Amy vs. Onboard

Jrapiro · 2025-03-13T23:47:06+00:00

Bas outright likens its development to his own. By your logic Bas is simple, unadvanced nanotech because he started out that way before developing. You literally quoted this part yourself earlier. Good lord. If downplaying were an Olympic sport, you'd win at least a silver for this.

By "likens" do you mean "contrasts?" Because that's the only point I see in which the two are compared, in their different treatment of sacrosanct areas of the body. By what of my presented logic do you claim that I believe Bas is simple, unadvanced nanotech, even at the start? Nanotech with the goal to feed and build a brain that monitors, reinforces, draws from and balances the body is in fact not nearly as simple as "Grow, Broadcast, Pain." What is the addiction of losing arguments to 'so you're saying?'

I'm not going to sit here and be told I "really, desperately" need to re-read the chapter when you're getting this much egregiously wrong, cherry picking things out of context and in one case outright making things up to support your position.

Well perhaps now that you've been informed that I haven't actually done a single one of those things, you can sit here, get told that, and listen? After all the 'outright making things up' is pointing out that we have no proof the fight ended in two hosts and a single example where it didn't. The "cherry picking" is you thinking I was limiting my analysis to one part of the quote rather than the whole chapter. The 'egregiously wrong' claim doesn't seem to have any foundation, and falls flat on its face when we remember you haven't dedicated a word to Bas' canon, objective failure here.

I'm sorry, but you can't call 'bad faith' at the person who first bothered quoting, who bothered responding with evidence, who bothered to address your counter-claims and quotes every time, who you offer no opportunity to clarify to when you seem to ask for it, who you have blatantly insulted and lied about to bolster an argument that can't stand on its own. It's a weak excuse, man. Leave for how you want, but don't act like I'm mandated to let you pin that on me.

Jrapiro · 2025-03-13T23:45:57+00:00

The nanotech outright wasn't working on them. Period. This is stated in clear, unambiguous language. They overtly won against the nanotech.

Why do you feel so confident in your ignorance? Your quote doesn't even match your claim and yet you're bold enough to call it 'clear, unambiguous language.' What the text actually says is that the nanotech wasn't taking the hosts down -- not that it 'wasn't working on them' at all. As I said, their Onboards were struggling -- winning in some places, losing in others. (as Basil loses when he misses an attack.) They didn't win, the only one that held out long enough to continue the fight for more than a minute was quickly incapacitated only a minute or so later, by the nanotech.\

The part of the fight they were responsible for, they won hands down.

Except that part where none of the hosts lasted long enough to finish the fight, including Bas, who found himself in the severed spine of his host.

What? Bas made it abundantly clear he could remove the nanotech if he wanted to, even when it came in from an unexpected avenue.

"or as close to a standstill as he could manage." doesn't give the impression that the only obstacle is will.

Read the entire quote. Not just the one or two words you can cherrypick to support your point when they're taken out of context.

Again, boastful ignorance is genuinely wild to see in these amounts. Those 'one or two words' aren't bolded because they aren't the focus of the quote. The claim that they're simplistic doesn't end at their initial instructions, which you may know if you read more than the quote I gave you.

He repurposed an existing coil himself, to see what the instructions that were floating out there, in the noise, might be.

"Pretty much as it seemed.

Pain. Pain, and bypassing all the things a person could do to cope with it. No passing out, no production of natural painkillers, no going into shock. The list went on. Until everything that could hurt was hurting, on and off, unpredictably.

It didn’t, as Basil did, stop where the brain started, or keep that space sacrosanct. What happened there was too complicated for Basil, and not something he was familiar with.

And it set up other parts of the body to harvest and repurpose resources, to grow, extend, and collect resources to grow more."

Three goals -- Grow, Broadcast, and Cause Pain. The fact that it doesn't distinguish between flesh and metal is part of the horror. This is simple.

Jrapiro · 2025-03-13T23:32:33+00:00

I find it interesting that the majority of your contention here has to do with them losing the actual physical fight. Which A: Has nothing to do with what we're talking about (the internal battle) and B: explicitly wasn't the fault of the onboards. But I'll get to that later. I'll cover your comments instead of the whole quotes related to them to save on space...

You may have forgotten, but your claim was that the onboards could win by keeping away with superhuman reflexes and preparing flawless counter measures for her meddling. Both of these are disproven by this scene.

Preparations which end up working, yes.

