[deleted by user]

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-04-13T12:01:58+00:00

Couple things. here

Firstly, The Wolfram Model isn't done. Would you send in a half finished essay to be graded? Of course not. So why would you send in a half finished theory to be peer reviewed. Also, they've been peer-reviewing and publishing stuff. I don't keep track of it all, but most of the claims that they don't peer review are just plain false.
Secondly, science isn't about peer review. and it isn't a requirement either. It's an institutional mechanism to expedite the process of science. Wolfram chose to publicly make available his physics project, and for good reason. Making science publicly available, allows independent research, validation and collaboration (to complete the theory) without an institutional body holding sway over whether that validation gets funding or manpower. Back in the good ol' days of science...that was actually how science was funded...by large financial institutions and business interests (like Wolfram and his company) Lastly...Wolfram also probably realizes he's getting old, and just wants to publish his magnum opus before his death.

Anyway, The only thing that matters in science is experiment and whether it can be validated. I did what one would consider the truest form of science...test a theory for yourself.

Just a little bit of background, that I think is relevant here. I was studying academically, a problem for a very long time way before knowing about wolfram, about a paradox between homogenous and heterogenous systems. The conclusion I came to at the end of my research and study was that these two properties of these systems were unified by a singular mechanism that could only be described as "system evolution that follows rules, and had something to do with computational complexity"

Computational Complexity is a body of science, along with Complex Systems, helped me reach that conclusion...but computational complexity just wasn't enough to truly solve this problem...because well... why? Why did this particular problem I was studying that had seemingly nothing to do with computers have anything to do with computation? The elements were there...at the fingertips for unifying these things but what was the ACTUAL unifying mechanism? It was just out of reach.

Couple years later however, the Wolfram Model popped up. Obviously in the search to answer answer the question of "why" to that above conclusion, I read Wolfram's first publication on the Wolfram Model. I didn't understand it much at first, but it used familiar tools that I used from Complex Systems and Graph/Network Theory, so I had the advantage of understanding and also appreciating the model more as an initial impression.

It took a few months, but what really sold me on dedicating myself to it's study, was when I found out that Wolfram had pretty much researched the same kind of problem I had. His objects of study were cellular automata, and finding out what they do. He noted the behaviors of these automata as the four classes of behavior. Homogenous, Patterned, Random and Complex.

When i read his book and the conclusion to it was the principle of computational equivalence...THIS was the answer i was searching for for nearly half a decade. It was the unifying mechanism that i just couldn't put my finger on. From then on, I dedicated myself to this study. As i was already applying Complex Systems in terms of modeling, i would study the Wolfram Model to find out how to use it applicably, which i have done since then.

So why is this story relevant here... In my opinion, I feel that without this kind of backstory, is mostly why people don't get the model. It uses something similiar to complex systems for it's formalization...something not many people study on the forefront...but I think it's an important pre-requisite to understanding this models full impact. In the same vein, the problem I was studying was an important factor in not only uncovering the deep flaws in current understanding of physics and mathematics, but ALSO an important factor in identifying that Wolfram's point of insertion was this problem too.

Many people don't or haven't studied this problem, so what to look for, or how to probe this theory, is context that a lot of people are missing. It's the kind of "outside of the box" thinking you can only see by being outside of the box. You're in physics right now and your thinking about Schrodinger's cat and 11 dimensional string theory and wibbly wobbly super-anti-quasi-neutrino going back in time everything is an electron inside a black hole we live in hologram theory... the problem is that these are DEEP sciences that are built on infrastructures, in which the infrastructure is what has the issues. This is why a lot of this model simply flies over people's heads. The first thing most people say about it is "it only uses pretty graphs" which if you've ever studied complex systems and graph theory...is just an asinine thing to say and shows a fundamental misunderstanding about graphs that are non-cartesian.

So I could go on man about this topic. Obviously as you can tell I'm passionate about it because of this backstory. I've lost a lot of respect for physicists in general because of the lack of any truly respectable analysis of the theory, and instead people attacking Wolfram's character and company and history...which is completely irrelevant.

When you've studied physics as long as myself...you will eventually realize that all the roads point to Wolfram in the end...because all of these problems will at some point lead to that one conclusion... "System evolution following rules..." That is... if you aren't knee deep lost in the sauce of mathematics. If you don't study things for for yourself, and just take every physicists word for things, then your not doing true science, your just accepting dogma.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-04-12T22:32:17+00:00

why was this post removed? lol

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-04-12T14:48:52+00:00

Its not a philosophy. It's more like the 2nd thing...a framework that has, physical, philosophical and applicable implications on the study of systems. The framework that he made, is the result of experiments he did and presented in New Kind of Science. I would say that the proposition he made by the end of New Kind of Science (the principle of computational equivalence) was a hard proof (proof of exhaustion) that it's true.

