Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-35640811-20180307024503/@comment-27136653-20180327170825

Guys. I have no problem with this. But the guy I'm about to reply right now loves to veer off-topic very much. I happened to discuss elevators with him once. He argued that horizontal-riding elevators apparently don't exist, so they apparently can't exist in the game either.

It's not my problem that he's uneducated. But I'm trying to educate him nonetheless.

TheHumanAmbassador

"Which has a 50% chance of happening by coincidence anyway."

Again, I don't know how you calculated that number, but I'm pretty sure you're wrong (since there's more factors than this, it's not a 50:50 scenario), AND that any kind of probability has nothing to do with the topic, since it is strictly argument-driven. Heck if the probabilities are equal, then we might as well forget about it, since it's not telling us anything.

"Therefore, that's not proof at all!"

As I showed with that Flowey/Asriel example, there isn't any proof for most of the things we find in the game. It's all common conclusions we've reached.

And so, I shall say this again. Determination is soul power, because of the correlation, because it generated no inconsistencies or paradoxes, and because it's a simpler explanation than the one you suggested, that the two aren't the same.

"and Alphys separates the two"

Since she has no idea she's really talking about the same thing. PERHAPS, the two aren't really the same phenomena, but for the purposes of the discussion, they are. Perhaps soul power is really the sum of the overall powers of DT and magic, with magic being exponentially weaker, which is generating the illusion that SP is DT solely. But as I said, for the purposes of this discussion, this doesn't matter, since even if this was true, the effects of magic would be negligible.

As for Alphys, she DID try to use DT to make the monster souls strong (implied by the "freedom might be closer than we all thought" line from the lab entries), so she did think that there is a correlation between DT and soul power after all.

"we know he must be Asriel"

Yes, but without Asriel's soul, is he really Asriel, or is he simply a flower with the memories of someone that has nothing to do with him? He had these doubts, since he wasn't exactly the same as him, since he lacked compassion.

If you died and woke up in a hospital in a new body, with a different personality, but still remembering your past life, who do you think you would really be then? Are the memories just an illusion, or are they really you? The game never answered this.

"My proof is the entries of the great Dr. Alphys."

Suddenly she's great to you.

Didn't you argue a week ago how terrible she is for watching anime and relaxing instead of not having any fun and doing pure science instead, as Gaster did it, according to you? Your proof is a joke. Please don't bring it up again. Find something to do in your free time other than making me deal with your bs.

"So, we look for the one that doesn't pose any problems in the game's lore."

I said it multiple times and I'm saying it for the last time. The lore is so incredibly vague, hard-analyzing it will only bring us despair. It's time for us to start drawing definite conclusions. It really is. We've pondered and theorized about absolutely everything already. There's nothing left to hard-analyze about the lore anymore.

"However, you then use that as undeniable PROOF that the other fallen children can SAVE and LOAD"

That's right. Because it's a model that works. I won't explain this again. If you think that DT is not soul power, then that's your problem. The truth is, we can't be sure on the second one else we are also sure on the first one. But if you aren't sure whether you are sure or not on the first one, then at least don't get sure for the sake of arguing with me about it. If we can't be sure on it, then no matter how much work you put into the alternative view, I simply won't accept it, else it out-benefits the other view. And it's not like I chose this one over the alternative one arbitrarily. When there's nothing else to latch onto, I default to the theory that explains the most. Which I did here.

"and then have to add another epicycle on why they didn't kill Asgore"

That is a fair point. But if we don't go with it, then we will have to assume that Flowey loaded in the presence of the previous humans instead. We will also get a mild inconsistency that Asgore isn't surprised when we tell him we fought him before. He could know the theory from Gaster or Sans, but even then, it's just a theory. Even if Gaster demonstrated it to him, he would still be surprised that a child has these powers now. Flowey could have also told him, but Flowey would then have to explain how he himself knew this so that the king would believe him, and I don't think he would want to bother doing that.

So all in all, the assumption that Asgore defeated the other humans even though they could reset is much less of a stretch than the fact that otherwise, he would be apparently totally cool with the fact that we're the first human to have these powers.

See? I didn't miss anything. After thinking so long about this, I think you really can't find any more flaws in my theory. Now is time for you to perfect your own theory. Then we will count the benefits versus the drawbacks and decide which one is better. Does that sound good? Or do you still want create a new anti-thesis and test my theory again?

Also, a little grammatical question. Where did you get the idea that "epicycle" = "the need of a drawback explanation in a theory which is valid only and only if such dialectic particle is present" from? I've honestly never seen anyone use that word in such a way before. Or is it a metaphor? Because... it doesn't really look like one. It looks more like the classical"I like to use big words to sound photosynthesis" - if you get what I mean.

"There exists a minimum amount of DT required to SAVE and LOAD"

Why I don't disagree with that.

"By modifying it every time it DID get wrong. It didn't predict anything. It just added more and more epicycles."

Eventually, it could predict the orbits of planets better than any heliocentric model constructed in that time. Of course, after the heliocentric model reached the same precision, the geocentric model was dropped for its complexity.

I guess this is what I really wanted to say, that it all came down to the fact that the heliocentric model later managed to connect itself with other branches of physics much better than the geocentric one. Which is the exact same case over here. I managed to explain multiple problems with ease, while giving a not so elegant explanation for only one more, while assuming this.

Assuming that Flowey's DT is high and that only red souls are a match for it however brings only problems into the question, and no real elegant solution for anything apart from how Asgore managed to defeat the other children. Sure, assuming that Frisk is special makes it obvious why they were able to win every single fight, while also being able to free everyone, but it also makes for all sorts of troublesome problems, such as the need to assume that "teenage" ≠ teenage in the underground, or that Flowey lied when he felt surprised about our presence in the undergroud (but excluding us being able to save, which WOULD be new to him under such condition), or that determination is never connected with the color red in the game, et cetera.

