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[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

No. You're just wrong. A misunderstanding occurs for lots of reasons - but it's empirical true that some people are very good at reading tone and body language and some are not. For this idea to actually work writ large, it has to mean that (in some cases) 100% of the characters are wrong 100% of the time - like the basic aura of leadership that the Warden has and all defer to. It requires that you characterize people as insane or socially incompetent despite in-universe evidence to the contrary.

Or, you could just not assume that you know how pther people think, and then this problem completely disappears.

You don't need to explain misunderstandings if you don't believe they're there.

This is dealt with all the time in law, with regards to legislation being redrafted multiple times before being passed. The answer is simple: the intent is overwritten and irrelevant to the extent that the final change directly contradicts it.

It's off-topic, but I loathe that aspect of legal reasoning.  Since the intent certainly isn't knowable to an ordinary citizen who reads the law, the intent can't ever matter without violating the underlying legal principle of fairness.

But then, my understanding is that western law is supposed to rest on the principles of justice and fairness, and I've never really understood what the word justice means - I took graduate-level courses in legal reasoning, and never found anything like a decent definition of the word - so I work strictly from fairness in all legal matters.

[MerinTB]

In Exile wrote...

MerinTB wrote...
So, the following line, as written, you know enitrely what tone it is being written in?

You poor thing.  What you must have gone through.  I am shocked.

Did you just - seriously and honestly - ask me to asses tone from a written line? The thing that is by its very nature auditory? 

Yep.  I did.

Because, with an unvoiced protagonist, you have to do just that. :innocent:

In Exile wrote...

MerinTB wrote...
Not only can people misunderstand, they can have agendas. They can purposefully disregard, exaggerated, or lie about what you just said. They can fail to hear what you said. There are so many ways that communication fails, that intent is lost even with voice and body language.

Did you know that medical science isn't 100% accurate 100% of the time? Man, better get some witch doctor to treat that cancer with inflatable banana pig™! Because that's how evidence works - if something isn't infallible, obviously it's just completely wrong and an inaccurate description of reality!

What science does do, however, is continue to try and both prove itself wrong and constantly correct itself.  It never rests on things being "absolute truths."
Scientific skeptics also know how to spot logical fallacies.
Like straw men - you saying that I was arguing if something is NOT 100% proven, you must accept something ELSE as true whether that is true or not.  I would never say that, as a scientific skeptic, because that goes absolutely against how I view the world.
Also there's false dichotomy - which is what you are describing me as saying in your straw man.  Another thing I'd never do.  The "it's either this or that, black or white, no in-between, no other options" is an abhorrant concept to me.  I'd never accept the Kobayashi Maru either.
But your fall back on sarcasm and falsehoods is noted. 

Modifié par MerinTB, 05 juin 2013 - 04:44 .

[In Exile]

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
No you don't.  You can merely suppose that one is true, rather than assuming it.  Rhetoric does this all the time.  Rather than assume something to be true in order to follow reasoning arising from it, we can suppose it is true as a rhetorical device to investigate the consequences of it actually being true, regardless of whether you know it to be true. [/quote]

A) You can't explore the consequences of it being true. It's simply impossible for you to model reality in this way, unless you're going to argue that you can simultaneously perceive all possible outcomes an (effective) infinite number of years into the future. 

Even if you could actually see the almost infinite permutations that would branch out from a single dedicision and evaluate this in enough time to actually decide, you would still make that decision with reference to external characteristics. 

Put another way, it doesn't matter what you suppose is true. What you have to do is have a viable framework to choose some outcome. 

C) There's no form of reasoning available to you to do what you want to do. Logic simply cannot operate to do this - it has inherent limits that make this kind of prediction impossible. 

[quote]When you have to make some choice (which is not always the case), those "empty" conditionals make it very clear which sets of choices are nonsensical and should be avoided. [/quote]

You always have to make a choice. There's no situation where you don't have at least two possible courses of action. 

And even if you're right - even if you can eliminate some (almost) infinite number of sets) that are 'nonsensical' - you still have a large number of generally 'sensical' options that you still haven't collapsed. 