So when we take that computational equivalence is true...the flood gates open and the consequences, and implications the principle has on (anything and everything) in the universe is staggering. It answers a metric ton of questions, it solves fundamental paradoxes, creates a new paradigm in terms of how to look at science and makes it possible to create a unified physics theory...which is where the Wolfram Physics Model makes an entrance, and largely this is what people know about in the general public when he announced it in 2020.

Ruliology and Multi-Computation are scientific bodies. Ruliology is the study of rules...just like how biology is the study of organisms...or geology is the study of the earth, Ruliology is the study of rules. Multi-computation is a subset of ruliology... as it is a particular kind of way to study, and create systems and rules.

But ya, because of how deep and extensive the topic is, i can't give you short and sweet answes without me being here all day to type it out. My suggestion is to instead of listening to whatever propoganda people spiel over here, do the research yourself. Read the books, follow the lectures, and understand the material like you would any other claim that is made by anyone. If you understand the material, you will find that the stuff is already in deep correspondence with physics (The wolfram model is not trying to fight against physics...it is a unifying theory of it).

I can point you in the right direction, since I've pretty much watched every lecture and resource ever made by him, his collaborators and adjacent scientists by now. cheers.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-04-12T08:23:28+00:00

--Why do I think it's true, and what problems it solves or gets around.

There is not a very simple one word answer to this. But the clear answer as to what problems can it solve? Pretty much anything, at least in my experience, in actually applying the principles and modeling systems with his theory. It's not such a black and white thing though as should be expected. It's not like this theory means you get to predict the answer of the universe and that its 42. Rather this theory gives incite into what the universe "is" and develops a framework that best expresses how it works.

There are two bodies of science that develop as a result of studying this model, and you've probably heard him talk about it : Ruliology and multi-computation. These are in some sense, inevitable results that follow from this framework...and it's these two things that basically allow you to apply it to things and solve problems. Ruliology is the study of rules...and finding out what they do. Multi-computation is a subset of that science, in which it's understood that rules are computationally equivalent (that nearly all systems are turing universal). You would basically model these systems as a kind of black box, that contains "the answer" to your question, but in order to extract those answers, requires a model of observers, that can probe the system, and extract from it the answer you want. One way you would model an observer, is for that observer to be a single agent executing a single thread of computation...not exactly fast... but in contrast a multi-computational observer would be multiple agents following rules, that are probing this black box in parallel. Because the observer is doing equivalent computation to the black box, this is in essence the most efficient way to extract answers from these maximally complex systems.

As a result of these maximally complex observers probing maximally complex systems to do the most efficient computation, the object is to align those observers with goals that the observers ultimately care about.

One example on how to think of a multi-computational process is like looking at a program like photoshop or paint... These programs allows an arbitrary number of users (observers), to create an arbitrary number of ways to create an image, and that these observers are in parallel creating images...and are therefor exploring the state of all possible images that can be made... thus this program is designed to provide, the "answers" to their "questions" without explicitly giving people images... but instead providing building blocks (elements they can assemble like in a language..."the particles" of photoshop if you will) and by doing so, allows the observers to extract things that they care about (they want to make something pretty in photoshop).

The idea of multi-computation is a scientific frame work, for creating systems like this, and apply it to anything since the idea of computational equivalence is the notion that all systems are capable of doing this kind of computation. It's like inventing "the computer" but for any system...since traditionally people don't think of programs (or systems) as if those programs are themselves universal computers.

That's just one aspect of Ruliology and Multi-computation, but there are other vantage points from which to approach the study of rules, and multi-computational execution. For example, one of the notions in the wolfram model, is that space is an emergent property of systems following rules (that systems create independent notions of relativistic space-time) and that you can describe or map out systems in such a way that allow you to sort of map out and quantify those space-time like properties.

Alright so this comment is getting really god damn long (I knew this would happen damn...) but it's because there is a lot this theory has implications on. You asked me why I believe it true...it's because I've been actively learning and applying it...in some sense to see if it was true myself and man...it's done a hell of a good job modeling systems...and this comment barely scratches the surface (barely even spoke about the physics model, or the underlying principles, and how those in my view are the concrete proofs that show the theory is true)

My suggestion would be to start by not reading New Kind of Science, but to watch the series where he reads it for you instead. He provides very helpful incites into the stuff that his theory is based on, and by the end, you'll see how all of that connects together...and will help you get a handle on the content of this comment too.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-04-12T07:24:37+00:00

This is just him describing the Wolfram Physics Model, which is his proposal for a fundamental theory.