My theory doesn't need to explain these problems. It avoids them. Erases them from the overall problem.

"You didn't specify exactly what the problem would be"

The problem would be the missing DT of course. Since that same DT was used for the barrier. So yes.

"You're using the "teen comedian" line here?"

You didn't read the links AGAIN? Really bro? How about you stop guessing what I meant and actually read them. Eh? Or you know what, here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6gS2LPXdIc5MkJPZ1JyUmJKdzg/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6gS2LPXdIc5TGdlTTU4aUoyVGc/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6gS2LPXdIc5SXEtUHVrTUNVSDg/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6gS2LPXdIc5eWxxVW1EYWlScG8/view

But still, now that you have mentioned it, a "teen comedian" can refer to the fact that the comedian is a teen themselves too. Not only the other way around. And in light of the above, that appears to be the case here.

"So, we can't build our theories off the fact that the odds of eight humans falling in one century out of 10 are astronimally low"

The calculation isn't as straightforward as you think it is. And yes, we should not rely on probability.

"yet we CAN build our theories on the assumption that one correlation that has a 50% chance of randomly happening means two things are the same thing?"

That was never a question of probability to begin with. You simply listed all the explanations that we came up with (2 in total), assigned them all the same weights, averaged them and then tried to pass this nonsense as an actual argument for your reasoning. More proof that your reasoning sucks and helps no one.

"because they were focused on alchemy"

Excuse me? Alchemy gave us gunpowder. And besides, you're assuming that the monsters knew from the very beginning what to do, without any trial and error. Which alchemy was all about basically. As I said, there's no way they reached the information age within two centuries by starting in the medieval era on the surface. Since that's what we saw the humans doing - using sticks and swords and whatnot.

So idk if you're imagining the monsters hiding their own technology from the humans kinda like the Wakandians in Black Panther or something. Which again, is an assumption so enormous it actually reminds me of something the flat earthers believe.

They believe that the horizon appears to be curving, since light rays curve as they travel towards the surface, making it look like it's curving, while in reality, it's flat.

Yeah, no, the monsters would be helpless without the human trash. That's what I believe. And Gaster may have been brilliant, designing an entire powerplant, but so was Tesla, the man who invented the alternating current generator, the basis of all modern powerplants.

"Or you think I'm saying Gaster was just a regular genius and not what the game says he is."

And what do you think the game says? That he was a clairvoyant able to immediately know what to do in order to advance the technology of the monsters?

"She lied about that."

There is no way she could hide the fact that a soul went missing during one of her experiments.

"No wonder the human SOULs couldn't revolt until we gave them back determination! They were dead! They couldn't!"

They revolted because we called for help. If they had no DT, they wouldn't even be alive. Since it's canon that DT is the thing that keeps souls alive even after death.

"That aside, Alphys didn't just take out all the DT of one SOUL. She took some determination from EACH SOUL."

The overall amount she took would still be missing though. Whatever she took would be missing. And since determination IS soul power, she couldn't have taken that much. So again, if Flowey's vessel was the only piece of this DT that wasn't used for the barrier, the rest of the monsterkind could have made up for that difference, as I've explained.

"Wow, you spotted the problem much quicker than I thought!"

Why of course, you think I'm stupid or something? Wow, you must be stupid to be thinking that! Actually, that hypothesis does seem to follow the observations. So I'd call this a solid theory. A solid theory titled "you're stupid".

"We know for a fact that at least one SOUL was captured, because otherwise there wouldn't any determination to extract to make Flowey in the first place!"

You weren't doing that for me, but for yourself too. What I believe in is that Flowey met no other human than us (this is excluding Chara ofc). Since I see how he acts. As I said, there's no way he confused two humans with Chara. And the fact that our soul was red too has nothing to do with this, since he called it a "stolen soul"... which he could have called any soul really, if he believed that Chara was in control of it. So he would have called someone else Chara, but at the same time, would not make the same mistake twice, since at that point, it would seem ridiculous to him, randomly assigning Chara to whatever human he meets, which is simply not what we observe in the game, where he called US Chara. So we were first to him. Really, the way he acts when he thinks we're Chara makes me think that he was at the height of his despair right before we arrived.

"If all SOULs naturally shattered, this wouldn't be possible."

So you're saying that red souls don't have enough DT to persist after death? Nonsense. Frisk's soul is the most determined one according even to you. What you're saying is impossible without assuming that there's a special mechanic which shatters the souls even though they DO have enough DT, which I refuse to believe, since we don't need such an 'epicycle' to explain how this mechanic works. It's simply all about determination:

A) Your soul just shattered. Are you determined to continue, even though it just shattered? You reload. B) Are you determined to give your soul away, without the power activating and undoing the entire timeline for this? The soul stays in one piece, while you lose the ability to reset/reload. C) Your soul just shattered. Are you determined to continue, even though it just shattered and the save ability is currently in someone else's hold? It might be difficult, but it will refuse.

Using this, we can explain the behavior of all souls, while connecting it with the theory that all of the fallen humans could save and load. It's actually necessary to assume that for this, but I still find it more convincing than saying that since all red souls have shattered so far, all red souls shatter in general and vice versa for non-red ones. That's a double induction and that's just grinding my gears. Sure, assuming that all souls act the same is also just an assumption, but at least I'm being general here and don't have to add special rules and asterists to my explanation. I simply say that the said rules apply to all souls, instead of introducing two sets of rules, one for red souls and one for the rest. I think that's redundant, especially if both yield the same results. Just like the geocentric model is redundant with its system of deferents and epicycles.