Results 121 to 150 of 287
-
2019-06-15, 04:57 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2017
- Location
- France
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
So what!? It's the third time that I tell you that the existence of ambiguously worded prophecies does not invalidate the existence of non-ambiguously worded prophecies like knowing that Durkon would die before going home, Xyko,n would attack Azure City, the Pyramid and the Tomb in that Order, that Beelkar would kill the Oracle at a precise time and be under a precise geas while doing so, knowing that a ghost would be present and refuse to leave while an important client is coming, knowing the exact circumstances of the Oracle's next death and knowing that Vaarsuvius would be on the ocean west of the Southern Continent. If you want to argue that no-one in the OOTS world has exact foreknowledge of (parts of) the future, you need to explain all that,
How could prophecy be separrate from foreknowledge? You need the latter to make the former!
The Oracle is doing very well, isn't he?
Ah, I think I've found the origin of our disagreement. I think the timelines split when Marty & Doc travelled through time, not at the first action they took while in the past. After all time-travelling is the one action that messes with time. But in any case the first change they create to 1955 was well before they met Marty's parents, when Marty ran over one pine. Hell, that's just the first change to ripple through 1985, the first change they created was the apparition of a two-ton moving car inside a barn, and then breathing air that wouldn't have been breathed at that point, etc. By the time they reach MArty's parents they were already in a second timeline.
No, the idea of libertarian free-will is that your decisions is not completely subject to circumstances and therefore people could behave the same under differentcircumstances or diffrently under identical ones. It fails however to establish any kind of mecanism under which people could make decisions when faced with identical circumstances, basically positing that people's choices are random. Libertarian free-will is basically seeing a dterministic universe and making a special pleading case for humans not being deterministic based on no evidence.
Yeah, I disagree with everything in your first two sentences, but let's not discuss religion/the soul. I don't think however discussing free-will breaks the forum rules.Forum Wisdom
Mage avatar by smutmulch & linklele.
-
2019-06-15, 06:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Valencia, Spain
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
That's my headcanon too. Xykon was almost certainly going to kill and soulbind the Oracle, because he wouldn't want someone able to locate his philactery to be available to his potential enemies.
Still I find odd that the Oracle went through all that effort to make Belkar trigger the Mark of Justice, which ultimately was helpful to thehobbithalfling, who the Oracle was supposed to dislike. The banishment of Roy I do not think was an overlooking because the Oracle gave the info about Belkar's death as a prophecy so Roy was going to remember anyway. I still have the impression that there was more in that whole scene than we believe.
-
2019-06-15, 06:49 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 1
-
2019-06-15, 06:52 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
It might have been ultimately beneficial, but for however many weeks it took them to get from the Oracle's valley to Greysky City, Belkar was very, very sick indeed. Given there was no other way the Oracle could realistically get revenge on Belkar for his death, I think he just chose to do what he could and be happy with it.
-
2019-06-15, 07:00 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Valencia, Spain
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
-
2019-06-15, 07:00 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2017
- Location
- France
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
It’s also possible that without the mark triggered, Belkar would have split, gone to Greysky to find someone who would remove the Mark and then gone on to live longer than he is going to.
Edit: or alternatively the world would have blown up without him helping along, he has already been instrumental in freeing Durkon and thwarting Hel.Last edited by Fyraltari; 2019-06-15 at 07:02 AM.
-
2019-06-15, 01:06 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2005
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
It could be that the Oracle was okay with ultimately helping Belkar by making him less of a jerk, so long as Belkar suffers in the process. Like... nothing about him really indicates to me that he's so hateful towards Belkar that he wants to avoid teaching him any lessons through punishment, because then his life might be better, and oh no, we cant have that!
How do any of the above considerations apply any less to the world of the comic than to our own world?
And Dion didn't contradict you. Why not take that as a silent admission of error? You've plainly laid out how not all prophesies have been ambiguous, so admitting being wrong about that would just be stating the obvious. No need to harp on it.
You need to know the future to know ahead of time that a prediction will be accurate, but an accurate prediction could also be a lucky guess, and inaccurate predictions are possible as well. Even if neither of those is what's going on with any prophesy in OotS, prophesy and foreknowledge can still be conceptually separate things. Unless you define the former to require the latter, at which point we're arguing definitions, which gets us into broader discussion on semantics. And the inherently recursive nature of question "What does 'means' mean?" complicates discussion to such a degree as to warrant its own thread, I think.