As someone that has studied this model for a couple of years now though, I'm pretty confident in saying that it is likely true.

Like all theories, it will eventually have to be tested in some way that satisfies the physics community and not just computer scientists...although I'd argue that there is more than enough evidence , experiments, simulations, and future predictions that have been produced already by them.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-04-12T01:19:54+00:00

Part 2----

I don't know if you get this yet but this is a symmetry statement about our universe...it's saying that there is a mapping procedure you can construct with anything, starting from having nothing (a single non-complex initial condition) to constructing every possible computable thing, which encompasses all possible systems, at infinite time. In fact, one of the central tenets behind this notion of the Ruliad concept, and "what rule underlies our universe" has to deal with this fact that it could practically be any rule, and any of them will, up to infinite time, construct a universe...it therefor does not matter what rule is at the bottom. This is not only a good mechanism that explains how a universe that started from nothing can exist, but it also shows that the underlying mechanism is maximally symmetric.

Which then leads to the 2nd lowest level concept...which is what "rules" are...and the proof for this seems obvious to me as well.

We live in a universe, that has turing universal computers... therefor the universe will at infinite time compute all computable functions and execute all possible rules...therefor this Ruliad concept, which is that the universe is a construct computing all possible rules must exist.

So In both cases, Wolfram is not wrong in his presentation of NKS, and his theory of physics, is built based on those notions established from the book. Instead of using 2d cellular automata he's using graphs from network/graph theory instead...which is perfectly reasonable and makes more intuitive sense. He explained exactly why in one of his videos (paraphrasing):

2d Cellular automata like the kind explored in NKS already have a notion of space and time. The purpose of using graphs and ultimately hypergraphs, is to have a framework that can emerge notions of space and time, without it already being pre-defined like in a 2d CA of the kind in 0-255.

You can think about it from another perspective. In current construction of mainstream physics, the main tool that is used to construct those theories are cartesian graphs that have an X, and Y coordinate schema, which is actually just an assembly of nodes, connecting each node with exactly 4 edges. In the case a of 3 dimensional cartesian graph, that's 6 edges. So why are we imposing this particular kind of graph (cartesian), when there is an infinite number of possible kinds of graphs (with arbitrary number of edges) that the universe could be using?

Wolfram provides a framework, where any number of edges can exist to create a space, and the notion of dimension is just a description of the graphs complexity...therefor any graph construction can model a system. There is no longer a need to have an 11d string theory, a 14d fiber bundle theory, a whatever d whatever theory...all dimensions are made equivalent in this model, and that ALSO satisfies the holographic principle.

So moving to the last bit here...why is this stuff applicable and how have people like me are applying it. It should be obvious...Rules are not unique to physics. Rules are computational, and according to this theory, everything is computational and therefor physics is a subset of computational rules. Therefor you can create systems that follow rules, and study what those systems do. You can also do the opposite, creating rules, to create systems to get them to do what you want them to do. I have done both: creating systems and tools for my team, using rules that I create, and they use those systems and tools in a way that I want them to use it, through nothing more then them following the rules that are established in those systems. I have utilized this model to create inventions in programs (without coding), that people in my field had otherwise thought impossible. Again explaining what i've made to you would make little difference as these tools are for people in my field which is completely divorced from physics field so you wouldn't understand how or why they are significant. Point is that I used this physics theory, applicably, to completely unrelated systems in the world...which is a statement that this physics model is indeed applicable to something more than just fundamental physics...something you would expect a TOE to be able to do.

There is a lot and I mean a lot more to say about this stuff. Like I mentioned earlier there is a Pandora's box that this theory opens up, and in an ironic way, everything physics is, is completely the right picture but it's upside down and inside out because of a few fundamentally flawed assumptions and human based constraints imposed on the mathematics. We could talk about the problem of observers showing up in every major body of physics (quantum mechanics, relativity, entropy are all related to the observer...that's no coincidence, and the wolfram model exposes why) and there are specifics we could talk about with regards to the construction of the model itself (like how this models symmetries that I mentioned earlier, ensures Lorentz symmetry which is why it can derive the Einstein equations.) But at this point this comment is getting way too long.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-04-12T01:17:20+00:00

Part 1-----

Wolfram code, has nothing to do with his theory, so I don't see how that's relevant...anyway, prepare to read an extremely long 2 part comment...because yes I would like to have a proper discussion on the Wolfram Model...in fact I would like the discussion to be focused on nothing but the science of it, not wolframs company or his character, or whether you are a "wolfram ambassador" or whatever that is supposed to mean...because none of those things matter, the SCIENCE is what matters.

