Story Friday Nov 11, 2016

[hkmaly 490]

36 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

I can't think of a known way of self-awakening where the self doesn't notice.  Susan awakened herself and that was very angsty and dramatic.  We have no information that says anything angsty or dramatic this happened to Rhoda recently.

Might be because we know next to nothing about self-awakenings. Also, while Rhoda doesn't seem the type, I know I would be able to miss several angst-induced awakenings every month, unless they would change my hair color. Remember: she have no idea what awakening is and how it looks, how can she recognize it? Even that cool dramatic effect of Susan's hair changing was mainly for the others, she was unlikely to see it (because no mirror). And that was MAJOR angst-induced awakening, there are also minor ones, presumably less flashy.

[Vorlonagent 442]

27 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Might be because we know next to nothing about self-awakenings. Also, while Rhoda doesn't seem the type, I know I would be able to miss several angst-induced awakenings every month, unless they would change my hair color. Remember: she have no idea what awakening is and how it looks, how can she recognize it? Even that cool dramatic effect of Susan's hair changing was mainly for the others, she was unlikely to see it (because no mirror). And that was MAJOR angst-induced awakening, there are also minor ones, presumably less flashy.

 "We don't know" is all I'm saying.  And then saying from the choices we do know of, there's only one left.

Susan rose into the air and the dye drained from her hair.  At that point Jerry was still completely sure it was a minor angst-induced awakening.  Do you have angsty moments 4 times a month where you rise into the air?  If not, you'd notice the one time you did.

More importantly would Rhoda have those kind of moments?  Her life seems relatively stable and happy despite being in high school, which is normally a wall-to-wall drama-fest.

[hkmaly 490]

16 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

"We don't know" is all I'm saying.  And then saying from the choices we do know of, there's only one left.

That's not how Occam's razors work.

16 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

Susan rose into the air and the dye drained from her hair.  At that point Jerry was still completely sure it was a minor angst-induced awakening.

At that point Jerry was still trying to calm everybody that it is a minor angst-induced awakening. I don't think he was as sure as he was pretending.

18 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

Do you have angsty moments 4 times a month where you rise into the air?  If not, you'd notice the one time you did.

I didn't noticed any moment I would rise into the air (unless jumping counts), but I'm not so sure I would notice, because, you know, angst and therefore not really paying attention to what's happening.

On the other hand, I didn't break my monitor or something similar yet, so it's not like completely out of control.

(Note: which doesn't mean I'm angsty from Internet debates or something. When I'm angsty before monitor, it's usually work-induced angst.)

19 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

More importantly would Rhoda have those kind of moments?

I did said I don't think Rhoda is that type. She's more likely to have those totally quiet and inconspicuous breakdowns.

20 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

Her life seems relatively stable and happy despite being in high school, which is normally a wall-to-wall drama-fest.

Her life was so stable and happy she changed look enough to convince Justin she's moved. And that was before the boar, which might've made her celebrity AGAIN (she even tried to change look again to not break her hidding look). AND she has a girlfriend now, which might make her more happy but definitely not more stable.

[Scotty 1,061]

7 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

38 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

"We don't know" is all I'm saying.  And then saying from the choices we do know of, there's only one left.

That's not how Occam's razors work.

And basically what I'm saying, is unless it's actually mentioned in the comic that Rhoda had some sort of emotional induced awakening or an Immortal induced one, I chose to believe that she awakened without such influences.

Also, one thing to wonder about, would Pandora know by looking, if an awakening was caused by another Immortal?

[Vorlonagent 442]

7 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

That's not how Occam's razors work.

Yes it is   Simplest explanation.  Choosing from known choices = simplest.

8 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

At that point Jerry was still trying to calm everybody that it is a minor angst-induced awakening. I don't think he was as sure as he was pretending.

Sure, but Jerry didn't hesitate to identify Susan's as a major angst-induced awakening once he was sure.

9 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Her life was so stable and happy she changed look enough to convince Justin she's moved. And that was before the boar, which might've made her celebrity AGAIN (she even tried to change look again to not break her hidding look). AND she has a girlfriend now, which might make her more happy but definitely not more stable.

Rhoda was being interviewed when Pandora showed up.  That's why she changed her look.  She changed her behavior to avoid feeling uncomfortable.  Note that if it was before the board it was before she met Catalina.  Her life has seemed to get a lot happier

[Vorlonagent 442]

3 minutes ago, Scotty said:

And basically what I'm saying, is unless it's actually mentioned in the comic that Rhoda had some sort of emotional induced awakening or an Immortal induced one, I chose to believe that she awakened without such influences.

Right there with you on that one...

[hkmaly 490]

17 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

29 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

That's not how Occam's razors work.

Yes it is   Simplest explanation.  Choosing from known choices = simplest.

It doesn't work if you KNOW there is some choice you don't know.

