So what exactly is the Thousandfold Thought?

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« on: April 26, 2013, 04:15:32 pm »
Quote from: Francis Buck
I honestly don't get it. I read through that book really fast because I had it from the library late and wanted to finish it, and then I never got the chance to read it again. I've checked out forums to see if anyone ever mentioned it, but I've never seen anything. So I really want to know. Is it just supposed to be Moe's "plan" or whatever? I suspect it's more than that, but I've never been clear on it. Enlighten me.

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« Reply #1 on: April 26, 2013, 04:15:40 pm »
Quote from: Madness
This is from my Unholy Consult post. Pretty much sums up my views but, obviously, the social implications are always fun to parse. My bolding for context here and spoilers tags are from WLW.

Quote from: Madness
The Thousandfold Thought - The Probability Trance followed long enough reveals the Thousandfold Thought. Moenghus saw it. Kellhus mined its labyrinthine possibilities.
(click to show/hide)

p. 367, TTT - "The God sleeps ... It has ever been thus. Only by striving for the Absolute may we awaken Him. Meaning. Purpose. These words name not something given ... no, they name our task."

Moenghus seems to suggest that whomever delves the farthest will become Absolute, that the unmoved soul the Dunyain strive for, is the God itself.

Who has delved deepest?

It's like Laplace's Demon, Hari Sheldon's Sheldon Plan, Leto's Golden Path. I have another post around here talking about this. It basically describes, deterministically or otherwise, the unfolding of all events - in the Dunyain's case, past, present, and future.

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« Reply #2 on: April 26, 2013, 04:15:48 pm »
Quote from: Swense
So the Dunyain goal would be to strive to alter that at all - change the utterly deterministic path everything walks?

Edit: the absolute being the moment from which determinism begins?

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« Reply #3 on: April 26, 2013, 04:15:55 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
I've only just started considering that it's cloud computing. Kellhus hypnotises them so he can pass data from and, via the fire watching spell, back to him. So he has vastly increased his processing power. His dad couldn't because he needed a way to feed the data back in, but had lost that capacity.

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« Reply #4 on: April 26, 2013, 04:16:01 pm »
Quote from: sciborg2
I thought the inclusion of the soul ensured Earwa was non-deterministic, but then Cnauir actually wonders about this in TTT. Akka talks to him about souls, but he notes that the Dunyain power comes from treating the world as causally closed.

So we're left with uncertainty, or perhaps forced to seek out Stapp's Quantum Consciousness theories. ;-)

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« Reply #5 on: April 26, 2013, 04:16:08 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Sometimes I think about the time stream as being like toffee - ie, its all one long line, but it drips down and folds upon itself. Thus a latter part of the stream touches an earlier part, peripherally.

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« Reply #6 on: April 26, 2013, 04:16:14 pm »
Quote from: Truth Shines
Eh?  It's that complicated?  I've always thought it just referred to Moenghus' master plan on engineering the holy war, calling his son Kellhus, uniting the three seas under a single leadership to attack Golgoterrath.

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« Reply #7 on: April 26, 2013, 04:16:21 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
I think more the engine of his plan - he could not attain the TTT, which was the key element of the plan. That's why he called for his son.

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« Reply #8 on: April 26, 2013, 04:16:27 pm »
Quote from: sologdin
isn't it designted as a "transition rule"?  if so, that has specific significance in the hard sciences, which i don't really understand.  we also see the phrase in law, but it's less interesting there.

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« Reply #9 on: April 26, 2013, 04:16:34 pm »
Quote from: The Sharmat
I sort of harbor the personal crackpot theory that Moenghus just made it up.

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« Reply #10 on: April 26, 2013, 04:16:42 pm »
Quote from: Wilshire
Quote from: Swense
So the Dunyain goal would be to strive to alter that at all - change the utterly deterministic path everything walks?

Edit: the absolute being the moment from which determinism begins?

I found this interesting. The goal of the Dunyain, as least as far as we have been told, is to obtain the absolute. So to obtain the absolute, to be a "self moving soul".

I have questioned why everyone who seems to "grasp" TTT seems to want to take it in a different direction. Maybe this is because there can only be 1 Absolute (no highlander reference intended). If TTT is the inevitable conclusion of following the probability trance long enough, then it would seem to be reasonable that to grasp the Absolute, one would need to control TTT.