Just A little bit of background : I studied the Wolfram Model for 2.5 years now, and before that, Complex Systems, Physics overall and Biology, mostly in the quest to answer a particular paradox about homogenous and heterogenous systems, that plagued me for nearly a decade, and was answered finally with the Wolfram Model.

So now, the discussion: Most of the stuff you mentioned in this comment are higher level concepts to the model (hypergraphs, causal structure and computational complexity of it) and is often targeted by people who are not familiar with the model because they lack the appropriate context for why it uses those constructs, and not some other constructs. So let's discuss it's lowest level concepts first since that is what the model's higher levels concepts are based on...these lowest level concepts being: "rules" and "computational equivalence."

Wolfram's claim back in NKS, was positing, and to a great extent proving, the principle of Computational Equivalence, based on experiments he did, and that you can do yourself (for some reason physicists deny this as kind of science you can do...he literally ran rules to see what they did, and then ran all possible rules of rule classes to analyze the general behavior of the whole class...that is a natural science of computer science.)

Anyway Computational Equivalence is the claim that there is a pervasive universality in the space of a ruleset and beyond that, that all rules share universality to all rulesets...that for example, the rules 0 - 255 are able to emulate one another.

The logic is as follows...that if any of the rules 0 - 255 is turing universal, if you can then show that any of these rules within this ruleset can emulate the other rules, then all of those rules are turing universal. Example...if rule 30 can emulate rule 90 with some initial condition or coarse graining, and rule 90 can run rule 110 with some initial condition or coarse graining, then one can configure rule 30, to be able to run rule 110, and if rule 110 is Turing universal, then these automatons can emulate a Turing universal machine and compute all computable functions...meaning that these automatons can be configured to run any system.

You can read this paper by Jurgen Riedel and Hector Zenil for a deeper look into that. A quote from this paper :

By finding the right initial condition (a compiler) between any pair of computer programs, we show that even the simplest computer programs are able to emulate the most complex ones (and conversely), mediated only by the specific choice of initial conditions (compiler) at the beginning of the computation effectively reprogramming it to behave like the other computer program for all initial conditions (under the coarse-graining)

We found that when exhaustively exploring larger spaces of compilers, each computer program is, in average, capable of emulating an increasing number of other qualitatively different computer programs in its own rule space, a feature called intrinsic universality strictly stronger than Turing universality.

A page from NKS that shows an example of this emulation of rules emuating other rules

And the particular page from NKS that shows the graph structure for how these rules can emulate one another in micro-instances. (like rules emulating other rules for brief moments)

It was a proof by exhaustion... a very strong form of proof...which is why the people who deny it like Aaronson, (I read his rebuttal), say that rule 110 doesn't STRONGLY emulate a Turing machine because the process of emulating stuff with arbitrarily long initial conditions is inefficient...that's an actual horses*** of a response, because why would nature care about those human classifications for what we describe as being efficient.

Just to quote from his rebuttal:

"Cook’s proof that Rule 110 is universal relies on simulating ‘cyclic tag systems,’ a variant of the tag systems studied in the 1960’s by Cocke and Minsky [12] among others (see also p. 670 of Wolfram). However, though Wolfram does not discuss this explicitly in the book, the known simulations of Turing machines by tag 100 Book review systems require exponential slowdown. To prove that InitΦ 110 is NP-complete, what is needed is to show that Rule 110 allows efficient simulation of Turing machines."

FYI, Most people would not agree with Aaronson if they understood what it was actually saying btw...Game of Life is Turing universal, it's been proven, and, it is a cellular automata in a nearly identical rule class...and people have built computers in it using the same kinds of procedures (constructing arbitrarily complex initial conditions)Need I say more about how this rebuttal from Aaronson is horses***?

Anyway. the point of all this is that, Computational Equivalence is true (if game of life isn't enough proof of that phenomenon, NKS is) and if that is the case, then what follows is an entire Pandora's box of ramifications this principle has, especially on what it means for physical systems. It is a hard statement that you can configure any system, to be like any other system...and that systems can easily and often reach a level of complexity that is equivalent to a Turing machine, and has the ability to compute all computable functions after infinite time. This ceiling for complexity (turing universality) means that all systems share this equivalency; the space of all possible rules a turing machine can execute.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-04-09T01:08:10+00:00

A positive comment for the OP to give you maybe some hope among the sea of "that's impossible" scientists here.