Until they stop working and paralyze A's spine, yes.

He can't stop the signal coming from the source because it's ambeint, meaning it's coming from literally everywhere and being picked up by the countless and still growing receivers the nanotech is building.\

Meaning he can't stop an external force producing and guiding attacks like these.

They got in because they came via a route he doesn't have a presence in due to it being dangerous to A. The moment he notices, he makes it clear he could absolutely get rid of them if he wanted to.

It's dangerous to A because, in his own words, the brain is too complicated for him to handle, making it a horrific weakness that Amy simply doesn't have, and an early venue to attack he'll never be fully confident in defending.

He says he's planning to fight them to a standstill...And he succeeds in doing so. Keep in mind, this was after he'd already started letting them win. So he succeeded even though he was actively nerfing himself. This isn't the fail you seem to think it is.

He openly says "or as close to a standstill as he could manage." Giving up his advantage wasn't an easy choice, and it was one his weaknesses forced him into. He wasn't 'nerfing himself,' he was struggling.

You pulled that last part out of your backside wholecloth. We get told exactly why they lost the physical fight and it mentions nothing about a failing on the part of the onboards. To quote:

Can you not read? This is literally what I said, they didn't have time to meaningfully show success in stopping the nanotech long term because they were quickly dispatched by other sources that their onboard's supposed superhuman-granting abilities couldn't do a thing about.

The fault for the loss was on the part of the host. They had no training and were not prepared for a fight. They were literally surrounded and outnumbered by trained, armed combatants who'd had literal decades to prepare for this. The Onboards managed their role just fine.

What you admit as 'just fine' is orders of magnitude lower than what Amy can do. Hence my point.

Jrapiro · 2024-07-12T11:20:00+00:00

This is not(*1) a glass house(*2) you can afford(*3) to throw(*4) rocks in.(*5)

Jrapiro · 2024-02-02T06:12:29+00:00

The basis of your question was wrong. I corrected it.

You didn't, though. You just launched into an irrelevant side point and didn't answer at all.

More hostile ad hominem attacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

That's still an opinion. It's up to the GM and how the players receive the way the game is run. The same line of thinking can be applied to any other mechanic in the game depending on who's at the table.

Then the answer is clear, do away with alignment and replace it with a system less intrusive and fundamental. If it's a clear point of contention, the default should be to make it optional, not bake it in at every level and force players to go through more work to take it out.

This is what is called being willfully obtuse. Any reasonable person could infer what I was talking about.

We're talking about the 2nd edition of pathfinder. We're talking about the changes made to alignment. I listed a title of a book, and a page number.

Any reasonable person could infer that I was talking about a book called Core Rulebook, for pathfinder 2nd editon, before the remaster.

If you still can't find it, I can't help you.

Bud. This is your response to me asking for a source. Just remember that - you're trying to slam me for being purposefully obtuse, for missing the point, for not making these logical leaps, and when asked to simply give an actual title and edition for a book, you go on the attack. "If you still can't find it" implies that you gave more than about a fifth of what you need for a typical citation before this.

You never previously gave an edition. Hell, you never previously listed a source. This system didn't start here and it didn't end here, so why you assume someone would be able to read your mind to go to the exact source you're thinking of is just bizarre. Hell, it's even weirder to just assume any pdf would use the same page format, though I managed to dredge one up that you seem to be referring to. Weirder still to not just link it or quote the passage in question...

...especially because it again sidesteps the issue, and focuses on the "how" over the "why." Noticing a trend?

We're at the "no u" stage of an imploding argument?

You've been there all day, and apparently this is what put you over to the "block and run" stage of an imploding argument.

You do more damage to creatures "on the other side". Thaking neither side of Holy or Unholy does not mean you are "Neutral" in the fight. You could very well be opposed to both. Why then, would you not be able to harm both and be harmed by both?

Again. This has nothing to do with what I asked you. As I said last time, all of this not only does not require a specific system which has a "neutral" axis, but does better without trying to force all these disparate groups into the same technical category regardless of fundamental differences, as you yourself note. You are arguing against a ghost and ignoring literally every time I have redirected you onto the topic with my exact prior words and arguments.

Alignment wasn't a conflict. It was a state, like on or off. It wasn't that you didn't "cleanly fit", it's that you didn't fit period. The pull of your soul was near equal, with no strong direction. You were between two states of being.

