Paradox of Souls

[Lago_AM3P]

Sorry if this makes little sense; I'm running out of tizzime.

I just thought about this while watching Full Metal Alchemist.

Not just in this anime but in a lot of series the soul is viewed as something precious, pure, wholesome, indivisable, and holy. Like in Kingdom Hearts II, the BBNSEG blows himself up because he didn't understand the power of the human soul (heart in this instance but I know what they were getting at).

But we already know the process that creates new souls. That is, hot monkey sex. After a finite period of time a new person, supposedly possessing a soul, gets born.

The soul isn't even important for the concept of identity. I mean, you can get BRAIN-DAMAGED and that will completely fuck your personhood up even if you survived it.

So even though the process is pretty well-understood and is frankly mechanical (you could start up a soul-making factory if you wanted to) then how come games treat soul as this sort of uberforce?

[Judging__Eagle]

Because in religion, the value of a soul is given precedent over the value of anyhting else.

Also, the "devil" will give you anything your mortal heart can desire for 'just', your soul.

Meaning that the soul has a value >> than mortal wealth.

Of course, you ask for infinite immortal youth and a corrolary to perform a service once every X years (with the side option to turn down and find a different service that doesn't involve you getting potentially boned, since the devil is perfectly fine with you being in prison forever or until you have to perfrom your next 'tastk').

In any case, trying to outwit the original rebel is probably the dumbest thing that a mortal could try, but we're stupid as a race that way.

Humans won't fly you say? We can't live at speeds of 50mph you say? etc. etc.

[shirak]

Romanticism?

[Catharz]

Soul is just a synonym for mind. If you get brain damaged, chances are you'll have a damaged soul too.

[Bigode]

Well, games do so because real-world belief systems do so, and take this with some tons of salt, but I think it's because lots of societal controls were based in doctrines that relied on humans being special regardless of who they were or what they did - so they'd need a concept "intuitively obvious" (read, one that didn't need any sort of intellectuality and wasn't possible to disprove through it) to justify that.

[technomancer]

For me, the preciousness of the soul would be dependent on two factors.

1) Is a soul immortal? Does it last longer than the mortal coil?
2) Did the soul exist before you did? If it did, where was it before you got it?

If the soul isn't immortal (or at the very least, last longer than you do), then it's not terribly precious. It's exactly as precious as the life it catalyzes. If the soul didn't come from anywhere, but was spontaneously generated when you hit a certain developmental point (sperm and egg kissed, you pop outta your mom, you become self-aware, whatever), then it's not terribly precious, because new ones are being made all the time. If, however, they come from somewhere else, and leave for somewhere else when you kick it, then souls become very precious indeed, because there is a finite number of them, and you have no idea how many will be the straw that broke the camel's back, and people stop being born with souls because there aren't enough to go around.

[JonSetanta]

Leave souls and death for the dead. Nuff said.

[Cielingcat]

In lots of religions (Hinduism being the one I'm most familiar with), there are a finite amount of souls that are constantly being recycled via reincarnation (they also often have all souls be part of some transcendent thing, whatever). The soul has value because it's all that defines you, and is totally eternal. Having sex just creates a vessel for a soul to inhabit.

[Prak]

I'll have to agree with the religion thing here, but it's also because we know nothing about the soul. It could be entirely made up, except it's not in FMA, they actually seem to exist and are vital to being a human, along with being able to do alchemy... Homunculi have no soul, hence they can't do alchemy, Chimera have animal souls, hence they can't do alchemy, Al is a human soul bound to armour, hence he can do alchemy. The soul is a mystical uberforce because we don't know what it is, where it comes from or even if it exists. We are certain that it separates us from animals, but we can't prove it, and we have seen things that are inexplicable by science(little old lady lifts car off of son, adrenaline doesn't even begin to cover it, small armies have held off forces 100,000 times their size long enough to save entire cultures, I doubt the spartans pulled out howlitzers and AK-47s and then hid it just before their army died...) and we need an explination. That's why the soul is important, because it explains what science can't and represents the vast potential of humankind when doing something "truely" "altruistic".

[Fwib]

1189921818[/unixtime]]In lots of religions (Hinduism being the one I'm most familiar with), there are a finite amount of souls that are constantly being recycled via reincarnation (they also often have all souls be part of some transcendent thing, whatever). The soul has value because it's all that defines you, and is totally eternal. Having sex just creates a vessel for a soul to inhabit.

Do the holy books/tradition specify how many the finite number is?

1189929144[/unixtime]]...it explains what science can't ...

