Kafuuka

[quote name='Pipstickz' timestamp='1294471139' post='77098'] Kafuuka, what is your suggestion to counter Burns'? [/quote] In the post directly above the one I'm quoting, I gave nine objections to Burns and co. And that's the ones I remembered from the other two pages of debate, near midnight on a Friday... I won't say they are all the same quality. Personally I don't believe in quantity as a good norm either, so let us consider this from a scientific and logical viewpoint: Burns' argument boils down to the following logic: 1. There is a problem on mp3 AND mp4. 2. Burns' proposal will diminish the problem. => We should adopt Burns' proposal. Such a kind of argument becomes void if either premise 1 or premise 2 is refuted. I have from the beginning refused to just believe in premise two and gave what I consider to be good examples of why it will not work. Since support for this idea seems to persist, I decided to be more thorough and also attack premise one, even though logically speaking I do not need to. In this topic we currently have four people who are or very recently were mp4 with their 'main' and who tell us they never experienced the alleged problems. If you claim that we are too old to be true mp4 and thus to be reliable sources of information, then sadly nobody on the forum, except for one guy who immediately got neg repped and patronized, qualifies to speak about this. If this is not countering Burns', then please tell me what is? And what do you mean by suggestion? An alternative proposal? I am trying to prove that not doing anything is better than accepting the proposal, hence 'not doing anything' is my proposal. Once again, I am in no logical terms obliged to do better than that. Certainly, if I would do better, it would be easier to persuade people but this is a debate, not a popularity poll. And in fact, my proposal to hunt down the culprits instead of make live 1% more difficult for them, was shot down as too difficult. I do believe it is a lot of work indeed. I also think it would actually work.

No matter which restrictions you impose on mp3, and that implies things far beyond the scale you put here, there will always be someone who you can't win against as an mp3, provided he is not idle. Even if every ritual has a counter, the person with more creatures and more stats has more options. Whatever ritual you make to defeat the fake mp3, that fake mp3 can counter your new ritual with a lot less effort. In the long run, against evil mp3s, a true mp3 will loose more often than win. There is no way to make it perfectly balanced. In extremis, at some too ridiculous to mention restrictions involving suppressing the shop and all trades and then some more nerfing, mp3s would be able to win against every other mp3 at least once in ten times? I'm certain those kind of odds are impressive compared to one in a hundred or one to maxint against the baddies. In practice though it makes no difference. You choose your target accordingly and you learn to cut your losses. Or you get upset that there is one guy you can never beat... in which case your real life sucks too because there will always be that one guy (or girl) who is better at something. Please note that: 1. It is no more fun to be nerfed because someone abuses alts than it is to be beaten by someone who abuses alts. 2. It is possible to cut your losses. This possibility costs less than being nerfed. 3. Being nerfed this much doesn't solve the problem. Neither will nerfing a bit less or a bit more. 4. Thus far, no mp3 nor mp4 supports your idea nor any of the previous incarnations. 5. Multiple mp5s don't support it. 6. At least one mp5 who does support it has openly claimed he does because it will lead to more mp5s. 7. In the long, spoilerfree, run this proposal will make mp5 less balanced and hence more broken, with those who are now 'protected' needing help even more. 8. None of these or related problems, are caused by newb mp3s. 9. Thus far, three older mp4s have reported never to witness the alleged problems on mp4. Personally I am not crazy overpowered with my zero tokens and angiens that have less than 100 wins, a total of zero drachorns and a tendency to have 'random' for defensive ritual 50% of the time.

