Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-32182236-20190716003715/@comment-32182236-20190808175115

Since we cannot use the scientific method, we cannot use deduction, we can only use induction. Things can be proven to a degree of credibility, but can never be confirmed, not without some word of authority clearing it all up. In this case, Flowey's arc is pretty darn believable I agree. But other things may not be.

Both deduction and induction use things we observe. It's just one is flawless but not very large in scope, and the other is larger in scope, but contains fallacies.

Either way, what I'm trying to say here is that we have a priori knolwedge-The primary canon-That which we observe in the game. We do have a foundation to pile our deductions on.

Then, once we've proven everything that can be proven, and disproven everything that can be disproven.. We move onto induction.

In that case, the simplest explanation to everything is the game's code. So if you prioritize simplicity, you ought to acknowledge the code's canonity, that it is what's driving all the in-game mechanics, which in turn makes them incredibly specific, applying only to the cases described by the various code flags and if-else structures.

Perhaps we disagree on what "simple" actually is.

Here, have another form of Occam's Razor:"Entities are not to be multiplied beyond what is necessary."

And William of Okham himself phrased it like this:"A plurality (of causes) should never be posited unless necessary."

We should also know that as I said earlier, all else should be equal first. So they should both have the same predictive power.. Meaning that before we test Occam's Razor, the evidence must all be explained by both theories. Then, we analyze the number of "entities" in the completed form.

But perhaps you don't know what an "entity" actually is.

So let's count the entities in two similar claims. Claims that appear to be just as simple as each other at first.. But one of which wildly violates Occam's Razor, and the other doesn't.

"Televisions work because of electricity" vs "Televisions work because of aliens".

Let's start with the first one.


 * 1:Televisions contain circuitry (And we observe that)
 * 2:Circutries are powered by electricity (We observe that as well)
 * 3:The power going through the circuitry is what makes the television work (Testable-Take away the power, and see if it still functions)

So far, there appear to be zero assumptions, since all three are justified. But I'll be generous to our alien friends and say that all three of them are assumptions.

So time for the alien hypothesis!


 * 1-The circuts are in fact completely useless (So why are they there?)
 * 2-Aliens exist (okay, that one might be reasonable)
 * 3-The aliens are what make the televisions function
 * 4-The aliens either orbit us, or violate the speed of causality established by the theory of general relativity
 * 5-In a way that we can't observe
 * 6-And the way they power the television ALSO can't be detected.

That's twice the number of entities. And none of them are observed to be true.. (Though one could say there's evidence that aliens probably do exist.)

Maybe that should help you understand my system a bit better?

So I reckon it's a trade off. Simple explanations give terrible generalizations that wouldn't be counted as "simple" in the real world by any stretch of imagination, and neat generalizations require insane leaps of logic regarding the underlying laws which are giving rise to the mechanics we observe.

...So you know that the system wouldn't be simple for us after all.

But perhaps we have ways of doing this without looking for leaps in logic. Perhaps we can look at this the way historians do.

There's very few of those though.

But using those, we can form more through deductive reasoning. Any conclusion that comes from a valid argument from which all the premises are one of these.. Will be just as objectively true as the premises that they were based from. These conclusions can then be used in other arguments as premises, to expand our knowledge even further. That which we see in the canon is a priori knowledge.

Science is partly founded in deduction too. It's usually the step after induction, to seek the final confirmation. Theories are predictive tools for when confirmation is not possible (yet).

Yes, there's that too. Which is why falsifiability is quite important for scientific theories.

We don't actually need to change anything, we just reinterpret what he meant by that.

He specifically says that if he does nothing, our turn will never arrive. He said he's doing nothing because one of our turns we'll kill him, so he decided that it'll just never be our turn. Ever. How can that not be interpreted as him actually believing that the world is turn-based? A claim that, if false, would be even dumber than a flat-Earther's claims, because even flat-Earthers know about causality laws. (Which I do argue still apply-Do you remember my explanation for the evolution of the HUD?)

We do and we did. Our ability to bypass Sans despite the standard battle laws not making this possible could be taken as the world's realization that the battle isn't actually rigid and locked in some internal HUD framework, but is actually fluid and atomized.

...But why did the world believe there was a HUD in the first place? And why did we have to literally move the box? The SOUL should have just returned to the bottom of the screen and allowed us to hit FIGHT.

Sans's belief that it was possible could be understood as his personal mistake. While I don't know what led him to think this and we could speculate on that forever, I just know that the world isn't "locked", since exceptions exist.

The rule is that you have to have your SOUL over the area that we visualize as the "FIGHT" button to fight. Moving the box to get there on someone else's turn is a loophole. So that is not an exception to the rule.

Besides, as I said earlier, you'd literally have to be dumber than a Flat-Earther to be falsely convinced of a HUD, if you lived within Undertale's world. Unless you think Sans actually saw the HUD, and the HUD actually is visible.. Making it a canonical illusion-Something that characters see that doesn't exist, but represents something else.

In which case.. What causes that illusion? And how does Frisk interact with it in the case of the box?