"Kellhus is dead, but not done."

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« Reply #105 on: November 15, 2018, 03:03:14 pm »
We're on the same page about it, then! It's nice to know I'm not the only one who sees it this way.

In the "old days" having been "raised" on reading White Wolf RPG books, I conceived of the Outside as a "Shadowlands" akin to what is in the game system of Wraith: The Oblivion.  That is, a world mapped over the world, separate yet connected, but "mirrored" in a way.  Any notion of that though is really shattered by Koringhus' revelations and by the views we get of it via Kellhus short forays into it.

If we were to consider the entirety of Bakker-verse a sphere (which it specifically is not, but just for the sake of illustrating this idea) then the Outside is what is inside the sphere.  In "reality" there is no "space" there just as there is no sphere.  Of course, this analogy fails to capture numerous things, but it does encapsulate the space-that-is-not-space aspect of that paradoxical nature of the Outside.  The Outside is far more a "place" in the Platonic sense than it is a "physical" one.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

themerchant

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« Reply #106 on: November 15, 2018, 03:31:59 pm »
When Saubon dies he falls and stops and hell rises up to meet him all indicating to me a direction and movement in that direction. Same with how hell is described within the arc how there is torsion which again implies direction and twisting in some dimension.

This is a good example of what i was trying to say with dimensions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0WjV6MmCyM
I understand what you mean, but our minds would see dimensions even if there is none (even in reality), since they are wired that way, or, more specifically, since this framework of understanding is taught in school, which is why it's useful for explaining concepts to readers. But it's not the only way, and a limited one at that. The Outside is a place of souls, which aren't a physical concept. It's more to do with philosophy and the notion of thought than with the concept of physical space.

Well it's the product of Bakker's mind , the video i posted actually shows we wouldn't see the higher dimensions with our minds, unless in specific circumstances.

Kellhus explains the soul using dimensions as well to Akka, imagine you could get the depth of an ocean "inside" you. Also the 5th dimension would be like looking at time from a singularity. You'd see the heat death of the universe from start to finish. The whole pattern would be laid out.

"Kellhus nodded, his expression at once cryptic and bemused. "Imagine," he said, "that you could take the Great Ocean, in all its immensity, and fold it into the form and proportion of a man. There are depths, Akka, that go in rather than down — in without limit. What you call the Outside lies within us, and it's everywhere. This is why, no matter where we stand, it's always here. No matter where we dare tread, we always stand in the same place."

SmilerLoki

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« Reply #107 on: November 15, 2018, 03:52:56 pm »
Well it's the product of Bakker's mind , the video i posted actually shows we wouldn't see the higher dimensions with our minds, unless in specific circumstances.
We'll get an approximation, just like we get an approximation of the world around us right now. The mind needs to cook up its reality, it's what it's there for.

The main problem with the dimensional approach is the fact that time is not a spatial dimension. Minkowski space accounts for it to an extent (here I'm fast reaching the limit of my expertise, unfortunately), but I'm unsure the whole "coordinate system" thing is constructive for the purposes of philosophy. It's certainly constructive for the purposes of calculating a plethora of physical phenomena in existing models, though.

themerchant

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« Reply #108 on: November 15, 2018, 04:22:05 pm »
Well it's the product of Bakker's mind , the video i posted actually shows we wouldn't see the higher dimensions with our minds, unless in specific circumstances.
We'll get an approximation, just like we get an approximation of the world around us right now. The mind needs to cook up its reality, it's what it's there for.

The main problem with the dimensional approach is the fact that time is not a spatial dimension. Minkowski space accounts for it to an extent (here I'm fast reaching the limit of my expertise, unfortunately), but I'm unsure the whole "coordinate system" thing is constructive for the purposes of philosophy. It's certainly constructive for the purposes of calculating a plethora of physical phenomena in existing models, though.

I'm not really stating the properties of the dimension, as they are completely arbitrary anyway, it's a way to think of where the outside is in relation to our physical forms. It's 90 degrees in a direction our physical forms can't go. Via magic or death though we can move in those directions. Hence why Kellhus doesn't physically enter the outside. his soul does. His actual body just has it eyes rolled up in his head.

