|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 30, 2011 8:01:31 GMT
Matter IS energy, just in another state, like ice IS water, just in another state. I know, I just feel it's stretching the definition of "is". The good news is: if the soul IS energy, then it must persist after death. Not necessarily. Energy cannot be destroyed, but it is not static. If the soul requires a certain configuration of energy, it can be destroyed, just like our body, which is made of matter (which cannot be destroyed either) can decay. In the same sense that other terms naming emergent properties (such as "water", "ice", and "steam") are useless. No. I do not mean that. I agree that naming emergent properties is useful. What I meant was that this is just redefining the word "soul" to that. We already have the word "ghost" or "mind" for that. Adding "soul" as another alias doesn't do anything new. My computer is running Linux. Does that mean that Linux is the soul of my computer?
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 29, 2011 18:02:27 GMT
This is most diffidently the "Splish" in the water from earlier. and also Reynard's "I'm sure I saw something swimming out there." Sure, but both events were screaming "fore-shadowing" even when we saw them the first time. "Why Does the Court Have this thing near the dorms?" It's the Court we're talking about here. They kidnap children when they're out camping!
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 29, 2011 17:58:45 GMT
Is "the soul is a form of energy" in line with "the soul is not material in nature"? This is getting a bit complicated, but I think the first is in line with the second, if we're talking about the fantasy/mystical kind of energy. But if we're talking about actual, real-life, energy then I think it isn't. Energy isn't matter per se, but they are mutually convertible and directly interact with each other. Testing and data collection is a recursive thing. You need at least some data to get the thing started, then you test and gather more data... rinse and repeat. Yeah. The guy I was talking about has firmly classified ghosts as things that do not exist by definition. If somehow confronted by a ghost I believe he would prefer to doubt his own senses than rethink his definition. I think I agree with you on this one. I would sure doubt my senses when confronted by a ghost, though, but that is not because of my definition of ghost, but because of my general understanding of how the universe "works" and the unreliability of my senses. Repeated confirmation by confrontation with ghosts, accounts of similar experiences from other sources that have shown to be generally reliably, and of course just waiting for a while, to see if I'm not just dreaming. Extraordinary claims de require extraordinary evidence. EDIT: regarding the whole soul thing: I'm not saying the concept of "soul" would be useless altogether, but rather that it wouldn't contribute anything new. It would be the same as the ghost (or "mind", if you prefer, since it is not at all the kind of ghost I was talking about a paragraph ago).
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 29, 2011 17:45:10 GMT
Of course
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 29, 2011 14:55:09 GMT
I dunno about you guys, but the cookies/I called it bit is getting a bit obnoxious. Maybe it is. I know I just did the thing a few posts ago, and were probably the trigger for you to write this post. It's just that I never "called" anything before, so it felt like I'm finally not entirely new here anymore. I've never seen a webcomic forum so obsessed with guessing what's going to happen next. Maybe MSPA. Note that there is a lot of cross-over between the two (I'm an avid reader of Homestuck too, and registered on their forum as well, although I haven't looked at that in a long time.) It probably has something to do with the plot in question. It the desire for self-gratification, and to be put bluntly, the bragging. It's hard to say something about people's motives, especially over the internet. But I can understand that perceived desire for self-gratification and bragging can be rather annoying. So I think based on this page and Kat's reaction, I would say that Kat was bound to forgive Annie all along... she just needed some time. I thought the last few words on the previous page sort of said that.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 29, 2011 14:53:01 GMT
To the best of my knowledge there has never been a study that demonstrated that animals think morally, and animal behavior has been extensively studied. I think there have been studies of social animals demonstrating moral behaviour (especially apes, IIRC).