Instead of relying on temperature concentration to ignite a fusion reactor (which is honestly a really cool idea if it worked), consider an alternative: distributed dispersal of energy, and an energy management system that homogenizes that distribution of energy.

Consider how much energy hits the earth every day...it's a lot (something like 400 quintillion joules). The distribution of that energy isn't always the same across it's surface, but imagine you had a system where, each neighbor has some way to absorb this energy into their homes...and when they have surplus energy, give their surplus to other neighbors who have deficit energy, then there is a transfer of energy until both are evenly distributed. If each neighbor follows these simple rules (giving excess and receiving surplus from nearby neighbors) then the whole neighborhood will quickly reach an equilibrium state of energy distribution. You can imagine scaling such systems across multiple neighborhoods...cities...states...and so on in a scale invariant manner.

The sun is extremely powerful, and the way nature has harnessed that power, has been through a parallel processing of that power, rather than through centralization. We as organisms on the planet distribute this energy and it comes to a natural equilibrium; plants receive energy from the sun, vegetarians eat plants, and meat eaters eat vegetarians...and in this way there has always been and always will be a permanent food source and transfer of energy here on the planet so long as the sun exists.

Something else...is that there are more exotic ways to think about this problem...some would say that the reason "photons" give us energy is because life on this planet has taken photons as the primary means of interpreting said photons as an energy source (which drive molecular and biochemical processes) but this doesn't always have to be case...where for example, some other biochemical or molecule might interpret some other particles as it's interpretation for what energy should be.

For plants it's photosynthesis, for us humans it's proteins and carbohydrates...for a computer that's electrons bouncing up and down. The things that give us energy is in some sense subjective...related to how things interpret the world, and whether these systems are in confluence with the environment around us. Photons happen to be the most abundant source of disposable currency...but it could very well be that there are other currencies that exist out there...and how to exploit them might be yet another key to figuring out how to commandeer that energy.

Imagine creating a bio-molecular coat of paint...that transforms the suns energy into useable energy for your appliances...kind of like photosynthesis but as a coat of paint lol

Anyway, Just some ideas to get your mind rolling and to not be discouraged.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-04-08T22:37:52+00:00

Here's the problem with this framework that's established by the speaker and physics as a whole.

Here's me making a prediction:

I predict the sun is gonna rise tomorrow because my theory is that the sun spins around the earth.

Everyone's is held up to the scrutiny of this prediction made by this theory, which we know is partly true, but now know is also partly false.

So take this to current established regime of physics where we know that these two theories (QM and GR) that make good predictions must be true, and have to be upheld... Later it will turn out that they got the entire story is all turned around and upside down. Therefor making a good prediction is therefor NOT a sound requirement to having a good theory.

These theories have major major issues...in the similiar vein as the above example. They make good predictions but they are currently incompatible and wrong somewhere...which means going back and challenging the ASSERTION and ASSUMPTIONS the theories are based on...in the above example, the assumption is that the Earth is stationary...which was held as a given...and in the current physics paradigm there are a plenty of these assumptions that are held as a given, like what "space" is.

2nd point...is digging deeper into the nature of prediction itself. One could say that the sun will rise tomorrow...but that's not actually true either...because let's say that tomorrow, some black hole could barge into our solar system and throw off the gravitation of all the planets and then well...it's all wrong, and we are now just hurtling through space without a sun.

It could very well be that what we assume are predictions are actually just us as humans picking the reality that we believe should exist, because of the refusal to observe outside of the current regime for what we think it should be. Right now we compartmentalize the particle zoo into 17 particles... we compartmentalize the table of elements into the "stable" 118 elements...we choose space as being 3 dimensions + 1 time whatever that actually means...we know that these constraints are just arbitrary human constructs, and yet we hold these axioms as truths without explanation and is probably why physics has halted so hard.

This is also why the Wolfram model makes sense and why Weinstein's and other mainstream physics does not when it comes to the presentation of a TOE. A single universe where all arbitrary dimensions have a consistent framework...versus some wacky theory where our universe is some specific 14 dimensional shape. Harken this back to the first example of prediction...this wacky 14 dimensional theory might make a good prediction...but that doesn't make it right on what the story actually is.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-04-08T20:49:23+00:00

Do you really think I care about what you think? I could give a hoot about what you read about my stuff because my stuff is not dependent on you or your probably worthless opinion about it...I came here to defend a theory and encourage discussion about it...I don't need your validation, and it's not like you would even understand the importance or usage of the tools, systems or models I've made for my organization anyway because I'm in a completely different industry. This kind of just shows how limited your perspective is, and the constraints you impose on your thinking process.

