The art of deception

[lindajdunn]

I think it went out about the same time as the Ivory Trade.

Do you store your Red D Jacket in the closet above your jar of Lucky Rabbits feet and your antique Elephant Foot Ashtray?

Quality never goes out of style.

And don't be silly, this is a non-smoking household. We have no use for an elephant foot... wait a minute.... DUMBO!!!!! What have they done to you????

[foibles]

So.. ahm...yeah...

I seem to owe Migopod an apologie.

Seems White Dragons are Evil after all.

I was confusing them with Silver Dragons.

I take it all back.



My bad.

[migopod]

Sorry for the delay, and although I accept your apology, I wanted to correct some of your misconceptions.

Holy Avenger? Principa Discordia?
Oh that’s rich. So now you’re a Paladin quoting Robert Anton Wilson?!?!
Well “Hail Eris”, freakjob.
Go roll your golden apple somewhere else. We’re all full-up on crazy here.

Yes Holy Avenger. It's good for kicking rump and taking forbidden names.

As far as the Pricipia and Erisianism; first of all, Robert Anton Wilson only created derivative works. Furthermore if you actually read what I wrote about the Law of Fives, my invocation of it was to demonstrate faulty reasoning. The idea that you can make any rule true by simply redefining the terms by which you assess truthiness, hence "the Law of Fives is true because even if it isn't you can force the data into a five or a multiple of five no matter what" is as laughable as "X is always good, so if X does evil then the evil must be interpreted in a context that actually makes it good"

A Rakshasa can only create the illusion of changing their stripes. At the end of the day, where the rubber meets the road, when the illusion fades, as all illusions must, the stripes remain the same.

Point conceded. I was being unnecessarily literal.

Racial profiling? Are you serious? Is it racial profiling to suggest that rattlesnake bites are poisonous? That lurkers above are sneaky? I think not, and no reasonable person would.

Certainly not. Rattlesnakes have evolved venom as a survival strategy as lurkers above have similarly evolved sneaky as a strategy that allows them to thrive in their particular niche (10x10 rooms for some reason). These strategies allowed rattlesnakes and lurkers abobe to outcompete other types of predator in their respective ecological niches and thus the trait exists. This is a function, of course, of genetics and differential reproductive success.

Unless you are making the claim that morality is purely genetic and not somehow culturally defined, I don't see how this is applicable. Furthermore, if a species X is genetically "Good", any individual Y who evolved the capacity for not good would have a tremendous competetive advantage against the rest of its species, thus leading to substantial moral variation within a sentient species (as we see today).

See. That’s just what you people do. Not completely unlike the NEA funded artist that created Piss Christ, you choose a devious selection of half-truths to weave this half baked image of faux mythological reality in order to create a venue for divisiveness and hate mongering pursuant your own private agenda.

AH! The you people card! What do you mean by "you people"? Humans? Paladins? People who immerse crucifixes in urine? I believe that when Andres Serrano created Piss Christ his entire thought process was something along the lines of "Hmm. I bet if I put a crucifix in my own urine, it will make me famous and really annoy people that I could very easily annoy in many ways... but this is easiest". Of course I lack psyonic abilities, and blew my save against postmodernism so my interpretation of his work may be incomplete.

Well I’m not buyin’ it, bucko. Not a coppers worth. And no True American would. Not here. Not in Greyhawk. Not now. And not in 1st edition AD&D of 1977.

Perhaps we should agree to disagree. I agree that you're completely wrong, and you can agree that I'm at least half-right. Viva Compromise!

But grog sounds good.

mmm... grog.....

[Shi no Tenshi]

1. White Dragons are Lawful Good. THEY JUST ARE.

No, they aren't. They are Chaotic Evil. Gold, Silver are Lawful good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromat...9#White_dragon

[I_luv_saber]

The last 2 pages made this whole thread worth it. This needs to go in the F.net Hall of Fame...

[foibles]

No, they aren't. They are Chaotic Evil. Gold, Silver are Lawful good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromat...9#White_dragon

You are so right, Shi no Tenshi. So very right.

And when I learned that. RE-learned that... it hit me, man. Hit me like a ton of bricks. Like a vorpal mace to the noggin. (Which is a hard hit indeed).

Its what you don't know, that you don't know... that gets you in the end, they say.

And it got me to thinking. If I can have a lapse like that, what else may I have mis-considered? I re-read my posts with a fresh eye. Cold. Distant. Non-emotive. To be honest... I didn't always like what I saw.

Could it be that the whole alignment paradigm is, as migopod suggests, completely obsolete? I know that the mass-unconscious understanding of mythological entities has been known to change over time. Are there not now strange permutations of vampires these days, that are little more than a nod to the classics we grew up with? Daywalkers and “good” vampires that keep their humanity pts high by only drinking synthetic or animal blood, etc?

Could it be that morally, breed does not trump pasture, as some ranchers might suggest? That all sentient mythological entities have the ability to choose their thoughts and actions independently of some arbitrary alignment chart?

Clearly, I needed someone with a higher unmodified base wisdom score than my own to help me puzzle through these challenging questions.

So I did what I often do at times like these. I asked my local cleric about it. (16int/ 18wis/). And he did what HE often does... Rather than actually answer my questions, he only asked me more. Not Socratic questions, where your own answers lead you to some forgone conclusion that you hadn't yet considered, but those evasive kind, that tend to tick you off... and send you packing towards someone less annoying to talk to. Like my Dwarven drinking/ workout partner, Briquette.

My confidence in my position now completely shaken by the annoying cleric, I had her read through the thread prior to our weekly 5k run (she's horrible at distance... "Dwarves", she tells me, "are naturally fast-twitch, wasted on x-country")... but I digress. She said something else that froze the blood in my veins. “You” she said, "are the divisive hate monger”. After I picked my mouth up off the floor, we talked some more. And some things started to make some sense.

Well. I’m still unsure, and it would take a long time to type it all out here, but I think I’m beginning to look at things a little differently than I did prior to this thread.

I need to go walk on a beach for a while...

[DoomPig]

I have reason to suspect that migopod is in fact a unicorn.

[Inquartata]

"...with a difference."