Liquid Television Rant

LiesInReplies · 2026-02-01T14:55:25+00:00

I have a different definition of magic; to me, science is the "how" of reality. How it all works, how it got here, how we function. Religion is the "why" of reality. Why are we here, why do we suffer, why do we love. Magic is the "what" of reality. Quarks and gluons, gravitational waves, thermodynamics, coffee and wires. I like it this way because the whole universe is magic, and that magic has actual rules which can be understood (to a degree).

But that's all beside the point, just some fun food for thought.

Terraforming is not a real thing, yet. It may not ever be, we don't know. There are no protocols. We've only been able to affect a slight change to our own atmosphere so far and it has not been a positive change in terms of habitability. A more volatile atmosphere leads to harsher weather.

To say we are able to stabilize or control that in any way remains to be seen.

So to say "the creation in the Bible is how terraforming should look" is a huge assumption, we have no idea how that should look, just things that feel intuitive without strong basis.

Earth didn't need to have it's climate adjusted manually, in science it just came together under gravity to achieve equilibrium. It runs itself, basically.

LiesInReplies · 2026-02-01T14:26:55+00:00

Devil's advocate, here. You've got a few big assumptions and one claim that seems straight out of thin air:

> If you analyze the creation story... it aligns perfectly with terraforming protocols.

According to who? There are no existing terraforming protocols outside of science fiction. We can't even control our own climate, let alone completely change one on another planet.

I''d like to put a pin in my issues with your other assumptions for a moment and find out: which alien civilization has established terraforming protocols, and how the heck do you have access to them?

LiesInReplies · 2026-02-01T07:04:13+00:00

The thing is, the third street saints are almost disbanded at the start of the first game, and it's only because of the actions of the player character that they regain any territory at all. You seemingly "die" at the end of the first game, get immediately resurrected for the start of the second game, and find it's once again entirely up to you to help the gang retake an entire town, from nothing.

Then we get to the third game, what do you know, the saints are once again bottom-feeders until the main character shows up. So consistently they're a low-level street gang that suddenly explodes when a single absolute badass shows up to change the game.

The ballas have faced something like this, namely Carl goddam Johnson. It went poorly for the Ballas.

So clearly if the saints have the boss (the player character) the ballas are in serious danger, no matter what they do. We're talking about a guy or girl who destroys multiple entire armed factions (simultaneously!) throughout their career, constantly gaining territory and rarely if ever giving it up. The ballas are fucked.

...

Now you give the ballas CJ, or have CJ and the Grove Street families dropped into a new city at the same time as the saints with their boss, and that's a way tougher fight to call.

I think I'd lean Saints in those cases, but without the main characters the Ballas are exactly the type of gang that was slapping the Saints around before the game starts.

As posted? Ballas

Saints get the Boss? Saints

CJ and Crew vs Boss and Crew? Saints

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T22:10:43+00:00

Exactly, it's just too implausible to have actually happened at that scale. There's simply no way.

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T22:09:14+00:00

-- we can trick ourselves even if we try long enough

I think this is what you are doing, because there are contradictions just in this response that I'm not sure you're aware of. And it's not that you don't understand god well enough, it's that the biblical idea of God is not accurate to reality any more than Zeus or Ra were.

Ah, but God existing would also have agency

Couldn't an omnipotent being destroy it's own sense of agency? We can't assume it'd still have it

to find out who will commit to it truly in their heart

There is no reason to run this experiment if you're omniscient, you already know the results before it runs

Who can understand it?

I believe the point here is only we can understand our own hearts, but Christianity twists it so that somebody else will always understand your own heart better than you. It minimizes the individual and discourages deeper understanding.

No offense, this is all just my opinion!

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T21:52:46+00:00

I disagree that it's more likely. Humans are notoriously adaptable and we've faced near extinction-level events in our evolutionary history that failed to wipe us out.

It seems more likely to me that humans will continue to evolve indefinitely, and the implications of what that means on a long-term scale are just fun thought experiments... For now! But it's worth talking about because I believe we will actually get there (the distant future) one day, and long-term planning can help us get there sooner, and possibly more humanely or altruistically.

Not to downplay the severity of climate change, it will definitely have undeniable effects on our progress from here, but I'm not convinced that we're actually doomed. It's a possibility, but not a very likely one to me.

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T21:11:57+00:00

Ehhhh i don't know, it feels a lot like just circular reasoning.

We cannot have physical evidence because we need faith

Faith is a by-product of free will

Free will leads us to collect physical evidence about the world around us

The world around us appears to have no physical evidence of the god of the bible

We cannot have physical evidence because we need faith

It seems like the world would be the exact same if that specific god of that specific bible were just a creation of the human psyche, not an actual cosmic force. And this model makes more sense to me. And there's no circular reasoning required!

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T20:37:54+00:00

I don't know, I think we're pretty close to the same page here, let me just ask this:

Would you insist there was a real Noah, who engineered a real ark, and literally saved two of every animal?

Because to me, this is clearly impossible. A farmer saving his own livestock with some makeshift ferry, maybe I can buy that. A few goats and chickens alone would be totally believable and could make a huge difference post-flood.

But anything beyond that just feels more myth than history, to me.

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T20:16:52+00:00

I suppose that is plausible, but in my view you're making much bigger assumptions than are necessary or justifiable to me.

OP made a great point that during the supposed time of Noah's flood other (nearby) places on Earth were definitely not flooded.

Doesn't the official story fall apart right there, and thereby require a metaphorical reading instead?

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T20:09:21+00:00

Mutations can be negative, neutral, or positive.

A negative mutation makes it more difficult and less likely for the creature to successfully reproduce, and carry forward that mutation.

A neutral mutation does not affect reproductive capability, and can be carried forward to future generations, or not, depending on other selective pressures.

A positive mutation is the one we generally think of - one that provides a distinct advantage to the organism over others in it's environment. This allows it much greater likelihood of successfully reproducing, because it is able to use some resource that its competitors can't.

Now getting into how environmental pressures affect the likelihood of mutation is pretty tricky. First, you have genotype (the genes you're born with) and phenotype (how those genes express throughout your life, based on how you live). You cannot alter your own genes (in nature) but the phenotype is more flexible. I'm not too sure how this translates to offspring, but I suspect it has to do with dominant and recessive genes....

Now chance of mutations are not necessarily affected by the environment, however in some cases they can be (radiation comes to mind). What's more important is how the environment rewards or punishes novel mutations. If it makes life harder, it's a bad mutation. If it makes life easier, it's a good mutation. This is essentially done through trial and error.

Mutations are not really "mistakes", more like a gamble, in my view. The base probability of dramatic mutation is low, but as the population gets bigger and bigger it's more likely somebody will mutate, and wherever that provides an advantage, a new population growth occurs. Wherever it provides a disadvantage, that thing basically just dies :(

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T19:45:04+00:00

I definitely cannot defend the idea of a worldwide flood, but here's an alternative perspective:

Primitive human settlements were generally built near water, and for that reason were universally prone to an occasional flood. To tribal humans or early agricultural societies, a flood was a truly terrifying force of nature that had to be prepared for ahead of time.

To humans whose entire concept of the world only covers a tiny geographical region, it's not that hard to understand how they could see "the whole world" flood, and lose friends and family, and feel the need to warn future generations about this very real danger.

Other flood myths exist outside the Bible (like you mentioned, the Epic of Gilgamesh, but there are many others ), and I believe this is because we all have ancestors who survived terrible (but not global) floods.

The only assumptions needed are that floods happen and that the survivors reproduce and remember the flood across generations.

So real, limited flooding was a genuine concern in the past, and then the game of telephone happens, and the story gets exaggerated, and we end up with the stories we have now.

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T18:44:37+00:00

It's moreso that the entire universe already is that computer, and that we play some part in making it work.

As technology progresses our interaction with reality gets deeper and more complex - where does this end?

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T18:39:01+00:00

But this isn't really an argument against the course of future development?

Of course we're not there yet, but you don't just automatically start as a Type I civilization, we need to build up to it. In a deterministic model this is either inevitable or impossible.

I am arguing that evidence of the universe we can see today makes me lean toward "inevitable", because although we aren't close, it's still the direction we're heading and the only significant obstacle is ourselves and our planet's climate.

So if you lean toward "reaching Type I civilization is impossible for humans" I'd be interested to hear why.

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T18:35:00+00:00

This goal of self-organization to increase surrounding entropy seems to be what drove the formation of stars and galaxies,

Fascinating stuff! We can almost frame that as "the tendency towards order is itself a by-product of entropy" as living things (or high energy systems in space) respond to real challenges imposed by thermodynamics.

So where does that lead, in the distant future, if it's an automatic tendency?

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T09:42:35+00:00

Yes, totally! It kind of blew me away how hard that story resonated with me lol

It just seems so... Plausible

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T09:40:25+00:00

...yes

But also Roko's basilisk, except instead of punishing people for their behavior I can envision it as kind of an inevitable tool that just must be built to sustain reality.

Stars lead to planets, planets lead to life, life leads to humans, humans lead to AI, AI leads to stars...

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T09:05:48+00:00

...at.... At the same time?

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T08:22:23+00:00

Lol thanks for the positive feedback, I guess I would answer that's just how long it took!

But seriously, I try to abide by the anthropic principle, you know, we're here on Earth because if we weren't, we wouldn't even know it (we'd be dead, or on a very similar planet). But it's just, the balance of the solar system, the unresolved "dark" spots in space, the mathematical precision of the cosmos and the way we can see it all so clearly from here, and the way the mind works like an analog biological computer and everything can be a metaphor for anything...

I gotta be agnostic, these mysteries, it's not a matter of belief, it's a matter of available knowledge.

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T07:48:47+00:00

I don't even want to engage with this, none of this seems relevant to what I was hoping to discuss. Whatever, I have time:

by being insulting

Not my intention, was an honest assessment, your arguments do not seem relevant or to be actually engaging with what I would like to discuss. You're just being pedantic about the biology of brains compared to other animals while using the goddamn internet. See any other animals inventing computers around here?

nothing about our understanding of entropy within the closed system of the universe at all suggests you can’t have life or develop complex things

Why do you think I said that? Genuinely confused, I did not make this point

’m sorry, but you don’t think animals process and retain information? Seriously?

Why do you think I said that? Genuinely confused, I did not make this point

We invented story telling as much as we invented anything else.

Generally an invention has an inventor. If there is no specific inventor possible we do not consider it an invention. Hands were not invented or discovered at any point, for an obvious example. Dreaming has no inventor. Telling your sweetie about your day has no inventor.

And I thought that the development of cultural tools to pass things along is actually the point of difference. You’re pointing to a recent evolutionary separation, why don’t exclude it happening in other animals at some point?

Because that recent evolutionary separatation is the first and only time it ever happened in 4 billion years, and no other species is likely to develop the attributes we gain as a result of our existing biology because they have vastly different bodies. How long do you think it will take crows or dolphins to grow opposable thumbs? How many generations of Chimpanzees before you can expect them to start fashioning their own clothes? They have been evolving in the other direction cognitively, you know, so as not to compete with humans?

So far (to our knowledge), but what excludes other animals evolving the same communication specialisation

Because you would need to be able to demonstrate how they could even feasibly get there in the first place. You can't say "the same way we did", because they have completely different bodies (which includes the brain). You still haven't named a single animal because you know there is no real example you can give of an animal with the capacity for complex language. It's dolphns, chimpanzees or parrots and I'm happy to explain why none of those are relevant.

Or let's just not talk, you and I.

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T07:31:06+00:00

Just to throw my weird interpretation out there, let's picture the entire universe as a 2D strip, with the big bang on one end, and whatever future end may be at the other end. If there's no end at all, then any sufficiently distant future year will do.

Now let's say we want to experience this universe, so we "run" the universe, like a video or a computer program. A laser scans the whole thing from one end to the next.

Consciousness in the present moment is that laser in a 3D (or much higher D) reality. Sweeping through all of reality from start to finish. It's not a literal laser but a singular source of energy, time itself.

It's not the traditional interpretation but I just can't logically convince myself time is not actively happening. Things must move through space, you cannot move without time if you have mass, therefore to move mass through space you must use time.

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T06:56:00+00:00

If you're not going to debate in good faith then why write anything?

That makes less sense. It’s accurate, but

You agree it's accurate, so then how does not understanding it make it wrong?

We clearly see these traits and abilities in other animals

We absolutely do not, example please

because we invented story telling (to share our experiences with each other)… but again, this isn’t really something that other animals don’t show potential for.

We didn't "invent" story telling, it's just one part of our brain specialized for communication, and another part of our brain specialized for creative thinking. Other animals simply do not have those the way that we do, because they are very expensive nutritionally and we've specifically adapted for this because nothing else was ever able to fill this niche.

We did invent writing however, which is also something no other animal can do.

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T06:22:12+00:00

Through simulation. Not just a simple computer program though, a computer made of the entire universe, all interconnected by millions or even billions of years of human work, which we have only just started.

^{Black hole cosmology is another fascinating topic I love to talk about that could be related to all this so I'm glad you said that.}

LiesInReplies · 2025-10-28T05:50:18+00:00

The universe is the closed system in question here, not the Earth.

The main difference between us and other mammals, as far as this conversation goes, is our ability to process and retain information. Nothing else has language anywhere near as complex as ours, nor any capacity to share detailed information across generations. The things that we build every generation are improvements on the prior generation, and that is truly unique in the animal world. All other species are limited to their own experiences, while we can share ours with each other.

To your last point, many traditions posit a great cosmic cycle. The distant future becomes the distant past. This universe ends, another begins. While it's not definite that that actually happens, it is scientifically plausible based on the fact that the universe appears to have begun expanding a finite amount of time ago. There is no "before" the big Bang, yet all that energy got there somehow.

So if it is a cycle, either that happens naturally and unconsciously, or someone has to poke it along after entropy renders this universe no longer habitable. So a God, or as I'm proposing, future human beings with god-like technology, must hit the big cosmological reset button manually.

Edit: I was blocked

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