Keeping Up With The Olympians (2 of ????)

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Nearing it's conclusion

At least I hope it is

I don't believe arguments have a most desirable length, and I'm busy, so my next response is being delayed by at least a few days.

 

[Testarossa002]

I don't believe arguments have a most desirable length, and I'm busy, so my next response is being delayed by at least a few days.

That's fine
Not rushing it
Just wouldn't want this to get too long to evaluate

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

It's a bit overwhelming to deal with so many arguments at once, so I'll try to generalize my response here, meaning I won't be responding to specific people, and I've also tagged some more staff so they can see our arguments.

@Antvasima @AKM sama @DontTalkDT @DarkDragonMedeus @Mr._Bambu @Celestial_Pegasus @Andytrenom @Wokistan @Ultima_Reality @Elizhaa @Qawsedf234 @ByAsura @Sir_Ovens @Damage3245 @Starter_Pack @Abstractions @LordGriffin1000 @Colonel_Krukov @SamanPatou @GyroNutz @Firestorm808 @Everything12 @Maverick_Zero_X @Crabwhale @Just_a_Random_Butler @Agnaa @Shadowbokunohero @Ogurtsow @QrowBarr @Crazylatin77 @Zaratthustra @ElixirBlue @Tllmbrg @Nehz_XZX @Dereck03 @Marvel_Champion_07 @Therefir @JustSomeWeirdo @Theglassman12 @Eficiente @DarkGrath @Moritzva @DemonGodMitchAubin @Duedate8898 @Planck69 @KingTempest @Armorchompy @CrimsonStarFallen @UchihaSlayer96 @LordTracer @Emirp sumitpo @Lonkitt @LephyrTheRevanchist @Deagonx @FinePoint @Elizio33

For the evaluating staff whom I tagged: The Riordanverse, a children's book series by Rick Riordan about the mythological gods and magic creatures of many ancient cultures coexisting with the modern world, contains some feats of the gods creating constellations. This thread discusses whether these feats scale to the AP required to manifest that many stars into the cosmos, a viewpoint I heavily disagree with.

Regarding the celestial bodies, I came into this discussion seeing it as a fairly simple matter. In antiquity, people believed Helios/Apollo drove the sun chariot across the sky, Selene/Artemis drove the moon chariot across the sky, and the stars were small, shining things the gods could hang on the sky as a way to immortalize the memory of heroes and monsters they favored.

Now, a core principle of the Riordanverse's cosmology is that contradictory interpretations of the same natural phenomena can all be equally valid explanations for them, such as Persephone's abduction and Earth's tilted axis both being valid ways to explain the seasons, and as long as a belief system is remembered by humanity, it will continue to play its part in governing the cosmic order.

Under this principle, the obvious parsimonious conclusion is that in the modern era, besides dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands, of other belief systems, the sun is both the sun chariot and a main-sequence yellow dwarf star, the moon is both the moon chariot and a natural satellite of Earth ¼th its size, and the stars are both little specks of light hung in Earth's atmosphere and giant spheres of plasma light-years away. As such, any feats of manipulating one of these interpretations don't scale to manipulating the other ones.

Compared to my simple line of inference, the arguments for the opposition have all been significantly more contrived and based on far weaker readings of the evidence.

• One was a claim that since the gods were shaped by human beliefs, and since humans now believed that the stars were parts of the scientific cosmos, the gods must've changed to accommodate for this. Of course, that's not how belief shaping reality works, as humanity's new beliefs about the sun and moon hadn't made the sun and moon chariots entirely obsolete, instead only shaping the cosmos to include an additional scientific model, so there's no reason to assume that somehow only the stars are now solely governed by their scientific interpretation and not any of the supernatural explanations. The only "rebuttal" to this I've received is the fact that the gods all dress modernly now, which doesn't mean anything when the gods can easily shapeshift to look however they want, so their looks are purely a fashion choice, not a result of humanity's beliefs directly influencing them.
• Another was a quibble over a sentence saying "the revolution of the planets and stars" instead of "revolutions of planets and stars" to infer that the gods could all somehow influence the revolutions of all celestial bodies as a whole despite the fact that two words in a sentence are far too little evidence to upgrade the gods whose best feats are all otherwise Tiers 7 and 6, even if we have no indication of effort on their part, to Tier 4 and also contradicts the far more explicit evidence that mythological and scientific celestial bodies operate separately from each other. In a nutshell, this statement can be read as conveying either meaning, and obsessively focusing on a minor grammar slipup isn't evidence at all.

TL;DR: Claiming that the gods are Tier 4 is based on rationalizing a contrived view of the evidence to highball them orders of magnitudes above what their reliable feats, which peak at Tier 6, have shown, and I don't get the impression that it's going to be convincing to the staff.

