hadriel | 009 [text]

[Part of Chris thinks he should've made this post awhile ago, and part of him still doesn't want to. But it's a compromise to do it now, and it's probably the best time for it anyway; the last event is over, and new people haven't arrived yet. It's the calm before the whatever, storm or otherwise.

But he's going with text because even though it's been a little while, he doesn't want to try to say the first part of this post in anything other than text.]

Hey everyone. So I guess I'll start off with the bad news: anyone who were friends with Ashley or Josh should know they aren't here anymore. Also, I'm going to add that if Josh owed you money or favors or whatever else, you're totally out of luck because I'm not honoring them no matter what he might've told you.

[Jokes make this not heartbreaking, right? Definitely.]

Though I guess this is also a good time to mention that if you're working on anything important or even just keeping general notes or something, you might want to consider sending them to a friend every so often. If whatever it is is just on your phone when you disappear, it's pretty much as gone as you are.

So yeah. Back up your data and all that. Even if you don't want to send an electronic copy to someone, at least keep paper notes or something.

[Semi-relatedly...]

If anyone needs help with how to send files or whatever, just let me know. And I'm finishing a program for something else right now, but then I guess I'm taking requests? If there's something you'd like a program on your phone for, I can see if I can figure out how to do it. It's not like I have a whole lot else better to be doing, so feel free and ask even though I can't totally promise I'll be able to do it.

[But still, please ask. Please give him something to do other than miss his friends.]

And okay, last thing I swear, and it's the good part. For everyone who's new here and doesn't know, we have pretty awesome coffee at the bar thanks to Delight. Usually either Emily or I are there to make it, but if we're not just send one of us a message; it's part of the deal with Delight about the coffee to make it, so you're not bothering us or whatever.

So yeah, you might be stuck in a shitty cave, but at least there's coffee. That's something, right?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's so absurd. I'd ask if you're sure, but you don't really have a reason to lie, that I can discern.

Yeah, I know it sounds weird, but then again it really doesn't sound much weirder than ending up in another world to begin with.

Where I'm from, an afterlife is widely believed in. This isn't completely dissimilar.

I guess so. I mean multiple dimensions and whatever are still a theory back home but they'd explain this too.

I thought it was a tenuous theory at best until very recently before I arrived here. I'm not of the opinion that being forced to question everything is particularly good for a person's sanity.

Yeah, I think there's a pretty big demand for a therapist around here.

[Nothing about this place is good for anyone's sanity, really.]

If you believe that therapy helps, anyway. Some people genuinely do.

Do you think they don't?

[It's curious, not judgemental, even if tone might be hard to read over text.]

I think that every source of advice or authority is fallible, and therefore not to be taken as gospel truth.

There's a pretty huge range between not taking everything to be totally true and it being totally false.

Shades of grey are always "a pretty huge range", but it doesn't mean we can't acknowledge black and white for the purpose of conjecture.

Sure, but not for things that are really complicated.

I'd say that the more complicated something is, the more crucial it is to have points of reference.

Points of reference maybe, but you kind of lose a huge amount of subtlety and detail and all that if you simplify it too much.

As with every process, there's an appropriate order. Subtlety and detail should come after the foundation or a premise or plan are laid down properly, don't you think?

[Chris is definitely inclined toward taking things one step at a time in logical order, but he also knows there are a lot of situations--especially ones involving people and social or emotional interaction--that don't exactly work like that.]

Maybe, but if you simplify too far your foundation's not going to be good enough to build on.

So you don't take it too far, and you don't have a problem. Lacking the context of a shared origin, as many of us do, it's probably more prudent to default to that basic foundation.

Assuming there's a basic foundation at all between all these different people.

[But he's kind of losing patience with this conversation, mostly because it reminds him of talking to Mello. Who knew there's a reason for that?]

[L probably would be a little disquieted to know that he's being compared to a successor, and that it's not going the other way around. For the first time, this world has context that is the precise opposite of what he's used to; it had Mello first, before he even set foot here.]

Would you accept the premise that we are all thinking, reasoning beings?

[Sorry, L. Though as far as comparisons to Mello go Chris likes L a lot more so far, mild annoyance with this conversation aside.]

Sure, yeah.

[The dynamic from their world is a weird one. L is simultaneously milder and more extreme versions of both of his successors. As in both, simultaneously.]

In that case, we all have something in common.

[That explains so much.]

Yeah, but I'm gonna hazard a guess that thinking and reasoning work totally different for different species or whatever. I mean, that's also assuming you and I have the same definition of thinking and reasoning to begin with.

[Somehow? It really does.]

While I appreciate pedantic definitions more than most people, deductive process and reasoning adheres to a very specific set of criteria. While it might take some species more or less time, if they're sapient, sentient or in agreement with Descartes' famous postulation, it won't vary beyond highly negligible factors. What matters is that we can communicate, which the translating mechanisms have seen to, and that we can comprehend and generate ideas. That's the bare-bones version of it, anyway.

Maybe practically, but if you're going to get into something like psychology and therapy and whatever those differences could be huge. I mean, if some non-human creature's brain works totally differently--even if the end result's the same--then they're not going to process trauma or whatever the same way physically, let alone mentally.

[He knows that sort of thing can vary widely between two humans from the same culture, let alone two people from different ones. There would have to be an enormous difference between beings who aren't even the same species.]

It's interesting that your mind went straight to processing trauma. Have you experienced some, recently? Or witnessed someone of a significantly different species dealing with it in a way that was novel to you?

[Text]

thechoiceisyours - 2016-10-22 22:59 (UTC) - Expand

hearthebell - 2016-10-25 04:11 (UTC) - Expand

thechoiceisyours - 2016-10-31 20:37 (UTC) - Expand

hearthebell - 2016-11-07 02:41 (UTC) - Expand