[2602] "The end of all knowledge."

[imaginaryfriend]

Hey, if they ever get Omega truly perfected then the only stories that happen within the Court's reach would be the ones that the Court allows. Sounds godlike.

[edit] Also this comic seems to show that "Loup" has access to Coyote's knowledge when he wants to, but maybe not on a moment-to-moment basis unless he's actively drawing on it. [/edit]

[basser]

From now on I'm going to start every explanation of my profession with "there is a human belief that everything is made up of tiny, tiny stones..."

[madjack]

Coyote dodging being all knowing because then he'd never be able to forget he's just a coyote.

[blahzor]

Loup: What is this a school for ants!!

[blahzor]

Mar 25, 2022 7:05:40 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Hey, if they ever get Omega truly perfected then the only stories that happen within the Court's reach would be the ones that the Court allows. Sounds godlike.

[edit] Also this comic seems to show that "Loup" has access to Coyote's knowledge when he wants to, but maybe not on a moment-to-moment basis unless he's actively drawing on it. [/edit]

Would make sense as Coyote can do whatever he wants to but only if he thinks of it first

[justcurious]

Sounds as if Coyote was a god who had good reasons to not want to be God. He seems to have wanted to stop short of omniscience and omnipotence.

[jda]

Mar 25, 2022 7:08:22 GMT basser said:

From now on I'm going to start every explanation of my profession with "there is a human belief that everything is made up of tiny, tiny stones..."

Please tell me you work writing politician speeches.

[jda]

Mar 25, 2022 8:59:42 GMT justcurious said:

Sounds as if Coyote was a god who had good reasons to not want to be God. He seems to have wanted to stop short of omniscience and omnipotence.

It's 3 am here so I may misremember, but there is a thought experiment on Computational Science and Philosophy that to create a machine that could predict the future would need to "understand perfectly" the universe (and thus simulate it inside) making it BIGGER than the Universe OR, BE the Universe itself.
A not so known, and paradoxical result would be that the universe would end then, since the computer would have to include ITS OWN FUTURE STATES in the calculations, making all time recursive.

[Corvo]

[jda]

Mar 25, 2022 9:48:32 GMT Corvo said:

That make think "Hey, maybe the Omega Project is Science education. If you can teach and make enough people believe in the tiny-stones-as-foundation-of-all-things, when they die they take science beliefs into the Ether, making it retroactively real?

That would explain the recent chaotic years: enough people believing in Quantum Mechanics have died to date, so the Ether world is just nuts to integrate disparaging beliefs.

[pyradonis]

Well, when you say it like that you make it sound stupid.

Anyway, apart from how it's hard to imagine even the Ether circumventing the fact that tracking an atom requires a lot more atoms, and thus a machine that tracked them all would be bigger than the universe, I'm beginning to understand why Omega fails predicting things related to Coyote (and likely, beings with similar power). The scientific theories upon which the prediction are based are simply not able to account for a being that rewrites reality just because it thinks something should be different.

[fia]

Huh, are we going all the way back to De Rerum Natura? Updated maybe with deterministic Positivism?

Noice

(No wonder Loup doesn't get it. See, positivism rules out all other ways of knowing that aren't experimentalist or materialist — straight contradicts everything etheric — and atomism wouldn't make sense to a being for whom matter is just a plaything or a clay without a soul/mind).

[Isildur]

Mar 25, 2022 9:44:39 GMT jda said:

Mar 25, 2022 7:08:22 GMT basser said:

From now on I'm going to start every explanation of my profession with "there is a human belief that everything is made up of tiny, tiny stones..."

Please tell me you work writing politician speeches.

These stones are connected by a series of tubes...

[ctso74]

Mar 25, 2022 12:15:24 GMT fia said:

Huh, are we going all the way back to De Rerum Natura? Updated maybe with deterministic Positivism?

Noice

(No wonder Loup doesn't get it. See, positivism rules out all other ways of knowing that aren't experimentalist or materialist — straight contradicts everything etheric — and atomism wouldn't make sense to a being for whom matter is just a plaything or a clay without a soul/mind).

This, along with other little bits of lore, has always reminded me of the The Technocracy of Mage: The Ascension.

[shadow3]

LOUP: "Nuclear fission? What's this? Hmm..."

[laaaa]

Mar 25, 2022 9:48:20 GMT jda said:

Mar 25, 2022 8:59:42 GMT justcurious said:

Sounds as if Coyote was a god who had good reasons to not want to be God. He seems to have wanted to stop short of omniscience and omnipotence.

It's 3 am here so I may misremember, but there is a thought experiment on Computational Science and Philosophy that to create a machine that could predict the future would need to "understand perfectly" the universe (and thus simulate it inside) making it BIGGER than the Universe OR, BE the Universe itself.
A not so known, and paradoxical result would be that the universe would end then, since the computer would have to include ITS OWN FUTURE STATES in the calculations, making all time recursive.

