Profile for Student of Trinity

Error message

  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6595 of /var/www/pied-piper.ermarian.net/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6595 of /var/www/pied-piper.ermarian.net/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6595 of /var/www/pied-piper.ermarian.net/includes/common.inc).
  • Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type int in element_children() (line 6595 of /var/www/pied-piper.ermarian.net/includes/common.inc).
  • Deprecated function: implode(): Passing glue string after array is deprecated. Swap the parameters in drupal_get_feeds() (line 394 of /var/www/pied-piper.ermarian.net/includes/common.inc).

Recent posts

Pages

AuthorRecent posts
Titan's Halls location...? [SPOILER] in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Sunday, March 4 2007 08:46 Profile #1
It's a long trip. Since the title of this thread should be a pretty good spoiler warning:

First, you have to defeat Monarch. If you did, and you thoroughly explored his lair, you should have found the mysterious black door (which really just looks like the cage doors -- I complained about that, said even a normal door would look better). And somewhere in Monarch's notes there is a complaint about how Litalia stole the key to his Black Pit, where all his best creations are, and how mad he is about that. So you know: he's got some bad things down there. Problem is that you need the key (which is some kind of magic key, obviously).

Litalia took the key. But at some point she mentions that she sent it to Northforge for study. If you wander all over Northforge citadel, you should find one obscure little corner that you can't seem to get into. If you explore into the Drakon areas, where you're not supposed to go, you'll also find one obscure little switch that doesn't seem to do anything. What it does is unlock that other obscure little corner, and in there is Monarch's Black Pit key.

Happy hunting.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
New Cold War US-Russia? in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, March 3 2007 02:57 Profile #12
quote:
Originally written by Andraste:

... the resulting dust clouds and radioactive debris would almost destroy the ozone layer.
Europe and the Eastern side of the US would not be able to have any agriculture. The same goes for most of South America.
What I'm telling you is that that is hooey. The Earth is too big for a few bombs to have such planetary consequences.

The US and the USSR have already detonated plenty of huge nuclear devices, in tests; more, I'm sure, than the combined nuclear arsenals of India and Pakistan. The ozone layer and European agriculture are still around.

Why do people trumpet doomsday scenarios like this one?

Because they're realistic? No, they're ridiculous.

So that people who don't give a damn about thousands of Indians and Pakistanis burning to death will get incensed at some far-fetched threat to their own comfort? This is why I'm disgusted.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
On the Road to Weapons of Mass Destruction in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, March 3 2007 01:12 Profile #57
quote:
Originally written by Protocols of the Elders of Zion:

Basically, a planet like Earth needs a planet like Jupiter around, and it'll have life. That's not true of most solar systems, so we can rule out a lot of places while scouring the universe for other instances of life.
I'd put this idea in the category of 'interesting speculations'. It has quite a few weak links of reasoning. I wouldn't bet too much on it even being true that iron meteorites somehow precipitated by Jupiter played a big role on Earth. And we know nothing about meteorites in other solar systems.

It muddies the water of discussions like this, not to distinguish between long shot speculations like this Jupiter/meteorite idea, and basic empirical conclusions like evolution.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
New Cold War US-Russia? in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Friday, March 2 2007 13:45 Profile #8
There was always something sick, to my mind, about the nuclear doomsayers.

No, a few bombs would not end civilization. Just kill millions of people.

Isn't that bad enough?

