Cthulhu Mythos Downgrade

[TheRicardoSama]

After reading so far, I agree with the downgrade but gonna wait for further input so put me on the agree side for now

 

[Shyouu]

I don't know why I'm listed as neutral, when I agree with Ultima - who's against the upgrade.

Put me as disagree

 

[Darksmash]

The very fact that the Vacua form an hierarchy of their own already disproves their connection to the Gates which Carter passes through. As described in Hypnos, there were various such obstacles that each caused the narrator and his friend to become more and more distanced from the physical world as they broke away from the limitations of matter and form. Meanwhile, as I said above, the Gates only provide two losses of stability as an individual passes though them: The one that occurs after the First Gate, which is supposed to shatter one's ego across all of their earthly counterparts, and the one that occurs after the Ultimate Gate, which shatters their ego across all realities instead. This is even reinforced by the Supreme Archetype itself, who states that, should Carter have refused to partake in the Ultimate Mystery, he would just return to his world through the same two Gates that he had just crossed:

Even then, what Hypnos experienced wasn't exactly a "skip" at all: Him and the narrator just rapidly clawed through several of the aforementioned obstacles in rapid succession until they reached the last one, which only Hypnos could penetrate. Meanwhile, Carter just walked through the Outer Extension for a while and found the Ancient Ones, who then unlocked the Ultimate Gate for him.

I was not equating the gates to Vacua though. I was just showing that the skip to the Outer Void is possible.

Yes, they eventually hit an obstacle incalculably denser than the rest, but that would still mean in their journey through the Vacuas they eventually skipped to the top at some point because that's how infinity works. It wouldn't really make sense to just climb an infinite hierarchy hoping to reach the top. Skipping to the top makes more sense.

How does time being relative across the different levels of these universes even remotely suggest that they exist within the same timeline, though? Of course, time being relative across different locations is something that could indeed happen within a single spacetime, but the presence of a similar phenomenon doesn't at all suggest that on its own.

Because it won't happen if the timelines were disconnected. The very fact they can make direct comparisons between perceptions of time for different cosmic things means they must follow the same worldline. And that was also very clearly the intent here.

The former was referring to the space inhabited by Kuranes, a regular human who obviously comes from three-dimensional space, and the latter passage was likewise referring to Gilman's own studies on the act of stepping into a higher-dimensional plane and using it as a way to descend back into some faraway point of the third dimension, hence the "cosmic framework" was described as having celestial bodies and whatnot. Both statements are pretty clearly referring to 3-dimensional space alone.

Yes but that does not have to correlate with the usage of "universe" in the Kull stories if it doesn't agree with the context. The various measures of space, time and size were quite directly implied to be "finite relative measures" in comparison to the true infinity, which is why they were called illusory.

Of course they are. You are well aware that being larger than an infinitely-sized space by a finite or countably-infinite amount is not a thing, yes? In order for it to be meaningfully "larger," it has to be equatable to a higher-dimensional space. And given that the higher-dimensional spaces which Lovecraft himself introduced are obviously very different from what's being described in The Striking of the Gong and also defined as directly connected to lower-dimensional ones, it seems all but fair that these two hierarchies would be in different spots of the cosmology. Not to mention that the hierarchy mentioned in Kull, again, fits much better with the description of the "super-cosmos" from The Whisperer in Darkness, as I've said above.

Yes, that's exactly why it makes sense for the hierarchy to be just a series of fractals in a single infinity, which also agrees with the overall context. And if you really want to force each part of the fractal to be infinite despite overwhelming counter context, then we can disprove them being higher infinities with a simple thought experiment. If the lower infinity is contained inside some finite structure to the higher layer(for example an atom), then you would only need the same infinity of these atoms to fill this higher layer, which shows it's the same infinity multiplication, which is obviously not a higher infinity and hence redundant.

All of this just seems to hinge on ignoring the logic of the text in favor of your own: It explicitly states that what Carter saw were simply the only symbols that he could comprehend, which is really all we need to know here; there's a difference between analyzing the text with more scrutiny and going for the complete opposite of what it states. If those properties were only stated to exist in relation to manifested images of the Outer Extension, and not to the Outer Extension itself, then we don't need to assume that to begin with. You're basically just saying "The text is actually lying because what it's saying doesn't make sense to me."

Yes, Carter's mind was only translating what he could comprehend of the higher dimensional reality.

No one is going for the opposite of what it states. The text's intent is quite clear.

Spoiler: .

Memory and imagination shaped dim half-pictures with uncertain outlines amidst the seething chaos, but Carter knew that they were of memory and imagination only. Yet he felt that it was not chance which built these things in his consciousness, but rather some vast reality, ineffable and undimensioned, which surrounded him and strove to translate itself into the only symbols he was capable of grasping. For no mind of earth may grasp the extensions of shape which interweave in the oblique gulfs outside time and the dimensions we know.

...

What happened then is scarcely to be described in words. It is full of those paradoxes, contradictions, and anomalies which have no place in waking life, but which fill our more fantastic dreams, and are taken as matters of course till we return to our narrow, rigid, objective world of limited causation and tri-dimensional logic.

...

For the first time Carter realised how terrific utter silence, mental and physical, may be. The earlier moments had never failed to contain some perceptible rhythm, if only the faint, cryptical pulse of the earth’s dimensional extension, but now the hush of the abyss seemed to fall upon everything. Despite his intimations of body, he had no audible breath; and the glow of ’Umr at-Tawil’s quasi-sphere had grown petrifiedly fixed and unpulsating. A potent nimbus, brighter than those which had played round the heads of the Shapes, blazed frozenly over the shrouded skull of the terrible Guide.

...

And then, suddenly, he felt a greater terror than that which any of the Forms could give—a terror from which he could not flee because it was connected with himself. Even the First Gateway had taken something of stability from him, leaving him uncertain about his bodily form and about his relationship to the mistily defined objects around him, but it had not disturbed his sense of unity. He had still been Randolph Carter, a fixed point in the dimensional seething. Now, beyond the Ultimate Gateway, he realised in a moment of consuming fright that he was not one person, but many persons.

...

He was in many places at the same time. On earth, on October 7, 1883, a little boy named Randolph Carter was leaving the Snake-Den in the hushed evening light and running down the rocky slope and through the twisted-boughed orchard toward his Uncle Christopher’s house in the hills beyond Arkham—yet at that same moment, which was also somehow in the earthly year of 1928, a vague shadow not less Randolph Carter was sitting on a pedestal among the Ancient Ones in earth’s trans-dimensional extension. Here, too, was a third Randolph Carter in the unknown and formless cosmic abyss beyond the Ultimate Gate. And elsewhere, in a chaos of scenes whose infinite multiplicity and monstrous diversity brought him close to the brink of madness, were a limitless confusion of beings which he knew were as much himself as the local manifestation now beyond the Ultimate Gate.

...

Then the waves increased in strength, and sought to improve his understanding, reconciling him to the multiform entity of which his present fragment was an infinitesimal part. They told him that every figure of space is but the result of the intersection by a plane of some corresponding figure of one more dimension—as a square is cut from a cube or a circle from a sphere. The cube and sphere, of three dimensions, are thus cut from corresponding forms of four dimensions that men know only through guesses and dreams; and these in turn are cut from forms of five dimensions, and so on up to the dizzy and reachless heights of archetypal infinity. The world of men and of the gods of men is merely an infinitesimal phase of an infinitesimal thing—the three-dimensional phase of that small wholeness reached by the First Gate, where ’Umr at-Tawil dictates dreams to the Ancient Ones. Though men hail it as reality and brand thoughts of its many-dimensioned original as unreality, it is in truth the very opposite. That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality.

