General Exalted Discussion IV: Roll Join Debate

[vegetalss4]

That's as rediculous as Schrodinger's Cat.

Quantum mechanics seem ridiculous, which by the way was what Schrödinger's Cat was invented to illustrate, but they also happens to work that way, we have experiments that prove it.

[Lix Lorn]

Also, Schrodinger's cat isn't ridiculous. It's a valid and accepted scientific theory.
...also you spelt ridiculous wrong.

[Yuki Akuma]

Oh hey fun fact:

Schroedinger didn't like the uncertainty principle.

This is why his thought experiment is ridiculous. It's meant to be.

It's a valid and accepted scientific theory.

No it isn't. The uncertainty principle is. The uncertainty principle doesn't work on the level that Schroedinger's Cat operates.

And why wouldn't the cat count as an observer, anyway?

[vegetalss4]

Oh hey fun fact:

Schroedinger didn't like the uncertainty principle.

This is why his thought experiment is ridiculous. It's meant to be.

exactly.

the really weird thing about quantum mechanics is that stuff on that microlevel don't act the same way as stuff on the macro level.

[Lix Lorn]

My apologies; I meant it was true as a demonstration, not that an actual cat works like that.

[Kyeudo]

Every explanation of how quantum physics came to exist that I've ever heard stems from several layers of abstraction, the inability of newtonian physics to explain the partical/wave duality, and Schrodinger guessing an equation in a cabin in the woods. While I cannot argue with quantum physics' results, I'm firmly in Einstein's camp. God doesn't play dice with the universe.

Yeah, it's almost as rediculous as the world being flat. Or gods and stuff actually existing in some form of bueracracy.

O WAIT!

Those aren't rediculous at all, especially if you aren't educated otherwise. The world being flat appears correct unless put under more careful scrutiny than is productive.

[Mr.Bookworm]

My apologies; I meant it was true as a demonstration, not that an actual cat works like that.

It's a horrible demonstration of the principle, because it gives people everywhere an extremely faulty idea of how the uncertainty principle actually works, particularly what the word "observer" means.

Every explanation of how quantum physics came to exist that I've ever heard stems from several layers of abstraction, the inability of newtonian physics to explain the partical/wave duality, and Schrodinger guessing an equation in a cabin in the woods. While I cannot argue with quantum physics' results, I'm firmly in Einstein's camp. God doesn't play dice with the universe.

What do you mean "came to exist"? You might as well ask how general relativity "came to exist".

And Einstein is both A) Quite capable of being wrong about something and B) was a great supporter of quantum theory. He wrote one of the papers that practically founded it.

Those aren't rediculous at all, especially if you aren't educated otherwise. The world being flat appears correct unless put under more careful scrutiny than is productive.

No. That the world isn't flat is clearly evident if you go out to sea and look towards that horizon. It's evident with even the slightest bit of astronomical scrutiny. This has been the generally accepted truth for a couple thousand years.

[Yuki Akuma]

Every explanation of how quantum physics came to exist that I've ever heard stems from several layers of abstraction, the inability of newtonian physics to explain the partical/wave duality, and Schrodinger guessing an equation in a cabin in the woods. While I cannot argue with quantum physics' results, I'm firmly in Einstein's camp. God doesn't play dice with the universe.

When it gets to the sub-subatomic level, the universe is pretty much magic.

Quantum mechanics is weird. It's not a surprise you don't understand it. Most people don't. I sure as hell don't.

[Turalisj]

I'm firmly in Einstein's camp. God doesn't play dice with the universe.

No, but he does like working on his epic settings with his own son as a Marty Stu

(I hope I didn't go too close to RL religion with that joke)

[DragonSinged]

We're all missing the important question here, though.


F****** magnets, how do they work?

[Kobold-Bard]

We're all missing the important question here, though.


F****** magnets, how do they work?

However the Sidereals want them to.

[Yuki Akuma]

F****** magnets, how do they work?

Quantum mechanics.

No really.

Basically it's a property related to the spin of certain elementary particles.

(And no, 'spin' doesn't mean 'rotation'. The way a particle rotates doesn't matter much.)

[Qaera]

We're all missing the important question here, though.


F****** magnets, how do they work?

Essence, obv.

[DragonSinged]

Quantum mechanics.

No really.

Basically it's a property related to the spin of certain elementary particles.

(And no, 'spin' doesn't mean 'rotation'. The way a particle rotates doesn't matter much.)

Hey, I don't want to talk to a scientist, y'all are lying and getting me pissed.


Edit: ATW, you can add me to your dot of cult now.

[Guancyto]

That they don't look doesn't mean they flipped Samsara the bird. If one Maiden were to observe Samsara as another Maiden acted without consulting Samsara, they'd see that Samsara perfectly predicts the actions of the ignorant Maiden. The Ignorant Maiden is just unaware of what Samsara is predicting. She's a fool believing herself to have free will.

Actually...

