Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-32182236-20190721003717/@comment-32182236-20200107224503

Okay, much of your original analysis isn't changed by the first two parts (Which you should really take into consideration before you talk about this series more:Just like you shouldn't criticize The Prisoner of Azkaban for not explaining everything to you, when really you just never read The Sorcerer's Stone or The Chamber of Secrets, which you're supposed to read first), so I'll respond to the parts that are still valid in light of the first two parts. (Actually, I'll respond to all of it, since I can simply refer you to those two parts.)

It's really impressive that it took the text equivalent of a novela to actualy start talking about Undertale's lore.

That's what happens when nobody can agree on a coherent way of solving the game. There become all of these year-lasting debates that go nowhere, because the people involved have different beliefs on how to analyze the game, which leads them to wildly different conclusions. The tools you use to analyze the game are important-Use the wrong ones, and you're going to get the wrong answers. That's why after all these years, we STILL haven't found a solution. We were using the wrong tools, and the wrong way.

And it's far easier to make bad theories than it is to refute said bad theories.

So I started making this series. If we can just all learn to analyze the game the right way... We can finally start actually getting somewhere. But since the average layman probably knows nothing about logic, I have to explain the very basics to them. I have to tell them things that you'd normally learn in a philosophy course, because not everyone here takes philosophy.

It is impressive that it takes this much just to get started.. But it's equally impressive how long people have been debating over the theories, not even realizing that they're all using the wrong observation tools, and the wrong deductive tools. All this while wondering why we haven't found the solution yet.

While I never took debate in school, and don't know all the fancy Latin terms for types of arguments, I do have a great respect for the scientific method, and have expanded my vocabulary by reading this.

That's why I explain what they mean, rather than just give the term and expect people to know what I'm talking about. And it's also why I made the two parts prior to this one, since many people don't even know what logic and deductive reasoning is.

I always start with the foundations. After all, that's the most important part-If the foundation is off, then everything else will be off as well. And trying to fix those other things that are off on a rocky foundation really isn't the way to do this. That's how we ended up with 100+ epicycles in the geocentric model, when we should have thrown out the geocentric model entirely, realizing that the idea of the planets orbiting the Earth is an unjustified assumption to make. (And so too the idea that orbits had to be circular!)

Appeal to Authority does happen a lot, whether MatPat or Toby, and it's refreshing that that's adressed here. While I do think that Toby, as the person who wrote and created the game, does count as "God" in terms of Undertale, that doesn't mean he isn't going to troll us. Just like Scott and FNAF, what's the point in making an epic puzzle and then spoiling the answer for people? Artists who make mysteries love to have fun with the fanbase, so I do think it's constructive to consider only the game lore itself canon. If an artist drops an idea, it's good to research it to see if something new can be learned, and respectuflly hear them out, but only in-game evidence should be used for proofs.

I agree. That really is used way too much. It's one of the reasons why scientific progress is so slow! The revolutions tend to come from people who reject such things, and actually analyze them based on their own merit. It's just impressive how few actually get that the identity of the person making the claim doesn't change the contents or validity of the claim. Yes, authoritive figures do tend to be right more often than the layman, but that doesn't mean they're flawless. Sure, taking the person that said into account is better than literally doing nothing or flipping a coin, but the way to be sure (and the best thing to do overall) is to actually read the theory and analyze it. And the fact that nobody bothers to critize them as much as anyone else ends up leading to the non-authorities soon becoming the more accurate, which then gives rise to the conspiracy theories about "they're lying to you".

..No, the problem is they made a mistake, and nobody bothered to question the mistake, so it stayed there.

I do think caution is neccessary, though, when getting overly lost in the mechanics of logic to the detriment of the game itself.

How is using logic a detriment of the game? If we use the system correctly, it's specifically designed to make sure the conclusions arise from ALL the evidence. Which is exactly what we want.

Undertale, like FNAF and Steven Universe, is a Mystery. And Mysteries as a genre make a point of diving into complex models, incredibly improbable events, and deliberately subverting the reader's expectations as much as possible. Going into such a project with the expectation of Normalacy is self-defeating.

But we should expect consistency, which is what logic actually deals with.

And define "normalcy". Undertale's not the same as our world, so it need not even follow the same laws of physics.

Normal possibilities can be tossed out via proofs just as much as non-normal possibilities. If it's invalid, then it's invalid.

For example, I've often had people try to stab me with Occam's Razor by saying that there's no possiblity that my intricate and complex theories could pass any sort of simplicity test.

Compared to..?

But that's not how Occam's Razor actually works: It says that out of all possible WORKING SOLUTIONS, the simplest of these is bound to be true. Like saying that people stay on the ground because of Gravity, instead of claiming invisible aliens are constantly pushing on our shoulders so we don't fly off into space.

Exactly!! You must be talking about those people that use Occam's Razor to call those pieces that don't fit their model "inconsistencies", because calling them such leads to a simpler model. Yeah, that's not how it works.

In a Mystery, the simplest solution to the labyrinthine details within is often very complex indeed. Occam's Razor does not say that "only simple solutions are possible". It just lends weight to the simplest working explaination you can find.

Correct. That's why every time I refute a point, I don't say "it's too complex", I cite a simpler explanation of that evidence. (While not ignoring the evidence!)

A Working Solution is one that explains all the available evidence, without exceptions. Otherwise, it isn't actually a Solution at all, and should be disqualified even before being exposed to Occam's Razor.

Exactly!

We should expect a complex solution when encountering a Mystery, not dismiss any solution out of hand simply because of its complexiity.

Complexity is really quite relative in this sense. We should be looking for a simple solution... Relative to the other working solutions. Yes, the solution likely is complex.. But if you take another route, how complex will this other solution need to be to be a Working Theory?

One element where I sharply disagree with Ambassador frequently is the importance of story to the mystery-solving process.

Correct. We do disagree on this matter. I believe that all that matters is that it's a Working Theory, as explained earlier, and the simplicity of such Working Theory. Of course, if it wasn't already implied, said working theory also needs to be consistent. That is, it lacks contradictions. It cannot contain both a proposition and its negation. If it does contradict itself, we disqualify it before even exposing it to Occam's Razor.

Consider a jigsaw puzzle. How do you know when you've solved it? You might find a solution where all the pieces seems to fit, but how do you know it's the right solution?

Simple:DO they actually fit? Look for the subtle holes, and errors in the reasoning, that eventually add up to making the theory invalid-See if given this kind of scrutiny, it actually turns out not to be a Working Theory after all. If even after all of that, it still stands, then it's a good candidate, and we expose it to the Razor after finding the others.

Because the goal of a jigsaw puzzle is to put together a Picture. And once all the pieces are in their proper place, we should be treated to a coherent image. A dragon in flight, an iceberg at sunrise, a unicorn with a machine gun... it doesn't matter how fanciful the picture is, as long as it makes coherent sense.

Do you simply mean "it doesn't have contradictions"? Because in that case, I would agree with that.

With FNAF, for example, the goal is clear: Find The Story. The Story is the picture that's been shredded into a thousand pieces and scattered about, waiting for us to reassemble it. And once we do find how all bits of lore fit together, the story should make sense.

That is, there should no contradictions within it.

Is it right to expect that the story of the FNAF games could be described by the single sentence "It was all a dream", or the simple claim that "William loves to kill kids and put them in robots for no reason other than he's a bad person" when the story of the novels, which have been demonstrated to be related to the story of the games, fill three entire novels, and counting?

Ah, but saying that it's all a dream leads us to ask the question:What inspired the dream? What lead the dreamer to dream up these animatronics in the first place? Characters in dreams don't appear out of nothing. So, if, for example, there's no place in the FNAF4 minigames timeline where the character that inspired the Puppet could be found, we have to add an extra assumption to say such a character did exist. And then we need to make a handwave (using I don't know how many assumptions) to explain how "dreams" contain a lot of actual readable text (most people actually CAN'T read in dreams, and even the ones that do only can see maybe a few words or sentences, at most a few stanzas), we need to explain where the dates from the FNAF2 paychecks came from, where the withered form of Springtrap came from, why the playable character changes names (only the dreamer is real in a dream, and has real experiences, so we must be the dreamer if we're playing a dream)…

So while it seems simple at first, once you actually scrutinize it, you'll see that it actually breaks down, and you'll need a lot of extra assumptions just to keep it around, and it'll end up becoming more complex than it just being real.

As for William killing everyone? Yes, that explains why everyone died, but what about the Puppet bringing life? Why did that result in them possessing animatronics? Why did William willingly wear a Springlock suit?!