If their arrival in the past isn't what split the timeline, then the original 1955 already contained a time-traveling Doc and Marty who didn't change anything. And then the timeline was split, not by time travel, but in some other way. That's internally consistent, just pretty much the opposite of parsimonious. Why else would the timeline split? Because the timeline just naturally splits all the time? But in that case also one would expect to observe a different sequence of events than the original, because most forks in the timeline don't lead to the future that you're from.
It seems like you're claiming that metaphysical libertarians are aware that in general there are no truly random events, but hold an irrational belief that human choices are an exception.
I dispute that the first part of that is an accurate generalization. I suspect that most metaphysical libertarians believe that some behavior of intimate matter is genuinely random as well.
(Attributing consciousness to an extramaterial soul doesn't explain it any more than does attributing consciousness to the brain. Identifying the location or source of a phenomenon isn't the same thing as detailing how it happens.)
Eh? Religious views on free will and determinism are as religious as religious views on the soul, and non-religious views on the soul are as non-religious as non-religious views on free will and determinism.
-
2019-06-15, 01:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2018
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
It seems like Dion appears to be equating "prophecy" with "predication" and thus any random guess is considered a "prophecy" to him and thus doesn't require foreknowledge. This is contrary to how everyone else appears to be using the word, because we're not willfully ignoring actual context and misunderstanding the story to prove a point that isn't actually applicable to it.
Last edited by Rrmcklin; 2019-06-15 at 02:09 PM.
I'd just like to point out that saying that something unsupported is the case unless someone else can prove that it is not is an utter failure of logic. - Kish
-
2019-06-15, 01:53 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2005
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
The way that time travel works in Back to the Future doesn't really have any bearing on the comic either, but that hasn't stopped anyone from discussing that. Opposing the "devolution" of threads into side discussions seems like setting oneself up for heaps of disappointment. Furthermore, is not complaining about a side discussion itself a side discussion that does not address the original topic?
Personally, I the way that these conversations can go on so many different tangents. "Life is a side quest! Seize the XP!"
-
2019-06-15, 05:15 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2018
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
Can you describe what you mean by foreknowledge?
If I prophecize that before the year 2150 I will be dead, few people would claim I possessed much foreknowledge, and nobody would claim I was omniscient.
When the oracle said Durkon would return home posthumously. I don’t think he had any more foreknowledge of how or why that would happen than I would if I said I’ll be dead sometime in the next 130 years.
I think the oracle knows *something* will happen to make his statement true. I think has no idea what will actually happen to make it true.
-
2019-06-15, 07:26 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2019
- Location
- Magrathea
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
You are grossly misrepresenting what the Oracle does and can do, based on our knowledge. The Oracle essentially said "Durkon (physical body or otherwise) will not be present in the Dwarven Lands until after Durkon has died at least once." No mention of any other condition. The fact that Durkon came back to the Dwarven Lands in itself does not mean much, but the way it happened such that Durkon had already died, and did not return at any other point, means something more.
An explanation of why MitD being any larger than Huge is implausible.
See my extended signature here! May contain wit, candor, and somewhere from 52 to 8127 walruses.
Purple is humorous descriptions made up on the fly
Green is serious talk about hypothetical
Blue is irony and sarcasm
"I think, therefore I am,
I walk, therefore I stand,
I sleep, therefore I dream;
I joke, therefore I meme."
-Squire Doodad
-
2019-06-15, 08:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2018
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
And I think people are grossly mistaken about what they see the oracle doing.
Suppose someone told you they were going to spend a month in Colorado hiking, and you said “I predict that at some point you will be at exactly 3,000 meters elevation”.
Suppose they came back from their trip and said “wow, how did you know that I would be on the Pikes Peak trail at 8:32 am in the morning on Tuesday? That’s amazing! But why didn’t you tell me to have a camera ready to take a picture of the elk?”
You’d think they were nuts. You had no idea how or when or where they were going to be at 3,000m. It was just (virtually) guaranteed that they would.
That’s how I see the reaction to the Oracle in this thread. Read what he REALLY is predicting. My default position is that what he ACTUALLY SAYS is the complete and full extent of his knowledge.
Clearly there are cases where he knows quite a lot (like with Belkar’s curse).
But I have no reason to imagine some crazy complicated mechanism that would allow him to know anything more about what would happen to Durkon, Haley, Belkar, or Elan that’s exactly what he said to them.
-
2019-06-15, 08:28 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
The Oracle can explicitly look into the future, and can apparently read the books in that future. So I would say that there is a simple mechanism (reading the books in the future) that allows him to know exactly what would happen to Durkon, Haley, Belkar, or Elan.
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 1
-
2019-06-15, 08:41 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2018
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
More to the point, the Oracle's business is answering people's questions, not telling them literally every single detail of how things got to that point.
