Your Dumbest Theory

[Jex]

6 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

My first thought would be that each of those one-dimensional lines has area zero; if you combine them, the resulting figure has area zero; you can do this with as many lines as you like, and the area doesn’t go up; equally, no matter how many you add, you cannot manoeuvre a line from one orientation to another — you cannot build a filled-in circle from superimposed zero-area line segments, even if you have uncountably many of them (presumably the possible orientations of a line in a plane is given by the real numbers).

 

You can't put together finitely many zero-area line segments to get something with nonzero area, but you can do it with infinitely many zero-area line segments.  Infinities are weird, and things can happen at infinity that are qualitatively different from what happens with any finite number, no matter how big.

(Here's one way to think of this: So, we're looking at a disk of radius D/2, centered on point O.  Pick any point P on that disk (besides the center).  There is a line segment of length D/2 centered at point O that passes through that point.  (How do we know this?  Because two points determine a line, so we know there's a unique line passing through those points, and we can just chop out the length we need.  That line segment is at some angle from the x axis, and it's not too hard to show that it's the only line segment (of length D/2 centered at point O) at that angle from the x axis.  So as we rotate the line segment 360 degrees, it must pass through point P.  Since point P was an arbitrary point on the disk, that means this is true of every point on the disk.  (Well, we did specify that point P wasn't the center—that was to assure the uniqueness criterion—but of course all the line segments pass through the center.)  So since the line segments pass through every point on the disk, if you put together all the rotated segments you do indeed get the full, filled-in disk.

In fact, not only can you get a nonzero area from adding together infinitely many zero-area line segments, you can even get an infinite area.  The entire plane can be composed from infinitely many lines.)

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

I can see this operating like an antifractal in that the area enclosed approaches and then achieves a theoretical limit of zero as the line itself is successively stripped (or "tapped") from its second dimension. Death by infinite cuts.

That's not an "antifractal"; that's just a (kind of) regular fractal—in fact, that's one kind of fractal I had in mind.  For some famous fractals that work this way, see Cantor dust or the Sierpiński gasket.  (Those fractals of course don't meet the Kakeya/Besicovitch criteria, but they're examples of fractals that work subtractively.)

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Jex said:

You can't put together finitely many zero-area line segments to get something with nonzero area, but you can do it with infinitely many zero-area line segments.

It is OK, it was not a serious suggestion, witness the next sentence:

8 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

THEN I would think that I know shit about infinities, screw up my piece of paper, and throw it away.

I was just riffing on your idea that there was a zero-area figure that could fit the line segment in all orientations but within which you could not rotate it — or otherwise jiggle it about from one position to another — and on which way one’s intuitions run.

3 hours ago, Jex said:

So since the line segments pass through every point on the disk, if you put together all the rotated segments you do indeed get the full, filled-in disk.

More seriously, I think you are trying to say that for any point on a circle, there is a radius that can be drawn through it. OK. I think — but I am a broo of very little brain — you are then saying that because “all the radii” get you “all the points”, “adding” lines can get you area. But that would seem to assume that the target of the argument will already swallow (uncountably many) dimensionless points adding up to area — in which case, they probably don’t need convincing about lines.

[Jex]

  

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

It is OK, it was not a serious suggestion, witness the next sentence:

Oh, I figured that, but I figured I may as well explain it anyway in case anyone was interested.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

More seriously, I think you are trying to say that for any point on a circle, there is a radius that can be drawn through it. OK. I think — but I am a broo of very little brain — you are then saying that because “all the radii” get you “all the points”, “adding” lines can get you area. But that would seem to assume that the target of the argument will already swallow (uncountably many) dimensionless points adding up to area — in which case, they probably don’t need convincing about lines.

No, while it's true that there is a radius that can be drawn through any point on the circle, that wasn't the main point; that was just a step in the proof.  The point was that it can be proven that adding together the rotated lines gets you all the points in the filled circle.  It's not something you have to "swallow"; it's something that's mathematically provably true even if it's counterintuitive.  (There are a lot of things in math that are counterintuitive but true.) 