Are you saying that there are things science can't explain, as opposed to 'has not explained yet' ?

[Nereas]

Well questions of the soul, much like questions of god or any other kind of mysticism may well be un-disprovable - but that's because they are not questions at all.
Because you cannot ever experimentally test them, (mystical=ineffable) they count for shit as the decaying remains of ancient attempts to order the universe and "guide" large portions of humanity.

Besides, if they did exist, everyone's life, effort, talent, memory and will would be as worthless as a Chick tract is to a real-world situation.

[Prak]

1189941827[/unixtime]]

1189929144[/unixtime]]...it explains what science can't ...

Are you saying that there are things science can't explain, as opposed to 'has not explained yet' ?

what if I am?

[Judging__Eagle]

1189929144[/unixtime]]

The soul is a mystical uberforce because we don't know what it is, where it comes from or even if it exists. We are certain that it separates us from animals,

You realize that animals can:

-Plan for the future based on previous experiences?

-Work with members of a differnt species to achieve a goal

-Understand the concept of "zero" as an actual measurable value

-Make predictions and risk resources based on their knowledge of their thinking ability (Metacognition, that is, they can think about their ability to think well or poorly)

-Develop animistic worship practices (religion is a product of large brains,

-Generation of new concepts made by combining already known ones

-Having non-human-taught sound and signing languages

There are seriously people that can't do some of those things.

Seriously, don't put humans on some sort of creationist/intelligent design pedestal.

We just got bloody lucky and by mistake we started scavenging meat while we were still pretty much herbivores.

but we can't prove it, and we have seen things that are inexplicable by science(little old lady lifts car off of son, adrenaline doesn't even begin to cover it,

Yeah it does, the human body runs at about less than 20% energy efficency, muscle-wise. If you widen all of your capilleries with adrenaline you can do ridiculous things.

Like stand and walk on a broken ankle.

Evil Kinevel did that after doing a canyon jump; he was walking around, then limping, then fell over and his medics realized that the adrenaline had been enough to keep him standing on muscle power not skeletal support.

small armies have held off forces 100,000 times their size long enough to save entire cultures, I doubt the spartans pulled out howlitzers and AK-47s and then hid it just before their army died...) and we need an explination. That's why the soul is important, because it explains what science can't and represents the vast potential of humankind when doing something "truely" "altruistic".

Except that in Sun Tzu's the Art of War he talks about that fact over and over and over again.

How size means dick all.

How morale, training, positioning, terrain, equipment and technique are what wins battles and how bribes, spies, ignoring useless fortresses and patiently waging cold and hot battles wins wars.

Seriously, a single man could stand against one hundred even if given the most minimal of equipment if the terrain is perfect.


It should be noted that the battle at Thermopylae occured with 300 men with anywhere from a year to decades of combat experience supported by 700 'soldiers' from Thebes.
It should also be noted that there were also about 900 Spartan 'serfs' that died at the end of the fighting. I'd imagine that the 1,900 at Thermopylae didn't go down without a fight.
->So, they had training and experience

They fought in a narrow pass making their enemies numbers count for almost nothing. If they fought on a plain, they would have lost immediately.
->So, they had terrain on their side.

They fought people who were for the most part slaves; while they themselves were fighting to save their homes.
->So, they had morale on their side.

They also were fighting on what is sometimes known as death ground. They had to fight and win or die

The art of war on a regular basis encourages generals to on a semi-regular basis:

-Burn your troops so-far accumulated loot, then tell them there's tons more in an enemy camp/fortress

-Tell your troops to break their only means of getting back safely; since it's victory or death, they will win

-Never ever completely surround an enemy force or corner an enemy force; they will fight like lions to survive.

-Do ridiculous things that will make your army surrounded/cornered (like send all of your armies food/pack animals to clog up the "only path of escape") if they realize they can't escape, your troops will fight a lot harder

->So, they had death ground working in their favour


They also had the best of the best of their nation's collective armies soldiers fighting the faceless masses of non-elitely equipped, non-elitely fed enemy troops.

Seriously, Spartan soldiers were the equivalent of warhammer 40k space marines for the amount of armour that they wore and fought in compared to the... non-armour that their enemies usually wore.

If you compare typical a Spartan man's armour:

Bronze Sheild
Bronze full head Helmet
Iron Greaves
Iron Bracers
Bronze breastplate
Segmented iron/bronze on leather straps kilt
Bronze boots

To a typical Persian Trooper's armour:

-maybe scale-mail, if they're an 'Immortal'
-maybe some skins or leather
-the rest wore layered cloth

You can see an obvious disparity of gear.

I'm not including the fact that the Spartans were Hoplites and thus used iron-tipped (this was a big fvcking deal up until the age of Rome in Europe) long spears versus enemy clubs, axes and 'swords'; as well as having iron swords (that they had probably spent countless hours practising with or with heavier wooden swords).


Seriously, the reason the Spartans at Thermopylae lost was b/c they were out manouvered and went from having a 7.000 man army verus 200,000 to 300,000 to a force of about 1,900 men.

They could have very well won that entire battle and then gone on to win the second Hello-Perso war if they were able to keep retreating and weren't sold out by former allies.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

For the record, I thought that the "spartans" (I know the movie says it, but those '300' had a large number of greeks) won through superior tactics and fighting power. Well trained + well disciplined army fighting to hold down a choke point on the home field with their homes at their backs fighting against army far from home that hasn't seen a fight in years recently ravaged by storms fighting uphill.

[shirak]

1189929144[/unixtime]]"truely" "altruistic"

I can assure you, as a descendant of those people, that Spartans were anything but altruistic. Their entire culture was based upon the concept of being an honorable warrior. They stayed and fought because the King said so and the king was a divinely descended hero and uber-general who basically told them "Fight until you die and drop or your son gets raped by Persians". And in Ancient Sparta, that was a fucking serious threat.

Really, the Spartans weren't altruistic. They were either ruthless badasses fighting to protect anything they valued or stone-cold blood-crazed bastards fighting out of bloodlust. Take your pick.

[Fwib]

1189955847[/unixtime]]

1189941827[/unixtime]]

1189929144[/unixtime]]...it explains what science can't ...

Are you saying that there are things science can't explain, as opposed to 'has not explained yet' ?

what if I am?

In that case I would be interested to know why you think it.

[cthulhu]

I like the methodology of "Souls are valuable, but only the souls of exceptional people are in any way worth harvesting" Gives a cool feel to it as a game concept.

As for the 'spartans are hardasses thing' it is totally stupid. The spartan warrior was the top of a massive pyramid of slaves that supported him so he had nothing else to do aside from being really buff and killing slaves because it was funny.

Which meant that any individual spartan was hardcore in ancient greece as they had lots of food and were tough.

However the society blew and they got stomped by people who could muster more lesser warriors see: Athens.

Also note the persian army was woefully ineffective and huge chunks of that massive horde wasn't really doing much aside from making up the numbers.

[Cielingcat]

1189941827[/unixtime]]

1189921818[/unixtime]]In lots of religions (Hinduism being the one I'm most familiar with), there are a finite amount of souls that are constantly being recycled via reincarnation (they also often have all souls be part of some transcendent thing, whatever). The soul has value because it's all that defines you, and is totally eternal. Having sex just creates a vessel for a soul to inhabit.

Do the holy books/tradition specify how many the finite number is?

In Hinduism, at least, all souls are part of Brahman or something like that, and so the amount of souls is functionally limitless. You can decrease the amount of souls by becoming enlightened, which lets you stop being reincarnated.

It's much more complicated than that, but that's the lowdown.

[JonSetanta]

1189987299[/unixtime]]

1189941827[/unixtime]]

1189921818[/unixtime]]In lots of religions (Hinduism being the one I'm most familiar with), there are a finite amount of souls that are constantly being recycled via reincarnation (they also often have all souls be part of some transcendent thing, whatever). The soul has value because it's all that defines you, and is totally eternal. Having sex just creates a vessel for a soul to inhabit.

Do the holy books/tradition specify how many the finite number is?

In Hinduism, at least, all souls are part of Brahman or something like that, and so the amount of souls is functionally limitless. You can decrease the amount of souls by becoming enlightened, which lets you stop being reincarnated.

It's much more complicated than that, but that's the lowdown.

Some sects still try to count, though. Which is weird since such a goal or declaration has no benefit to the rest of the world at all.
I sleep fine not knowing how many souls there are.

I'll even sling out my own guess, totally out of my ass: 3 Trillion, no more no less.
Anyone is welcome to challenge such an opinion but since I'm backed with 'faith' it essentially means my ears are plugged to reason, practicality, and common sense.
(Pun intended. Some people have actually taken me seriously when I joke like this, which scares me.)

It's funny because since so many different religions have their own members obsessed with categorizing the universe into neat little numbers, yet if any single one of them were actually correct... the rest are dead wrong.

And since no religion has yet to produce quantifiable 'supernatural' results at the time they are most needed, I'm convinced that religions are just that; belief systems, and nothing more.

But there is a greater truth 'out there'. It's just so inconcievably simple or unreachable that no amount of science or dogma will ever put it into layman's terms.

[Maj]

I like the methodology of "Souls are valuable, but only the souls of exceptional people are in any way worth harvesting" Gives a cool feel to it as a game concept.

In our games, we adopted the concept of soul + spirit + body.

The soul's job is animating a body. Having a soul means you automatically have free will (Free will: You are not bound by alignment tags in the MM. You grew up defined by your culture, experience, and family, not by your race).

The spirit is the sum of your experience. It's the "hard drive" where your thoughts and motivations and so on are stored. If you suffer brain damage from something, it doesn't change your soul, but it does affect your spirit and body. It's also where your level and XP are stored.

The body, I think, is self explanatory. It requires an animating force (soul), and a spirit to function.

Creatures like Devils/Demons, Archons, etc, didn't have souls or spirits, they had an Essence instead. Having an essence means you don't have free will - your animating force is derived from the outer plane that spawned you, and forces your spirit to only write to one sector of the hard drive (the sector designated by your alignment). A fallen angel/risen devil is a creature who was forced to write on a sector of their spiritual hard drive contrary to that dictated by their home plane, and thusly unwillingly gains a soul.

It was a very interesting philosophy that made some great games.

[JonSetanta]

Very much like Ghost In The Shell, Maj.

[Maj]

Very much like Ghost In The Shell, Maj.

Cool... I have no idea, since I don't watch much anime.

[Prak]

1189956404[/unixtime]]

1189929144[/unixtime]]

The soul is a mystical uberforce because we don't know what it is, where it comes from or even if it exists. We are certain that it separates us from animals,

You realize that animals can:

-Plan for the future based on previous experiences?

-Work with members of a differnt species to achieve a goal

-Understand the concept of "zero" as an actual measurable value

-Make predictions and risk resources based on their knowledge of their thinking ability (Metacognition, that is, they can think about their ability to think well or poorly)

-Develop animistic worship practices (religion is a product of large brains,

-Generation of new concepts made by combining already known ones

-Having non-human-taught sound and signing languages

There are seriously people that can't do some of those things.

Seriously, don't put humans on some sort of creationist/intelligent design pedestal.

You realize there are probably millions of people out there that seriously think the difference between us and animals is souls, right? I personally don't believe in souls at fucking all, I'm really just playing devil's advocate here like I always do...

We just got bloody lucky and by mistake we started scavenging meat while we were still pretty much herbivores.

but we can't prove it, and we have seen things that are inexplicable by science(little old lady lifts car off of son, adrenaline doesn't even begin to cover it,

Yeah it does, the human body runs at about less than 20% energy efficency, muscle-wise. If you widen all of your capilleries with adrenaline you can do ridiculous things.

Like stand and walk on a broken ankle.

Evil Kinevel did that after doing a canyon jump; he was walking around, then limping, then fell over and his medics realized that the adrenaline had been enough to keep him standing on muscle power not skeletal support.

There's a huge difference between walking on a broken ankle and lifting a car.

small armies have held off forces 100,000 times their size long enough to save entire cultures, I doubt the spartans pulled out howlitzers and AK-47s and then hid it just before their army died...) and we need an explination. That's why the soul is important, because it explains what science can't and represents the vast potential of humankind when doing something "truely" "altruistic".

Except that in Sun Tzu's the Art of War he talks about that fact over and over and over again.

How size means dick all.

How morale, training, positioning, terrain, equipment and technique are what wins battles and how bribes, spies, ignoring useless fortresses and patiently waging cold and hot battles wins wars.

Seriously, a single man could stand against one hundred even if given the most minimal of equipment if the terrain is perfect.


It should be noted that the battle at Thermopylae occured with 300 men with anywhere from a year to decades of combat experience supported by 700 'soldiers' from Thebes.
It should also be noted that there were also about 900 Spartan 'serfs' that died at the end of the fighting. I'd imagine that the 1,900 at Thermopylae didn't go down without a fight.
->So, they had training and experience

They fought in a narrow pass making their enemies numbers count for almost nothing. If they fought on a plain, they would have lost immediately.
->So, they had terrain on their side.

They fought people who were for the most part slaves; while they themselves were fighting to save their homes.
->So, they had morale on their side.

