The remains of the Tiering Revision, part 3

[DontTalkDT]

Ok, then the latest draft in full is:

Characters that exist in a state beyond and superior to the classical states of contradiction-allowing logic on some level of existence. That is to say, for any statement A about them they are in a state that can't be described as A is true, A is false, A is simultanously true and false or A is neither true nor false. And so they must obey a many-valued logic with at least 5 truth states, and not be in any of the 4 combinations of true and false mentioned earlier.

 

[Antvasima]

That seems fine to me at least, but I am not a good person to ask.

What do the rest of you think?

 

[Damage3245]

I suppose that looks fine though I am also not the best person to ask.

 

[PrinceofPein]

Ok, then the latest draft in full is:

This is fine but we will need to put at least an example, at least to make it easier for users to understand

 

[DontTalkDT]

This is fine but we will need to put at least an example, at least to make it easier for users to understand

Do you mean a theoretical or a practical example?
Because I actually don't know a single character that has that type, so I don't know a practical one.

 

[Antvasima]

Perhaps a theoretical example in lack of better options then?

 

[PrinceofPein]

Do you mean a theoretical or a practical example?
Because I actually don't know a single character that has that type, so I don't know a practical one.

Both will be fine,
Theoretical examples are fine, as long as it helps users know and understand the requirements based on the example given.
I also cannot think of a practical example right now, but if anyone can they can let us know

Random thought:- in the event that we are unable to get a single character to fit into this category, what is the use of an ability that no character will likely have?

 

[DontTalkDT]

Random thought:- in the event that we are unable to get a single character to fit into this category, what is the use of an ability that no character will likely have?

Ultima mentioned one character he thought would have the ability earlier in the thread somewhere IIRC. But I don't know that character, so I can't make an example out of that one.
If no character would get the ability we would just delete it... but as said, apparently at least one character supposedly has it.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Do you mean a theoretical or a practical example?
Because I actually don't know a single character that has that type, so I don't know a practical one.

I believe I already gave an example of a character that'd fit the bill for Type 4 under the above criteria, that being the Atzmus from Unsong, since it's in a state where it is neither:

- The created world (Separation and duality exist here)

- God (Absolute wholeness where all characteristics and attributes are unified into a single, simple essence with no distinction among them)

- Divine Nothingness (Diametrical inverse of God, where no attributes whatsoever exist, being the 0 to His perfect "1")

I feel the thing is a pretty textbook example of a Type 4 Transdual, so, might as well use it.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you for the suggestion. That seems fine to me.

 

[DontTalkDT]

I believe I already gave an example of a character that'd fit the bill for Type 4 under the above criteria, that being the Atzmus from Unsong, since it's in a state where it is neither:

- The created world (Separation and duality exist here)

- God (Absolute wholeness where all characteristics and attributes are unified into a single, simple essence with no distinction among them)

- Divine Nothingness (Diametrical inverse of God, where no attributes whatsoever exist, being the 0 to His perfect "1")

I feel the thing is a pretty textbook example of a Type 4 Transdual, so, might as well use it.

I see. Can you write that into an example to be put on the page? In the best case with scans.

 

[Agnaa]

I believe I already gave an example of a character that'd fit the bill for Type 4 under the above criteria, that being the Atzmus from Unsong, since it's in a state where it is neither:

- The created world (Separation and duality exist here)

- God (Absolute wholeness where all characteristics and attributes are unified into a single, simple essence with no distinction among them)

- Divine Nothingness (Diametrical inverse of God, where no attributes whatsoever exist, being the 0 to His perfect "1")

I feel the thing is a pretty textbook example of a Type 4 Transdual, so, might as well use it.

I don't think Atzmus fits. Atzmus is just the conventional "Neither 1 nor 0" type of transduality.

It is explicitly (and only) described as being no information, where God is 1, and Divine Nothingness is 0.

Is that really all it takes for this type of Transduality? Just NEP 2 over some more things?

 

[Agnaa]

Actually, does it even make sense to say that God is generally transdual in the first place? I didn't weigh in on this since when these pages I thought I didn't understand Transduality at all, but now that I think I do....

He is clearly not above all dualities, as he directly participates in the simplest duality, existence (God) and nonexistence (Divine Nothingness). He is not above the duality of good and evil, He is perfectly good.