As for adding up all the points getting you the area... well, yes, if something includes all the points in a filled-in circle, then it includes that filled-in circle; a shape by definition is the sum of all the points in it.  Every finite (or infinite!) shape is made up of infinitely many (dimensionless) points; it's routine in geometry to define a shape by specifying the points in it.  For instance, a disk—a filled-in circle—can be defined by the formula x²+y²≤r².  But what that formula is really defining directly is the points in the disk—it's saying that every point (x, y) that satisfies the inequality is included in the disk.  That infinitely many zero-area points can make up a shape with finite (or infinite) area is kind of fundamental to geometry.

But anyway, I feel like I've kind of been hijacking this thread to ramble about math; sorry.  Unless there are any related questions anyone really wants to know the answer to, I'll shut up now and let people get back to dumb theories about Glorantha.

[EDIT: Okay, I said I'd shut up, but I just thought of another explanation that may help... or may just make things worse; I don't know.  Anyway, I think the crux of the issue here is that when we're asking what's the area of infinitely many dimensionless points, we're multiplying zero times infinity.  Now, zero times any finite number is zero; infinity times any finite (nonzero) number is infinity.  So what's zero times infinity?  It's undefined.  It doesn't have a unique value—at least without more context.  Zero times infinity isn't necessarily zero, or infinity; depending on exactly how you get the zero and the infinity, it can be zero, or it can be infinity... or it can be one, or fifteen, or π.

So how could you get a value for zero times infinity in a given situation?  Well, one way is to use limits.  You let one value get larger and larger, and one get smaller and smaller, in such a way that the bigger the one value gets, and the smaller the other value gets, their product gets closer and closer to a given value.  And that's one way we can define area!

We can approximate the area of an object by covering it in squares.  For the purposes of this argument, let's take for granted that we know the area of a square of side length L is L².  So okay, let's take a circle of radius 2, and we'll take a bunch of squares of side length 1 and use them to cover it.  Each square has an area of 1, and it takes 16 squares to completely cover the circle.  So the total area of the squares is 16 times 1, or just 16.

But of course this overstates the area of the circle, because some of the squares extend beyond the edge.  We can come closer using smaller squares.  Let's use squares of side length 1/2, so the area of each square is 1/4.

Now it takes 60 squares to cover the circle, so their total area is 60 times 1/4, or 15.  Of course, there are still a few squares that extend beyond the edges, so this is still an overestimate.  What if we make the squares even smaller?  Let's use squares of side length 1/4, so the area of each square is 1/16.

Hm, now it takes 224 squares, so the squares' total area is 224 * 1/16 = 14.  But there are still some squares overlapping the edge.  As we use smaller and smaller squares, the area of each square gets smaller and smaller—tending toward zero—but the number of squares we need gets larger and larger—tending toward infinity.  But if we look at their total area, while it does decrease the more squares we use (because we're lowering the amount that extends outside the circle), it doesn't decrease at the same rate; the rate of decrease gets smaller and smaller, as the total area of the squares—the area of each square times the number of squares—approaches a particular value that it never drops below no matter how small the squares get.  Specifically, in this case, it approaches 4π, or about 12.56637...  We can take this to be the limit of the sequence as the area of each square approaches zero, and as the number of squares approaches infinity—and we can take this limit to be the area of the circle.  (In fact, one very common way to find the area of a shape, integration in two dimensions, essentially is doing just this, finding the limit as the shape is divided into infinitely many infinitesimal bits.)

Now, if at the limit the squares have zero width and zero area, what's the difference between a zero-area square and a point?  We've effectively just divided the circle into infinitely many points, and in this case their total area—infinity times zero, the infinity of the number of points times the zero area of each point—came out to 4π.  But of course while that value holds for that circle, if we used the same procedure for other shapes with different areas we'd get different limiting values.  So, like I said, infinity times zero can be... pretty much anything.  But, in particular, it certainly isn't necessarily zero.

