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Messages - pail

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General Earwa / Re: [TUC Spoilers] Nascenti of Zaudunyanicon
« on: August 23, 2017, 01:56:43 am »
- "Kellhus is dead but not done."

To elaborate further: Bakker confirmed that Kellhus is dead but he is not in the Outside.

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General Misc. / Re: World War IV
« on: August 21, 2017, 07:03:31 pm »
the one the pail devised.

Disclaimer: This is not the pail's personal system. The pail was merely suggesting it as potentially satisfying Wilshire's criteria of "the world agreeing."

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General Misc. / Re: World War IV
« on: August 21, 2017, 04:59:22 pm »
Its more a question of, what does the world agree is right and what does it/"we" justify as wrong. Or at least, a majority of people?

In the case of genocide, I think you'd not likely find a majority of people that would say genocide should be allowed.

So, would international law or sanctions imposed by the UN qualify as the world agreeing on something? Is foreign intervention on the table when, for example, Saddam, who carried out the Kurdish genocide, continues to violate sanctions imposed by the UN? Or when Assad employs chemical weapons, a war crime that nearly the entire world, including Assad's government, has signed treaties against using?

Note: I'm not actually taking a position on whether the US should have invaded Iraq again or that Obama should have declared war on Assad. (Gee, it sure is easier to sit here putting pressure on Wilshire's position than actually taking a position myself, isn't it?  ;) )

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General Misc. / Re: World War IV
« on: August 21, 2017, 04:24:10 pm »
You're tough to corner, Wilshire - almost as hard as asking questions of Bakker! If your position is that non-defensive military intervention is never justified even to prevent a genocide, I can at least credit you with being consistent in your position (even if I don't agree with it!). But if you were to concede that it could be justified in some cases, then in my point of view it makes the absolutist moral relativism argument fall apart - as it would be conceding that in some cases it's okay to use violence to impose our values (genocide is bad) on another society with different values (some genocides are good). From that point we would just be debating a matter of degrees: in other words, just how bad a situation would need to be and how costly the intervention would be in order to justify intervention. And making those judgments of "how bad" and "how costly" really mean judging precisely how far the situation and the cost of intervention deviate from our values. And once you're weighing whether an intervention is justified based on that, you've already abandoned the absolutist moral relativism framework.

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General Misc. / Re: World War IV
« on: August 21, 2017, 04:01:34 pm »
Intervening in WWII could just as easily be construed as an economic decision.

[...]

But, honestly, if the economics weren't in our favor, I don't think the US would have intervened

We in fact did not intervene in the case I was referencing.

I'd still like to know your answer - I did intentionally engineer the case and attempt to stack the deck against you, but I think it would help clarify your position.

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General Misc. / Re: World War IV
« on: August 21, 2017, 03:25:14 pm »
Wilshire, it sounds like you're arguing against all non-defensive military interventions. To clarify your position, would this apply in all cases? For example, do you agree with the Allies not intervening at Auschwitz despite the requests of the Jewish Agency? Would you still have choosen not to intervene even if we'd had access to precision bombing technology at the time that would have allowed us to target specific infrastructure with minimal civilian casualties?

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General Earwa / Re: [TUC Spoilers] Nascenti of Zaudunyanicon
« on: August 18, 2017, 09:07:37 pm »
Any hint if "The Crabiqiad" (lol) will be all devoted to Crabby or will have a glimpse at least of what happened to the others?

My understanding is that it's just Crabby. In fact, Bakker actually said the other reason he wants to make Crabiqiad the first book is how much it will piss off people who are waiting for a follow-up to the ending of TUC.

Though, this becomes complicates, as the Nascenti learned, when Bakker himself asked to have the italics sections of Neuropath removed from one printing to another...

What I understood from Bakker was slightly different: Not that he wanted the section removed, but that the publisher wanted a "lighter" book so he consented to having the italic section and the afterword removed in order for them to buy it.