It's not a Working Theory, because it doesn't explain ALL the evidence. And if you try to make it explain all the evidence, you end up making it more complex than the supposedly-complex alternative. That then exposes it as the less-valid hypothesis that it is.

First, analyze what it would take for the theory to be true. Then, put THAT into Occam's Razor. You'll get a far more accurate result then.

That's the difference between saying cable powers television, and that ALIENS power television. They seem just as simple as each other, but when you actually look, the latter is far more complex, as it requires far more assumptions in order to actually make it a Working Theory.

All sorts of attempts are made to change the evidence: That can't be Michael's reflection we see in Ennard's mask, even though physics says it's a mirror reflection.

Right, if physics makes it clear it HAS to be a mirror reflection.. Then it is!

It must be part of Ennard that we're seeing.. even though you can't find a glowing eye in a wide socket anywhere on them.

And we even get to see their full model, lol.

20 2ft tall Minireenas climbing into Michaels' wiggle-tight springsuit that shouldn't have room for even one of them doesn't mean they burrowed into his flesh... that's ridiculous!

So what DOES it mean? Or is the suit simply not that tight, and DOES have room? If they argue the latter, then you'd have to show evidence that such a Minireena couldn't fit, then you'll analyze their explanation and see if it really does explain it.. But remember, any assumptions you have to make to make it work count as complexities.

And the sound of rending flesh that begins the moment Michael starts typing on Baby's keypad isn't important because it's only a stock sound unworthy of notice...

Yeah, there's a Scott of the Gaps.

Even though the Guts.wav sound was painstakingly engineered to be subtly mistaken for the Drips.wav sound that was playing earlier

Do we have proof that they were meant to be mistaken, or are you just theorizing about Scott?

revealing it's a custom-made sound rather than a stock sound, that the author deliberately concealed to anyone who wasn't paying close attention.

My method leads us to just plain saying they're distinct, and must be treated as such. We need a way to explain what just happened.

The idea of Michael being an android covered in synthetic flesh isn't outlandish at all by FNAF standards: We learn that Charlie herself, the protagonist of the novels, is an android by the end of the last book, with amazing synthetic flesh that is still capable of eating, healing and growing despite not being fully human.

Charlie is exactly what they claim would be ridiculous for Micheal to be, lol.. Androids are canon in FNAF. There's no disputing this now, not with the mountain of evidence presented and several canon reveals. Yet still.. the resistance goes on.

Look, I get why they wouldn't want to believe it. But they should really look for an explanation that keeps Micheal human, not say that it's all a mistake.

There's nothing that blinds theorists more than Wishful Thinking. Seeing what they want to see, rather than deal with an unpleasant truth they'd rather avoid. I feel into this trap myself when I started to research Undertale's lore to debunk the Ness Theory, only to find more evidence that supported it instead.

It's something we all have. That's why it's nice to have actual skeptics who'll help debunk it. It's far easier to debunk someone else's theory than your own, even if they both have the same strength. Sometimes even if yours is weaker.

But the evidence must win in the end, which is why I adopted the Ness Theory into my own models for Undertale.

And, of course, I didn't, but that's because I have an explanation for the evidence, and still believe there are problems with it.

F inding elements that, when put together, make a promising twist in a story, is just like finding all the Sky pieces in a jigsaw puzzle and putting them together in a clump, then seeing how this clump might fit with other clumps. It's an essential part for making the progression steps neccessary for solving the puzzle as a whole.

Well yes, you do need to know your canon before you analyze it. That's why the first part of the series is all about discussing what is and isn't canon.

So searching for what makes the best story, in my own research, is an invaluable compass that suggests possiblities to explore, which can then been compared against the known clues to test the possiblity of whether the idea scores a hit or not.

My method was able to weed out the bad theories just as efficiently. So there's really no more justification for this.

Undertale is a creative project. There's no hope of discovering it's mysteries unless we also apply creative thinking in our own approach to it.

What exactly do you call "creative thinking"? If it means questioning things, I'm with you. But if it means theorizing about the author, or disregarding a simple theory because then the story wouldn't be as good as you want it to be, then I'm NOT with you.

I think it's a fallacy to assume that only complex left-brained alegbra will yield us the answers.

Sure, you might get lucky and guess correctly...

Or that Latin terms will help explain the story to laypeople.

See Part 1 and Part 2.

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I'm waiting for your refined analysis, that takes this, and the actual first two parts, into consideration (though you are allowed to dispute the first two parts, obviously.)