The TLDR takeaway here is just that infinity is really weird, and doesn't always behave how you'd expect, and infinity times zero is especially weird.

And now I really will shut up unless there's some mathematical question someone really wants addressed.]

Edited June 10, 2023 by Jex

[mfbrandi]

11 hours ago, Jex said:

But anyway, I feel like I've kind of been hijacking this thread to ramble about math; sorry.

No need to apologise. If it is anyone’s fault, it is mine for opening the worm can.

[JRE]

To dumb thing down, I posted this in a now locked thread, but I feel it fits better here anyway. I have edited it a bit as rereading I had some further insights.

One of the common threads in our sources is that the leader of the Lightbringer's Quest (LBQ) is surprised by the end result, even if they are succesful and get what they want. As it was also discussed with Kallyr's short LBQ in the Gloranthan Sourcebook, a succesful LBQ strengthens the Cosmos and the Compromise, besides whatever the quester is looking for. But it is a gamble, because a failed one weakens the heroquesters, the Cosmos and the Compromise.

Which makes me think that Argrath's big LBQ actually failed. And my own take is that he failed it deliberately in order to go further. By engaging in creative heroquesting in Hell, he missed the setting of grievances and the peace between sun and storm, and even worse, missed the Compromise. That could also explain the high body count among his companions, lost when he abandoned them in Hell.

So although I am quite sure it was not anything he wanted specifically, he opened the way for the Monster Empire, and probably did it even further when he realized that despite his expectations Sheng did not destroy the Moon, just took it over, so then he had to take him out as well.

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, JRE said:

a succesful LBQ strengthens the Cosmos and the Compromise

And this is why Argrath & the Devil gives us the perfect LBQ: dead gods break no promises, and we put the WMD of the Gods War permanently beyond use? The more “distance” we put between us and eternal cosmic warfare, the stronger the world (cosmos) of time (the compromise). Now we have only to overcome ourselves. There is always a catch.

[mfbrandi]

The writer has to have a rough idea where everything is … But I like to know as little as possible, whether I’m writing or reading. Too much knowledge gets in the way of my imagination. I don’t want The Day of the Triffids to be a pseudo-accurate horticultural guide to walking vegetables, I want it to be a novel about middle-class people pulling themselves together in the aftermath of the second world war – sorry, “the disaster”. I don’t want to read the operating instructions for the Starship Enterprise; it isn’t a vacuum cleaner …

I think you can increase the illusion of depth by leaving plenty of space for the accidental

— Mike
—————————————————————————————————

I … leave some things unexplained or just referred to, as though the world is much bigger than just this one story and won’t all fit in the pages …

It’s difficult … not to … wonder about those details, and try to build them out yourself. I can see why readers ask the questions they do about the worlds they read, and I can see why some writers would respond by trying to answer all those questions in advance.

— Ann
—————————————————————————————————

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.

— Ralph
—————————————————————————————————

It’s full of holes. It’s full of holes.

— Bill
—————————————————————————————————

Consistency and completeness may be virtues in some fields, but in building imaginary playpens, you are just setting traps for yourself. Viriconium was never consistent — it was never meant to be. Comics used continuity as an excuse for crises of infinite tedium, but in truth these were unmotivated — it never mattered a jot that a Superman story from 1950 contradicted one from 1980, and if you “fixed” the continuity, the stories were still there.

Glorantha is dense and that could be stifling. But if we treat every retcon and every newly discovered dissonance in the palimpsest as generating a new epistemic hole, we can let some air in. Embrace resolutions offered? Seek resolutions that should remain elusive? No, just breathe deeply the bracing wind of ignorance. How could Orlanth argue with that?

So stipple, scribble, and crosshatch if you must, for the more of the paper you cover, the less we will know. That is what the Golden Void whispered in my ear. Or possibly it was Fred Dretske … or even old IK himself. (And this is why Lhankor Mhy is not the knowing god, at all.)

“Establish a baseline of official dates”? “Make the IP more consistent and high quality”? — Feed these heresies into the memory hole of blessed Kajabor!

