[2568] That's putting it simply.

[madjack]

Shell exposits, Kat pats herself on the back.

[arf]

The same techniques may reach the same conclusions about Arthur's bod.

[flowsthead]

Well, I mean, the ether is basically magic. *Insert "It's magic. I ain't gotta explain shit* meme.

[philman]

Are the Court aware of Coyote's Secret? That Coyote and other etheric creatures do not exist without human imagination. Is Annie now about to spill the (cool) beans?

[dawolf]

It's hardly surprising that the court couldn't find any explanation for etheric creatures, after all there is no scientific explanation for life.

[theonethatgotaway]

Jan 5, 2022 10:16:39 GMT dawolf said:

It's hardly surprising that the court couldn't find any explanation for etheric creatures, after all there is no scientific explanation for life.

Oh come on, there totally is! There was this goo, and it got kinda hot and bothered, and the atoms got together, and were like "hey, we should work together to take over more atoms and molecules", but like, intrinsically, since there was no thoughts back then, and yaddayaddayadda, the British hate the French. 

[imaginaryfriend]

If ether is the only thing about magic in the GCU that can be quantified then it would make sense to view the GCU reality as etheric flows. I as a humble reader suggested that a long time ago so it should be equally obvious to characters within the universe...

...but of course that brings with it uncomfortable questions, such as, "Is natural reality anything other than etheric flows?" and "Does matter really exist or is it just one state of ether?"

I've expounded elsewhere on why I think it makes sense to view ether and matter as the ends of a continuum and why "stories" can be viewed as the currency of the GCU but for people who want to live in a neatly ordered Newtonian world I suppose that's a non-starter.

[shadow3]

I wonder if this could be foreshadowing, for the Court to use Kat's technology to bridge a gap in their pursuit of seeking the ultimate power over the Ether.

[sebastian]

Jan 5, 2022 10:16:39 GMT dawolf said:

It's hardly surprising that the court couldn't find any explanation for etheric creatures, after all there is no scientific explanation for life.

Of course there is a scientific explanation for life. Essentialy is self-replicating molecules, it is just physic and chemistry in the end. and scientists can understand how it works, that is how you get things like genetic and cloning and ... uh.. . nanomachines, I guess? Anyway, my point is, life is not 'magic' (except in the Pratchett's sense of "It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works.")

Reynard, Coyote and others like them OTOH make no sense. Reynard is a puppet that move, talk and can turn into a wolf.Where does he get his energy? Wheere do he keep his brain? WHERE DOES THE HELL GET (and where it goes) THE EXTRA MASS? That's cheating, I tell you. CHEATING!

Really, i understand why the Court would be pissed.

[dawolf]

Jan 5, 2022 13:30:12 GMT sebastian said:

Jan 5, 2022 10:16:39 GMT dawolf said:

It's hardly surprising that the court couldn't find any explanation for etheric creatures, after all there is no scientific explanation for life.

Of course there is a scientific explanation for life. Essentialy is self-replicating molecules, it is just physic and chemistry in the end. and scientists can understand how it works, that is how you get things like genetic and cloning and ... uh.. . nanomachines, I guess? Anyway, my point is, life is not 'magic' (except in the Pratchett's sense of "It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works.")

Reynard, Coyote and others like them OTOH make no sense. Reynard is a puppet that move, talk and can turn into a wolf.Where does he get his energy? Wheere do he keep his brain? WHERE DOES THE HELL GET (and where it goes) THE EXTRA MASS? That's cheating, I tell you. CHEATING!

Really, i understand why the Court would be pissed.

You can mix all the chemicals you like together but you don't get life.

Did you know that all life on earth is descended from one single monocellular organism?

www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2018/01/31/581874421/be-humbled-our-oldest-ancestors-were-single-celled-organisms

And all those, would have descended from just one single cell.

So basically....that one spark of life, into one single cell, has led us all the way here.

And yet we still have *no* scientific explanation for how that works. No true scientific explanation for life or consciousness. A lot of guesses, yes.

You can't just handwave that as "physics and chemistry".

[Gemminie]

Shell's continuing to try to explain how Aata sees the Ether to be unjust, which Renard has questioned. She started out saying that the laws of physical reality, which human science has had a lot of success figuring out, are just, in the sense that they apply equally to every person, animal, etc. The Ether, though, can be manipulated by some people and entities, but not by others, which suggests that the laws of the Ether, whatever they are, don't apply equally to everyone, so the Ether is fundamentally unjust. Renard has just suggested that perhaps humans merely haven't figured out the laws by which the Ether operates, and Shell responded that that's the natural next step, implying that there's a problem with it.