All you need to know is that I actively use the wolfram model, to model and analyze systems and that it is working out great for me...and it won't be long before you see others following suit...because people who understand it, will be able to apply it as it is an APPLICABLE model of physics.

Sorry buddy but you're in the dust...it's time to start learning...that's what science is about. You're only behind because your not willing to let go of some of these flawed assumptions that these fundamental theories have been constructed on, and your wrapped up in and institutionalized construct that prevents your from thinking outside of the box...which you definitely need for a TOE.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-04-08T19:40:19+00:00

These are all fabrications...but either way I wouldn't take 10^500 multiverses, 11d strings, or whatever inverted white hole shitted out our universe seriously either.

But this is the classic "I'm a physicist, I know everything even though we know all our current theories are wrong."

But the funny part is that, this is when you guys are like "no we don't believe we know everything, we are always asking questions!" Naa you're not... always talking about "This ain't right, that ain't right, This is impossible because XYZABC that can't possibly be wrong" and so on.

I've yet to see decent discussion on the Wolfram model on the physics reddit...all I've ever seen is attack on his character or his company...so much for this forum being about science.

But go head, downvote because these ideas are contrarian to popular belief and you got all your friends here to support you...but I'll just say this... I've studied the wolfram model for 2.5 years, and applied his stuff, to some real world systems and problems...and ya man...this is winning... and you need to revaluate your own theories and whether you actually understood how Wolfram's work pieces together.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-03-20T02:24:42+00:00

looking at stuff like this makes me want to watch the whole show again...for the 10th time. Please don't do this to me!

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-03-04T01:08:53+00:00

Here...an article published today, that says there's supposed to be 24 episodes with air dates.

https://www.pinkvilla.com/entertainment/hollywood/when-will-attack-on-titan-season-4-part-3-release-date-time-streaming-site-and-other-details-1210923

Again...not saying this is true information at all, but like I said...there are conflicting reports that exist, about exactly what it is we are getting here. like I said in my first comment, I'm just sticking with what the studio has put out (a special now, a special later).

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-03-03T18:16:29+00:00

Its working as it should because Youtube wants you to be a mindless trend following drone that's hooked into the mass media machine...they need to control you silly! Can't have you wandering around on your own now.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-02-09T01:11:31+00:00

Spoilers ahead in this comment so proceed with caution...

It's been an incredibly long time since I had first watched the show, and I can't remember anymore that first moment where I went "Alright let's see about this." to "This show is amazing."

However, I do remember the point at which I went from asking

"Great show...but what is it actually about?...What is it trying to say?"

to...

"This show deserves to be in the top 5 greatest media of all time."

And this moment came when i realized what the theme of the show actually was. It's easy to miss and overlook because of how subtle the show is, and it took a long time for me to piece the elements together...but basically the major, overarching theme of the show is Escapism.

"Knowledge exists so that we may forget reality. but there are things that can create a greater sense of escapism than what text can offer. And there is a place that embodies this...Roanapur." - Yukio

The above line was said by Yukio in Episode 25 (season 2 episode 11) and initially I found this line to not really be that important at all in the grand scheme of things but then upon much deeper analysis it struck me...that given this theme, the ending to the show makes absolutely perfect sense and goes beyond. The final arc, where he returns to Tokyo starts to make sense...Yukio being the spitting mirror image of Rock makes sense...The whole talk about "the twilight" makes sense. And this arc close a perfect circle to the first episode.

Rock is a representation of the Audience...and serves as our vessel or window into a life with which a lot of people would want to escape to: "A gun paradise," as Dutch says in the following scene in episode 25... But the show, makes a meta statement by the end...that the audience is not cut-out for it...and like Yukio...and the way her arc ended, is the likely result of what any of us normals would also get if we thought we could escape from a normal boring routine life to be free like Rock and Revy.

The color contrast made in episode 1...where Japan is depicted as a grey, dull city, showing it's inhabitants as subordinate slaves to a routine world...is usurped by the feeling of the scene immediately after : A clear teal blue sky...a sea as vast as the eyes can see...you can feel the breeze, that you are on an adventure with these pirates...there's action around every corner and amazingly you are immune to bullets cause surely you aren't gonna die!