Edited June 13, 2023 by mfbrandi

[AlHazred]

The trick is, you have to avoid the Fridge Logic situation. So long as your inconsistencies don't rise to that level, you'll be fine with them.

[soltakss]

On 6/5/2023 at 5:56 PM, mfbrandi said:

Well, on the one hand:

eyes closed;

eyes open;

eyes thrown in the air and juggled.

But on the other, these look like the glyphs used to notate Gloranthan choreography. “Young elf, there’s no need to feel down … It’s fun to stray in the True Illusory Forest.” Or maybe they are pom-poms and that is something by Toni Basil. Pom-poms or no, “Crosseyed and Painless” might soundtrack a Gloranthan rebirth.

You really should publish your musings as a Jonstown Compendium supplement.

[mfbrandi]

Lhankor Mhy and Eurmal are ripped to the tits on Datura and they have imprisoned the Red Moon in Flatland (fig. A) — or it may just be a drop of LM’s blood from where he cut himself shaving. (E talked him into it, but there’s no time for that, now.)

“I think her cell is too big,” says LM, “I am going to cut it in half. Then we’ll have two cells, each of exactly half the size. We can put Orlanth in the other one. That’ll be hilarious.” (fig. B)

“No, no, no,” says E, “We’ll just slice it most of the way down — then they will be able to kick each other but won’t be able to switch sides.” (fig. C)

“Ha! You won’t fool me again, so soon,” says LM, “We all know a plane figure is defined by the points it contains; clearly, A and C contain exactly the same points, so A = C; if she can move freely within A, she can certainly switch sides in C.”

“You’re crazy,” says E and throws recently severed bits of beard at his partner in crime. They wrestle.

Meanwhile, the drop of blood — or perhaps it was the Moon, after all — has made its escape unnoticed.

Edited June 14, 2023 by mfbrandi
larger top border for graphic

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, Jex said:

"This oasis is where Pamalt broke the mask of Trickster and freed him from his own worst trick."

This strikes me as an extremely dangerous thing to do: break the mask of , and all you are left with is the Void, or . It is certainly liberating, however. (Disorder is the mask of Chaos, or Chaos expressed as a power.)

(Of course, Pamaltelan equivalences can be tricky (Cronisper is Sky ( = Aether) but also Breath ()) , and I think Jeff said somewhere — although I cannot remember where — that Eurmal is Illusion and Bolongo is Disorder. But if masks — “tonight, Matthew, I shall be …” — don’t suggest Illusion, I don’t know what does.)

Quote

Bolongo, I said, last. “Murderer, Emptiness, Evil, Trickster” — Pamaltelan Creation Mythology

Trickster = Death = The Greatest of the Lords of Terror = The Devil ?= Kajabor

But no Death rune, so … ? Ah, but “without Illusion, there would be none of us to think we ever were” — withdrawal of Illusion results in existence failure, or proper death, not the piddling phoney death of discorporation.

So Trickster’s own worst trick was existence. And this is how Pamalt freed him from it:

Quote

“This is murder,” said Pamalt, “and after this, any murder will be bad, and will be punished by delivering the same results upon the guilty.” This was the first justice, and so they killed Bolongo. — Pamalt Exercises Rule

Capital punishment merely frees the Devil. Call it “justice” if you like.

[Jex]

12 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

“Ha! You won’t fool me again, so soon,” says LM, “We all know a plane figure is defined by the points it contains; clearly, A and C contain exactly the same points, so A = C; if she can move freely within A, she can certainly switch sides in C.”

Oh, heck, we're back to math again.  Are you trying to get a contradiction out of the idea that a plane figure is defined by the points it contains?  Because it seems unlikely that you're going to successfully undermine the foundations of geometry.

In this case, the problem with your argument is that A and C clearly do not contain exactly the same points.  You've removed a line segment from the middle, so the points on that line segment are in A but not in C.  Yes, the line segment is infinitely thin, and doesn't affect the area; A and C do have the same area.  But they don't have all the same points, and so they aren't the same shape.

It may seem counterintuitive that removing an infinitely thin line of points can make a meaningful difference, but it does.  (Again, there's a lot in math that's counterintuitive.)  Even removing a single point from a shape makes it a different shape.  Again, it doesn't change the area, and it may not seem like a single infinitesimal point should make any difference, but a plane with a single point missing and a fully intact plane have some very different properties.  (Among other things, one is an open set and one is a closed set.  I'm not going to go into exactly what that means, but it's a mathematically significant distinction.) [EDIT: Oops, more accurately, one is an open set, and the other is both open and closed.]

Edited June 14, 2023 by Jex

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, Jex said:

Even removing a single point from a shape makes it a different shape.  Again, it doesn't change the area, and it may not seem like a single infinitesimal point should make any difference, but a plane with a single point missing and a fully intact plane have some very different properties.

Why should any points be removed? And anyway, why regard a point as infinitesimal (i.e. very small) rather than dimensionless?

Consider fig. B: if touching but not overlapping circles have one point in common, then the two “cells” have a whole line/side in common, right? So the gods’ thought is that if the points in the (top 3/4 of the) dividing line are included in each cell (each rectangle in fig. B) when the line goes all the way down, then they are included in fig. C when it doesn’t reach all the way down.

This seems good enough for an argument between intoxicated gods without the benefit of modern mathematics. (My inspiration — though the case is quite different — was the Joker’s routine about the torch beam in The Killing Joke.)

[AlHazred]

7 hours ago, Jex said:

Are you trying to get a contradiction out of the idea that a plane figure is defined by the points it contains?

Don't fall for it, man. Don't you see‽‽‽ It's the Nysalor Riddle for the Geometry skill!

[mfbrandi]

18 minutes ago, AlHazred said:

It's the Nysalor Riddle for the Geometry skill!

Well, I figured:

Quote

“What is the difference between a Silent Movement?”
“The sound of a man dying.”

… set the bar pretty low.

[scott-martin]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

“What is the difference between a Silent Movement?”
“The sound of a man dying.”

I forget, is that the one for Speak Own Language? Its pretzel logic has such a chomskian flair like a sentence that should communicate profundities but all the signifiers only add up to a gordian knot. Cut it by acknowledging its impenetrable absurdity ("there is no why, this is just the answer") and add 1% next year.

While I like the mechanical flourish of there being an official riddle for every line on the character sheet, the implication that the Bright Empire pashas were aware of the character sheet or even contributed to its standardization as the map of the gloranthan self is Too Awful To Contemplate except maybe in this thread. More fun to dwell on the narcissism of small differences when one rival school wanted "nu" and the other wanted "mu" as the answer to the Animal Training Riddle or whatever. "A duck quacking!" +1% for everyone in the barber shop sooner or later.

 

[AlHazred]

8 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

the implication that the Bright Empire pashas were aware of the character sheet or even contributed to its standardization as the map of the gloranthan self is Too Awful To Contemplate except maybe in this thread.

I mean... that's the Whole Point of This Thread!

[Jex]

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Why should any points be removed?

 How are you "cutting" the shape without removing points?  If there's a discontinuity in the shape, which there must be if you can't pass from one side to the other without leaving it, then there are missing points.

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

And anyway, why regard a point as infinitesimal (i.e. very small) rather than dimensionless?

In everyday colloquial language, "infinitesimal" might be used to just mean very small, but in mathematics it has a more precise meaning.  "Infinitesimal" literally means infinitely small.

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Consider fig. B: if touching but not overlapping circles have one point in common, then the two “cells” have a whole line/side in common, right?

Sure, there's no problem with two different shapes having a boundary in common.  Two shapes can share some of the same points.  You can have two different shapes overlap each other as much as you want.  But a shape can't meaningfully overlap itself—a shape can't share points with itself; a point is either in the shape or it's not.  There's no meaningful sense in which a shape can share a boundary with itself and still include the boundary.  You can't just draw a line through the middle of a shape and declare that it's included in the shape but also a boundary.  That doesn't mean anything.  Sure, you can just declare by fiat that the red circle can't pass through that line, but in that case you're not changing anything about the shape itself; you're just setting rules about what the red circle can do.