Put another way, even if you can reject the absurd, you haven't eliminated all possible options but one. 

[quote]Who cares how people use the words?  If people take truth to be anything other than a binary condition, those people are wrong. [/quote]

No. People use the word "truth" to apprehend a different concept. Are you willing to argue that words have some Platonic ideal that they apprehend? Because otherwise it doesn't matter what the combination of sounds/set of scripts that forms "truth" apprehends, as long as we all understand it to mean the same thing.

I suppose you'd object to words having multiple meanings, but even if that were true, then we can still reject using "truth" to describe this kind of binary condition and instead capture a more pragmatic form of knowledge, because it's a more relevant meaning. 

[quote]But we just don't know what the truth is, most of the time.  This is why I encourage people to apply Schrödinger's Cat on a macro level. [/quote]

You mean, the thought experiment designed to show that superimposed states are prima facie absurd and should never be given serious intellectual consideration? 

[quote]First of all, the metal contraptions appear to fly through the sky.  Don't get ahead of yourself. [/quote]

Well, see - that's my point about choice. On the one hand, you refuse to even posit that reality exists in a meaningful sense. But on the other hand, you act as it if does. What reason can you offer for why you should suppose that any of your sensory inputs are worth relying on? 

[quote]Second, the engineer has mountains of empirical data supporting those best guesses.  You don't have anything like that same body of empirical observations to support your guesses regarding any individual's behaviour. [/quote]

Actually, we have millions of years of hard-wired biological programming, thousands of years of culture, and decades of socialization. We have so much information that it would be impossible - until very likely quite recently in our lifetimes - to even store the amount of data that we rely on to draw these inferences. 

You assume that if you don't have information that you can syntactically manipulate you don't have information, but that's just false. A fundamental part of your functioning outright defies description by syntactic processing. 

[quote]"There is no truth in science."  I had a professor in my first year of university who opened the very first lecture with  those exact words.  Science only tells us what isn't true, not what is.  Karl Popper FTW. [/quote]

Popper is wrong. Duhem rejected his entire thesis before he even formulated it. 

It's called the problem of underdetermination. I'll give you the simple case (but please challenge it rigorously - it's been years since I've really discussed it and don't have time to re-research, so my recollection might be poor; the same applies to my notation, so please ask me if anything about how I noted it in formal logic). 

Popper assumes that we have some theory T that implies some observation O. If we observe Not O, then we can reject theory T on the basis of modus ponens. 

So, T => O, ~O, therefore, ~T. 

The problem is that the systme is not T => O. The actual theory T can only functionally exist in a system with some untestable assumptions (UA), and a lot of auxiliary assumptions (AA) from other theories which either share similar UAs or have their own underlying AAs. So the actual structure is more akin to:

(AA ^ AA' ^ AA'' ^ AA''' ^ AA'''' ^AA'''''' ^ AA''''''' ^ UA ^ UA' ^ UA'' ^ UA''' ^ UA"'' ^ T) => O, and if we have ~O, then we have ~ (AA ^ AA' ^ AA'' ^ AA''' ^ AA'''' ^AA'''''' ^ AA''''''' ^ UA ^ UA' ^ UA'' ^ UA''' ^ UA"'' ^ T) rather than ~T. 

[quote]Do you think it's possible to know that something is false? [/quote]

No, because it's impossible to know whether logic is actually a justified system of inference, so presuming that logical opposites actually denote true impossibility is unjustified. 

If logic tells me that a particular state is logically impossible, that doesn't mean that logic is justified. 

I suppose you could say that even in that case I know some element of the set is false, but if I can't know which element of the set is false, the it's meaningless. 


[quote]I spot contradictions.  It comes naturally to me.  No matter how far removed in time or space, I notice contradictions.  If someone says something to me now that is incompatible with a set of things he said to me earlier, I'll notice.  I'll know he's lying to me, or that he's mistaken, or that he misspoke on at least one occasion.  But I'll know the set of statements this person has made is, taken together, false. [/quote]

See above. There's no reason to suppose that logic can demonstrate falsity. 

[quote]I don't believe you.

...

Nor do I disbelieve you. [/quote]

Clever. I am still going to reiterate being sorry.

[quote]They identify falsehood, so that I can avoid it.[/quote]

Again, you can't demonstrate that your own system of infernece isn't itself false, even if you've used it correctly. 

[quote]Of course it's irrelevant.  We can't ever have it.  Truth is beyond us. 

But we can distinguish between things that are possibly true and necessarily false.  Conclusions that are necessarily false are conclusions we should never draw, but your system of reasoning will occasionally draw them . [/quote]

We can't. Because we have no reason to suppose that "necessarily false" has any value or meaning other than being a particular product of some formal system that we have no basis to believe corresponds to anything. 


[quote]Within the set of possibly true conclusions, yes, what you describe is eaxctly what we should do.  But that's not the first step.  First we need to find the set of possibilty true conclusions and stay within it.  If we don't do that first, then our reasoning will not be falsifiable. [/quote]

Our reasoning can never be falsifiable. That's the problem. 

[quote]With regard to action, yes.  No one disputes this. [/quote]

With regard to anything, even choosing a system of evide

[quote]Games aren't reality.[/quote]

Games operate by the same inferential rules. 

[In Exile]

MerinTB wrote...
Yep.  I did.

Because, with an unvoiced protagonist, you have to do just that.

No, you don't. Because the line isn't in a vacuum. It's sorrounded by context - by other lines that writers have written, by the previous line, by the social cues sorrounding the scene, by the graphical presentation, by the reaction of other characters, by information we have about their perception of social indications ... 

If you want to talk about falsehoods and sarcasm, then you're already covered the field there. 

For a silent protagonist, I have to divine the pre-existing intent behind a line where there's not enough information, which is why the silent protagonist is bad design for an RPG. 

What science does do, however, is continue to try and both prove itself wrong and constantly correct itself.  It never rests on things being "absolute truths."

That's not an accurate description of science, and what science does is an incredibly contested topic that's spawned entire academic disciplines. Suffice it to say that depending on the field this is both true and very false. 

Scientific skeptics also know how to spot logical fallacies.

They're also introspective. 

Like straw men - you saying that I was arguing if something is NOT 100% proven, you must accept something ELSE as true whether that is true or not.  I would never say that, as a scientific skeptic, because that goes absolutely against how I view the world.

Really? Because you're missing the introspection part. Also the challenging your own views part. 

Also there's false dichotomy - which is what you are describing me as saying in your straw man.  Another thing I'd never do.  The "it's either this or that, black or white, no in-between, no other options" is an abhorrant concept to me.  I'd never accept the Kobayashi Maru either.

I'm not describing you as saying anything of the sort. I was only being as facetious as you were in your last post to me.

Not to mention that, actually, I can infer quite a fair amount of tone from the way you've written that sentence through your use of periods. But given all of our previous conversations, a discussion on the actual role of punctuation in grammer seems very pointless. 

Modifié par In Exile, 05 juin 2013 - 05:02 .

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Or, you could just not assume that you know how pther people think, and then this problem completely disappears.

We could also assume that drinking gasoline and then swallowing a match will make us immortal, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. 

You don't need to explain misunderstandings if you don't believe they're there.

You wouldn't need to fear mortality if you assumed you're immortal, but again, there are excellent reasons not to do that. 

It's off-topic, but I loathe that aspect of legal reasoning.  Since the intent certainly isn't knowable to an ordinary citizen who reads the law, the intent can't ever matter without violating the underlying legal principle of fairness.

The idea of intent in the law is not actually about real intention. It isn't an attempt to understand what actual mental states went into the drafting of a statute. It's about defining the scope of power granted by arguing through established analogies in a kind of analytical ritual.

For completely arbitrary historical reasons, certain kind of facts have been associated with certain kinds of grants of authority. Taking these historical features as, essentially, metaphysical primitives, statutory interpretation is about fiting the appropriate analogy that is response to a series of hard and soft constraints. 