[quote name='Chewett' timestamp='1294437812' post='77068'] You cant chastise someone for not knowing something lol. The bigger issue is then that these mp3/4's are being taught to not go to mp5, and specially train certain things up without learning why. Which is something i would say is encouraged by some mp4's [/quote] According to Burns that is not what this thread is about. As for being encouraged and/or discouraged, that happens on all levels, by all levels and across all levels. The mp5s are scaring people by posting negative mp5 related threads on the forum. They are encouraging to level up asap in the game though. Not necessarily the same people or at the same time though. As an mp4 on the forum I probably dissuade people implicitly from moving up. In the game, and you'll have to take my word for that, I tell people they should decide for themselves after listing all the facts and give them some pro's and cons. Note that by the time I take to write out such a balanced response, half of the people who said 'should I level up' in chat, have gotten at least three 'yes of course' response, without any arguments at all, and have already pushed the button... [quote] The whole learning process is screwed up when people sit in the dojo complaining about each and every loss, while being told what to train and not learning about the rits. This is much more important than preventing alts. [/quote] I thought the dojo got replaced by the sparring grounds and that the times of 'oh noes i got attacked' were long gone? But suppose it is not, who is giving this people those tips? I don't, none of the real mp3s or mp4s could, unless they have been here long enough to have figured out what to train and by then they're not real noobs anymore anyway. [quote] ANY mp4 can survive at mp5 whatever the stats/crits as long as they have the basics of ritual making, including some decent "ve protecting, crit protecting" rits. [/quote] Ironically, if we take the same argument but substitute mp3 for mp4 and mp5, they can survive against the horrors which Burns wants to protect them against. Let me put it this way: there is no mp4 conspiracy to make mp5 suck more. I would start one, if there were a need for it, but it seems to me mp5 are already doing good enough a job by themselves. Just take a look around: messages on the mood panel like 'please level up faster and become my punchbags' or private logs stating 'you're too weak to be mp5, go back to mp4' etc. Don't tell me those were ironic statements by those people.

@Burns: Once again I reiterate that I do not think your proposal is effective to stop or even diminish the pwning of noobs. Alts have access to better training schemes, better ritual knowledge and better creatures. Your proposal is to cut down a small part of the better creature department. A 'typical' mp3 according to the mp3 to mp4 half life time of about one week, will not be able to naturally age an elemental to max level. That infamous nightmare ritual is not even an option unless they either trade for an aged elemental. Except they don't know what they would need it for nor do they know its market value or have anything to trade with unless they invested in the shop. See, unless spoilers occurred or they invested in the shop, they wouldn't even know how long they would have to wait. [quote name='No one' timestamp='1294395688' post='77019'] I did, so many times, tried to reason with young players. The problem is that you have to raise him to your lvl to make him understand. Otherwise he does not (want to ) understand. If I would have liked to do that I would have been an LHO. [/quote] Patronizing eh? [b]I sure hope that was a joke of yours, a bad one that nobody is laughing at and hey look I can use bold font and look like I [i]know[/i] that I am smarter than you too. I don't even need to make my text bigger in size for it.[/b] Now please don't make me switch to your lvl anymore, I don't quite enjoy it.

[quote name='Udgard' timestamp='1294289185' post='76925'] You're supposed to stay mp4 just for a while, to age/upgrade some creatures to prepare for mp5. Once you've aged your creatures, go and move on to mp5. And no, people are not supposed to wait for their angiens to have max age before going mp5..[/quote] Rubish. There is no statement anywhere that says you are supposed to become mp5 at all, let alone that you are supposed to 'only stay mp4 for a while', whatever the heck a while might be defined as. I think the most official statement by Mur is 'not everybody has the patience to reach mp5', but my memory isn't all that good. [quote] I think lately there has been to many illusions of "mp5s/vets only wanting to get more people to move up so they can pound them". [/quote] I think lately mp5 live in the illusion that anything they say is true and thus that the idea that anyone should be mp5 is true too. Seriously, who is it that tells us that mp5 is hard? Who is it that posts here that mp4 and mp3 is being abused by alts using whatever means. What is the maximum level the 'mains' of the abusers have? It is all mp5. That doesn't mean all mp5s are bad though, that's never what anyone wished to claim. I don't even claim all mp5s who want to stop the alleged (and plausible) abuse on mp3 are trying to gain an advantage at mp5. I claim that it gains more than half of its support on the forum from mp5s who are indeed evil greedy and shortsighted people. I claim that nobody who has never had an mp5 account, supports this idea.

