The Writer and The Law of Identity

[Antvasima]

Continued from here:

https://vsbattles.com/vsbattles/1283207

Questions have been raised regarding whether we should downgrade The Law of Identity to High 1-A again, due to claiming to have a limitation in its omniscience.

Another issue that has been raised is that The Writer technically severely violates our Reality - Fiction Interaction regulations, and that it also has a limited intelligence, due to simply being a collective of real world human writers.

Input would be appreciated.

NOTE: STAFF ONLY

 

[Antvasima]

DarkLK has replied:

"There is planned a large modernization of her profile on the ACF in the next few of months.

Although she has always been and will be high 1-A.

She is not like the Creator, she is more like Featherine's sister.

As for your thread, there is a lot of nonsense that I do not even want to discuss."

"She is completely transcendental to any hierarchy of stories within which there can be multidimensional and dimensionless structures.

I thought this had already been discussed a couple of times."

 

[Antvasima]

DarkLK is our by far greatest expert regarding how the higher levels of our tiering system works, as he personally invented it, so I think that we should follow the ACF wiki's example.

 

[Monarch_Laciel]

On the Law of Identity:

If it can't make itself omniscient, then it isn't omnipotent. So when it says there are things that it doesn't know, it simply boils down to "can it make itself know".

As for the Writer, I don't know. It ruins our reality-fiction interaction rules, and so it's hard to quantify. However, if I had to say, I would say no it is not a Tier 0. Just a High 1-A existing in some sort of meta-space called the "real world" beyond the Overmonitor.

 

[Sera_EX]

The argument was that if omnipotence is "questionable" by our standards, which separates our Tier 0 from ACF's Level 0, then not being omniscient does not exclude you from the tier. I know DarkLK built our upper levels of the Tiering System, but we use completely different interpretations. That was Ven's reasoning, not nonsensical by any means.

@Monarch Tier 0s aren't omnipotent. Either they are (remove "questionable" and replace it with "fictional") or they are not. It's time VSB decides. Every Tier 0 has some form of controversial status. The logic of "she's Featherine's sister" doesn't work either. Featherine would be Tier 0 were it not for the Creator, TLOI has no one above her. Just because she isn't a Parabrahman/Ein Sof archetype she can't be Tier 0?

Arguing about this tier is a waste of time and energy both here and FC/OC. I'm just being blunt honest here. I contacted Ven and he said he doesn't have the time or energy to extensively debate this, but that reasoning still stands. So if downgrading her to High 1-A will satisfy Dark, then by all means go ahead, doesn't mean I agree with it but I don't care to keep going back and forth, I already do so on FC/OC about the same misconceptions about this tier.

As for The Writer...

Many other pages violate the Reality-Fiction Interaction, yet are still here, including The One Above All (pre retcon). So if The Writer goes, despite Matthew's blatant explanation of how it is from a fictional perspective, the rest must go too. This has been discussed before, at least twice. What abouy The Player (from many franchies)? Or anything that is meant to be "us". While I'll accept the Identity's downgrade, The Writer should be left alone.

 

[Antvasima]

I am neutral regarding The Writer, but although Tier 0 characters are boundless rather than assumed to be omnipotent, we still count the ones with a significant limitation as High 1-A in other cases, so I think that we should preferably be consistent in this regard.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

I am 100% against removing The Writer and the Law of Identity as of Tier 0s. It doesn't violate the reality-fiction interaction rules so more than any other Metafictional Verse does so.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

The Law of Identity is Tier 0. Her being Nigh-Omniscience doesn't change that fact. I thought we had long since agreed that Intelligence is rather meaningless to a Tier 0. So it changes nothing is someone has variable intelliect or is just nigh-omniscient. Not of our Tier 0s are truly Omnipotent. They are just at the highest level we have.

As for the Writer, removing it is like deleting all of Undertale and Doki Doki Literature Club. It is Tier 0, too.

 

[Antvasima]

I am fine with keeping The Writer, but I think that we should adjust the tier for The Law of Identity to High 1-A, as it has an important limitation.

 

[Antvasima]

Also, with all due respect, DarkLK invented this system, and knows the Law of Identity character well. I trust his judgement regarding this issue.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

The only limitation shows is that she says that "Even I don't know all that I can do."

