So, how far from completion are you all, with your WIP?

I would say mine is about 85% complete - although I have to admit it's not going to be quite the colossal adventure I was dreaming of when I set out.

I'm hoping, with all that I've learned, my next is going to be much easier and therefore bigger.

Probably about 5%. Need to knuckle down a bit.

It's hard to estimate but I'd say mine's about 25%. It's been hard to find the time so work on it has been painfully erratic. The map and major objects are done, but I've still got a lot of placeholder text for scenery and puzzles that will have to be touched up, lots of NPC dialogue to write, and the end-game segment that still needs to be implemented and padded out with another puzzle somewhere.

Maybe it's more than 25% but I'm just rounding down in case anything unexpected pops up.

0.00000000000001 % done

Well... the old gamebooks of the fighting fantasy series used to have 400 pages, I have written about 328, so 82% done? I wonder thought if I will leave it at that or continue, I suppose it depends on the interest of people...

adrao wrote:Well... the old gamebooks of the fighting fantasy series used to have 400 pages, I have written about 328, so 82% done? I wonder thought if I will leave it at that or continue, I suppose it depends on the interest of people...

You mean the Ian Livingstone/Steve Jackson stuff? I don;t remember them being that hefty.

I still have The Warlock of Firetop Mountain so can check at some point.

OurJud, they were indeed, I played lots of them and remember that ultimate success was page 400... warlock was indeed a classic, though the maze at the end used to drive me crazy! Anyway when I get to 400 I think I will consider the game finished and release, up to then will continue beta-testing! 82% finished doesn't sound too bad...

You really needed a pen and paper to do the maze as the directions weren't logical and you'd go round in circles.

They probably don't seem to be 400 pages as some of the pages were only a few words long.

"You stumble on a branch, turn to page 57"

ah yes, sorry, I suppose I meant "sections"? what did they use to call them? (or did they just use to say "turn to 50"). But indeed, many of them were quite short actually...

but yes, i remember doing crazy maps of that maze...

I can see the end. I'm one baddie away from the Big Boss. Once those are done, it's just a case of polishing.

Congrats!

Let me know if you need a beta tester.

Thanks.

I can't tell. I might have over-extended myself. This game has so many paths and choices that it's exhausting to make any progress. Right now I'm sitting at 85+ pages and there are only about 7 or so choices for the player each way. Not sure what to do.

renagrade wrote:I can't tell. I might have over-extended myself. This game has so many paths and choices that it's exhausting to make any progress. Right now I'm sitting at 85+ pages and there are only about 7 or so choices for the player each way. Not sure what to do.

That scale makes mine sound like a mini-game. I think I have on average about 3 path choices at each location.

renagrade wrote:I can't tell. I might have over-extended myself. This game has so many paths and choices that it's exhausting to make any progress. Right now I'm sitting at 85+ pages and there are only about 7 or so choices for the player each way. Not sure what to do.

Are you talking about a CYOA or an IF game?

Marzipan wrote:

"renagrade"

I can't tell. I might have over-extended myself. This game has so many paths and choices that it's exhausting to make any progress. Right now I'm sitting at 85+ pages and there are only about 7 or so choices for the player each way. Not sure what to do.

Are you talking about a CYOA or an IF game?

What would be the defining difference between the two?

IF is interactive fiction (aka text adventures), while CYOA is a choose your own adventure, aka gamebook. The latter was what I was assuming based on your remark about choices and pages written, but I was just asking for clarification since OurJud was comparing it to the size of his (IF) game.

And IMO it's just such a completely different writing process that you get an apples and oranges situation trying to compare the two.

edit: okay based on your comment in another thread, yeah, it's a gamebook, so don't feel too bad, OurJud! Writing a game like yours with seven separate paths would basically make you some kind of IF-writing god, I don't think I've ever seen it done before.

As for n00b, have you figured out how to work in more choices for yours? Because requiring the player to read like 12 pages per choice might be a bit much, yes. Turning a short story into a CYOA is something I've attempted before so believe me, I feel your pain there...one trick you might consider is switching character POVs a lot, it lets you give the player choices without actually changing major plot events too drastically.

Marzipan wrote:IF is interactive fiction (aka text adventures), while CYOA is a choose your own adventure, aka gamebook. The latter was what I was assuming based on your remark about choices and pages written, but I was just asking for clarification since OurJud was comparing it to the size of his (IF) game.

And IMO it's just such a completely different writing process that you get an apples and oranges situation trying to compare the two.

edit: okay based on your comment in another thread, yeah, it's a gamebook, so don't feel too bad, OurJud! Writing a game like yours with seven separate paths would basically make you some kind of IF-writing god, I don't think I've ever seen it done before.

As for n00b, have you figured out how to work in more choices for yours? Because requiring the player to read like 12 pages per choice might be a bit much, yes. Turning a short story into a CYOA is something I've attempted before so believe me, I feel your pain there...one trick you might consider is switching character POVs a lot, it lets you give the
player choices without actually changing major plot events too drastically.