But then, my understanding is that western law is supposed to rest on the principles of justice and fairness, and I've never really understood what the word justice means - I took graduate-level courses in legal reasoning, and never found anything like a decent definition of the word - so I work strictly from fairness in all legal matters. 

Nothing will give you less of an understanding of the law than an abstract course on legal reasoning. Theories of law are completely divorced from the structure of law, and generally some intellectual attempt at creating coherence where none exists and isn't intended to exist. 

The law is a tool. Creating a normative framework for the law is like trying to create a normative theory of forks. 

Anyway, if you want the real answer, justice is really capturing a sense of biologically hardwired social division of resources that we've got as an "intuition" because of our social tribe structures, and that biogically hardwired constraints exists in the form it does for purely arbtirary environmental reasons. 

[MerinTB]

In Exile wrote...
If you want to talk about falsehoods and sarcasm, then you're already covered the field there. 

Tu quoque fallacy.

For a silent protagonist, I have to divine the pre-existing intent behind a line where there's not enough information, which is why the silent protagonist is bad design for an RPG.

Opinion.  One I, and many people, both gamers and game designers, disagree with.

In Exile wrote...

What science does do, however, is continue to try and both prove itself wrong and constantly correct itself.  It never rests on things being "absolute truths."

That's not an accurate description of science, and what science does is an incredibly contested topic that's spawned entire academic disciplines. Suffice it to say that depending on the field this is both true and very false. 

• Science is a systematic and logical approach to discovering how things in the universe work. It is derived from the Latin word “scientia,” which translates to knowledge. Unlike the arts, science aims for measurable results through testing and analysis. Science is based on fact, not opinion or preferences. The process of science is designed to challenge ideas through research. It is not meant to prove theories, but rule out alternative explanations until a likely conclusion is reached.

Learn more here - http://www.livescien...fic-method.html

The scientific method relies on observing reality, posing questions about reality, forming a hypothesis that might answer a posed question, then testing the hypothesis to see if you can disprove it.

A key point to science is that your hypothesis should must be "testable and falsifiable"

Falsifiable means "able to be proven false, and therefore testable" - http://www.thefreedi...com/falsifiable

In Exile, do not attempt to argue with me about what SCIENCE is.  You are wasting your time.

In Exile wrote...

Scientific skeptics also know how to spot logical fallacies.

They're also introspective. 

They can be.  They can also be egotistical, self-righteous jerks.  They can also be the kindest, most giving of people. They can like puppies, hate kittens, be allergic to chocolate.  But, as a rule, all that being a scientific skeptic means that you believe science's ability to explain the world and that you don't accept the claims and conjectures of people who DON'T think that science is the best way to learn about the world.  

Nothing about introspection is required, though I suppose a scientific skeptic must be willing to accept a falsifiable hypothesis posed about him- or her- self.

Of course "what science does is an incredibly contested topic that's spawned entire academic disciplines. Suffice it to say that depending on the field this is both true and very false" doesn't read as very approving of science, on it's face, saying that science is an incredibly contested topic after all would seem to imply you think there is reason to doubt science--so you can guess, me being a scientific skeptic and having given a definition of what that means, exactly how much weight you're encouraging me to give your claims.

In Exile wrote...
Not to mention that, actually, I can infer quite a fair amount of tone from the way you've written that sentence through your use of periods. But given all of our previous conversations, a discussion on the actual role of punctuation in grammer seems very pointless. 

Fascinating.  Let me pull out my English degree hat, educate me on what you can read from my use of periods (sounds like graphology to me, so you have to know I'm going to be extremely skeptical of what you say) -- I'll be sure to run it by my wife, an English teacher, and my friend, a newspaper editor.  I'm sure we'll find it extremely enlightening.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Or, you could just not assume that you know how pther people think, and then this problem completely disappears.

We could also assume that drinking gasoline and then swallowing a match will make us immortal, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Right, because it produces a negative outcome.

But I'm describing a situation where your assumption makes things worse for you, not better.