 

[Testarossa002]

Whew
Now we wait

 

[Testarossa002]

Continued from here
Downgrade thread here
Things to point out before going fully into the thread

1. This thread doesn't include speed scaling
2. While the OP of the original downgrade had the right idea, trying to revise the AP, LS and Speed of 20+ characters in a single thread was not going to end well. That section of the verse was pratically in a limbo when the thread ended.
3. I have all read the greco-roman RR novels at least twice. I'd appreciate if I don't get dismissive disagreements to the thread. Just view it as someone dropping an alternative interpretation to what you read.
4. There's going to be large walls of text. I don't think a lot of people have read the series so my evidences are including contexts so as not to appear jarring
Since that's out of the way, let's get into the meat for today
5. Please refrain from discussing about other species scaling (Demigods, Titans, Monsters and Giants). I wasn't planning on revising them in this series but I'll make sure to tackle it in the next section

Spoiler: Tier 3

I'm not going to engage allat about these but just to fulfill all righteousness

Feats:
A fight among the Gods was stated capable of destroying the universe

~Percy Jackson's Greek Gods: Persephone Marries her Stalker


Hera's breast milk created the milky way

~Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes: Hercules Does Twelve Stupid Things

Yeah yeah
It's not real cosmic stuffs
Just a mirage in our atmosphere


While I'm not going to actively argue for this, I'll elaborate more on the debunks in the next section

Spoiler: Tier 4

Feat: Artemis creates a constellation at mftl+ speed

~The Titan's Curse: Chapter 18
Here's where shit's gonna go down

Debunk 1: Like in the Greek Gods novel, Greeks believed that the stars are just hung in the sky. So it's obviously not the same as real life scientific stars.

Right for the most part but let's go back and see some explanations about the Gods

Divine/Monster stuffs are born out of loads of people believing in the same thing, effectively warping reality


~The Tyrant's Tomb: Chapter 28
I can agree with the fact that Zeus and co weren't creating real stars because the ancient Greeks did not believe in them that way. However, that can't apply to modern times.

For the most part (excluding flat earthners), humans now believe the that the stars are bajillion times bigger than the earth and bajillion light years away like you know, real stars. Hence, why
it's literally impossible for Artemis to manifest anything other than tier a 4 constellation.

You can raise the argument that "But this modern humans don't worship the gods nor believe in them. So it's not possible for them to influence the way gods create stuffs" but that's not necessarily true
Here's an excerpt from the first few chapters of the franchise


~The Lightning Thief: Chapter 5
People remember and reference the gods across every civilization
Granting them relevance
It's self evident because, well, they haven't faded yet. At least not all of them


Debunk 2: It's just an illusion. No stars were created or shown
Yeah….no
The Huntress has been shown to exist beyond the moment of the feat as at end of The Titan's Curse

~The Titan's Curse: Chapter 19


~The Battle of The Labyrinth: Chapter 12
Actually seen in the sky as part of the other "real stars"

Debunk 3: Even though the stars were real, she only brightened the stars not create them from scratch

This would be fine and all if this part didn't exist from Son of Neptune

~The Son of Neptune: Chapter 25
So no. She did create stars
Even if she did-.....more of that in the next tier

Debunk 4: Apollo's Sun Chariot. No explanation needed. That's a blatant contradiction

That's actually a very good point. But let's examine the evidence again.


~The Titan's Curse: Chapter 4
This was interpreted to mean that Apollo's Sun Chariot ≠ The one some 90 million km away from us. Which is pretty valid

Then there's also this

~The Hidden Oracle: Chapter 16
Used to prove that Apollo's control over the "Sun" is not equal to the aforementioned science Sun

This is quite tricky tbh but let's get into it
I'll like to provide another interpretation to the evidences provided
Each of the belief systems (including science) have control of the sun in a way

Pointing this out from the last scan
Many different belief systems powered the revolution of the planets and stars.

Apollo never said that the Supernatural doesn't apply to stars and planets. In fact, his statement implies the opposite as they power the revolution i.e the movement of the stars and planets
Not that the Supernatural is only manipulating what humans perceive them to be.

To add to this, Chiron also says this:

~The Lightning Thief: Chapter 5

This is further shown in the Kane Chronicles (multiple times too) when Ra's destruction would result in the destruction of the real sun


~The Throne of Fire: Chapter 21

~The Serpent's Shadow: Chapter 2

~The Red Pyramid: Chapter 27

"How come this doesn't apply to Apollo? He was stripped of his powers and nothing happened to the sun."
Two things
1. Apollo, although weakened, still had some of his godly essense left in him


~The Burning Maze: Chapter 16

2. Apollo also, while being the sun god doesn't have as much influence on it. As he has an array of sphere of influences (music, poetry, archery, oracles, healing) unlike his predecessor Helios. The Sun and Apollo are not interwoven the same way Ra or Helios are with it. The Sun getting destroyed won't automatically destroy Apollo. Vice versa


~The Burning Maze: Chapter 18

This also applies to his twin (Artemis/Diana) as she's also not a one trick pony unlike Selene with the moon

Debunk 5: This is just an outlier, nothing else in the present times imply that the gods can do something on this scale

To start with, the gods do not appear to make any sort of effort when performing their feats.
They just…..do it
Nothing implies Poseidon flipping islands like skillets to be a cap on his strength
Nor Demeter nuking mountains

The only time the gods were pushed to their limits was again Typhon. Who was eventually sealed under a mountain. Apart from the facts that immortals don't do well when imprisoned
(Hera, Atlas, Zeus, Artemis, Ares. *****, one could mention instances with the fingers on both hands), the mountain didn't just spawn on him. Zeus acted on the mountain. It's not just class T weights that subdued Typhon, it's Class T + Zeus's strength

As an addendum, Apollo implied twice that he could create constellations if he had full access to his powers