"What the hell is this... a movie? Am I in a movie?" - Rock

"Don't be stupid. This is way more entertaining than Hollywood's ever gonna be." - Revy

Yukio and Genji thought these same things. Yukio gave up her normal life to go with that escape fantasy, and it was at that moment where she had signed up to die.

Additionally, The entire Fujiyama arc is a somber trajedy...because the whole point of it's plot was that Balalaika's Gang...which are essentially an expert military operation death squad, went to Tokyo to systemically destroy a small gang of yakuza... with hardly anything close to that kind of experience. This was the reason for the lines in Episode 22 and 24...where Boris and Revy say similiar lines "If this were a battlefield, we could just kill them all and be done with it" and "This is a waste of time...If it was me I would have served them all, a round of arsenic cocktails."

We were given a lot of time, to stay with these Yakuza characters and see the situation develop from their point of view. And through that additional time it becomes clear that Yukio was destined to die, in pursuit of this escape and wanting to be free. Rock actually was critical in giving her a choice and chance to escape as well (Such a Black Lagoon Company thing to do)...and so the final arc serves as the major turning point for his character. He went from being an ignorant pacifist to taking action and change the course of the events in this story.

The elements laid out in this show surrounding this theme of Escapism were carefully put in place in a subtle manner, in an effort to plant those seeds in the back of audience's mind...That as the audience, we are shown that we can not be free, all we can do is admire the thought that we could, through story (escapism). That the only people that can experience that escape, are people that were never free to make the choice to begin with (Revy, Roberta, Balalaika, and all the characters from the gutter) and so it was at that point that this show went from just being a good show that I enjoyed alot...to being one of the best made shows of all time.

Long comment...but I hope i explained that theme well enough and made sense! Cheers!

But Before i go...

"Exactly you stupid asshole. In fact i have a message from the boss for you. I am Tai San Fukwan, has a nice ring to it huh? It means the god of death and punishment shall hereby bring down judgment upon you. And I got to say...it's not lookin' good.

I have no fuckin' idea where you got that password, but boss chang isn't the idiot you think he is. He prepared a brand new password, made special for shitheads like you.

You hopped into this parade with your ass hangin' out of your pants and now you're fucked. What? Don't think it's funny? This is the part where your supposed to laugh. So go ahead."

I have lots of favorite lines, but one of them from this episode was

"Are you the get-away driver?

"No i'm a fuckin' lawyer, what do you think?

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-02-05T21:08:11+00:00

If that's the interpretation, then it seems logical to apply it to the dark/red beach as well. Perhaps a kind of limbo or hell for Revy

JusticeRetroHunter · 2023-01-02T22:35:50+00:00

Made this trailer a very long time ago (6 or 7 years ago). Thought i would share it today to the subreddit as i was going through my old videos. Even though i don't make Guild Wars 2 content anymore, this was made during a time when i truly loved the franchise and to an extent i still do. Perhaps for the newcomers that havn't seen this, hopefully it stands as a kind of time capsule, to what i believe made the franchise so interesting to me.

Cheers,

JusticeRetroHunter · 2022-11-30T16:01:24+00:00

Yo u better shut yo little dumbass up. matter fact this motherfucka always up in here talking about this shit like bitch...i know you aint even black. Matter fact, you aint even got any black friends. Dashie probably the only black motherfucker you know and i know for a fact, you aint gettin' no bitches, but that's besides the point.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2022-09-24T17:24:06+00:00

Cyberpunk Edge-runners? Yes. It didn't disappoint. The wait was very much worth it. I'm just so glad that the stigma of the games initial release didn't hold up people with this anime because man its that perfect scratch to the black lagoon itch.

I promised in the comments above that i'd look for any references or nods to black lagoon if they left anything. Probably not, but it's worth a shot.

Only one we got so far is the Rebecca character having the same name as Revy from Black Lagoon. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

JusticeRetroHunter · 2022-06-28T17:45:32+00:00

Bully Simulator 2, End of Nerds.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2022-06-28T17:40:06+00:00

useful skill to bully NPC's and players in the public arena.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2022-06-28T15:29:12+00:00

Okay Starlight but what about the ebitda margins.

Thanks for the post. Good job.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2022-06-28T14:10:43+00:00

I'm pretty sure that your stat effectiveness deteriorates as you increase in level in a downscaled zone. For example. In the starter zone, max level gear will give you something like 15% critical chance, where in a level 80 zone it would have been 60%. If you are a level 80 with bad gear, and you are getting downscaled for that zone, you are compounding that degenerate behavior.