Note that a shape doesn't have to include its boundary.  A square that includes its boundary and a square that excludes its boundary are both validly defined shapes, but they're different shapes.  (For that matter, there's no reason a shape can't include only part of its boundary, though that's not particularly relevant here.)  So if you want that line partway through C to be a boundary, well, is it included in the shape or not?  If not, then the points on that line are in A but not in C, and the two shapes don't have the same points.  If it is, then shape C is continuous across it and there's nothing special about that line, so in what sense is it a boundary?

7 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

This seems good enough for an argument between intoxicated gods without the benefit of modern mathematics.

Well, sure, if you just want to write a nonsensical argument between intoxicated gods, then mission accomplished, I guess.

[EDITED TO ADD:

Look, I seriously would rather not keep getting into mathematical discussions in this thread; I feel like we're really derailing the thread and probably annoying its other participants.  (Yes, I know I could just not reply, but I keep feeling compelled to respond against my better judgment due to Somebody Is Wrong On The Internet syndrome.)  Some of the points you bring up touch on some fairly deep mathematics, and I don't want to discourage your interest, but if you really want to discuss these things, might I suggest you take it to somewhere like math.stackexchange.com?  That's a site all about discussing mathematical questions, and you may find people there who have a lot more experience explaining these things and may be able to give better explanations than I do.]

Edited June 14, 2023 by Jex

[mfbrandi]

Moondrunk

The wine we drink with our eyes
Flows nightly from the Moon in torrents,
And as the tide overflows
The quiet distant land.

In sweet and terrible words
This potent liquor floods:
The wine we drink with our eyes
Flows from the moon in raw torrents.

The poet, ecstatic,
Reeling from this strange drink,
Lifts up his entranced,
Head to the sky, and drains,—
The wine we drink with our eyes!

— Albert Giraud (1860–1929), Pierrot Lunaire, trans. Brian Cohen

———————————————————————————————

Think of E and LM brawling as two drunks arguing over how best to fish the Moon out of a puddle.

Edited June 14, 2023 by mfbrandi
previous version replaced by a poem, in harmony with Jex’s edit

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, scott-martin said:

pretzel logic

Getting Becker & Fagen to write a full set of koans simply proved prohibitively expensive. Perhaps the best thing would have been to lean into the absurdity: the question is always “What is the difference between a durulz?” and the player is required to answer “in the style of [skill name]” — like a round of Whose Line is it Anyway? — with DMs given for witty answers.

3 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Bright Empire pashas were aware of the character sheet or even contributed to its standardization as the map of the gloranthan self

Ah, yes, the character sheet — the agent of the wrong kind of Thinning, in life as in games: CVs/résumés; psychometric testing … the horror! the horror!

[metcalph]

I think the "wot is the difference between a silence movement?" should have been "wot is the difference between silence and movement?".  Chaosium's then editors led slip through done howlers such as the mysterious "Tehri" in AH's Gods of Glorantha (actually a double typo for "Their"). 

[AlHazred]

19 hours ago, metcalph said:

I think the "wot is the difference between a silence movement?" should have been "wot is the difference between silence and movement?".  Chaosium's then editors led slip through done howlers such as the mysterious "Tehri" in AH's Gods of Glorantha (actually a double typo for "Their"). 

Wow, really? I found this back in the day, was it complete fantasy? Wow!

Tehri
The Eternal Transcendent

Tehri, the Eternal Catalyst, presides over the enigmatic cult known as the Transcendents. Embracing the paradoxical nature of existence, the Transcendents seek enlightenment through the transformative power of death, life, and the ever-changing forces that shape the world. They reject the notion of stagnation and believe that true growth and understanding come from embracing the cycles of creation, decay, and rebirth.

Entry Requirements: Must possess a deep curiosity for the mysteries of life and death, and a willingness to embrace change.