More importantly, the evidence for being above all dualities isn't very good. I don't think there's ever a statement of God being above all dualities. The closest thing I know of is that certain dichotomies and tradeoffs don't apply to heaven. And these aren't things like "existence and nonexistence" or "light and dark", they're aspects of logic and traits of the reality they happen to live in (Chapter 21):

“Listen!” said the man. “One plus one is two. If you don’t eat, you die. P implies not not P. Prices are controlled by the law of supply and demand, and are the only fair way of managing scarcity.”

Ana began to lose altitude.

“Organisms evolve according to the laws of natural selection. Reproductively fit organisms pass their genes on to the next generation. Uh. The wages of sin are death. Everybody dies. In a closed system, entropy always increases.”

Ana flapped her arms vigorously, trying to regain altitude, but her flight had never come from wings to begin with, and she fell further.

“Matter can’t be created or destroyed. Uh, calculus. Taxing a product disincentivizes its production. The light speed limit. No mathematical system can prove itself consistent, or else it would be inconsistent.”

Ana gently landed somewhere. She wasn’t in the tower. She was on a wharf. There were people all around her, dousing her with water, holding her hands, saying things to her.

“Prisoner’s dilemma! Can’t square the circle! Nothing exists but atoms and empty space, all else is opinion! Bad money drives out…no, look guys! She’s awake!”

None of these are dualities. And in fact, we know that there are other universes God created where these sorts of things also don't apply (Chapter 71):

“I CREATED SUCH A UNIVERSE,” said God. “IN THAT UNIVERSE, THERE IS NO SPACE, FOR SPACE TAKES THE FORM OF SEPARATION FROM THINGS YOU DESIRE. THERE IS NO TIME, FOR TIME MEANS CHANGE AND DECAY, YET THERE MUST BE NO CHANGE FROM ITS MAXIMALLY BLISSFUL STATE. THE BEINGS WHO INHABIT THIS UNIVERSE ARE WITHOUT BODIES, AND DO NOT HUNGER OR THIRST OR LABOR OR LUST. THEY SIT UPON GOLDEN THRONES AND CONTEMPLATE THE PERFECTION OF ALL THINGS.

I tried looking in Ultima's cosmology blog and the thread about it for evidence of Transduality, but the only part that mentioned it was a quote from Wikipedia, which isn't really applicable to a specific piece of fiction.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you for helping out, Agnaa.

 

[Antvasima]

Lucifer is getting downgraded to 1C
This isn't happening

What does that have to do with anything? Also, why are you supportive of an inherently extremely evil character?

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Actually, does it even make sense to say that God is generally transdual in the first place?

I'd say so, yeah. God's nature as an entity of pure simplicity means that he has no parts, to begin with, no further, more basic components comprising him, and as such, everything at that level is just one and the same as him and unified with his essence, so much so that Aaron (In the official in-character Tumblr account that Scott Alexander runs, if we accept that) directly says that duality means separation from God (The "2" coming after the "1")

And for the matter, evil, too is unified into God. In fact, the point being made by the story is that "good" and "evil" are a false dichotomy. Even if Thamiel, the Left Hand of God, may be perceived as the latter, in the end that's just a misconception, and both the Left and Right hands are good:

The dark facet of God, call it evil, call it hatred, call it Thamiel, was hollow, more brittle than glass, lighter than a feather. I started laughing that Ana had wasted her question on the existence of evil, when evil was thinner than a hair, tinier than a dust speck, so tiny it barely even existed at all. Evil was the world’s dumbest joke, the flimsiest illusion, a piece of wool God pulled over His own eyes with no expectation that it could possibly fool anybody.

“IT IS A COMMON MISCONCEPTION THAT THE RIGHT HAND IS GOOD AND THE LEFT EVIL. AS ASPECTS OF THE DEITY, BOTH ARE GOOD AND NECESSARY TO PRODUCE BALANCE. THE RIGHT HAND CREATES AND SUSTAINS. THE LEFT HAND DIRECTS AND PURIFIES. BUT AFTER THE SHATTERING OF THE VESSELS, WHEN ALL ASPECTS LOST THEIR CONNECTION TO SUPERNAL DIVINITY, THE RIGHT HAND BECAME AIMLESS IN ITS BLESSINGS, AND THE LEFT SWITCHED FROM THE CAREFUL DIRECTION OF A LOVING FATHER, TO PUNISHMENT FOR ITS OWN SAKE. THE MIDDLE PILLAR REPRESENTS THE COMPROMISE BETWEEN THESE TWO EXTREMES. BALANCE. UNION. HIDE.”

