Well, I believe the post I linked was midway through the third page but it had the most congruent thoughts to this thread - there are comments before and after ours .

I think we're ignoring some fairly obvious intentions - this seems to reflect the Erratic's great act of trauma and, to me, it seems obvious that Cleric cannot kill Achamian until he remembers Seswatha.

Also, Deliverator, in light of this discussion, I'd be very interested in what you make of my thoughts from Dunyain and Nonmen.

How could a proper Elju function w/o a small understanding of Nonmen consciousness?  Is it as simple as understanding how to use memory fulcrums?  If so, how would Kosoter have known how to manipulate Cleric by using Akka and Mimara as memory fulcrums?  Is it knowledge the Zaudyani Captain would have had just from his life experience?  Can it be random chance?  Did someone (Kelhus), teach him?  How does Kosoter become in possession of Cleric anyways...

Kellhus would have to have coached Kosoter on being an elju. From what I understood from Achamian's POVs of TAE, Kosoter might even be lying to Nil'giccas. Perhaps, that is where Incariol came from and why Achamian can't remember his name - it's a creation of Kellhus and Kosoter to control Nil'giccas. But, in my opinion, there is no way that Kosoter could fulfill such a role without Kellhus.

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Only when memory is stripped away!  Only then is being revealed as pure Becoming!  Only when the past dies can we shrug aside the burden that is our soul!

What is Nil'giccas' aim here?  What will he gain by shedding his soul and Becoming?  Surely Nilgiccas knows...  Do y'all?  I have an idea, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.  Also, does he fail in Becoming?  He asks Akka WTF just happened as he lies impaled?

You'll have some of my thoughts in that other thread. However, in light of discussion here, I might hazard the alternative that trying to remember Nil'giccas and the acts Cleric must do, to do so, just isn't fun. Memories are a big thing here, and while I support lockesnow's assertion that we should consider Earwan reality, rather than our own (metaphysical consequences of the mundane, etc), we might first analogize towards degenerations akin to Alzheimer's; stranded in a perpetual now.

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N: "So... You offer me oblivion?"  "No, I will ruin and I will break."  "Honour?"  "Love?  What are these but dross before oblivion?  No! I will seize the world and I will shake from it what misery, what anguish, I can.  I will remember!"

Fairly straight forward so far.  The Nonman claiming Nil'giccas is dead can be seen as Nil'giccas being an erratic, etc...  Akka realizes he can't be the Nonman's book, he and Mimara are to be the memory fulcrum.

He will do anything, commit any trespass, to remember those he loved.

Cleric (at the very least), knows who the father is.  He must (?), want them saved so he can remember them later.

Is he thinking of Achamian and Mimara... or Seswatha and the Queen...?

Anyways, after a bunch of Mimara POV's and the end of the Dragon fight.  The Nonman empties his pouch of Qirri!  The motive for that is interesting but another topic... unless it's not.

I always thought, if Kosoter is actually on the up-and-up with Cleric, then ditching the stash in front of the addict was a way to incite the trauma-necessary combat between the memory fulcrums and the Erratic - classic power play, though obviously, Achamian and Mimara bung this up slightly by trying to give up their addictions themselves.

I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed that arc! Fantasy and drugs?!

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N: Nil'giccas!  you call-beseech! as if trying to awaken some truth slumbering within me.  You think Nil'giccas is something I have lost!  And therefore something I can recover!  You forget, that before the Nonman King's passing, I did not exist! I can no more recover him than you can recover your mother's virgin womb.  I am Incariol!  Cleric!  And you shall not survive my lesson!  You think the cripple!  You think Cleric the ruin of someone whole!  But you are wrong, Seswatha! I am the Truth!  "We are many!" the Erratic roared.  "We are legion!  What you call your soul is nothing but a confusion, an inability!  A plurality that cannot count the moments that divide it and so calls itself One.  Only when memory is stripped away!  Only then is being revealed as pure Becoming!  Only when the past dies can we shrug aside the burden that is our soul! Only then does Darkness sing untrammeled!  Only then!"