Thanks for clearing that up, Marzipan. As for the Do More With Less part, I'm probably committing a deadly sin(in fact I know I am) by making the player's dialogue how you progress. Anytime the player says something it advances the plot. Sometimes there are multiple choices. Those choices branch off the storyline. Then those branches have twigs. Then those twigs have stems. Then those stems have buds. But they all are following the same general path. The choices themselves lead to a sort of pseudo POV change where for example, this playthrough I was the outlaw who robbed the train, next playthrough I was the outlaw who had a change of heart and shot my accomplices before they robbed everyone blind.

In the end you get this:

Roots: Man who needs money
Trunk: Mixed up with outlaws
Branches: A, Rob train. B, Save train.
Twigs: Shot three other men on a train, how do I prove I was saving them without making myself out to be guilty too?
Stem: Convince everyone they were outlaws and you remembered seeing their face on a wanted poster.
Bud: Cash reward for saving train.

The beginning and end line up in the same general way. The big difference is how you get there. Not to say all of my paths lead to the same ending scene or even the same type of ending. Or are about cowboys. Or trains. Or trees.

Boy it's a slow process this IF lark!

I've just spent the last two hours mapping out a four-roomed apartment and the various objects contained within, and I'm knackered (mentally speaking).

Yep, it's brutal.

I finally picked my game up again today and spent like four hours working on a bunch of stuff most players will probably never even try.

Marzipan wrote:... spent like four hours working on a bunch of stuff most players will probably never even try.

I know the feeling well

I have to say, I opened the TA side of Quest and just thought to myself, "Nope." So OurJud...respeckt. What's your IF about, if you dont mind spoiling?

n00b wrote:I have to say, I opened the TA side of Quest and just thought to myself, "Nope." So OurJud...respeckt. What's your IF about, if you dont mind spoiling?

Thanks

I felt the same way when I first started to play around with it, but I resented the restrictions of the GB mode so persevered. I wouldn't have got anywhere near this far if it wasn't for the help of a few, very dedicated members here.

My game's a sci-fi detective/bounty hunter type affair with a setting very much influenced by the film Blade Runner - not very original I know, and I don't know if my writing has pulled it off, but that was the vibe I was going for. You play a man hunting the developer of a new, very destructive trend drug called Cloud 9. It's a simple case of working your way through his cronies to get to him, and is nowhere near as 'epic' as I'd (rather innocently) imagined, but it's only my first effort and I'd say 70% of my time has been spent on here asking for help.

OurJud wrote:

"n00b"

I have to say, I opened the TA side of Quest and just thought to myself, "Nope." So OurJud...respeckt. What's your IF about, if you dont mind spoiling?

Thanks

I felt the same way when I first started to play around with it, but I resented the restrictions of the GB mode so persevered. I wouldn't have got anywhere near this far if it wasn't for the help of a few, very dedicated members here.

My game's a sci-fi detective/bounty hunter type affair with a setting very much influenced by the film Blade Runner - not very original I know, and I don't know if my writing has pulled it off, but that was the vibe I was going for. You play a man hunting the developer of a new, very destructive trend drug called Cloud 9. It's a simple case of working your way through his cronies to get to him, and is nowhere near as 'epic' as I'd (rather innocently) imagined, but it's only my first effort and I'd say 70% of my time has been spent on here asking for help.

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it." -C.S. Lewis

Surely truthful fiction is an oxymoron?

isn't truth fiction, too, an oxymoron?

'truth~facts' and 'perfection~paradise' are the few single word oxymorons, hehe

give me any truth, and I'll show you a lie~fiction~deception~falsity

perfection~paradise is balance, for example, a perfect world (or person), is not a world (or person) without evil~suffering~etc (nor a world~person of no good~etc), but a world (or person) of equal forces of evil~suffering~etc and good~etc, perfection~paradise is not perfection~paradise, hence it's a single word oxymoron

how can you have~know perfection, without having~knowing imperfection? everything requires a comparison~contrasting:

how can you be~know cold~chill, if you never are~know hot~heat~warmth?

if you're perfect at offense, then you're not perfect at offense. if you're perfect at defense, then you're not perfect at defense. If you know both offense and defense, then you are perfect at both offense and defense. For one to be good at offense, one must know defense (so you know how to beat it), for one to be good at defense, one must know offense (how will they try to beat my defense, allowing me to beat their offense). how can you know defense if you don't know how defense is attacked? how can you know offense, if you don't know how offense is defended against? Know thy enemy and thy self, Know thy enemy's and thy self's, strategy+tactics

the absoluteness of dualism.

My biggest problem at the moment seems to know when to stop writing and actually release the game... I mean, 82% finished but I am not sure it is worth waiting till I reach 100% to officially release the game? I have had a few beta testers already, and generally it seems that what is there is kind of solid...

You're the Stephen King of IF

hahaha so you think its time to release it?

Do all the story arcs read smoothly? If so, yeah. No need to keep growing it for the sake of it.

When I started this thread I estimated my game was 85% complete.

Posting tonight after a short stint on it, I'd say it was 86% complete

I have this uncanny knack of turning everything I do into a chore

if you're perfect at offense, then you're not perfect at offense. if you're perfect at defense, then you're not perfect at defense.

Unless you're going for a zen koan sort of thing, neither of those make sense.

If you know both offense and defense, then you are perfect at both offense and defense.