Abilities: Commune with Spirits, Death Rites, Mythology of Tehri, Revitalize, Shapechange, Transcendence Rituals.

Virtues: Curiosity, Resilience, Adaptability.

Affinities:

[Death] Embrace the Void (Counter Necromantic Spell, Death's Resilience, Dispel Death Spirit, Evoke Mortality, Nullify Undead Feat, Speak with Dead)

[Life] Vitality's Renewal (Healing Touch, Infuse Life Energy, Renewed Strength, Regeneration, Rejuvenation ritual)

[Change] Shaping the Flux (Alter Form, Chaotic Influence, Imbue Transformation, Shift Realities, Twist Fate)

Other Side: Tehri's followers understand that death is not an end but a transition. They believe in the eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth and seek to transcend the limitations of mortal existence.

Worshippers: Seekers of wisdom, philosophers, mystics, those unafraid of the mysteries of life and death.

Other Connections: The Transcendents of Tehri have been both allies and adversaries to various gods and entities, for they see the interplay of life, death, and change as fundamental aspects of the cosmos.

[Jex]

On 6/14/2023 at 1:49 PM, mfbrandi said:

previous version replaced by a poem, in harmony with Jex’s edit

Hope I didn't come across as rudely shutting you down—it's not so much that I didn't want to continue the discussion; it's just that it seemed off topic for this thread and I was afraid we were annoying the other participants.  If you want to continue the mathematical discussions, I'd be fine with doing so in the Alastor's Skull Inn forum, since that seems to be the more anything-goes, off-topic forum; I just was uncomfortable doing it here and derailing the thread.

And speaking of not derailing the thread, I guess I should post something relevant here now, except that I'm still new enough to RuneQuest that I don't really know that I have any dumb theories interesting enough to be worth sharing yet, or rather that I probably do but I don't know enough to realize how dumb they are.  But I'm almost done reading through the Guide to Glorantha, and I'm learning, and I'm sure soon I'll have no shortage of really stupid theories.

[scott-martin]

The lower depths of Volume 2 are the best spawning ground for sufficiently advanced dumb theories or at least sincere observations we haven't looked at in a couple years.

To follow up on one of the best entries in this thread . . . 

On 6/5/2023 at 12:18 PM, JRE said:

what is the opposition to Law?

. . . I now believe that techniques the Middle Sea Empire developed to eradicate their waertagi cousins were later adapted for active deployment against EWF. After all, once you figure out how to destroy dragons, why not share the fun? Of course most of the Dragonslayer secrets were stored in skulls that burned in the Kill so all of this is apocryphal.

However it means three things. First, we should probably stop looking for archaic draconic powers in the old God Learner territories where the Law prevailed. Second, Eest becomes especially interesting as the territory where it went differently. And third, if my fellow dragon is the enemy of my enemy, EWF may have found a way to work with the waertagites and their fellow oceanic powers, 

[mfbrandi]

A frolic for those of a frivolous disposition …

On 6/16/2023 at 2:25 AM, scott-martin said:

To follow up on one of the best entries in this thread . . . 

On 6/5/2023 at 5:18 PM, JRE said:

what is the opposition to Law?

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world …

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

— Yeats, The Second Coming
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So if is the mark of the invisible god, then as opposition should be a familiar idea.

Spoiler

We park the idea that Yeats knew and disliked the Great Beast and his beastly poetry, despite the fact that the poverty of the poetry suggests the identity of Crowley and Orlanth. “It was said of [Orlanth|Crowley] that unlike most braggarts he had actually done some of the things of which he boasted.”

And yet the phrase “the second coming” is as suggestive of the old three-in-one (god of household lubricants) as it is of any Devil or Antichrist, but that is as it should be — “So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing” — and the runes are slippery things.

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Law

Meaning: Universal principles, logic, sorcery …

The philosophers of the West describe the Law Rune as one of the great Powers, in polarity with the Chaos Rune … it ties the universe together in a rational structure.