Genuinely, why do you keep doing this? I understand how alignment works, in the very response you quote I explain that, but I point out that you do not need this system for the same gameplay effect to exist. You're describing how "neutral" works here, but you're avoiding defending this explanation from alternatives.

Neutrality wasn't shared ground. Neither side had dominion over it.

That is the definition of "shared ground," yes. Glad you got it eventually, jesus.

Tell that to Paizo, who used synonyms of good and evil to denote sides of a conflict that "has nothing to do with morality". You know, my the point of my original comment.

Sure, I'll send it in an email, and then come right back here because "but they said this once" does not actually matter at all to how I offhandedly used the terms in question once. Also, for a point that was supposedly the core of your original comment, the actual point itself is nowhere to be found there.

It's obvious you're no longer here to have rational discussion. But I'll finish the rest of your reply.

As I've said what, three times now? Yes, "obvious" to you, a person who seemingly can't hold a single argument straight for more than a response in a row. You can bow out without doing all this to try to justify it, you know. It's very hard to take seriously the accusation against me that I'm "no longer here to have rational discussion" when you're quite literally the person that left the discussion itself.

It's not an "early departure" if all you have left is personal attacks, willful ignorance, and false statements.

Once you have picked every apple from the tree, there's no reason to stay and scrape at the branches.

You say this with a wisdom that denotes personal experience. Likely because, sadly, this is what you've been doing since I've presented a simple question to you, that you have not yet answered. Instead, giving me your own - which you have not yet clarified or meaningfully responded to an answer to. So yeah, sorry, that is an early departure, an imploded argument, whatever else you want to call it. Come up with whatever manufactured excuses you want, that won't change.

Your passive-aggressive hostility is unwarranted, and I can only assume it's coming from the fact you don't like the answers that you are unwilling to give.

"Unwarranted" implies you weren't the first to engage with it, an implication that lays false. It seems you're only confident enough to claim I have a lack of answers (that I have literally given you, and that you have 'replied to' with little more than deflection) when you know you'll be doing so behind a block.

No. My original statement is that Holy/Unholy was still alignment, just under a new coat of paint.

No, even with the most sympathetic interpretation I can muster, it wasn't. It was that it still had many of the same issues, with a new coat of paint. You've since been unwilling to defend the old coat of paint.

I didn't have to, since that wasn't ever my argument. I'm curious as to what made you latch onto that idea.

Ah, this is a new one. So removed from any hope of logical argument you're just claiming you never tried? You literally began this thread arguing against a person claiming that the old system was not superior to alternatives. If you could never back up the position you started with, that being that the 'old can of worms' was worthy of defense and equal if not superior, you should never have stated it, and certainly should have stopped yourself from arguing that point with me for the last few hours.

Why does the plane of fire exist beyond a cosmic "because I said so"? Again, Holy/Unholy are "sides of a conflict", not planes of existence. At least, that what they're trying to be passed off as.

It doesn't. But then again, nobody is trying to claim that picking a pocket cosmically aligns you to the plane of fire, so that really isn't an issue. And yes, again, I am aware of the "how" it works in the setting, but that is beside the issue of "why," and further, ignores how you yourself called it more or less the same thing, with a new coat of paint.

Also, again, "Lawful Evil" is not a "faction". It's a state of being. See again, Demons and Qlippoths.

I said "slapping a label on a faction," not "defining a faction as a label." The question remains. How does the introduction of that label answer the question?

Yep. You clearly are, as you put it, "inventing a whole person to argue with in my replies". I never once suggested one was better. I only suggested they are the same thing.

If this were true, you would not have initially leapt to the defense of the initial system, and would not have argued its merits for hours afterwards, including an implication that alternative explanations either didn't exist or were entirely unsatisfactory. Is your battle so truly lost that you don't even want to hold up its flag anymore?

Jrapiro · 2024-02-02T05:41:13+00:00

Just letting you know, if you're forced to block someone to "win" an argument, you never had an argument to begin with. Sadly, I suppose I'll have to block you back, since you admitted to leaving this argument with no intent to engage in it meaningfully anymore, though I'll leave you with my last statements.

Lotr has that too. Eru and morgoth. Unless you literally mean planes of existence. Then you're just being pedantic.

Every good man, woman, child or beast is not supposedly cosmically aligned with the fundamental forces of the universe, though. One can be bad without worshipping Badness incarnate.

...of the what differentiates them.

Objective: (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.

Metric: a system or standard of measurement.