~The Hidden Oracle: Chapter 17


~The Dark Prophecy: Chapter 7

There's also this
You know how I said I could agree with the ancient Greek creation debunk?
Well……..
Warning: This is quite long. Like half a chapter

It's the PoV of a satry from the modern times

~Camp Half-Blood Chronicles, Section 7, Part 1
I'm not particularly hung up on this side of my argument. Just felt the need to drop this here

That should be all from me from this section

Summary: The Olympians get bumped into tier 4

Don't know the exact values but yeah

Spoiler: Tier 5

Feat 1: Flashback to one of the debunks to the tier 4 feat
It being that Artemis simply brightened up already existing stars. I don't necessarily agree with that interpretation but brightening up a constellation is a tier 5 feat. It could get recalced to get an exact value. Given how the luminosity was sustained for at least 2 years, it could get much higher

As usual, every Olympian scales

Feat 2: Supernovas

There are multiple statements of supernova attributed to the gods when they show their true form
Such as this

~The Lost Hero: Chapter 50
And this

~Percy Jackson's Greek Gods: Hera Gets A Little Cuckoo
And this

~Camp Half-Blood Chronicles, Section 7, Part 1

I would not subscribe to interpret them going actual supernova but here's an alternative interpretation

We already know that the major attribute of the Gods true form is the light they emit which is deadly to nearly everything in the verse

I'd prefer to interpret the statement as the gods glowing as bright as supernovas
Rather than actual supernovas

And we actually see it get mentioned in The Last Olympian


~The Last Olympian: Chapter 9
"B-but hyperbole"
Well yeah, the Zeus's own uses like which would imply hyperbole but that's besides the point
Author intent also matter here.
RR has implied on more than one occasion that the God's true form has something to do with supernova
It's not just a one off statement

The God's true form is also something that's treated in canon to be something extremely deadly and forbidden
It's not that much of a stretch tbh

I asked what would be the potential yield of luminosity for the statement and the answer was in Yottatons (5-A) at the very least
Mind you, this is as a result of them just existing at their full power

Spoiler: Tier 6

Feat: Zeus (and Poseidon) flood the planet


~Percy Jackson's Greek Gods: Zeus Kills Everyone

According to this, it's easily 6-A
It doesn't really matter if Poseidon helped in the feat (Zeus was going to do it eitherways), it's still going to be 6-A

As usual, all Olympians Sca-

"Hold on a sec
Unlike the tier 3, 4 and 5, this 6-A feat was done by one of the Big 3
Why would Dionysus or Hermes scale to this feat"

Apart from the fact that the lesser Olympians have been accepted to scale to the major ones in this thread (credits to @The_Fiend), the feat was once again a very off handed one. Not something Zeus busted his ass doing or something he achieved with his divine weapon

Spoiler: Tier 7

Yeah….No

I ain't settling for downgrade
Worst case, they all retain their 6-B ratings

Spoiler: Raiton: Hakai!! (Bonus)

Zeus's lightning bolt is stated to make hydrogen bombs look like firecrackers

I'll list out why I think it's not a hyperbole

1. Chiron is super knowledgeable on the workings on the supernatural. He most like have seen the lightning bolt in action
2. He's also super knowledgeable on the mortal sides. The dawn of nukes was during WW2. Most wars in history were instigated by demigods on the Greek and Roman sides. WW2 specifically was a war between the children of Hades and those of Poseidon and Zeus. I won't be surprised if the Manhattan project was done in the Hephaestus bunker at Camp Half Blood
3. It's not exactly outlierish as it's consistently stated to be the nuke equivalent of the Olympians

Here's an example of one of such calcs
https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Spinosaurus75DinosaurFan/Zeus's_Master_Bolt
Totally coincidental that I presented the calc with the highest possible output. Absolutely not intentional

That's all for this section ig
I don't think I have the capacity to redo this thread again, most especially the tier 4
Unless I read TSATS and TCotG and find something new
VOTES

Proposals	Agree	Disagree	Neutral
Tier 3		@IdiosyncraticLawyer @GraveDigger84 @AnonymousBlank
Tier 4	@DMUA @KingTempest @AnimesFreak2 @GraveDigger84 @AnonymousBlank	@IdiosyncraticLawyer
Tier 5 (Artemis)	@AnimesFreak2 @GraveDigger84	@IdiosyncraticLawyer
Tier 5 (Supernova)	@AnimesFreak2 @GraveDigger84	@IdiosyncraticLawyer
Tier 6	@AnimesFreak2 @GraveDigger84 @IdiosyncraticLawyer
Tier 7
Bonus

I mean, that's my whole point
Human's belief about Harpy changed
Which brought about his own change
Point is, he still changed because of the beliefs surrounding him.
And it's not exactly an isolated incident.
Humanity's belief is basically what drives the gods
Lack of belief=their non-existence (Pan, Helios, Selene)
Change of belief=new abilities (roman pantheon, Apollo, Artemis)



This is a false equivalence
I'm not saying because of the beliefs of present day humanity, Modern Hera would get tier 3 for creating the milky way. I'm saying Modern Artemis would get tier 4 for creating stars in a timeline with current beliefs.
Prometheus with humanity is a non factor because he didn't create a human in modern times (I could have sworn I remember him trying to animate one but it failed but that's besides the point)

Dissolved into Stars means something completely different from Dissolved into the Stars which you turned it to.
The first means the matter dissolving turned into Stars
The latter means the matter dissolved into already existing stars
Percy's statement in SoN was pretty explicit


Again, you're missing a crucial part of the statement which throws the statement in a new light

Not "revolutions of planets and stars"
"The" meaning a singular event
There's one star and smaller satellites
They all move in a single way (revolution)
The different aspects of reality (belief systems) power the way they move

Ra's Chariot or the Aztec guy's method all power (once again) the revolution



There's this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

Didn't drop all of them because I didn't think they were as explicit at the first 3
All from different characters

I don't agree with it being a joking contribution as that section was intended as a guides for demigods when they get lost (which happens). But that's fine anyways
As it is just a supporting evidence

Those reasons apply to if the interpretation is that the stars were created not when the interpretation is that she brightened up already existing stars. Unless if the point of your earlier explanation was that the gods can't interact with science aspect of nature. Which is a different can of worms.

I could argue that Kronos's form was going to passively burn through anything and the Olympians would scale (or downscale due to being 10x less potent) to him eventually but that's fine. Already gave them death hax for it in the previous thread

Are you fine with the tier 6 stuffs though?

---

That's all
You can respond to it but I can't guarantee a response.
We're the only ones debating this and I'd rather not have this delve into 2 pages.

There's already few active knowledgeable members with an even fewer amount of staffs.
Wouldn't want this to become too voluminous for evaluating staffs

I think you're having a slight misunderstanding on what myths mean here

These are not stories made up to explain unexplainable scientific phenomenon in the context of the verse

These are events that actually occurred in the context of the verse

Poseidon creating Andromeda some 4000 years ago is not a myth
It's a canon event in the franchise

The reason why it can't be accepted as valid is because, like I said earlier, the gods are influenced by the believes of humans

Humans 4000 years ago believed that stars were just hung in the Earth's atmosphere, hence why creating a star then would just align with the "reality of humanity" of that period

Same cannot be said of present times for already explained reasons
Further supported by this statement from the first few chapters of the franchise


Earth in ancient Greece probably just meant Greece and eastwards up to India
Same would apply to Gaea

That however cannot be said for modern times
Because the beliefs about earth had changed
Also, regarding this:

I find it a bit disingenuous to claim that 7+ statements from multiple characters about how Sun goes if Ra goes is false.
Even though some of them describe what exactly would happen if the real sun was to disappear.

This should be my last take on the whole tier 3/4 stuffs



I'd rather we get staffs to evaluate it

Imma just bump the arguments again

 

[Antvasima]

It's a bit overwhelming to deal with so many arguments at once, so I'll try to generalize my response here, meaning I won't be responding to specific people, and I've also tagged some more staff so they can see our arguments.

@Antvasima @AKM sama @DontTalkDT @DarkDragonMedeus @Mr._Bambu @Celestial_Pegasus @Andytrenom @Wokistan @Ultima_Reality @Elizhaa @Qawsedf234 @ByAsura @Sir_Ovens @Damage3245 @Starter_Pack @Abstractions @LordGriffin1000 @Colonel_Krukov @SamanPatou @GyroNutz @Firestorm808 @Everything12 @Maverick_Zero_X @Crabwhale @Just_a_Random_Butler @Agnaa @Shadowbokunohero @Ogurtsow @QrowBarr @Crazylatin77 @Zaratthustra @ElixirBlue @Tllmbrg @Nehz_XZX @Dereck03 @Marvel_Champion_07 @Therefir @JustSomeWeirdo @Theglassman12 @Eficiente @DarkGrath @Moritzva @DemonGodMitchAubin @Duedate8898 @Planck69 @KingTempest @Armorchompy @CrimsonStarFallen @UchihaSlayer96 @LordTracer @Emirp sumitpo @Lonkitt @LephyrTheRevanchist @Deagonx @FinePoint @Elizio33

For the evaluating staff whom I tagged: The Riordanverse, a children's book series by Rick Riordan about the mythological gods and magic creatures of many ancient cultures coexisting with the modern world, contains some feats of the gods creating constellations. This thread discusses whether these feats scale to the AP required to manifest that many stars into the cosmos, a viewpoint I heavily disagree with.

Regarding the celestial bodies, I came into this discussion seeing it as a fairly simple matter. In antiquity, people believed Helios/Apollo drove the sun chariot across the sky, Selene/Artemis drove the moon chariot across the sky, and the stars were small, shining things the gods could hang on the sky as a way to immortalize the memory of heroes and monsters they favored.

Now, a core principle of the Riordanverse's cosmology is that contradictory interpretations of the same natural phenomena can all be equally valid explanations for them, such as Persephone's abduction and Earth's tilted axis both being valid ways to explain the seasons, and as long as a belief system is remembered by humanity, it will continue to play its part in governing the cosmic order.

Under this principle, the obvious parsimonious conclusion is that in the modern era, besides dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands, of other belief systems, the sun is both the sun chariot and a main-sequence yellow dwarf star, the moon is both the moon chariot and a natural satellite of Earth ¼th its size, and the stars are both little specks of light hung in Earth's atmosphere and giant spheres of plasma light-years away. As such, any feats of manipulating one of these interpretations don't scale to manipulating the other ones.

Compared to my simple line of inference, the arguments for the opposition have all been significantly more contrived and based on far weaker readings of the evidence.

• One was a claim that since the gods were shaped by human beliefs, and since humans now believed that the stars were parts of the scientific cosmos, the gods must've changed to accommodate for this. Of course, that's not how belief shaping reality works, as humanity's new beliefs about the sun and moon hadn't made the sun and moon chariots entirely obsolete, instead only shaping the cosmos to include an additional scientific model, so there's no reason to assume that somehow only the stars are now solely governed by their scientific interpretation and not any of the supernatural explanations. The only "rebuttal" to this I've received is the fact that the gods all dress modernly now, which doesn't mean anything when the gods can easily shapeshift to look however they want, so their looks are purely a fashion choice, not a result of humanity's beliefs directly influencing them.
• Another was a quibble over a sentence saying "the revolution of the planets and stars" instead of "revolutions of planets and stars" to infer that the gods could all somehow influence the revolutions of all celestial bodies as a whole despite the fact that two words in a sentence are far too little evidence to upgrade the gods whose best feats are all otherwise Tiers 7 and 6, even if we have no indication of effort on their part, to Tier 4 and also contradicts the far more explicit evidence that mythological and scientific celestial bodies operate separately from each other. In a nutshell, this statement can be read as conveying either meaning, and obsessively focusing on a minor grammar slipup isn't evidence at all.

TL;DR: Claiming that the gods are Tier 4 is based on rationalizing a contrived view of the evidence to highball them orders of magnitudes above what their reliable feats, which peak at Tier 6, have shown, and I don't get the impression that it's going to be convincing to the staff.

This seems to make sense to me.

 

[Testarossa002]

Sighs
Thank you for your input

 

[Antvasima]

No problem.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

It's a bit overwhelming to deal with so many arguments at once, so I'll try to generalize my response here, meaning I won't be responding to specific people, and I've also tagged some more staff so they can see our arguments.

@AKM sama @DontTalkDT @DarkDragonMedeus @Mr._Bambu @Celestial_Pegasus @Andytrenom @Wokistan @Ultima_Reality @Elizhaa @Qawsedf234 @ByAsura @Sir_Ovens @Damage3245 @Starter_Pack @Abstractions @LordGriffin1000 @Colonel_Krukov @SamanPatou @GyroNutz @Firestorm808 @Everything12 @Maverick_Zero_X @Crabwhale @Just_a_Random_Butler @Agnaa @Shadowbokunohero @Ogurtsow @QrowBarr @Crazylatin77 @Zaratthustra @ElixirBlue @Tllmbrg @Nehz_XZX @Dereck03 @Marvel_Champion_07 @Therefir @JustSomeWeirdo @Theglassman12 @Eficiente @DarkGrath @Moritzva @DemonGodMitchAubin @Duedate8898 @Planck69 @KingTempest @Armorchompy @CrimsonStarFallen @UchihaSlayer96 @LordTracer @Emirp sumitpo @Lonkitt @LephyrTheRevanchist @Deagonx @FinePoint @Elizio33

Is anybody else going to comment here? If not, I believe we'll have to consider this upgrade rejected.

• Tier 3: Unanimously rejected, not under consideration.
• Tier 4: Nobody seems willing to respond to my assessment of the situation here, which Ant, a bureaucrat, has agreed with, so unless someone has something new to say, the constellation feats aren't being accepted.
• Tier 5 (Artemis): This depends on the star feats being at least partially accepted, so it's not flying either if nobody has something new.
• Tier 5 (Supernova): This was dropped as an argument, as it's just hyperbole for hax.

In conclusion, if nobody has anything else to say, High 6-B is staying. I'll request for this thread to be closed if nothing happens within 24 hours.

 

[Testarossa002]

Yeah.... No
Waiting for further evaluation
Evaluating staffs vote is 1:1 (KT:Ant)

And I'm not even sure how the Tier 5 Artemis feat is debunked in the first place as you'll be asserting the idea that Olympians can't interact with science beliefs in the first place
Which is blatant not true

+there's the 6-A rating in the OP

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

And I'm not even sure how the Tier 5 Artemis feat is debunked in the first place as you'll be asserting the idea that Olympians can't interact with science beliefs in the first place
Which is blatant not true

If the stars are only little specks hung in the sky, the standard rating for brightening a constellation doesn't apply. Also, if you haven't responded to my points, saying the idea that Olympians can't interact with science is "blatantly not true" is an unfounded claim.

+there's the 6-A rating in the OP

I suppose that's okay to apply. My mistake.

 

[Testarossa002]

If the stars are only little specks hung in the sky, the standard rating for brightening a constellation doesn't apply.

Uh... You haven't proven that the stars are supernaturally created in the first place.
You haven't also proven that the stars in modern times are small dots in the sky.

No evidence it was supernaturally created. Burden of proof is on you

You are on one hand asserting that Apollo doesn't drive the Sun or the destruction of Ra doesn't affect the Sun in the real world and that their influence is independent of science cosmos. Which means that you agree that scientific celestial bodies exist in the verse.

You're on the other hand also asserting that the sun in the verse is just a very bright bulb in the sky even though it's explicitly stated that astrophysics influences the planet and stars

Both of your stances can't be true at the same time

You can't eat your cake and have it

Also, if you haven't responded to my points, saying the idea that Olympians can't interact with science is "blatantly not true" is an unfounded claim.

Metaphysical? But you were just talking about –’ ‘Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavours: the immortal gods of Olympus. That’s a
smaller matter.’ ‘Smaller!’ ‘Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class.’ ‘Zeus,’ I said. ‘Hera. Apollo. You mean them.’ And there it was again – distant thunder on a cloudless day

Water is borne out of a scientific phenomenon
Same for storms
Or plants
Even the freaking earth.
So yes, it's blatantly not true

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Uh... You haven't proven that the stars are supernaturally created in the first place.
You haven't also proven that the stars in modern times are small dots in the sky.

No evidence it was supernaturally created. Burden of proof is on you

You are on one hand asserting that Apollo doesn't drive the Sun or the destruction of Ra doesn't affect the Sun in the real world and that their influence is independent of science cosmos. Which means that you agree that scientific celestial bodies exist in the verse.

You're on the other hand also asserting that the sun in the verse is just a very bright bulb in the sky even though it's explicitly stated that astrophysics influences the planet and stars

Both of your stances can't be true at the same time

You can't eat your cake and have it



Water is borne out of a scientific phenomenon
Same for storms
Or plants
Even the freaking earth.
So yes, it's blatantly not true

Did you even read my post?

Under this principle, the obvious parsimonious conclusion is that in the modern era, besides dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands, of other belief systems, the sun is both the sun chariot and a main-sequence yellow dwarf star, the moon is both the moon chariot and a natural satellite of Earth ¼th its size, and the stars are both little specks of light hung in Earth's atmosphere and giant spheres of plasma light-years away. As such, any feats of manipulating one of these interpretations don't scale to manipulating the other ones.

• Another was a quibble over a sentence saying "the revolution of the planets and stars" instead of "revolutions of planets and stars" to infer that the gods could all somehow influence the revolutions of all celestial bodies as a whole despite the fact that two words in a sentence are far too little evidence to upgrade the gods whose best feats are all otherwise Tiers 7 and 6, even if we have no indication of effort on their part, to Tier 4 and also contradicts the far more explicit evidence that mythological and scientific celestial bodies operate separately from each other. In a nutshell, this statement can be read as conveying either meaning, and obsessively focusing on a minor grammar slipup isn't evidence at all.

 

[Testarossa002]

Did you even read my post?

Did you read my post?

And I'm not even sure how the Tier 5 Artemis feat is debunked in the first place as you'll be asserting the idea that Olympians can't interact with science beliefs in the first place
Which is blatant not true

---

You haven't proven why they can't interact with science phenomenon

You simply saying that they can't is not a rebuttal

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Did you read my post?

---

You haven't proven why they can't interact with science phenomenon

You simply saying that they can't is not a rebuttal

I don't have to prove they can't, you have to prove they can. You're the one making the positive assertion. That the gods can affect storms and water doesn't mean they can affect stars. I've provided plenty of evidence that mythology and science operate separately from each other regarding celestial bodies.

 

[Testarossa002]

I don't have to prove they can't, you have to prove they can. You're the one making the positive assertion. That the gods can affect storms and water doesn't mean they can affect stars. I've provided plenty of evidence that mythology and science operate separately from each other regarding celestial bodies.

That's you drawing an arbitrary line

They either can't influence scientific phenomenon or they can

You don't get to pick and choose which one you want it to apply to

Either Hades creating an earthquake in Los Angeles happened in reality or it was just all an illusion

Your "plenty of evidences" is tied to the inference that RR (an author versed in the usage of English Language) doesn't know the difference between "into the stars" and "into stars" or the difference between "the revolution of planet and stars" and "revolution of planet and stars"

We're not discussing about a Japanese literature where words or context may be missing in translation

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

That's you drawing an arbitrary line

They either can't influence scientific phenomenon or they can

You don't get to pick and choose which one you want it to apply to

Either Hades creating an earthquake in Los Angeles happened in reality or it was just all an illusion

I think you're misunderstanding what I mean when I say that the gods can't influence scientific phenomena; upon further reflection, that wasn't the best way to explain my viewpoint. This feat from Hades legitimately does scale to scientific earthquakes because he would need to exert the same amount of energy as that which two tectonic plates colliding releases to cause an earthquake. The same is not the case with Artemis's star feat; as she is brightening the mythological version of stars, which are little things hung in the sky, the amount of energy she would need to release to do so is far less than if the light was coming from light-years away.

Your "plenty of evidences" is tied to the inference that RR (an author versed in the usage of English Language) doesn't know the difference between "into the stars" and "into stars" or the difference between "the revolution of planet and stars" and "revolution of planet and stars"

We're not discussing about a Japanese literature where words or context may be missing in translation

That's my secondary evidence, and I'm not asserting that Riordan doesn't know which phrase means which, only that using a quirk of wording to argue for such a massive upgrade is insufficient. My primary evidence is the fact that the sun and moon chariot coexist with and operate separately from their scientific counterparts, so that's clearly how the stars are supposed to work in this setting too.

I would appreciate it if we could stop meddling over points we've already gone back and forth about. @Antvasima Could you help get some more staff to evaluate this?

 

[Testarossa002]

That's fine
I believed I already addressed all that earlier

 

[Testarossa002]

Bump

 

[DMUA]

I think you're misunderstanding what I mean when I say that the gods can't influence scientific phenomena; upon further reflection, that wasn't the best way to explain my viewpoint. This feat from Hades legitimately does scale to scientific earthquakes because he would need to exert the same amount of energy as that which two tectonic plates colliding releases to cause an earthquake.

The same is not the case with Artemis's star feat; as she is brightening the mythological version of stars, which are little things hung in the sky, the amount of energy she would need to release to do so is far less than if the light was coming from light-years away.

Don't these two statements contradict each other? You mentioned earlier how everything is paradoxically true in Riordan's works, so like, if Artemis is only affecting glowey sky lights, what happens with someone who just sees the stars as outright stars? Does the constellation outright not exist and Artemis just did nothing because in fact she's not strong enough to generate genuine stars, just the Greek ones?

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Don't these two statements contradict each other? You mentioned earlier how everything is paradoxically true in Riordan's works, so like, if Artemis is only affecting glowey sky lights, what happens with someone who just sees the stars as outright stars? Does the constellation outright not exist and Artemis just did nothing because in fact she's not strong enough to generate genuine stars, just the Greek ones?

First, to someone who doesn't believe in Greek mythology, the mythological stars still technically exist, but the mist would hide the stars from them the same way it hides the sun and moon chariots from aircraft who fly higher than them. Second, I'll explain what I mean in more detail:
The Earthquake
Observed effect: Earthquakes happen.

• Mythological explanation: The gods exerted their divine power to make the Earth shake.
• Scientific explanation: Two tectonic plates collided with enough force to make the Earth shake.

With this feat, the two explanations must've released the same amount of energy because mythology and science both believe the Earth is a giant ball of rock, meaning they're similar enough to coalesce into one entity; the only distinction between the mythological and scientific Earth is that the former embodies Gaea, which isn't enough of a difference to make the two feats require different amounts of energy to pull off.
The Constellations
Observed effect: Stars shine in the sky.

• Mythological explanation: The gods placed shining lights on the dome of Ouranos as a way to honor the memory of heroes and monsters.
• Scientific explanation: Light from giant stars light-years away reaches the Earth.

With this feat, the two explanations don't release the same amount of energy because there's too much disparity between the explanations; mythological stars are tiny specks of light in the atmosphere while scientific stars are giant balls of plasma, meaning to create the latter would require far more energy than the former.

 

[BoastJr]

disagree with tier 3.

Agree with tier 4.

 

[Testarossa002]

Bump

 

[Testarossa002]

I'm never getting this series done this decade, am I?

Bump

 

[Armorchompy]

What's the consensus so far? I've only read OP.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

What's the consensus so far? I've only read OP.

This is my summary of the situation:

For the evaluating staff whom I tagged: The Riordanverse, a children's book series by Rick Riordan about the mythological gods and magic creatures of many ancient cultures coexisting with the modern world, contains some feats of the gods creating constellations. This thread discusses whether these feats scale to the AP required to manifest that many stars into the cosmos, a viewpoint I heavily disagree with.

Regarding the celestial bodies, I came into this discussion seeing it as a fairly simple matter. In antiquity, people believed Helios/Apollo drove the sun chariot across the sky, Selene/Artemis drove the moon chariot across the sky, and the stars were small, shining things the gods could hang on the sky as a way to immortalize the memory of heroes and monsters they favored.

Now, a core principle of the Riordanverse's cosmology is that contradictory interpretations of the same natural phenomena can all be equally valid explanations for them, such as Persephone's abduction and Earth's tilted axis both being valid ways to explain the seasons, and as long as a belief system is remembered by humanity, it will continue to play its part in governing the cosmic order.

Under this principle, the obvious parsimonious conclusion is that in the modern era, besides dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands, of other belief systems, the sun is both the sun chariot and a main-sequence yellow dwarf star, the moon is both the moon chariot and a natural satellite of Earth ¼th its size, and the stars are both little specks of light hung in Earth's atmosphere and giant spheres of plasma light-years away. As such, any feats of manipulating one of these interpretations don't scale to manipulating the other ones.

Compared to my simple line of inference, the arguments for the opposition have all been significantly more contrived and based on far weaker readings of the evidence.

• One was a claim that since the gods were shaped by human beliefs, and since humans now believed that the stars were parts of the scientific cosmos, the gods must've changed to accommodate for this. Of course, that's not how belief shaping reality works, as humanity's new beliefs about the sun and moon hadn't made the sun and moon chariots entirely obsolete, instead only shaping the cosmos to include an additional scientific model, so there's no reason to assume that somehow only the stars are now solely governed by their scientific interpretation and not any of the supernatural explanations. The only "rebuttal" to this I've received is the fact that the gods all dress modernly now, which doesn't mean anything when the gods can easily shapeshift to look however they want, so their looks are purely a fashion choice, not a result of humanity's beliefs directly influencing them.
• Another was a quibble over a sentence saying "the revolution of the planets and stars" instead of "revolutions of planets and stars" to infer that the gods could all somehow influence the revolutions of all celestial bodies as a whole despite the fact that two words in a sentence are far too little evidence to upgrade the gods whose best feats are all otherwise Tiers 7 and 6, even if we have no indication of effort on their part, to Tier 4 and also contradicts the far more explicit evidence that mythological and scientific celestial bodies operate separately from each other. In a nutshell, this statement can be read as conveying either meaning, and obsessively focusing on a minor grammar slipup isn't evidence at all.

TL;DR: Claiming that the gods are Tier 4 is based on rationalizing a contrived view of the evidence to highball them orders of magnitudes above what their reliable feats, which peak at Tier 6, have shown, and I don't get the impression that it's going to be convincing to the staff.

As for the votes, @KingTempest is in favor of Tier 4, though I should not that they voted before I started posting here, while @Antvasima is against it based on my counterarguments, meaning the tally is 1-1, though Ant's vote is regarded with more weight.

In terms of decision-making authority, bureaucrats are given the highest consideration, followed by administrators, and then thread moderators.

 

[Testarossa002]

What's the consensus so far? I've only read OP.

Tier 3 has been largely dismissed

Tier 4 and 5 is/had been debated on (waiting for votes)

Tier 6 has been largely accepted

 

[Armorchompy]

I would definitely disagree with tier 3. On the topic of tier 4 I'm unsure, I think there's good arguments but also none that would necessarily be unquestionably correct. Would you be willing to agree with an At least/Possibly split?

That said I don't think the tier 5 feats are to be taken literally (If they were they'd be High 4-C though, given that that's the strength of a supernova)

 

[Testarossa002]

I would definitely disagree with tier 3. On the topic of tier 4 I'm unsure, I think there's good arguments but also none that would necessarily be unquestionably correct. Would you be willing to agree with an At least/Possibly split?

At Least 6-A, possibly H4-C (or whatever creating constellations fall in), right?
I'm not opposed to that

That said I don't think the tier 5 feats are to be taken literally (If they were they'd be High 4-C though, given that that's the strength of a supernova)

What about the star brightening feat though?

 

[Armorchompy]

At Least 6-A, possibly H4-C (or whatever creating constellations fall in), right?
I'm not opposed to that

Mhm

What about the star brightening feat though?

If you're considering it tier 4 then it ain't tier 5, y'know?

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

If that's what it takes to finish this thread, I'm willing to agree to "possibly High 4-C" based on how the quote about beliefs governing reality can be read either way.

 

[Testarossa002]

If that's what it takes to finish this thread, I'm willing to agree to "possibly High 4-C" based on how the quote about beliefs governing reality can be read either way.

Alright
Could you tag KT and Ant to have a look?
So we can move on to other things

 

[Armorchompy]

@KingTempest @Antvasima

 

[KingTempest]

I don't change my views when somebody else does. I'm solid on tier 3 in Ancient Greek key and tier 4 modern day key

 

[Armorchompy]

(I definitely oppose tier 3 for the record)

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

I don't change my views when somebody else does. I'm solid on tier 3 in Ancient Greek key and tier 4 modern day key

This type of stubbornness is not helpful, and you're pushing for something nobody else has agreed to. Tier 3 has been thoroughly refuted, and Tier 4 is being compromised on.

 

[KingTempest]

This type of stubbornness is not helpful, and you're pushing for something nobody else has agreed to. Tier 3 has been thoroughly refuted, and Tier 4 is being compromised on.

Please, I'll change my view if my view's points has been refuted, but it seems like I was called to change my view specifically cause others changed their views and I needed to add on and agree in order to move on. Me agreeing ≠ me pushing, and me agreeing to something no one else agreed to doesn't matter.

It hasn't been thoroughly refuted because even you said that the milky way feat scales primarily scales to their old ancient mythological times self, which is what I said for "give them an old times key".

this feat is still unquantifiable, as you've conceded that this was at least the case back in mythological times, which is when this feat took place.

Generation of a galaxy isn't unquantifiable. It's very quantifiable. If you want to bring up the fact that the stars are fake and only hung up, then that can be quantifiable, the relocation of billions of stars in a quick timeframe such as a breastfeeding timeframe

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

It hasn't been thoroughly refuted because even you said that the milky way feat scales primarily scales to their old ancient mythological times self, which is what I said for "give them an old times key".

No, I said that the feat was entirely invalid to scale to astronomy because it happened when astronomy wasn't yet a thing.

Generation of a galaxy isn't unquantifiable. It's very quantifiable. If you want to bring up the fact that the stars are fake and only hung up, then that can be quantifiable, the relocation of billions of stars in a quick timeframe such as a breastfeeding timeframe

First, it's not "billions of stars" because the ancient Greeks didn't know the Milky Way was that big, so their model would only have a few thousand stars based on what's visible from Earth. Second, we have no real way to calculate the magical energy required to relocate magical specks of light.

 

[KingTempest]

No, I said that the feat was entirely invalid to scale to astronomy because it happened when astronomy wasn't yet a thing.

So why can't we just work with what we have? (See below)

First, it's not "billions of stars" because the ancient Greeks didn't know the Milky Way was that big, so their model would only have a few thousand stars based on what's visible from Earth. Second, we have no real way to calculate the magical energy required to generate specks of light.

So the few thousand stars there.

To generate specks of light? Calculate the luminosity of the stars. Would be less than flat out generating new stars but it's still quantifiable

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

So why can't we just work with what we have? (See below)

So the few thousand stars there.

To generate specks of light? Calculate the luminosity of the stars. Would be less than flat out generating new stars but it's still quantifiable

Fine, but remember that these stars are hung in the Earth's atmosphere, meaning they don't need anywhere near the power of brightening a regular constellation to be visible.