Today, she uses Arthur's body as an example, stating that it's basically an advanced machine, one that she herself doesn't understand, but Kat does, because she designed and built it via an engineering process. (Well actually Juliette designed the brain, but the point is that humans designed and built it.) She compares Arthur's body with Renard, whom the Court studied for years during his captivity. The Court discovered nothing during all that time, other than the fact that the Ether could be measured and extracted. They couldn't explain Renard's existence, Shell says, or that of any other etheric creature. I might question whether they can explain the existence of the human mind, soul, personality, or what have you, but I'm not there to ask. Shell is telling us that the Ether's rules/laws, whatever they may be, remain obscure, and thus the Ether remains unjust. I imagine she'll continue this line of reasoning on the next page.

Meanwhile, I notice that when Shell says to Kat that Arthur's new body is the result of solid, tested engineering, Kat just replies, "Sure ..." condensing all the iffy hand-wavy details down into one word and some hesitant ellipsis. Because we know that a large portion of it isn't. The process by which Arthur's personality was transferred from his old CPU to his new body was most definitely not just physical. Diego's arrow was involved, and that one particular time at least, the Arbiter got involved, and Kat signed a metaphysical contract that seems to have allowed her to continue doing this, with or (more likely) without the arrow. There's definitely something nonscientific happening there. But sure, his body is all engineering – based on details provided by robots whose knowledge goes back to when they were created by their predecessor golems, who weren't machines in the usual sense at all. And there's the fact that Kat shouldn't have even been able to read those details in the first place, and we think she can read them because of metaphysical machine angel powers. Sooooo yeah, Kat doesn't want to go into several chapters' worth of story right now. "That's ... putting it simply," she says. Besides, even if Arthur may not be the best example Shell could have chosen, her argument is that machines exist that humans have designed, and their functioning is explainable.

Next: Unjust Ether! How Aata made his choice to turn away from enlightenment!

[Per]

There exists an earliest common ancestor, hence your knowledge of organic chemistry is invalid.
-Troll Descartes, probably

[Gemminie]

Jan 5, 2022 15:52:21 GMT dawolf said:

You can mix all the chemicals you like together but you don't get life.

Err ... the current theory, at least, is that yes you can. You mix a lot of chemicals together, under various environmental conditions, and over billions of years you'll get life. Eventually there will be molecules that can self-replicate and larger (larger than molecules, anyway) structures that organize themselves based on those molecules. The ones that don't work die off, or at least don't continue to replicate, or at least not as efficiently, while the ones that work stick around.

Did you know that all life on earth is descended from one single monocellular organism?

www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2018/01/31/581874421/be-humbled-our-oldest-ancestors-were-single-celled-organisms

And all those, would have descended from just one single cell.

So basically....that one spark of life, into one single cell, has led us all the way here.

And yet we still have *no* scientific explanation for how that works. No true scientific explanation for life or consciousness. A lot of guesses, yes.

You can't just handwave that as "physics and chemistry".

Yes we do. It really is all just physics and chemistry. That one single cell was the first one that happened to have the right combination of stuff to lead to more stuff like it. There were plenty of others, that article says, that didn't work, or didn't work as well, but that one worked out, and here we are. Now we run into trouble with scientific explanations when we try to figure out the mind and the individual personality. Some think we'll never be able to figure that out. Others say we'll eventually be able to do it. Nobody knows.

[dd500]

Theory on the nature of the ether and what's actually going on:

The "ether" is just the imagination of Tom and the readers (us). Our minds literally create the world of Gunnerkrigg (and the ether) through reading this webcomic and imagining the characters, making them "real" in the story. The ether gets its power to break the laws of physics through Tom writing and illustrating about it happening, it has power because the writer (Tom) and the readers (us) give it power. Thus, with more readers (in other words, people "believing" in Gunnerkrigg), the ether gets stronger. Coyote is aware of this and that's why he breaks the 4th wall and addresses us directly on occasion, and that's the meaning behind his "great secret" -- he literally does not exist unless the writer and readers believe so.

