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Messages - Helm

#381
Why would anyone outside america make an effort to follow a sport like American Football is beyond me (post made to spark a little controversy finally! This thread has potential!)
#382
General Discussion / Re: Disapointment !!!
Sat 28/10/2006 10:43:58
I remember liking it a lot.
#383
Remember to download the manual/diary of a madman from abandonia/underdogs and read before you play. Enjoy.
#384
Eager, I was talking to Skyfire, no worries.
#385
Skyfire, can you, and are you willing to discuss with me or others here without any sort of demeaning innuendo or snideness permeating your replies is what I want to know. Simple question.

Can you disagree with me on something without that making me or my posts stupid? Can I expect from you to attempt to humor such -in my opinion- reasonable prequisites for normal conversation?
#386
Seriously though, wait, 'cause this is getting kind of ridiculous.

Quote from: skyfire1 on Thu 26/10/2006 23:32:13
Do a bit of research before you post something stupid.

Please don't insult me on the internet. Treat people with respect and manners around here. I am asking you all nice.
#387
I have been skyfired!
#388
Don't you see a difference between a derogatory term used against people who have black skin, and a non-derogatory matter-of-fact term explaining that a person comes from the UK?
#389
Watch how hilariously most modern adventure games, both pro and amateur fail the 'why adventure games suck' list.
#390
As far as the fourth wall breakage, yes, never to do it again would be the point, but I was mistaken there as you didn't break the fourth wall, I misread. And I suggested what could be done to fix the misreading, by alternating between blow-up doll and Lucius.

About the language, I have nothing to suggest besides to not use such language unless it's appropriate. What DG said.

Those were all my points about your comic, which I sincerely hope goes well. From there and on, you've offered counter-arguments to my points, which I shouldnt really have to contest though I tried. If you feel my criticism was not constructive enough, I think that's an unfounded impression.

I adore the visuals. I like the concept on the bare level, like DG said. I find the ties to White Wolf gaming (as if the victorian debutante and the nosferatu are their property) connection superfluous and contributing nothing of interest (and I know my RPGs) to this strip. If someone without any knowledge of the game can't read this and enjoy it, then I think you're narrowing your target audience more than you have to. This has not happened yet! I hope it doesn't in the future.

You need to pay special attention to how this is written, which seems to be the resonant critique in this thread, and the way you do this, is by paying special attention. I can't offer any more constructive hints. Read books, see how Victorian-era gentlemen insulted each other. Oscar Wilde will be of interest to you, as well as this book I found in AGA's house of a guy that basically spent his whole life insulting people in correspondence and publications in a very erudite way.
#391
Quote from: EagerMind on Wed 25/10/2006 01:47:00
Ah yes, and so goes the universe. But if the universe is an isolated system, what set things in motion to begin with?

I don't know.

QuoteWill it happen again?

I don't know.

QuoteIf the universe isn't an isolated system, then what is it reaching equilibrium with?

I don't know. What I know is what I got time for: I hold no epistemological belief. Every theory is a theory and some results are trustworthy because they work thus far. Maybe tomorrow they'll stop working. This means I take everything with a grain of salt. It's called humor, the thing big brother said I was bereft of? I lack faith, but I have humor. I can laugh at the senselessness of it all, and I'm just fine not knowing all the answers.

I'll go with what seems to be occuring, not a strong belief, but it seems more likely to me that when we die, we rot and we deposit our prime material back into the soil. Maybe a small miracle happens inside each and every one of us when we die, perhaps we go to heaven. I don't know, you don't know, I'll just take the odds, man.

I put one foot after the other, thusly I walk. Now, there's no epistemological certainty that walking will work this way the next step I take. Yet I take my chances, 'cause I got places to be, fun to have. Otherwise I ponder and I remain motionless. And that's just positively entropic now, isn't it?

QuoteDoes the universe even obey the second law of thermodynamics? And what are the implications for smaller systems like us?

I'm no scientist, so I don't know what a 'smaller system' is, as the way I see it - it's called holistic viewpoint - everything is connected, everything interfaces with everything else. There is no closed system. There's only one whole. I enjoy spitting in the face of the second law of thermodynamics, let's say it has a face, right? I enjoy that, I enjoy the magic, and I like knowing that I don't know much. I hold no truths. You're debating this with the wrong person, if you want to get down to it. However, I find... ontological persuits, about the very beginning of reality, the metaphysics and all that, to be a waste of my time. So I'll just go with the odds on this one.

QuoteAnyway, aren't biological organisms open systems, feeding from the environment and dumping waste into it?

As I explain, we're all one huge system. The concept of a closed system is only a theoretical one.

QuoteIf I can keep extracting useful energy from the environment in exchange for my entropy, then why should I ever have to die?

That's a wonderful question. If you can keep sustaining the mechanism that uses energy, your whole body going, or at least the relevant parts, you won't have to die ever! Get to it.

QuoteInteresting that science doesn't really have an answer either. And if people are just simple thermodynamic systems, then why are they saddled with these inefficient, irrational conscious - in effect, what makes us who we are?

I don't know. I think the ghost of consciousness is an evolutionary sidestep arising from a very complex self-programming system that finds systematic use of its own recursiveness. Does that make sense? The Consciousness is a very small part of our brainpower. Abstract thinking, disparate connections... we have a lot of tools that we keep refining because they work. We're still around, so they work. I don't see anything unnatural about us being here and being relatively at the top of the food chain.