You wouldn't need to fear mortality if you assumed you're immortal, but again, there are excellent reasons not to do that.

Why assume either?  Does you believing yourself to be mortal make any material difference in your life?  Beliving yourself to be immortal probably would (you'd be less risk-averse), but isn't the possibility of mortality enough to impart that risk-aversion?

Why assume that you're mortal?  I don't assume that I'm mortal, and I think I'm happier for it.  Being aware of my mortality would suck.  Why would I want to know that I'm going to die?

The idea of intent in the law is not actually about real intention. It isn't an attempt to understand what actual mental states went into the drafting of a statute. It's about defining the scope of power granted by arguing through established analogies in a kind of analytical ritual.

For completely arbitrary historical reasons, certain kind of facts have been associated with certain kinds of grants of authority. Taking these historical features as, essentially, metaphysical primitives, statutory interpretation is about fiting the appropriate analogy that is response to a series of hard and soft constraints.

How, then, do we ever undo bad decisions?  For example, I think Riggs v. Palmer was a terrible decision.  But it happened over a century ago.  Is it now so ingrained in the system that it is immutable?

Nothing will give you less of an understanding of the law than an abstract course on legal reasoning. Theories of law are completely divorced from the structure of law, and generally some intellectual attempt at creating coherence where none exists and isn't intended to exist.

In a common law system, perhaps.  I would think a civil law system would support coherence (and for that reason, I strongly favour civil law over common law).

The law is a tool. Creating a normative framework for the law is like trying to create a normative theory of forks.

It's a tool to direct behaviour.  If I don't understand it, it can't direct my behaviour.

Anyway, if you want the real answer, justice is really capturing a sense of biologically hardwired social division of resources that we've got as an "intuition" because of our social tribe structures, and that biogically hardwired constraints exists in the form it does for purely arbtirary environmental reasons.

And if a person lacks that "intuition" (and such people do exist), what then?  How are they supposed to understand the law?

This is way off-topic.  We need to take this to PMs.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 05 juin 2013 - 07:03 .

[AlanC9]

MerinTB wrote...

In Exile wrote...
For a silent protagonist, I have to divine the pre-existing intent behind a line where there's not enough information, which is why the silent protagonist is bad design for an RPG.

Opinion.  One I, and many people, both gamers and game designers, disagree with.

Just disagreeing with the "bad design" part, or are you also disagreeing about whether there's any need to divine the pre-existing intent?

Modifié par AlanC9, 05 juin 2013 - 09:04 .

[Fredward]

I wanna voiced protag cuz I like cinematics. Bioware likes cinematics too. A silent protag with cinematics would be stupid. So we get a voiced protag, which I'm totally cool with. I'd be fine with a silent protag but not in a cinematic game. A silent protag in a otherwise fully voiced game is also weird cuz the reaction of whoever you're talking to limits the way your pc could have delivered the line. Unless you wanna pretend EVERYONE has like Aspergers or something and just sucks at reading body language/understanding tone. Which is your headcanon sure but the game isn't catering to you, the intent isn't even there you're just pretending it is, which is also fine. I just don't understand that if you're comfortable with doing that why it's such a leap to fill in cognitive blanks with a voiced protag. "Sure Hawke is saying X but he's only doing it because Y." You'd have to do exactly the same when a voiced NPC reacts atypically to the meaning you attached to the unvoiced line.

So yeah with an unvoiced protag in a voiced game you wind up with a lot of the same limits as a voiced protagonist but without the voice and with none of the benefits.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

No, you don't. Because the line isn't in a vacuum. It's sorrounded by context - by other lines that writers have written, by the previous line, by the social cues sorrounding the scene, by the graphical presentation, by the reaction of other characters, by information we have about their perception of social indications ...

I insist that context isn't necessarily meaningful.

That's not an accurate description of science, and what science does is an incredibly contested topic that's spawned entire academic disciplines. Suffice it to say that depending on the field this is both true and very false.

There are vast swaths of "science" that are not science.

Falsifiability is paramount.

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

MerinTB wrote...