Which from your first two sentences means you're not perfect at either. (Sorry. The logical syllogism part of my brain kicking in. Though I do like trying to figure things out.) Perhaps you mean things like "if you're *only* perfect at offense, then you're not perfect at offense." But even that doesn't make sense. Obviously, you're saying you can't be perfect at either in isolation.

So last night I said SCREW IT and pared my entire game down to 25 rooms. Not going to try to calculate percentages right now but this should put me a lot closer to the finish line.

Surely truthful fiction is an oxymoron?

There can easily be truth in fiction.

Wikipedia: Truth is most often used to mean being in accord with fact or reality, or fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal.

Fidelity or accordance is all that's required.

I even wrote a blog thingy about fictional facts, but that's a different topic.

https://bejitters.wordpress.com/2012/07/15/jitter-9-2/

For example, there are mathematical truths, verified and proven theorems, which have nothing whatsoever to do with reality (anything to do with infinity, for example). But they exist as truths within their own context.

"I am Batman" is false, when said by me. But it's a true statement when said by Bruce Wayne - who doesn't exist except within our minds. But is that any less real? Thoughts do exist. Ooohh... memes. lol

Marzipan wrote:So last night I said SCREW IT and pared my entire game down to 25 rooms. Not going to try to calculate percentages right now but this should put me a lot closer to the finish line.

I had one room, and it took me over two years to finish. Perhaps I should have pared it down.

jaynabonne wrote:
There can easily be truth in fiction.

Wikipedia: Truth is most often used to mean being in accord with fact or reality, or fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal.

Fidelity or accordance is all that's required.

I see the phrase 'truth in fiction' and I take it as everything in a story just feeling believable and right. Characters interacting in ways that make sense, the world staying faithful to its established rules while also reflecting 'universal truths' we know from the real one, and so on.

We're talking LOTR in the movie threads, I think the books are a good example even though they're about as fictional as it gets. Or, maybe a little more obscure, but I'm rereading Watership Down right now...probably one of my favorite books, and I'd say there's a lot of truth in once you get past the premise of talking rabbits.

And yeah, you should have just written half a room. I mean obviously.

92%

Bar the play-testing and polishing.

I haven't written anything at all, period, in almost two weeks now. I think about various things I want to work on all day and then by the time I get home I'm just too exhausted and/or miserable.

If I can just make it past the first week of February I should be able to get some semblance of my life back, but knowing how my brain works, by then I'll have probably lost all interest in being creative and just be ready to go and reinstall Morrowind awhile or whatever.

I had a few weeks like that towards the end of last year. I decided that I needed to learn 3D modelling so my game could have screenshots of rooms before a mate politely reminded me that the whole point of interactive fiction is because it's, well, interactive fiction. My latest piece of procrastination has involved me having ideas of the game having a branching narrative, like CYOA. This is a returning theme to my mind so no doubt I'll climb that mountain some day. I've actually penned out the mechanics of how it would work, but I can't think of the different stories with different resolutions for the game I'm writing lol. Maybe it'll come later. But I have to remind myself that for now it'd be an achievement to just finish a linear game. I've almost finished the first room of my game now. It's not even complicated, working with two states (light and dark) gives you plenty to think about though. I also added a little tutorial for folks not familiar with parser games which could be seen as further procrastination I suppose.

Lordy!! Is there some kind of connection between IF creation and those prone to depression?

Dr jdpjdpjdp ??

Right now it's really more 'complete and utter exhaustion' than 'depression' for me, though I admit I do get the occasional bout of that too.

If I have any actual diagnosable mental issue it's probably something closer to ADHD...

[Freud voice]Vat ve see here ees the eener verkings off the creatiff mind...[/Freud voice]

There's a pretty proven correlation between creativity and depression. It's obviously not universal, but I don't think I'm saying anything we don't all already know.

My current game-related struggle is a mental health issue, too... specifically my OCD.

I have a tavern. What should be in a tavern? Patrons, staff, tables, chairs, bar, food, beverages, walls, floor, ceiling, etc. So I want to put in all those things. And I want to ensure there is an appropriate default for all those things, for all the verbs in the game (about forty-fifty). All this despite the fact that the room serves no purpose except to have a conversation with one person. The amount of work that entails is maddening, and I can't NOT do it because the alternative is that things like "throw bartender" and "lick wall" -- stupid and unnecessary, but still technically possible -- won't have their own witty responses. Given the scope I have envisioned for the game, I will finish it sometime around 2247, at which point text will become obsolete as we'll all exist as sentient gases communicating through odors.

The alternatives I find myself looking at are to either disable the command bar and do everything w/ links and buttons (to keep people from typing stupid stuff I have to account for), or going full gamebook. Both of which bug me, because I feel like I've wasted all that energy spent learning all the complex coding stuff I've been plugging away at.

Needless to say, I'm taking a breather for the day...

jdpjdpjdp wrote:The amount of work that entails is maddening, and I can't NOT do it because the alternative is that things like "throw bartender" and "lick wall" -- stupid and unnecessary, but still technically possible -- won't have their own witty responses.

That's priceless, but only because I recognise it so well.

That said, please don't tell me you're genuinely including a response for 'lick wall'. There's simply no end if you're going to be that obsessive.