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 29, 2011 14:36:45 GMT
Now, if you'd like to prove it is possible for something with no mass, weight, or perceivable properties to actually exist, your scientific study will immediately stall because there are no known data with which to form a hypothesis. The fact that you are unable to continue does not mean this is not suitable for scientific study. Its just not at all useful. What if the soul is actually not material in nature (this was my premise all along, I should have made that explicit)? If the only way souls interact with the universe is by manipulating the internal state of a brain (one brain per soul), how would you test that? As far as I know, it would be unfit for scientific testing, pretty much by definition. "Cool things I only noticed on reread." Thanks! That was gonna drive me nuts and Google was no help! Sorry I shortened the name, I thought it would be obvious. There are people who seriously make similar arguments. I know at least one person who includes ghosts along with witches, Santa, Satan and the Easter bunny in the category of things that do not exist and is very comfortable with leaving things at that. There are also some historians who like to make cases that some group or others do not exist as popularly conceived. Speaking of cowboys, I think I saw one documentary a few months ago on how cowboys are an invention of pulp fiction and early cinema and to the extent they actually existed they were more like vagrants. I'm having a hard time finding out what argument you're making here. Could you please clarify? Another possibility is that the soul doesn't have an independent existence from the body, but it is an emergent phenomena from a complex system (the body and possibly society). The problem with that is that it makes the term "soul" pretty much useless. In philosophy class, we divided the human in three parts: the body (which rather obviously exists, the ghost (the "software" running in our brains, which must also exist, unless you want to think about philosophical zombies) and the soul, which is some part of identity, independent from our body, which could live on after death, but its existence has not been confirmed. In the possibility you propose, the soul is identical to the ghost, rendering the term soul useless, because it is rather obvious we have a ghost (again, not counting p-zombies). Hell, then my computer probably has a soul too. Maybe even more than one.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 29, 2011 14:13:08 GMT
But since Coyote is a trickster, this information is not very valuable: we do not know how to interpret his words correctly.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 28, 2011 18:56:49 GMT
I thought Tom was joking. Guess I haven't been here for long enough. Anyway, Called it! (I predicted tentacles, but whatever ) I really want to know what's going to happen next.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 28, 2011 18:52:29 GMT
What are you trying to prove about "the persistence of life after death"? Whether it exists? Seriously, how would you gather information on the whereabouts of the "souls" of the recently deceased?
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 28, 2011 18:26:57 GMT
Bringing this in from "Cool things I only noticed on reread.": (On studying persistence of life after death) Anything is suitable for scientific study, even if you're trying to prove its all bollocks. How you you propose to test it then? EDIT: oh, right. What is it with CTIONOR and science?
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 28, 2011 18:21:58 GMT
I said that as an example of abysmal science (beginning with the conclusion and then making the data fit) but to play devil's advocate, the definition of ghost that Mort is not would probably be something like, "A ghost is a cardboard cut-out decoration in store windows at Halloween, a costume worn to collect treats and a lie told to scare or excite in stories and movies." That hardly seems fit for a proper definition of ghost. Compare it to defining cowboys to be actors playing a this-and-this role in a film about this-and-this period of the western part of America. (I'm not in the mood to fill out all the right details, but I hope you get my point.)
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 26, 2011 14:06:51 GMT
Yet somehow we have Kat, a budding young scientist who's growing up in Gunnerkrigg Court and who's mother can use magic. Kat said in ch. 21 she didn't believe in magic and in ch. 14 is regularly surprised by people displaying magic and extra-human abilities. Doesn't that suggest that the books and internet articles Kat had been studying may have at least downplayed such things as magic? This is indeed very strange and an aspect of GC that I have never understood.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 25, 2011 23:03:59 GMT
I predict the next panel will feature a giant sea-monster (cause of the splishes), with huge tentacles, holding Kat up in the air, so she will be the one left hanging, and the situation will be reversed and it will be funny, also this sentence is way too long but I don't care!
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 25, 2011 22:47:48 GMT
ghosts and magic and such may be very infrequent in the GC universe. They sure are very common at the court. Even if we assume the rest of the universe has less of those magical shenanigans, which I can accept, it would probably be noticeable enough in common life. That's what I assumed anyway. And even if they were very rare, they still would have been subjected to endless studies around the world (scientists are pretty good at finding and observing rare phenomena). If something isn't repeatable and testable then it isn't "scientific." Of course. If you can't disprove something by definition, then either it is a tautology or the premises are flawed. Even if a scientist encountered Mort and went back and met him again the next day, she or he could choose to believe that Mort may exist but he can't possibly be a ghost because ghosts don't exist. That would be a very bad scientist indeed. Humans have an amazing ability to believe what they choose to believe. They (we) do, but it's not science.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 23, 2011 18:17:32 GMT
There are some clues that suggest that events like those we've read about in this comic would be considered unusual by most humans, such as Parley's dad being the only psychic to pass the EG challenge (if psychics were common and reliable then I wouldn't expect such a thing to exist, or if it did more psychics would be certified and winning smaller prizes). I am not sure that mere sense evidence now and then is enough to convince the scientific culture in the GC universe that ghosts, gods, guides, and things etheric actually exist as conventionally understood. Why not? We look at the GC universe with eyes from this one, where we don't have ghosts, gods, guides, and other things starting with a g. In the GC universe, claiming ghosts do not exist would be as ridiculous as claiming zebras do not exist in our universe.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 23, 2011 7:31:58 GMT
New record for character popping up after the long period of absence!