In Exile wrote...
For a silent protagonist, I have to divine the pre-existing intent behind a line where there's not enough information, which is why the silent protagonist is bad design for an RPG.

Opinion.  One I, and many people, both gamers and game designers, disagree with.

Just disagreeing with the "bad design" part, or are you also disagreeing about whether there's any need to divine the pre-existing intent?

I certainly disagree with that.  But I'm also a big fan of Death of Author in literary theory.

[Fast Jimmy]

Enabling perspectives, sure. But enabled perspectives doesn't mean intent.

The fact that English teachers cut their teeth on making wild sociopolitical assumptions on every well-known fiction book doesn't mean that's what the author intended. If, in fact, it was NOT what the author intended, then it is hard to consider it a valid interpretation.

Sure it does.

Have you ever had a paper/work critiqued? Did the editor say you were using the wrong tone, or improper use of literary devices or inconsistent voice? Did they praise an aspect of the work you did not expect, or say they walked away with a different perspective that hanged how you viewed that work?

That critique is valid. Your intent was not executed in a way that have the exact experience you anticipated. Part of this is technique, but the other part is the perspective of the end user. They end user brings thoughts, emotions, experiences and viewpoints with them that make how they view the work as inherently different than anyone else.

If I flip on an episode of Charlie Brown's Christmas Special and laugh at the funny parts, but you tear up and cry because the movie reminds you of a lost relative who used to watch the movie with you, those are two different reactions. Do you think Charles Schulz had the intent to make anyone cry from the memories of their dead relatives? No, unless he had a rather crazy, convoluted purpose to his writing that seems unlikely.

Does that make the sadness one can feel in my example incorrect? Invalid? WRONG? I'd say not. Experience trumps intent, mostly because the person who creates the content can never know all the circumstances and nuances their media may be viewed through. To say "well, that's not what I had in mind" is fine. But to say "that's not the way I envisioned it and anyone who didn't see things the way I did when I made this content was experiencing that content in a way that was inferior" grossly misunderstands how the lens of human perspective changes, distorts and warps nearly everything we see, do or experience.

Now, the point where your example comes into play is the gap between intent and how that intention is carried out. To use a different example, Mac Walters said that the end world state of ME3 was a "wasteland." That was clearly his intent. However, that actually doesn't happen in the game at all. His intent was not transferred clearly enough to be reality in his work.

For your example, I would say the reason the outsider's experience trumps the writer's intent is because this is reality, not metaphysics. Books and games and such are judged by what they are, not what was intended. It looking like a rape scene is an undesirable result, so the intent loses importance. I would argue that this is a social concept.

What if the tone the writer's intend is an undesirable result for me? Does the intent then not lose importance?

With a silent PC, I can make the call if that intent has importance or not. With a voice PC, I cannot make the call. To be melodramatic, I am exposed to metaphorical unwanted rape scenes.

[AlanC9]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
If I flip on an episode of Charlie Brown's Christmas Special and laugh at the funny parts, but you tear up and cry because the movie reminds you of a lost relative who used to watch the movie with you, those are two different reactions. Do you think Charles Schulz had the intent to make anyone cry from the memories of their dead relatives? No, unless he had a rather crazy, convoluted purpose to his writing that seems unlikely.

Does that make the sadness one can feel in my example incorrect? Invalid? WRONG? I'd say not. Experience trumps intent, mostly because the person who creates the content can never know all the circumstances and nuances their media may be viewed through. To say "well, that's not what I had in mind" is fine. But to say "that's not the way I envisioned it and anyone who didn't see things the way I did when I made this content was experiencing that content in a way that was inferior" grossly misunderstands how the lens of human perspective changes, distorts and warps nearly everything we see, do or experience.

But surely the person in this example would know that the sadness was caused by personal factors, and that the vast majority of people would share neither those factors nor that feeling. It would not be sensible to say that "the Christmas Special is sad" if you meant to convey that you felt sad when watching it because of those reasons.

Or perhaps it never makes sense to say "the Christmas Special is sad."

[MerinTB]

AlanC9 wrote...