[quote name='Kyphis the Bard' timestamp='1294007966' post='76669'] The reason that I didn't suggest Principles is that the DNA format is able to form the backbone of far more ideas than just the above. [/quote] You can write down the principles in alphabetic order and put a 0 if you don't have it, a 1 if you do have it and you have the same setup as the DNA format, except the number of bits is lower and there's currently a limit on the number of ones a person can have. If you'd need a higher number of bits, you can easily double them by adding the sequence of bits with 1 if the principle has the highest number of points, 0 otherwise. Repeat for second highest etc... I can't see many advantages of DNA format. I would guess it is less predictable and hence less likely someone would try to minmax into the right DNA especially because that would only work for a fresh account. On the other hand it is more difficult to balance. The fact that there is a limited number of ones in the principle byte is an advantage for balancing imo. The DNA format is slightly bigger, but I doubt you need that large a string for anything. On the other hand, principles are the foundation of MD. They are intuitively linked to certain concepts and will thus provide more natural selection of feats. (Who will select the markers and how? How many people do we want to have 0, 1, 2 .. 10? valid markers?). [quote] Although, the "pray/day" limit would be interesting, it would defeat the point of having the tiers accessible like that as you would always have the competitive group at identical heat values, and it would be extremely difficult to rank them for tiering. The only way I could think of to do it would be based on who reached the limit first each day, however this favors those in certain timezones and would result in people who have identical heat but not identical tier boosts, and would just cause far more hassle. [/quote] I doubt that. Even if many people are easily able to get max pray/day each day, some people will have started to worship earlier than others and there would not be this erratic behavior. In the more balanced situation, the limit is large enough so that only a few people would actually bother to reach the daily limit every day. Suppose you are the n°1 worshipper out of 50, you don't want it technically to be possible to be booted out of place if your isp breaks down for only a day, would you? As for worshipper vs adept: I think worshipper only is more elegant too. I added the other ideas mainly because they were more in tune with the first post.

I don't get why you link adepts and worshippers. If you get up to 15 tiers, there's room to let adepts of mp5s get tier one, adepts of mp6 get tier 2+ depending on the mp6' level. Or you could leave it worshipper only. People to being adept and worshipper could be used to give a 'synergy' bonus or something. They all seem equally programmable options to me. Instead of player DNA or a new DNA, I think principles are the natural choice for characteristics? You could even have funny effects like someone with high cyclicity score would have his boons cycle over time whereas someone with high entropy would see his boons diminish in effect (tier) but multiply in number. Let it be influenced by the characteristics of the worshippers too and you get a chaotic system. I vaguely remember some multi person combat influence principle proposal/idea being posted loooong ago, maybe this can be linked with that? [quote name='Kyphis the Bard' timestamp='1293955306' post='76619'] This idea has a MAJOR flaw in that certain players who give very good bonuses would remain MP6 constantly, and there are not enough players to support very many MP6, preventing almost everyone from ever finding out what MP6 is like. [/quote] In your idea, more than 25% of an mp6's worshippers don't have any reason not to change to a newer protector. The sooner you can start praying, the more chance you'll reach the top 25% donors with better advantages albeit of a different nature. As such I don't think it changes much to the frequency of mp6 turnover. Of course the same % system favours people who don't have a life outside of MD. Not certain if that is a problem or intended. If you want to remedy it, impose a pray/day limit.

The difference between a carrot and a stick is self deception. And you will need a huge amount of carrots to overcome the cake named 'pwning noobs'. At least with the large sticks that are proposed I can see the mp3 problem diminish a bit. With carrots all we will have is that mp5s will be happy because they got free stuff. For a while they'll keep from complaining about people on mp3 being overpowered. Overpowered mp3s are by definition alts. Overpowered mp3s are by a tiny leap of faith, alts of mp5s. So if you give all mp5s, including those who have overpowered mp3 alts, a lot of carrots... that is not going to change anything to their overpowered alts. It is more akin to rewarding bad behavior even. If on the other hand you punish all mp3s and mp4s, including those who are not alts, you will not have punished the mp5 'mains' of those who caused the 'problem'. The bigger the stick you use, the bigger you make the gap between mp4 and mp5; a gap which has been claimed to be too wide often. I have some faith in Awiiya's proposal. I can also imagine how a reset would solve the alledged problems. However, whether you present your sticks as swords or coat them in sugar, changes nothing to the basic idea which has been regurgitated a dozen times before. An idea which inherently implies penalizing future mp5s and is unsurprisingly always proposed by mp5s and never by lower mp levels. Unsurprising because mp3s don't tend to post on the forum. However I can't see why any mp3 would agree that being nerfed is fun or good or desirable. If mp4s were to provide an answer on the dreaded gap, I guess it would be more like this: Upon leveling up to mp5, you (temporarily) gain +1k in everything. Every day this spell-like effect is lessened by 2%. (A half life of approximately one month.) Nothing long term changes for any mp level, however it might make life for new mp5s a lot easier today, tomorrow and next year too. I'm certain someone could tweak the numbers to make it really balanced.