I've been in a similar predicament in that there's only a handful of objects in my first room. But there's a lot of nouns in the description. And then there's examining those nouns when it's light and examining them when it's dark. Some of those things can't be seen in the dark, so people will want to feel them etc. And on and on the list goes. Especially as the finer descriptions contain nouns themselves... lol.

It's not OCD for me I don't think. Just chronic perfectionism (maybe that's undiagnosed OCD though?)

It seems daft polishing at such an early stage. But I'd go mad if I had an entire game's worth of that to do at the end.

OurJud wrote:That said, please don't tell me you're genuinely including a response for 'lick wall'. There's simply no end if you're going to be that obsessive.

Yes, I really am that obsessive, and yes, I did put a response for "lick wall". Assuming I don't ditch the command line entirely, however, I'll be removing it... pure scenery items will be looked at, MAYBE touched, and that's it. I've played really great games that have fewer custom defaults in the entire game than I've got in my first room, and you're right, it's never going to end that way.

I have to adopt the following mantra: "A great game isn't defined by the response you get for being dumb, it's defined by the response you get for being smart." If I can stick to that, I'll be okay. (Maybe.)

@Jay:

actually... there is infinity in the real world:

how long is the coastline of the U.K. ??? (it's infinitely long, as you can always make smaller and smaller measurements, think of having to measure it with a meter~yard stick, vs a half-meter~yard stick, vs a 1/3 meter~yard stick, etc etc etc, the smaller, more precise the measuring tool, the more distance you discover, due to the infinity of its fractualization)

if you have to walk 10 feet, and each step you take cuts remaining distance in half, you'll never reach 10 feet, as this is infinity too.

the measurement of NATURE is infinity, and Fractuals is the math to measure infinity:

Fractals: Hunting for the Hidden Dimension ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s65DSz78jW4 )

uber cool video, and fascinating math~physics~science subject.

-------

there's no such thing as mathematical truths (math and science are religions~beliefs, and just as aloof as the rest of the religions~beliefs, there are no truths, only faith, we have faith that our math and physics 'laws' are correct... but later we learn that they're not, just like with early religions~beliefs such as what are now known as mythologies ~ philosophies ~ Religions, though with genetic engineering we may soon have centaurs and minotaurs and etc hybrids, and etc mythos or even godly stuff, lol), as, as we discover more and more, we learn that what we thought was mathematical truth, was completely incorrect. some examples: understanding of time (we still have no idea, it's uber complicated: not just as space-time, but even just with film~animation physics and movement physics itself as just being static~still 'snapshots~pictures', yet we have movement, seemingly anyways, lol), newtonian physics vs quantum physics, and etc etc etc

and then... we always USE math... which means, we twist it, using it for our AGENDA... we can pick and choose what numbers to use or how to ask the questions (for example in a statistics survery~poll or a 'scientific study', haha... right...)

--------

ya, I wasn't writing those things in terms of a logical construct... laughs... (though I do love circular logic, it's fun, and it's actually debatable in whether it is a falicy or not, as the real world has lots of circular stuff... it has validity, so it's thus not neccessarily a falicy)...

I love this logic challenge:

The below sentence is true.
The above setence is false.

And I don't understand the difficulty in the "chicken vs~or the egg", of course the chicken comes first, as the egg is CREATED BY the (female) chicken. What's so unknown... ??? HK scratches his head... it's a very simple biology 101 question+answer... sighs. Gamates (sex chromosomes: X and Y: egg:XX and sperm:XY) are the products of a mature organism, they have no other origin, they're MADE by the mature organism. You can't have a product, without having its producer first.

anyways... (I'm wandering... lol)....

I explain though what I meant by them (I might have edited this in after you read my post, if you didn't see them there):

"For one to be good at offense, one must know defense (so you know how to beat it), for one to be good at defense, one must know offense (how will they try to beat my defense, allowing me to beat their offense). how can you know defense if you don't know how defense is attacked? how can you know offense, if you don't know how offense is defended against? Know thy enemy and thy self, Know thy enemy's and thy self's, strategy+tactics (HK)."

I wouldn't place science alongside religion. It's not a belief system for starters. Science is 'our current understanding of such and such' (until a better understanding comes along) where as religion is 'this is how it is' (an absolute, to question is to blaspheme). Well with the Abrahamic ones anyway.

science is no different than a 'Religion (such as the 3 Abrahamics: Judeism, Christianity, and Islam), we BELIEVE (have FAITH) in math and science, we can't prove nor disprove science+math, just like with any 'Religion'. Science, Math, Religions, Philosophies, Spiritualities, Mythologies, and etc are all atempts at trying to make sense of the world we live in, in a way that makes sense to us.

(actually, all early beliefs: Religions, Mythologies, and etc, were~are at their heart, attempts at understanding creation~birth: seriously imagine not knowing how birth+sex+plant seeds~sex:germination, works, how would you create an understanding of it? Did you know that all~most weather~'heavens' gods are 'males', while all terrestrial~earthian gods are 'female', as usually a male is on top the female, fertilizing her~the ground~earth with his 'sperm-rain', just as the rain makes plants grow... see how mankind is trying to make sense of creation: the 'miracle of birth+life'... without the understanding that we have now of the new religion, called science: biology, chemistry, genes, dna, chromosomes, cells, and etc...)

