"There's no free will," says the philosopher; "To hang is most unjust."
"There is no free will," assents the officer; "We hang because we must."
"There is no free will," assents the officer; "We hang because we must."
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Kill Six Billion Demons
- Thread starter Tempera
- Start date
Triggerhappy
Stick with Trigger and You'll Make it Through
- Location
- SoCal
"If there is no free will, then I, a totally causal machine reacting purely based on my initial state and external stimulus, will move to stimulate other totally causal machines, reacting purely based on their initial state and external stimulus, in accordance with achieving responses from those machines that favor the outcomes that lead to my own iteration from previous causal machines reacting purely based on their initial state and external stimulus."
"You what?"
"I'm going to beat the shit out of you for breaking the social contract ya dumdum."
To me it's kinda the opposite, it's more or less saying - 'Everything Jadis is saying is true . . . and also all of it is also completely and absolutely useless no matter how true it is.'
Which makes sense when you realize that Jadis already had a mindset of supreme passivity. So of course, even with omniscience, that's all she can see herself doing. She was literally telling herself that she was finally in control of her life as she switched on the machine . . . the machine that had been raised and told switching on was the only purpose in her life . . .
It's literally a person who knows that they could do better, and be happier, using any excuse they can to do nothing. Because doing things is hard.
Or, alternative, all of the effective altruist cunts who want people to ride their dicks as moral paragons for being rich by dressing it up in lengthy essays of empty solipsism.
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E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
So, to be clear, the core problem for me remains that Jadis is supposed to be saying "why bother with suffering to fix things when you could just fuck off and do stuff that makes you content instead", but she is saying it to an obviously suicidal person, after shoving that person into the "everything is meaningless" machine.
It makes no sense to me whatsoever how we are supposed to figure out what Jadis meant before Allison spells it out, and Allison spells it out to the person who helps her refute it so it is instantly countered once I actually heard it.
Maybe it is just my own brushes with suicidal thoughts making me very aware of how that chain of logic is not something that will work for me, one that actually pisses me off a bit to see attempted, but it is honestly so bad of a setup I don't even know where to begin to try and fix it.
Which is a problem, because it is the core moment for the current Allison to take her place as a powerful person in the world who knows herself.
It is the critical starting point for everything that comes afterwards, and it is at best a total failure of an arc to me, the dramatic equivalent of a joke you need to have explained to you. At worst it is a line of arguments that feels insultingly out of touch to me, but I try and tell myself that I just understand things differently than the comic's creator and shouldn't be that harsh on it.
- Location
- New Zealand
Would it be fair to say "Author intended this to be a crowning moment of awesome, but instead it appears as ``Main character refutes bloody stupid and poorly communicated argument, with her own bloody stupid and poorly communicated argument''?"
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
Eh, that is honestly a bit better than what I think.
That proposes two arguments were made, one refuting the other.
In my experience it was "a bunch of fucked up shit happens, Allison goes through depression while a madwoman rants at her a bit, she gets into a brief argument with her ex about conversations that happened off screen, and then finds a bit of her dead girlfriend that makes her decide to get up and leave, without her new prosthetics for reasons that I still don't know".
With the intent of it being the core moment where she finally gets it together and starts doing magic punch wizard shit at the end... which seems entirely unearned because I did not see any clear arguments being made or refuted, just a variety of body horror moments and philosophy with insufficient backing.
- Location
- New Zealand
.... yeah, okay when you word it like that, the arc seems even dumber than I thought (and I already thought it was pretty dumb). :/
hahahahaha
Oh man.... the visual and style of K6BD are so good, but god damn, the philosophical bullshit whatever is so mixed up and kind of stupid.
EDIT:
Ohhh yeah... that bit where he is telling her "You told me this", and she was like "I what? When?"
That read as all sorts of bullshit time shenanigins, which like... yeah, I guess that's a thing?
Fuck, what does it mean if Jadis tells you you will die in 30 years if time is all non-linear and shit.
Also, if the universe is due to end in 10 days?
Like seriously, that's gotta be a shot to the ego, even if its told to you by a mad woman.
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