[2263] both right and wrong at the same time

[wies]

Forum: spends two days speculating on specifics of magic
Zimmy: it just has no explanation!

[imaginaryfriend]

I think she's saying that she and Coyote are plugged into the ether so they can know things directly without the need to "see." Explanations are only for suckers.

[philman]

So Coyote both had power, and understood how things worked
Ysengrin had neither, but then ate Coyote to create Loup, who has power, but doesn't understand how things work
Zimmy understands how things work but doesn't have power

So if Loup eats Zimmy, that should create Coyote (Zoyote? Zoup?) again, right?

Yeah, comics logic!

[jda]

So Loup marries Zimmy and it is a happy ending.
Or and ending.
Of Everything,including us.

[pyradonis]

Maybe the two of them should work together. At least a meeting between Loup and Zimmy should be fun.

Also: Gamma won't live to see her 30th birthday if she keeps up that lifestyle.

[madjack]

Feb 7, 2020 8:30:41 GMT jda said:

So Loup marries Zimmy and it is a happy ending.
Or and ending.
Of Everything,including us.

Nah it sets up a sequel.

Gunnerkrigg Court 2: Gamma's Revenge.

[gpvos]

How is that for an enigmatic answer? It barely answers anything at all.

[merry76]

Feb 7, 2020 8:47:52 GMT gpvos said:

How is that for an enigmatic answer? It barely answers anything at all.

Well by her own logic - she could be also wrong.

Its like religious people pointing to science and telling us its worthless because it cant, by definition, know everything.

I think Zimmys view is just as correct (and wrong) as everybody elses. Who ever looks at this problem will have an impact on what he sees. And I am not invoking quantum theory here either.

[philman]

Feb 7, 2020 8:31:28 GMT pyradonis said:

Maybe the two of them should work together. At least a meeting between Loup and Zimmy should be fun.

Also: Gamma won't live to see her 30th birthday if she keeps up that lifestyle.

Judging by Renard's reaction to Zimmy, she might scare Loup off just by existing at him!

[Zox Tomana]

Feb 7, 2020 8:47:52 GMT gpvos said:

How is that for an enigmatic answer? It barely answers anything at all.

In fact, it raises more questions than before!


So science is explainable things, magic is things which are explained by having no explanation... which almost seems to be a redundant thing. "It's not unexplainable, the explanation is that there is no explanation." "So... it's unexplainable?" "No, *that* is the explanation." "..."

Although I guess the revelation here is that there is in fact not an underlying explanatory framework underneath magic. Rey's note that the blinker stone works the way the wielder wills it and that's all there is to it comes to mind. It works the way it does because that is the way it works.

So Kat is right in that there is something to explain here, but she's also wrong in that there is no explanation beyond the plain facts. And Annie is right in that you can't get an explanation for magic, but is wrong in that the very fact that there is no explanation is the explanatory answer itself.

How circular.

[imaginaryfriend]

Not entirely sure I understand what she's saying but apparently according to Zimmy, the world is things that you can see (sense) and things you can't see (the unseen world) unless you have a special ability to do so, and even then there's a lot going on that can't be seen (like how Antimony can only sometimes see Smitty's strings) at least by someone like Antimony. People like Kat and the Court can do things that Antimony and presumably Zimmy can't figure out because their efforts (and past efforts) to make things they can't see into things they can see result in explanations they can use to achieve various results (presumably by manipulating "natural" forces). Etherically-gifted people can do things that mundane people can't but that's not magic; an explanation of how that etheric stuff works would necessarily be at best incomplete, and all explanations can be said to be "wrong" in some way. That means that competing explanations can (and do) exist and while none of them are complete from the perspective of one who is plugged into the unseen world directly there can be explanations that are better or worse than other explanations... explanations that produce better results may be more useful but these results do not necessarily prove one explanation to be better or worse than another from Zimmy's perspective. Also I expect Zimmy's experience plugged into the unseen is radically different from Coyote's, because of his control at the very least but more likely these unseen things would appear/interact with different subjects in different ways, sometimes creating radically different experiences of the same unseen thing... which would appear to fit with the paradoxical truths of the etheric beings.

tl;dr: Shit happens.