Again, if we looked at this from a simple mundane memory perspective, metaphysical aside, this seems an example of a more stable persona exerted it's influence over others, less concrete ones.

The Nonman goes on to explain the divisions in the soul and that Cleric can not (somehow), access Nil'giccas.  The Nonman compares this to a child recovering his mother's womb.  So a division in the Nonman soul is in some sense born separate from the prior incarnation?  Cleric's soul has the DNA of Nil'giccas' soul, but is like a wee 'lil child soul!!???  Yet, the total Nonman soul is aware of it's division (alluded to at the top of this post).

Nil'giccas is essential a womb to Cleric, following the memory and personalities trend: Nil'giccas is the physical form, the life lived, that gave rise to Cleric. Cleric could no more have existed, if Nil'giccas has not lived, than you or I could've without our mother's.

To answer how Kosoter did what he did, I tend to mark it all down as Kellhus manipulation. The guy is a complete fanatic, and he tells us he has explicit instruction from Kellhus to keep Mimara alive. He obviously had some dealing with Kell, and is therefore under his influence. Also, there is no way that the Skin-Eaters just happened to find the most powerful Quya wandering around in the woods. And it didnt just happen that Akka picked the one band of scalpers that had a Nonman. Kellhus manipulated a large portion of that story, and Kosoter more than anything else.

Ah, +1 .

Is it possible Nil'giccas wasn't ready to actually kill Akka until that very moment of memory?  Does remembering his actual name add weight to remembering the betrayal?  He says "I will remember," then DOES actually remember the moment Akka refuses to strike (professes his love one MOAR time...  Finally tipping the scales), and begins to lash out at Achamian.  Have I lost the plot guys\gals?  I kinda think I have.

+1 Erraticism. I'm pretty sure you got it straight.

Quote from: locke on July 09, 2013, 01:42:55 am

Ah but Cleric/NG has conditioned achamian and mimara to accept him--nilgiccis--into their bodies--which they promptly do (which would explain why C/NG dumped the qirri to force them to burn him and accept him inside them.  perhaps bakker's Lembas-melage-dust has it's perils (for humans) and profits (for nonmen)...

Death went swirling up, afterall, when they made the C/NG qirri.

Hmmmmm...

I'm willing to be lead somewhere if your willing to show the way.  Whatever the benefits are, they can't in anyway prevent Damnation...  or Nonmen would never have gone over to the Consult.

+1. I wonder if that might have been Cleric's intention, hell, even Kellhus'?! We return again to the question of effects; Nil'giccas is noted as tasting different than Cu'jara Cinmoi.

I'm still rooting for Maggot being Pre-Born with Nonmen ancestral memories !

+1 Wilshire - Perhaps the experience of Nonman consciousness would be different with the presence of their book...

+1 Full-Dunyain Progeny of Kellhus.

Considering the evidence of defectives, I'd hazard that the Dunyain didn't achieve that balance, whatever it may be. Cool question though...

Lol, I don't watch much TV but the idea that a show with subject matter like this (pop-science) narrated by Morgan Freeman escaped my notice saddens me. This is the second time in the past few months I've encountered it.

That said, I think these questions are exceedingly complex . Love it!

From what I can find (without watching the episode and only reading reviews) the example you are using refers to studies done by US military in training drone pilots.

Bear with me, as this is one of my favorite subjects to discuss, this could get long-winded:

There is a lot of theory going into these practices and not much hard evidence to back it up, though that is changing quickly. Basically, these aren't novel, unlocked abilities, they are reflections of evolving technological capabilities.

You want to pick up a task. This is going to involve a particular schema of activation (neuronal firing) in your brain (for instance, the multiple perceptions involved in simply throwing a ball: where you are, what you see, smell, hear, feel, and taste, your state of mind, attentive awareness - itself a schema, which compounds learning speed, when firing within schemas of novel stimulation involved in learning new tasks). Learning also seems to follow a loose descriptive formula; at first there are low levels of neuronal firing that reach a crescendo before what's been called pruning, where the brain culminates in using a large area and density of neurons to perform a task inefficiently but then comes to use less to do more as it balances for efficient (arguably, there are tons of competing theories about the mechanisms by which the brain actually does this).