MerinTB wrote...

In Exile wrote...
For a silent protagonist, I have to divine the pre-existing intent behind a line where there's not enough information, which is why the silent protagonist is bad design for an RPG.

Opinion.  One I, and many people, both gamers and game designers, disagree with.

Just disagreeing with the "bad design" part, or are you also disagreeing about whether there's any need to divine the pre-existing intent?

I thought the bolding would make it clear, though maybe I should have included "the silent protagonist" in there.  To clarify, since you ask, I meant that silent protagonist being bad design for an RPG is opinion.

I doubt you could quantifiably prove it is good or bad.  At best, you could probably prove it to be popular or unpopular to the majority of RPG players or some such... but that doesn't equate to it being good or bad design, just liked or disliked design.

[MerinTB]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
There are vast swaths of "science" that are not science.

Falsifiability is paramount.

Any pseudo-science should not be given the name science.  Like, say, graphology! 

And, yes, falsifiability is absolutely paramount.  If you cannot test your hypothesis, if there isn't a way that your hypothesis could be clearly proven false, then it is a useless hypothesis.

Another thing of extreme importance in sciene, something that the layman often doesn't comprehend, is that not even a theory is consider 100% certain (strike that - the common person thinks that "theory" means "rampant conjecture" and not "very thoroughly tested and verified to be as close to scientific truth as we can get about anything remotely complex.")  Science is self-correcting, never set in stone, and always looking to challenge itself.

Too often the fact that science is quite willing to admit it was wrong when presented with new, compelling evidence is seen by less science-minded individuals, and touted by shucksters, as a weakness of science.  To the point, it's one of the greatest strengths of science.

....

that's quite the digression.

I'm against the word "wheel" having anything to do with RPGs, except in the context of mills and vehicles, and perhaps how a formation turns while marching.

[MerinTB]

EntropicAngel wrote...
And I would repeat that your experience, if outside of the author's intent, is wrong. However, I would say again that wrongness doesn't matter in this case.

That's a bold statement.

As someone who considers himself a writer, my intent is not nearly as important as my hopes that the majority of my readers understand what a scene is meant to convey.

To bring this around, EA - the scene in my novel that you had issue with, that you felt was too erotic, and you seemed to focus on the inclusion of the word nipple.  I explained that my intent was NOT to have the scene be erotic nor overtly sexual.  But your experience was one of discomfort.

For you, my writing FAILED in that scene because you came away with the wrong impression.  But YOU were not wrong in your experience.

Modifié par MerinTB, 05 juin 2013 - 06:38 .

[MerinTB]

EntropicAngel wrote...
I will say that the reason I didn't care for that scene was because it felt like the intent was vaguely erotic. It wasn't necessarily the use of the word nipple, but the action involved with the nipple: the jerking back and the crying out, and the refusal to meet the gaze. That paints a very different picture than simply a hand moving over a breast. It felt like the intent was muddled.

That's a different issue than experience. Or so I would argue.

Your writing failing because I came away with the wrong impression is a valid statement, but I would argue that your writing failing because, say, a woman who had a lover named Mason who rejected her now can't read your book without hurting, is an invalid statement.

Without getting into lengthy discussions of the scene in question, a person's experiences color how they view the world.  A woman, especially one who's been abused, harassed or dismissed by men all her life will see the actions of men around her very differently than the guy who was a jock and goes out drinking with his bro's every Friday night.  Their experiences will shape how they see people and events around them.

Not meaing to put words in your mouth, but I have to ask - Did you view the exchange as seemingly an allegory for, what, a woman's first homosexual liason?  Shayla finding herself stimulated but confused, wanting to engage in passion with Eleanor but too afraid or confused about her own sexuality?  If so, what life experiences have you had to see it as you did?

Would another person, one who had been in a position of unwanted advances from someone in a position of power over them, see the scene instead of Shayla being terrified of Eleanor and Eleanor trying to use her position of power to get Shayla to do things that Shayla didn't want to?

Or could a person who is gay read that and see it as yet another example of homophobia, of a straight person overreacting and assuming everything coming from a homosexual has to have a sexual connotation?