— HeroQuest Glorantha, p. 16
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So we have that odd trio of , , and : Stasis is associated with alchemy, so presumably with scientific law (contentful), while Law gets logic. The thing about logic — and this is a feature, not a bug — is that it says nothing: p or ¬p places no demands on the world, and the whole point of a valid argument is that it does not take you beyond your premises. So is the sign of emptiness — the Void, if you will — the traditional realm of , its supposed polar opposite or complement, which brings us back to Eliot. It is notable that Powers come in opposed pairs but that the Chaos rune is never placed in the Powers. One could say that this is just more anti-Chaos bigotry, but perhaps it is because we do not take the Nysalorean insight seriously or literally enough: in the final analysis, there is no difference between Law and Chaos. They are the same, identical: = . No ifs, no buts, no fudging. No need to put it in twice, so the poor old rune is left lying around for abuse by all and sundry.

And then one begins to have sympathy for the RQ2 scribes who omitted from the Power runes — how could it be a Power if it had no opposing Power? And how can logic be a Power when nothing can stand against it? And nothing can stand against logic because logic makes no demands on anything: fill the Void with something, anything, or nothing — it is all one to logic. Chaos is the power which is not a power. That is why it is not to be feared. The more Imperial of the Lunars do not grasp this, and so they become monster wranglers when they could have been philosophers shooting the breeze with old man Zhuang.

Meanwhile, the rubes associate with corruption (which you may want to put down to a strange horror of detritivores). And this is odd, because Chaos is supposedly a form, and corruption is breaking down — the destruction of form. Note also the easy progression: corruption —> breaking down —> analysis. Analysis, which surely brings us back to our (un)holy trio of science, logic, and truth.

So what of ? If Stasis is scientific law and Law is logic, where does that leave Truth? One’s first thought might be that is the realm of ordinary contingent truth, all those truths that fall outside of science, maths, and logic — but can that be right? Back in the prehistory of 1983, we were gifted this:

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Eurmal … can make reality … It is not always permanent reality, of course, since it is so hard to keep it inside Time … Do not think that illusion is not real! Once an illusion has been created, it becomes a part of reality, however temporary.

— Greg Stafford, RuneQuest Companion, p. 30
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“[P]ermanent reality … so hard to keep … inside Time” — so is this how we are to understand the – polarity, as not about truth and falsity (of propositions or sentences, say) but as about permanence and impermanence? If so, what are the permanent realities? Not the gods, they can be disposed of in memory-hole Kajabor. The runes? All that squabbling about which came first, suggests that they are items with histories and thus as disposable as any god.

Spoiler

You want to put some permanent realities outside Time, you say? Some Platonic forms to out-god the gods and out-rune the runes? Tell me more …

So we ask Trickster, and she tells us — as She has always told us — that all is māyā: take away illusion and you have nothing left, only , empty logic, the Void, . Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

Spoiler

Does that make Trickster merely a mask of Chaos, or does that mean that Trickster is all that has ever stood between us and Chaos? Above my pay grade, I am afraid. I am just a humble sage sat by a river watching the fish and the rippling waves.

Well, if you will hold that gun to my head, I will say: if all is māyā, then is Cosmos, which would make its complement, , Chaos, the Void. Sod the noumenal, there is the phenomenal and its absence. That is the mystical thought for the day. I see you have put the gun down, but I cannot unsay it. No one ever can.

So Truth itself proved to be just another Illusion? Or less than an illusion, for permanence was not even a temporary reality? Another of our treasured polarities proves to be no polarity at all?

Trickster is looking very smug, even though that punch up with LM is looking more like a solitary fit. (E is known to have those.)

After all this digging, is looking more mysterious than ever. “As a dragon scale should,” you say? The Truth (which doesn’t exist) caged in inverted/dead/rotated (who knows?) Law. Law which is logic. Logic which asks nothing of the Cosmos, and so is the only thing which is not Illusion? Are our ears able to hear the laughter of sleeping dragons?

The only way to achieve permanent reality is to make a prison of inverted logic? I wouldn’t know where to begin.

Edited June 17, 2023 by mfbrandi
less snide final sentence