The outside doesn't have to be Euclidean in property.

Although as Robert Penrose said "Space and time are not concepts that can be considered independently of one another"

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« Reply #109 on: November 15, 2018, 04:38:04 pm »
I'm not really stating the properties of the dimension, as they are completely arbitrary anyway, it's a way to think of where the outside is in relation to our physical forms. It's 90 degrees in a direction our physical forms can't go. Via magic or death though we can move in those directions. Hence why Kellhus doesn't physically enter the outside. his soul does. His actual body just has it eyes rolled up in his head.
Ah, sorry, that is certainly a valid explanatory device, and I agree with the resulting description.

Although as Robert Penrose said "Space and time are not concepts that can be considered independently of one another"
Oh yes, this is why I very much like this "timeless" thought experiment in TSA.

themerchant

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« Reply #110 on: November 15, 2018, 05:10:54 pm »
I'm not really stating the properties of the dimension, as they are completely arbitrary anyway, it's a way to think of where the outside is in relation to our physical forms. It's 90 degrees in a direction our physical forms can't go. Via magic or death though we can move in those directions. Hence why Kellhus doesn't physically enter the outside. his soul does. His actual body just has it eyes rolled up in his head.
Ah, sorry, that is certainly a valid explanatory device, and I agree with the resulting description.

Although as Robert Penrose said "Space and time are not concepts that can be considered independently of one another"
Oh yes, this is why I very much like this "timeless" thought experiment in TSA.

Yeah just stating how i rationalise it in my head. As to where it is. I don't have the philosophical knowledge to add much to it's properties bar parroting lines from the book, which are vague and scarce.

As you stated it's no surprise my brain uses this model as a couple of decades ago i did my undergraduate in physics although i never went on to work in the industry.

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« Reply #111 on: November 28, 2018, 01:22:24 pm »
If we were to consider the entirety of Bakker-verse a sphere (which it specifically is not, but just for the sake of illustrating this idea) then the Outside is what is inside the sphere.  In "reality" there is no "space" there just as there is no sphere.  Of course, this analogy fails to capture numerous things, but it does encapsulate the space-that-is-not-space aspect of that paradoxical nature of the Outside.  The Outside is far more a "place" in the Platonic sense than it is a "physical" one.

I'm going to attempt to adopt this way of thinking. My present model was the Outside being ... outside the sphere-that-is-earwa. It being actually being inside is more clever though.
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« Reply #112 on: November 28, 2018, 02:21:54 pm »
I'm going to attempt to adopt this way of thinking. My present model was the Outside being ... outside the sphere-that-is-earwa. It being actually being inside is more clever though.

Consider Akka's analogy about "madness" being pin-pricks through the "surface" of the world from the Outside.  In that case, the "water" that leaks out is inside that surface, or better yet, consider that it is contained within that "surface."  In reality, the "place" of the Outside is more like a singularity than it is like a plane or sphere, that touches all point on the Inside, while simultaneously not actually having any dimension (only appearing to have some).

It's not really something that makes any sense in Euclidean geometrical terms, except in the sense that Zero, the origin, touches all quadrants of "space" while also not actually being a "space" at all.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

Wilshire

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« Reply #113 on: November 28, 2018, 03:12:03 pm »
I'm going to attempt to adopt this way of thinking. My present model was the Outside being ... outside the sphere-that-is-earwa. It being actually being inside is more clever though.

Consider Akka's analogy about "madness" being pin-pricks through the "surface" of the world from the Outside.  In that case, the "water" that leaks out is inside that surface, or better yet, consider that it is contained within that "surface."  In reality, the "place" of the Outside is more like a singularity than it is like a plane or sphere, that touches all point on the Inside, while simultaneously not actually having any dimension (only appearing to have some).

It's not really something that makes any sense in Euclidean geometrical terms, except in the sense that Zero, the origin, touches all quadrants of "space" while also not actually being a "space" at all.