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General Earwa / Re: [TUC Spoilers] Nascenti of Zaudunyanicon
« on: August 18, 2017, 07:57:18 pm »
Some more nuggets that may not have been posted yet:

  • Bakker described his conception of The Outside as follows: If we consider the universe to be an entity, the material world is that entity's conscious mind, and the Outside is its subconscious mind. The various agencies are the fractured aspects of its subconsciousness, which battle with each other for consciousness. I like to think of this as the universe's own "legion within."
  • "Kellhus came to believe that the path to The Absolute lay through The Outside. He was wrong."
  • Ajokli had no relationship with Kellhus prior to the Circumfixion. It was at the Circumfixion that Kellhus's mind was broken down close enough to madness that the Outside was able to slip in. Unless the timelessness of the Gods allows Ajokli's influence to extend back in time, this implies Kellhus's haloes are NOT related to Ajokli!
  • The Dunyain weren't part of anyone's master plan. Ajokli didn't manipulate history with the intention of bringing about their creation. They stumbled upon their path all by themselves.
  • The No-God series will contain 1-2 books which follow up on what happens in the Three Seas following the resurrection of the No-God. The other book will be the story of Crabicus (obviously, this book will be known as The Crabiqiad). This will most likely be the first book in the No-God. He wasn't sure about the order, but he was leaning this way because if he finished the story of the Three Seas first, it would make the story of Crabicus feel like an extra tale tacked on to the end of a complete series. These details made it sound, to me, like Crabicus will not have a major role in the fate of the world, which will play out in the other one or two books.

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General Misc. / Re: World War IV
« on: August 18, 2017, 03:38:43 pm »
Then what are you saying? Leaving me to fill in gaps doesn't seem to be working... :)

Well, going back to my first post, first I disagreed with the idea that a war of ideas can, in principle, never be won with violence, then with the idea that it's impossible to directly attack IS since it only exists as an idea. I don't think I've taken a position on the best course of action to take in our current straits!

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General Misc. / Re: World War IV
« on: August 18, 2017, 03:13:37 pm »
Am I understanding correctly that you think that by removing that geographic region, the ideology will disappear just like Natzism?

I'm not saying that, nor do I propose killing everyone that doesn't share my ideology as you asked.

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General Misc. / Re: World War IV
« on: August 18, 2017, 02:47:00 pm »
So who really won?  IS is todays natzi's. Except we cant just invade the country because they dont have one. They exist nowhere except the hearts and minds of those who believe.

IS certainly has a country. IS stands for Islamic State. No other country recognizes it as a state, but it has a clearly defined territory where it rules and collects taxes.

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General Misc. / Re: World War IV
« on: August 18, 2017, 01:51:47 pm »
It's far more complicated than that. And most of it doesn't have much to do with the religion. While we are all calling ISIS extremists and all, 99.99999% of their actions are condemned already by Islam.

This isn't wrong, but it depends on how you define Islam. Islam as believed and practiced by the majority of Muslims around the world in 2017? Of course, most Muslims are much more moderate than ISIS, so their brand of Islam would condemn many of ISIS' actions. That's the most prevalent brand and we can't dismiss it because religions are like living things that evolve with time. On the other hand, if we define Islam as the set of beliefs and ideals and laws described by Islam's most important texts, the Quran and the hadith, I would argue that the most faithful and accurate practitioners of the religion in the world are ISIS.

Which leads us to the absence of education, education needs money.That's the heart of the problem.

This was my intuition as well: if we could just give everyone a good education and fulfill all their basic needs, terrorism would be solved. But it turns out that the data shows no negative correlation between being well-educated and becoming a terrorist, and, in some studies, even shows a positive correlation!

You can't fight an idea with a gun

Can't you though? Didn't guns and bombs defeat Nazism? Rather than looking at war as a totally different arena from a battle of ideas, I look at it as the last resort, or the escalation, of that same battle. We want to beat dangerous ideas with other ideas and rationality so that we don't have to beat them with guns. But history has shown, by my reading of it at least, that guns can in fact kill them when it comes to that.

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The Unholy Consult / Re: [TUC spoilers] The visions - Not Ajokli?
« on: August 18, 2017, 01:49:40 pm »
The Rape of Omindalea might not be canon at all or not entirely. Is it anywhere in the actually included in the published books Glossaries, and if it is, then to what extent?

It's mentioned in both glossaries as the name of the event that brought an end to the Tutelage, but with no details.

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General Earwa / Re: [TUC Spoilers] Nascenti of Zaudunyanicon
« on: August 15, 2017, 04:19:37 pm »
True, we all know you're full of shit, Madness.

Crabiqiad, I like it.

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General Earwa / Re: [TUC Spoilers] Nascenti of Zaudunyanicon
« on: August 15, 2017, 04:04:13 pm »
Good overview Madness, but, among other things, you didn't even mention The Crabiciad...

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