That's not really a limitation and more like a shrug. If anything, I'd say it could make sense. Your power is so effectively boundless it is hard to know all you can do with it, as finding a limit of all the things you can do would mean your power isn't boundless.

 

[Antvasima]

I think that a true tier 0 should be able to access any knowledge that it wants, not have limitations according to itself.

 

[Antvasima]

Still, Assaltwaffle and Aeyu were the ones most invested in this issue. I had to argue with them for hours this morning, which is time that I technically do not have available.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

But yes, I would be fine with High 1-A LOI. But saying that all Tier 0s need to be a traditional Monotheistic God with Omniscience and Omnipresence is nonsense. Those powers are just secondary subsects of the Omnipotent's boundless power.

It'd be like saying that Azathoth should be downgraded for not being omniscient and arguably not omnipresent since it's both a Blind-Idiot and is located on a specific place. Except it literally has dreamt a being that fits all those criterias, Yog-Sothoth. If there were no Mist or Azathoth, Yog would be Tier 0. The only thing that contradicts it is the existence of higher beings.

Same thing with the Writer. If the Writer didn't exist, then the Overvoid would be 100% boundless, omnipresent, and omniscient. As it stands, it is all of that, except it has no idea from where DC Comics came from, as it cannot be aware of the being who drew it on its canvas.

The Writer is more metaphorical. Nobody is saying that Grant Morrison is literally Omnipotent. It's specifically why the image is a generic picture of a hand drawing a character.

Also, SCP has a Supreme Being which is supposed to also literally be the SCP writers. It's hella favouritism to let that slide and harp on the Writer.

 

[Antvasima]

Azathoth only seems mindless from lower perspectives. It still dreams absolutely everything into being, which would require omniscience. The Law of Identity stated itself that it has a small limitation.

 

[Antvasima]

But as I mentioned, I am neutral about The Writer.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

The Writer wouldn't be boundless if we were to look at it as literally a guy writing DC in his desk. We need to look at it from the in-fiction perspective. If the writer wanted, it could write a character who is Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Omniscient. And then erase it.

 

[Antvasima]

I suppose that is a good point.

 

[Antvasima]

So, should we update the LOI profile page?

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

The Swann SCP-001 has Omniscence and Omnipresence last I checked, despite being supposed to be the literal SCP writers. That's because the profile has the decency to not act like it is literally a real person.

Just like the Player characters who are Universal or Multiversal for interacting with the game like it is... Well, a game, aren't really you. You aren't Multiversal.

Same thing with Monika. She doesn't really break the 4th Wall and interact with you. It's all a script programmed cleverly to simulate that she is doing that.

Grant Morrison talking with Animal Man also isn't literal. It's a comic Morrison wrote, he didn't literally went and talked with Animal Man.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Anyway, this is the thread where the Law of Identity was agreed as Tier 0. Look at mine, Sera's, and Ventus' points.

We basically agreed that you don't need to be a being similar to Ein Sof or a Monotheistic "Most High God" to be a Tier 0. You just need to display qualitative and hierarchical superiority over everything in a Verse, including 1-As and High 1-As, and be its supreme being.

We agreed that Knowledge as we understand is wholly meaningless for a Tier 0. Hell, Cthulhu Mythos does show that. Omniscience is literally just an idea that Azzy dreamed of. To say that it is "Omniscient" is actually limiting in a sense.

 

[Antvasima]

Azathoth and WeeklyBattles are talking about how best to revise the SCP profiles, but I agree that it is hard to avoid reality-fiction interaction profiles, when a certain verse is built that way. However, we should still obviously not remotely rate every author or player avatar as tier 0. That would be ridiculous.

 

[Antvasima]

DarkLK, A6colute, and the ACF staff disagree about the LOI being tier 0, and with all due respect, they are the most knowledgeable people we have available regarding how the tiering system fundamentally works.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Azathoth and WeeklyBattles are talking about how best to revise the SCP profiles, but I agree that it is hard to avoid reality-fiction interaction profiles, when a certain verse is built that way. However, we should still obviously not remotely rate every author or player avatar as tier 0. That would be ridiculous.

Obviously. Which is why they vary a lot. The Player from Doki Doki is 2-C cause that's how big the Verse is.

Swann is 1-B because that's how big that Verse is.

The Writer is Tier 0 because... That's how big DC Comics is.