They also were fighting on what is sometimes known as death ground. They had to fight and win or die

The art of war on a regular basis encourages generals to on a semi-regular basis:

-Burn your troops so-far accumulated loot, then tell them there's tons more in an enemy camp/fortress

-Tell your troops to break their only means of getting back safely; since it's victory or death, they will win

-Never ever completely surround an enemy force or corner an enemy force; they will fight like lions to survive.

-Do ridiculous things that will make your army surrounded/cornered (like send all of your armies food/pack animals to clog up the "only path of escape") if they realize they can't escape, your troops will fight a lot harder

->So, they had death ground working in their favour


They also had the best of the best of their nation's collective armies soldiers fighting the faceless masses of non-elitely equipped, non-elitely fed enemy troops.

Seriously, Spartan soldiers were the equivalent of warhammer 40k space marines for the amount of armour that they wore and fought in compared to the... non-armour that their enemies usually wore.

If you compare typical a Spartan man's armour:

Bronze Sheild
Bronze full head Helmet
Iron Greaves
Iron Bracers
Bronze breastplate
Segmented iron/bronze on leather straps kilt
Bronze boots

To a typical Persian Trooper's armour:

-maybe scale-mail, if they're an 'Immortal'
-maybe some skins or leather
-the rest wore layered cloth

You can see an obvious disparity of gear.

I'm not including the fact that the Spartans were Hoplites and thus used iron-tipped (this was a big fvcking deal up until the age of Rome in Europe) long spears versus enemy clubs, axes and 'swords'; as well as having iron swords (that they had probably spent countless hours practising with or with heavier wooden swords).


Seriously, the reason the Spartans at Thermopylae lost was b/c they were out manouvered and went from having a 7.000 man army verus 200,000 to 300,000 to a force of about 1,900 men.

They could have very well won that entire battle and then gone on to win the second Hello-Perso war if they were able to keep retreating and weren't sold out by former allies.

ok fine, the "300 Spartans" example is out, but there are plenty of other examples of things that shouldn't happen or work, but for some reason do.

"truely" "altruistic"

I can assure you, as a descendant of those people, that Spartans were anything but altruistic. Their entire culture was based upon the concept of being an honorable warrior. They stayed and fought because the King said so and the king was a divinely descended hero and uber-general who basically told them "Fight until you die and drop or your son gets raped by Persians". And in Ancient Sparta, that was a fucking serious threat.

Really, the Spartans weren't altruistic. They were either ruthless badasses fighting to protect anything they valued or stone-cold blood-crazed bastards fighting out of bloodlust. Take your pick.

I wasn't calling the spartans altruistic, fuck I know they weren't. I was speaking more of mothers lifting cars off of their sons, or random people running into burning buildings and saving entire fucking families... also, you'll notice I put quotation marks around each word. I don't believe true altruism exists...

In that case I would be interested to know why you think it.

because I believe there are some mysteries so outside the realm of detection by normal scientific methods they will never be codified and explained, I believe that in an ever shrinking world, eventually there will rise a force which actively prevents the big mysteries from being codified into banality, and because science is a human institution, and such things always miss or fail at something.

[shirak]

1189992887[/unixtime]]I wasn't calling the spartans altruistic, fuck I know they weren't. I was speaking more of mothers lifting cars off of their sons, or random people running into burning buildings and saving entire fucking families... also, you'll notice I put quotation marks around each word. I don't believe true altruism exists...

I don't know enough about adrenaline and the human body to answer this. I'll try to talk with my best friend who is basically a doctor for athletes and I'll get back to you.

True altruism, what an interesting philosophical concept

1189992887[/unixtime]]because I believe there are some mysteries so outside the realm of detection by normal scientific methods they will never be codified and explained, I believe that in an ever shrinking world, eventually there will rise a force which actively prevents the big mysteries from being codified into banality, and because science is a human intuition, and such things always miss or fail at something.

Technically, you are right. IIRC, Euler proved that science can never fully explain everything. There will always be something our science is blind to. That, unfortunately, doesn't mean it isn't explainable by other people's science.

Hmmm, pretty cool campaign seed. To races go to war because the science of each explains the religion of the other and neither can understand the explanation given!

[JonSetanta]

True generosity and benefaction can also be equated as complete idiocy from a survival viewpoint.
But then again all behaviors must be categorized from single viewpoint of an observer, be it from within or without. And perspective tends to change the facts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect

The most ideal method to categorize what is human and what makes the human soul (if any) unique would have to be observed by something non-human IMO, and since we are the only sentient beings on this planet with culture, foresight, and even written language, I doubt we can find such a third party so easily.
Computers? Are they the mirror?