Which of those is a correct assumption?  Or are they all wrong?

Part of writing, sometimes, is just presenting a scene and letting the reading interpret the full ramifications.  Sometimes what is NOT written is far more engaging to the reader than what is.

Think of a singer / song writer, like Seal back in the day, who refuses to have their lyrics published.  They want the audience to internalize the song, and take it to mean whatever is important to the listener.  Is that more right or more wrong than the singer / song writer who not only publishes the lyrics but will do intereviews, maybe even CD liner notes, explaining the meaning and inspiriation for each song?

I say I failed at that scene with you, EA, not because your interpretation of what was going on in the scene was necessarily wrong, per se, but because you shouldn't have felt the scene to be overly erotically charged.  My use of words and descriptions in the scene seemed to rely too much on aspects that triggered, for you, thoughts of "sex."

[AlanC9]

MerinTB wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

MerinTB wrote...

In Exile wrote...
For a silent protagonist, I have to divine the pre-existing intent behind a line where there's not enough information, which is why the silent protagonist is bad design for an RPG.

Opinion.  One I, and many people, both gamers and game designers, disagree with.

Just disagreeing with the "bad design" part, or are you also disagreeing about whether there's any need to divine the pre-existing intent?

I thought the bolding would make it clear, though maybe I should have included "the silent protagonist" in there.  To clarify, since you ask, I meant that silent protagonist being bad design for an RPG is opinion.

That bolding would have made your position clear, I suppose, if you had actually made those words bold.  But it's in In Exile's original post.

[MerinTB]

AlanC9 wrote...

MerinTB wrote...
I thought the bolding would make it clear, though maybe I should have included "the silent protagonist" in there.  To clarify, since you ask, I meant that silent protagonist being bad design for an RPG is opinion.

That bolding would have made your position clear, I suppose, if you had actually made those words bold.  But it's in In Exile's original post.

Yes, I left the bold as is intact.  I had hoped that I wouldn't have had to underline the bolded part as well to continue the emphasis.

Clearly I was mistaken.  I have since clarified.  Does this need to go further?

[MerinTB]

EntropicAngel wrote...
I'd argue that it's only based on my experiences, inasmuch as my experiences have led me to believe than running a hand over the breast CAN be erotic, inasmuch as a crying out or gasping while doing so CAN be erotic, insomuch as refusing to look at someone CAN be considered not erotic, but a sign of guilt at an inappropriate act, inasmuch as a feeling of arousal CAN be considered erotic. I make these assumptions based not on my personal experience, but on the definitions of what these things mean: one definition of running a hand over someone's body is foreplay. One definition of someone crying out is shock or surprise. One definition of someone refusing to look at another is guilt.

The only real logical leap I'm making is that those definitions, in particular, are the accurate ones: that it appears to be foreplay because it IS foreplay, that it is shock or surprise because of a...ahem, climactic occurence, that it is guilt because of an inappropriate or unwanted advance (and I do recall there being a line about the "unwanted" advance).

The scene is Eleanor showing Shayla how an Other sees her, at least how Eleanor sees her, especially in Irrean.  To do that she has to make contact, affecting the parts to show off their hidden qualities.

The spark, the rejection, is no different than Shayla shaking off Mason's "memory haze" or how other abilties quickly fail to work on her.  What Eleanor was doing, Shayla's body rejected.

It was super-charged by Shayla's discomfort, and the act that you took as overtly sexual so did Shayla on some level.  Her body fired back.  Eleanor was physically repulsed, drained, stunned.

If you want to see that as a climax, I can see it described as such.  Is sexuality absent from the scene?  No, it is quite present in an uncomfortable way in Shayla's mind.

Was it meant to be an allegory for foreplay?  Not by author's intent.

Did Eleanor feel guilt?  Not in the slightest.  This is my biggest failure, I suppose, to make clear that what Eleanor feels is WEAK, HARMED and EXPELLED.

Modifié par MerinTB, 05 juin 2013 - 08:43 .