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
On the Road to Weapons of Mass Destruction in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Friday, March 2 2007 02:44 Profile #45
quote:
Originally written by Excalibur:

When looking at satellite images of Mt. [Ararat] ... they found a large rectangular object near its summit.
When this gets discredited, as it surely will, I hope you will not lose your faith. Christianity by no means stands, or falls, on the historical accuracy of the Noah story. Biblical infallibility, of course, does stand or fall on every Biblical story. But Biblical infallibility, in the literalistic sense of modern Christian fundamentalists, is a recent aberration with little relation to mainstream Christian tradition.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Did you feel herded? (*spoilers included*) in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, March 1 2007 15:09 Profile #12
There is a reputation system in Geneforge, but it's trying to track loyalist vs. rebel stance, and nothing else. We had a discussion about this sometime before G4 came out. All I remember now is that someone (it might even have been me) suggested an idea that I liked. It couldn't be too much harder (the idea suggested) to have one or maybe a couple more kinds of reputation, instead of just the who's-side-are-you-on one. So there could be an Avernum-style reputation as well as the Geneforge one, and your PC and all your actions would carry two numbers, instead of just one.

After going through beta testing for G4, and seeing more of how Jeff works, I guess I see things a bit differently, though.

On the one hand, making one twisted humdinger of a multi-threaded storyline, in which multiple reputations were exploited to the hilt, would probably be far too complex. Jeff would be up to the story part of it, I think; but the time it would take to test and debug all that would be beyond his means.

On the other hand, just adding another reputation to handle a few bizarre cases, in which people weren't playing along with the story, would still be a fair amount of effort. And it would be effort that could be better spent elsewhere. Jeff's still in business, after years of his insane way of making a living, because he knows when and where to accept imperfection. There are always going to be lots of things wrong with any of his games, and he knows it. If he has time and energy left after getting something to basically work, he can knock off the top few nice-to-haves. I don't think this problem is going to make the cut.

Don't get me wrong: I do think there are things Jeff could improve, here and there, with only very little effort. What I'm saying is that he should do the quick and dirty fixes, like throwing in a few more auto-kills. More elegant but more elaborate solutions just aren't going to be practical.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Hypothetical Greek Weapons of Mass Destruction Suck in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, March 1 2007 10:55 Profile #11
India is not such a small country, really.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
On the Road to Weapons of Mass Destruction in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Thursday, March 1 2007 04:04 Profile #23
Einstein's special theory of relativity has no problems with quantum mechanics. Relativistic quantum field theory is a hard subject, but it works. It's his later general theory of relativity, which as the name suggests is a generalization, and in particular includes gravity, that gives all the problems. They're severe enough that we can say that either general relativity or quantum mechanics or both, as we now know them, must be wrong in some fundamental respects.

But this doesn't mean they're not both right about many things. So far they have both passed very stringent experimental tests.
It's a bit like something like Google Maps. What you see on your screen is a flat map, and we know the world isn't really flat. That doesn't mean the maps you see aren't great, within their range of applicability, even though extrapolating from them up to the global scale leads to absurdities.

So while Kelandon is perfectly right that in some respects scientific theories are much more than facts, still in other respects they are generally also less than facts. Understanding the universe is hard; it forces you to expand your understanding of what understanding means.

And that is what conservative Christian anti-evolutions seem not to appreciate, in my experience. They believe that the Bible furnishes a complete and coherent doctrine, whose every word is unambiguous and infallible. The problem is that they imagine that science is competing in the same market, and claiming to offer a similar product. The truth, of course, is that no such unambiguous, infallible doctrines actually work, theirs included. Science figured that out centuries ago, and now takes much more sophisticated epistemology for granted.

This is why so much of this debate ends up being so ridiculous. Anti-evolutionists imagine that evolution must be, like their alternative, a glass carriage, which will shatter if it takes a single hit. So they point to some little observation here, or some simple argument there, rejoice that they have scored a hit, and wait for their enemy to collapse. They don't seem able to imagine that it is a battleship, possibly vulnerable in some surface details, but built on such an enormous mass of hard evidence that nothing short of an immense catastrophe could sink it.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Did you feel herded? (*spoilers included*) in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, February 28 2007 10:13 Profile #3
Yeah, the game can't quite decide whether news travels fast or slow. Certain actions are flagged to affect your reputation, and news of them seems to reach everywhere instantly. Other actions just don't do anything. Up to a point the game tries to make this make sense. The rebels are in such a tough spot that they have to trust you even when they might really not want to. The shapers are expecting you to maintain a rebel cover, so bumping off a few loyalist red shirts doesn't bother them. But it doesn't make sense for either side to go on trusting you after you make a serious attack on a major base or leader, unless there is some reason to believe that no-one knows you did it.