[hen3ry]

This reminds me of the view that there exist true contradictions in the world - that something can be both true and false at the same time, but that this does not invalidate it, as long as you use a more foolproof logic system (paraconsistent logic).

[pyradonis]

Feb 7, 2020 8:47:52 GMT gpvos said:

How is that for an enigmatic answer? It barely answers anything at all.

Meh. IMHO it is not even an answer. And even if it is, it is just Zimmy's opinion.

[machiavelli33]

BELIEF.

She's talking about belief. This is what I think.

Belief as a motive force, belief as a source of power - the juice of Divine Magic. Godly ability: the power to manifest things into reality with nothing but will and the utter confidence that *things must be JUST SO*.

If this is what Zim is talking about, then its why these are things that are explained "by having no explanation" - belief and faith precisely demand such, and that the things they extol do not and cannot have no physical, rational, tangible or even reasonable explanation. They simply are, because they believed or willed it so.

It has to also be why Coyote loves the idea that he doesn't exist - and why oh why does he love humans so. They are powerful wielders of belief and will - they made him after all. And them making him was powerful enough to change the very world they lived and grew up on, powerful enough to mold their own world to fit the ideas they wove to explain the world around them.

Who put the stars in the sky?

Ask anyone, and they will tell you differently.

[Corvo]

That's my new headcanon M-Theory. I'll call it Z-Theory.

[Deleted]

I still think Zimmy is estimating that magic requires one to eschew contemplating how it works. If one did, it would no longer (presumably because it would no longer interact with the Ether once it stops being fueled by affects). Close your eyes and spread your wings to intuition, etc.

Feb 7, 2020 8:31:28 GMT pyradonis said:

Also: Gamma won't live to see her 30th birthday if she keeps up that lifestyle.

Something something leaden casket, but I'm nearly as tired as she is.

[fia]

Ugghhhh.

This is the worst of all possible "answers", Zimmy.

Unexplained skills and abilities are not magic (viz., they are part of the fabric of the universe? so not unnatural or supernatural but just natural? or what? is this a Humean point?), but they also do not essentially lack explanations (so not mysticism), but also we should not expect explanations (so not positivism) ––– none of that amounts to anything ontologically or epistemically coherent. It's just a lot of negations. I thought she was at least going to say something minimally like a sophisticated anti-positivism, but it's just of general mysterianism that rejects both mystery and coherence. =_=
Whatever Zimmy and Coyote 'get', I guess I don't 'get'. Generally it just feels like "the world is bigger than you, it's mysterious and weird, so science may never capture it, but it isn't supernatural anywhere, it just is what it is" is what she's saying.
Which is a bit like not saying anything at all. Not quite not saying anything at all, but almost like.

The metaphysics has to at least agree with Wittgenstein that "the world is everything that is the case," but that's so close to a tautology it is almost meaningless. And her epistemology is basically "you don't know what you don't know, and there are some things you can't know, but it doesn't entail anything metaphysical, necessarily" which has some content to it, but given that the question was about the world, was a bit of a misleading diversion.
I dunno. I still like Zimmy.
But sometimes Tom is a genuine troll.

[hen3ry]

Everybody just assumes that if something has rules, we can understand it scientifically, but that only holds for a very tiny part of our knowledge. Once you go beyond particle physics to more complicated systems, there's always an element of belief or guesswork. Magic is most noticeable in relation to people, which makes it terrible for science. It's not a stretch to define it using that property - that it is so dependent on context that you simply never get enough data to understand it. So there are rules, but you cannot find them; "it just works". Or maybe you can find the rules, but not scientifically - e.g. an authority tells you.

[imaginaryfriend]

One more thing: If Coyote can forget then it follows that Coyote can ignore some of what he experiences in the ether as he chooses, which means that he is conscious as I would understand it... but I am not sure if he can doubt what he experiences in the ether even if he knows that how he experiences it may be radically different from what another god does. That might be a good reason to want to escape being Coyote.

[saardvark]

Feb 7, 2020 17:11:55 GMT fia said:

Ugghhhh.

This is the worst of all possible "answers", Zimmy.