I get the limitations, but it seems a useful inversion of the snowglobe-world I was envisioning. Though in that case, too, you could say Akka's analogy works the same if the snowglobe was filled with a gas and the outside a liquid that seeps in through cracks... But the other way is more satisfying somehow.

Though it does cause issues with the pervasiveness of the Outside beyond Earwa. Not sure that squares with me.
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« Reply #114 on: November 28, 2018, 03:43:28 pm »
I get the limitations, but it seems a useful inversion of the snowglobe-world I was envisioning. Though in that case, too, you could say Akka's analogy works the same if the snowglobe was filled with a gas and the outside a liquid that seeps in through cracks... But the other way is more satisfying somehow.

Though it does cause issues with the pervasiveness of the Outside beyond Earwa. Not sure that squares with me.

Well, one reason why I tend to think of it as "inside" as opposed to "outside" real-space, is that since it has no dimension, it doesn't make much sense that the Outside would then envelop the Inside.  Instead, it makes more sense to me that the Outside, as a space which is not space, that is the absence of space, would be "inside" although that is an arbitrary Euclidean designation that really doesn't mean anything.  It only serves to illustrate that no matter where you are on the Inside, you are equidistant from the Origin, the Zero-Space of the Outside (the whole of the Outside, singularity as it is).
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

Wilshire

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« Reply #115 on: November 28, 2018, 03:54:07 pm »
Wouldn't The God be the singularity middle, with the 100 some shell around it, Inside being a shell beyond that?

And then, kind of like the optic nerve obscuring your vision, the Outside could have a somewhat fixed blindspot that they didn't know existed.
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« Reply #116 on: November 28, 2018, 04:30:02 pm »
Wouldn't The God be the singularity middle, with the 100 some shell around it
That does seem to make the most sense as the current inferred structure of the Outside. The Gods are fractions, and between them is the Cubit (the Zero-God).

Now, I reserve my judgment about the God of Gods. Not enough data to make predictions that stand up to any kind of scrutiny.

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« Reply #117 on: November 28, 2018, 04:48:40 pm »
Wouldn't The God be the singularity middle, with the 100 some shell around it, Inside being a shell beyond that?

And then, kind of like the optic nerve obscuring your vision, the Outside could have a somewhat fixed blindspot that they didn't know existed.

Well, is there really a "middle" of a singularity?  If the space is no-space, then there really isn't a bottom, middle or top.  In the zero-space that is the Outside, I don't think there is any dimensionality except the perceived differentiation that somehow "endures."  So, it's really a "perceptual space" rather than a physical space.  That is, sort of a Platonic Idea Space, rather than an actual Dimensional Space.

So, it's not really nested, I don't think.  The God is everything.  Literally.  The Hundred are just parts of God.  All souls are parts of God.  The whole singularity is God.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

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« Reply #118 on: November 28, 2018, 06:44:00 pm »
I singularity has an event horizon - but what I meant is that The God would be your singularity no-space, the 100 being not so infinite would be outside of it, in the same manner that the inside is outside the outside...
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« Reply #119 on: November 28, 2018, 07:27:28 pm »
I singularity has an event horizon - but what I meant is that The God would be your singularity no-space, the 100 being not so infinite would be outside of it, in the same manner that the inside is outside the outside...

Well, I think this is where the analogy fails quite dramatically.  I use singularity because it is the closest conception I could devise for what a "space" that is "collapsed" would be.  Whatever the Outside is, it likely has no "event horizon" because it has no gravity or anything.  It has no physical substance or physical parallel.  It is likely just an inter-subjective "idea" of "space."  So, it has no event horizon, in the same way that the mathematical concept of a prime number doesn't either.

The Hundred are not infinite, you are right, and an Eärwan soul is also not infinite, because they imagine themselves separate from the infinite nature of God.  The Hundred could return to their infinite state, should they relinquish their foolish notion that they are separate from God.  But they don't, which is exactly why they exist.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira