How would resolving the Paradox change the story for you?

[The Dark Overlord]

Thanks guys. What about Lord Foul being in the bonfire? The narrative doesn't say it APPEARED to Linden Avery(or anyone else) as if something was in the fire- the narrative states something(Foul) WAS in the fire. Also, what about when Covenant sent Linden Avery back for a few minutes and she determined he was too far gone? His wild magic was manifesting in the open air in the real world. One last thought, Am I the only one that realizes that it's OK if the paradox DOES get resolved(after TPTP that is)? That it DOESN'T take anything away from the rest of the Chronicles if it is? The paradox was necessary for the first series. It only played a pivotal role(yes, crucial) in the First Chronicles. I think what happens is, is that it is SO crucial(to the plot and Covenant's "integrity') in the first three books that people automatically carry the importance over into the next Chronicles( partially because the concept itself has actually become endeared to [some ] of them). If you think about it, it's barely mentioned in the beginning of The Wounded Land and doesn't even figure in the rest of the books. Any thoughts? TDO

[The Dark Overlord]

Hello? Anybody?

[balon!]

That might be a sign you stand alone in your caring that it doesnt matter.


Good post though.

I think that the Foul appearing doesn't make the paradox one way or the other. Its sort of like when TC speaks to the Creator. Doesnt prove it one way or the other.

[Zarathustra]

Overlord, I've given a detailed response to exactly these points in my thread What is the Land? You are free to look it up. The amount of research and work required to discuss this is more than many of us "regulars" are prepared to do, because we've already exhausted ourselves on this topic. In addition, I'm curious to see what some fresh blood might contribute to the conversion. I'm satisfied just to sit back and watch.

But I'll throw this little tidbit at you, since you seem to think that Lord Foul actually, literally made an appearance in the "real world." If he did, then why did Donaldson respond to this question on the Gradual Interview in this manner? Check it out:

A curiousity question - Have you ever during the creation of any of the Convenant novels written or contemplated a situation where one of the characters of the Land was transported to Convenant's world?

Thanks for your time.

Donaldson: I can honestly say, No. In fact, No, no, a thousand times no! That would be an absolute violation of the integrity of the stories I'm trying to tell.

Okay, one more of my favorite quotes from the GI:

And remember, I'm dealing with a "reality" which is inextricably bound to the mind(s) of my protagonist(s). According the rules I've created, we simply *can't* have the Land without Covenant/Linden. It really would be cheating if I suddenly announced, "OK, I was just kidding about that whole maybe-it's-not-real, you-are-the-white-gold shtick. Let's pretend it never happened."

He doesn't resolve the paradox. He simply shifts focus to different aspects of the story. His goals change, but that doesn't mean he has thus committed himself to the idea that "Land is literally real in exactly the same way the 'real world' is real."

[Zarathustra]

Back to paradox in general . . . can someone (like Nerdanel) explain why paradox can't simply be a feature of reality? Why does it have to be something we don't understand, something that is resolved on another level, ect.? What is your personal aversion to reality being fundamentally paradoxical?

[kevinswatch]

In your Profile, immediately under 'Username' it should say 'Custom Rank'. If it doesn't for you, then you probably have to reach a certain number of posts before having a custom rank.

Yea i think it might be 50?
I remember someone else asked and i didnt know te exact number then either.

I'm not really sure what the exact number is either. Heh.

Maybe that's a sign that I should just get rid of that rule.-jay

[Rocksister]

Holy textbook, Batman, flashback to Philosophy and Psysics classes, circa 1993!!!! Interesting topic.

[iQuestor]

TDO:

I agree there are some examples, like Foul appearing in the fire, and his apparent causing of lightning strikes, etc that are hard to explain away, and seem to solidify that 'Land is Real' side.

But for every one of these examples, there is another argument that just as solidly supports the 'Land isn't real' side, for example, the fact that TC and Linden's bodies remain in the Real world, a fact witnessed by others.

It s a paradox, and was designed as such by SRD; this was what finally convinced me that neither side can or will be proven: Because SRD says so. It is the Law of CopyRight, and it cannot be broken by Wild Magic...

[paradox]

It is the Law of CopyRight, and it cannot be broken by Wild Magic...

[Relayer]

My take on it is that in the bigger picture, it doesn't really matter whether the Land is real or not. As has been said, SRD has moved away from the issue, and notice that for Linden in the 2nd Chrons it really isn't an issue. She's there and has to deal with it, and whether or not it's real never comes up in her thoughts.

From that big picture perspective, it probably didn't matter in the 1st Chrons either... BUT that paradox is critical to the development of TC, his character, his decisions, his growth. Once that has been resolved, it's no longer important. Hence, it's not an issue for TC in the 2nd Chrons either.

------------
I could change my tagline, but I LIKE being an Elohim

[Nerdanel]

Nerdanel, you don't think it's a paradox that self-consciousness necessarily precludes the possibility that it can be directed at itself? I'm not talking about sub-consciousness or anything murky beneath the surface. I'm talking about the most explicit form of self-consciousness you can imagine. The act of reaching for your own consciousness necessarily pushes it beyond your reach. And yet, somehow, we're still conscious of ourselves. It doesn't get any more paradoxical than that!

No, I don't really see it like that. I think self-consciousness as a subprogram of the mind. It appears that the subprogram is not capable of supervising itself, but easy enough, it can call itself recursively so that it gets monitored... but the new instance of the self-consciousness subprogram won't, unless it calls itself recursively... Asking someone to think about their consciousness in this manner is essentially a primitive forkbomb (please excuse my computer terminology) for the mind that quickly exhausts the available memory resources. The recursion won't thus get very far, but we remain conscious of ourself all along (in the manner we normally define consciousness - if you define it otherwise we are never really conscious), as the original self-consciousness subprogram keeps running.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think human mind is identical to a computer (it's vastly more parallel for one thing), but I find it a useful analogy.

As for the particle/wave duality, until you can solve it, it's still a paradox. Your belief that it's not isn't an evidence-based belief. In fact, the evidence contradicts your belief. So I'm curious, what's it based on?

Particles and waves are both only useful (although limited) models of the real thing, not the real thing itself. I think the modern view of particles is more along the lines of probability clouds, but we still get textbook pictures of electrons orbiting atom nuclei like planets the sun, because that way things are easier to understand for the students. And of course a lot of the practical applications are vastly simpler with the simplistic particle or wave ways of calculating thins.

It is related to Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle--another paradoxical feature of matter. Characteristics, like position and velocity, are mysteriously linked in such a way that the more accurately you know one, the less accurately you can know the other. It's not a limit of our measuring capabilities--not a practical limitation. It's a limitation of principle, a fundamental roadblock that our knowledge will never be able to pierce. You can know either value to infinite precision, but you can NEVER know both together at the same time except as an approximation.

Perhaps this paradox will be resolved, but if that's so, we'll have to reevaluate the nature of matter so fundamentally, that quantum mechanic itself will be shown to be false. (And QM is the most experimentally verified theory in the history of science.) 100 years of extremely detailed experimental evidence amassed by the smartest men in history argue against your belief. But maybe they're wrong and you're right. I just think this belief arises from a superficial understanding of quantum mechanics. I recommend Quantum Reality, by Nick Herbert as a good place to start.

Again, I fail to see the paradox in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Is there some principle according to which we should be able to gather any information we wished? Consider the process of observation. It is impossible to observe something without interacting with it somehow. The least invasive observation mechanism, looking at something, involves shooting photons or taking advantage of the photons somebody/something else shooted at the observed thing. No photons -> the thing total darkness -> no observation. This doesn't normally have much of an effect, but when we get microscopic enough things change. Suddenly, the energy of a photon can really jar the particle we observe. Sure, we-can use low-energy photons like radio waves, but lower energy is linked to a longer wavelength by a simple mathematical formula, and with longer wavelength photons we don't get so good an idea where the thing we observe is. Conversely, we can use something like gamma radiation with its very short wavelength to pinpoint the observed thing, but since the gamma radiation is very energetic, it's going to change the observed thing's velocity rather significantly when it hits it. This is a paradox how? How about "Cheap, fast, reliable - pick any two"?

I see absolutely no reason to believe in paradoxes. I think believing in paradoxes is comparable to believing in "God did it" in that it discourages finding the real solution. For example "Maxwell's demon" was considered a paradox for a while (it seemed to be able to decrease the total entropy of the universe) until somebody thought to take account the entropy of the "demon", which would increase...

[The Dark Overlord]

Malik23, I will check out your post, thank you. Has anybody considered another possibility? Mabey SRD blew it when he had Foul appear in the bonfire? I seem to recall someone in the forum picking upon his mistake that if we followed WGW exactly as written, Jeremiah SHOULD have been a girl and that they had to do some pretty nifty(and fast ) track covering. Couldn't it be that SRD painted himself into a corner with having Foul in the bonfire? Might not he have FORGOTTEN about that when he gave his response that Malik23 quoted. Mabey he would have been left stuttering if someone had brough it up- just like when they brought up Jeremiah's gender and he HAD to admit '' Yeah, it was a screw up''.
I mean if the land is magical other worldly/dimensional mabey only their spirits go to the Land but I still don't see how to explain Foul's actual appearance in the real world. I guess SRD blew it like in the case of Jeremiah's gender. TDO

[Zarathustra]

Overlord, I am certainly open to the possibility of SRD making mistakes. I've pointed out several of them myself. Whenever his work seems to contradict my own personal interpretations, that's usually the first thing I suspect! (It couldn't be that I made a mistake. )

The bonefire "appearance" might have been a combination of: aggressive use of metaphor, character hallucination, careless writing, or simply a consistency error. I don't know. What I do know is that anything we observe in this world cannot possibly prove the existence of an entirely separate world. I don't care how bizarre it is, it's still a phenomenon of this reality--if we're experiencing it here. Whether or not it comes from beyond this reality is pure speculation, never arising to proof.

At the most, Foul's "appearance" either says something transcendental about the characters, or something transcendental about the "real" world. And, I believe, the same could be said about the Land in general.

Nerdanel, the computer analogy to consciousness can be misleading. Computers are not self-conscious, nor do I believe they can be, not without a radical departure from what we currently think of as computers. I don't care how many parellel processors you put on your mother board, they will never achieve self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is NOT an algorithm. No amount of complexity turns an algorithm into a conscious being. Simulations of consciousness might be possible; in other words, it might be possible to create the appearance of consciousness from the outside. But subjectivity--the appearing to oneself--is something we have no idea how to create. We don't even understand it within ourselves.

Forget self-consciousness. ANY kind of consciousness has two parts: subjective part, and an objective part. My consciousness of an apple includes both the appearance of the apple (the objective part) and the appearing-to-me (the subjective part). Consciousness has this dual-directional aspect. Now you can have computers relate to objects or manipulate objects, but there is nothing in their algorithms that creates this "appearing-to-me" quality. And it is precisely this part of self-consciousness which produces the paradox. We can think about the subjective part, make it an object of our consideration (like we're doing right now in talking about it), and in this sense we objectify it. But we don't reduce subjectivity into objectivity. We don't eliminate it. A subjective aspect always remains. And this is that part that "retreats" as we try to turn our attention to it. The tail of the dog trying to catch its own tail. The "forkbomb" isn't like this. An endless process on a computer is an endless series of objects, not subjective states. In addition, an endless, nonterminating calculation can still be represented by one algorithm. So its endless nature isn't the result of a paradox like the endless retreat of subjectivity away from its own subjectivity.

The particle "model" of matter isn't a merely simplistic picture to help students. Matter does actually behave like particles in certain situations--usually measurement events. The electron probability cloud can be "collapsed" into discrete particles by measuring them. We can calculate the exact mass or position of an electron or proton--something we cannot do for waves. Waves don't have particular masses or positions. Even light is emitted in discrete photons. The particle nature is REAL. It is precisely because this particle nature is real that its wave behavior is paradoxical!

The wavelike nature of particles is in their probability. They have a probability of being in a certain spot before measuring them. But once we measure them, they never look like waves. They look like particles. The wave phenomenon makes itself known in the group behavior of individual particles; it is a wave of probability that is exhibited once you have enough instances to trace out the wave.

As for Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle, it has nothing to do with our measuring technique disturbing the picture, because we can measure as precisely as we wish any one single property. Our interference can be accounted for. The energy of a photon, for example, is known, so we can subtract its disturbance from our measurement. The uncertainty I'm talking about goes well beyond practical limitations; it's a fundamental property of nature. It's not an issue of "cheap, fast, reliable--pick two" at all. You're talking about practical issues. I'm talking about a principle of nature, dictated by properties of matter, not measuring limitations.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Mathematics provides a positive lower bound for the product of the uncertainties of measurements of the conjugate quantities. The uncertainty principle is one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics and was discovered by Werner Heisenberg in 1927. The Uncertainty principle follows from the mathematical definition of operators in quantum mechanics; it is represented by a set of theorems of functional analysis. It is often confused with the observer effect.

However, Heisenberg showed that, even in theory with a hypothetical infinitely precise instrument, no measurement could be made to arbitrary accuracy of both the position and the momentum of a physical object.

The uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics is sometimes erroneously explained by claiming that the measurement of position necessarily disturbs a particle's momentum . . . . Such explanations, which are still encountered in popular expositions of quantum mechanics, are debunked by the EPR paradox, which shows that a "measurement" can be performed on a particle without disturbing it directly, by performing a measurement on a distant entangled particle.

And completely unrelated, but cool nonetheless, is this:

* In Stephen Donaldson's Gap Cycle science fiction book series, one of the characters postulates a socio-political version of the uncertainty principle: namely, that by determining his precise "location" in the current political landscape, he is prevented from simultaneously calculating the likely direction of political events in the near future.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

[iQuestor]

Malik23 said:

Back to paradox in general . . . can someone (like Nerdanel) explain why paradox can't simply be a feature of reality? Why does it have to be something we don't understand, something that is resolved on another level, ect.? What is your personal aversion to reality being fundamentally paradoxical?

a Paradox en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox is an apparently true statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition. Typically, either the statements in question do not really imply the contradiction, the puzzling result is not really a contradiction, or the premises themselves are not all really true or cannot all be true together. (Wikipedia definition)

In this case, either the universe allows paradoxes to exist, or we Humans don't know as much as we thought we did about the seeming paradox.

I have to believe the latter. I think we humans are not presently equipped to know or comprehend the true nature of the universe, and are allowed only glimpses and the occasional insight through the Galileos, Hawkinses and Einsteins that come along.

I do not have an aversion to paradoxes; to me they represent a flaw in our understanding of the underlying rules and laws of the universe. I am sure we have resolved many such paradoxes over the centuries as our knowledge of the universe has grown.

[Zarathustra]

Iquestor, but your idea that paradoxes represent flaws in our understanding depends upon the assumption that reality can't be contradictory. I call this assumption an "aversion" because it is not based on logic or experience (in fact, experience disproves the assumption).

Logic tells us nothing about the world. It can't. That's why scientists still conduct experiments. If the universe operated according to the rules of logic, you could deduce every fact from what you already know. Logic can only tell us about the relations between sentences. Logic is a purely formal system that deals with the structure of propositions. It is used to calculate their truth values (which is an algorithmic value, not a measure of their relation to the world) and whether or not they are consistent with each other or contain contradictions.

But events in the world are not sentences. Our language was developed to model the world, and the world is not required to follow the structure of our language or thought. In fact, events in the world DO NOT occur according to logical necessity. Events are contingent upon context and previous events.

Rocks fall to the earth not becasue logic dictates they must, but rather because of gravity. The sun doesn't rise every morning due to consistency, but because the earth is spinning. See what I mean? There is absolutely no reason within logic that requires that the unverse be noncontradictory. Nerdanel keeps talking about incomplete models of the world . . . but logic is an incomplete model of the world.

So what about experience? Well, that has shown the universe to be contradictory, not merely provided the possibility. If we're talking about measurements like mass and time, two observers can find different (and both equally true!) values for these quantities dependent upon their reference frame. In other words, according to relativity, one's velocity relative to the speed of light will alter one's reality into a different reality from another observer at another velocity relative to him. Aren't these two different measurements of the same quantity a contradiction? How can they both be true at the same time unless the universe has no problem violating the rules of logic? (In this case, the law of identity.)

Are you suggesting that there is some "overview" that contains both of these observers and resolves both of their measurements into one? If so, you're talking (again) about something that is based on neither logic nor experience. Such an "overview" is a belief based on your personal aesthetic (i.e. the pyschological desire for the universe to be noncontradictory). And this aesthetic tendency to expect consistency generates an "aversion" to the opposite view: an inconsistent reality. If you eliminate logic and experience as causal factors for this belief (and its counter-belief), then "aversion" or something similar is the only choice left to describe this belief tendency.

[The Dark Overlord]

Thanks for the reply, Malik23. I think I need to clarify or explain my position so everyone knows where I'm coming from. I took a decent amount of college English courses -including writing and literature where we learned( like in high school) about narrative voice(or point of view)-whether a story is written in the first person, second etc. The Chronicles are written in the straight, third person omniscient- therefore when it simply says Lord Foul was in the bonfire, he was. No alliteration, no allegory, no symbolism- the narrative voice used precludes that-unless you want to take this as the only instance in all the Chronicles that the narrative voice departs from the straight third person omniscient. It can't be argued that Foul's appearance was a ''phenomenom'' or ''observed'' but we don't know what that ''observation'' proves. Nothing was observed, that's the whole problem-all you readers are acting like observers of the story and interpeting what you observe. In other words readers make the mistake of acting like they ''saw'' Foul in the bonfire themselves and interpeting it as such. That is not the case- we are not observing for ourselves but are being told by a narrator and the narrator in the third person omniscient straightfowardly says it was Foul in the bonfire as a fact. It is not a matter of taking this information and interpeting it-that was done for us by the narrative voice. Taking into account the priciple of narrative voice and the nature of the one used(third person omniscient) if Donaldson wanted to maintain the parodox he blew it- the existence of Lord Foul- and thus the Land- was given as a fact in that instance. One thing, Malik23, I don't know what you mean by Foul's appearace say something transendental about the characters or the real world.

[Zarathustra]

Donaldson himself describes his POV as "restricted third person," not "straight third person omniscent."

But my chosen POV (restricted 3rd person) . . . (9/26/06)

The way I understand this--which could be wrong--is that restricted 3rd person is the closest thing to first person. Although the pronouns, "he, she, they" are used instead of "I," we still only get priviledged access into the thoughts and feelings of one character, the main character. The feelings of others are interpreted through the eyes of the protagonist, or told directly to him/her. There is nothing omniscent about this POV. With very few exceptions (i.e., Hile Troy, and Mhorham), the narrative follows either Covenant's or Linden's perceptions.

Anyway, this point of view clearly does not preclude the use of metaphor. (I'm not sure any POV precludes it.) Linden wasn't literally walking into the past when she ascended scree pile (Runes). The obdurate stone doesn't literally hug to its heart secrets "at once enduring and elusive, tangible enough to be tasted. . . " (Runes, p.164) Stone doesn't have a heart, nor does it hug secrets, nor can they be tasted. This POV doesn't render every event or description a literal event and/or description. We're dealing with fantasy here. Even if this narrative were omniscent, "group hallucinations" could be described. I believe you're thinking of 3rd person objective, which doesn't reveal inner thoughts/perceptions except through what characters say or do.

[Usivius]

The way I understand this--which could be wrong--is that restricted 3rd person is the closest thing to first person. Although the pronouns, "he, she, they" are used instead of "I," we still only get priviledged access into the thoughts and feelings of one character, the main character. The feelings of others are interpreted through the eyes of the protagonist, or told directly to him/her. There is nothing omniscent about this POV. With very few exceptions (i.e., Hile Troy, and Mhorham), the narrative follows either Covenant's or Linden's perceptions.

I agree and my is that he pressence or image of Foul is quite simply a projection of his evil self ( ) not the actual being which is confronted by TC in the first and second chrons...

Another way to think of it is a scene from the LotR movie "Return of the King". The palantir is able to project the image and power of Sauron, but at no time can Sauron 'physically' appear through it (if he indeed did have a physical form at that point).

[Relayer]

Although the pronouns, "he, she, they" are used instead of "I," we still only get priviledged access into the thoughts and feelings of one character, the main character. The feelings of others are interpreted through the eyes of the protagonist, or told directly to him/her. There is nothing omniscent about this POV. With very few exceptions (i.e., Hile Troy, and Mhorham), the narrative follows either Covenant's or Linden's perceptions.

That's my understanding of it, too. At any one time we only directly see what one character is experiencing. All other characters and places, actions, perceptions, etc. are viewed through that POV character. Even the couple of times he switches viewpoints suddenly (the Giant-Raver at Doom's Retreat, and then Bannor in Melenkurion Skyweir) we only see inside their head for those few pages. The closest thing I can think of to narrative omniscience would be when Tull and Runnik describe the Mission to Seareach. They don't relate what they were each experiencing, but simply narrate the tale. Typical Haruchai However, it's still from the "perspective of the Mission" - we don't jump ahead to see the Raver, we don't know the Lurker is stalking them, etc.

Stone doesn't have a heart, nor does it hug secrets, nor can they be tasted.

The Giants may disagree with you...

[Nerdanel]

So what about experience? Well, that has shown the universe to be contradictory, not merely provided the possibility. If we're talking about measurements like mass and time, two observers can find different (and both equally true!) values for these quantities dependent upon their reference frame. In other words, according to relativity, one's velocity relative to the speed of light will alter one's reality into a different reality from another observer at another velocity relative to him. Aren't these two different measurements of the same quantity a contradiction? How can they both be true at the same time unless the universe has no problem violating the rules of logic? (In this case, the law of identity.)

Consider another example: Observers A and B are standing on the opposite sides of a road. A car moves past them. A says that the car moves right-to-left. B says the car moves left-to-right. How can this be? Does the universe itself violate logic?!?

Well no. A and B are describing their relationship to the car, and the same applies when they are moving at relativistic speeds and describing the car's speed differently. As there is no universal set of coordinates (one of Einstein's big insights), an object's speed must always be given in relation to something specific in order to be meaningful. And an object's speed in relation to itself is always zero. The rules of logic remain inviolate.

I feel this discussion isn't really getting anywhere... It's starting to sound like a religion debate. Anyway, I think I should mention that any Turing-complete machine can emulate another Turing-complete machine. Specifically, a single-processor machine can do everything a machine with n processors can do. The only potential difference will be in execution speed. At the moment the current computers are far too slow and limited in memory to make proper AIs, but after a few decades they will be reaching human levels of capability if Moore's Law holds up. Of course I'm not saying that your everyday desktop or the Internet will wake up spontaneously like in bad science fiction. Rather the AI will have to use special programming, which will most likely come in the form of trying to make a bootstrap program for a baby intelligence capable of learning for itself like a human child, as we don't understand the brain well enough to program its functions explicitly. I don't see any reason to believe in some mystical force residing in biological circuitry and not in silicon. Sure, we have examples of sentient biological creatures (or at least we BEHAVE like we're sentient, but perhaps everyone of us but you were just programmed by God by do that... ) but the only reason we don't have intelligent computers is that machines don't arise by natural evolution and we have to do the hard work of building and designing them, at least until they can do that themselves.