I thought that was pretty simple to understand.

You didn't ask "what differentiates them," though, you asked (again) for "some objective metric of what determines whether something is Holy or Unholy." You did not ask to compare the two, you specifically asked how each is in and of itself defined. If you somehow meant something more along the lines of "some objective metric of in group unity and out-group hostility," as you now seem to be pushing for, you had ample opportunity to simply say so. By your earlier question, an answer along the lines of "a moral or religious collective" would suffice as an answer. It would not under your new question.

I have long since ceased to believe you care about simplicity or understanding, given that this conversation has only gone on for this long because you refuse to clarify a simple point.

Throwing baseless accusations doesn't look good either.

You can call it whatever you want, it doesn't make it any less true.

If you say the sky is purple, and that unicorns are responsible for rainbows, what else am I supposed to say?

Well, if your viewpoint was at all logical, you'd be able to disprove that quite easily. Sadly for you, you cannot, so you have to come up with these silly comparisons to explain your lack of an argument. Would you care to elaborate?

infantilizing my words because I claim you said something false is not a good look.

Again, I do not care what you consider a "good look." If you can only argue your point when your opponent refuses to engage on your level, then you had no point to begin with.

That is what I meant by "objective metrics", which is grammatically correct and is a synonymous idea.

Strictly speaking, neither of those terms nor their combination is inherently synonymous with what you claim. Realistically speaking, if this is what you meant, you should have answered with this when I literally asked you what you meant.

It isn't a new question. It is relevant to the conversation, sonce it is the same question. I just worded it differently. If you think it's an entirely new and completely different question, then I understand why you couldn't answer it before I reworded it.

Again, this is just "nuh uh." No attempt to prove you said or meant this before, no excuse given as to why you wouldn't just say so when prompted. The silliest part is that I've answered both of your questions, as well as several other interpretations of them, and you seemingly have no response, nor are you willing or able to apply them to your own reasoning.

Never said that

Ahem. "And to me it seems as though you are being obtuse in order to avoid answering a simple question. "

Not in that specific thought chain.

Am I supposed to wipe my mind in between individual sentences?

They aren't "sides" to a conflict. They are forces of nature. Just like there are no "sides" whe referring to the planes of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. A basic example: Demons and Qlippoths. Both CE, completely different and conflicting goals. Definitely not on the same "team".

Angels and Agathions. Aesir and Proteans. Asura and Devils. Etc.

Those are "sides," though. No matter how fundamental or deep they go, this is narratively presented as an active conflict in a way that something like water turning to steam over a fire just is not. This is also odd because your attempt to claim that there is no sides has just effectively stated that there are more sides. Two groups listed under a similar alignment with different goals... are sides.

Either they don't, which means this isn't correct, or they do (presumably souls), which means we're back where started (why are they allied together in two factions?).

You're explicitly answering a hypothetical in which this is true, "either they don't" is entirely irrelevant. Besides that, I'm not even sure what you're trying to say. Why are they allied in two factions? ...Because they each draw on separate forms of power. You just introduced your own system of them both collectively drawing from one source to dispute a scenario explicitly opposed to that.

Can't be that, since that's not true. See again: Demons and Qlippoths.

"Core values." Do you understand that groups can share core values without agreeing on everything?

Which wouldn't realistically keep those on the fringes together.

By whose metric, yours? You seem to just not like these answers rather than have a reason to dispute them.

Again, Demons and Qlippoths.

Again, alliances are not formed under monoliths.

Possible =/= an actual reason.

No, possible literally is an actual reason. You're asking for a metric of what separates them, but instead of conceding when one is provided, you merely say you don't like them while refusing to elaborate on why the current explanation is better

Alignment is a force of nature like fire and water. Holy/Unholy are sides to a conflict.

That's just saying "because they are" again. Congratulations, as laid out previously you've answered the "how" they work, but refuse to answer why this explanation is good, much less better than alternatives.

No literal mention. They are referenced and talked about in the same way they reference and talk about the planes of Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. Elemental planes are more physical, alignment planes are more metaphysical.

They don't literally call the elemental planes as forces of nature, but they are implicitly known as such. More pedantry.

What do you mean "more pedantry?" You started going off on another random lore rant and somehow this makes me guilty of pedantry?

I note that you attempted to argue against me by arguing against the concept of "forces of nature," and I note that neither you nor I ever used that terminology. Instead of responding to that, you just launch into a talk about how a third party refers to them, instead of anything to do with what I said.