Yeah. The newest pages reminded me of math experiments, to create machines that could predict their own status. It was impossible.
Maybe they just need a large amount of ether to do all calculations and gain knowledge of everything, but somehow I doubt it'd just stop there. I get the feeling that the reason the Court wants a large source of ether is...
...they want to reset the universe.
They're not moving do a different continent, but to a new universe. And I doubt the current universe would survive the switch. (Or maybe it could, but travelling back and forth would be practically impossible).
I think. I mean, this is intense enough that explains why Annie "being left out of the program entirely" is such a huge threat and the Court moving is such a big deal. 
If some Court officials and scientists just up and left while leaving the infrastructure intact, it'd be just a change in management. Some people would stay. You could travel back and forth. It's a nuisance, but things like that happen all the time, and while unpleasant they're not particularly dramatic.
I don't know what else to think.

[blahzor]

Mar 25, 2022 14:01:02 GMT shadow3 said:

LOUP: "Nuclear fission? What's this? Hmm..."

Humans hit tiny tiny rocks together until some of them shoot off elsewhere? What belief is this?

[aline]

Mar 25, 2022 7:14:42 GMT madjack said:

Coyote dodging being all knowing because then he'd never be able to forget he's just a coyote.

That's something he himself explained to Annie so that's not what he's avoiding, since he already does know it.

I suspect the issue is not acquiring one specific piece of knowledge but rather the ramifications of perfect knowledge, something about reaching the 100% bar that breaks the world, along the lines of what jda mentioned 

[aline]

Side note but "perfect knowledge of all atoms" would not account for the effect of the ether on the world. This may be the reason the Court elites hate the ether so much. Because it remains unknowable, unpredictable through knowledge of physics alone, it stands in the way of a working Omega device. Even if you can know where every smallest particle is AND predict where it's going next ("which is impossible btw" Kat would say and she'd be right), Annie for example could barrel through that and set on fire things that aren't supposed to be on fire. So I stand by my earlier prediction that eliminating the ether from the world is a goal of the Court, as a way of reaching there predictable-world-paradise. And that probably means getting rid of etheric people and creatures. 

That shadow-boss guy attempted to exist as an etheric guy that doesn't use the ether and failed, and this is such a terrible sin because it caused the Omega device to lose its grasp of what reality is supposed to be like.

[aline]

Another side note, but Coyote being himself a god, if he did want to achieve knowledge of everything he may well be able to achieve this by changing the world into something that can be fully known. So that would be why he didn't try. Because if he did try, then his powers may enable him to erase the ether from the world in order to make it fully knowable. And if Coyote is capable of that, well, isn't that interesting that the Court wants his powers so badly even though they hate all things etheric?

Maybe this belongs more in the crazy theories thread. Sorry. Just feels like things maybe are falling into place.

[guntherkrieg]

Mar 25, 2022 13:36:44 GMT ctso74 said:

Mar 25, 2022 12:15:24 GMT fia said:

Huh, are we going all the way back to De Rerum Natura? Updated maybe with deterministic Positivism?

Noice

(No wonder Loup doesn't get it. See, positivism rules out all other ways of knowing that aren't experimentalist or materialist — straight contradicts everything etheric — and atomism wouldn't make sense to a being for whom matter is just a plaything or a clay without a soul/mind).

This, along with other little bits of lore, has always reminded me of the The Technocracy of Mage: The Ascension.

NWO_OverseerProg:// TERMINOLOGY VIOLATION DETECTED
> Dispatching HIT-Mark to last known location

[Gemini Jim]

I like how Annie's "the last thing that needs to be known" could be interpreted two ways. It's either "the final thing," which is probably the intended meaning. Nothing else to know beyond that.

Or alternatively, it could also be "the least desirable thing," as in "Bomb Moscow? That's the last thing we should do!"

At least, that's how it seems to me. For a God, "knowing everything" would be "the last thing" in both senses. Gods seem to require unknowable magic and mystery to function. Every time that we develop evolutionary science, or The Big Bang, or a scientific explanation for how lightning works, it takes away from what only Jehovah, or Thor, or Jesus, or Allah, or a Coyote, can exclusively do. It reduces god to an equation.

As Douglas Adams wrote, God "promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."


So Annie here seems to be (innocently? unwittingly? depends upon how aware she is) leading Loup to his doom, if he follows this metaphysical train of thought to its logical conclusion.

Or it could just enrage him further, if he stops short of atomizing himself to death.

[laaaa]

WAIT.
1) Even though Loup can use Coyote's omniscience to understand whatever Annie is talking about, he still has to collect info from her in the traditional way?!

aline Avatar
Mar 25, 2022 17:25:41 GMT 2 aline said:
This may be the reason the Court elites hate the ether so much. Because it remains unknowable, unpredictable through knowledge of physics alone, it stands in the way of a working Omega device.

2) Clearly, the ether is quantum.
(Joking aside, Annie has been talking about atoms only)

[rabbit]

"The end of all knowledge."

Hmmm. A world with no surprises, no discovery, no unrealized possibility, no ... magic?
Rabbit doesn't want to live in that world.

