Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-32182236-20190716003715/@comment-32182236-20190805222051

Assuming that something is true because an in-game character said it was true is either argument from authority, or argumentum ad populum, depending on whether you're claiming that the character in question is an authority, or claiming that it was the common consensus in Undertale's world.

So that's a logical fallacy. I agree that we, therefore, should not assume that something is true just because a character says it is true. All we can assume is that the character either thinks that it is true, or wants us to believe that it is true.

Remember, canon is that which we observe in the game. If a Character X says that Premise P is true, what are we observing? Are we observing Premise P being true, or are we observing Character X claiming that Premise P is true?

...It's the latter. So only that is definitely canon by these rules alone.

Yes, the Hard Mode conspiracy also violates Occam's Razor immensely.

The FUN value is still within the 1-100 range. But there are some differences between the two timelines, so one could indeed assume that there was a butterfly effect, that ultimately lead to Flowey gaining a different personality.

Either way, the part about the Annoying Dog means that at least one of the two things that we see canonically happen in-game... Must not be canon. Either Hard Mode isn't canon... Or sparing isn't canon. Either way, we've still rejected the notion that everything within the game is canon. (There's far more evidence for sparing being canon than Hard Mode.)

So we still need to find a better way of determining canon. The common-sense approach is still flawed. So the rest of my post still follows.

Masks themselves start edging onto conspiracy theory territory. It's far more plausible that there is simply an imperfection in the medium by which we are observing Undertale's world- ie;the game.

Remember, we're observing a three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional screen. Not everything is going to stay the same after the transition. And other things would have to be simplified so that it will be perceivable on the two-dimensional screen.

For instance, let's take a look at color. Does it exist?

...No. It doesn't exist.

"Color" is simply what the brain uses to perceive the many different energy frequencies of photon waves that reach the eye. "Red" is just a wavelength of approximately 430 terahertz. Yet we see it as color.. Because that is a qualia that can be perceived.. And thousands of photons could not be perceived by us. So color is an imperfection in the medium used to see our world-ie;our senses.

The same principals apply to Undertale.