Now a couple years ago, I suggested to peoples who had no business listening to me that we needed to cultivate an archive of neuroanomalous individuals from all sorts of expertise; that is, simply record as many experts as possible either actually performing or imagining the practice of their expertise in as many different neuroimaging devices as possible so as to enable the development of neuropractices bridging the gap between neurotypicals (us commoners) and the neuroanomalous (experts).

This is exactly the same hypothesis by which they are using the tDCS (transcranial direct-current stimulation) in this context. The idea is that since they can mimic the excitatory and inhibitory schema of an expert's neuronal firing with a programmed tDCS, when novices perform tasks, with a similar schema of firing, they actually perform much closer towards expertise... in effect, the tDCS acts as training wheels of sorts for the novice's brain. Since schemas of activition follow that plastic curve of learning, the boosted brain, achieves efficient firing balance much quicker than normal.

Theory aside, I actually despise these things - it simply answers humanity's insatiable laziness... I would much rather do embodied practice and achieve faster and faster results through the application of compounding schemas. But hey, I'm a freak . One who will quickly be left behind by the first-adopters and pioneering-users of these technologies.

I was curious as to what anyone thought about how that might affect humanity. If something like this could be used to drastically reduce the amount of time it took someone to become an 'expert' at any skill, say any athletic event, how would it affect everything? Would it cause an explosion of greatness? Reducing the time it takes to become equal to the current level of expertiese, allowing significantly more time in ones life to read new heights. Or, would it cause a great stagnation of talent, a completely level playing field, where no one bothered to work harder than the next guy, knowing that eventually they will be able to 'cheat' their way up after a few years.

Once again - Semantica! Bakker write that fucking book .

The athletics question, aside, is a particularly interesting one - the neurons that enable muscle contraction and relaxation would certainly benefit ability. There have been experiments where individuals imagine working out and show actual muscular increase but it seemed definitively hampered by non-movement (like the iconic piano practice experiments).

Only a certain number of individuals will embrace this future, Wilshire. Almost certainly companies will attempt to incorporate technologies and nootropics like this into the standard conduct but these are very specific and targeted aims. Also, there are legislative reactions and socioeconomic circumstances to consider.

I'm sure this is food for thought for now - I had other things to do, Wilshire . My fault for making this my homepage.

Lol, some good thoughts, Somnambulist.

Gah! I can't believe the mystery Bakker's managed to walk with Ishual... Tantalizing!

Welcome to the Second Apocalypse, Morrigan.

Just started a Philosophy & Gender credit... 'lo and behold the textbook is simply called Feminism. *Face-Palm*

Can't wait to start arguing with this professor over that one (I walk a real tricky line where I constantly demand that professor's actually engage their positions - especially in online credits).

Since I've been on vacation and couch surfing for almost a month and a half and having just moved back to my place up north, the only books I really have on me are the ones that came with me and my textbooks.

So after a trip to the campus library - I rarely frequent libraries now in adulthood as I like owning my books - here is what I'll be mostly reading for the next three weeks (aside textbooks):

Soterion prompted these first few choices based on reading I did in our New Wave SF thread.

In Defense of Fantasy - Ann Swinfen
Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion - Rosemary Jackson
Metamorphoses of Science Fiction - Darko Suvin

And then truly for the fuck of it:

Platform Oratory and Debate - John Rigg (I'm on an oratory kick right now after reading Rhetoric for Radicals whilst surfing around - memorizing a bunch of historical speeches for the fun of it; might even join me a Toastmasters' club)
Women Philosophers - Ethel M. Kersey (I had picked this up over a month ago and renewed it while on vacation - though I didn't read it as it was in storage. It will certainly help me in my Philosophy & Gender course - like prof's actually advocate extracurricular reading - but I had originally grabbed it based on the one Women & Bakker thread I engaged in).

Should be fun . Can't wait to get my books out of storage as I have a couple choice titles I bought recently that I haven't had a chance to read.