Unexplained skills and abilities are not magic (viz., they are part of the fabric of the universe? so not unnatural or supernatural but just natural? or what? is this a Humean point?), but they also do not essentially lack explanations (so not mysticism), but also we should not expect explanations (so not positivism) ––– none of that amounts to anything ontologically or epistemically coherent. It's just a lot of negations. I thought she was at least going to say something minimally like a sophisticated anti-positivism, but it's just of general mysterianism that rejects both mystery and coherence. =_=
Whatever Zimmy and Coyote 'get', I guess I don't 'get'. Generally it just feels like "the world is bigger than you, it's mysterious and weird, so science may never capture it, but it isn't supernatural anywhere, it just is what it is" is what she's saying.
Which is a bit like not saying anything at all. Not quite not saying anything at all, but almost like.

The metaphysics has to at least agree with Wittgenstein that "the world is everything that is the case," but that's so close to a tautology it is almost meaningless. And her epistemology is basically "you don't know what you don't know, and there are some things you can't know, but it doesn't entail anything metaphysical, necessarily" which has some content to it, but given that the question was about the world, was a bit of a misleading diversion.
I dunno. I still like Zimmy.
But sometimes Tom is a genuine troll.

spoken like a true philosopher..... (which you are, I guess!)

[Gemini Jim]

IMHO, Gorillaz Zimmy has sounded vaguely religious* about magic and science for the last few pages, or at least "spiritual" for lack of a better word, since there's certainly no Church of St. Zimmy.

(* which is troublesome for somebody like me, because I'm not religious at all.)


I don't recall there ever being an Anglican or a Catholic or even a Buddhist in the Gunnerkrigg universe.

They have Coyote, but he seems to be one of those old-fashioned "get physically involved" gods, as opposed to Invisible Man In The Sky God. And he seems to take the view that he only exists because people will it.


In any case, unless (this version of) Zimmy reveals that she is "a lot like Coyote" because she is Coyote (and yes, everybody else is), she's just talking.

She could also be a mouthpiece for Tom, which is often the case when a character in a story gets TL;DR.

[zbeeblebrox]

Is this just Zimmy's version of shootin the shit, or is she stumping to get Coyote's old position? I mean that last line of her's was a perfect softball for Annie to be like, "Well...what if we did something about it?"
I think Zimmy's reality warping affliction is probably strong enough to confuse Loup. And they have an imprisoning device. I'm just sayin, it's not totally out of the question.

[mturtle7]

I...um...

Well this feels awkward. Zimmy's explanation of her opinion honestly just makes perfect sense to me, and I'm just now realizing that it's probably because I'm a student working in the field of literary criticism, so I guess what "makes perfect sense" to me is actually just a confusing mess to other people.

I think I mentioned on last page's thread how I thought Zimmy wasn't really attacking magic as an actual thing in the world, she was attacking the entire CONCEPT of "magic" as being arbitrary and vacuous to the point of being essentially meaningless. She is, as they might say in the field, "deconstructing" the entire sub-culture of "magic users" which Annie holds so dear (but in a nice way!). For the last few pages, people have been asking for a definition of what Zimmy considers "magic", and she basically just gave it in panel 2. It's obviously paradoxical and impossible, and now...somehow people have taken that mean that magic in the Gunnerverse is "FUELED BY PARADOX" or belief or something? But for me, when I see someone give a paradoxical and impossible definition of a particular word as the end of their argument, it's usually because they're saying the word itself is paradoxical and impossible. Which has pretty much been Zimmy's stated goal from the beginning - "there ain't no such thing as magic!", remember?

By Zimmy's view, neither Kat's nor Annie's view is "incorrect", exactly, but...well, to be rather unnecessarily brutal about it, that's because their ideas are too damn stupid to be incorrect. "We can't explain how it works, it just IS" can't really be argued with, since it clearly does exist and you definitely don't know how it works, but it's kind of stupid to use it to mean that it's literally impossible for anyone to ever explain it, and therefore they should stop trying. But saying that "anything can be explained with science, it's just a matter of time" is, AGAIN, impossible to argue with (because you can never conclusively PROVE that something is unexplainable), but it's also really stupid to use it to invalidate people's problems (or worse, criminalize them) just because they can't be explained by science right now (note just how pertinent this idea is to Zimmy's life specifically). Zimmy is just trying to concise "this is how magic works" because that would kind of defeat the whole point of her argument. Even though hard rules of magic are easier for you guys to use as Wildspec-fuel. Sorry!