Besides, let's not forget that there's areas where there is NO math~science~physics (such as the singularity: inside a black hole, or the 'ether' between the multiverse bubbles or the 'ether' beyond our universe:blackhole 's event horizon, the quantum physics level, etc etc etc)... so math~science~physics are hardly Absolutes...

I didn't say they were absolutes. They're a series of theories that anyone is at liberty to attempt to disprove. Unlike religion and creationism (for example) where questioning its validity (so by extension the existence of god) is blasphemy.

just as questioning science is blasphemy... why do you not see, there's no difference. Scientists are as fanatical~zealous in their beliefs as are 'church-goers'. Scientists think they're right, and 'church go'ers' think they're right. Both are die-hard religious people, laughs. The Religion of Science is the ONLY and One True Religion, just as the Religion of Christianity is the ONLY and One True Religion, just as the Religion of Judeism is the ONLY and One True Religion, just as the Religion of Islam is the ONLY and One True Religion. (Most) Scientists refuse to believe in Religion, jsut as some 'church go'ers' refuse to believe in science.

Christianity+Judeism+Islam (along with Science) ARE ALL a series of theories that anyone is at liberty to attempt to disprove, too. (to use your words)

Religion requires belief on the part of its adherents to be true where as science doesn't. Take reproduction. A cat doesn't need to have an understanding of biology in order to produce a litter, does it? Where as religion is entirely a human construct. Which is why they forgot to mention the dinosaurs.

a cat needs to have an understanding of biology... (from the male cat's thinking) put my male genitilia into female genitilia during the female's ovulation period of time... sounds like biology to me, laughs. Understanding~knowledge passed on, imprinted at the cellular level, from the instant we're born, we already have the knowledge of sex.

Science requires a belief too... and religion is not entirely a human construct, elephants mourn their dead (such as their bones), the bones are 'sacred' to them, just as bones have been 'sacred' to humans. All organisms communicate and are intelligent, and with that comes Religion (just as it did~had with humans). Also, we don't understand animals, how do we make such an absurd claim 'Religion is entirely a human construct' ??? Aren't humans (and thus Religions) just a construct of physics? Big Bang -> Nebulas -> Stars -> Planets -> Life -> Humans -> Religions. Isn't: 'Science is entirely a human construct', too? YES, it is. (actually, it's not, but I'm disproving your statements. Animals know science too, monkeys have displayed knowledge of very advanced economic concepts, as well as many other discoveries into animal intelligence).

Laughs, non-religious people are extremely ignorant too... the extinction of the dinosaurs, was just one of MANY MANY extinctions, we have had serious extinctions (90%+ of ALL life: the K-T:'dinosaur' extintion was only like maybe 60% of all life, maybe only 40%, meh), heck, humanity nearly went extinct from the Toba eruption, which few scientific people know about, let alone all the CATROSPHITE (can't spell) CLIMATE CATASTROPHIES the earth has undergone, long before there ever was an Industrial Revolution, heck long before there ever was humans, and when talking about human evolution, I find many (esepcially europeans) people who're totally ignorant of it (they don't belief in anything religious, except that man isn't an animal, which is direct ignorance and disbelief in evolution, lol) ...

The end-game of Science: discovering GOD

GOD: the mysteries of the universe~multiverse~beyond-whatever (lol)

religion is an attempt at understanding the world
science is an attempt at understanding the world
mythology is an attempt at understanding the world
philosophy is an attempt at understanding the world
math is an attempt at understanding the world
spirituality is an attempt at understanding the world

Does anyone else ever read HK's posts and wonder what he's been smoking?

Careful now, he's anti drugs!

A cat having intercourse doesn't involve understanding at all. It's a function driven by instinct. And elephants mourning their dead can't be described as 'religion'. Neither of us can read their minds but my guess would be that they're protecting the body from predators. Saying that they're 'mourning' is just projecting human behaviour onto them.

I don't smoke (why would I inhale the same chemicals that destroy the earth? A climatologist who smokes, is quite the irony), but I do love knowledge, I love educational~science shows, and have done a *lot* of schooling. I'm 'smoking hot' with knowledge (aka HK is a NERD)

--------

so, who is to say that humans mourn, maybe we're just protecting the dead too... humans just magically have our behaviors, oh no those behaviors didn't come from our animal ancestors, I denounce the science of evolution! humans are not animals and animals are not humans! No, there's no such thing as evolution! Homo sapiens sapiens isn't a species of animals, such as canis lupis lupis, or ... (other weird science species' names, lol).

-------

'instinct' is knowledge, laughs. CELL knowledge, they think just as we do, passing their knowledge from cell to cell to organism, just as we pass knowledge from one organism (human) to another organism (human).

How do you explain instinct? Silver: it's MAGIC, it's an act of God, of faith, it's a miracle! God tells organisms how to have sex, as oh no, 'instinct' isn't knowledge, yet it is, how does the cat know how to have sex? why doesn't the male cat mistake its ear for its male genitilia? the cat has clear knowledge, or else it wouldn't even know what it's doing... How is anything done without knowing how to do something? You make a boat... yet you have no idea or knowledge of boat making... that makes ZERO logical sense, let's stay rational here with one's opinions.

humans ARE animals, animals ARE humans, animal behavior is human behavior, human behavior is animal behavior: evolution 101. Humans' behavior is often the exact same as COWS, brainlessly following the herd. Look how people drive on the highways, they must keep up with the other cars (ever had a car go whizzing by you, I KNOW you felt a 'need' to speed up to keep up with them, THAT'S 'ANIMAL' behavior, pack mentality, like wolves, got to keep up with them, or with cows, must stay with the herd. Organisms are Organisms, we all behave the exact same, because we are the same, we're a continous evolutionary line of behaviorism.