Is there any real guarantee of that? This is just speculation at this point, but if Venus looks at Samsara and sees "Mercury performs a peppy show tune with ten Celestial Lions as backup dancers," at this point she's compelled to try and make that a reality. Chances are she'll accomplish this by walking up to Mercury and saying 'hey, Samsara said you'd perform a peppy show tune with ten Celestial Lions as backup dancers,' and Mercury (knowing Samsara to have never been wrong before) will figure hey, why not?

And if she doesn't, there's a Celestial Incarna with highly enhanced charms who cannot help but try and make that happen, so she'll probably end up doing it to get Venus off her back so they can get back to the Games.

But besides Venus who is hopped up on Samsara and Mercury's own preconceptions about the whole thing, who says Mercury has to do that?

[vegetalss4]

Every explanation of how quantum physics came to exist that I've ever heard stems from several layers of abstraction, the inability of newtonian physics to explain the partical/wave duality, and Schrodinger guessing an equation in a cabin in the woods. While I cannot argue with quantum physics' results, I'm firmly in Einstein's camp. God doesn't play dice with the universe.

heres a fun little experiment they have done at the Copenhagen university


the blue lines is a kind of special mirror glass that reflects exactly half the light that hits it.

The red lines represent ordinary (through very high quality mirrors)

the box with the X is a special machine that when activated releases exactly one photon.

if you put a measuring object at the a and b you find that the photon hits either one half the time.
now if you don't you instead find that the photon ends up at one of two points whose locations depend on how you have placed the mirrors (or if you place the mirrors just right they only end up at one point, but thats not important right now.)

now here is the weird thing the location of both those points change if you change the position of just one of those red mirrors, not just the location one would imagine was the result of the photon actually hitting that mirror.
or in other words that single photon somehow measures both mirrors when the photon isn't itself observed other wise it only goes one way and only measure one mirror.


EDIT: wait a minute, why am I arguing that quantum mechanics have been experimentally proven in a thread about exalted instead of talking about exalted?

[Tavar]

Okay, back to exalted...
Oh, here's one; in the First Age, some Solars did experiments with Demon Summoning. Specifically, the decided to summon a specific demon. They then followed the demon around, and found that 5 days before the summoning, the demon started the trek through the endless desert. Okay, pretty normal.

But that wasn't all. The Solars did some more tests, where they would follow the demons that the group was going to summon, and then on the summoning day they would randomly decide whether or not they were going to summon the demon or not. The demon always left 5 days ahead of time if the summoning went forward, and did not if the summoning didn't.

[Yuki Akuma]

Cecelyne has some weird time stuff going on. She always takes five days to cross, for instance. Always.

Even if you go in one direction for one day and turn back, it takes five days to get back to where you started.

Malfaes is probably slightly disjointed in time compared to Creation because the Loom of Fate (which controls things like causality and 'x happens before y') doesn't reach there.

[DragonSinged]

Okay, back to exalted...
Oh, here's one; in the First Age, some Solars did experiments with Demon Summoning. Specifically, the decided to summon a specific demon. They then followed the demon around, and found that 5 days before the summoning, the demon started the trek through the endless desert. Okay, pretty normal.

But that wasn't all. The Solars did some more tests, where they would follow the demons that the group was going to summon, and then on the summoning day they would randomly decide whether or not they were going to summon the demon or not. The demon always left 5 days ahead of time if the summoning went forward, and did not if the summoning didn't.

I was thinking about my response to this, being all, "Well, the only real useful application I can think of this is monitoring the more powerful demons, and if they start going through the desert that means you've got 5 days to get ready to deal with it."

But then I thought, wait, does that apply to like, 3rd circle demons as well? If someone decides they want to summon Ligier, does Ligier have to spend 5 days walking through the desert? That seems a little ridiculous, but as far as I understand it, yes, he does.

[Yuki Akuma]

But then I thought, wait, does that apply to like, 3rd circle demons as well? If someone decides they want to summon Ligier, does Ligier have to spend 5 days walking through the desert? That seems a little ridiculous, but as far as I understand it, yes, he does.

Yes, he does.

But Ligier can be in two places at once.

[Xefas]

Okay, back to exalted...
Oh, here's one; in the First Age, some Solars did experiments with Demon Summoning. Specifically, the decided to summon a specific demon. They then followed the demon around, and found that 5 days before the summoning, the demon started the trek through the endless desert. Okay, pretty normal.

But that wasn't all. The Solars did some more tests, where they would follow the demons that the group was going to summon, and then on the summoning day they would randomly decide whether or not they were going to summon the demon or not. The demon always left 5 days ahead of time if the summoning went forward, and did not if the summoning didn't.

Conclusion: The freelancer that wrote that bit was being dumb and should've just said that summoning demons bypasses the five day trek through Cecelyne.

The more and more I think about it, the less I think I like the Exalted setting, and more I think that, with the good core ideas, the fact that it's layered with so much disjointed bullcrap lets me easily forget the millions of things I don't like because everything is contradicted by like nine other things.

I have to say, the Exalted setting I play in is a lot different than the one that seems to exist on the internet. And I don't even use the Exalted system to play Exalted anymore.