For the most part people seem okay with that because it's the result they care about, not the journey, and even if they did care the Oracle is a jerk who very clearly doesn't like telling more than is asked.
But to claim that the above somehow invalidates or makes ambiguous his knowledge of the future is ridiculous.Last edited by Rrmcklin; 2019-06-15 at 08:42 PM.
I'd just like to point out that saying that something unsupported is the case unless someone else can prove that it is not is an utter failure of logic. - Kish
-
2019-06-15, 09:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2019
- Location
- Magrathea
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
Durkon did not say "I have been banished from the Dwarven Lands, and my family is probably going to look for my body for the ceremonial burial if they can drum up the cash, will I ever return". He said "Will I ever return to the dwarven lands". The Oracle replying "posthumously" to the first question would be grim at first and then after the vampire bit be more insightful, but easily guessing. For the second question, it is grim and then insightful, but...is highly improbable to be just guessing, because while it is true, the Oracle is far from the Dwarven Lands and so could easily assume Durkon would die in the area where he is. The odds of Durkon dying in a random dungeon, and the odds of his body never returning in the first place, means that it is a far cry from "Information" "Nearly tautological comment based on information".
V's comment is far more interesting, as it has even less predictability. What are the odds of V actually acquiring ultimate arcane powers? Well, given that V was a pretty high level mage for a world where few wizards make it past 10th level...pretty decent. He might not get to "I am as unto a god" tier, but he'd probably master some immensely powerful spells. Then you have the 4 words to the right entity. That is VERY specific. What are the odds of someone making a faustian bargain to get ultimate magical power, when they seem sane now? What are the odds of someone accomplishing something with four words? You could say there's a good chance. You could say it would be probable. But the Oracle evidently does not care to know his clients very well, and so the odds of HIM KNOWING that V would do all this without magical doodads and whatnot are slim to none.
The other comments like the "pair of family reunions" (alluding to Nale and Julia using Sending, which the Oracle would know nothing about without spending way too much time on people he doesn't care about) also explicitly demonstrate the Oracle's abilities.Last edited by Squire Doodad; 2019-06-15 at 09:06 PM.
An explanation of why MitD being any larger than Huge is implausible.
See my extended signature here! May contain wit, candor, and somewhere from 52 to 8127 walruses.
Purple is humorous descriptions made up on the fly
Green is serious talk about hypothetical
Blue is irony and sarcasm
"I think, therefore I am,
I walk, therefore I stand,
I sleep, therefore I dream;
I joke, therefore I meme."
-Squire Doodad
-
2019-06-15, 09:06 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 1
-
2019-06-15, 09:08 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2019
- Location
- Magrathea
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
Thanks for catching that. It still matters little, in retrospect V's question is ever more damming (*rimshot*) of a piece of evidence...for a point that is already in-universe canon and cannot be argued in virtually any way unless one disregards clear and concise information that has been confirmed many times over.
I liked the timeline discussion better.An explanation of why MitD being any larger than Huge is implausible.
See my extended signature here! May contain wit, candor, and somewhere from 52 to 8127 walruses.
Purple is humorous descriptions made up on the fly
Green is serious talk about hypothetical
Blue is irony and sarcasm
"I think, therefore I am,
I walk, therefore I stand,
I sleep, therefore I dream;
I joke, therefore I meme."
-Squire Doodad
-
2019-06-15, 09:16 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2004
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
-
2019-06-15, 10:03 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2019
- Location
- Magrathea
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
An explanation of why MitD being any larger than Huge is implausible.
See my extended signature here! May contain wit, candor, and somewhere from 52 to 8127 walruses.
Purple is humorous descriptions made up on the fly
Green is serious talk about hypothetical
Blue is irony and sarcasm
"I think, therefore I am,
I walk, therefore I stand,
I sleep, therefore I dream;
I joke, therefore I meme."
-Squire Doodad
-
2019-06-15, 10:25 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2007
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
You are the one grossly mistaken and indeed clearly ignoring the evidence in front of you. The Oracle is not doing guesswork. He has been shown capable of predicting the times of his own death down to the exact minute. That is far, far beyond guesswork.
Knowing the exact count of words that would give V ultimate Arcane power is a similar example of something beyond guesswork. As is Haley's answer, and of course Elan's.
Grey WolfLast edited by Grey_Wolf_c; 2019-06-15 at 10:25 PM.
Interested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
Deep in the corners of your mind
Where reality is an intruder
And myth and legend thrive
Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est
-
2019-06-15, 10:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2019
- Location
- Magrathea
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
Last edited by Squire Doodad; 2019-06-15 at 10:29 PM.