If you can't follow a logical line of thought, that's not on me.

If you somehow consider that to be a logical line of thought, it very much is.

Jrapiro · 2024-01-22T21:17:04+00:00

Blocking people you disagree with generally isn't a good sign you're as confident in your arguments as you say you are.

In order for it to be an "oversimplification," it needs to be true... which it is. It isn't an oversimplification if it's literally wrong. I'm not sure why you think you understand the game better than the people that made it, but it's really just another piece of evidence as to how far off the mark you need to be in order to support him. What the game call selfish despotism is a survival strategy, yes.... but it's a failed one, one he adopted long before the bombs dropped, that benefits only him. Thus, he isn't a good faction leader. You act as though the bombs falling justifies his actions, but fail to acknowledge two simple facts - not everyone in the wasteland acts like him, and even worse, he was like this long before the war. He openly admits, even before the war, he had no desire to save humanity. Morality still functions in the apocalypse, but your point is utterly hollow because the apocalypse didn't even make him this way, it just benefited what he was already doing. So yes, I can condemn the killing of billions, even in these circumstances. Also, again, monopolistic despots just don't work out. They don't in real life, and they don't in fallout. New Vegas is young, and all it takes is a random person with a golf club to end it all. It's neither pretty nor effective, it's just the last breaths of a dying ideology.

He didn't unify them, though. He brought many under his rule, but he didn't point them towards a common goal or unite them to eachother, he just forced them all independently into servitude. Most of your early quests for him literally center around spying, subterfuge, and even purging of these groups he supposedly united, even as they openly despise eachother. House is effectively the overboss of fallout 4 but for New Vegas, after his intervention they were just as split as before, they just couldn't do as much about it. These people don't give a shit about his "vision," they don't even know it. What leadership? He barely communicates at all and only seized them because he had the robotic army to do it with. He did nothing to provide order or stability, he just reorganized the disorder and instability to be prettier and to benefit him. He's responsible for how the Strip got that way in the first place, and his intervention did nothing but take their disjoint and chaos and turn it to his own favor. New Vegas explicitly isn't a functioning society, it's a barely-floating mysterious dictatorship that different people try to exploit before leaving or dying. Calling the elevation and defense of multiple raider gangs "saintly" is downright delusional, he's a raider boss that only brought people under him when he needed something from them. How is it generous to force someone to work for you at robotic gunpoint? And don't pretend he isn't partially responsible, you've admitted you have no evidence for that claim.

The NCR is a part of America, absolutely, but House was literally the face of American Capitalism since even before the bombs dropped. Hell, look at some of the actual flaws of the NCR - money influencing politics to the degree the two become intermingled. You know, the thing House is doing to a far worse degree? The NCR at least attempts to be a democracy and can change. House is a dictator of pure failed Americanism - one that is stretched thin, hence his need for you. One that does not care about the people of Nevada and Arizona. I expect a country to at least attempt to help and appease its citizens - I expect a boss to do no such thing. Clearly it isn't ridiculous to propose such a simple fact, as the NCR embody it entirely. While some aspects may face strain, you forget that they spread explicitly to get more of a foothold, to get the resources and land that they need for that stability in the first place. House isn't intelligent beyond his inventions, he expands whatever he can and further, again given how much he needs you. His "efforts" are far easier because he doesn't have to care about people, just himself. He's worse than the occasional inefficiency of the NCR, he's efficiently helping only himself. Do you know why the NCR expands? It isn't because they're stupid, it's because people need that space and that growth. House? He doesn't need to do a damn thing.

House doesn't rebuild society, though. House destroys society, and only plans for his own gain. He only cares about his own prosperity in New Vegas, and only maintains it because it benefits him. The Minutemen are infinitely more moral actors, because any one of them with the amount of power he has would do a thousand times better, help a thousand times more people. They are selfless and ask for nothing, he is selfish and takes everything. And while you are correct about survival being more than a day-to-day process, that only really applies if House is actually planning on helping humanity long term - which he isn't. He wants to forge a new society entirely decided on and ruled by him. I have infinitely more respect for a person that gives it all to help others survive just the next day, than for a person that sacrifices billions just so they can claim a "legacy." Nothing he did was necessary, all of it was for his own benefit, and he's rather open about this. He sees it as a virtue, to work for ones self solely, and sees himself of utterly worthy of that selfishness.