...

All at once the pageant of impressions seemed to achieve a vague kind of stabilisation. There were great masses of towering stone, carven into alien and incomprehensible designs and disposed according to the laws of some unknown, inverse geometry. Light filtered down from a sky of no assignable colour in baffling, contradictory directions, and played almost sentiently over what seemed to be a curved line of gigantic hieroglyphed pedestals more hexagonal than otherwise and surmounted by cloaked, ill-defined Shapes.

...

There was another Shape, too, which occupied no pedestal, but which seemed to glide or float over the cloudy, floor-like lower level. It was not exactly permanent in outline, but held transient suggestions of something remotely preceding or paralleling the human form, though half as large again as an ordinary man. It seemed to be heavily cloaked, like the Shapes on the pedestals, with some neutral-coloured fabric; and Carter could not detect any eye-holes through which it might gaze. Probably it did not need to gaze, for it seemed to belong to an order of being far outside the merely physical in organisation and faculties.

...

Just what the Ultimate Gate was, and how it was to be passed, Carter could not be certain; but a feeling of tense expectancy surged over him. He was conscious of having a kind of body, and of holding the fateful Silver Key in his hand. The masses of towering stone opposite him seemed to possess the evenness of a wall, toward the centre of which his eyes were irresistibly drawn. And then suddenly he felt the mental currents of the Most Ancient One cease to flow forth.

This back and forth doesn't even matter because even IF we assume all Carter received were mental images, that just makes the reasonings that you use equally irrelevant. Calling it undimensioned(Which the word doesn't even mean what you want it to mean btw) would be equally as irrelevant as calling it dimensioned if Carter cannot see what it is in the first place. Yet the context for it being dimensioned vastly outweighs the context of it not being so. With most of the (scarce) quotes that seem to suggest something of a higher quality eventually contextualising it to be outside the dimensions we know.

Yes, which wouldn't necessarily be excluding locations that surpass dimensioned space to begin with. As you pointed out before, the Outer Extension is described as "beyond time and the dimensions we know," yes, but as TDITWH showcases, even a single spacetime continuum is comprised of a lot more spatial dimensions than the three which human beings are familiar with, so saying that wouldn't really be a restrictive statement, especially since the time dimension, in this case, encompasses all of those spatial axes.

Yes it wouldn't, but it would blatantly be ignoring the intent of story itself. Especially when the Ultimate Mystery literally involved talking about the workings of the higher dimensions themselves, and how every lower dimensional thing is cut from some higher dimension in the same way the earth we know is a cut phase of the small wholeness(Blatantly also called "dimensional extension" and "many-dimensioned original").

Yes, and this amalgamation of his is of the same nature as the Outer Extension itself: Just like the entity of "Randolph Carter" is an amalgamation of all of Carter's earthly instances throughout time and space, so too is the Outer Extension an archetypal form of all of the Earth's versions throughout all of time and space, which, again, is why the images that Carter witnesses within it are described as somehow related to the planet's forgotten past.

Yes yes. Exactly. It's the dimensional extension out of which the 3D earth is cut off of. That's also why some of the images were linked to 'memory".

It was not exactly random nor senseless, no, but, again, it was indeed the Outer Extension itself projecting images directly into his mind. The text states as much, in the most explicit terms possible. The tidbit stating that Carter was utilizing his eyes to observe those images is literally just a case of Perception Manipulation, and nothing else:

It would be quite senseless if the reality projected images into his brain that he couldn't even properly comprehend, especially if the point was to "show him images that he could comprehend"). It seems far more plausible with the context that his brain was just comprehending whatever it could of the weird reality, filling the rest with imagination. It's a philosophy already mentioned before in lovecraft.

He had read much of things as they are, and talked with too many people. Well-meaning philosophers had taught him to look into the logical relations of things, and analyse the processes which shaped his thoughts and fancies. Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.

Reality is defined by the pictures it generates into the brain, yes. But does that invalidate the overwhelming amount of descriptions said reality was given? No, and quite frankly that line of thinking would just make all of lovecraft's descriptions of said reality invalid, which I don't think he exactly intended.

Beyond 3-dimensional logic, yes, which is not as exaggerated of a description as you're claiming it to be.

Yes, but in context it was referring to the Silver Key's shenanigans leading to the Outer Extension, and given the shapes residing there were also called outside the dimensions we know, it seems to make quite a lot of sense, along with it's connections to how the cosmology even functions in the first place(explained above already).

Or, alternatively, it was due to the fact that crossing the Gates results in a gradual loss of individuality and sense of self, with the crossing of the Ultimate Gate ultimately resulting in complete dissolution across all realities. The "loss of stability" is pretty clearly treated as being part of a single continuous process related to the nature of the Gates.

Losing his sense of self had nothing to do with that in that sense. Once again, the loss of self isn't treated in some conceptual/abstract way by lovecraft. The loss of stability just came from ascending to more primal levels of dimensions and becoming more and more of a composite entity.

Because a higher-dimensional object is not an archetypal form within Lovecraft's cosmology. The cosmology provided by TtGotSK more or less hinges on the logic that, since a 3-dimensional object is derived from a 4-dimensional object, then so, too, is a 4-dimensional object logically derived from a 5-dimensional object, and this recursion goes on infinitely, until it culminates on an archetypal level of reality from which all such phases are derived and dimensionality itself becomes irrelevant.

Outer Extension wasn't even called "Archetypal". And archetype in context of what I said clearly just refers to more original forms of reality which archetype the lower dimensions and act as the whole from which the latter is cut off of. And the "Archetypal Infinity" was quite clearly referring to the Archetypes themselves.

Not really, no, since we always default to a negative, until something comes up and allows us to accept the positive. You are the one who has to substantiate the claim that there is in fact an hierarchy between the First Gate and the Ultimate Gate.

Assuming the first gate is beyond the dimensional hierarchy just because there are only two gates isn't exactly "defaulting to a negative" I must say, especially when an overwhelming amount of context points to it being dimensioned.

I don't know why I'm listed as neutral, when I agree with Ultima - who's against the upgrade.

Put me as disagree

Sorry, my bad. Must have missed it

 

[Antvasima]

Ultima should also be written under disagree, and I usually trust his sense of judgement.

 

[Tyranno223]

I side with disagree for all that's worth. I'm not really a Cthulhu Mythos expert in regards to Cosmology.

 

[Rikimarox2]

I agree with Darksmash here, for the record.

 

[Emirp sumitpo]

I also stand on the disagree in case my name hasn't been written there

 

[Ningenron]

Darksmash arguments are still making the most sense so far, I Agree with the downgrade.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I was not equating the gates to Vacua though. I was just showing that the skip to the Outer Void is possible.

That's when I'd like you to clarify your argument again: Throughout this entire thread, your position has been basically depending on the notion that there's a single hierarchy in the Mythos' cosmology, which you've used as a basis to say that the Outer Extension is simply some vaguely-defined higher-dimensional space, and not an undimensioned reality as the text claims, and in the process, you have equated the hierarchy of Vacua to the hierarchy of higher-dimensional spaces, and in turn equated that to the Gates. In fact, this very branch of the argument revolves around you defending the possibility of there being an infinite amount of gates (Which would thus allow them to correspond to the higher-dimensional spaces described in TDITWH, at least in nature), in spite of the statements pointing at the opposite direction,

Now, you seem to be at least entertaining the notion that the Vacua and the Gates are indeed different hierarchies that reside in different spots of the cosmology, and are apparently just using the former as a reference point. So, really, which is it?

Yes, they eventually hit an obstacle incalculably denser than the rest, but that would still mean in their journey through the Vacuas they eventually skipped to the top at some point because that's how infinity works. It wouldn't really make sense to just climb an infinite hierarchy hoping to reach the top. Skipping to the top makes more sense.

Not really, no. It's perfectly possible to mathematically ascertain the last element of an infinite sequence, and in fact, the whole purpose of ordinal numbers in Set Theory is to do just that; For example, ω+1 = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4... ω}. Of course, you could say that Hypnos and his friend would logically need an infinite amount of time to get there, but we're already dealing with realities where time and space as we know them explicitly aren't really relevant concepts anymore, so, that's not really something we'd need to treat as a genuine caveat.

Assuming the first gate is beyond the dimensional hierarchy just because there are only two gates isn't exactly "defaulting to a negative" I must say, especially when an overwhelming amount of context points to it being dimensioned.

That's ignoring the fact that, as I've said, the First Gate and the Ultimate Gate are directly portrayed as the absolute last barriers that an individual goes through before passing into the Ultimate Void. Them coinciding with the dimensional hierarchy in any way by default implies that there is a hierarchy between the two, which visibly isn't the case, and so, we obviously default to the other option. Unless you can provide me with a more concise layout of where each of them stand, of course.

Because it won't happen if the timelines were disconnected. The very fact they can make direct comparisons between perceptions of time for different cosmic things means they must follow the same worldline. And that was also very clearly the intent here.

Yes but that does not have to correlate with the usage of "universe" in the Kull stories if it doesn't agree with the context. The various measures of space, time and size were quite directly implied to be "finite relative measures" in comparison to the true infinity, which is why they were called illusory.

That's mostly irrelevant, since the Hyborian Age (The time period where Robert E. Howard's characters such as Kull, Conan, Bran Mak Morn, and etc lived in) took place in the exact same universe as Lovecraft's stories, instead of happening in some alternate universe that was finite in size (As you seem to be implying, at least. Do correct me if I'm wrong), as evidenced by how Worms of the Earth makes multiple mentions of R'lyeh, Children of the Night mentions Bran Mak Morn and the Picts at the same time it mentions Cthulhu and the Necronomicon and The Haunter in the Dark mentions the snake-people of Valusia, which in turn is mentioned in At the Mountains of Madness. So, yeah, the hierarchy in The Striking of the Gong does indeed exist in relation to the at worst 3-D-but-spatially-infinite and at best many-dimensioned singular universe found in Lovecraft's stories.

Not to mention that the statement itself isn't even that contradictory, since the Mythos' cosmology already entertains the existence of "genuine infinities" that trivialize even constructs that lesser minds may perceive as being infinite, such as the spacetime continuum itself.

And if you really want to force each part of the fractal to be infinite despite overwhelming counter context, then we can disprove them being higher infinities with a simple thought experiment. If the lower infinity is contained inside some finite structure to the higher layer(for example an atom), then you would only need the same infinity of these atoms to fill this higher layer, which shows it's the same infinity multiplication, which is obviously not a higher infinity and hence redundant.

The conclusion drawn from this is not necessarily correct, no. As the symbol suggests, R^3 itself is nothing but (real-valued) 3-dimensional space as a whole, and thus cannot be viewed as embedded within a finite subset of another 3-dimensional space, in the same way a countable ordinal cannot be positioned past ω1. You could, of course, visualize it as a subspace of 3-D planes constructed from sets such as the hyperreals (Which include ω and infinitesimals), or the long line, but those are extremely non-standard constructs that basically no verse brings up, and even then, the shift in perspective that occurs in hierarchies like this one wouldn't really happen, and the set itself likewise wouldn't suddenly be contained in a finite subset of those spaces.

This back and forth doesn't even matter because even IF we assume all Carter received were mental images, that just makes the reasonings that you use equally irrelevant. Calling it undimensioned(Which the word doesn't even mean what you want it to mean btw) would be equally as irrelevant as calling it dimensioned if Carter cannot see what it is in the first place.

It would be quite senseless if the reality projected images into his brain that he couldn't even properly comprehend, especially if the point was to "show him images that he could comprehend"). It seems far more plausible with the context that his brain was just comprehending whatever it could of the weird reality, filling the rest with imagination.

I've already explained that this can be easily avoided. The statement referring to it as "undimensioned" doesn't refer to Carter's limited perception of the Outer Extension (Which only encompassed those arcane geometries and images related to Earth's past that you've pointed out), but instead to what was lying beyond it in the first place. The statement itself is as straightforward as you can get: The Outer Extension is an undimensioned realm, and was constructing mental images into Carter's mind so he was capable of grasping his surroundings, which were not themselves undimensioned. Much of the arguments that you posit against that, beyond the other points you're making that I'm responding to individually, seem largely based on personal incredulity than anything else.

Of course, you can go ahead and say that this doesn't matter since it's only supporting evidence, or whatever, but that doesn't really mean I can't pick it apart anyway, especially since you willingly presented it as one of the pillars holding up your argument to begin with. And you can also say that my arguments in this specific exchange don't really counter the general idea that the Outer Extension is higher-dimensional, which is fair, because I am not trying to do that: To clarify, I am just saying that what you are laying out in those paragraphs is not counter-evidence to the currently accepted ratings to begin with, and whether or not you have better arguments to push for that is irrelevant, since I'm already separately addressing all of them, like I said up there.

With most of the (scarce) quotes that seem to suggest something of a higher quality eventually contextualising it to be outside the dimensions we know.

I already explained how this isn't really that restrictive of a statement. You quoted the explanation down there, but didn't bother actually countering it, it seems, so, go do that.

Yes it wouldn't, but it would blatantly be ignoring the intent of story itself. Especially when the Ultimate Mystery literally involved talking about the workings of the higher dimensions themselves, and how every lower dimensional thing is cut from some higher dimension in the same way the earth we know is a cut phase of the small wholeness(Blatantly also called "dimensional extension" and "many-dimensioned original").

"Many-dimensioned original" wasn't strictly referring to the Outer Extension per se, no, so much as to the nature of higher-dimensional objects in general, as they in fact act as the original bodies out of which lower-dimensional spaces are derived, in all cases. It's just talking about how humans arrogantly believe their own 3-dimensional world to be the absolute reality, and deem thoughts of higher-dimensional spaces as a whole to be just fantasies and dreams, hence why it concludes by saying "That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality," which coincides with how even four-dimensional forms are stated to be things men only know "through dreams and guesses."

They told him that every figure of space is but the result of the intersection by a plane of some corresponding figure of one more dimension—as a square is cut from a cube or a circle from a sphere. The cube and sphere, of three dimensions, are thus cut from corresponding forms of four dimensions that men know only through guesses and dreams; and these in turn are cut from forms of five dimensions, and so on up to the dizzy and reachless heights of archetypal infinity. The world of men and of the gods of men is merely an infinitesimal phase of an infinitesimal thing—the three-dimensional phase of that small wholeness reached by the First Gate, where ’Umr at-Tawil dictates dreams to the Ancient Ones. Though men hail it as reality and brand thoughts of its many-dimensioned original as unreality, it is in truth the very opposite. That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality.

Yes yes. Exactly. It's the dimensional extension out of which the 3D earth is cut off of. That's also why some of the images were linked to 'memory".

Yes, and so, the "impressions" which Carter was receiving of his multiple earthly selves were the same as the "impressions" which he was receiving of the Outer Extension itself. That's the part of the argument I was addressing there.

Outer Extension wasn't even called "Archetypal". And archetype in context of what I said clearly just refers to more original forms of reality which archetype the lower dimensions and act as the whole from which the latter is cut off of. And the "Archetypal Infinity" was quite clearly referring to the Archetypes themselves.

It wasn't, no, but as I said, we can already gather that this is the case due to how the First Gate alone already nullifies self-identity much like the Ultimate Gate does, with the difference being that the effect is restricted to earthly counterparts instead of spanning all realities. Higher-dimensional spaces in other Lovecraft are never really shown to have that characteristic, and TDITWH already shows that the planes are purely spatial, and that a lower-dimensional lifeform can easily survive in a space with any number of higher dimensions.

 

[Darksmash]

That's when I'd like you to clarify your argument again: Throughout this entire thread, your position has been basically depending on the notion that there's a single hierarchy in the Mythos' cosmology, which you've used as a basis to say that the Outer Extension is simply some vaguely-defined higher-dimensional space, and not an undimensioned reality as the text claims, and in the process, you have equated the hierarchy of Vacua to the hierarchy of higher-dimensional spaces, and in turn equated that to the Gates. In fact, this very branch of the argument revolves around you defending the possibility of there being an infinite amount of gates (Which would thus allow them to correspond to the higher-dimensional spaces described in TDITWH, at least in nature), in spite of the statements pointing at the opposite direction,

My argument was that the verse has a single dimensional hierarchy yea, based on not only every conception of Outer Void only ever showing a single hierarchy, but also the descriptions and the text itself, which repeatedly call the Outer Extension dimensioned.

Now, you seem to be at least entertaining the notion that the Vacua and the Gates are indeed different hierarchies that reside in different spots of the cosmology, and are apparently just using the former as a reference point. So, really, which is it?

I am not entertaining that notion at all. The conceptions of the Outer Void still only mention a single hierarchy each time. And Outer Extension was blatantly called "dimensional extension" and "Many dimensioned". They are just the same hierarchies looked at with different lenses each time.

Not really, no. It's perfectly possible to mathematically ascertain the last element of an infinite sequence, and in fact, the whole purpose of ordinal numbers in Set Theory is to do just that; For example, ω+1 = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4... ω}. Of course, you could say that Hypnos and his friend would logically need an infinite amount of time to get there, but we're already dealing with realities where time and space as we know them explicitly aren't really relevant concepts anymore, so, that's not really something we'd need to treat as a genuine caveat.

You wouldn't exactly be able to reach omega from the natural numbers though. If you are skipping finite amount of numbers each time you will always be equally far from infinity. The only way to reach there is either skip to infinity at some point, or perform infinite jumps in finite time, or just take infinite time. the latter ones would be really wacky in terms of a story, and we know isn't what happened as the text clearly stated they eventually hit an obstacle incalculably denser than the rest, implying the ones before it were finite.

That's ignoring the fact that, as I've said, the First Gate and the Ultimate Gate are directly portrayed as the absolute last barriers that an individual goes through before passing into the Ultimate Void. Them coinciding with the dimensional hierarchy in any way by default implies that there is a hierarchy between the two, which visibly isn't the case, and so, we obviously default to the other option. Unless you can provide me with a more concise layout of where each of them stand, of course.

Where are they represented as the "absolute last barriers"? And where are these barriers in other conceptions of the Outer Void, where things always reach there through a single hierarchy(sometimes abysses, sometimes blacknesses, sometimes dimensions etc)? How I see it is, the first gate just took Carter past the space time continuum(which should be the default negative assumption), and the second one took him to the last void(explicitly stated so default assumption in this case). I don't have to prove it if we are defaulting it in both cases. It's just a quirky cosmology.

That's mostly irrelevant, since the Hyborian Age (The time period where Robert E. Howard's characters such as Kull, Conan, Bran Mak Morn, and etc lived in) took place in the exact same universe as Lovecraft's stories, instead of happening in some alternate universe that was finite in size (As you seem to be implying, at least. Do correct me if I'm wrong), as evidenced by how Worms of the Earth makes multiple mentions of R'lyeh, Children of the Night mentions Bran Mak Morn and the Picts at the same time it mentions Cthulhu and the Necronomicon and The Haunter in the Dark mentions the snake-people of Valusia, which in turn is mentioned in At the Mountains of Madness. So, yeah, the hierarchy in The Striking of the Gong does indeed exist in relation to the at worst 3-D-but-spatially-infinite and at best many-dimensioned singular universe found in Lovecraft's stories.

The point was not that they aren't in the same universe, the point was that the usage of the term 'Universe" can vary, just like cosmos and space time can vary in lovecraft stories. So we should look at the context in the story first, and this should be even more obvious when the story isn't even from lovecraft in the firt place, and hence can definitely have different writing style.

Not to mention that the statement itself isn't even that contradictory, since the Mythos' cosmology already entertains the existence of "genuine infinities" that trivialize even constructs that lesser minds may perceive as being infinite, such as the spacetime continuum itself.

That completely overlooks the context in the stories themselves, where only the underlying reality is called infinite, and everything else called illusory and what "finite minds can perceive". And again, in context of the stories these universes quite explicitly share the same worldline of time.

The conclusion drawn from this is not necessarily correct, no. As the symbol suggests, R^3 itself is nothing but (real-valued) 3-dimensional space as a whole, and thus cannot be viewed as embedded within a finite subset of another 3-dimensional space, in the same way a countable ordinal cannot be positioned past ω1. You could, of course, visualize it as a subspace of 3-D planes constructed from sets such as the hyperreals (Which include ω and infinitesimals), or the long line, but those are extremely non-standard constructs that basically no verse brings up, and even then, the shift in perspective that occurs in hierarchies like this one wouldn't really happen, and the set itself likewise wouldn't suddenly be contained in a finite subset of those spaces.

I already explained a much more plausible scenario, where these fractals are all finite in comparison to the infinity of the universe, which also agrees with the context from the stories. Problems only occur if you impose extremely unlikely scenarios on it based on usage of a term as general as "universe" from other stories not even from the same writer, however even if we go with it, this isn't the first time fiction did dumb things. Multiple infinite multiverses exist in fiction, after all. More importantly, I think the thought experiment itself shouldn't be ignored, as it kinda proves it cannot be a higher infinity.

I've already explained that this can be easily avoided. The statement referring to it as "undimensioned" doesn't refer to Carter's limited perception of the Outer Extension (Which only encompassed those arcane geometries and images related to Earth's past that you've pointed out), but instead to what was lying beyond it in the first place. The statement itself is as straightforward as you can get: The Outer Extension is an undimensioned realm, and was constructing mental images into Carter's mind so he was capable of grasping his surroundings, which were not themselves undimensioned. Much of the arguments that you posit against that, beyond the other points you're making that I'm responding to individually, seem largely based on personal incredulity than anything else.

Alright how about this instead: "Undimensioned" was referring to the realm itself, but so were the multiple statements calling it dimensioned. From "dimensional extension" to "Many dimensioned original". They vastly outnumber the usage of "undimensioned", not to mention the word doesn't even hold the meaning you are assigning to it in the first place. More importantly, your main counter to that was "detailed descriptions of the realm contradict it", which is where this argument can come in. If Carter cannot exactly even perceive said realm, then the detailed descriptions aren't exactly relevant you know. And all this only after we overlook the fact that he was literally making use of his eyes to observe said reality after stablization.

Of course, you can go ahead and say that this doesn't matter since it's only supporting evidence, or whatever, but that doesn't really mean I can't pick it apart anyway, especially since you willingly presented it as one of the pillars holding up your argument to begin with. And you can also say that my arguments in this specific exchange don't really counter the general idea that the Outer Extension is higher-dimensional, which is fair, because I am not trying to do that: To clarify, I am just saying that what you are laying out in those paragraphs is not counter-evidence to the currently accepted ratings to begin with, and whether or not you have better arguments to push for that is irrelevant, since I'm already separately addressing all of them, like I said up there.

Yea it's fine, it's helping me strengthen the arguments along the way.

I already explained how this isn't really that restrictive of a statement. You quoted the explanation down there, but didn't bother actually countering it, it seems, so, go do that.

Yes, it isn't a restrictive statement, but it does hold an intent, intent which agrees with the rest of the context of the Outer Extension being dimensioned.

"Many-dimensioned original" wasn't strictly referring to the Outer Extension per se, no, so much as to the nature of higher-dimensional objects in general, as they in fact act as the original bodies out of which lower-dimensional spaces are derived, in all cases. It's just talking about how humans arrogantly believe their own 3-dimensional world to be the absolute reality, and deem thoughts of higher-dimensional spaces as a whole to be just fantasies and dreams, hence why it concludes by saying "That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality," which coincides with how even four-dimensional forms are stated to be things men only know "through dreams and guesses."

It was quite implicitly referring to the Outer Extension itself, yes. Considering it blatantly talks about the world of men and the small wholeness(from which the world of men was cut off of) in the previous statement, and then equates the former to "reality", it seems like a very logical conclusion that the "Many dimensioned original" is referring to the small wholeness from which the world of men was cut off of.

The world of men and of the gods of men is merely an infinitesimal phase of an infinitesimal thing—the three-dimensional phase of that small wholeness reached by the First Gate, where ’Umr at-Tawil dictates dreams to the Ancient Ones. Though men hail it as reality and brand thoughts of its many-dimensioned original as unreality, it is in truth the very opposite. That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality.

Really, not treating it as the small wholeness is just blatant Ad Hoc at this point. Considering it's also called "dimensional extension".

Yes, and so, the "impressions" which Carter was receiving of his multiple earthly selves were the same as the "impressions" which he was receiving of the Outer Extension itself. That's the part of the argument I was addressing there.

They don't correlate to the impressions he blatantly observes with his eyes after gaining stabilization.

It wasn't, no, but as I said, we can already gather that this is the case due to how the First Gate alone already nullifies self-identity much like the Ultimate Gate does, with the difference being that the effect is restricted to earthly counterparts instead of spanning all realities. Higher-dimensional spaces in other Lovecraft are never really shown to have that characteristic, and TDITWH already shows that the planes are purely spatial, and that a lower-dimensional lifeform can easily survive in a space with any number of higher dimensions.

Again, as I said, the loss of identity in lovecraft is nothing other than becoming a more composite entity. What the first gate did can also be done by merely going past some 4D space time continuum(generally speaking here ofc) and becoming a composite of all your instances across time. That has absolutely no correlation to Archetypal Infinity as how lovecraft uses it, which is quite explicitly referring to the archetypes themselves. And even then, it doesn't matter that much because as I pointed out even in the OP the archetypes don't work any different from simple higher dimensions in lovecraft, acting as the wholes from which the lesser dimensions are cut off.

 

[DaringAttitude4]

I agree with Ultima here, which leading through disagreement with the downgrade.

 

[ImNot4nUser]

Well, after reading through the arguments so far, and trying to comprehend them big words, I agree with Darksmash the most, so I agree with the downgrade

 

[Braking]

due to all of the arguments in this thread if not already disagreeing with the downgrade

 

[OnsokunoSonic]

Oh crap, the thread is still going huh? Btw, why haven't you list me on disagreeing lol

 

[Braking]

Oh crap, the thread is still going huh? Btw, why haven't you list me on disagreeing lol

my bad

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Where are they represented as the "absolute last barriers"?

The hills behind Arkham are full of a strange magic—something, perhaps, which the old wizard Edmund Carter called down from the stars and up from the crypts of nether earth when he fled there from Salem in 1692. As soon as Randolph Carter was back among them he knew that he was close to one of the gates which a few audacious, abhorred, and alien-souled men have blasted through titan walls betwixt the world and the outside absolute.

A gate had been unlocked—not indeed the Ultimate Gate, but one leading from earth and time to that extension of earth which is outside time, and from which in turn the Ultimate Gate leads fearsomely and perilously to the Last Void which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter.

You wished to sail up golden Oukranos, to search out forgotten ivory cities in orchid-heavy Kled, and to reign on the opal throne of Ilek-Vad, whose fabulous towers and numberless domes rise mighty toward a single red star in a firmament alien to your earth and to all matter. Now, with the passing of two Gates, you wish loftier things. You would not flee like a child from a scene disliked to a dream beloved, but would plunge like a man into that last and inmost of secrets which lies behind all scenes and dreams.

“What you wish, I have found good; and I am ready to grant that which I have granted eleven times only to beings of your planet—five times only to those you call men, or those resembling them. I am ready to shew you the Ultimate Mystery, to look on which is to blast a feeble spirit. Yet before you gaze full at that last and first of secrets you may still wield a free choice, and return if you will through the two Gates with the Veil still unrent before your eyes.”

And where are these barriers in other conceptions of the Outer Void, where things always reach there through a single hierarchy(sometimes abysses, sometimes blacknesses, sometimes dimensions etc)?

Again, as I said, the loss of identity in lovecraft is nothing other than becoming a more composite entity. What the first gate did can also be done by merely going past some 4D space time continuum(generally speaking here ofc) and becoming a composite of all your instances across time.

The "blacknesses" beyond the First Gate are never really depicted as forming an existential hierarchy, per se, unless you can point me to some indication of that, and the "(twilight) abysses," like I mentioned before, are higher-dimensional planes portrayed in TDITWH as part of a single spacetime continuum (Unless you count a far more ambiguous passage that was just as likely to be referring to the Ultimate Void itself) and as bounded by temporal dimensions, which the First Gate, as you said, leads to the outside of, so that (Alongside the fact that what Gilman saw was completely different from what Carter saw) also showcases that the Gates aren't in a 1:1 correspondence with the dimensional hierarchy.

How I see it is, the first gate just took Carter past the space time continuum(which should be the default negative assumption), and the second one took him to the last void(explicitly stated so default assumption in this case)

Interpreting it as a "skip" automatically implies that there are, in fact, barriers that stand beyond even the Ultimate Gate, which would contradict the quotes I've posted above and the fact that it's, well, the Ultimate Gate. Equating them to the Hypnos' Vacua likewise suggests that there are a number of barriers between the First Gate and the Ultimate Gate, which is also something that we don't see and which is directly contradicted by the passages above, which defined the former as standing just before the latter. "It's just a quirky cosmology" sounds like a pretty huge excuse here, in light of that.

the latter ones would be really wacky in terms of a story, and we know isn't what happened as the text clearly stated they eventually hit an obstacle incalculably denser than the rest, implying the ones before it were finite.

Again, the text already involves Hypnos and his friend plunging into realities where time and space as we know them are completely irrelevant concepts, so, that's not really something that we have to consider as a valid restriction.

I am not entertaining that notion at all. The conceptions of the Outer Void still only mention a single hierarchy each time. And Outer Extension was blatantly called "dimensional extension" and "Many dimensioned". They are just the same hierarchies looked at with different lenses each time.

Then you may as well address the core point here: The vacua and the dimensional planes form an infinite hierarchy, while the Gates explicitly form a finite one. How do you explain this difference in portrayal?

The point was not that they aren't in the same universe, the point was that the usage of the term 'Universe" can vary, just like cosmos and space time can vary in lovecraft stories.

I already explained a much more plausible scenario, where these fractals are all finite in comparison to the infinity of the universe

Yes, and my point is that this hierarchy would indeed encompass the infinitely-sized "baseline" plane of the universe at the absolute least, by necessity.

And that's not really a plausible scenario at all, no, since what's described as infinitely-sized in Lovecraft's stories, as I said, is the baseline, 3-dimensional plane of the spacetime continuum, which is continuous structure forming a "cosmic framework" of different points where other celestial bodies may reside, not unlike our own universe, instead of some infinite fractal hierarchy of finitely-sized universes.

That completely overlooks the context in the stories themselves, where only the underlying reality is called infinite, and everything else called illusory and what "finite minds can perceive".

And how does that affect anything, exactly? You'd certainly not argue that only the ultimate reality that lies beneath the cosmos of space and time is High 3-A due to being the only thing described as objectively finite, or somesuch, so that description alone is pretty worthless, especially when we choose to reconcile it with the wider cosmology of the setting.

More importantly, I think the thought experiment itself shouldn't be ignored, as it kinda proves it cannot be a higher infinity.

I explained already why the case described in Striking of the Gong is very different from what you describe, and gave examples of spaces in which R^3 itself can be embedded, and which still wouldn't exactly be perceiving it as finite, or anything of the sort. It'd still be encompassing an infinite subset of those spaces, in all cases.

They vastly outnumber the usage of "undimensioned"

That's pretty arguable, since, as far as I see, there are only 2-3 instances of the word "dimensional" being utilized here. I do think that the context behind the Gates' standing in the cosmology can serve as a counter to that, too.

not to mention the word doesn't even hold the meaning you are assigning to it in the first place.

The word is just a synonym for "dimensionless," so, yes, I'd say it very much does. In real world contexts, it's used to talk about 0-dimensional spaces, something which the Outer Extension is evidently not.

And all this only after we overlook the fact that he was literally making use of his eyes to observe said reality after stablization.

They don't correlate to the impressions he blatantly observes with his eyes after gaining stabilization.

And you, yourself, overlook the fact that those images were just a product of his perception being directly manipulated, both before and after the stabilization. As far as I see, you've never directly addressed this, beyond saying "If it was translating itself into the only symbols he could comprehend, then why was that reality so wacky?" which, again, is an argument from pure incredulity, and literally just you putting your own logic above the text's. Like I said, that's just Perception Manipulation at play, and not much beyond that.

It was quite implicitly referring to the Outer Extension itself, yes. Considering it blatantly talks about the world of men and the small wholeness(from which the world of men was cut off of) in the previous statement, and then equates the former to "reality", it seems like a very logical conclusion that the "Many dimensioned original" is referring to the small wholeness from which the world of men was cut off of.

Arguing further into the specifics of this passage would hinge on the arguments I presented above, which I suppose puts me on a similar position to you here, as far as I see, so, I digress on that.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Oh crap, the thread is still going huh?

To be fair, it'd probably be way more convenient if Darksmash and I didn't apparently live in opposite time zones, but, it is what it is.

 

[Ovy7]

On the bright side, the thread is very civil. . .

looks at the Shinza downgrade CRTs

 

[DaReaperMan]

On the bright side, the thread is very civil. . .

looks at the Shinza downgrade CRTs

People can debate like adults!

I read those... oh boy.

 

[Livinmeme]

On the bright side, the thread is very civil. . .

looks at the Shinza downgrade CRTs

and bleach CRT downgrade

 

[Guardian_Doge]

At the moment I’m in agreement with Darksmash, I personally think his reasoning is less mental gymnastics yet concise at the same time.

 

[Darksmash]

A gate had been unlocked—not indeed the Ultimate Gate, but one leading from earth and time to that extension of earth which is outside time, and from which in turn the Ultimate Gate leads fearsomely and perilously to the Last Void which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter.

This, and the other quotes, don't exactly call them the "absolute last barriers". The Ultimate Gate leads to the last void, sure. That's the default assumption. However, nothing suggests the first gate goes beyond the hierarchy. So that shouldn't be the default assumption.

The "blacknesses" beyond the First Gate are never really depicted as forming an existential hierarchy, per se, unless you can point me to some indication of that, and the "(twilight) abysses," like I mentioned before, are higher-dimensional planes portrayed in TDITWH as part of a single spacetime continuum (Unless you count a far more ambiguous passage that was just as likely to be referring to the Ultimate Void itself) and as bounded by temporal dimensions, which the First Gate, as you said, leads to the outside of, so that (Alongside the fact that what Gilman saw was completely different from what Carter saw) also showcases that the Gates aren't in a 1:1 correspondence with the dimensional hierarchy.

It's not usually a hierarchy yea, but "blackness" is often correlated with the dimensions(or abysses), for example:

There were suggestions of the vague, twilight abysses, and of still vaster, blacker abysses beyond them—abysses in which all fixed suggestions of form were absent. He had been taken there by the bubble-congeries and the little polyhedron which always dogged him; but they, like himself, had changed to wisps of milky, barely luminous mist in this farther void of ultimate blackness.

Thick though the rushing nightmare that clutched his senses, Randolph Carter could turn and move. He could move, and if he chose he could leap off the evil shantak that bore him hurtlingly doomward at the orders of Nyarlathotep. He could leap off and dare those depths of night that yawned interminably down, those depths of fear whose terrors yet could not exceed the nameless doom that lurked waiting at chaos’ core. He could turn and move and leap—he could—he would—he would—

Off that vast hippocephalic abomination leaped the doomed and desperate dreamer, and down through endless voids of sentient blackness he fell. Aeons reeled, universes died and were born again, stars became nebulae and nebulae became stars, and still Randolph Carter fell through those endless voids of sentient blackness.

And these also blatantly directly lead to the Ultimate Void :/ so how are they bound to a single space time continuum?

Interpreting it as a "skip" automatically implies that there are, in fact, barriers that stand beyond even the Ultimate Gate, which would contradict the quotes I've posted above and the fact that it's, well, the Ultimate Gate. Equating them to the Hypnos' Vacua likewise suggests that there are a number of barriers between the First Gate and the Ultimate Gate, which is also something that we don't see and which is directly contradicted by the passages above, which defined the former as standing just before the latter. "It's just a quirky cosmology" sounds like a pretty huge excuse here, in light of that.

What? How? How does interpreting it as a skip imply there is stuff beyond the Ultimate Gate? We are still interpreting the Ultimate Gate as the last barrier.

It doesn't explicitly say that there are no more dimensions between the First Gate and the Ultimate Gate. They just aren't part of the system of Gates that Carter was crossing. Again, defaulting to the negatives. The first gate is quite blatantly called "dimensional extension" and "many dimensioned original". The Ultimate Gate skipping to the top isn't my problem, it is the cosmology being weird. So yes, calling it a "quirky cosmology" is not any kind of excuse.

Again, the text already involves Hypnos and his friend plunging into realities where time and space as we know them are completely irrelevant concepts, so, that's not really something that we have to consider as a valid restriction.

This is the same as saying all detailed descriptions of realms that were previously called "beyond comprehension" are fake and irrelevant. Just selectively nitpicking the buzzwords. We are also told that the Vacuas still contained elements of space and time, and "time being an illusion" was also merely translated to the characters not aging. Seriously, we aren't even talking about conventional time here. We are just talking about what happened in the story, in chronological order. They were clawing through the obstacles, and eventually hit one incalculably denser than the rest. That is a discrete jump, and makes total sense as no one would vainly climb an infinite hierarchy forever if they want to reach the top. Like I said, from the context of a story exploring the cosmology, It would make more sense for them to skip to the top with the next gate, since the first gate had already relatively shown the working of the archetypal change-being-illusion cosmology, it would make sense for the next step to skip to the top. That should be a default assumption based on what the story said, and the explanation I provided also explains that very well.

Then you may as well address the core point here: The vacua and the dimensional planes form an infinite hierarchy, while the Gates explicitly form a finite one. How do you explain this difference in portrayal?

Read above. And this can also be seen in the fact that only the Ultimate Gate is said to lead outside "All earths, all universes and all matter".

Yes, and my point is that this hierarchy would indeed encompass the infinitely-sized "baseline" plane of the universe at the absolute least, by necessity.

If by hierarchy you mean the entire hierarchy, then yes I agree because..well the overall reality is infinite.

And that's not really a plausible scenario at all, no, since what's described as infinitely-sized in Lovecraft's stories, as I said, is the baseline, 3-dimensional plane of the spacetime continuum

I already explained that the stories have discrepancy even in the usage of terms like "Space time" and "Cosmos". It's no wonder something as general as "Universe" may be utilized differently in a different story, not to mention a story not even written by Lovecraft in the first place, and not necessarily conforming to the same writing style.

which is continuous structure forming a "cosmic framework" of different points where other celestial bodies may reside, not unlike our own universe, instead of some infinite fractal hierarchy of finitely-sized universes.

How exactly does forming a "cosmic framework of different points where other celestial bodies may reside" exclude it from having a fractal type hierarchy? Correct me if I interpret it wrong but to me it sounds no different than saying "I don't think the universes should work that way, so any attempts to expand upon the implications of infinity(Like a repetition of fractals) would be irrelevant". Something which you might call "pure incredulity".

And how does that affect anything, exactly? You'd certainly not argue that only the ultimate reality that lies beneath the cosmos of space and time is High 3-A due to being the only thing described as objectively finite, or somesuch, so that description alone is pretty worthless, especially when we choose to reconcile it with the wider cosmology of the setting.

Because the context of the story makes it clear what these "finite measures" are, giving examples of how civilizations fall in the time it takes stars to change, and how someone in a different location in the fractal hierarchy can experience hours or even millions of years from their perspective in a very short amount of time from the perspective of another location.

I explained already why the case described in Striking of the Gong is very different from what you describe

Where?

and gave examples of spaces in which R^3 itself can be embedded, and which still wouldn't exactly be perceiving it as finite, or anything of the sort.

Perceiving any infinity as "finite" from a "higher infinity" is technically blatant counter context for the infinity not actually being "infinite". This wiki just has extremely lax standards with infinity, so we are forced to try to explain it alternatively. Trying to pass it off as "it doesn't work like that in mathematics" is just misusing the extremely lax standards of the wiki, and we might as well turn all scaling chains beyond infinity into a chain of alephs, because well infinity doesn't work like that mathematically. Especially funny when the universes aren't even called infinite in the same story, and this only happens when you try to force the usage of the term from another story by a different author without taking into account the possibilities of discrepancies and blatant context of the story itself.

That's pretty arguable, since, as far as I see, there are only 2-3 instances of the word "dimensional" being utilized here. I do think that the context behind the Gates' standing in the cosmology can serve as a counter to that, too.

2-3 is a lot, I would say. And being called "Many dimensioned" is a very blatant instance of it that cannot really be ignored. The Ultimate Gate would just be a quirky skip to the top, going by all default assumptions.

The word is just a synonym for "dimensionless," so, yes, I'd say it very much does. In real world contexts, it's used to talk about 0-dimensional spaces, something which the Outer Extension is evidently not.

Dimensionless=/=Being bigger than dimensioned spaces. Not to mention for a short while you argued that the Outer Extension is a realm where dimensions "dissolve into incoherency", which wouldn't exactly be "dimensionless", especially considering the realm is also stated to have directions.

And you, yourself, overlook the fact that those images were just a product of his perception being directly manipulated, both before and after the stabilization. As far as I see, you've never directly addressed this, beyond saying "If it was translating itself into the only symbols he could comprehend, then why was that reality so wacky?" which, again, is an argument from pure incredulity, and literally just you putting your own logic above the text's. Like I said, that's just Perception Manipulation at play, and not much beyond that.

Where is the evidence that his perception was being manipulated after the stablization? Heck, I don't think it was being manipulated even before the stablization. That's quite blatant misunderstanding of the context of the story based on some buzzwords. Memory and Imagination were helping him "shape" some of the images from the chaotic scenery because the imagery there...well included what he already observed on the earth considering it was the dimensional extension of the earth itself. The only time he experienced pure cerebral impressions was when the entity "Carter" was taking shape, which just repeated the images his life revolved around, which is a thing in lovecraft's philosophy:

He had read much of things as they are, and talked with too many people. Well-meaning philosophers had taught him to look into the logical relations of things, and analyse the processes which shaped his thoughts and fancies. Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.

And honestly this discussion is just secondary and only comes into play when you ignore the blatant context of the story and the many times the realm had been called dimensioned.

Arguing further into the specifics of this passage would hinge on the arguments I presented above, which I suppose puts me on a similar position to you here, as far as I see, so, I digress on that.

I am not exactly sure what you mean by this but I am assuming you agree with me here?

 

[Pepsiman25th]

i just noticed something
all the og tier 0s becoming 1-A or lower
first was TOAA, next it gonna be the Cthulhu guys and then the writer

 

[DivineAura44]

i just noticed something
all the og tier 0s becoming 1-A or lower
first was TOAA, next it gonna be the Cthulhu guys and then the writer

Every Tier 0 is gonna be 1-A or lower.

 

[Pepsiman25th]

Every Tier 0 is gonna be 1-A or lower.

3812 gonna be laughing at them all when he claims the spot as the only true tier 0

 

[Metalballrun]

On the bright side, the thread is very civil. . .

looks at the Shinza downgrade CRTs

Because there's only really a handful of people (mostly it's just Ultima and Darksmash) in this thread who read the Mythos with sufficient knowledge to debate the subject. Less people, less chaos.
The majority of the rest of the comments are just: [ Reading through the arguments | At the moment | After reading through the thread ], I agree with [ Ultima | Darksmash ] without much discussion.

 

[Dereck03]

Because there's only really a handful of people (mostly it's just Ultima and Darksmash) in this thread who read the Mythos with sufficient knowledge to debate the subject. Less people, less chaos.
The majority of the rest of the comments are just: [ Reading through the arguments | At the moment | After reading through the thread ], I agree with [ Ultima | Darksmash ] without much discussion.

As you said, only those 2 have a great knowledge to debate in such a way, and as you said, most of the comments are those, because obviously we have to read and give an opinion and think which of the 2 has the right answer. Taking myself for example, I don't feel confident in giving an in-depth answer as to why I agree with either of the two, and I think many of the others feel that way as well.

 

[DaringAttitude4]

Well, I just wanna point out something, but I may explained that poorly.

Universes are infinite:

“In time he grew so impatient of the bleak intervals of day that he began buying drugs in order to increase his periods of sleep. Hasheesh helped a great deal, and once sent him to a part of space where form does not exist, but where glowing gases study the secrets of existence. And a violet-coloured gas told him that this part of space was outside what he had called infinity. The gas had not heard of planets and organisms before, but identified Kuranes merely as one from the infinity where matter, energy, and gravitation exist.”

From Whisperer in Darkness, the universe is implicitly described as an “ingenuine infinity,” but still infinite; it is simply a lower infinity in the perspective of the “genuine infinity”:

“Their main immediate abode is a still undiscovered and almost lightless planet at the very edge of our solar system—beyond Neptune, and the ninth in distance from the sun. It is, as we have inferred, the object mystically hinted at as “Yuggoth” in certain ancient and forbidden writings; and it will soon be the scene of a strange focussing of thought upon our world in an effort to facilitate mental rapport. I would not be surprised if astronomers became sufficiently sensitive to these thought-currents to discover Yuggoth when the Outer Ones wish them to do so. But Yuggoth, of course, is only the stepping-stone. The main body of the beings inhabits strangely organised abysses wholly beyond the utmost reach of any human imagination. The space-time globule which we recognise as the totality of all cosmic entity is only an atom in the genuine infinity which is theirs. And as much of this infinity as any human brain can hold is eventually to be opened up to me, as it has been to not more than fifty other men since the human race has existed.”

Here he also reveals that the multiverse has infinite universes. What this means is that given each universe has fundamentally different physical concepts, such as matter and gravitation and energy, don't simply just work differently due to constants, but don't exist in some universes, implying different fundamental laws of physics. That this is a Type 4 Multiverse. Also, it talks about an “ultimate infinity” again, but let’s get to that later:

“I have said that there were things in some of Akeley’s letters—especially the second and most voluminous one—which I would not dare to quote or even form into words on paper. This hesitancy applies with still greater force to the things I heard whispered that evening in the darkened room among the lonely haunted hills. Of the extent of the cosmic horrors unfolded by that raucous voice I cannot even hint. He had known hideous things before, but what he had learned since making his pact with the Outside Things was almost too much for sanity to bear. Even now I absolutely refuse to believe what he implied about the constitution of ultimate infinity, the juxtaposition of dimensions, and the frightful position of our known cosmos of space and time in the unending chain of linked cosmos-atoms which makes up the immediate super-cosmos of curves, angles, and material and semi-material electronic organisation.

Never was a sane man more dangerously close to the arcana of basic entity—never was an organic brain nearer to utter annihilation in the chaos that transcends form and force and symmetry. I learned whence Cthulhu first came, and why half the great temporary stars of history had flared forth. I guessed—from hints which made even my informant pause timidly—the secret behind the Magellanic Clouds and globular nebulae, and the black truth veiled by the immemorial allegory of Tao. The nature of the Doels was plainly revealed, and I was told the essence (though not the source) of the Hounds of Tindalos. The legend of Yig, Father of Serpents, remained figurative no longer, and I started with loathing when told of the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space which the Necronomicon had mercifully cloaked under the name of Azathoth. It was shocking to have the foulest nightmares of secret myth cleared up in concrete terms whose stark, morbid hatefulness exceeded the boldest hints of ancient and mediaeval mystics. Ineluctably I was led to believe that the first whisperers of these accursed tales must have had discourse with Akeley’s Outer Ones, and perhaps have visited outer cosmic realms as Akeley now proposed visiting them.”

 

[CrystalValley]

Well, I just wanna point out something, but I may explained that poorly.

Universes are infinite:


From Whisperer in Darkness, the universe is implicitly described as an “ingenuine infinity,” but still infinite; it is simply a lower infinity in the perspective of the “genuine infinity”:


Here he also reveals that the multiverse has infinite universes. What this means is that given each universe has fundamentally different physical concepts, such as matter and gravitation and energy, don't simply just work differently due to constants, but don't exist in some universes, implying different fundamental laws of physics. That this is a Type 4 Multiverse. Also, it talks about an “ultimate infinity” again, but let’s get to that later:

i'm fine with something like that, but the wiki doesn't believe in true infinity type stuff for weird reasons, so it wouldnt apply here unfortunately. ignoring the wikis arbitrary rules (no offense) this argument is entirely plausible, but they dont believe in that stuff here afaik.

 

[DaringAttitude4]

i'm fine with something like that, but the wiki doesn't believe in true infinity type stuff for weird reasons, so it wouldnt apply here unfortunately. ignoring the wikis arbitrary rules (no offense) this argument is entirely plausible, but they dont believe in that stuff here afaik.

I'm just giving an example, this is just part of it actually.

 

[Teezar]

i just noticed something
all the og tier 0s becoming 1-A or lower
first was TOAA, next it gonna be the Cthulhu guys and then the writer

Possibly only TES or twin peaks will be the only verses with teir 0 on this wiki or possibly no more teir 0s
Featherine was a teir 0 to high 1A. So it's possible some might be high 1A also if downgraded.

 

[Teezar]

Because there's only really a handful of people (mostly it's just Ultima and Darksmash) in this thread who read the Mythos with sufficient knowledge to debate the subject. Less people, less chaos.
The majority of the rest of the comments are just: [ Reading through the arguments | At the moment | After reading through the thread ], I agree with [ Ultima | Darksmash ] without much discussion.

Tbh, exactly why I didn't get involved in this thread as I don't even know the verse or have any knowledge on it to know who is right or wrong.

 

[ZeedKZ]

I agree with Ultima.

 

[Vietthai96]

To be honest, this is way better than any vs match. Both side are civil and respect each others, at the same time throwing their knowledge at each other face intensively......0.0

 

[Grand_Saver_Ritsuka]

So...which side is winning?

 

[Metalballrun]

So...which side is winning?

11-13 votes in the disagreement's favor. Still quite close.
As for the actual debate happening, it's still sorting itself out.

 

[Antvasima]

I personally think that Ultima seems to make sense, if nobody has noted me down yet.

 

[PrinceofPein]

following, read through the entire thing, it is a bit confusing since it is almost a circle. Dont know much about CM so i will be neutral for now till maybe they can bring summary points or something else

 

[Rez]

From What I have read here and in the previous upgrade thread i am agreeing with ultima although Idk much about cuthulu mythos

 

[ZetaMarishi]

I'm more agreeing with Ultima as well with what I'm seeing, but I'm glad it's going relatively calmly.