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 21, 2011 17:58:35 GMT
Seriously, how much time has she spent on setting up these wacky schemes? She could have used it to sleep some! I think shadow 2 has improved his english even more over the summer Like, totally! Usually I'm not a big fan of the lighter chapters (my favorite are the dark/creepy ones), but I'm really liking this one for some reason. Maybe after all the drama and craziness in the previous chapter it's nice to have something more fun. It does have a lot of drama so far, though.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 21, 2011 17:54:00 GMT
Eighty musical scantily-clad female velociraptors.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 21, 2011 17:52:15 GMT
It is a comic, it is not real. I'm sure everyone here knows that. Judging from this thread, I'm not sure everyone here feels it. Then again, it is very hard to interpret people's internal state from forum posts.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 18, 2011 21:25:07 GMT
Also, if the design pictures a more obscure element of the whole shebang, fans might like it for some in-joke appeal.
This is pure speculation, though.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 16, 2011 18:26:39 GMT
I can't believe I forgot to read today's page earlier, because I saw Tom's tweet and read Gastrophobia instead. Come to think of it, it's a pretty cool twist. A lot of people were predicting Annie rescues Kat / vice versa. Tom had the same thought, because it's a fairly common mechanism in storytelling. So instead of playing it straight, he has Annie have that idea, and attempt-- with hilarious results-- to manufacture such a situation herself. I'd call that a pretty nifty subversion of a trope! (Sorry Tom, I've heard you don't like TVTropes.) More like an invoked trope than a subverted one, if you ask me.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 9, 2011 20:36:41 GMT
Continuing the trend of being massively off-topic I'd just like to point out that LAUGHING ON LINE is very very rarely used as an actual acronym anymore and has instead ascended to be a (rather convenient) word in and of itself. So if your online lexicon is based on, say, online games and 4chan, like mine is, then it gets rather baffling when you type a simple, short word meaning "I am amused by this" and end up with an obnoxious block of capital letters. JUST SAYIN'. Also, if you're Dutch like I am, the L-word is an actual word, meaning "fun". So it feels very natural to use it as a word online.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 9, 2011 11:59:56 GMT
Yay! (I really like huge!Kat staring down on Annie :3)
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 9, 2011 8:11:33 GMT
Awkward angle up the nose in panel 5. She reminds me of the Smurfs for some reason. Wow. That actually surprised me more than a lot of things in this comic. I expected Kat to be far more, well, resentful. Me too. I think it is actually more like Kat to be this way, now that I think of it.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 9, 2011 8:02:24 GMT
Surely we can do more with that? Damn. EDIT:
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 7, 2011 10:19:22 GMT
Yay, drama! (What? I said I'd be disappointed if everyone just forgave Annie!)I'm so happy that Kat is upset with her, as awful as that sounds. Annie did a pretty shitty thing to her, and for her to get off scott-free would have been unfair. Exactly!
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 4, 2011 18:17:17 GMT
I hate it when Tom does things like this. I love it when Tom does things like this. I am a masochist in that way.Also, any form of exposition will most likely be to either Kat or Parley/Andrew.
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 3, 2011 22:10:31 GMT
And then there are pages like this and this, where Rey behaves in ways a father never would. Cut Rey some slack in the second one, please. How would you act if a 12(?)-year-old with magical powers over you (remember, he has to do as she tells him, because the toy is hers) treated you like a small child, parental feelings or not?
|
|
|
Post by jasmijn on Mar 2, 2011 8:36:34 GMT
That's pretty sweet. I, for one, do hope for a less enthusiastic response from the other people, otherwise it will look like she just gets away with everything.
|
|