Fate, Free Will, and Sarda being a jackass

[stick93]

You are forgetting something. If Sarda stops the LW from killing his parents OK won't be traumatized and wont become Sarda thus Sarda will be erase from realty.

Also this circle couldn't exist from the dawn of times. Something made OK become Sarda and start this never ending circle. I mean before the first Sarda to sent the LW after the 4 orbs something or someone other then the LW made OK become Sarda.

[Heresy488]

No, this IS one of those loops where there is no continuity between beginning and end.

Very much so, the end pre-dates the beginning. Onion Kid becomes Sarda to punish the LW's before the LW's horrified Onion Kid. If you look at it on a timeline:
Beginning, Sarda grows old and crazy, Light Warriors harm Onion Kid, Sarda punishes LW's, OK becomes Sarda.

I don't think it makes sense either. I guess you have to look at all reality and time as a single entity, a closed ecosystem, a metaphysical sandbox where a clean and logical flow from beginning to end is not only optional but completely abhorrent to the system.

[Primalmoon]

Originally Posted by The Wizard Who Did It

I've been wondering, has OK seen WM in any comic other than the ones in the double digits?

She was the one that left him with the crazy ol' sage named Sarda in the first place. Episode 1005.

[Sean Renaud]

A couple things are bugging me in this Free Will vs Fate debate.

1. The debate seems to be focused around the concept that you need to have legit alternative choices for their to be a choice. That in a video game where you can say no to a question three hundred times and get caught in a loop is fate. Of course that isn't really true because you could shut down the system.

However there is more to the world than me. I think the best examples of this (though fictional) are Greek Myths or Shakespearean plays. Pick out any king ever who was fated to die. He was going to die. PEriod end discussion. Almost without acception these kings take actions to prevent their deaths that eventually lead to their deaths. What isn't examined is had they gone about it the opposite way. What if they had found the child destined to kill them and raised them with love in their own houses? Would the fate have been averted? I doubt it. It would have happened in a different way. PErhaps the "son" would prevent his father from being captured, or put an end to his suffering from some disease.

I think what I'm getting at is Fate and Free Will can co-exist particuarly if Fate is made up by milestones, not the entire story. Much like how Bryan wrote this story. He knew that Sarda was going to be an advesary early on. He didn't know that a unit called the MARTANS were going to make a statement about dying in the shade.

2. Free Will in this debate again is spoken about in the first person as if an individual has considerable control over things. Take Onion Kid for example, at what point has he had ANY choice in anything?

On the comic which has been sorely neglected. I really really hope that in a rare unfathomable moment of inteligence, humility, rationality and team work that the next comic starts with Black Mage shouting "Quick RM do that mimic thing! I want this jerk double dead!"

[Yozul]

I just want to say that if you define free will as a world in which cause does not reliably lead to effect, I'll take fate.

I mean, I'm all in favor of surprises and unpredictability in my life, but I like that stuff because it allows me to further my understanding of how things work. If people could just go around altering the universe at random with their magical free will beams, how could we ever really understand it?

[Cicero]

A point which I think has sort of been neglected--even if we agree that determinism in no way negates free, Sarda's argument still isn't very good--in fact it's worse, as the Light Warriors (mostly) did not choose to do the things that ended up traumatising the Onion Kid. The vast majority were accidents. Admittedly, many of these accidents stem from recklessness on the Warriors' parts (such as BM throwing the old man out the window over what happened to be Onion Kid's house), so they do bear some responsibility from a criminal neglect standpoint, but these events also would have never occured had Sarda not sent them off on the very quests wherein he knew they would occur (an act he, on the other hand, very much deliberately chose to perform). In this respect I sort of have to side with the Light Warriors on this one--while their crimes are many and terrible, it doesn't really seem fair for Sarda to call them to account solely for one which A) they didn't really do on purpose and B) which Sarda himself played a far more active (and knowing) role in causing to occur in the first place.

In short, despite all odds and some very stiff competition, Sarda still manages to do things in such a way that he comes out the biggest jackass of them all.

[The Wizard Who Did It]

Originally Posted by Sean Renaud

1. The debate seems to be focused around the concept that you need to have legit alternative choices for their to be a choice. That in a video game where you can say no to a question three hundred times and get caught in a loop is fate. Of course that isn't really true because you could shut down the system.

Yes, you can turn off the game when we're using an example where you're inside the game, more specifically a part of the game, and more specifically that wasn't an option given.

It's an incomplete analogy, but it was used because it should have been recognizable to the people here. Fate is that bit of code that you can't work around and can't change while you're in the game. It's the 0s and 1s that force everything to happen beyond the person in the game's control.

I think what I'm getting at is Fate and Free Will can co-exist particuarly if Fate is made up by milestones, not the entire story.

This is true. Unfortunately, fate being made up of milestones is not the pure deterministic way of thinking. You can always half-ass something's definition and come up with a compromise. You can take bits and pieces of two contradictory ideas and form a cohesive idea out of them, but that doesn't mean the pure ideas aren't mutually exclusive.

Also, I guess your interpretation is possibly a form that could keep a stable time loop going, but again, that wasn't the point of this branch of discussion.

2. Free Will in this debate again is spoken about in the first person as if an individual has considerable control over things. Take Onion Kid for example, at what point has he had ANY choice in anything?

Replace "considerable" with "any" and you're more correct. Under free will, the OK always had the choice to kill himself or whatever. Or to run away from his soon-to-be-dead foster parents. Under fate, he had absolutely no choice.

Originally Posted by Cicero

A point which I think has sort of been neglected

Nah, it was pretty well established on the first page that everyone thinks Sarda is being completely irrational and is in the wrong. Dude's too blinded by rage, hate, and crazy to actually care though.

[Exerci]

Originally Posted by The Wizard Who Did It

... I'm not sure how exactly I can make this more clear.

You're saying they have only one option that they're going to choose, and yet somehow that equals Free Will?

I want you to walk up to somebody, and tell them they can either choose to shoot themselves or, y'know what, hey, nevermind that's the only thing that's going to happen. They're going to shoot themselves in the foot, and that's the end of it! Then, y'know, after they shoot themselves in the foot, ask them how much Free Will they had.



Come on man, you're usually pretty logically consistent.

He's still logically consistent. People are not just given one choice as your horrible horrible analogy shows. People are given plenty of choices. But if someone went up to me, while I was hanging off the edge of a mountain and went: "Yo man, want one of these", followed by him showing me a rope, a rattlesnake, and a fork then even though I have a choice, me being who I am, in the situation I'm in, will unfailingly choose the same, no matter how many times people rewind time and ask me again. Now, the world being as complex as it is still makes it impossible to predict the future, as it would be like solving a massive, difficult equation, while only being privy to a very small part of the numbers involved in solving it, having to guesstimate the rest.

In this world there isn't necessarily any such thing as free will, the only piece of evidence we have for the existence of free will is that it feels like we have it.

[deimon]

I'm really tired of this fate vs. free will thing mostly because not only does it have nothing to do with this comic but it also has nothing to do with any kind of time loop

since this is mostly because people thing a stable time loop cant have free will ill start there

lets say for the sake of the arguement that OK gets sent back again and does exactly what this sarda did and everyone has free will. now since nothing has changed why would the LW do anything besides what they did last time, they dont have any new information so I ask WHY would they do something different because they have no idea what they did durring the last loop.

and for those who are confused by the stable time loop theory there are also stable time loops that develop with the other theory as well they just have to start without someone frome the past and after the loop repeating it self hundreds of times it eventualy "stabalizes."

ill give an example for this since its kind of weird...

lets say you go back in time to kill someone you hate before they screw with you and you also convince yourself to go back in time to kill him (so now you havent experianced this guy doing anything wrong to you in anyway) so you go back in time again kill again and convince yourself again... evenualy everything happens the same way (whether any version of yourself remebers why or not) and it becomes stable

of course as brian has said (I believe) this is the actual stable time line theory hes working with but if this helps you comprehend this a little better think of it from this prespective and this is like the 8 millionth time the loop has happend or something....

*if anything is unclear let me know and ill clarify im not going to bother to review this

[tacticslion]

Originally Posted by Heresy488

No, this IS one of those loops where there is no continuity between beginning and end.

Very much so, the end pre-dates the beginning. Onion Kid becomes Sarda to punish the LW's before the LW's horrified Onion Kid. If you look at it on a timeline:
Beginning, Sarda grows old and crazy, Light Warriors harm Onion Kid, Sarda punishes LW's, OK becomes Sarda.

I don't think it makes sense either. I guess you have to look at all reality and time as a single entity, a closed ecosystem, a metaphysical sandbox where a clean and logical flow from beginning to end is not only optional but completely abhorrent to the system.

I'm... not entirely certain what you mean by "no continuity between beginning and end". I mean, it's entirely continuity. That's kind of the point of such a loop. Continuity is ironclad in such a case. "The end predates the beginning" also doesn't make sense to me. It's a loop. There is no beginning or end of a loop. Think of a ring - a perfect circle. Find the starting point of that. There isn't one, and so it is with this.

But, if you mean that time ceases just so time can begin, I also think that's not necessarily the case. Take that "perfect circle" analogy I just made and alter it slightly by adding a straight length of metal to one side. While the loop itself is completely stable and perfectly self-satisfying, the line can continue past the loop as well. Given that there was an infintesimal speck when White Mage arrived, there was probably a time before the loop, so add at least a small line on the other side. I'm really bad at IRC art, but it would look kind of like this:

Originally Posted by lookitmeI'mrepresentin'atimeloop!

___O___

Meh, it's not perfect (the "O" isn't exactly touching the line) but it's as close as I can get, as I don't have a picture of a ring welded to two small sticks of metal. Just to cement the idea, make the entire thing a magnet. All of the magnetic lines flow in one direction (which gives you your poles) but the loop actually flows backwards for a short time before joining the main line and flowing normally again. The flow of magnetism from one point to the next is automatic. In fact because magnetism is introduced into one end of the item, it will eventually flow through to the end. It causes itself and thus, starting at one end of the flow will follow the 'blue print' of the metal itself (to a point - yes, I'm really, really over-simplifying, but hey it's a board, not an actual physics class). Maybe this helps clear up how it could work?

Also, keep in mind that this example is solely for the fictional world, and not a suggested model for the real world. I'm just pointing out a semi-logical quasi-precedent for the whole thing. Sure it doesn't work on every concievable level, by any means, but that's why it's metaphorically speaking!

And Exerci: I'm glad I have one person who gets it! Yay!