 

[Antvasima]

Anyway, I am about to fall over from exhaustion, and still have several hours of work ahead of me. As such, I would appreciate if we could drop this discussion, and simply restore the page to High 1-A, as DontTalk created it to be.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Well, I don't think we can just ignore the past discussions on the topic. All that went is "She isn't Omniscient thus not Tier 0". But there have already been lengthy discussions over why a Tier 0 can be not Omniscient here. I feel that that's just ignoring all that was previously discussed and going by to step 1. DontTalk said he is neutral, really.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Here are some points from the old thread:

Mine:

The very concept of "knowledge" as we understand it is wholly meaningless for a Tier 0 being, so to hold it as a limitation, and treat it as a reason for it. We do not think any of ours. We do not think any character in fiction is Omnipotent, nor that any character can be Omnipotent. Tier 0 is, at the end of the day, a Tier of power. So if a character is the Verse's sole Supreme Being, fully transcendent over 1-As and High 1-As, they can be considered Tier 0.

In short, I do not believe in a lack of complete. "Omniscience is enough reasoning to not rank something as" Questionably Omnipotent ". Some people out there like to talk about "True Omnipotence", but such a thing is impossible to be portrayed in man-made fiction, and is essentially meaningless. If we were to be honest, we could not be in the same way. They would be truly incomprehensible and unknowable, and perhaps our human concept of knowledge. In my opinion, 1-As who act 100% like humans or similar people are rather silly, but I do not complain about it. The only thing holding TLOI against it, is its lack of Omniscience. Which is not really a weakness, but just a fact about it. Similarly, The Writer is more a cosmological concept in Grant Morrison's comics, rather than a fully-formed character. It's hard to put it into words if it is Omnipresent or Omniscient do to its Meta-textual nature. However, if a DC character were to be an Omnipresent, Omniscient, High Outerversal being ... They would only be such because they were written as such.

A "Omnipotent Being" is a complete paradox, going beyond even the simple rock paradox. You can create an infinite amount of paradoxes. For instance: Can an Omnipotent be Omnipotent? Or to not know it? And then do it anyway? It's all vague and meaningless. You are limiting your understanding of Omnipotence to that which I call the "Modern Art God", something vague, formless, devoid of role and personality. Not all Tier 0s need to resemble Ain Sof, or Umineko's Creator, or the Divine Presence. If a writer wants to give it the ultimate supreme being, even in comparison to High 1-As, a personality, they should be allowed to. To hold an absolute standard across all of the fiction is to limit and close your eyes to different interpretations and approaches.

My main point is such: Knowledge is a meaningless concept to beyond dimensional beings, if we were to be truly academic about it. Human experiences, and all our concepts, understandings, emotions and thoughts, everything that defines us as "human" should not apply to a 1-A. As, per defintion, a Beyond-Dimensional Being is unbound and outside everything. Our concepts should not be applied to it, it should be utterly beyond recognition. To ask if it is "Omniscient" or not be laughable. Yet that is not how it is in fiction. Instead, many writers treat 1-A at the level of power, and allow for Beyond-Dimensional beings to remain fully human in nature and thought. Demonbane makes a clear divide between Elder and Outer Gods, with the Elder Gods being "Heroes of Justice", and the Outer Gods being "The Evil Gods". And Nyarlathotep acts as a teasing trickster ******. It's a superhero conclict, with the Beyond-Dimensional nature. Similarly, I / O has 1-A schoolgirls and nurses, and they still act like their limited 3D selves even after their 1-A status. Their minds and natures are still fully human. So again, 1-A is not being treated as it should be logically ... And that is okay. It is all fiction and make-belief, we should not hold an exclusive law relating to the nature of beings. See what I mean? Arguing to know how a 1-A is the same as the arguing that you know the "Nature of God". It's ridiculous and arrogant. Likewise, if a author wishes to write its "Omnipotent" supremacy being as they are emotional or human, they have all the right in the world to do so. As long as it fulfills our requirements for Tier 0, which is very simple: "Beings that are boundlessly above absolutely everything, including existence and nonexistence, possibility, causality, dualism and non-dualism, the concepts of life and death, and their analogues at any level." To be a Tier 0 is to be boundlessly above -1-As. That's it. Levels of Infinity, stomping, feats and cross-verse comparisons are not part of the debate, and never will be. We do not have any of the problems of Omniscience as it is a weakness in any other.

