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A simple question?

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Started 1 year ago by kyler
Latest reply from M. J. Young

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kyler
Member

This question is for the reader, in this case, you.

You're living a day in your (relatively) mundane life when you cross paths with an attractive (by aesthetic), muscular man dressed in advanced clothing the likes of which you've never seen who seems to be living very well for himself despite the fact that he seems to be carrying his every belonging with him in various bags. For reasons unfathomable, he takes a shine to you, and makes you an offer of immortality and eternal youth if all you will do is but follow him wherever he may go even beyond death were it to come to that.

What would your reaction be?

Fri Oct 22 2010 1:12 pm #
Jhiaxus
Member

Do I have to service him?

Fri Oct 22 2010 1:34 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

HELL NO!!!! I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm kind of looking forward to dying.

Fri Oct 22 2010 1:55 pm #
kyler
Member

Service him?

My expectation would be that he would laugh it off and tell you he's straight.

Fri Oct 22 2010 1:59 pm #
Jhiaxus
Member

I'm just saying, you mentioned him as good looking, had to make sure :P

Fri Oct 22 2010 2:08 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

Yeah, that would be the deal breaker.

Fri Oct 22 2010 3:21 pm #
kyler
Member

... serious answers welcome...

Fri Oct 22 2010 4:26 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

I think I would be horrified at the idea of actually becoming a verser. People are supposed to die. It's the way things are. If it happened, I'd try to make the most of it, but I'd probably be looking for a way to make it stop.

Fri Oct 22 2010 6:16 pm #
Nikolaj
Member

I would look at him and smile. I would tell him that I already have eternal life. If he wants to know how I'll tell him about Jesus.

This is a serious answer.

Fri Oct 22 2010 6:20 pm #
Jhiaxus
Member

In all seriousness I would accept it, if not for the simple fact of natural curiosity. Once I figured out once you are in you are in, the verser better hold certain standards I adhere to, or I would go my own way.

Fri Oct 22 2010 7:21 pm #
Glantri
Member

Curiosity along with a desire to improve myself (which I would interpret eternal youth as such a thing) would drive me to jump right in. Intrigue can get me into all sorts of trouble.

Fri Oct 22 2010 9:05 pm #
kyler
Member

My fiancee says she would tell the guy that's the most ridiculous thing she ever heard in her life and punch the guy in the face.

(She'd probably miss)

Fri Oct 22 2010 11:52 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

Kyler, why in the name of Sir Issac H. Newton did you say a man? A good looking woman would be much more likely to tempt a board full of guys.

Fri Oct 22 2010 11:57 pm #
kyler
Member

substitute woman, then, if you like.

Sat Oct 23 2010 12:05 am #
M. J. Young
Moderator

I probably wouldn't.

For one thing, it's an incredible offer in the literal sense of the word--I simply wouldn't believe it.

For another, I would be very suspicious that this might be a cheat--Mephistopheles is a con artist and a cheat. Even if I were certain that the terms of the deal weren't going to lead me to hell (and the way you've phrased them doesn't guarantee me that they won't) I'm not persuaded that he couldn't lie about that point anyway.

Third, I'm probably getting too old for adventures. He'd have to persuade me that he could cure my asthma, restore my body to a more youthful vigor, fix my teeth--I'm not sure about my eyesight and hearing (I've lived with the bad eyesight for a lot of years, but always took glasses for granted; the hearing has started to become a bit of a challenge more recently). I'm really not fit for such a life.

Fourth, I'm afraid there is at least one person I would not leave behind. There are probably several others I would not leave (five come to mind very quickly). I know I'm going to have to leave them eventually, but I'm not rushing the deal--and anyway, I think I've alerted them all to look for me at the East Side, Center Gate, so I figure that would be an interruption, and this offer would be a permanent separation.

And I would say in my case "woman" only complicates the matter.

Of course, we're talking at this point about a stranger on the street. He could be anyone. The odds of him being not crazy given his claims are pretty slim--and he doesn't have naturally pointed ears or cat-like slitted pupil eyes or other obviously alien features to give credibility to the notion that he's not from around here.

It might change a bit if I knew him longer than hello.

--M. J. Young

Sat Oct 23 2010 3:07 am #
Tadeusz
Member

I'd be deeply skeptical to the point where I'd probably say no, although I'd be willing to have the guy continue to explain it to me.

As one guy said to me 'Eric you take a long time making up your mind, but then you don't change it.'

And I'd want to take my family with me.

And advanced clothing is probably not enough to convince me, unless its really advanced.

And this would probably freak me out to some degree because the idea of people being nice to me for no good reason does. Even now, when someone does something nice for me out of the blue, I'm a little freaked.

Sat Oct 23 2010 4:22 am #
JohnA1nut
Member

And this would probably freak me out to some degree because the idea of people being nice to me for no good reason does. Even now, when someone does something nice for me out of the blue, I'm a little freaked.

Ain't paranoia wonderful?

Sat Oct 23 2010 4:26 am #
Brock
Member

I'd strike up a conversation with him, learn what spawned his offer, and then decide. The details matter. I'd ask him about his past adventures and all that too.

Sat Oct 23 2010 4:43 am #
WilliamTWodium
Member

I'm not alone with this man, am I?

If I'm in public, I'm relatively safe, and I can simply excuse myself as politely as I may - I've got family here, after all.

If I'm alone with this potentially dangerous eccentric, put him off until we're in public and I can disentangle myself from him. Ask him to elaborate while I think about it, and by the way I'm hungry so let's head to a (highly public) cafe, how about that one near the bus stop?

Sat Oct 23 2010 4:45 am #
JohnA1nut
Member

If I'm in public, I'm relatively safe

I wouldn't count on that. People are strange, and it's not like there are very many prisons which can hold a verser.

One problem though with immortality, or so I've read. The older members of the forum probably noticed that, as they got older, time feels like it's accelerating. A week feels like it flies by. When you were a child, a year until your birthday was nearly an eternity, now, it seems like it didn't take long at all. There's actually a scientific reason for this. I don't remember it exactly, but it has something to do with the way your brain stores memories. If you were truly immortal, after a while, years would seem to fly by. You'd live a year, and think it was only a matter of days. For a verser who was aged several millennia, decades would seem to take minutes. Centuries would seem to last a year, tops. I think that would probably cut down on the enjoyment of it.

Sun Oct 24 2010 8:59 am #
Glantri
Member

The theory you're mentioning is that you view the same percentage of your life passing as the same amount of time. a 1 year old views 3.5 days as a 100 year old views a year.

I believe that theory is only applied toward the way one remembers time however, and specifically doesn't affect the actual process of experiencing it. As such there is enjoyment there, it just when they remember it it seems like it went by too quick. Then again they don't remember many slow spots, since time streams by so fast.

Sun Oct 24 2010 2:36 pm #
M. J. Young
Moderator

People are strange, and it's not like there are very many prisons which can hold a verser.

John, you are the only person in this thread to have assumed that the man is quite capable of making good his seemingly absurd and impossible (and thus incredible in the literal sense: lacking any credibility such that we would believe it) offer. The best any of us have allowed is "It might be possible and is worth exploring." Scott rather clearly has taken the position of "That's fiction, and this guy believes it, so he must be crazy." The possibility that the man might be a verser does not enter the equation unless you accept the possibility that there might be such a thing as a verser--and I, who am co-creator of the game concept, am pretty skeptical of it as a reality. I really believe that there are not a vast number of divergent dimensions more or less like our own in which anything is possible. I say so in the book. It's just fun to contemplate as a game.

And Mike hit it right. Sure, days seem longer when you're younger, and years seem longer, because every unit of time is measured in memory against your remembered life to this point. But there are three other factors. One is that the percentage of your life that is a minute is not significantly different when you are eleven hundred years old than it was when you were only a thousand, and thus the effect is attenuated over time. The second is that memory is only partial, and you remember less of events as you grow. After all, the first dozen times you sit on a real toilet are going to be important at the time, but five years later they fade to insignificance, and so do all the other times you do that. You remember things because they are different. The sameness of events causes you to have fewer milestones in your memory, and thus to look back over years as times in which almost nothing happened. The third is that your experience of the forward motion of time is not based on memory or percentage, but on the speed with which you can do things within it. If it still takes twenty minutes to walk a mile, you will experience that twenty minute walk over the course of twenty minutes. You might not remember it the same way, if you've made the same walk ever day for twenty years, but the experience is still of some two thousand steps taken one at a time, one every three seconds.

--M. J. Young

Sun Oct 24 2010 9:19 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

John, you are the only person in this thread to have assumed that the man is quite capable of making good his seemingly absurd and impossible (and thus incredible in the literal sense: lacking any credibility such that we would believe it) offer.

I'm open-minded almost to a fault about things which are strange and unusual. Loch Ness? Prove there isn't a prehistoric reptile in there. Bigfoot? If it didn't exist, no one would ever see it, now would they? This guy says I can live forever and be young for all eternity? Didn't a man by the name of Jesus Christ make a similar claim? Point is, anything is possible.

The best any of us have allowed is "It might be possible and is worth exploring." Scott rather clearly has taken the position of "That's fiction, and this guy believes it, so he must be crazy."

All the more reason to assume that you're not safe in public.

Sun Oct 24 2010 9:58 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

Two

The possibility that the man might be a verser does not enter the equation unless you accept the possibility that there might be such a thing as a verser--and I, who am co-creator of the game concept, am pretty skeptical of it as a reality. I really believe that there are not a vast number of divergent dimensions more or less like our own in which anything is possible. I say so in the book. It's just fun to contemplate as a game.

So you don't actually believe in the theory of the Multiverse? Honestly, I think that's one of the single most arrogant notions someone can possibly have, that we are completely alone. That there is no other life in this universe, no other life anywhere. Why would an all-powerful God create only one planet with life on it? Like, God just woke up one morning, got bored, and said "Gee, I think I'll make a universe today." NOOOOOO!!!! God has been creating worlds and creating universes for a very long time. I think the idea that humans are the only intelligent life anywhere is arrogant and foolhardy. God always has been and always will be creating worlds.

Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

Heavens, plural, more than one.

Do us both a favor and don't argue with me about it.

Mon Oct 25 2010 4:44 am #
Brock
Member

This is how that remark comes across to me: "You don't think there are a whole bunch of universes in existence? How close-minded. I am open minded and believe! I KNOW God made a bunch of worlds! Of COURSE there are other intelligent beings! It's stupid to think there isn't, or to be skeptical! I'm right and you're wrong, so don't argue with me about it! Nyaah Nyaah Nyaah Nyaah Nyaah Nyaaaaaah!"

Really, must you always provoke people? I happen to agree with your point of view. I do think there is other intelligent life somewhere. I don't know that it is more than one UNIVERSE, but I think another planet somewhere should have some kind of advanced life forms on it. However, I wouldn't dream of stating my disagreement with someone the way you just did.

I might say, for example, "Based on the estimated size of the universe, and the statistical odds of all the necessary events happening on a given suitable planet to produce life, I think it likely there is some other form of advanced life somewhere in the vastness of the universe, though whether or not it is anywhere near close enough for us to discover anytime soon is debatable."

Seriously, just stop and think about how your statement will make people FEEL.

Mon Oct 25 2010 5:13 am #
Glantri
Member

Do us both a favor and don't argue with me about it.

That's very childish, and even if a child said it I think I would point out to them how immature it was.

Mon Oct 25 2010 5:26 am #
WilliamTWodium
Member

All the more reason to assume that you're not safe in public.

I said "relatively safe" - as in, relative to how safe I would be if I were alone with him.

I choose my words carefully, precisely to forestall this kind of misinterpretation and the resulting conversational tangent. It doesn't always work.

Mon Oct 25 2010 7:13 am #
JohnA1nut
Member

Do us both a favor and don't argue with me about it.

That's very childish, and even if a child said it I think I would point out to them how immature it was.

No, it's not childish. It's in anticipation of how I know MJ will respond. He's going to want to write a 50,000 word essay explaining why my statement is wrong. A 50,000 word essay that will be a waste of his time to write and a waste of my time to read, which won't make a lick of difference in how I think. What you see as a childish statement is actually nothing more than a statement of practicality. If he just let's me have this skewed point of view, we won't waste a lot of time with something utterly pointless. Thus, if he doesn't argue with me, he will, in the literal sense, be doing both of us a favor. What you see as a childish statement is a statement of practicality.

Mon Oct 25 2010 12:15 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

Two

Mistake

Mon Oct 25 2010 12:36 pm #
Brock
Member

It is childish of you to refuse to change your point of view for anyone or anything yet expect others to change theirs on command.

Mon Oct 25 2010 12:47 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

I don't expect anyone to change for me.

Mon Oct 25 2010 12:56 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

Two

I said "relatively safe" - as in, relative to how safe I would be if I were alone with him.

I choose my words carefully, precisely to forestall this kind of misinterpretation and the resulting conversational tangent. It doesn't always work.

Yeah Scott, I misunderstood you. I'm reminded of a parable. A housefly is flying along and sees a frog. The frog wants to eat the housefly, and says "Why don't you come down here so that we can have a nice cup of tea together?" The housefly says "I don't see any other houseflies down there. I only land where there are other houseflies because I know it's safe." He flies away. A little while later, the housefly sees a spiderweb with dozens of other flies on it. He says "This must be a safe place to land. Look at all of those houseflies!!" Of course, he becomes the spider's next meal. The moral of the story is that there is no true safety in numbers, or anywhere else.

Mon Oct 25 2010 1:24 pm #
M. J. Young
Moderator

Do us both a favor and don't argue with me about it.

Yeah, yeah, no.

Since Brock put the argument best, I will quote him:

Based on the estimated size of the universe, and the statistical odds of all the necessary events happening on a given suitable planet to produce life, I think it likely there is some other form of advanced life somewhere in the vastness of the universe, though whether or not it is anywhere near close enough for us to discover anytime soon is debatable.

I think that the ability to calculate the statistical odds are a bit daunting.

I'm trying to remember the name of the famed atheist who once debated C. S. Lewis. He was an Oxford scholar who believed that there was insufficient evidence for the existence of God. When the Human Genome Project published its findings, he--wait, I know where to find it. I mentioned him some years ago when I wrote Faith and Gaming: Teleology. His name is Antony Flew, and at 81 years old he became a deist after having been perhaps the world's foremost living atheist. He did so because he said he realized that the basic building blocks of life could not have happened by "any combination of chance and the known laws of science".

If Flew is correct, then the probability of life occurring anywhere in the universe, including here, is zero. In that case, it must have appeared here based on something other than chance; and if that is so, no argument from probability can establish that it might have occurred more than once, since it is against all probability for it to have occurred even once.

Now, I'm not so arrogant as to say that I am certain there's no life anywhere else in the universe. All I will say is I consider it highly improbable, yet just as I also consider it highly improbable that we will ever travel through time I have put my mind at times to the problems inherent in the ramifications of the possibility. That is, I have given some thought to what it would mean for there to be "intelligent aliens" out there.

I've got an article somewhere about that, but it's not been published and I don't see it appearing any time soon; I also don't see the point in copying it to the forum.

Now, what I said was

I really believe that there are not a vast number of divergent dimensions more or less like our own in which anything is possible. I say so in the book. It's just fun to contemplate as a game.

I do not consider it arrogant to have made that statement, any more than I consider it arrogant for me to say that I really believe that Wawa has the best price on half and half in our area, and Rite Aid has the best price on whole milk. I have made some investigations and reached a conclusion. The evidence is adequate for me. I certainly did not say that you would be stupid or arrogant to believe otherwise; I can see that you might find some of the evidence of additional dimensions compelling (although the suggestion that there are dimensions we cannot perceive that are part of this universe is a far cry from stating that there are entire universes unknown to us). I personally believe that other universes do not exist, or that if they do they are so completely unlike ours that they are rather irrelevant to any discussions we might have.

--M. J. Young

Wed Oct 27 2010 1:23 am #
kyler
Member

New question.

You're zygoted into a world and are born as a cow, and are treated with reverence by the indigs.

Is this world probably offensive to people who practice Hinduism?

Wed Nov 3 2010 2:24 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

Without question.

Wed Nov 3 2010 3:19 pm #
Nikolaj
Member

I don't know. If I'm dropped into a world that has Christian themes, it does not offend me. If I'm Zygoted as Christ I would stop that game though.

The Hindu's believe that they might reincarnate into a cow, so I don't see how it would be offensive to them, except when that means they had a bad lifestyle so now they are a cow...

But my knowledge of Hindu religion is faded, and it wasn't much to begin with...

Wed Nov 3 2010 6:06 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

How would you ever verse out? The indigs aren't going to kill you, a cow isn't really capable of committing suicide, and versers don't die of old age. You'd be viewed with absolute holy reverence after (What's the normal lifespan of a cow?) when you were still alive 20 years after you should have kicked the bucket.

Wed Nov 3 2010 6:36 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

Two

If I'm Zygoted as Christ I would stop that game though.

Nikolaj, this probably will sound like an incredibly stupid question, but why would you stop the game?

Wed Nov 3 2010 7:02 pm #
Nikolaj
Member

It doesn't. There's a few reasons. One, I'm not Christ, second, Christ was God became man and sinless, not a failing/sinning verser. The rest is even deeper theology.

Wed Nov 3 2010 7:09 pm #
Jhiaxus
Member

I take offense to that, Jesus most certainly did sin, if he was human it happened. The rest I understand.

Wed Nov 3 2010 7:15 pm #
Nikolaj
Member

If that would be the case His death was in vain, our sins have not been pardoned and all that leads to, which is faulty because His Spirit in me testifies of Him.

Wed Nov 3 2010 7:24 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

Adam wrote:

Jesus most certainly did sin

You do realize you just made MJ waste an hour whilst he explains this to you, right?

Wed Nov 3 2010 7:31 pm #
Jhiaxus
Member

Ok as much as I loathe religion talk, I won't let something as illogical, and frankly wrong pass. I spent many years in Catholic School, and although I disliked it, it was pretty fair assessment of the Catholic Faith. Jesus spent 30+ years as a man and carpenter. I can accept that he took ALL our sins on himself for our behalf and died for OUR sins. I'm not going much out on a limb that both logic and conventional religious wisdom agree, that as a man, not knowing his role for 30+ years, he sinned. There are few things I put my foot down with religion, but this is one of them.

Wed Nov 3 2010 7:35 pm #
JohnA1nut
Member

Ok as much as I loathe religion talk, I won't let something as illogical, and frankly wrong pass.

And that's exactly how MJ sees your statement. Illogical and frankly wrong. I don't really think it much matters.

Wed Nov 3 2010 7:42 pm #
Nikolaj
Member

Why would you think he did not know his role?

Wed Nov 3 2010 7:51 pm #

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