17 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

30 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

At that point Jerry was still trying to calm everybody that it is a minor angst-induced awakening. I don't think he was as sure as he was pretending.

Sure, but Jerry didn't hesitate to identify Susan's as a major angst-induced awakening once he was sure.

Well he must've admitted it when he was zapping her (with the "serenity" spell) due to that.

 

[Vorlonagent 442]

17 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It doesn't work if you KNOW there is some choice you don't know.

You're adding conditions to Occam's Razor, which simply reads, "The simplest explanation is the most satisfying."  That's the Razor.  Nothing about assessing unknowns or incomplete choice sets. "Simple" means discarding choices we don't know or simply saying "Of the choices we know or can reasonably figure out" (which is what I did) and then choose the simplest choice (which is also what I did).

[Drasvin 123]

I might be remembering wrong, but I don't think Rhoda is in the loop about magic and stuff. So she likely wouldn't know that awakening is a thing or anything else about magic outside of her personal experience and experimentation.

So it's possible she had an awakening somewhere private with all the dramatic special effects, and she wouldn't have known what had just happened except her strange mark is gone and her size changing abilities improved in new ways (her new spells are similar enough that someone not in the know might mistake them as extensions of the previous ability)

Since Rhoda is keeping her ability secret from seemingly everyone except Cat, it's unlikely she would have told anyone else about the weird spectacle she experienced.

[hkmaly 490]

2 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

20 hours ago, hkmaly said:

It doesn't work if you KNOW there is some choice you don't know.

You're adding conditions to Occam's Razor, which simply reads, "The simplest explanation is the most satisfying."  That's the Razor.  Nothing about assessing unknowns or incomplete choice sets. "Simple" means discarding choices we don't know or simply saying "Of the choices we know or can reasonably figure out" (which is what I did) and then choose the simplest choice (which is also what I did).

If you want to be technical, Occam's Razor also doesn't say that the simplest explanation is TRUE.

(Although, there actually isn't any "canon" formulation of Occam's Razor.)

37 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

I might be remembering wrong, but I don't think Rhoda is in the loop about magic and stuff.

She definitely isn't.

37 minutes ago, Drasvin said:

So she likely wouldn't know that awakening is a thing or anything else about magic outside of her personal experience and experimentation.

So it's possible she had an awakening somewhere private with all the dramatic special effects, and she wouldn't have known what had just happened except her strange mark is gone and her size changing abilities improved in new ways (her new spells are similar enough that someone not in the know might mistake them as extensions of the previous ability)

Yes. She might not even notice that her size changing abilities improved at the same moment - unlike the mark spell, which the marked person usually cast on his/her own, you can have new spell for months and never noticing (see Susan for example). If the awakening was dramatic, she might decide she need pause afterwards and would only cast her new spell week or two later, and not connecting it.

She only mentioned she had the mark because it was relevant.

I'm actually not sure how she connected the mark with her spell, but she apparently did. When she noticed her mark disappeared, she certainly checked if she can still resize things, but noticing small change in how her spell works?

 

 

[Vorlonagent 442]

22 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

If you want to be technical, Occam's Razor also doesn't say that the simplest explanation is TRUE.

I didn't say "true" did I? 

[hkmaly 490]

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

If you want to be technical, Occam's Razor also doesn't say that the simplest explanation is TRUE.

I didn't say "true" did I? 

No.

And I wasn't exactly speaking about what would the result of applying Occam's razor on this situation be. I just said it wouldn't work. We have too little information about the situation. We don't know all possibilities how can someone awaken ; we don't know Voltaire's motivation ; we don't know much about Rhoda - we probably know less about her than Pandora, and Pandora was surprised. Any possible answer is going to require assumption which we can't honestly say how simple is. We can, obviously, still speculate. But Occan's razor is supposed to be used on hypothesis, not wild guesses.

[Vorlonagent 442]

22 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Occan's razor is supposed to be used on hypothesis, not wild guesses.

I wasn't making wild guesses.  I was making a hypotheses based on known data.

The alternatives are to simply throw up our hands until Dan tells us either how Rhoda Awakened or tells us every possible way a human could Awaken (won't have complete information before then therefore cannot speculate).  Neither of those sound very fun. 

[hkmaly 490]

29 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

The alternatives are to simply throw up our hands until Dan tells us either how Rhoda Awakened or tells us every possible way a human could Awaken (won't have complete information before then therefore cannot speculate).  Neither of those sound very fun. 

We can speculate all we want. We just need to accept it's often closer to wild guesses than to hypotheses.

Remember, one of point of Occam's razor is that simpler hypotheses are better testable (Karl Popper, 1992). But we can't really test anything in EGS world - unfortunately ; I'm sure everyone would like to. And most would even think up something else besides dangerous tests like "how firm are Nanase's ... various parts of body". We only get the informations in comics, meaning we are in similar situation like astronomers before Sputnik.