If this were an actual literary criticism paper, it would be about 15 pages longer, talk about Zimmy's tone and diction choice and how it relates to both her character and her argument (as well as GC themes in general), and also present at least 3 other points of view on magic and science that are relevant to Zimmy's argument. But of course, I'd rather beat myself to death with the entire collected works of Jaques Derrida than post that sort of **** on a webcomic forum. Hope I still helped widen peoples' perspective on Zimmy and her obnoxious attitude here.

Edit: to be clear, Zimmy's views on magic in the Gunnerverse are not necessarily mine! Also, I'm not actually trying to say Annie and/or Kat are dumb, because that's not what Zimmy is saying either. It's just that they each are loosely affiliated with the general philosophies of magic and science, respectively, and Zimmy wanted to take both of those philosophies down a peg or two.

[Runningflame]

Feb 7, 2020 18:33:09 GMT hen3ry said:

Magic is most noticeable in relation to people, which makes it terrible for science. It's not a stretch to define it using that property - that it is so dependent on context that you simply never get enough data to understand it. So there are rules, but you cannot find them; "it just works". Or maybe you can find the rules, but not scientifically - e.g. an authority tells you.

"Ewww, it's one of those soft sciences."

I really like this theory about magic, though! When you think about the primary world, it's certainly true that people are endlessly varied, and what works in one context with one person won't work in another context or with another person. (Which makes people like me, who like predictability, prefer sometimes to interact with computers. Sometimes.) If magic is personal in nature, then why shouldn't it be the same way? A spell works for one person but "refuses" to work for another, or only works on a Friday under a full moon, or whatever. With respect to Gunnerkrigg specifically, it makes me think of how blinker stones are often gifts between couples. And how some people can use them but others just can't (which statement, BTW, is what prompts Annie to ask Anja if she's a magician--!). And how Parley couldn't control her abilities until she admitted she was in love with Andrew.

Hmm, and back to Zimmy's point: when Anja says "there is a lot about the etheric process we just can't understand," I always assumed she meant "we haven't been able to figure out yet, no matter how hard we tried." But maybe she actually means can't.

One of the core tenets of the scientific method¹ is uniformitarianism², which holds that the way things work here and now is the same way they work everywhere and everywhen. This is a metaphysical assumption that cannot be proven, although it has admittedly produced pretty good results for us so far. But maybe what one would call "magic" or "supernatural" or other terms, are simply the occasions when uniformitarianism doesn't hold true. Things work according to scientifically analyzable laws most of the time. But sometimes they just don't. Somebody else tries to reproduce the experiment and gets a completely different result. Or there's enough similarity in results to make some generalizations (thus the importance of tradition and handing knowledge down), but not enough to say, "You put X in, you'll get Y out."


¹ As I understand it. From the Wikipedia introduction, it would seem that some scientists don't hold strictly to uniformitarianism, although they still think it's mostly true.
² Not to be confused with Unitarianism. Although I suspect most Unitarians would also be uniformitarians.

[mturtle7]

Oh yeah, and also, Zimmy "can't do nothing about it", because she can't actually control her powers or anything, even if they are pretty amazing in scope. That's why she specifically said that Loup can "control" stuff, instead of just saying that he has big powers. Stuff may happen to Zimmy a lot, and she can try to take advantage of the patterns in how it happens (like we saw in "Divine"), but that sort of strategy can go very bad for her very very quickly (as we ALSO saw in "Divine"). Gamma's still there for a reason, after all, and it's not just because she's a clingy girlfriend.

[wies]

Something that stands out to me is how Zimmy presents herself here: as a hostage of what is going on with her. Her bitterness is justified, but at the same time it is also a pretty sober bitterness. She does not seek an explanation or a reason for why she is the way she is.
No comforting story that replaces the seemingly random cruelty with a cruel fate, a divine power that at least would give some sense to her suffering. A very common coping strategy, and zimmy is not using it. She is just like that.

I think Zimmy is very lucky to have Gamma to help her bear this. It is really no wonder she can be insecure about Gamma's attachments to other people.

[cognizanita]

Yall have such great reflections on what Zimmy means. I normally lurk, but this has been an especially fun (and illuminating!) series of posts!