No need to rehash, I get your side of the story, its just not one I totally believe in and do not think it goes against theme and plot. There is plot set ups the that NG will be defeated. Mimara, Akka's dream with the Heron Spear not killing the NG, and so forth. I cant wrap my head around yours and others insistent that it goes against the themes and couldn't be properly done. I would never expect a riding off into the sunset ending. I would expect a almost defeated humanity, that would have to start over and might not even make it. What with the mass amount of Sranc and whatnot that would still be left. I see nothing of unicorns and rainbows, rather, wtf are we gonna do know. Is there gods? Has sorcery ceased to exist, I think so. A whole different world still on the verge of failure, and that fate we will not know.

The thing is, you can't both defeat the No-God AND the God. It's one of the other, and everything points toward the No-God winning. I don't know why some of you guys assume that means that Sranc will forever rule Eärwa though. Hell, you could say humanity won in the sense that the Mutilated and possibly Shaeönanra (my beloved hero) are still alive. Humans to whom meaning is alien to inhabit a meaningless world. That could be a positive ending, depending on your perspective.

Quote from: Madness on November 07, 2017, 02:33:44 am

Quote from: Beardfisher King on November 06, 2017, 01:00:26 pm

Yes, but the physical perspective is not the only perspective available. In fact, it's not even truly a perspective, since to have a perspective, there would have to be a perceiver.

Eh...

I'm interested in teasing out these thoughts with you, BFK. I feel like they've come up in a number of separate contemporary threads.

Quote from: Madness on November 08, 2017, 04:18:12 pm

Quote from: Beardfisher King on November 07, 2017, 11:46:26 pm

Well, as a newly-minted amateur student of philosophy, I'm game.

Nah, this isn't philosophy, friend, this is biology.

My mistake. Then I literally have nothing to add, if this a exclusively a biological question. Cheers.

Each cell has thousands of nanomachines carrying out various tasks. If the behavior of one such machine behaves according to physical laws, i.e. it is not free-moving, it is hard to see how an ensemble of such machines, or an ensemble of ensembles, can be free-moving without invoking a modern version of vitalism.

Also, at the risk of sounding like a broken record: AGI will never happen.

Why can't humanity survive and there also be the death of meaning?

I think this is what most of us believe will happen, i.e. the world will be reduced to the 144k, the World is shut, and humans repopulate. What's interesting is the manner in which this will happen, of which we have have little idea.

Quote from: TLEILAXU on November 06, 2017, 07:32:10 pm

Right. My point was basically that I agree with that and the mentioned mantra is useful for calming myself so I can analyze/exploit the situation intellectually instead of reacting with an emotional outburst à la "you're a phagget".
All this being-human-emotion talk is too confusing for me.

Cold calculation can be quite handy, but sometimes you need that boiling water to animate you into action

Yes we probably do need some emotion.

Quote from:  Wilshire

Regarding "how much more can be said": Earwa is a massive universe. I'm sure Bakker could write stories within this world he intricately crafted for all the days of his life, and there would still be stories left untold. After all, its taken him nearly 30 years to tell just one story - the story of The No God. So what's left to be said? We've only just finished the prologue.

Well, I would never expect butterflies and rainbows. Why would man defeating TNG be butterflies and rainbows?

It would LITERALLY be butterflies and rainbows and unicorns because that would defeat the whole purpose of Meaning dying and pull us right back into the comfy-but-also-extremely-awful World with objectively real Gods/morals. Not to mention that Eschaton is an inherent property of this world. The way I see it right now, either the God itself will kill humanity (lol) or the No-God is causally predestined to succeed at some point.
 

Yeah, I think I can dig up at least two or three more early quotes on "Eschatology."

Future Madness' responsibility.

I always just assumed that without the No-God, the World and the Gods would just continue indefinitely, but the fact that Eschaton was fated to happen helps explaining a lot, such as Kellhus comment about the Inchoroi winning and Akka's dream with Gilgaöl.
Now the thing is, in the same passage, Kellhus also says "Our actions, our Great Ordeal , follows a doom outside of doom". Does that mean that the No-God provides a different sort of doom than what would've happened "naturally"?
But then again, it's hard to reconcile non-self-moving agencies (the Inchoroi) managing circumvent Eternity by "will" or cunning. The No-God must've been causally fated to manifest all along.
I'm confused 

I've honestly lost the plot here xd. Not sure what exactly we're talking about.