'psychology' is just 'sociology', which is just '("animal":organism) behaviorism'

there is only one life science: organism behaviorism, there's no such thing as sociology, there's no such thing as psychology. All there is, is behaviorism (organism behaviorism).

Actually... organism behaviorism, is the same as physical (matter+energy) behaviorism. Organisms behave just as stars and atoms behave... hehe

Chemicals? Hang on, isn't that science which you just denounced?

I never denounced science, all I did was state that science and religion and mythology are all the exact same thing: our attempt at understanding the world in a way that we can make sense of, science is no more concrete than religion than mythology, science just like religion just like mythology can't be proven, nor disproven. Science is Religion, as Religion is Science.

If you narrow the argument down to that then yeah. There's a lot of differences between science and religion though and I maintain that it isn't a belief system. If it was then all scientists would be in agreement like all adherents of monotheism are in agreement regarding tje existence of god.

The central plank of religion is belief and acceptance of a static narrative where as science attempts the opposite by perpetually challenging ideas to further our understanding.

really? history's shown the opposite, my favorite example: just ask gallileo , scientists much are more ignorant and closed-minded than most religious people, scientists are more fanatically religious than religious people are fanatically religious.

If science is not a belief~religion, then why do all scientists behave as if science was a religion~belief ??? Surely, if science is not a religion, it wouldn't be treated as such, scientists wouldn't react~behave just like religious poeple would, right?

Scientists are never challenged, when has anyone ever stood up and said to a scientist (or a teacher, for that matter), you're completely wrong! When science has be nearly elminated from existence as Religion has~is being done, then we'll have science being challenged too. Scientists (and teachers) are God, their word is the Word of God!

You use Galileo (who was denounced by theists) as an example of theists being more open minded than scientists? You also appear to contradict yourself by firstly saying scientific people are more closed minded than religious people so highlighting a difference, then saying scientific people behave like religious people thus arguing they're the same.

HegemonKhan wrote:really? history's shown the opposite, my favorite example: just ask gallileo , scientists much are more ignorant and closed-minded than most religious people, scientists are more fanatically religious than religious people are fanatically religious.

If science is not a belief~religion, then why do all scientists behave as if science was a religion~belief ??? Surely, if science is not a religion, it wouldn't be treated as such, scientists wouldn't react~behave just like religious poeple would, right?

Scientists are never challenged, when has anyone ever stood up and said to a scientist (or a teacher, for that matter), you're completely wrong! When science has be nearly elminated from existence as Religion has~is being done, then we'll have science being challenged too. Scientists (and teachers) are God, their word is the Word of God!

Sorry I should have quoted this as you're prone to retrospective editing, which you have just done.

HegemonKhan wrote:... scientists are more fanatically religious than religious people are fanatically religious.

I have a feeling that should be: "Scientists are more religiously fanatic than religious people are fanatically religious."

But then I could be wrong.

Ooh, and I feel this is relevant to the thread, and urge you all to watch it. The clip should auto-start at 7m30s, but if it doesn't, that's where you need to FF to.

http://youtu.be/HN_kOED6zGE?t=7m30s

actually... there is infinity in the real world:

how long is the coastline of the U.K. ??? (it's infinitely long, as you can always make smaller and smaller measurements, think of having to measure it with a meter~yard stick, vs a half-meter~yard stick, vs a 1/3 meter~yard stick, etc etc etc, the smaller, more precise the measuring tool, the more distance you discover, due to the infinity of its fractualization)

(First off, I haven't watched the video, so perhaps I'm missing something.) I believe you mean "infinitely dense" here. But I would dispute that since as you get deeper and deeper in scale, eventually you'll arrive at the point of discrete subatomic particles. And there will only be a finite number of them making up the coastline. Fractals are (again) theory. You can *in theory* divide forever in the mindscape, but the real world doesn't work that way. Planck's constant is an indication of that. A coastline is an approximation of a fractal (or vice versa or both depending on your view point).

if you have to walk 10 feet, and each step you take cuts remaining distance in half, you'll never reach 10 feet, as this is infinity too.

And, of course, the answer is that for the fixed rate, as you cut the distance in half, you also cut the time in half. So as time moves forward, you do get there.

And I don't understand the difficulty in the "chicken vs~or the egg", of course the chicken comes first, as the egg is CREATED BY the (female) chicken. What's so unknown... ??? HK scratches his head... it's a very simple biology 101 question+answer... sighs. Gamates (sex chromosomes: X and Y: egg:XX and sperm:XY) are the products of a mature organism, they have no other origin, they're MADE by the mature organism. You can't have a product, without having its producer first.

