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Soul Manipulation and The Real World

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Wokistan

Wokistan

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Recently, this thread brought into question whether or not we should assume souls exist for the purpose of vs threads concerning real life people.Some other prior reading.

Now personally, I don't think we should. I don't even really agree with setting them as the default for fictional verses. At the center of the issue is that there is simply just no objective and measurable proof that they are a thing, and as such should not be assumed to be. Yes, many religions and philosophies assert their existence, but many also eschew the concept entirely, and we should not be using religions and philosophies as the basis for uncertain situations given the extreme number, variance in ideal, need for proof, and general problems that tend to arise when arguing faiths. Attempting to apply the standard of "verse needs to say no" to reality is asking us to prove a negative, and shifting the burden of proof in the first place. If souls were never conclusively proven in the first place, why should I now have to somehow prove they don't exist? How does one even go about doing that? Attempting to prove a negative in general is just a really screwy idea in general when dealing with philosophies and religions. To say conclusively souls exist is to endorse religions and philosophies, while in saying that there's no conclusive proof on the subject and as such their existence cannot be assumed is much more neutral.

TLDR, I don't think we should assume souls for things in real life due to lack of proof. I also don't think that we should assume that they exist by default in fictional verses though I'm a lot less optimistic about this being accepted and wouldn't hold by breath.

Now, I am well aware that this is a controversial topic that has the potential to get heated. I will be monitoring this when I am able to, and won't hesitate to close the thread if it starts getting out of hand. Please, let's all try and stay civil in this discussion. Thank you.

EDIT: Mostly dropped the fictional defaulting, just concerned with how we apply to reality now.

Verse equalization thread
 
The short version of my post is, yes we should assume because of verse equalization.

Reality has no plot to manipulate, but we'd still assume that characters with plot manipulation would be able to use their abilities against real world characters. This is part of verse equalization, and is fine to equalize. Souls are a similar case, they're an ethereal thing that we can't prove exist in the real world, but they should still be equalized.
 
I'm against assuming things like souls existing in the real world and if they aren't stated they exist in fictional verses as well. Since that's, especially, headcanon and "verse equalizing" that wouldn't even be equalizing something similar, but giving them something that doesn't exist.
 
I'm going to try to not meme over how bad of an idea this will turn out to be. Want it to be known that this is a biiiiiiig test of will.

Yes, we should assume they exist. Same for Medaka Box's case, unless some verse writer/creator (who the hell this would be irl, I dunno) comes in, we shouldn't assign everyone a resistance to a particular hax for simply not having the subject confirmed one way or another.
 
>Tries to debate the existence of souls

>Fiction and reality don't agree with that

Too late Bambu, I already memed it.

That being said, we should absolutely assume that souls in fiction exist unless stamped out by WoG (Which I'm pretty sure is never gonna happen so yeet).
 
Verse equalization doesn't really pertain to this though. For verse equalization, there must be something equivalent to equalize in the first place.
 
Junkoposter said:
this thread was a mistake ovo
Click to expand...
probably

I'm not kidding when I say I will close this if it gets out of hand though.
 
Wokistan said:
Verse equalization doesn't really pertain to this though. For verse equalization, there must be something equivalent to equalize in the first place.
Click to expand...
If you don't want to call it verse equalization, don't call it verse equalization, but why do we assume that characters with plot manipulation can use their abilities in the real world? Why would we assume that characters with certain types of concept manipulation can use that on verses with different types of concept manipulation?
 
This is kind of like the whole chakra thing with Naruto. So long as the verse treats them as all living things have them, we assume they do.

They line is a bit blurry when it comes to sentient machines tho.
 
Because plot manipulation would be a form of causality/probability manipulation.

And concepts exist in the real world?
 
I feel like the majority of fictional universes that are used in fictional verses debates have characters that have souls - and thus I believe we should assume they have it until proven or stated that they don't.
 
Then don't mention religion, Tor, easy as that.

Regardless, I do agree equating RL with any verse is just weird. Equalizing things like souls when there's nothing pointing to their existence just because of Verse Equalization and "but we don't have proof they don't" feels more like just following a standard because it's held widely and trying not to make special cases.

Except special cases exist, and RL is one of them. Or is someone gonna tell me we are gonna disregard physics and say Calc Stacking can't be used for real life related profiles because "it gives inflated and incorrect results"? Are we gonna argue about outliers too?
 