In places the game handles this sort of situation with auto-kill. It just doesn't do so consistently.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Hypothetical thoughts in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Wednesday, February 28 2007 00:52 Profile #62
Speaking of sucking, can't you guys either do better than this "Am not!", "Are too!" crap, or leave it alone?

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Hypothetical thoughts in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, February 27 2007 23:18 Profile #56
I have kind of the same trouble with Tolkien as Alec, though perhaps not so severe. Tolkien's conservatism is so ridiculously extreme, and it does color most of the book. But I can put it aside, suspend judgement along with disbelief, and enjoy the story for a few hours. After all, it is in principle possible that there could be a world in which all the great stuff just happened to be old.

I think it's healthy to let somebody who disagrees profoundly with you into your head. It may be unpleasant, but if you can stand it, you can learn a lot.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Hypothetical thoughts in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, February 27 2007 14:30 Profile #34
quote:
Originally written by Cryptozoology:

Darwinism. The very fact that language changes persisted over time shows that people who changed their language were more likely to pass on their linguistic habits to others than people who stayed closer to the original language. This strongly suggests that linguistic conservatism was actively detrimental to survival, either on an individual or a cultural level.
So linguistic sticks in the mud die so much faster that we get linguistic change in a few generations? That's a pretty fierce selection pressure, there, for a putative linguistic inferiority subtle enough that its existence is not even clear.

As I said above, I can buy that a certain amount of linguistic change may be evolutionary in some sense. But what I imagine is that, from the steady random changes, people might be a bit more biased towards picking up useful ones. That's artificial selection, and while it may be survival or exinction for words and pronunciations, it has nothing much to do with survival of speakers, either individually or collectively.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
The Ancient Greeks in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, February 27 2007 04:24 Profile #101
quote:
Originally written by Protocols of the Elders of Zion:

The moral of the story is that whether or not it's right now, rational observation will eventually prove right. While that's a slippery and Wikipedian approach to truth, it's unfortunately the best we can do a lot of the time.
I agree. But I keep worrying about the other parts of the time, in which some of the emotional ravers are actually right, against the best available rational observations.

It's easy to recognize an idiot, but how can you recognize when an idiot is right?

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Hypothetical thoughts in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Tuesday, February 27 2007 03:49 Profile #25
Alec seems to be combining a Whig view of linguistic history with Whorffian ideas about how language constrains thought. I think that both these views are certainly dealing with real and important issues: linguistic change is surely evolutionary to some degree and in some sense, rather than purely stochastic; and language surely plays some role in shaping thought. It is only when these two theories are taken rigidly and extremely, though, that they constitute knock-down arguments against what Kelandon has said.

So for instance about Latin as a vehicle for science: scientific vocabulary may technically be English (as well as other modern languages), but it is very technical English. English-speaking scientists still have to learn technical terms and concepts, which are certainly not part of the language they learned in their childhood critical periods. If modern scientific terms were introduced into Latin as loan-words or neologisms, the way new terms are constantly being introduced into any living language, then I don't see how learning science in Latin would be much different from learning it in English.

Of course the project of reviving Latin to the point where it could serve as a scientific language would be totally Castalian; it's sheer Glasperlenspiel craziness. But on the premise that Kelandon had infinite resources with which to indulge a fantasy, I think it would be a practicable indulgence. I also think, though, that it would actually be more interesting not to try to modernize Latin, but instead just to expose more people to the classical mindset as (as best we can tell) it was. We already have modern mindsets; that would be something different.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
The Ancient Greeks in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, February 26 2007 23:47 Profile #96
It might be an interesting thesis.

It might be worth looking at the historical emergence of science, particularly the late medieval stuff. That wouldn't by any means determine what people like Aristotle or Seneca were doing, but it might be informative to see just how their kind of natural philosophy later got morphed into science. It might help to highlight which features could best be seen as proto-scientific, and which might even be considered anti-scientific.

The literature on the origins of natural science is of course vast, but from my small sampling of it, I wouldn't be surprised that most of it viewed natural philosophy through a scientific lens, rather than trying to assess it on its own terms.

One point that occurs to me is that science predated natural philosophy, and continued to develop in parallel with it. Ancient astronomy and mathematics can be seen pretty clearly as genuine, if primitive, science. Ancient Sumerians and Egyptians were trying to predict the future, specifically various seasonal events related to agricultural, using mathematical models constrained by observations. And this activity continued through the classical natural philosophers. Ptolemy of Alexandria was a great astronomer, and his geocentric solar system was a model both simple (it had exactly one epicycle per planet) and sophisticated.

Just how did the classical natural philosophers, and their medieval or Islamic heirs, affect the ongoing development of science? The impression I have from the late end of the story is that the impact must have been profound, because the early European developers of physics were spending a lot of time re-assessing Aristotle, as well as arguing over astronomy. But there's definitely something in the early end of the story that I don't know.

For one thing, the ancient mathematical astronomy was strictly about modelling the patterns of nature. There was no notion of understanding them, in any sense of the elusive concept 'understanding' that I know. Perhaps by adding their moralizing glosses to contemporary scientific knowledge, the philosophers injected into science the basic hope of not only capturing nature in simple formulas, but of reducing it to simple concepts that in some way make sense to human intuition.

If so, the hybridization of modelling and understanding remains incomplete, for these two goals still compete fiercely in science today. Perhaps it is even their competition that is the essential vital spark of true science, with quantitative modelling and observation to check philosophical complacency, and philosophical curiosity to check satisfaction with black-box modelling.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
The Ancient Greeks in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, February 26 2007 13:53 Profile #94
Sounds interesting: what do you see as the difference between science and natural philosophy?

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Quessa-Uss in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, February 26 2007 02:41 Profile #5
In a beta version I was able to get Ghaldring down to about a third of his health before getting auto-killed. I suggested that Jeff make him invulnerable, rather than just unkillable, because it kind of takes away his aura if you think that three Kills would do him in.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Slartanalysis: Creations I in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Monday, February 26 2007 02:31 Profile #23
I kept a Kyshakk for one game, and towards the end it was more or less pulling its weight, but for most of the time my Wingbolts and Rotghroths were doing the job while the Kyshakk took some damage. I suggested making the Kyshakk attack do fire rather than magic damage, so that at least sometimes they'd be doing something the Wingbolts didn't do better; but Jeff thought that would only make them even weaker.

The enduring damage thing from the Kyshakks is a neat idea in principle, but it's just not a big enough effect, especially when Kyshakk accuracy is so poor.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
The Fens in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Sunday, February 25 2007 13:41 Profile #7
Due to some poor strategic planning, my rebel Servile hit the Fens with only a very small stock of essence pods. Due to more poor strategic planning, or at any rate to a perverse taste in playstyle, he really needed a lot of buffing to fight bad things on Torment.

So I wound up really having to think about how to get through the Fens and down to the Alpha Creator without using up any pods. That was kind of cool, and a first for me in Geneforge, to have to plan several zones ahead.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Why You Suck: Ancient Greek Edition in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Sunday, February 25 2007 13:32 Profile #22
Hey, that's nothing compared to all the double entendres I scrupulously edited out. See how civilization has progressed?

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
The Ancient Greeks in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Sunday, February 25 2007 09:44 Profile #89
Darwin can't explain anything happening suddenly. As far as we can tell from paleontology, however, nothing did happen suddenly. Evolution is a very slow and gradual process.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Consequences in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, February 24 2007 12:37 Profile #1
That lot is pretty tough, actually. If you can kill them all, you probably don't need to worry about any consequences. If you just get them mad, they'll stay mad, and you won't be able to cross Western Rise any more. Until you do kill them all, of course.