You make a fair point with the fact that God is placed in contrast with the Divine Nothingness, though, but I'm not sure that this would matter, necessarily, since even in the context of Transduality, we can make a distinction between states that'd be considered nondual by us: The difference between "Both A and B" and "Neither A nor B," for instance, with Type 4 Transduality being precisely something that's in another state encompassed neither by those two, nor by dual states ("A and not B" and "B and not A")

 

[Agnaa]

I'd say so, yeah. God's nature as an entity of pure simplicity means that he has no parts, to begin with, no further, more basic components comprising him, and as such, everything at that level is just one and the same as him and unified with his essence

I don't evaluate Transduality, but from reading the definition, this doesn't feel like something that would obviously qualify.

Also, I'm not fully sure how true this is, the interlude that Atzmus comes from talks about a lot of stuff that don't quite feel like they square with this.

More complex things are defined in terms of 1s and 0s, in God and Divine Nothingness. Other things are constructed out of that, and don't necessarily reside in God Himself.

God is space filled with the maximum amount of power, intelligence, goodness, and everything else it can hold. And every colour. Erica asks if God contains evil as well as good, weakness as well as strength, and sadness as well as happiness, and the others disagree with that. People are weak because they lack God's strength, people are dumb because they lack God's intelligence. This feels like a very strong indicator to me of "God does not contain all qualities of all dualities, just the maximum of the good parts".

directly says that duality means separation from God (The "2" coming after the "1")

This feels like a fair amount of inference, the direct quote is "Bet is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It represents duality, separation, distance from God." It says nothing about the 2 coming after the 1.

 

[Antvasima]

Maybe it is just a case of God encompassing absolutely all, but that the bad qualities are largely human limitations that are overshadowed by the greater good ones?

 

[Sniper670]

I think I understand what Ultima is talking about

Dual World

God(Oneness) = encompasses both 1 and 0

Nothingness(Devoid))=1 and 0 do not even exist here.

Atzmus(Ineffable) =is neither these states. So what is it?

Atzmus does fit the Philosophy of Plotinus the One. It's simplicity in a sense it's indivisible any further. Anything that comes after him, however transdual, is a distinction

In short, not even the Wholeness of God and Empitines of Nonexistence can define Atzmus, as that is a distinction born of His Simplicity.

NB: Azthmis is transdual nonexistent over both transdual nonexistences. NEP 2 is just a byproduct of his being

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I don't evaluate Transduality, but from reading the definition, this doesn't feel like something that would obviously qualify.

It would, by our standards. As seen in the previous stretches of the thread, we consider "Both A and B hold simultaneously" to be a transdual state, especially so if it's a case where the very distinction between A and B just doesn't exist anymore. The page image for the ability is an instance of exactly that, even.

More complex things are defined in terms of 1s and 0s, in God and Divine Nothingness. Other things are constructed out of that, and don't necessarily reside in God Himself.

God is space filled with the maximum amount of power, intelligence, goodness, and everything else it can hold. And every colour. Erica asks if God contains evil as well as good, weakness as well as strength, and sadness as well as happiness, and the others disagree with that. People are weak because they lack God's strength, people are dumb because they lack God's intelligence. This feels like a very strong indicator to me of "God does not contain all qualities of all dualities, just the maximum of the good parts".

I don't think that's necessarily indicative of anything contradicting God being what I said above. By the logic of that interlude, there is no such things as "weakness" or "dumbness" to begin with, because those aren't real attributes of their own, so much as they are the relative lack of them (Weakness is just the lack of strength, dumbness is just the lack of intelligence). When it comes to dual concepts that are considered "existent," though, it does seem God encompasses and unifies them, as seen with the example of the Good/Evil/Right-Hand/Left-Hand dichotomy explained above.

This feels like a fair amount of inference, the direct quote is "Bet is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It represents duality, separation, distance from God." It says nothing about the 2 coming after the 1.

That bit was me drawing from information that other parts of the book give us. You probably remember that, at several points, Aaron and others derive Kabbalistic correspondences from words using a method called "Gematria," and what that is is a practice basically founded on the fact that, in the Hebrew alphabet, each letter represents a number, and a word, then, has a numerical value corresponding to the sum of the values of the letters making it up. So, under that, Aleph (The first letter) represents 1, Bet (The second letter) represents 2 and Gimel (The third letter) represents 3.

The letter Aleph representing 1 is a big deal, because Aaron tells us that it also signifies God. So, God = Aleph = 1.