This also gets to why I think the court wants to leave -- they want to literally leave the world of Gunnerkrigg (exiting the webcomic) because the world of Gunnerkrigg is subject to the power of the ether, which can never be fully understood by them. They want to leave and go to a place where the laws of the world are fully explainable, away from the writer and readers.

This also ties into what I think the "program" that Annie, Aata and others are in -- the program is a way of removing their etheric powers so that they can exit the world of Gunnerkrigg as well, so they are also no longer subject to the power of the ether. Or maybe the program is just exiting with the members of the court who are leaving, and that strips them of the power of the ether. In Annie's case, it would allow her to be a mother without dying, which I'm guessing is what Tony wants for her. Additionally this would help us understand why Ysengrin was so upset about the court taking Annie to a "far away place", the court would be removing her from the world of GC, no longer able to talk to Ysengrin anymore.

[dawolf]

Jan 5, 2022 16:20:11 GMT Gemminie said:

Jan 5, 2022 15:52:21 GMT dawolf said:

You can mix all the chemicals you like together but you don't get life.

Err ... the current theory, at least, is that yes you can. You mix a lot of chemicals together, under various environmental conditions, and over billions of years you'll get life.

.

It's called abiogenesis and it's a theory with no example or proof.

Here's where we are: We've proved that amino acids can be created very easily with just raw chemicals and energy.

But the generation of sentient life, beyond that stage, is solely a hypothesis.

And again, this cannot be handwaved away as just physics and chemistry.

All life on earth, from single single cell organism to us, is descended from one single event that we don't understand.

It's one of those questions like the origins of the universe itself that will probably never have a definitive answer. It's ultimately the question of consciousness itself.

[sebastian]

Jan 5, 2022 15:52:21 GMT dawolf said:

Jan 5, 2022 13:30:12 GMT sebastian said:

Of course there is a scientific explanation for life. Essentialy is self-replicating molecules, it is just physic and chemistry in the end. and scientists can understand how it works, that is how you get things like genetic and cloning and ... uh.. . nanomachines, I guess? Anyway, my point is, life is not 'magic' (except in the Pratchett's sense of "It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works.")

Reynard, Coyote and others like them OTOH make no sense. Reynard is a puppet that move, talk and can turn into a wolf.Where does he get his energy? Wheere do he keep his brain? WHERE DOES THE HELL GET (and where it goes) THE EXTRA MASS? That's cheating, I tell you. CHEATING!

Really, i understand why the Court would be pissed.

You can mix all the chemicals you like together but you don't get life.

If you could wait long enough you would.

[Daedalus]

This raises an interesting question, actually: IS Kat's engineering prowess supernatural? If someone else were to try to copy her blueprints, would their version work?

[pyradonis]

...and this is where Omega comes in, I assume. A "device" they don't really understand either, but which allows them to peer into the unseen world. Although the Loup desaster suggests they still have problems interpreting what Omega shows them.

Jan 5, 2022 9:10:06 GMT philman said:

Are the Court aware of Coyote's Secret? That Coyote and other etheric creatures do not exist without human imagination. Is Annie now about to spill the (cool) beans?

Hmm, at least Jones knows about it, Annie talked to her about it and she was aware of the theory.

[pyradonis]

Jan 5, 2022 19:08:43 GMT Daedalus said:

This raises an interesting question, actually: IS Kat's engineering prowess supernatural? If someone else were to try to copy her blueprints, would their version work?

The robots suggested Kat's ability to read their opcode was superhuman. Although this means Diego had the same ability (as he designed it) and it is not a divine power only Kat alone can possess.

[Daedalus]

Jan 5, 2022 19:28:35 GMT pyradonis said:

Jan 5, 2022 19:08:43 GMT Daedalus said:

This raises an interesting question, actually: IS Kat's engineering prowess supernatural? If someone else were to try to copy her blueprints, would their version work?

The robots suggested Kat's ability to read their opcode was superhuman. Although this means Diego had the same ability (as he designed it) and it is not a divine power only Kat alone can possess.

I can't find the page right now, but I remember Diego's initials being "DD". Is it possible that he's part of the Donlan family, and the ability runs in the bloodline? They've all had experience and success merging etheric mysteries and technology, though of course Kat is the peak of their family's work. 

I still think Kat is basically a Spark from Girl Genius, or maybe a Tinker from Worm. If you (a normal person) look closer or try to replicate it, your version will not function. And yet, Kat's machines definitely work -- impossibly well, in fact -- when *she* is the one to build them. 