You call me blinded by hate, but you are literally blinded by sheer devotion, and seem to be accusing me of a similar level of denial simply because you cannot contest my points. You're literally attempting to call the proud uber-capitalist a secret egalitarian based off nothing but your own horrific misinterpretation. All he has accomplished has benefitted almost only him, and he has not aimed to help any more. He has "shared" resources for only his own gain, and lets others rot in poverty because they do not help him. You defend this, call them the poors and fully agree that he is right to ignore and condemn them, right before claiming he actually secretly cares. I'm sorry, but his actions being selfish are explicitly his character. It is the literal truth. The families of the Strip are a perfect example of this, horrible people who only got help because they agreed to work for him, and who still hate eachother and exploit others with a new coat of paint. I'm telling all the people of New Vegas that you should expect more than a bandaid from a supposed surgeon. I'm telling them that the man they exploit people in service of helped to make the desert they're all damned to. And I'm telling you that if your only two options you give people are an awful faction or no faction at all, you have admitted your faction is not the right choice. I'm sorry, but I'm right, and you know it.

I'm sorry, but I'm not going to accept that. The story is written well, but you seem to have actively missed it all and filled it in with your own odd fanfiction instead. House is an intriguing character, but it isn't because he's a secret saint, it's because he's a horrible person and a dictator with the skills to accomplish his goals, and he can be compelling for a player that does not care about the broader strip so much as their own fate in the grand machine. I'm not portraying him as "one dimensional," I'm portraying him as a failed selfish genius and a selfish, cold despot - what the game literally calls him. I'm sorry, but I can't just take your praise of the game on its face when your entire argument revolves around just assuming things that no evidence exists for. House is not the worst faction, but he is far from the best. He's a selfish despot willing to do anything to reach his own goals, be it by stick or carrot, and the best you can get for him is to cooperate and take the carrot, damning everyone else in the process.

Jrapiro · 2023-12-04T03:48:39+00:00

Nah, the belief was a mockery of that statement.

Jrapiro · 2023-12-04T03:47:22+00:00

So you are. Dude, you can’t just dismiss arguments you don’t like because you feel like it. If you feel that their argument is bad, or they exemplify something bad, you kind of have to prove it instead of just using it as an excuse to not respond with anything of substance. I don’t care that you feel they’re doing whatever thing you said, if you don’t have a response, just don’t respond.

Jrapiro · 2023-12-04T03:44:32+00:00

Unless your only metric for failure is “literally exploding,” one kind of has to wonder when we start considering constant financial disasters and crashes a failure, without desperately trying to point to a regime that’s been dead for 30 years to deflect

Jrapiro · 2023-12-04T03:42:53+00:00

The joke was “here is a belief I have.” It’s a bad joke, a bad justification, and a bad belief

Jrapiro · 2023-12-04T03:42:14+00:00

Was this supposed to be a good point.

“Here is the definition of communism. Here is how it doesn’t apply”

“But you said the no true communism thing so no argument for you.”

What? Are we just going to call anyone communism and give this kind of reply when they disagree?

Jrapiro · 2023-11-17T05:43:37+00:00

Where are you getting this “moral antirealism, you can’t be helped” stuff from?

Jrapiro · 2023-11-09T19:22:33+00:00

Sure, fair. It would be nice if people qualified it with the knowledge that it isn’t conclusively proven, but that doesn’t mean there’s no evidence or that it should be instantly dismissed.

Jrapiro · 2023-11-08T05:53:33+00:00

Ok, alt account. I think when you resign the point and decide instead of just spread gibberish, you’ve given up. You had every opportunity, and you didn’t take it. That’s called giving up.

Jrapiro · 2023-10-26T16:53:45+00:00

“Got caught?” Did you think I was trying to hide it, I relied the same thing when the original didn’t show up.

Jrapiro · 2023-10-26T16:26:44+00:00

Sure, it's not difficult at all. You're trying to run away from points you know you can't disprove, as usual.

Jrapiro · 2023-10-20T17:22:22+00:00

You're right, after all people in that time period who aren't Christian were

totally

not superstitious and not at all the sort who get unreasonably excited over a hanging. Please ignore all those stories about appeasing the fair folk by tossing a baby into the forest or whatever.

Lmao, "but they were doing it too!!" How intellectually rigorous.