Without getting into authorial intent or assumption this is a pretty grey area.

I personally believe in souls, but I know of verses that are "atheist" in this regard and never acknowledge or even hint at a higher power/souls. That said, I think that, given the majority of the population is religious in some form or fashion, souls should be the default unless the verse indicates otherwise.
 
Warren Valion said:
I feel like the majority of fictional universes that are used in fictional verses debates have characters that have souls - and thus I believe we should assume they have it until proven or stated that they don't.
Click to expand...
That's literally headcanon tho.
 
Yobo Blue said:
Yeah, but things like Platonic concepts don't have proof in the real world. GG no Type 1 conceptual Manipulation doesn't work on CH apparently
Click to expand...
Now that's where verse equalization kicks in. Not imposing something that doesn't exist.
 
Ogbunabali said:
Because plot manipulation would be a form of causality/probability manipulation.

And concepts exist in the real world?
Click to expand...
Plot manipulation sometimes very explicitly involves rewriting the plot of the world or of characters. Such as Monika and SCP-3043.

Concepts exist in the real world, but there's no proof that type 1/2/3 concepts exist, just like how there's no proof of souls existing. As such, abilities that rely on type 1/2/3 concept manip shouldn't work in the real world, or in verses with only type 4 concept manip.
 
Assaltwaffle said:
Without getting into authorial intent or assumption this is a pretty grey area.

I personally believe in souls, but I know of verses that are "atheist" in this regard and never acknowledge or even hint at a higher power/souls. That said, I think that, given the majority of the population is religious in some form or fashion, souls should be the default unless the verse indicates otherwise.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't look much at the philosophical aspect of this. The fact is, it's a extreme double standard to have souls be the one thing that isn't put under Verse equal.
 
Type 1s is straight up 1-A concept hax anyways, and people can create these sorts of things with conceptual powers anyways.

Also @thread, I'm a lot more open to just accepting an assumption as the default for fictions. I'm more concerned with the real world right now. Not really gonna argue for fictions, if that's how it's decided then it is what it is there.
 
Let me ask a counter question: Should we assume the acupuncture points Kenshiro uses to make people explode exist in humans of other verses or real life humans? After all, for humans of other fictional verses the author probably didn't consider them having those. And real life humans certainly don't have them.


If you would rather have Kenshiro be able to use his moveset like he does in his verse in our debates, than to assume that many of his techniques don't work due to verse equivalence issues, you have found the reason why we should assume souls exist unless shown otherwise.
 
Now that's where verse equalization kicks in. Not imposing something that doesn't exist.

Except there isn't any reason to assume they don't exist even if they go unmentioned in a fictional work.
 
Agnaa said:
Plot manipulation sometimes very explicitly involves rewriting the plot of the world or of characters. Such as Monika and SCP-3043.

Concepts exist in the real world, but there's no proof that type 1/2/3 concepts exist, just like how there's no proof of souls existing. As such, abilities that rely on type 1/2/3 concept manip shouldn't work in the real world, or in verses with only type 4 concept manip.
Click to expand...
Equalizing plot with causality/probability is very fine. They are way to similar in that regard, they are basically sub power.

Again that's where verse equalization kicks in. Concepts exist in the real world, so we equalize them with Platonic ones with another verse.
 
Thing is, concepts of fate and the like don't need to exist for fate manipulation to work, since fate is basically the same as causality which is decidedly real, by the way it is defined by humans.
 
Wokistan said:
Thing is, concepts of fate and the like don't need to exist for fate manipulation to work, since fate is basically the same as causality which is decidedly real, by the way it is defined by humans.
Click to expand...
Fate isn't always the same as cause and effect
 
I mean, verses like inFAMOUS don't confirm whether they exist either, but unless there's explicit proof they don't have them then we still assume those characters have souls. There's really no reason to treat reality as being any different in this regard. It's not like Calc Stacking or anything like that, there's no law of physics that says souls can't exist.
 
Assaltwaffle said:
May I direct you to the entirety of theology and a decent chunk of philosophy?

But seriously if this is about the Real World, why?
Click to expand...
It came up in a thread and we should probably deal with the issue at some point.

Also souls aren't a universal concept within all religions and philosophies in the first place.

Should we just make OP specify? (Legitimate question)
 
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