[fia]

Jan 5, 2022 19:36:36 GMT Daedalus said:

Jan 5, 2022 19:28:35 GMT pyradonis said:

The robots suggested Kat's ability to read their opcode was superhuman. Although this means Diego had the same ability (as he designed it) and it is not a divine power only Kat alone can possess.

I can't find the page right now, but I remember Diego's initials being "DD". Is it possible that he's part of the Donlan family, and the ability runs in the bloodline? They've all had experience and success merging etheric mysteries and technology, though of course Kat is the peak of their family's work. 

I still think Kat is basically a Spark from Girl Genius, or maybe a Tinker from Worm. If you (a normal person) look closer or try to replicate it, your version will not function. And yet, Kat's machines definitely work -- impossibly well, in fact -- when *she* is the one to build them. 

I have a feeling it might be a problem a little like "you'd have to understand her blueprints to replicate her achievement, and 99% of scientists would not be able to understand her blueprints" coupled with other technicalities, like the fact that actually Juliette contributed invaluable research to the brain and consciousness part, which means even Kat herself wouldn't have been able to complete the work alone.

That leaves the possibility that a team of scientists working together could put it together if they pooled their expertise, but the sorting-Diego's-code-problem seems like it required an insight on Kat's part that it may be hard for her to communicate to others. Part of Einstein's (or his wife's, depending on what you read) achievement was putting his insights into clearly worded explanations. He wasn't an inventor. Kat is more of both an Einstein (the theoretical part) and an inventor (making a product).

[dawolf]

Jan 5, 2022 18:06:22 GMT sebastian said:

Jan 5, 2022 15:52:21 GMT dawolf said:

You can mix all the chemicals you like together but you don't get life.

If you could wait long enough you would.

There is no evidence for that. There is a hypothesis for it (which I personally also agree with as the most likely event).

But that's not how science works. It doesn't say "this is what happened" when it's a possibility.

It doesn't say would, when it's actually maybe. It's the scientific method and it's requirements.

Anyway back to the comic, basically the ether is magic and the court can use it to a certain extent but sees it as a tool, a means to an end. And they are prepared to sacrifice individuals - unwillingly - to further the courts interests. All powerful etheric beings should be worried.

[Igniz]

[todd]

This page raises the question of whether stopping Reynardine from possessing and thereby killing people was the only reason why the Court was imprisoning him.

[shaihulud]

I do believe Eglamore already stated that they were trying to find a way to remove Renard from Sivo.

[mordekai]

So, since you don't understand everything in the universe, you are going to destroy all the parts you don't understand, leaving only the part you think you do... yeah, that's tooootally logical and scientific...

Relativist physicist: "The behaviour of subatomic particles isn't explained by relativist physics... I MUST DESTROY ALL ATOMS!"

[batsugars]

Jan 5, 2022 23:58:30 GMT todd said:

This page raises the question of whether stopping Reynardine from possessing and thereby killing people was the only reason why the Court was imprisoning him.

Coyote did just recently mention that Aata had a hand in Surma tricking and trapping Renard, didn't he? So now we know why Aata was involved. I wonder how much Renard has realized - last I remember, he thought it was a fair punishment for "breaking the court's laws."

It's interesting that Surma met Tony while he was on a mission for Omega... did Surma start working for/with the Shadow Men and Omega after that? What else did she do for them, besides trapping Renard?

[warrl]

The problem with the origin of life is that there are too many plausible theories - to the point that there's the beginning of a system of taxonomy for the theories - with all of them consistent with available evidence and known laws of physics, but none of them realistically testable for whether they would actually work - and even if that problem were solved, if we find two or more that would actually work there's no way to determine which one DID the job.

The category of theories that is most likely to have the correct answer, had one test run in each cubic centimeter of ocean water to a depth of probably 2-5 meters but at least a couple centimeters above the ocean floor, per second, for somewhere between half a billion years and a billion years. (The resulting very large number is why this category is the most likely to be what happened. Other categories are more restricted: one category is where shallow ocean meets land, another is where shallow ocean meets ice, another involves underwater thermal vents...)

[sleepcircle]

Pepperidge Farms remembers.

[pyradonis]

Jan 5, 2022 23:58:30 GMT todd said:

This page raises the question of whether stopping Reynardine from possessing and thereby killing people was the only reason why the Court was imprisoning him.

If you believe Coyote, this question has already been answered.