Nonduality, and the contradicting standards within it

[Theglassman12]

I've been meaning to make this thread for quite some time but have been busy with IRL stuff, now that I got some free time, I'm getting this out of the way sooner than later. The entire standards on Nonduality is completely stupid and makes no sense to the point it just goes against the most obvious examples of what is considered a duality in the first place.

On the page itself it mentions this as part of the standards.

For this ability, dualities refer to logical dualities where the duality is between "A" and "not A" where A is some object or attribute. For example, fire and water are not a duality; the duality of fire would be fire and not fire. The duality of existence would be existence and not existence, or, alternately, existence and nonexistence or existence and void. However, not all verses follow this logic, and many may treat things not logically considered dualities - such as water and fire or time and space - as dualities, meaning what is and isn't a duality can change between verses. Due to nonduality's nature as an abstract power, qualifying for it requires a verse to directly explain the way they treat a power in a way that aligns with the standards outlined below; merely demonstrating qualities matching those of a nondual character doesn't automatically qualify a character for it.

This in of itself doesn't sound confusing, but when you look into what even counts as a duality in the first place it becomes more nonsensical. One example people would think of as a duality like Life and Death doesn't count on the site standards due to the fact that it's not a logical negation, and instead has to be "Life and not Life". It gets even more ridiculous when a major franchise like star wars gets a very blatant statement on dualities existing in the Force and uses Life and Death, or Light and Darkness itself, and either due to miscommunication or just people not understanding how the standards for dual natures work, it still counts. What makes the whole Logical negation of it needing to be "A and not A" even more nonsensical is the main quote in the page using Unsong, they use God and Nothingness as an example of Nonduality, which under this logic wouldn't make sense because it doesn't specify as "God and Not God" or "Nothingness and Existence". Another major example in fiction that uses very on the nose duality concepts is in Avatar the Last Airbender when Koh describes Tui and La as polar opposites of one another and balance each other, with the examples being Push and Pull, Life and Death, Good and Evil, Yin and Yang, all the while showing both Koi fishes merging into a Yin and Yang symbol, the most iconic imagery used when it comes to dual natures, but due to the Logical Negation requirements, most of these wouldn't count just from the fact it's not a logical negation of "A and not A".

This entire roundabout rant is essentially saying that the standards for Nonduality need to change to have this "Logical Negation" be removed as many fictional works and even the example used in its own page doesn't line up with the idea of dualities being "Neither A nor not A". Instead my proposed change is changing the above quote to this.

For this ability, dualities refer to dual concepts that balance each other out or cannot exist without one or the other, such as Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, and Yin and Yang to name a few. Having a general statement of such polar opposites being a thing in the verse and it not being elaborated on them being literal dual concepts that balance one another would not qualify for it to be a duality, such as a throwaway line of a villain stating good and evil mean nothing in their grander plan. It's important to note that not all verses follow this logic, and many may treat things not logically considered dualities - such as water and fire or time and space - as dualities, meaning what is and isn't a duality can change between verses. Due to nonduality's nature as an abstract power, qualifying for it requires a verse to directly explain the way they treat a power in a way that aligns with the standards outlined below; merely demonstrating qualities matching those of a nondual character doesn't automatically qualify a character for it.

The above revised text I'm open for any revisions on how to word it better, but my overall proposal is to change Nonduality, and by extension what counts as dualities on the wiki to fit the common consensus in fiction rather than this arbitrary "A and not A" standards that disregards the most blatant cases of dual nature concepts.

Agree: 2 (Qawsedf234, Agnaa [in agreement with having Nonduality be remade into a separate page])

Disagree: 1 (DontTalkDT)

Neutral:

 

[TWILIGHT-OP]

Shouldn't this be in staff thread?

 

[Theglassman12]

Just moved it, been too used to doing normal CRTs that I forgot to make it there.

 

[KLOL506]

@DontTalkDT @Agnaa @Ultima_Reality @Planck69 @Elizhaa @Executor_N0 @Everything12 @Qawsedf234 @Firestorm808 @GrathOfLux @Abstractions @LephyrTheRevanchist

 

[Theglassman12]

@FinePoint Your input here would be appreciated given your thoughts on the current standards.

 

[Qawsedf234]

So in my view, logical negation as a concept on the wiki are diametrically opposed forces. Fire and Water aren't diametrically opposed, because they're just different states of matter. Light and Darkness are opposed, as Darkness itself is just the absence of light.

By the same token, Life vs Death is still a duality as Death just means there's an absence of life. I think the definition can be made clearer, but most of your examples would still count as a duality on the wiki is my view.

Having said that, I am okay with the revised version within the OP.

 

[DontTalkDT]

That doesn't work, as at that point you define nonduality as a bunch of subjective differences and the characters with the resulting "ability" have literally nothing in common.

What does an undead (not life and not death) have in common with a morally neutral person (not good or evil)? Nothing.

It also doesn't generally grant any capability to any of the characters. What ability does a rock have for being neither light nor darkness?

That rock example also shows well how many characters would kinda just walk into this by technicality. If Push & Pull are dualities, by definition standing still is a feat of nonduality?

That leads to the question of what lies beyond some duality, which is inherently subjective in its definition. I brought up an undead as neither life nor death, as some verses consider them as such, but others might say "they have biology, so they are alive", and others might say "they are just moving corpses without consciousness, so they are dead". (or make arguments about the soul or lifeforce)
So two characters with the same properties may qualify or not, depending on your philosophical opinion on where to draw the border between two things.

What even are such dualities is subjective. Take your Light & Darkness. I would argue Darkness can exist without light just fine.
And "balance each other out"? So is Freedom & Responsibility qualified? Or should it be Freedom & Oppression?


As far as things go, it also makes very little sense to put logic violation, that is the current nonduality, into the same container as any of that. Metaphysics breaking is a bit more extreme of an ability and hard to relate to any of that stuff. Quite frankly, at that point it's not even the same ability anymore. You may as well just make a completely separate ability page, as the proposed version has nothing to do with the existing ability in its core.


Ultimately, what is it that this proposal would improve? Only that the term of duality is now used in the same vague sense as media use it, which really isn't of our concern. In exchange, it makes it less clear who should have the ability and makes listing the ability less meaningful, as there is no connecting thread between its users anymore. At that point, it would be more suitable for a Category to put at the bottom of pages, than a P&A page.

Hence I'm strongly opposed to this idea.

So in my view, logical negation as a concept on the wiki are diametrically opposed forces. Fire and Water aren't diametrically opposed, because they're just different states of matter. Light and Darkness are opposed, as Darkness itself is just the absence of light.

By the same token, Life vs Death is still a duality as Death just means there's an absence of life. I think the definition can be made clearer, but most of your examples would still count as a duality on the wiki is my view.

Having said that, I am okay with the revised version within the OP.

Whether Life & Death or Light & Darkness are durality would depend on the exact definition. Very often when these things are brought up, particularly in the context that something is neither, it's exactly about how they are not logical negations. Like, things being neither alive nor dead are often undead or artificial beings, rather than outright in a logically paradox state of being.

So these things can be logical dualities, but it depends on how exactly the verse defines the terms.