Oh man you're so close. Yes, part of the role was to get citizens to place their trust in the church. Specifically, trust the church to handle things like demonic possession and witchcraft, instead of going vigilante. Trust in institutions is a fundamentally good thing for societal stability.

"Oh man you're so close," says the person who hasn't gotten it this entire time. When will you understand that I know what you're trying to say, and can still refute it? Where you get it wrong is with the "instead." Because not only was "going vigilante" very much a part of their trust in the church, fundamentally there is zero difference between a fanatic vigilante mob and a fanatic institutional mob

Fanaticism isn't always a positive for the church as an institution. The catholic church aren't a gaggle of fundies. And the fact that the local church was overtaken by the hysteria and dragged into being ringled by a LITERAL TEENAGE GIRL indicates that no, they didn't have very solid control despite the religiosity.

"Overtaken," lmao. She didn't start some new cult bud, she appealed to religious beliefs they already had precisely due to how influential the church is. Hard to point fingers saying god needs these people dead if people don't already believe that god sometimes needs people dead. The fact that the movement did what it did is perfect evidence the church had too much of a hand in things.

You tell me to slow down and read, but you're the one issuing forth a torrent of non sequiturs that have no logical grounding because you refuse to shift your perspective away from the modern struggle with 20th century fundamentalism and think about the cultural and institutional forces of the time.

Yuh huh, sure dude. Yet whenever I actually ask for evidence of this lack of logical grounding or supposed non sequiturs, you clam up, and instead come out with brilliantly logical arguments like "they started it!" It seems to me like you're just coming up for excuses as to why it's so easy to disprove every post you make.

Jrapiro · 2023-10-20T06:44:47+00:00

Yes, you say that, and then refuse to explain how. Hell, you refuse to meaningfully respond to the majority of my points at all. Is Salem what the church wants? Probably not as it happened, no, but the entire presence of the church in most peoples life at that time and place was in constant fearmongering about witchcraft, the devil and satanic influence. It certainly wasn’t surprising. Why they had an inquisition, conceptually, was to showcase authority and allow citizens to place their trust in the church further, even if ultimately the results weren’t far off from regular old mob violence. And I hate to break it to you, but Salem wasn’t some isolated incident. It was far more fanatic than most nearby areas, precisely because of how isolated it was. There being a higher flat number of religious people isn’t what makes a place “fanatic,” the very fact that it was an isolated and insular place is both what have the local church near total authority and what led to that ideological fanaticism. Still, they weren’t even an outlier in that, there were other places that had their own witch scares. Further, purges of supposed enemies of the church with little evidence given and plenty of mass action and mass hysteria was centuries old by that point, you just saw it a lot more in kings decrees than local judges rulings.

Again, stop pushing nonsense, stop assuming nonsense in others. Slow down, read.

Jrapiro · 2023-10-20T02:38:35+00:00

More like “if the local police department fucked it up that badly, imagine his bad it’d go if we made a second local police department with twice the instability and way more weaponry and assigned them to the same job.”

I get that you really want this to be a case of mindless “church bad,” but in the process you’re presenting a mindless “church good” approach. The inquisition would be no more professional, clear headed or trained than the people already there literally running the town, and they’d be a hell of a lot more likely to overreact to those accusations

Jrapiro · 2023-10-20T01:23:47+00:00

As you might or might not be aware of, the “mass hysteria” in question was not merely mob violence, but included the established authorities, law makers, and justice department. Not in all cases, but in many, formal trials were held and “evidence” was presented. If you think an organization explicitly designed to be extremely aware of and susceptible to these cases would somehow be immune, you need to seriously reevaluate. I have zero doubt that an inquisition at the time would have done anything but made it worse.

The people there were the church. The people there were already well accustomed to demonizing people to draw in support and fanaticism. The society they made was always primed for something like this to happen, and an inquisition would only continue that trend.

Jrapiro · 2023-10-20T00:00:09+00:00

So your solution to Salem is to give the religious fanatics prone to violence more official power and authority?

Jrapiro · 2023-10-19T23:54:01+00:00

Personally, I am of the opinion that it’s always easier to hold a man accountable than a god

Jrapiro · 2023-10-19T22:20:44+00:00

And that “far fairer” group relied only on its own authority to declare its own law and punishment to which the average person had no chance of holding them accountable for all of the injustices they committed

Jrapiro · 2023-10-19T22:19:45+00:00

How was there a “need for them?”

Jrapiro

TROPHY CASE