But I don't think there are really any other consequences. Alwan is (or thinks he is) employing you as a double agent. He expects you to maintain a rebel cover, and he has deliberately not told all his subordinates that you are on his side. So even though he may have given you a pass for Western Rise, if you end up killing them all there, he'll figure that they attacked you or something. After all, the Western Rise commander is a hot-headed fanatic. So Alwan will still deal with you. And I'm pretty sure that even Camp Gamma, just next door to Western Rise, will still deal with you.

[ Saturday, February 24, 2007 12:37: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ]

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Why You Suck: Ancient Greek Edition in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, February 24 2007 12:26 Profile #5
Well, I take it to be a basic fact of history, that trying to constrain the male sex drives within some limits of justice is a big part of what civilization is all about. It's a core problem, not something to expect as a spin-off. And civilization has had maybe a couple of millennia to try to catch up to several hundred million years of evolution. It shouldn't really be a surprise that our progress since ancient Greece has in many respects been only modest.

Not at all to say that we shouldn't aim higher. Only that we ought to recognize how difficult the problem is.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Round Table on Morality, Theology, and Ethics in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, February 24 2007 09:27 Profile #61
quote:
Originally written by Kelandon:

I dislike the idea that there are things in the universe that humans in principle cannot understand, but I don't have any rigorous proof that no such things can exist. I find this answer totally unacceptable, but I can't give any good reasons why. I find, "We don't know right now, so let's stop thinking about it at the moment," much better than, "We can't ever know, so let's never think about it again."
One doesn't necessarily have to stop thinking about it. We may never attain God's perspective, but that doesn't mean we can't get anywhere towards it. Partial understanding is a very difficult concept to pin down; it's not easy to avoid the conclusion that one either understands something, or one does not. But I'm convinced that partial understanding does somehow hold water as a concept; I'm sure that there is some sense in which one can have some truth despite not having it all.

And as a Christian I hold the hope that I might eventually understand, in another world; though a theologian I know has pointed out that this hope, although common among Christians, is not really based on anything in the Bible or Christian tradition.

Certainly there are many awful things whose justification I don't expect to understand in this life, and that does suck. My inability to understand sucks very much less, however, than the fact these awful things exist. It's not even all that high on the list, really, of tough things that I expect to have to deal with in life.

So what I take to be the Biblical answer to the problem of evil is perhaps an answer as opposed to a solution. By no means does it make evil okay, or even, in itself, make it much easier to bear. To me at least, though, it does make faith in God possible, despite evil.

[ Saturday, February 24, 2007 09:34: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ]

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
Round Table on Morality, Theology, and Ethics in General
Student of Trinity
Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
 written Saturday, February 24 2007 09:09 Profile #60
quote:
Originally written by Cryptozoology:

quote:
Originally written by Student of Trinity:

I would say that every belief is a matter of choice, and the only difference is how conscious the choice is.
It seems to me that calling a "choice" that isn't consciously made a "choice" at all is twisting the meaning of the word almost beyond recognition.
Hmmm; a good point. I was taking 'choice' to mean a logically arbitrary selection, as opposed to a rational conclusion. This is one standard usage of the term, not a twisting; I think it's the choice in the Axiom of Choice, for instance.

Also, many of what I call unconscious choices can become conscious, if they are analyzed. Every now and then I stop and think about why I just assume the sun will rise tomorrow. And insofar as I understand why, I see a lot of choice based on pragmatic factors apart from evidence.

Finally, my basic point is the standard non-foundationalist line, that nothing is ever entirely rational, and everything requires some amount of assumption. From a rational point of view, the tiniest amount of leaven leavens the whole lump; one can't really be mostly rigorous. So the notion that one is simply convinced by evidence, or not, seems to me inadequate to account for how we reach even the most trivial conclusions.

--------------------
We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty.
Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00

Pages