I'd say exactly the opposite, if by "egg" you mean the fertilized egg the creature comes from. Evolution works as random mutations in the *parent DNA* combine to form a new offspring. So neither parent of the first chicken were chickens themselves (depending on how you measure "chicken-ness"), but the combination of their *possibly mutated* DNA formed an egg with a new DNA combination from which the first chicken was born, with DNA that hadn't existed in either parent. So that new DNA combination existed in that egg before the animal it came from was hatched. (If you mean just the egg the female produces, then it's still debatable, depending on where the genetic mutation takes place, in which parent. The gametes of the parents need not be genetically identical to the parents.)

Edit: It's all moot anyway, given that life is not this discreet thing that the reductionist Western world likes to believe it is. Life is a continuum. Conception is the joining together of living material. Birth is merely the movement of living material from one point to another. Life does not begin - it merely continues on in different forms, mixing, mingling, evolving. And life is just a pattern of matter anyway, which is just a pattern of space-time, so...

Scientists are never challenged, when has anyone ever stood up and said to a scientist (or a teacher, for that matter), you're completely wrong!

Well, let's see...

The theory of the ether was proven wrong.
The model whereby the sun revolves around the Earth was proven wrong.

There are pages available through Google listing theories that were later proven to be incorrect. There are scientific journals where scientists publish regularly and are subject to peer review. There are theories being discarded all the time.

The point is that scientists stand up and tell other scientists "you're wrong." It's built into the way science works. And the winner is the one who can prove or disprove. That is the difference between religion and science: with religion, truth is revealed (and rigorously defended despite any evidence to the contrary) whereas with science - at least the way science is meant to be, ignoring human failings - truth is discovered, investigated, and either proven or disproven. With religion, you start from a given. With science, your givens change as your knowledge evolves, hopefully approaching "reality" (whatever that actually is). Again, I'm ignoring individual scientists who may or may not adhere to the principles. I'm speaking on a fundamental level. There is a basic undeniable difference in the two systems' epistemology.

Oh my God you guys, stop it, this is why we can't have nice threads.

This is a nice thread lol.

It's what we do to keep from working on our games. lol

Haha isn't it just! Disagreement is good for furthering knowledge though. I probably put too much top spin on my musing sometimes though. The socratic method (dialectics? Or am I mixing Ron Hubbard books with Socrates lol) or occam's razor are good approaches to debate. I think the former is continually challenging a position through questioning iirc and the latter deduces that the most wrong answer is the one that contains the most assumptions. Ive probably got over 50% of that wrong. HK is right in that science does require belief. Most human things do: the economy needs belief to function too. I just don't agree that science is a belief system. You put it more eloquently than I could muster but I agree with your post above.

Don't get me started on "belief" (in a good way, of course). I think my take on belief is different from most, in that I see belief as necessary for and integral to everything that is not first person experience. Even something like watching the news or reading a science journal or a history book or a love letter involves belief in some form (with said belief predicated on trust). To that end, almost all human knowledge comes in as an "accepting of something as true" when we don't have the first-hand experience to back it up. We just don't have the time to verify everything ourselves.

And human beings are great at making things up. How much that we have read in books growing up has proven to be apocryphal? How many newspaper or magazine articles have been retracted or amended or outright shown to be fabrications? Who and what can you actually trust?

(And since belief requires trust, the gradual erosion of trust in our world - from the "War of the Worlds" broadcast, which broke the people's trust in what they heard on the radio, to Watergate, which broke the people's faith in politicians, to ""Wag the Dog", which showed how the media could fabricate news and the public would buy it, to Photoshop, which made it possible to alter the images we perceive as reality, and on and on - has resulted, at least for me, in a state where I doubt almost everything. At least we don't have the Matrix yet, where we would even doubt our own senses... Or do we? And the biggest bastion of mistrust is this here Internet. The signal to noise ratio is so low. People question how some can doubt we went to the Moon or doubt the value of vaccinations or believe that the Illuminati are plotting a New World Order, but it all boils down to a crisis of trust, whether it be in the government or the medical institution or whatever, most of which have become tainted by power or monetary concerns - generally, other agendas from what they should have, which makes them suspect. People have lost trust and rebel against the loss of certainty about things we can't verify ourselves or find reliable, trusted sources for.)

But... you can strive to prove your beliefs as opposed to blindly and dogmatically argue them, and that's what science tries to do, with a methodical scientific approach. It might not be perfect, but in theory, it's the best system we have to discover how this Universe we live in actually works.

And now back to my game. Or the dishes. Or something. If you can believe that...

Interesting post. In a past life (or maybe a decade ago) I was briefly drawn in by conspiracy theories. They provided easy answers to things - but above that - exciting answers. What if we are just living in a scifi novel? Of course reality tends not to imitate art in that sense and politics provided better answers for the way the world is which I found way more boring if slightly more enlightening. To those ends, I'd compare the vast majority of conspiracy theories with religion. Easy answers provided in an exciting package. And far more interesting (and understandable! ) than bending your mind around Das Kapital or anything by Friedrich Hayek.

(perceived) progression in understanding the world:

Mythology -> Religion -> Science

newtonian -> quantum

this is what I'm trying to get at, our best understanding of the world in the past was mythologies, then we understood the world better with religions, and now we've got science explaining the world.