An explanation of why MitD being any larger than Huge is implausible.
See my extended signature here! May contain wit, candor, and somewhere from 52 to 8127 walruses.
Purple is humorous descriptions made up on the fly
Green is serious talk about hypothetical
Blue is irony and sarcasm
"I think, therefore I am,
I walk, therefore I stand,
I sleep, therefore I dream;
I joke, therefore I meme."
-Squire Doodad
-
2019-06-15, 10:35 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2004
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
-
2019-06-15, 10:52 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2019
- Location
- Magrathea
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
An explanation of why MitD being any larger than Huge is implausible.
See my extended signature here! May contain wit, candor, and somewhere from 52 to 8127 walruses.
Purple is humorous descriptions made up on the fly
Green is serious talk about hypothetical
Blue is irony and sarcasm
"I think, therefore I am,
I walk, therefore I stand,
I sleep, therefore I dream;
I joke, therefore I meme."
-Squire Doodad
-
2019-06-15, 11:02 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2007
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
Interested in MitD? Join us in MitD's thread.There is a world of imagination
Deep in the corners of your mind
Where reality is an intruder
And myth and legend thrive
Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est
-
2019-06-15, 11:07 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2019
- Location
- Magrathea
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
An explanation of why MitD being any larger than Huge is implausible.
See my extended signature here! May contain wit, candor, and somewhere from 52 to 8127 walruses.
Purple is humorous descriptions made up on the fly
Green is serious talk about hypothetical
Blue is irony and sarcasm
"I think, therefore I am,
I walk, therefore I stand,
I sleep, therefore I dream;
I joke, therefore I meme."
-Squire Doodad
-
2019-06-16, 12:21 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2018
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
I never said the oracle was guessing. I said there's no reason to believe he knows more than he's saying.
Yes, the oracle knew the exact count of words. That doesn't mean he knew which words, or who V would say them to, or why, or when, or anything else beyond the fact that their would be 4 words.
Think about it like math. There are all sorts of theorems in math that tell you that an object must satisfy some factual statement, without telling you how it satisfies that statement. For example, the fundamental theorem of arithmetic is "every natural number can be factored into unique primes". But just because you can look at an number and say unequivocally that it factors into unique primes, that doesn't give anyone the ability to actually know what the primes are.
My default position for any story with accurate prophecy is that the story occurs in a universe where a prophecy is a mathematically true statement (like there are unique prime factors), without necessarily telling you how it's true (like what the prime factors actually are).
The Oracle clearly knows some things in very great detail. But his knowledge of the world is similar to V's ability to throw fireballs. Just because V can throw a fireball, that doesn't make V omnipotent. And just because the oracle can know some things, that doesn't make the oracle omniscient.Last edited by Dion; 2019-06-16 at 12:23 AM.
-
2019-06-16, 01:03 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
Which is all well and good, but should have changed when the Oracle said "I can look into the future, read the future books, and have all the answers." Or even earlier when he says the entire point of the memory charm is because he rambles and lets soothsayings slip on by all willy nilly.
Either way, there is very much reason to believe he knows more than he's saying.Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 1
-
2019-06-16, 06:52 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2014
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
I think this is more a general symptom of characters not being allowed to derive any useful information from prophecy because acting intelligently on said information would inevitably alter the foreseen future (or conversely cause it to be fulfilled in various contrived bull**** ways.) I'm not... crazy about prophetic visions as a plot device for this reason.
With that said, I do think the Oracle having effective or near-total omniscience is pretty heavily implied by the text. He's just kind of a jerk about it.Give directly to the extreme poor.
-
2019-06-16, 07:51 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2009
- Location
- Birmingham, AL
- Gender
Re: Is everything pre-determined in OOTS world?
I can totally understand that, and I kind of like that that wasn't so much an issue in OotS; Roy acted intelligently to the prophecy, but got his question wrong, which was an amusing inversion. Durkon and V didn't care about anything but the end result of their prophecies, and even as they realized they were happening welcomed them; Haley simply took the advice, and that resolved her issues; Elan just asked as general a question as he could, I'd lump him in there with Durkon and V; and Belkar, well, he was always wanting his to come true regardless.
Now, the dragon, she totally acted intelligently on hers, and that ended up biting her in the rear hard, but that was hardly her fault.Cuthalion's art is the prettiest art of all the art. Like my avatar.
Number of times Roland St. Jude has sworn revenge upon me: 1
-
2019-06-16, 10:55 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2006
- Location
- California
- Gender