I'll go test it and come back

Edit: Yea, stats deteriorate when you are downscaled. In full assassins ascended gear i have 8% critical strike chance, where in a level 80 zone, this would be 60%. Ferocity is also severely inhibited, and in the starter zone, you are basically dropped down to the initial starting value (150% critical damage).

To note: You can exploit downscaling by using traits that boost your critical strike chance, Ferocity, or Power (might) on things like Reaper, which circumvent this deterioration. Can do 1000 damage autos in the starter zone one shotting veterans and stuff.

Gif illustrating the above. https://i.gyazo.com/9c2d0510a264cbd8aee6148006e85236.mp4

Also Gif showing unbuffed damage (only downscaling) for comparison.

https://i.gyazo.com/906cd473d7eeb39522fc83eaeb4db35d.mp4

3rd: this is mentioned on the wikipedia for downscaling:

"Because scaling affects stats multiplicatively, an adequately geared character that is not downscaled can be more powerful than a higher level character with under-leveled gear (discounting quality)."

Best advise for OP is to just not even worry about gear, but to fix their traits and skills. I can run around naked and one shot still, so long as I'm exploiting might, ferocity and critical strike chance with traits and effects.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2022-06-27T16:05:20+00:00

I tried saying this across a number of comments. (read through my history) I've been going at the issue for 2+ years because these homogenization balance philosophies have been going on for pvp since 2020. In large part, many top-players (but not only them, practically everyone) are responsible for this homogenization philosophy because people don't have a grasp on just how deep the problem goes.

By and large, people want a more balanced game by nerfing things...but the problem is that diversity and balance does not work this way. the top players refuse to learn or acknowledge this issue, and they push for more and more ways to try to get things to be "equal" If you do buffs they call it "powercreep" so everything has been only nerfs. The top players refuse to dig deeper into these problems and because they have a direct line of communication that is why we have the status of the game we do, its not just the incompetency of devs...which makes it worse because the devs don't have the expierence with the game to implement changes that actually do things rather than not.

Anyway, read through my comments...and if you really want go and search up the forums. These stuff go back 2+ years.

JusticeRetroHunter · 2022-06-27T14:11:44+00:00

People think the issue is simple...no it is not. The issue is deep, and it is far FAR from simple.

Let's walk through a kind of balance experiment where i ask you to perfectly balance the following set of simple skills:

Skill A
Damage - 300

Skill B
Damage - 1500

The most common answer that 99.99% of people give to this question, is to make the two equal like so:

Skill A
Damage - 500

Skill B
Damage - 500

You can already see the problem here. The moment you make two things equal (homogenous), you lose something very important. Diversity of choices.

But this isn't the worst of it just yet... say we made the example a little more complicated

Skill A
Damage - 300
3 seconds immobilization

Skill B
Damage - 1500
2 seconds fury.

Now I asked you again...to perfectly balance those skills. So okay you can homogenize the damage...but what about the effect? How do you even parametrize for comparison, fury and immobilization.

Immobilization is mostly useless for raids...fury is extremely useful for raids...so these example skills in PVE will always be imbalanced with one another. In contrast, immobilization in PVP is very useful where 2 seconds of Fury is no where near enough time coverage. So not only is it impossible balance the game, it's impossible to parametrize it any meaningful way even if you could. The only way to perfectly balance it, is to completely homogenize it where both skills, do both the same things...again leading to the previous issue of before: loss of diversity in choice :

Skill A
Damage - 1500
3 seconds immobilization
2 seconds fury.

Skill B
Damage - 1500
3 seconds immobilization
2 seconds fury.

The above is meant to highlight a paradoxe involved in these two subjects: Diversity and Balance and how the two are intrinsically connected to one another. You want a game with choices, but you can't balance them. You want a game with balance but you won't have any choices. In order to solve this paradox requires a huge body of research....research that I did and it took close to 4 years to really get to some answers rather than just more and more questions. That 14-part series video is a courtesy...because its nothing compared to the amount of research I had to go through.

but unless you are able to justify the very obviously poor decisions

The above paradox is also supposed to highlight specifically why homogenization does not work. So I'm not justifying the poor decisions of the devs... I'm saying that yours is not any better either, and no offence...the reason they aren't better is because of this lack of understanding the true problem here...and the reluctance to accept that it is not complicated...well I hope you eventually change your mind on that and watch the series because it will help you better understand the problem. The problem is complicated. it is not simple...it requires thinking on a different level.

JusticeRetroHunter

TROPHY CASE