I suspect that in the end, Loup will find such a world distasteful also.

This part of the story, and this thread, bring a quote from Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men to mind:
"The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him."

On the other hand, what Coyote brought to the forest in his determination not to know everything, why "magic is a little bit stronger when he is around," how his "disarray" made the forest stronger, brings to mind this from John Le Carré:
"Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers."

[kelantar]

Think that's what Coyote was referring to here?

[maxptc]

You know, I'm really starting to like this Loup guy. Finally someone talking about science in terms I can understand. I agree, the human tiny stone theory is taken way to seriously.

[drmemory]

Coyote gets bored. He put substantial effort into making himself forget things (such as stories) so he could hear them for the first time, and into tricking himself. See: Goose Wife for an example.

So it's not a mystery why he refused to use his ability to know all things. How boring!

In fact, much of what we are seeing now, including the very existence of Loup, is part of Coyote's plan to finally experience the one thing he's never been able to - death.

[drmemory]

I posted my theory as to what the court is up in another thread. Basically, they want to go somewhere with no non-humans so they can totally control everything, using Omega. Once they have the ability to predict things precisely, if there is nobody around that can act outside of what Omega can handle, they win. This goes far beyond Orwell and 1984 - they will be able to foresee anything they don't like and prevent it.  A third idea of what they may need the ether energy for - a shield to keep out non-humans.  The first two were "Power to run Omega" and "Power wanted by Omega for its own ends".

So now, my guess as to what Coyote wants Loup to learn. We just got a big clue today. Coyote knows that if he actually uses his abilities to know everything and do whatever he wants, all that is left to him is boredom. Ysengrin didn't get that at all - he was petty and hated humans, and had no sense of balance or scale. Loup is worse, I think mainly due to being a kid. He is totally focused on what HE wants and he wants it NOW. No patience, no wisdom, no understanding that sometimes the best thing he could do would be... nothing. I think Coyote wants him to figure that out. I wonder if Coyote has like a wisdom power that Loup could use? A shortcut to understanding.  Anyway, maybe seeing Kat accomplish so much without using the ether will cause him to think more deeply, but maybe it won't.

I'm still missing a piece - why does Coyote think Loup should go willingly to his death? He isn't anywhere near Coyote's level of understanding and boredom, and has much to experience before death will be all that is left to experience. Loup doesn't even understand that sometimes getting what you think you want turns out to be a bad thing - even Ysengrin finally learned that!

I think we have still not seen anywhere near the full extent of Coyote's powers. He really is a god. Capital "G" God I think, in a fictional sense. He can know anything he wants to know and do anything he wants to do, and I suspect has been like this for a really long time. He already has learned the lesson that the Court has not.

[justcurious]

Just what is the ether in the universe of Gunnerkrigg Court? It does not appear to be the luminiferous ether of Nineteenth Century physics. The references to it make it sound more like what I have seen referred to as mana, the force behind magic.

[drmemory]

Mar 26, 2022 8:12:27 GMT justcurious said:

Just what is the ether in the universe of Gunnerkrigg Court? It does not appear to be the luminiferous ether of Nineteenth Century physics. The references to it make it sound more like what I have seen referred to as mana, the force behind magic.

That is not entirely clear.  At times it seems like life force, based on the fact that people are escorted into the ether when they die (by the psychopomps), and one once said that this keeps the world spinning.  The Norns say the Time Stream flows from the ether, and Skuld waters Yggdrasil from it.  They have it in a little pool, with a fountain, but I doubt if that is all of the ether!  Gods like Coyote use the ether to do things directly, but they also seem to have powers that aren't necessarily dependent on a power source.  For example, I can easily see strength using energy, but maybe not omniscience, which Loup is currently tapping into.

The Court keeps trying to steal Coyote's power, but he isn't his power - even he talks about it as a separate thing.  It belongs to him and I think is part of him, but he is a distinct entity, not a puddle of power.  The Court also has been able to collect ether from the environment with their power stations - which makes me think it's a sort of natural energy.

Yet, it is also a place, or at least contains places, such as The Realm Of The Dead (they prefer ROTD).  It isn't clear whether that place is solidified ether, or somewhere you can only reach if you use the ether, or what.  I'm suspicious that both the ROTD and the place a psychopomp can take you are related, but perhaps not - they certainly don't seem to be the same thing!  The place any psychopomp can reach by opening any door looks like your basic white, glowing afterlife.  The ROTD has like offices and furniture and stuff.  Coffins...  Even if most of what people see there is illusion, there is clearly a there there.

So I don't think it is the luminiferous ether, as it doesn't just fill in the empty places in space - it can be found in natural places (like untamed water).  It can be collected, moved around, and used by those with the talent.  It has characteristics of the luminiferous ether, yet it can also be treated as a liquid, but is generally immaterial and invisible.  It has characteristics of mana, as it can be used to power abilities.  Then there is the stuff Diego was able to do with it, which seems different than anything else we've seen (other than from Kat, of course).

What does this all add up to in the end?  I do not know.  Best guess - "life force".