TTT seems to be the culmination of the darkness that comes before. The culmination of all things that determine the actions of man. Now we go to the dunyain who want to be self moving. To do this nothing must come before. If even the Dunyain, after 2000 years of selective breeding,  are in this ball of probability that is TTT, then they would need to control it to become outside of it.

So then there certainly could only be 1 person directing it, because baring being the only one, someone else would be controlling the future of you and everyone else.


Also I think it might be worth nothing the the Dunyain in Ishual cannot grasp TTT. This is because TTT is the inevitable conclusion of the probability trance followed with ALL variables. This includes war, sorcery, presumable the Tekne to some degree, and the Consult. This may help to explain why Ishual is not filled with Dunyain freaking about about the end of the world.


Creackpot?:
This could be one of the reason why upon finding Ishual, the original Dunyain ignored and even hid the existence of sorcery. They may have already have known seen TTT. They knew that the current apocalypse would not end the world, but that the second would certainly be the end of all things if nothing was done. So they hid themselves away in order to save the world from the end. It could have been that 2000 years of preparation, and perhaps many more, would be needed to save the world. If Ishual was left to try and control every one of the doomsday variables then maybe they would have been doomed to fail. But, if they could focus on just a few, if they could be given the tools to say detect the yet to be developed skin-spys, the brain power to wield the most devastating sorceries (without the need to develop scorecery for those 2000 years), and the physical prowess to defeat any circumstance.

Could the Dunyain have "stumbled" into Ishual and made it their contingecy play to change the fate of the world?

I may have more things to crackpot about but for now I'm out of time.

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« Reply #11 on: April 26, 2013, 04:16:51 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: The Sharmat
I sort of harbor the personal crackpot theory that Moenghus just made it up.

Moenghus thought, "how can I throw Kellhus off my scent, if he knows what I conspire he will try to overthrow me or stop me or seize control from me... how can I distract him?  I know! I'll send a minion with a cryptic message that contains an appropriately cryptic phrase, he'll think the phrase is my entire plan and never bother to look beyond or around the phrase, I'll trap him in his own expectations!"

Come to think of it, Kellhus does sort of go 'shiny!' at the mention of TTT, and in a sense, he becomes trapped by it.  TTT is a way to flatter a Dunyain's sense of superiority to the world, an illusion that he can master all circumstance and all men.  Come to think of it. he is also trapped by assuming the roles of God and Emperor.

If Moenghus survived, he would be free to act however he pleased.

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« Reply #12 on: April 26, 2013, 04:16:58 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote
I sort of harbor the personal crackpot theory that Moenghus just made it up.
Heh, I could like that theory, if he was worldborn.

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« Reply #13 on: April 26, 2013, 04:17:04 pm »
Quote from: The Sharmat
Well given that it does give Kellhus what he wants to hear (that he has surpassed his father) it does sound like something a Dunyain would use.

Also note that neither of them ever describe what the Thousandfold Thought dictated they do, and that Kellhus was forced to cut his attempted interrogation of Moenghus short due to Cnaiur's imminent arrival.

And finally, consider that Kellhus left the grotto in Kyudea with absolutely no information he didn't have before he entered.

EDIT: It also occurs to me that throughout the entire series, never in his internal monologue does Kellhus acknowledge that his reasoning could be flawed. Only that his knowledge is imperfect. He seems to assume that had he the correct information, he would always act on it appropriately to achieve his goals. (Although come to think of it he does later come to regret not killing Cnaiur. Still, he never considers the possibility as a general phenomena.)

Moenghus on the other hand acknowledges that even a Dunyain has vestigial emotions and biases that can interfere with their pursuit of the shortest path. That they are flawed.

Which sounds more like the failing of a world born man? What is more likely, that Kellhus alone in all the universe posseses the capacity for perfect reason, or that he's a remarkable yet wholly fallible individual?

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« Reply #14 on: April 26, 2013, 04:17:10 pm »
Quote from: lockesnow
Quote from: The Sharmat
Which sounds more like the failing of a world born man? What is more likely, that Kellhus alone in all the universe posseses the capacity for perfect reason, or that he's a remarkable yet wholly fallible individual?
this is something that bugged me the entire first read of the series, that Kellhus was rarely questioning himself, only noting the flaws in others.  And that we readers were supposed to let him get away with it because he fits the script of the traditional fantasy protagonist hero ubermench.

I think there's something literary and thematic going on with the contradiction that Kellhus embodies in not noting his own failings, but I'm not certain we're going to get all of that until after the series is complete.  :-/