 

[Antvasima]

From what I remember, DontTalk said in another thread today that he preferred to keep the profile at High 1-A, and the past discussion was contingent on DarkLK not having the energy to argue about the issue, as usual. That does not change the fact that all of us are very ignorant regarding the mechanics of his system compared to himself, and he disagrees with your assessment.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

If he disagress, I'd rather I and Ven discuss it with him rather than just go by his word as law. We could take it on his wall if you wish.

 

[Antvasima]

I will not budge regarding that if DarkLK, A6colute, DontTalk, and the ACF staff, all of whom are more knowledgeable than yourself about this issue, disagree with a tier 0 LOI, we should not keep that tier. However, I have already worked for 8 hours in a row today, and likely have 5 hours more ahead of me, so I would appreciate if you would be reasonable about this.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Also, our definitions of Omnipotence no longer go literally by what DarkLK said and instead we go by what Kevyn Souza said. A Tier 0 can have its wishes or a personality. The Umineko Creator is literally the Judeo-Christian God. The One Above All has a personality when it talked with Spiderman.

Tier 0s aren't just boundless innefable concepts.

 

[Antvasima]

DarkLK usually considers it a wasted effort to argue with people much less knowledgeable than he is about a subject, or at least when his language skills to express himself are limited, but if you are extremely respectful and polite, he might be willing to help out.

 

[Kaltias]

Can i ask where on the tiering system page is stated that a character must be omniscient to be tier 0?

Also, i agree with Matt about the fact that tier 0s don't need to have all the characteristics of an omnipotent monotheistic suprem god.

 

[Antvasima]

The tiering system has not remotely changed to Kevyn Souza's version. It was still designed by DarkLK, and that its the authority that we stick with. I would appreciate if you do not attempt to undermine the structure.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

We should not treat either DarkLK and DontTalk as law. That is a literal application of the Fallacy of Authority. And we should also not blindly follow what ACF does. There are numerous, and I mean numerous ratings there that we disagree. Our Tiering System is also since stopped being identical to ACF's and is now our own thing.

All I'm saying is is that we should go by arguments not positions. If a new user who has less than a 100 posts and no staff position shows up and his argument is better than anyone else's, then he is right. It matters not if Admins and Consultants are disagreeing with him.

 

[Antvasima]

Also, as far as I understand, The Creator is more akin to Nirvana.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

No, it is literally the Judeo-Christian God. It is even called the Holy Spirit for a reason. Sera could go into more details about it.

But basically, we should go with fictional omnipotence, not demanding fictional characters to be Ein Sof. Because no fictional character will ever be that.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Antvasima wrote:
The tiering system has not remotely changed to Kevyn Souza's version. It was still designed by DarkLK, and that its the authority that we stick with. I would appreciate if you do not attempt to undermine the structure.
I am not. Please don't distort my arguments. Our Omnipotence definitions are based on what Kevyn Souza has written. Not DarkLk's thing. Kevyn Souza is objectively far more knowledgeable and informed on the subject, and literally wrote a thesis to argue his views, and all his statements are sourced.

Also, this is how his thesis concluded:

"In conclusion, there is enough philosophical and logical basis to assume that omnipotence may violate the principle of non-contradiction. For that, it would suffice that she was paraconsistent. Since paraconsistency is an area of logic, we can not even say that it is illogical, since logic in its entirety encompasses much more possibilities than the classical laws of thought, and of classical and Aristotelian logic."

It ended with the conclusion that Omnipotence can contradict itself. Because that's the nature of the idea.

 

[Antvasima]

@Kaltias

It is stated that High 1-A characters are tier 0s with a minor limitation that does not make them completely absolute.

@Matthew

These two extremely tiresome discussions after each other, when I already have an enormous edit-monitoring backlog to take care of, are pushing me towards a heart attack.

As for our system, we try to strictly follow the ACF concepts regarding tier 1-C and upwards. To do tohervise would be to base it on the limitations of our own ignorance, and lose much of its cohesion and structure. It is extremely against our regulations to attempt to mess with it.

 

[Matthew_Schroeder]

Ant, please.

I am not doing any of what you are saying I am. I am not undermining the system nor trying to mess with it. I am stating a fact. Our system isn't identical to ACF's so trying to go 100% by ACF is illogical.

That's it.

To say I am trying to destroy and undermine the system is either a misinterpretation or a strawman fallacy.