I am a bit surprised that after reading my post you people still suggest alternative methods of implicit or explicit nudging everyone towards mp5. When I said 2/3rd isn't bad, I was being sarcastic. @ Awiiya: the second idea might work with some tweaking. I think it wouldn't make sense if there isn't a minimum amount of votes before it checks the rate. There is the possibility of farming no's if you have a large amount of ips available though.

[quote name='Burns' timestamp='1293664614' post='76324'] I am indeed fairly certain that i won't be able to find a non-alt mp3 with a drachorn, or an angien over lvl 2. You're right that angiens make nice quest rewards, but they most definitely won't reach lvl 3 on a plain, normal mp3 account, simply due to the age requirement on them. [/quote] Because ever quest creator gives creatures that are only one week old? Or is it because people are more prone to tell someone who wonders if they should level up, to do it as quick as possible?

[quote name='Chewett' timestamp='1293655663' post='76315'] Normal mp3's who train are not able to get angiens, and birds are hard to obtain. If you train normally, mp3's will move on before leveling up too many creatuers, if the limits are put in effectively then a normal mp3 wont be effected [/quote] For a cheap mp3 geared quest, angiens, birds and loreroot creatures make a lot of sense to give out. So if you train normally as an mp3 interested in more than just grinding, you should be able to get those creatures with a small amount of luck. I would have thought Kyphis' point is quite clear: no matter how many restrictions you put in place, people who have a tried and tested training scheme will be more powerful than real mp3s who still need to go through trial and error. Burns also requested us not to nitpick about what creatures should have which nerfs... I am quite certain he did this because he thinks that is the Achilles heel of this proposal. Only if we want to make an analogy with Achilles, his mother should have bathed him in the river of sheer and utter weakness, so that only his heel does not grant a mortal wound if someone touches it.

[quote name='Asterdai' timestamp='1293638434' post='76287'] just gotta ask, what would you feel like if you were forced into MP5, in your current thoughts about the levels? [/quote] It depends a lot on the reason. If I'm forced up because people think I am a liability on mp4 I'd be very angry. Not about the mp5 thing, but being considered a menace. I'm certain I am annoying to plenty of people, regardless of mp level. I'd also be angry about being forced to choose my final principle... I took the first ones based on what made most sense, but down the line the remaining ones are closer and closer in sensibility. (I don't bother with tokens atm so that's not giving me obvious choices.)

According to some people, several mind power levels are 'broken'. More specifically, mp3 is under threat from alts that like to pwn noobs. mp4 suffers the same problem and mp5 is rumored to be broken because those crazy veterans that like to battle, cannot keep themselves from attacking younger players. Oh and also because newer players fear the mp5 level which is supposedly full of overpowered people. In my experience as mp3, which is years ago, there were already people planning to win heads at mp3 with their second account. These people would be virtually impossible to attack during heads contest and they would repeatedly collect. None of that really did much damage because back then everybody learned to set dummy defenses. In my experience as mp4, I can walk around the realm during non heads days and find it void of people who want to attack me, except at the gazeeboo or in the park. If I idle somewhere 'far away' nobody bothers my creatures. On heads days, they'll chase you though. Most of them will still ask if they can attack you, probably because an easy battle will leave them with more energy for the next battle. Selfish but not exactly abusive. People who are currently 'veterans' still recommend 'noobs' to use dummy defenses. They still claim that even if you gimp yourself at mp3, you can rectify it later. They still claim that patience is the most important skill in the game. Although some do state that you should become mp5 in at most two months... In my experience as mp5.. oh wait i have no intention on ever becoming mp5... Regardless of my experience, people repeatedly claim some or all of these levels are 'broken' and in general they propose to either nerf lower levels, which is appreciated by many mp5s because it will persuade more people to become mp5, or they propose to move people up to mp5 directly. Actually, I cannot remember any proposition which did not implicitly or explicitly make mp5 cooler and mp- less. Two questions can be asked: 1. Is there a point to have multiple mp levels if we will force everyone to be mp5? 2. Will forcing people to mp5 really work? Yes moving people to mp5 will work. Without anyone being mp3 or mp4, nobody will be able to complain mp3 or mp4 are broken. In fact, it would be superefficient if whenever someone signs up for the forum, all of their accounts are moved to mp5. This way, people can only ever complain about mp5 being broken; only 1/3rd of the complaints will remain!! It is as arbitrary as X active days; suppose someone logs in every day and plays half an hour and someone else logs in every day and plays two hours. Or X days since creation (even if your isp breaks down), or even X battles fought (they can be in or out, won or lost, low or high xp).