So, by extension, the world starts at Aleph (The singularity where everything is indistinct from God) and then moves on to Bet, which is by virtue of its position representative of duality, and thus separation; the point at which there starts to be a difference between Self and God. That's why I put that tidbit in there, pretty much.

But, regardless, this is not an Unsong discussion thread, so, since the Atzmus' qualification for Type 4 Transdual is still being questioned, in the meantime I suggest ANU, since he's more or less the exact same as the Atzmus, with the added factor of one of the states he transcends being, I believe, less controversially transdual.

 

[Vietthai96]

But, regardless, this is not an Unsong discussion thread, so, since the Atzmus' qualification for Type 4 Transdual is still being questioned, in the meantime I suggest ANU, since he's more or less the exact same as the Atzmus, with the added factor of one of the states he transcends being, I believe, less controversially transdual.

what about The Amaranth

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Forgot that profile existed.

 

[Agnaa]

Naw the Atzmus convo can stop here, idk enough about transduality standards to continue any further. If other people think that it can qualify from our exchange, it'd be good to add.

 

[Antvasima]

what about The Amaranth

Perhaps ANU and the Amaranth can be mentioned as examples in conjunction with each other, due to occupying the same positions and natures, although not personalities.

 

[Vietthai96]

r.i.p Lucifer outerversal tier

What the hell guy, this is not place for that, stop with the derailment. If you don't want Lucifer to be downgrade or something, arguing in the upcomming DC revision instead, trying to post these pointless comments all over the wiki to get people attentions do nothing good

Anyway Ant when you online please delete these comments, we are in the process of important revision

 

[Antvasima]

I deleted the derailing comment.

 

[Antvasima]

Stop derailing please.

 

[Fixxed]

So.... is the revision get accepted???

 

[Agnaa]

DontTalk, Pain, Ant, Damage, and I explicitly accepted the suggested wording. Ultima hasn't commented on the new wording specifically, but has accepted old ones.

 

[Vietthai96]

All and all, i think everyone here already agree with merging transdual type 2 and type 3, remove 1-A requirement. The only thing left is type 4

 

[Fixxed]

DontTalk, Pain, Ant, Damage, and I explicitly accepted the suggested wording. Ultima hasn't commented on the new wording specifically, but has accepted old ones.

All and all, i think everyone here already agree with merging transdual type 2 and type 3, remove 1-A requirement. The only thing left is type 4

I think the only problem left is who the character that will become example, and i see ultima just have problem with that. Everyone is agree with the revision

 

[Antvasima]

So should we apply the following wording then?

"Characters that exist in a state beyond and superior to the classical states of contradiction-allowing logic on some level of existence. That is to say, for any statement A about them they are in a state that can't be described as A is true, A is false, A is simultanously true and false or A is neither true nor false. And so they must obey a many-valued logic with at least 5 truth states, and not be in any of the 4 combinations of true and false mentioned earlier."

Do we need to start a revision project thread afterwards?

 

[Sniper670]

Bump

 

[Antvasima]

So should we apply the following wording then?

"Characters that exist in a state beyond and superior to the classical states of contradiction-allowing logic on some level of existence. That is to say, for any statement A about them they are in a state that can't be described as A is true, A is false, A is simultanously true and false or A is neither true nor false. And so they must obey a many-valued logic with at least 5 truth states, and not be in any of the 4 combinations of true and false mentioned earlier."

Do we need to start a revision project thread afterwards?

@DontTalkDT @Ultima_Reality @Agnaa @KingPin0422

 

[Antvasima]

I accidentally initially spelled @KingPin0422 's username wrong, so an extra notification message for him I'm afraid.

 

[Agnaa]

I'm still fine with that wording, but I don't know whether a revision project thread will be needed or not.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you for the reply.

Well, the following pages might need to be carefully checked through and adjusted when necessary.

Pages that link to "Transduality" | VS Battles Wiki | Fandom

vsbattles.fandom.com

 

[Fixxed]

Bump and bump

 

[Antvasima]

I think that we will have to wait a while for the others to respond.

 

[KingPin0422]

This is my suggested wording for the new type 4:

Characters that exist beyond the classical states of dialethic logic on some level of existence. That is to say, for any sentence A in relation to such characters, it cannot be described as an affirmation (A is true), a negation (A is false), a "glut" (A is both true and false), or a "gap" (A is neither true nor false). Therefore, they obey a many-valued logic with at least 5 truth states, not being in any of the 4 combinations of true and false mentioned earlier.

The new type 2/3 would be adjusted accordingly if this receives enough support.