 

[Theglassman12]

@DontTalkDT that's a complete false equivalence with using undead and someone who's morally grey as well as well as the rock example. Nothing about those examples you mentioned have anything about them literally existing outside of the dual concepts that govern the world and balance each other out so Idk what you're trying to argue with that.

My proposal is to make dualities on the wiki follow the common consensus on what qualifies for dual concepts in the first place rather than this arbitrary logical negation when the page itself doesn't back it up and uses an example from Unsong that has nothing to do with "A and not A" examples. FFS we literally use Taiji as the main image example of what's considered a dual nature but the common examples of Taiji for some reason don't qualify because of the logical negation.

 

[DontTalkDT]

@DontTalkDT that's a complete false equivalence with using undead and someone who's morally grey as well as well as the rock example. Nothing about those examples you mentioned have anything about them literally existing outside of the dual concepts that govern the world and balance each other out so Idk what you're trying to argue with that.

I see no part of your description that objectively excludes them. Why is an undead not neither alive or dead for instance? Many fictions consider them to be.
In which more literal way can you exist outside of the concepts of push and pull, than to have neither apply to you by standing still? What do you mean by existing beyond these concepts other than that neither of them applies to you?
You can't just call things false equivalence and not explain why they would be.

My proposal is to make dualities on the wiki follow the common consensus on what qualifies for dual concepts in the first place rather than this arbitrary logical negation when the page itself doesn't back it up and uses an example from Unsong that has nothing to do with "A and not A" examples. FFS we literally use Taiji as the main image example of what's considered a dual nature but the common examples of Taiji for some reason don't qualify because of the logical negation.

Remove Unsong as an example then. Why would we change the ability to fit the example instead of the other way around?
Same for the image. (albeit I really see no reason for the image. It's as close to an image for logical negation as you're likely to get. Don't really have better ideas)

We have no need to follow the common consensus on what is a "dual concept" if that just makes the existence of the ability meaningless. It's like saying that we should revise Concept Manipulation to also include mental ideas, since that is a common use of the word as well. We have to be clear about what the ability does, not aim to include every possible meaning of the term.
Absolutely worst case, it's better to rename the ability to "Paraconsistent Existence" than to include this stuff.

 

[Theglassman12]

Because an Undead can still be reanimated through various means, them literally being above the concepts of life and death is not the only way one can be undead so you're just stretching for the sake of making these dual concepts not work. Standing still doesn't automatically make you immune to those concepts as people can still push and pull you in the end. You can claim these dual concepts are ridiculous but it doesn't change the fact that fictional pieces of work and by extension stuff from Taiji uses these concepts. Avatar uses Push and Pull as an example tied to Yin and Yang and our page literally states that other dualities can still qualify if the verse treats specific things as a duality in the first place.

Literally how does it make the existence of the ability meaningless if we use the common consensus? Can you elaborate how using the easiest examples on what counts as dualities so people can understand the meaning behind Nonduality is supposed to be makes the power meaningless? Mental ideas for concepts are not the same as literal dual concepts so stop with these false equivalences here. Nothing about the page is remotely clear on what the ability does when people are back and forth on what counts as dual natures when in some instances Light and Darkness can count and in others, it doesn't just because it doesn't count as a logical negation. Ok what about Paraconsistent existence has anything to do with logical negations or dualities? That just sounds like word salad at this point.

 

[Agnaa]

Unsong is actually a fine example, iirc.

While it does say "God and nothingness", the broader context of that quote is that:

• God is 1.
• Nothingness is 0.
• Everything is composed of God withdrawing himself from the world, leaving nothingness in its wake; they are specific combinations of 1's and 0's.
• Atzmus is a lack of information altogether.

God is the fullness and contains within itself everything, while divine nothingness lacks absolutely everything. They are, in fact, a full duality that everything participates in, like "existence and nothingness".

Other than that I generally agree with DT here. And fwiw, as far as I can tell from his previous Discord messages, Ultima agrees too.

Because an Undead can still be reanimated through various means, them literally being above the concepts of life and death is not the only way one can be undead so you're just stretching for the sake of making these dual concepts not work. Standing still doesn't automatically make you immune to those concepts as people can still push and pull you in the end. You can claim these dual concepts are ridiculous but it doesn't change the fact that fictional pieces of work and by extension stuff from Taiji uses these concepts. Avatar uses Push and Pull as an example tied to Yin and Yang and our page literally states that other dualities can still qualify if the verse treats specific things as a duality in the first place.

Literally how does it make the existence of the ability meaningless if we use the common consensus? Can you elaborate how using the easiest examples on what counts as dualities so people can understand the meaning behind Nonduality is supposed to be makes the power meaningless?

Because such simple invocations don't actually imply any capability in general.

Maybe we could make a power or type of nonduality that says "This is for vague invocations of characters being outside of dualities. Due to the vagueness, it confers no capabilities for characters with it outside of those demonstrated in the piece of fiction itself". But I think even having that on pages would confuse people and result in them treating such characters as more powerful regardless.

Ok what about Paraconsistent existence has anything to do with logical negations or dualities? That just sounds like word salad at this point.

Paraconsistent logic - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Theglassman12]

@Agnaa That's not a logical negation as nothing mentions nothingness is "not God", just that they exist as polar opposites with the 1s and 0s itself. Also I don't really care for an old screenshot from Ultima when he's said in another thread that tying Dualities into logical negations is a mistake. Unless Ultima says on the thread that he agrees, I'm not taking what he says offsite a while ago to be legit.

What about "vague invocations" has this got anything to do with what I'm arguing here? The page already has a section in regards to the Nonduality side of things to where it would need to be proven they're immune to specific things as a result of them being outside of those dual natures?

 

[DontTalkDT]

Because an Undead can still be reanimated through various means, them literally being above the concepts of life and death is not the only way one can be undead so you're just stretching for the sake of making these dual concepts not work. Standing still doesn't automatically make you immune to those concepts as people can still push and pull you in the end. You can claim these dual concepts are ridiculous but it doesn't change the fact that fictional pieces of work and by extension stuff from Taiji uses these concepts. Avatar uses Push and Pull as an example tied to Yin and Yang and our page literally states that other dualities can still qualify if the verse treats specific things as a duality in the first place.

I have never said they are ridiculous or not used. They are just ill-defined and powerwise being not being part of the duality has no consequence for the properties of the character.

At least, that is by the description in the OP. You now introduce an entirely new idea in this post, which is that the character should be above the concepts, in such a manner as to make them automatically immune to the concepts and not being able to have the concepts simply applied to you. That was not part of your original definition and does not automatically follow from it either.
In fact, I would argue that if that's what you want for a power, a power that makes you transcend concepts to make you immune to them, then you are not focussing on the right page again. There is no reason to have a concept transcendence power to only come in transcending certain (subjectively indentified) pairs of opposites. You are better of just making an ability page for the ability to transcend concepts in general, with opposites or not.

In fact, wasn't there recently a proposal to add an Ontological Manipulation power or something that went in that direction? I was in favor of making a power like that, so perhaps we should revisit that thread.

The power to transcend concepts in any case has little to do with nonduality in its current form (and I would argue often when fiction talks about being beyond a duality, it is not meaning full conceptual transcendence either).

Literally how does it make the existence of the ability meaningless if we use the common consensus? Can you elaborate how using the easiest examples on what counts as dualities so people can understand the meaning behind Nonduality is supposed to be makes the power meaningless?

Because an ability must do some specific thing for all its users. Do you know why we don't have "Vampirism" as an ability? Because what is entailed in being a Vampire in fiction completely varies from one fiction for another.
Same would be the case for an ability that is "being in a third case of some things that are perceived as opposites, but are not logically opposite". What that does in your favour would vary from fiction to fiction.

Now, if you say that this should additionally include conceptual transcendence, as you said in the upper bit, you would have that connecting thread, in that it makes them immune to the concepts.
But, as said, at that point why even talk about duality? The entire effect of the ability comes from conceptual transcendence, not from something related to dualities. It would merely be the special case of conceptual transcendence applied to two concepts which you consider to be dualities.

Mental ideas for concepts are not the same as literal dual concepts so stop with these false equivalences here.

Didn't say they were. Read the comparison again. Point is that we already have made the decision on pages to not include every use of a term as part of the power.
I.e. Just because something is called duality by someone, we don't have to consider it for the purposes of how we define a nonduality power. We can use a more restrictive definition of the term if that works better, as we have done when we decided not to feature all meanings of "concept" as part of concept manipulation.

Nothing about the page is remotely clear on what the ability does when people are back and forth on what counts as dual natures when in some instances Light and Darkness can count and in others, it doesn't just because it doesn't count as a logical negation.

What a logical negation is, is literally as objectively clear as things get. It's a basic building block of logic.
If people have a problem with comprehending that we can improve the explanation.
The solution to people not understanding a relevant distinction is not to make things more vague to conceal it.

Ok what about Paraconsistent existence has anything to do with logical negations or dualities? That just sounds like word salad at this point.

Paraconsistency is the term for logic in which things can exist that are contradictory, both true and false.
So it has everything to do with the current nonduality page. An object that is beyond logical durality, i.e. everything that meets the requirements of the nonduality page, is described by a paraconsistent logic, instead of classical logic.
A "Paraconsistent Existence" would be an existence which is to be described by paraconsistent logic. So the implication being, that it has a state which is contradictory in some fashion, neither true nor false.

So, if the sigmata of the word "duality" really bothers us so much, we can just change to a word like this that has no assosciation with anything but violating strict logical opposites.

 

[Agnaa]

@Agnaa That's not a logical negation as nothing mentions nothingness is "not God", just that they exist as polar opposites with the 1s and 0s itself.

“Goodness is the same as existence. To exist infinitely is to be infinitely good. A human who was really human, who fulfilled her humanity to the utmost degree, would be a truly excellent human, one who was good at being a human and exemplified all the human virtues. Insofar as you are less of a human than that person, you exist less than them. God is pure existence, so He has to be pure good as well.”

“Maybe,” said Eli seriously “existence is like distance. There’s only one direction you can go. God went that direction and we called it ‘good’. Bad is something else.”

“The kabbalistic conception is that God withdrew from Himself to create the world. I, for example, am beautiful and intelligent, but not so physically strong. God is perfectly beautiful and intelligent and strong, so by withdrawing a little bit of His beauty and intelligence, and a lot of His strength, and some other things, we end up with an Ana.”

“Except you’re not an off-shade of brown,” said Erica.

“And also, God mostly just withdrew from the original universe in such a way that made it have laws of physics that generated you,” I added.

I already said this in my previous post, but yes, in Unsong, nothingness is the absence of God, God is maximally existent. These quotes are all from the same tiny chapter that the quote on the Nonduality page comes from.

Also I don't really care for an old screenshot from Ultima when he's said in another thread that tying Dualities into logical negations is a mistake. Unless Ultima says on the thread that he agrees, I'm not taking what he says offsite a while ago to be legit.

He said this stuff offsite after the post in that thread. Why frame my stuff as "old screenshots" or "a while ago" when they're far more recent?

What about "vague invocations" has this got anything to do with what I'm arguing here? The page already has a section in regards to the Nonduality side of things to where it would need to be proven they're immune to specific things as a result of them being outside of those dual natures?

You didn't include that in your proposed wording in the OP. And, the idea would be to not make them immune to things that they're not specifically established as being immune to canonically.

 

[Theglassman12]

@DontTalkDT Not should be, they need to be proven that they are above said concepts that said dual natures aren't able to define their existence. You keep arguing that I'm pushing for immunities via conceptual transcendence when the page itself already has that. My argument is not to push for conceptual transcendence, my argument is to make the dualities in question follow what's the common examples of a dual nature concept such as good and evil or light and darkness or yin and yang. Stop strawmanning my points and focus on what I'm arguing in the first place.

This is not what I consider to be a duality, this is what many fictional pieces of media and many people in general consider to be a duality when we use Taiji as the main poster child example of what dual natures pertains to. By that logic your arguments become meaningless since we're going by what you consider to be a duality rather than what's the common consensus.

When did I say we include every term? I'm using the most common examples of dualities for the revised explanation. Also how does providing examples of dualities like light and darkness make things too vague? That's the exact opposite of making things vague.

If we're really pushing for paraconsistent logic to be a thing on the wiki then we can have the dualities stuff be a separate page then in regards to dual nature concepts, though I'd question what would even qualify or be perfect examples for paraconsistent existence since this is a concept barely talked about in much media..

@Agnaa I want Ultima to comment for himself here on whether or not this is even a mistake.

I didn't include it because I'm talking about what qualifies for a duality, not what grants immunities or not. That's from the previous paragraph which already went into details so why would I bring up something I'm not changing in the first place?

 

[Deonment]

Have permission from Glass to comment on this thread, not touching on most the above stuff both because it's a mess that I don't want to parse through rn, secondly because I don't have infinite permission to ask to comment on the thread, and third that would just make a bloated post

To give a barebones idea of what I think nonduality should be, it should be an ability that showcases a character existing outside of dualities, through transcendence or simply not participating in them, whether the duality in question is contradictory (logical/binary), or contrary/complementary ("greyscale" ie Activity vs Passivity or Good and Evil (in cases such as Zoroastrianism rather than instances of Privatio boni)).
For a duality to actually qualify for this, the duality should exhibit the following properties
-It must be universal, that is it applies to all characters within the reality that it influences
-It must be fundamental to existence, whether predating it and acting as its foundation, or existing in tandem with it, defining reality in equal parts as reality defines it, this means for example, that transcending dualities which are simply moral or societal, such as Good and Evil or Order and Chaos, do not qualify unless the verse gives additional context to the nature of these dualities
-The duality in question should be an actual duality, if someone just throws out a statement regarding Fire and Ice, Wind and Earth, and someone later transcends reality or whatnot, then no we aren't giving them nonduality, because we have no idea about the nature of these concepts, and whether or not their dualities is something the verse has to display

This grants an unconventional resistance to the manipulation of what these dualities are, both as concept and as particular, in a similar manner to how Acasuality type 4's resistance towards Causality manip used to work

The extent to which this resistance functioned would be dependent on the type of nonduality, and whether or not its nonduality or transduality

With types, type 1 only gives resistance towards the dualities that have been displayed to exist within the verse itself, type 2 gives a general resistance to everything on their level, and is gained through the transcendence of more general dualities (such as yin and yang or multiplicity), same applies for type 3

Nonduality would still let the character be affected by certain powers if the character in question either has feats or can enforce the duality they exist outside of on them (ie First Hassan can enforce/give someone a concept of death to then kill them, that would bypass nonduality based on life and death), Transduality you just need feats for

Spoiler: Response to Agnaa

Anyways, to address the first post Agnaa and DT made each

And fwiw, as far as I can tell from his previous Discord messages, Ultima agrees too.

Ultima agreed that that's the standard, not with the principle of the matter itself (and this shouldn't matter anyways because ultima isn't making any contributions to the site in like, who knows how long, but even if he did he has also said on discord multiple times that making nonduality based in logic was a mistake on his end)

Because such simple invocations don't actually imply any capability in general.

Maybe we could make a power or type of nonduality that says "This is for vague invocations of characters being outside of dualities. Due to the vagueness, it confers no capabilities for characters with it outside of those demonstrated in the piece of fiction itself". But I think even having that on pages would confuse people and result in them treating such characters as more powerful regardless.

I mean the issue I have (and that I imagine glass is having) isn't that its vague or not, its that its specific to the point of uselessness and doesn't ignore the fact that not all dualities are contradictory in nature, and I would almost put money on most of them instead being some variant on Activity vs Passivity (Yin/Yang, Lingam/Yoni, etc), which are all some type of contrary or complementary duality, the number of characters that actually qualify for it by our current standards are so small that at that point we should just delete it for being too niche in the same way something like an "essence manip" page would be

Spoiler: Response to DT

That doesn't work, as at that point you define nonduality as a bunch of subjective differences and the characters with the resulting "ability" have literally nothing in common.

This is just wrong, the point of commonality is transcending the dualities, whether or not they are binary or analogue, the ability then gives resistance to the corresponding things they exist outside of by way of them existing outside of its framework, same as BDE or Immo Type 5

What does an undead (not life and not death) have in common with a morally neutral person (not good or evil)? Nothing.

It also doesn't generally grant any capability to any of the characters. What ability does a rock have for being neither light nor darkness?

That rock example also shows well how many characters would kinda just walk into this by technicality. If Push & Pull are dualities, by definition standing still is a feat of nonduality?

This argument is working under false pretenses, both in assuming all types of dualities are the same, a metaphysical duality like life and death is not the same as a moral or physical duality, especially considering neither of those dualities are universal in nature, you would be better off bringing up the duality of like, a particle and its antiparticle, which still isn't the same, but I can imagine a bunch of powers that could give, but the first would be that they do not have (typical) material composition and thus typical matter manip won't work on it, which works under our standards of duality

Also the Push Pull argument is just, wrong off the rip because you know damn well that nothing actually stays still, even if it were a lone particle in an empty universe it would still engage movements and field mechanics

That leads to the question of what lies beyond some duality, which is inherently subjective in its definition. I brought up an undead as neither life nor death, as some verses consider them as such, but others might say "they have biology, so they are alive", and others might say "they are just moving corpses without consciousness, so they are dead". (or make arguments about the soul or lifeforce)
So two characters with the same properties may qualify or not, depending on your philosophical opinion on where to draw the border between two things.

Point being? All verses do that, we inherently rely on verse context, which is based on the author's subjective thoughts mind you, to give qualifications for things, one verse can have the soul be the metaphysical ground of being that transcends even concepts, meanwhile another verse can have souls be an emergent property from life, that doesn't mean that soul manip has issues, that just means that what a Soul is varies between instances of fiction, which applies to every single power and ability we have.

What even are such dualities is subjective. Take your Light & Darkness. I would argue Darkness can exist without light just fine.
And "balance each other out"? So is Freedom & Responsibility qualified? Or should it be Freedom & Oppression?

Because Darkness is quite literally Not-Light, it is the utter absence of Light, nothing that is in light is in darkness and vice versa, and that's just physical duality, many verses which go on to then elaborate on the nature of such a thing actually explain the nature of said duality and explain that everything is either darkness or light, because the duality is part of the verse's innate metaphysics.
"Balance each other out" is vague wording and you're taking advantage of that, it would be freedom and fetter by the way, but this doesn't matter

Remove Unsong as an example then. Why would we change the ability to fit the example instead of the other way around?
Same for the image. (albeit I really see no reason for the image. It's as close to an image for logical negation as you're likely to get. Don't really have better ideas)

We have no need to follow the common consensus on what is a "dual concept" if that just makes the existence of the ability meaningless. It's like saying that we should revise Concept Manipulation to also include mental ideas, since that is a common use of the word as well. We have to be clear about what the ability does, not aim to include every possible meaning of the term.

Because common consensus in this case is, rather than just being what fiction has (because it directly draws from it), quite literally the most common and one of the oldest mythological, religious, and philosophical concepts ever, and that being the fact that some form of the Active/Passive or Feminine/Masculine duality (or in the case of Zoroastisnism and its related/inspired things, Good and Evil), which are not contradictory or logical, they are contrary and complementary.

 

[Agnaa]

To give a barebones idea of what I think nonduality should be, it should be an ability that showcases a character existing outside of dualities, through transcendence or simply not participating in them, whether the duality in question is contradictory (logical/binary), or contrary/complementary ("greyscale" ie Activity vs Passivity or Good and Evil (in cases such as Zoroastrianism rather than instances of Privatio boni)).
For a duality to actually qualify for this, the duality should exhibit the following properties
-It must be universal, that is it applies to all characters within the reality that it influences
-It must be fundamental to existence, whether predating it and acting as its foundation, or existing in tandem with it, defining reality in equal parts as reality defines it, this means for example, that transcending dualities which are simply moral or societal, such as Good and Evil or Order and Chaos, do not qualify unless the verse gives additional context to the nature of these dualities
-The duality in question should be an actual duality, if someone just throws out a statement regarding Fire and Ice, Wind and Earth, and someone later transcends reality or whatnot, then no we aren't giving them nonduality, because we have no idea about the nature of these concepts, and whether or not their dualities is something the verse has to display

This grants an unconventional resistance to the manipulation of what these dualities are, both as concept and as particular, in a similar manner to how Acasuality type 4's resistance towards Causality manip used to work

The extent to which this resistance functioned would be dependent on the type of nonduality, and whether or not its nonduality or transduality

With types, type 1 only gives resistance towards the dualities that have been displayed to exist within the verse itself, type 2 gives a general resistance to everything on their level, and is gained through the transcendence of more general dualities (such as yin and yang or multiplicity), same applies for type 3

Nonduality would still let the character be affected by certain powers if the character in question either has feats or can enforce the duality they exist outside of on them (ie First Hassan can enforce/give someone a concept of death to then kill them, that would bypass nonduality based on life and death), Transduality you just need feats for

My main concern with this sort of approach is giving those non-total dualities Type 2 and 3. Why would we assume that claims which don't even generalise for the trait in question (i.e. the duality of "black and white" does not encompass all of colour), can generalise to other traits as a whole?

If we were just to limit it to Type 1 I'd be pretty fine with this. But I do kind of hold DT's reservation that it may be better to just group this under a different label and to encompass more than just dualities. I'd want "beyond/[don't participate in] temperature" to be able to get this sort of resistance, not just "beyond/[don't participate in] hot and cold".

Ultima agreed that that's the standard, not with the principle of the matter itself (and this shouldn't matter anyways because ultima isn't making any contributions to the site in like, who knows how long, but even if he did he has also said on discord multiple times that making nonduality based in logic was a mistake on his end)

@Agnaa I want Ultima to comment for himself here on whether or not this is even a mistake.

Fair, but keep in mind that I said:

And fwiw, as far as I can tell from his previous Discord messages

It was drenched in doubt. I said both "for what it's worth" and "as far as I can tell".

I'm not ordering you to add it to the OP or anything.

If you give that no credence, that is perfectly fine by me. I personally gave it very little initially (just "oh haha looks like DT, Ultima, and I agree on something"). And now that y'all have presented other indications of his view, and readings of that post, I give it none.

I didn't include it because I'm talking about what qualifies for a duality, not what grants immunities or not. That's from the previous paragraph which already went into details so why would I bring up something I'm not changing in the first place?

There's no point in arguing about whether my reading of your OP was irrational or not. I think it wasn't, but what really matters is where the conversation goes from here.

 

[Deonment]

Have permission from glass to post again

My main concern with this sort of approach is giving those non-total dualities Type 2 and 3. Why would we assume that claims which don't even generalise for the trait in question (i.e. the duality of "black and white" does not encompass all of colour), can generalise to other traits as a whole?

If we were just to limit it to Type 1 I'd be pretty fine with this.

I mean, sure, I can understand that concern. Part of my thing was that the nature of these dualities would have to be one universal or general in nature, so I'm not sure how much it would qualify. But ignoring that for a bit and looking at whether there is just a random instance of like, black and white as a duality within the verse, then it would be type 1. Most verses (to my knowledge at least) typically use it as part of a list of dualities that either are the same thing, or fall under another concept, and thus the (greater) duality in question could be argued to be type 2, but if that's just it, then yeah, type 1 it is for being a specific duality.

Spoiler: Semi-Relevant Tangent/Nitpick on the nature of Black and White

And a bit of semi-relevant nitpicking on my end, a verse that does bring up the idea of like black and white in specific, and not in relation to a worldview or what not, and it's not just another expy for Light and Shadow, would likely have the rest of color as part of it, as they sit at like, the end points of color, either being all or none of the colors at all, and every color is thus a variation upon either adding or subtracting more or less from them. But that could just be me as an author seeing a cool concept and running with it, rather than thinking about what most authors would do.

Anyways, my thoughts for type 2 would by necessity require the duality in question to be total, to be something we could point to and say "Hey, this could be/is a generalized duality which all reality (and potentially even "lesser" dualities) participate in.", before a character goes on to do their usual statements of transcending the boundaries or polarities of this world. It would require a non-specific duality to get.

But I do kind of hold DT's reservation that it may be better to just group this under a different label and to encompass more than just dualities. I'd want "beyond/[don't participate in] temperature" to be able to get this sort of resistance, not just "beyond/[don't participate in] hot and cold".

I mean, this does just seem like a potentially separate topic (that being the creation of a new ability), but ignoring that, this seems like a sort of bad reading of most dualities, or well, at least, applying the nature of contradictory/logical ones to contrary ones. The latter typically functions on some degree of greyscale when it comes down to how they manifest within reality, things don't usually come up as purely one or the other, and those that do are exception(al) for being such, humans are a mix of Yin and Yang, Digimon (which, if I need to explain it, I will, but not if I don't need to) are made of both 1s and 0s, darkness and light, the above tangent on Black and White I talked about, FF14s Umbral and Astral, etc.

If we don't have reason to believe that hot and cold don't exist as the duality that grounds temperature, then sure, but if the duality exists and is something a character transcends, the difference between "transcending temperature" and "transcending hot and cold" seems to be mostly academic to me. I genuinely cannot think of a situation in which there is anything different between the two beyond like, the former character not having material make-up and the latter character having their atoms be stuck at a specific velocity which, I will admit on my end is a wild assumption to make, but you can understand my issue with such a statement.

 

[Theglassman12]

@Agnaa Like I said, I prefer Ultima himself clearing up on his stance, because like Deonment said he might only say that just because that's what the current standards is despite his disagreements with it. This isn't the first time he's disagreed with something that's a site standard given his massive overhaul on what qualifies for 1-A via R>F or who'd qualify for tier 0.

Ok, but I'm focusing on the current situation, which is the criteria on what is or isn't a duality doesn't add up with the logical negation requirements.

 

[DontTalkDT]

@DontTalkDT Not should be, they need to be proven that they are above said concepts that said dual natures aren't able to define their existence. You keep arguing that I'm pushing for immunities via conceptual transcendence when the page itself already has that. My argument is not to push for conceptual transcendence, my argument is to make the dualities in question follow what's the common examples of a dual nature concept such as good and evil or light and darkness or yin and yang. Stop strawmanning my points and focus on what I'm arguing in the first place.

I'm not strawmanning anything. I would appreciate if you would not try to dismiss examples and comparisons like that, but instead just engage the points.

As for your point, the page currently doesn't grant automatic immunity for being nondual. That's something optional which can be added when it's demonstrated (as by my last passed revision thread on the subject). The only thread currently connecting all nondual characters, is that they are paradoxical existences (more precisely they all violate the law of excluded middle in some fashion).

So I'm not sure quite sure which option you are suggesting here. I'm going to reply to both variants just in case:

1. If you mean that you want people beyond your pseudo-dualities to have this ability even without having the immunities and transcendence, then we are back at the problem that the users have no common ground. They wouldn't all have the same nature nor the same capabilities at all. It would be like vampirism again: A common label, but no common properties. So that's just not practical for an ability.
2. If you mean that you want people beyond your pseudo-dualities to have this ability, but only if they have demonstrated the immunities and transcendence, then we would be in a weird spot where the logical dualities don't have that requirement. So you would have two kinds of duralities with different standards, which is kind of awkward. And, as mentioned prior, in that case the far better option is to just have a page for transcendence of concepts, not just for the transcendence of dual concepts. The duality part doesn't really seem important at that point.

This is not what I consider to be a duality, this is what many fictional pieces of media and many people in general consider to be a duality when we use Taiji as the main poster child example of what dual natures pertains to. By that logic your arguments become meaningless since we're going by what you consider to be a duality rather than what's the common consensus.

When did I say we include every term? I'm using the most common examples of dualities for the revised explanation.

It being the most common is simply irrelevant. You are arguing about semantics. We don't make a page about a word, we make a page about an intended meaning behind a word.
If we made a page "bass manipulation" we could make it about the fish "bass" without acknowledging the more common meaning of the word that is a low-pitched sound in music.
The idea of what the ability is supposed to do is what is important, not how common a word use is.

So the question here is: "Is an ability page about being beyond dualities in your sense more useful to us than an ability page about being beyond logical dualities?"
And my answer to that is that it isn't. A separate additional page about being beyond concepts is what is most useful to us.

Also how does providing examples of dualities like light and darkness make things too vague? That's the exact opposite of making things vague.

The act of providing examples isn't vague. The criteria for what qualifies as a duality is.
And the criteria for what it means to be beyond them, assuming we don't require full conceptual transcendence to qualify for that. If we do, that part at least is clear.

If we're really pushing for paraconsistent logic to be a thing on the wiki then we can have the dualities stuff be a separate page then in regards to dual nature concepts, though I'd question what would even qualify or be perfect examples for paraconsistent existence since this is a concept barely talked about in much media..

It already is a thing? Like, that's what the nonduality page currently is. It's entirely about objects following paraconsistent logic.
As for a perfect example: this.

---

Have permission from Glass to comment on this thread, not touching on most the above stuff both because it's a mess that I don't want to parse through rn, secondly because I don't have infinite permission to ask to comment on the thread, and third that would just make a bloated post

To give a barebones idea of what I think nonduality should be, it should be an ability that showcases a character existing outside of dualities, through transcendence or simply not participating in them, whether the duality in question is contradictory (logical/binary), or contrary/complementary ("greyscale" ie Activity vs Passivity or Good and Evil (in cases such as Zoroastrianism rather than instances of Privatio boni)).
For a duality to actually qualify for this, the duality should exhibit the following properties
-It must be universal, that is it applies to all characters within the reality that it influences
-It must be fundamental to existence, whether predating it and acting as its foundation, or existing in tandem with it, defining reality in equal parts as reality defines it, this means for example, that transcending dualities which are simply moral or societal, such as Good and Evil or Order and Chaos, do not qualify unless the verse gives additional context to the nature of these dualities
-The duality in question should be an actual duality, if someone just throws out a statement regarding Fire and Ice, Wind and Earth, and someone later transcends reality or whatnot, then no we aren't giving them nonduality, because we have no idea about the nature of these concepts, and whether or not their dualities is something the verse has to display

This grants an unconventional resistance to the manipulation of what these dualities are, both as concept and as particular, in a similar manner to how Acasuality type 4's resistance towards Causality manip used to work

The extent to which this resistance functioned would be dependent on the type of nonduality, and whether or not its nonduality or transduality

With types, type 1 only gives resistance towards the dualities that have been displayed to exist within the verse itself, type 2 gives a general resistance to everything on their level, and is gained through the transcendence of more general dualities (such as yin and yang or multiplicity), same applies for type 3

Nonduality would still let the character be affected by certain powers if the character in question either has feats or can enforce the duality they exist outside of on them (ie First Hassan can enforce/give someone a concept of death to then kill them, that would bypass nonduality based on life and death), Transduality you just need feats for

Spoiler: Response to Agnaa

Anyways, to address the first post Agnaa and DT made each

Ultima agreed that that's the standard, not with the principle of the matter itself (and this shouldn't matter anyways because ultima isn't making any contributions to the site in like, who knows how long, but even if he did he has also said on discord multiple times that making nonduality based in logic was a mistake on his end)

I mean the issue I have (and that I imagine glass is having) isn't that its vague or not, its that its specific to the point of uselessness and doesn't ignore the fact that not all dualities are contradictory in nature, and I would almost put money on most of them instead being some variant on Activity vs Passivity (Yin/Yang, Lingam/Yoni, etc), which are all some type of contrary or complementary duality, the number of characters that actually qualify for it by our current standards are so small that at that point we should just delete it for being too niche in the same way something like an "essence manip" page would be

Spoiler: Response to DT

This is just wrong, the point of commonality is transcending the dualities, whether or not they are binary or analogue, the ability then gives resistance to the corresponding things they exist outside of by way of them existing outside of its framework, same as BDE or Immo Type 5

This argument is working under false pretenses, both in assuming all types of dualities are the same, a metaphysical duality like life and death is not the same as a moral or physical duality, especially considering neither of those dualities are universal in nature, you would be better off bringing up the duality of like, a particle and its antiparticle, which still isn't the same, but I can imagine a bunch of powers that could give, but the first would be that they do not have (typical) material composition and thus typical matter manip won't work on it, which works under our standards of duality

Also the Push Pull argument is just, wrong off the rip because you know damn well that nothing actually stays still, even if it were a lone particle in an empty universe it would still engage movements and field mechanics

Point being? All verses do that, we inherently rely on verse context, which is based on the author's subjective thoughts mind you, to give qualifications for things, one verse can have the soul be the metaphysical ground of being that transcends even concepts, meanwhile another verse can have souls be an emergent property from life, that doesn't mean that soul manip has issues, that just means that what a Soul is varies between instances of fiction, which applies to every single power and ability we have.

Because Darkness is quite literally Not-Light, it is the utter absence of Light, nothing that is in light is in darkness and vice versa, and that's just physical duality, many verses which go on to then elaborate on the nature of such a thing actually explain the nature of said duality and explain that everything is either darkness or light, because the duality is part of the verse's innate metaphysics.
"Balance each other out" is vague wording and you're taking advantage of that, it would be freedom and fetter by the way, but this doesn't matter

Because common consensus in this case is, rather than just being what fiction has (because it directly draws from it), quite literally the most common and one of the oldest mythological, religious, and philosophical concepts ever, and that being the fact that some form of the Active/Passive or Feminine/Masculine duality (or in the case of Zoroastisnism and its related/inspired things, Good and Evil), which are not contradictory or logical, they are contrary and complementary.

My response to that is the same as above. You are introducing a complicated, and often quite subjective concept of duality, but what you ultimately wish to do with it is just concept transcendence. If you want concept transcendence, do concept transcendence. The duality part is not central to the power at that point.

(Also, you can absolutely stand still in the universe. That's how inertial frames work. But that's pretty irrelevant to the subject)

 

[Theglassman12]

Your comparisons are nonsensical when you're trying to compare someone who stands still as the same as being outside of the duality of push and pull. Also if you don't know what I'm trying to push here, I literally spelled it out for everyone in the OP.

The above revised text I'm open for any revisions on how to word it better, but my overall proposal is to change Nonduality, and by extension what counts as dualities on the wiki to fit the common consensus in fiction rather than this arbitrary "A and not A" standards that disregards the most blatant cases of dual nature concepts.

Can you stop making assumptions on what my intent is in regards to the immunities because this is not relevant to the current topic at hand.

And the intended meaning behind the word quite literally has no meaning because of the botched standards for Nonduality on the site to where very few if any fictional forms of media talk about dualisms in a "A and not A" type logic. Saying the common examples is irrelevant is not an argument when we literally use Taiji as an example and any forms of media that tackles dualisms brings up ideas of Yin and Yang and have them be important. So no this isn't me arguing semantics, I'm arguing the page needs to make it clear on what dualities work because the page and the site itself can't agree on what counts and what doesn't.

I literally explained in the OP what a criteria for a duality is, if you have a problem with how I've worded it by all means make your own revised wording on what qualifies for a duality.

The same page that uses things that has nothing to do with logical negations like "A and not A".

 

[FinePoint]

@FinePoint Your input here would be appreciated given your thoughts on the current standards.

What I'll say is this: We should strive to build a box around fiction, not to shove fiction into a box. That is to say, if 90% of fiction considers "Life and Death" to be some kind of meaningful duality then we should probably do the same.

That said, I think contextually there's a strong argument to be made that many such cases already do qualify as a logical negation in that dead could quite literally be defined as 'not alive'.

Ultimately, my goal would be a definition which allows for relevant context to hold a lot of power. As it stands, I think the current definition and the following examples we use actually logically contradict each other.

We define it as: "Nonduality and Transduality are states of being wherein an entity exists independently of, or qualitatively beyond, various dual systems."

But then we say: "A nondual character's state of being could be between 0 and 1, being both or neither at once, being another number besides these, or be indescribable through numbers."

And objectively, being both 1 and 0 does not make you independent of, nor beyond, 1 and 0.

So at the bare minimum, one of these things needs to change.
Either we open up what nonduality can mean, or we stop including 'both'.
I'd prefer the former.

 

[Agnaa]

Have permission from glass to post again

I mean, sure, I can understand that concern. Part of my thing was that the nature of these dualities would have to be one universal or general in nature, so I'm not sure how much it would qualify. But ignoring that for a bit and looking at whether there is just a random instance of like, black and white as a duality within the verse, then it would be type 1. Most verses (to my knowledge at least) typically use it as part of a list of dualities that either are the same thing, or fall under another concept, and thus the (greater) duality in question could be argued to be type 2, but if that's just it, then yeah, type 1 it is for being a specific duality.

Spoiler: Semi-Relevant Tangent/Nitpick on the nature of Black and White

And a bit of semi-relevant nitpicking on my end, a verse that does bring up the idea of like black and white in specific, and not in relation to a worldview or what not, and it's not just another expy for Light and Shadow, would likely have the rest of color as part of it, as they sit at like, the end points of color, either being all or none of the colors at all, and every color is thus a variation upon either adding or subtracting more or less from them. But that could just be me as an author seeing a cool concept and running with it, rather than thinking about what most authors would do.

Anyways, my thoughts for type 2 would by necessity require the duality in question to be total, to be something we could point to and say "Hey, this could be/is a generalized duality which all reality (and potentially even "lesser" dualities) participate in.", before a character goes on to do their usual statements of transcending the boundaries or polarities of this world. It would require a non-specific duality to get.

I don't think listing many dubious dualities and implying more (i.e. saying "Not just black and white, but life and death, good and evil, hot and cold... I could go on.") should be generalised for the reason I said.

I'd want to tackle that specific issue, instead of saying "Well of course only listing one duality is type 1", since that wasn't my point.

If we don't have reason to believe that hot and cold don't exist as the duality that grounds temperature, then sure, but if the duality exists and is something a character transcends, the difference between "transcending temperature" and "transcending hot and cold" seems to be mostly academic to me. I genuinely cannot think of a situation in which there is anything different between the two beyond like, the former character not having material make-up and the latter character having their atoms be stuck at a specific velocity which, I will admit on my end is a wild assumption to make, but you can understand my issue with such a statement.

This is kind of my point? That we should make a separate page for this sort of thing, since there are equivalent things that aren't described in terms of dualities.

Saying the common examples is irrelevant is not an argument when we literally use Taiji as an example

If we had to rewrite abilities to have worse standards every time the image was found to be ill-fitting, instead of just changing the image, we'd have significantly worse ability pages in general.

 

[Theglassman12]

I don't really see how this is considered "worse standards" when we're clarifying something that should be easy to comprehend for those unfamiliar with what is or isn't a duality.

 

[Agnaa]

I don't really see how this is considered "worse standards" when we're clarifying something that should be easy to comprehend for those unfamiliar with what is or isn't a duality.

Again, I would ask you to go back to the substance.

You said that we should change the ability to be in line with the picture. I pointed out the absurdity of that. To which you're responding with "Well I think the standards are good anyway."

Defend them with substantive arguments then! Respond to the points made about the details! This tertiary stuff is getting us nowhere.

 

[Theglassman12]

I think the standards on what does or doesn't count as resistances via nonduality is fine, the standards on what is or isn't a duality in the first place is dumb because it flies in the face on what's used on the page and what's even accepted in the first place. Also no this isn't tertiary stuff, defining what is or isn't a duality is literally step one on the process to achieve nonduality as the verse has to establish these things existing in the verse.

 

[Deonment]

Got perms from glass to post and stuff

My response to that is the same as above. You are introducing a complicated, and often quite subjective concept of duality,

Not only is this no less complicated than our current standards, but something being subjective is not an argument against something, we have powers much more subjective than what I'm suggesting currently (see mind, soul, and concept manip, for example, whose natures can all vary wildly verse by verse, yet we choose to wholly generalize them in the former two cases, and categorize them all in the latter).

but what you ultimately wish to do with it is just concept transcendence. If you want concept transcendence, do concept transcendence. The duality part is not central to the power at that point.

Not only is that not what I'm suggesting, but that's for all intents and purposes what our current power is anyway, it is that you exist outside of a concept (duality) and thus become unaffected by its particulars, any logic stuff you want to add or argue is just set dressing, but that doesn't make the duality part any less the core and central theme of the power

Snip of the response to me

Okay, so after a bit of a talk off-site, I realized aagna and I were possibly talking over each other's heads.
So to make a clarifying statement
My thoughts on what a duality needs to be to qualify is that it must be universal in nature, which means everything in reality must participate in its nature. For example Light and Darkness, if a verse just makes a simple mention of it, that isn't really quantifiable as anything, if it goes on to clarify the nature of Light and Dark as being more metaphysical/ontological, such as claiming that Light and Darkness are Destruction and Creation (in general), then that would be a duality, but a specific one and transcending it would be type 1, if it then goes on to elaborate that all things are in some way particulars of Light and Dark, (ie saying "Everything is of Light and Darkness, muddled together to create a grey maybe", with potential further elaboration), then that can be a generalized duality, and transcending that would be type 2.
If it then lists aspects of those dualities, such as Life and Death, transcending those would be type 1.
Simply listing dualistic aspects or framing does not get you past specific dualities, a bunch of specific dualities, but nothing more.

If these non-logical dualities do get accepted as equal in viability for type 3, then type 3 would have to be rehashed, and my first thought would be something along the lines of transcending the duality/boundary of differentiation and non-differentiation.

 

[Agnaa]

Okay, so after a bit of a talk off-site, I realized aagna and I were possibly talking over each other's heads.
So to make a clarifying statement
My thoughts on what a duality needs to be to qualify is that it must be universal in nature, which means everything in reality must participate in its nature. For example Light and Darkness, if a verse just makes a simple mention of it, that isn't really quantifiable as anything, if it goes on to clarify the nature of Light and Dark as being more metaphysical/ontological, such as claiming that Light and Darkness are Destruction and Creation (in general), then that would be a duality, but a specific one and transcending it would be type 1, if it then goes on to elaborate that all things are in some way particulars of Light and Dark, (ie saying "Everything is of Light and Darkness, muddled together to create a grey maybe", with potential further elaboration), then that can be a generalized duality, and transcending that would be type 2.
If it then lists aspects of those dualities, such as Life and Death, transcending those would be type 1.
Simply listing dualistic aspects or framing does not get you past specific dualities, a bunch of specific dualities, but nothing more.

If these non-logical dualities do get accepted as equal in viability for type 3, then type 3 would have to be rehashed, and my first thought would be something along the lines of transcending the duality/boundary of differentiation and non-differentiation.

Yeah I'm mostly fine with this.

As I've repeatedly said, I think it might be better structurally to move a lot of this stuff (maybe all except Type 3?) to a different page. I don't think you should need to talk about a reference class as a duality in terms of its two extremes, to get a special resistance for being divorced from that reference class.

And I might nitpick about exact details about how strong the evidence needs to be, but that's small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

@Theglassman12 @DontTalkDT Do you have any thoughts on this?

 

[KLOL506]

bump

 

[Theglassman12]

@Agnaa Whether it's moving all of the dual concepts stuff to a new page or revise the current nonduality page itself to include the common consensus of what dualities are, I'm fine with either way, though should I put you as agreement in specifics to making this into a new page or should I still leave you in disagreement?

 

[Agnaa]

The wording you provided in the OP is still one I disagree with, since it does not require such dual forces to be total.

 

[Theglassman12]

Then how would you word it? I said I'm fine with any inputs on how to make it better.

 

[Agnaa]

I'll give one, but I increasingly think we need to replace Nonduality with a new page.

Reword​

For this ability, dualities refer to systems described through diametrically opposed forces, which by logical necessity (by being composed of "A" and "not A") or elaboration within the piece of fiction, has everything participate in them. For example, existence and non-existence by definition captures all ordinary things. However, light and darkness may not, as some objects are in a shade of grey. But if a piece of fiction establishes that the duality of light and darkness applies even to those grey-scale things, or if it establishes that light is a synonym for creation, and darkness a synonym for non-existence, that would be considered to qualify. Do note that not all verses would agree on these sorts of things; what is and isn't a duality can change between them.

That ends the new portion, the paragraph would end with the common ending already a part of the page:

Due to nonduality's nature as an abstract power, qualifying for it requires a verse to directly explain the way they treat a power in a way that aligns with the standards outlined below; merely demonstrating qualities matching those of a nondual character doesn't automatically qualify a character for it.

Why We Need a New Page​

On top of the concern I previously pointed out, how a character couldn't qualify for this if they simply said "temperature" instead of "hot and cold", despite them essentially meaning the same thing and thus having the same practical consequences, I've noticed some more issues.

Allowing more complex constructs of duality makes the assignment of Type 3 quite difficult. If a character is beyond the duality of "white and black", which encompasses all of colour, then that easily has more than 4 values (red, green, blue, yellow, cyan, magenta, violet, etc.), but it seems quite silly to assign type 3 based on that. We'd need to, at the bare minimum, rework that section of the page as well.

Our current Nonduality page says:

This type of nonduality immunizes the user against all attacks and haxes that don't also possess this level of nonduality, though characters scaling to more logical states than the ones mentioned can bypass this immunity.

This type of nonduality immunizes the user against all attacks and haxes that scale to fewer logical states than the user.

But I'm not aware of us having a hax page for an attack "scaling to many logical states". It seems like a big hole in our system to only have a page for defensive applications, when that page itself explicitly mentions offensive applications. I think fixing this would require a rework of the page as a whole.

EDIT: Also, we should consider removing the references to having a "qualitative difference" over the duality, given the baggage that has under our new tiering system.

 

[KLOL506]

At this point just nuke the old Nonduality page and remake it from scratch. Just keep it far away from us normal folks' hands to use, it's too much power to handle.

 

[Theglassman12]

@Agnaa I'll put you as agreement with having Nonduality be remade into a separate page then.

 

[Qawsedf234]

At this point just nuke the old Nonduality page and remake it from scratch. Just keep it far away from us normal folks' hands to use, it's too much power to handle.

Tbf, the page originally was only for Transduality. Nonduality was added because very few people qualified for TD while ND was a more consistent historical and fictional concept.

 

[KLOL506]

Tbf, the page originally was only for Transduality. Nonduality was added because very few people qualified for TD while ND was a more consistent historical and fictional concept.

Should've left them as separate pages.

 

[FinePoint]

I support the idea, but we should probably have a replacement ready before 'nuking' the page.

 

[DontTalkDT]

I will get to a more detailed response to everything later, but I will say that my current stance is that it seems most reasonable to have

• Breaking logic by being in paradoxical states
• Surpassing or evading concepts

as two separate pages. It doesn't seem productive to have things related to two entirely separate metaphysical aspects, which don't generally interact and each have their own considerations and nature to take care of, fused into one page. Ultimately, both "natures" would have different criteria for gaining them and the defense granted by the ability would be different (overcoming one would not mean to overcome the other).

But I'm not aware of us having a hax page for an attack "scaling to many logical states". It seems like a big hole in our system to only have a page for defensive applications, when that page itself explicitly mentions offensive applications. I think fixing this would require a rework of the page as a whole.

Feels like it would be a subapplication of logic manipulation. So, you know my stance and having that. Big fan.
While the offensive equivalence to the concept-related idea would probably just be concept manipulation.

Btw. is your reword supposed to reflect Deonment's proposal? Because I understand the content of the two very differently.

 

[Grabbing_dragon]

I'll give one, but I increasingly think we need to replace Nonduality with a new page.

Reword​

That ends the new portion, the paragraph would end with the common ending already a part of the page:

Got permission from FinePoint . I rewrote the wording below with the reasons I mentioned to FinePoint. The light and darkness part was no longer a duality of light and darkness according to the standards. Instead, it was a duality of existence and non-existence, rather than all light and all not-light. So I reworded that too and added links to make it easier for people. In the last part, I also added “as long as the logical dichotomy is established, they would qualify,” since that part could cause misunderstanding as well, Logical negation by itself does not meet the standards. For example, 'It is raining.' The negation is 'It is not raining.' You can see that by itself it does not cover all possibilities(all possible things)

For this ability, dualities refer to systems described through diametrically opposed categories, which, by logical necessity (by being composed of "A" and "not A") or elaboration within the piece of fiction, have completely opposite categories with everything participating in them in a logical dichotomy. For example, existence and non-existence, by definition, cover all ordinary things. However, light and darkness may not, as some objects are in a shade of grey. But if a piece of fiction establishes that light and not light applies even to those grey-scale things by defining them as two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive categories they would be considered to qualify. Do note that not all verses would agree on these sorts of things; what is and isn't a duality can change between them, and as long as the logical dichotomy is established, they would qualify. Simply having X as the negation of non-X does not establish a logical dichotomy. It only qualifies if X is the negation of "all" non-X (everything that isn’t X).