[quote name='Udgard' timestamp='1293635657' post='76276'] AFAIK alt abuse is making alts simply to benefit your main. Transferring creatures from mains to alts does not seem like alt abuse to me, unless it is done only to age them and send them back to the main. [/quote] And who decides which alt is the 'main'? Alt abuse is the valid term whenever one uses an alt to get an unfair advantage on another alt. 99% of the time the alt that benefits is the alt we would call the main, however it's not a requirement.

[quote name='Burns' timestamp='1293621839' post='76259'] Due to once again increasing problems, i, again, want to propose an idea to stop alts from bashing on newbies. Since GGG ceased, there are only minor problems with monstrous stats left, and people now take their massively aged, tokened and traded creatures and transfer them to mp3 to create new god accounts. [/quote] Transferring creatures to an alt is considered alt abuse I thought? An mp3 alt created with the purpose of bashing newbies would need either an accomplice who gives powerful things for free, or a large amount of coins and/or credits to trade with. Without MAGIC they'd still have to train those creatures. Afaik only a select amount of people can magicize, so that should be entirely under control. Trade logs can be monotored too.

[quote name='Aysun' timestamp='1292653008' post='75654'] I did NOT quote incorrectly, Jester changed his stance multiple times to end in the final result. That he cannot state a solid opinion on things isn't something I can control. I have blamed no one for any 'mistake' considering I do not see what 'mistake' you're talking about- could you be clearer if you'd like it addressed? [/quote] It is still you who decided to quote him when he was talking about WP codes. You can't come in here two weeks later and say 'oh but jester actually said something different and i wanted to talk about that.' Not only do you try that, you're also stating that it is our fault for not understanding what this topic is about and you say it is jesters' fault that you couldn't quote him right. If he did make a more bold statement and you read it, why did you have to quote a less bold one? You yourself said you have screencaps and everything. [quote] With regards to your points, they miss the actual points completely. King is not a free license to abandon the responsibilities of a monarch once you get the crown or even later on down the road, being nice or bad has nothing to do with Necrovion to begin with so that point is in itself pointless, and yes it is a Monarchy- too bad it isn't run like one. [/quote] Well, first we had the subject of this thread be 'kings not sponsoring codes to rebels', when the majority agreed that they can, you decided to change the topic into 'jester is banning rebels from all citizen quests regardless of sponsor'. Since that point is failing to gain support, you wish to change the topic into 'jester is a bad monarch'? Is Jester running necrovion as a monarch? He didn't host elections, so actually yes he is. Is punishing rebels the same as abondoning your responsibilities as a monarch? I'd say it is quite the opposite. Is Necrovion being a nice or bad place relevant to what you expect of its monarch? Yes it is. A monarch can be benevolent or oppressive and egotistical. There is nothing in the word monarch that implies the king to be a nice person. If you look at the history of Necrovion, its kings have from the beginning paid more attention to their own goals than to what happens to their citizens.

[quote name='Aysun' timestamp='1292451616' post='75529'] I've been avoiding this thread because it got a bit silly with other people bringing up old personal issues to throw at old foes (or so it seems- I can only judge by what's been said here), but overall my position is and has been this: [/quote] You made the topic and then avoided it and are now coming back with this kind of introduction? You wish to claim you are better at 'not bringing up old personal issues?' [quote] A citizen, not the king, started a quest. A citizen was ordered to bias whose entries they accepted according to the king's bias. Since they are prize provider, I concede that this is fair enough. Since the issue has turned INTO that, I have never had a problem with THAT SPECIFIC logic- however this was not the original problem. [/quote] [quote] the record in that thread isn't the most accurate and was only partially transferred over to this thread out of extreme frustration with Jester constantly deleting what were originally very short posts asking the specifics of the rules that did not exist at the time of the thread creation, and for the ferocity of the original post of this thread I apologize to the rest of the community- it was not my original plan. [/quote] It is your responsibility to quote correctly. Instead you made a mistake, which can be forgiven. Yet twice you blame others for your mistake. That cannot be forgiven. It's things like this which make the rebels look like <insert pejorative>. On the subject that is supposedly the topic of this thread: yes he can. 1. He's king 2. Necrovion has never been reputed to be a nice place 3. Necrovion is actually a monarchy