Science is just our current age of understanding, in the future (should we last that long), science will be replaced by a new understanding of the world. Just as for example, the age of newton's laws got (somewhat) replaced by quantum mechanics and string theory. Again, there's areas where science doesn't exist (and thus science is fundamentally faulty, just as religion and mythology is faulty): the singularity (inside a black hole) where there is no distance(space)-time, and the 'ether' that separates the multiverse bubbles or the 'ether' that exists beyond the event horizon of our universe (the inside of a black hole) or a black hole. I use 'ether' as it's a good word (as it's an old word, which means exactly what it's needed for, which is) to describe that which is outside of science. Yes, our universe is the inside of a black hole, the barrier edge of our universe, is an event horizon, to us inside the black hole (our universe), nothing exists beyond our universe's barrier edge, just as nothing exists beyond the barrier edge of a black hole, for the stuff inside of a black hole.

this is what I mean by beliefs, of science and religion and mythology being the same.

---------

the science on science:

science is scientifically proven 100% incorrect

science at it's heart is observation (as what is observable is testable), but that observation is based upon our senses (touch, feel, smell, sound, taste, and thought), but our observations are distorted, they're fake, 'photo-shopped' (manifested) by our brain, which twists the real world into a world that we as organisms can function in. For an example, there's no such thing as sight, your 'eyes' are just HOLES to the back of your brain, the world that you see is actually a picture projection by your brain, everything that you see isn't real, it's a manifestation of your brain. Also, once you observe something, you change it from what you wanted to observe. Whether it's a person's behavior driving when not having a cop car nearby (they speed) or having a cop car nearby (they stay at the speed limit), how a person behaves when they're not being watched~filmed, vs when they are being watched~filmed, as it is with trying to observe an electron, and lastly, all of our science is no different than religion and mythology, we craft our 'science~world' in a way that will make sense to us, as we can't understand what we can't understand, and so our scientific world is merely a world that makes sense to us (exactly as it is~was with the religious world or the mythological world), and not what the world actually is, since we wouldn't be able to function in such a world that we can't even fathom.

So, as much as we try to rationalize science as being more concrete than religion and mythology, it really is not, it's no more firmly established than a religion or a mythology. All of science is a lie, just as religion and mythology are lies.

---------

yes, trust is vital for socialization: (a simple example) imagine if you ask someone the time, and they lied, giving you the wrong time. For a functional society, we must have a world of trust, and thus to assume that what people tell us, is truthful. Maybe, this is exactly why our societies are breaking down, the information (communication) age that we live in (the internet and instant 24/7 tv~news), leads directly to the Age of Madness, as we're seeing across the world, as now it's so easy to lie, for the craziness (anarchy and murderous intent ~ violence) to come out in full force, our foundation of trust is gone, and thus our societal building has come crashing down on us.

--------

chuckles, yes, I too see life as a continuum, Jay, something we agree on ~ understand together, lol:

based on you also seeing life as a continuum, I think you'll really like this:

http://www.booktv.org/Watch/13381/After ... l+AEI.aspx

Dick Teresi is the Co-Author of The God Particle book, he's really smart!
http://www.amazon.com/The-God-Particle- ... 0618711686

it's about how we (including doctors, and especially this retarded lady interviewing him) have NO idea of what 'life' + 'death' is (and where it begins).

'life' and 'death' is a CYCLE, the Carbon+Nitrogen Cycle

Carbon Cycle: Life is Cannabalistic, life can only exist by cannabalizing life, life must kill and eat life, to survive. There's no difference from chopping up a plant or an animal, that plant is just as alive as an animal is, even if we have trouble associating with a plant as it moves and functions differently than animals do, yet none-the-less, it moves and functions just as animals do, as both animal and plant are living breathing organisms. No dead~killed organism goes to waste ever, as ultimately, as it WILL be used as food for organisms (bacteria and the like) to survive, if nothing else gets to feast upon the dead~killed organisms, bacteria (and the like) will.

Nitrogen Cycle: Life's toxins~waste, which we get rid of (like urine, poop, and O2 or CO2), is food~energy for other life: animals breath~take in the toxin~waste product of plants, O2, and excrete the toxin~waste CO2, which is food~energy for plants, which excrete O2, poop and urine is fertilizer (food~nutrients) for plants, plants are eaten, and pooped out as nitrogen, which is fertilzer for plants.

and ultimately, go to even further...

We are literally 'Children of the Stars' (as we're literally 'Star Dust', hehe), stars gave birth to planets, planets gave birth to life, life gave birth to humans.

the true evolution miracle: atoms to DNA. the power of the atom is nothing compared to the power of DNA, if we think 'playing god' is with nuclear (atomic) power... oh boy, are we in for a 'world of hurt' when we 'play god' with DNA... DNA is so much more powerful than an atom... sighs.

an interesting idea I've had:

the J curve graph

let's pretend we start with God (the left tip of the J ). God in all his so-called 'godly' power, can only create things lesser than himself, and I mean really feeble simple things: quarks~particles, so much for God's 'godly' power. But, those quarks~particles, unlike God, can create things better themselves: elements -> compounds, and then came the creation of DNA, which can create infinately better things, and unlimited better things, unlike the atom. So, this is a quite interesting idea, eh? DNA is the true GOD, not God. DNA gave us our worshipped 'intelligence~technology~science', and beyond with machines, the new era of evolution...