[gareth]

I've been thinking about the charm Legend Lives On, from the Dreams of the First Age Errata. It's a high-essence Solar charm which creates a ghost to watch over an organisation that the Solar created. There are two variants, one for bureaucracies and one for military organisations. The ghost can also train up the new recipient of the Solar's exaltation, breaking limits on training speed. One of the obvious things to do with it is have a Second Age PC meet the ghost of his First Age incarnation. He gets a mechanical benefit as well as an interesting story. But the ghost can only survive if a military or bureaucratic organisation headed by a Solar in the First Age survived into the present day, and I'm not sure that there are any examples of that in the setting. Any ideas?

[vegetalss4]

Cecelyne has some weird time stuff going on. She always takes five days to cross, for instance. Always.

Even if you go in one direction for one day and turn back, it takes five days to get back to where you started.

Malfaes is probably slightly disjointed in time compared to Creation because the Loom of Fate (which controls things like causality and 'x happens before y') doesn't reach there.

time is deeper than the loom of fate, the reason for Cecelynes wierdness is that
A) She is infinitive
B) the Exalted host weren't taking that **** so they worked into her surrender clause that she at most was allowed to be five days long to cross.

in other words the five days to cross no matter your speed is due to stangeness in space not in time.

[Urpriest]

In terms of Samsara, here's my take. I'm mostly getting this just from reading other people's accounts, so feel free to correct me, but I think this is consistent with what people are arguing:

Exalted is a setting that operates on two types of rules: game mechanical and narrative. For example, motes, a game mechanical concept, really exist, and stunts, sort of a narrative concept, can really generate motes.

Game mechanically, we can all agree that Samsara doesn't negate free will at all for anyone but the Maidens. Unless Kyeudo regularly plays the Maidens in games, this doesn't cause problems.

So Samsara vs. Fate: Fate is the fatalist interpretation of determinism. Fate is the sort of thing that dooms you to repeat your mistakes and takes away the value of your accomplishments and your responsibility for evil. As such, essence users can say "screw you" to fate and do their own thing, and this is the nature of free will.

Samsara, by contrast, is the rationalist interpretation of determinism. It's the one that says "you're going to do what you're going to do anyway, so there's no use moping about it." This interpretation takes Dennet's view that free will is just freedom from certain types of coercion (in this case, Fate) rather than freedom from all predetermination whatsoever. In this view, determinism doesn't matter and shouldn't make you feel any less free.

Now remember, Exalted is a world with narrative rules. So while you might argue that what I just presented are two different interpretations of the same state of affairs, and that you can choose the former interpretation, in fact you cannot. Exalted's narrative structure means that both of those interpretations are built in to the concepts of Fate and Samsara. Samsara's narrative role is to be interpreted as not limiting players' free will, while Fate (barring essence expenditure) is, and these interpretations are just as much a part of the setting as the mechanics.

[Rockphed]

She(SWLiHN) also reminds me of the Auditors, from Discworld.

So she is composed of lots of empty robes with no sense of self who don't like uncertainty?

But they can't change Samsara. No one can.

And just because Samsara has never been wrong does not mean that Samsara will never be wrong. Samsara may describe a history of the world written after it is finished, but it isn't necessarily the right one.

My apologies; I meant it was true as a demonstration, not that an actual cat works like that.

If you hooked a cat in a box up to a machine that would kill it when a certain atom decayed and waited exactly one half life of that atom, the cat would either be alive or dead, each with 50% probability, but you wouldn't know which one until after you opened the box. However, it is indeed a horrible thought experiment to demonstrate uncertainty.

[Tavar]

Conclusion: The freelancer that wrote that bit was being dumb and should've just said that summoning demons bypasses the five day trek through Cecelyne.

What's wrong with that?

[Xefas]

What's wrong with that?

You don't find anything wrong with beings that supposedly have free will having their actions have consequences before they've decided on those actions in the first place?

If, five days before my Twilight decides at all to summon a demon, a demon knows that I'm going to summon them, then the choice has already been made before my Twilight was even aware. They had no free will in the matter.

Which, Essence has the ability to skew the causality within the Loom of Fate. Which Malfeas doesn't have.

So, I guess it'd come back to Samsara. Which I also think is, at absolute best, completely unnecessary and, at worst, also dumb.

[Lord Raziere]

I have no problem with demons crossing five days before I summon them, I actually find it quite funny.

Demon: Oh hey, I'm gonna be summoned in five days, gonna have to start walking....

[Tavar]

First off, demons never had free will in the matter; that's the whole point of demon summoning spells.

The rest of the issue is complicated by the temporal shenanigans involved. But, no, I don't see an issue with actions that mess with temporal oddities having odd timings. Remember, the demon still is only called if and only if you cast the summoning spell.

Plus, it's been canon that Hell has weird time rules for some time. That's part of why the Yozi are one of the only beings in the setting that do have access to something approaching resurrection.

[Qaera]

*cough*