[quote name='Rask' timestamp='1292362208' post='75457'] From Mur's announcement, dated November 11, 2010: "Using alts to increase the number of rebels of a land will be punished" [/quote] This quotation assumes three things: 1. alts are 100% detectable 2. punishment will be swift and severe 3. everybody interpreting that sentence the same way. If we look at disputes, 99% of them are about words and in this case it is easy to claim that the announcement can be read as 'using alts solely for the purpose of increasing the number of rebels of a land, will be punished.' Whether or not that is true or sensible I am not going to debate; it is however likely that someone would try to play that card. On the other hand, assuming 1, why let them in?

[quote name='Malaikat Maut' timestamp='1292251376' post='75353'] Not if it were expressed purely mathematically. The numbers would always mean the same thing although their visual interpretation may be skewed. Again, not very practical all/most of the time - but really this entire debate was little more than pedantry.[/quote] A purely physical definition of red is not as simple as you think. The emission spectrum of an object is among others dependent on the temperature of the object. A photon might experience a redness shift while traveling etc. Of course, you could make that 'colour x under conditions y and at timespace xyzt'. Such is not practical and for most people not possible. eg. the percentage of people aged < 12 year that would understand you is close to zero. And that is for one word... There's millions of words. Words that also change meaning over time slowly. [quote]Even if I concede to this single case, you're still talking about a rare mechanical/biological defect - something that, again, can be tested for and diagnosed. The fact that someone can look at your eye and tell you, "what you see as red is really green", screams objectivity. [/quote] Time and again you are forgetting the word 'recently' and using self-fulling prophecies. "How about you go and explain me something you don't know?" That is the basically what you are asking us to do. It is not because we do not know it, that something does not exist. As a realist I think you agree to that. However, now that we have given a clear example of something that used to be unknown, you say 'aha but it is known now', whereas my point was that something which was once not known, exists, and certainly that leaves room for things not being known now.

[quote name='Tarquinus' timestamp='1292023694' post='75089'] But hospitality does not seem to be what is wanted, and the law of the jungle prevails. I don't have a problem with that, because after all I was hammered into shape by merciless players, and you can learn something from the losses that don't kill your entire ritual in round 0. [/quote] Either back then they used smaller hammers or you were built from a sturdier metal than the people who say that mp5 is broken or unfair or boring or whatever. But as you say, let's stay on topic. After two months, this is the status: Those in favor have given two reasons: 1. It will allow mp5s to find targets easier 2. It is 'balanced' Those against have said that: 1. There is a log-out button 2. There is neither RP nor grind mechanical balance in the proposition. The only new thing you add is that it 'could be fun just like the 7-head rule is'. Someone said fewer people log in during heads - I haven't bothered counting but it doesn't surprise me - so this falls perfectly under objection 1. You can wish for pro arguments all you want, we won't be making them for you even if we could.

*edited because Z pointed out i missed a sentence* I think that both rebels and kings are edgy on these things. The kings' worries are easily understood: they have some power and could loose it to people who have less power. In the extreme case, as Firs points out, someone with nothing to loose (or at least thinking they have nothing to loose) can do whatever they want. The rebels on the other hand, are naturally attacked by any means possible and currently there is no historical basis to believe a rebellion could succeed. The means used against them are apparently beyond their expectations and their progress is slowing according to some. It's easy to question something to be unjust or unfair, however it does lead to further polarization on the forum and increases the suspicion that rebels, or at least some of them, hurried into the situation they are in now, without considering all the consequences. Which is one of the things which would worry kings: people rebelling without fully knowing the consequences and not being able to revert their situation. Such people will try to move forward if they can't go back, regardless of whether they really believe forward would be better. Do rebels have it too easy? Probably not. Is it too easy to become a rebel without fully understanding it? Probably yes, but then again we do like the game for allowing you to make huge mistakes.

