Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-32182236-20190716003715/@comment-32182236-20190806004222

"Then... what are you still doing on this forum? If nothing can be proven, then what is it that you're trying to do?"

But things CAN be proven. I even explained how we know that Flowey absorbed the human SOULs.

And even though we can't prove that everything we're ever told is true, we do know that the characters believe it to be true. And evidence based on what we see both in the True Lab, the SOULs that we literally see in capsules in Asgore's Room.. The SOULs rebelling against Photoshop Flowey.. Our SOUL shattering, and us having the ability to LOAD, since we actually use it in-game.. We do have things to go off of.

And yes, eventually, we do reach inductive reasoning and subjective probability. Which is something I'll go over in later parts. Remember what I said at the end of the OP:"We also have logic, science, and a few branches of epistemology to help us out."

I went over logic in Parts 2 and 3 (though I never quite finished it, either) But I never went over the other two things I mentioned now, did I?

Though I did give you a sneak peek of how subjective probabilities work in a response I made to you earlier on another one of these threads.

"Eh whatever, I don't even care. As I said, everything is subjective. The scientific method is useless. It will help us deduce things if we have something tangible to start off with, but it won't help us create those tangible things from nothing."

We do have tangible things to start off with-That which we observe in the game.

Yes, they can be doubted, but so can our senses. And we should treat the game the same way we treat our own senses. That is, assume them to be true, until we have good reason to think otherwise.

"I thought you never considered parsimony a valid argument. If you were, you'd for example agree that the HUD doesn't make any sense."

Occam's Razor states that:"all else being equal, the simplest answer is most likely to be the correct one."

All else being equal. If all else is not equal, then the argument doesn't apply.

And to avoid a reliance on Occam's Razor.. I actually went along with the Hard Mode conspiracy theory in the OP, and found another way to debunk it. After all, claiming that Hard Mode is non-canon when we see it in the game is an extraordinary claim. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Fortunately, we actually have extraordinary evidence here.

"The canon is made from objective informative statements which do not include unproven explanations. That's literally it. The rest falls under the head canon umbrella."

Exactly. And the only objective informative statements are that which we actually observe being true. And we can then use logical deduction to find more truth. But eventually, we do reach speculation.

But in a way, all of science is "speculation". What matters is just how much evidence you have to support it, how likely it is, and how few unneccesary entities you have to support it.

After all, it could still theoretically be true that the Earth is flat, literally every photo is fake, and the Illuminati has somehow created illusions to make it look round. The odds of this, however, are so miniscule that rounding it down to zero wouldn't make much of a difference. It's quite safe to assume that the Earth, in fact, is round. (Did I count the number of assumptions that it makes? ...No. In fact, I don't even think I can count the number.)

"And speaking of masks, I consider them less esoteric than Sans's spiel about turns. I mean, you can interpret masks as only slightly changing the meaning of the canon. For example, that Sans wasn't literally speaking about turns, but about something more figurative, such as when one person attacks, the other must defend and vice versa. It's basically what you said, an imperfection in the visuals."

But that's not what he said. It's one thing to say that wavelengths translate into color, but another to say that the filter somehow takes words that a character says, and changes the words they say.

If Sans meant figurative turns, the visuals could simply have given us his real, actual dialogue. There's no barrier preventing it from happening. No reason to bring up the idea of us pushing the box to make the FIGHT command visible, when we can literally just attack the way we usually do, if that's what you argue the scene represents.

Why would Sans say that if he does nothing, it won't be your turn ever? How does that make sense, if he doesn't actually believe in this? And if he's mistaken, why don't we, Frisk, have the chance to prove him wrong on the matter?

It only makes sense if turns actually do exist. Not because we see turns in the game, but because of Sans' final dialogue.

"Last time I said something like this, you disagreed and argued that the HUD is real and exists exactly the way we see it, which almost made me vomit."

Yeah, I've changed by stance on the latter part. The HUD does exist.. But perhaps not in the way we see it. And the only reason why we know it exists is, again, because of Sans. ...Also Flowey this time. But that's literally it. Not because we see it. It's because someone actually utilizes this feature.

For instance, let's look at the illusion that the sun orbits the earth. We know that's false. But suppose a pheonix literally picked up the sun, and moved it downwards, towards the Earth.. And night fell because it went past the Earth. Also, the Earth didn't burn up like it logically should have if the sun is what science says it is.

If we saw that happen.. It would only make sense if the sun really did orbit the Earth. ...Oh, and it would also mean that phoenixes actually exist.

...But we don't see that happen, do we? Of course not. Phoenixes don't exist, and the sun doesn't orbit the earth.