QuoteThe ironic thing is that once you reach the conclusion that nothing is knowable, science and reason - those tools so fervently brandished to argue against the existence of god - are suddenly no better than religion.

I have absolutely no problem with this concept. I just think critical analysis, as faulty as it is, words, as wrong as they are, all these things you pit against faith, they have the odds going for them. We're still around, and it ain't because of faith. These things are not reliable, but they work for the here and now. I don't ask you - I don't ask from myself - an enduring faith in logic. I just gamble that it works, and as long as it does, I'm a happy camper. I don't want to be montionless pondering everything. It's not very fun.

QuoteIn fact, would it be wrong to say that faith is required for science and reason be conducted in a meaningful way?

What is required, is faith, yes. Faith that playful gamble that the world will still be working tomorrow as it is working today. So we can explore it, make good of our time and generally be restless as life is before it's extinguished to feed new life. That's so much more conductive, for me, than talking to a manufactured deity that creates more issues than he solves. No problem with faith in walking.

QuoteAfter all, how do you know that this is reality, that this isn't a figment of your imagination, that you're not hooked up to the matrix? You don't take it on ... faith ... do you?

I don't know, man.
#392
Though I love Captain Blood very, very much, I don't see how an icon-system could be done in ags that wouldn't either seem derivative, or underworked. I suggest a 'common trade language' as well.
#393
"Avec Nutricrotte° je voie là  differanse j'est même developper du mucsle"

what does this mean?
#394
Actually, second law of thermodynamics. From hot to cold, never the other way around. Entropy gradually increasing in a closed system. It makes perfect sense for the human system to shut down and completely fade away after death.
#395
Yeah, I guess you have to consider saying less and leaving more to be understood by showing.

I don't know about Swedish readers. I know that when you draw something even vaguely funny, there'll be people that will be falling off of their seats bellyachin'. I'm just saying what it does or doesn't do for me. I'm sure this comic will have a good following without you giving any thought at writing the material better, if that's what you need, I'm sure the only thing you need to do now is just make this steadily for a while until a lot of people pick it up. If you want to make it better, I'd reconsider the usage of profanity until it means something more than 'extreme disapproval' (wild horses skullfucking, silly bitch). I think generally this seems much more european than american, and this americanism with swearing every time something unfortunate happens just doesn't mesh well.

I've explored my critique more than just telling you to 'make it better', Linus, on every post of mine.
#396
Try dreamweb.
#397
As far as a different person in another part of the world can relate:

After losing (or never having, as in my case) your faith, you endorse wildly positivistic beliefs for a while. THINGS ARE UNDERSTANDABLE IF YOU STUDY THEM and so on. Those lead to the eventual experience that we aren't really capable of studying ourselves (questions of epistemology, what is knowledge, so on) and that looking inside and trying to make sense is like biting your own teeth. The words 'spirit', or 'free will', start to become as meaningless as 'god'. To degrees, the word 'I' also.

I'm sure these concepts are not new to you, just as that there's atheists around the world wasn't new to you before. But it's one thing to be vaguely aware of a concept (like someone pointing at a map and telling you 'there's china'), and another to experience it to degrees inside yourself (going to china). I believe that such a thing will happen to you, maybe soon maybe not. When this happens, your positivistic beliefs and your relation to clean causality will come in friction with that things are infinitely more complex than our consciousness can hope to understand. This will end that period more or less, and you'll be left as close to a solipsist as you'll ever be. There's a wonderful existential crisis in there for you, completely alone against the realization that you cannot know nothing dependably. Out of this epistemological dispondency, your system will reconfigure itself to survive. And it will probably base itself on keeping you happy.

Finally you'll do the things that keep you happy, without excess theological baggage or existential wondering. Perhaps after this stage -where I am at- there's more peril awaiting, that's all I know this far.
#398
Erenan, I was making a general point for the purposes of this thread, that there really isn't much that can happen to you out of the blue that - what the majority of people-  would consider the logical approach would then entail the inventing of a Deity and system of faith to explain it. This goes to say that people don't believe in God because evidence is there.

This does not mean your personal experiences aren't of probable interest to me, and others participating in this thread. The point of view of what obviously is a bright person, who seems to be going from a theist background to... something else, is very interesting. I'd say go right ahead.
#399
I don't really know what to reply to you with. Where's my imagination? Where's my sense of sportmanship, where's my joy of living, where's my spunky disposition? We're discussing God here and you sound like a self-help tape.

QuoteYou say you're unable to accept the existence of God regardless of personal experience, yet you mock those who won't accept the non-existance of a god, no matter the rhetorical proof?

I'd like it to be noted that I didn't mock anyone's faith. I might not believe in the same things a theist does, and I might find their belief aburd in cases, but I'm not pointing and laughing here.

Also, I didn't say I'm unable to accept something. I said if some phenomenae occured, I'd first look at more probable reasons for their existence before jumping to, oh manufacturing of a freakin' Deity and a whole system of faith around it! Check your double-negations at 'won't accept the non-existence' and all you're left with it 'accept the existence' and that is a matter of burden of proof. The burden of proof is on the one that claims this 'god' thing exists. You meet me on the street and you say 'hello'. 'Hello mr Big Brother'. 'Today I realized Zoothoole exists!' I don't know what this is. I've never encountered this Zoothoole concept before, I am unaware of its various attributes. Please explain to me what this concept is, and why it might exist, and what its existence explains that is inexplicable otherwise with far tidier answers, even the dreaded oh the most dreaded 'I don't know'. 
#400
Why would I perform in front of a mirror?
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