[quote name='Malaikat Maut' timestamp='1291819639' post='74857'] I've heard people try to argue that quantum mechanics allows or even necessitates subjective reality. Particle duality and wave-form collapse and all that. The issue then becomes that you're trying to leverage a branch of science that's famed for making unfathomably precise and repeatable predictions about the tiniest pieces of our observable world. Also, no one on this board even comes close to understanding quantum mechanics.[/quote] I loathe it when people try to use quantum mechanics to prove philosophical debates, without having ever studied quantum mechanics or philosophy. I am also very skeptical about the argument 'I have a degree in X'. However, I do have a degree in physics; I read somewhere one of our board members is a professor in quantum chemistry and there's probably more than one engineering student who took at least a basic course in quantum mechanics, reading this topic. If neither of us is close enough to understanding quantum, who is? Feynman? [quote]Color can certainly be objectified. Red is light radiation with a wavelength between 480–405 THz while green exists between the frequencies ~575–525 THz. Objects that adsorb light radiation below and above 480 THz will appear red. There's no magic or mysticism to it, and, just like the Rorschach test, our individual perceptions of it don't at all change the reality. However, unlike the Rorschach test, color blindness has nothing to do with individuality or the subjectivity of our thoughts. It's a mechanical defect - one that Kafuuka admits can be tested for, which should immediately make the point that color is objective.[/quote] While you say everybody on this forum is incapable of getting quantum, you also propose that everybody understands the physics of wavelengths. Explaining what Red and Green are, is highly depending on your audience. Worst case, they will not understand your objective definition. Even if they understand, they are not capable of imagining it. The only thing they can grasp is the difference in frequency and that they're incapable of visualizing it. I also noted that Daltonism is a fairly recent discovery. Apparently it has first been described in 1798. For the majority of human history we were unaware of its existance. The notion that colour is related to wavelengths is also a recent phenomenon. It is not difficult to imagine that other concepts exist which we are unaware of and currently unable to express. Similar to Gödel's incompleteness work and the halting problem, it seems provable even that there will always be things that cannot be expressed.

Perhaps this has been addressed somewhere before but: isn't the water gathering stuff supposed to rely on rain? @Marv: yes seasonal patterns should be easy to code. Probably a lot more easy than to determine what exactly a season is in MD, with the irregular day/night thing, parallels to earth seasons seem a bit far fetched.

Language and knowledge... On one hand, I don't believe that everybody is capable of grasping the same concepts. This includes the concept of understanding understanding. People don't necessarily know that their interpretation of a concept is different from what the 'teacher' is trying to explain, or 'teachers' might not know that their 'pupils' don't get it. - One of the reasons I hate telephones is that this problem occurs a lot more often when conversing through them. - If there is an inherent limitation on what knowledge people can grasp, then language is doomed to fail. (Of course this is a tautology, but it seems interesting to note that the problem might not lie in language.) On the other hand, I'd like to ask 'how do we store knowledge in our brain' and more precisely 'is that not language?' If we take language in the broad sense, meaning spoken language, written language, pictures, sheet music, music, sounds... then it seems to me knowledge always exists in some kind of language and thus knowledge is never able to escape the constraints of language. Expanding further on the image of pictures: people with Daltonism are physically incapable of differentiating red and green. We are born into this world with senses and gather information by using these senses. Somehow language, writing, drawing, singing developed to assist us in storing and conveying information. It is difficult to label things as a priori, inborn, nature verus cultural, nurture. Some animals have extensive language and are able to comprehend us (at least we think). On the other hand, some humans are incapable of understanding green. Yet more complicated, we've devised tests to see if someone has Daltonism. Yet I do think that is a fairly recent phenomenon and there might be differences between people we never detected and some we never will. [quote name='Malaikat Maut' timestamp='1291733843' post='74755'] I would challenge you to express a purely abstract, conceptual matter that can in no way be tied to objective or even physical entities. Even infinity can be imagined within the physical world. Stand between two mirrors. [/quote] Certainly you jest? To refute that concepts exist that are without a physical tie and that cannot be expressed properly by words, you dare us to name one?