unreality

~~~ Round One: ~~~ Frost * Freeze - Frozen * Shield - PG * Curse - CL * Coup de Grace - Alyanna * Flummox - CL * Vacuum - dawh * Magnetic Surge Frozen * Freeze-Frost * Shield-dawh * Curse-PG * Coup de Grace-GC * Flummox-PG * Vacuum-Frost * Quid Pro Quo II CL * Freeze – Frozen in Fire * Shield - Alyanna * Curse - Frost * Coup de Grace - Frost * Flummox – Dragonjest22 * Vacuum - Mekal * Quid Pro Quo II PG * Freeze - CL * Shield - Mekal * Curse - Frozen * Coup de Grace - [Nobody] * Flummox - Frost * Vacuum - Panther * Quid Pro Quo II GC * Freeze - CL * Shield - PG * Curse - Frost * Coup de Grace - Mekal * Flummox - Dawh * Vacuum - Alyanna * Quid Pro Quo 2 Panther * Freeze - Frost * Shield - Frozen in fire * Curse - Mekal * Coup de Grace - [Nobody] * Flummox - CL * Vacuum - [Nobody] * Magnetic Surge Dragonjest22 * Freeze - Frozen * Shield - PG * Curse - Dawh * Coup de Grace - CL * Flummox - Mekal * Vacuum - [Nobody] * Quid Pro Quo II Foolonthehill * Freeze - foolonthehill * Shield - PG * Curse - Mekal * Coup de Grace - Mekal * Flummox - Frost * Vacuum - [Nobody] * Quid Pro Quo II Mekal * Freeze - FIF * Shield - Footonthehill * Curse - Frost * Coup de Grace - CL * Flummox - Alyanna * Vacuum - Panther * SOC- Magelore Dawh * Freeze: Mekal * Shield: Cherry Lane * Curse: Mekal * Coup de Grace: foolonthehill * Flummox: GC * Vacuum: Frost * Spell of Choice: Magnetic Surge Alyanna ? [Did not PM in moves] I rolled for Vacuums, only Frost's and GC's succeeded. Frost (#1 on the roster)'s Vacuum was rolled to suck up all spells cast ON the target (Frost's target was dawh), and GC's Vacuum was rolled to suck up all spells cast BY the target. However GC's target was Alyanna, so this didn't have any effect lol - so whether or not Alyanna PMed her moves in doesn't matter anyway Spells cast on Dawh that will be sucked up by Frost's Vacuum: Shield by Frozen, Flummox by GC, and Curse by Dragonjest22. Next, 3 people cast Magnetic Surge - this blur of massive electromagnetic force ramped up the Flummox chance from 25% to 37% (4% * 3 = 12%, added to 25% is 37%). I then rolled my d100 (two 10-sided dice ), and a result of 00 to 36 meant your Flummox succeeded. Flummox Casters: Frozen, CL, GC, Panther, Dawh There were some close calls so the Magnetic Fluxes definitely had a major effect Remember that Flummox has a 1/3 to mix up Freeze and Shield, 1/3 to mix up Curse and Shield, and 1/3 to mix up Flummox and Curse. So going from the top-ranked Flummoxer (Frozen) to the bottom (Dawh), I rolled for their mix-up: Frozen: mixed up PG's Freeze and Shield targets CL: mixed up Dragonjest22's Curse and Shield GC: mixed up Dawh's Curse and Shield Panther: mixed up CL's Curse and Shield Dawh: mixed up GC's Flummox and Curse, however GC was higher up on the roster and already cast his Flummox, thus Dawh's switch has no effect Now for the roster removing already done stuff, removing spells on GC, removing [Nobody] target spells, and calculating any mixups: Frost * Freeze - Frozen * Shield - PG * Curse - CL * Coup de Grace - Alyanna Frozen * Freeze-Frost * Curse-PG * Coup de Grace-GC * Quid Pro Quo II CL * Freeze – Frozen in Fire * Shield - Frost * Curse - Alyanna * Coup de Grace - Frost * Quid Pro Quo II PG * Freeze - Mekal * Shield - CL * Curse - Frozen * Quid Pro Quo II GC * Freeze - CL * Shield - PG * Curse - Frost * Coup de Grace - Mekal * Quid Pro Quo 2 Panther * Freeze - Frost * Shield - Frozen in fire * Curse - Mekal Dragonjest22 * Freeze - Frozen * Curse - PG * Coup de Grace - CL * Quid Pro Quo II Foolonthehill * Freeze - foolonthehill * Shield - PG * Curse - Mekal * Coup de Grace - Mekal * Quid Pro Quo II Mekal * Freeze - FIF * Shield - Footonthehill * Curse - Frost * Coup de Grace - CL * SOC- Magelore Dawh * Freeze: Mekal * Shield: Mekal * Curse: Cherry Lane * Coup de Grace: foolonthehill Frozen got 4 Freezes cast on him lol, so he doesn't freeze. Frost got 2 Freezes, so he's fine. Mekal got 2 as well. The only person that gets frozen for next round is Foolonthehill, who froze himself Now for Shield Point stuff: Duel Master: Unreality 1) Frost - 5 2) Frozen in Fire - 5 3) CL - 5 4) PG - 5 5) GC - 5 6) Panther - 5 7) Dragonjest22 - 5 8) foolonthehill - 5 9) Mekal - 5 10) Dawh - 5 11) Alyanna - 5 After the Shields and Curses: Duel Master: Unreality 1) Frost - 4 2) Frozen in Fire - 5 3) CL - 4 4) PG - 6 5) GC - 5 6) Panther - 5 7) Dragonjest22 - 5 8) foolonthehill - 6 9) Mekal - 5 10) Dawh - 5 11) Alyanna - 4 After Quid Pro Quo II's: Duel Master: Unreality 1) Frost - 3 2) Frozen in Fire - 4 3) CL - 4 4) PG - 5 5) GC - 5 6) Panther - 5 7) Dragonjest22 - 4 8) foolonthehill - 6 9) Mekal - 5 10) Dawh - 5 11) Alyanna - 4 That's it for the first round, except for one more thing: Mekal's Magelore! The new Spell of Choice is: ** Ascension - [takes effect before anything else] during the round that you used it in, your rank is as if it subtracted 11. For example, the 11th person becomes 11-11 = rank 0. The 8th person becomes 8-11 = -3. This gives the upper hand in Vacuums and Flummoxes Remember that anyone can use that now, not just Mekal, and that as some people start dying off Flummoxes and Vacuums will be less common and less likely to happen with a smaller group The beginning is a whir of confusion lol Also, I won't be going this in-depth for every single round description, but I wanted to for the first round so you guys can get more understanding of how the game will work. So the new Shield Point stats are: Duel Master: Unreality 1) Frost - 3 2) Frozen in Fire - 4 3) CL - 4 4) PG - 5 5) GC - 5 6) Panther - 5 7) Dragonjest22 - 4 8) foolonthehill - 6 9) Mekal - 5 10) Dawh - 5 11) Alyanna - 4 And Round 2 has begun! It will end in approximately 23 hours, maybe a bit later. PM in your spell choices ;D Also you can make alliances with people, though I think it's best if you make the overbearing legalities of the alliance IN the topic. You can discuss specific private strategies via PM of course AFTER you've formed the alliance, and you can CC me if you want but you don't have to Anyway, all the above happened in a split second of roaring energy, and you wily mages you are already bringing more crackling lightning to your fingertips for the next barrage!

I tried it out, looks pretty good. I'll have time to finish mine this weekend, and since I can't see the coding of anything else (and don't understand PHP anyway ) it'll be the only one I trust, lol. Unless I can't get the function evaluator to work right, then I'll use taliesin's lol. All I have left to do is to program the EDITA/B/C commands and then the function evaluator (the "function function" haha)

I thought both candidates' reasoning for anti-gay-marriage was horrible. What's wrong with it? Why are people so against that? So, they can't make babies. If someone thinks that's the point of marriage, they need to get in the modern world. The point today is love or happiness or responsibility or whatever, not churning out children and contributing to the world's overpopulation anyway... the better thing, if they were wealthier, would be to adopt. Much better for humanity anyway than a straight couple who are marrying to procreate in the name of the Bible lol. Who cares if the Bible says "a marriage should be between a man and a woman"? It's the freaking Bible! Sorry, that just angers me. lol, back to the debate, I actually think it was insightful. They actually answered more questions than I was expecting, and here's what I think: * Not sure about the economy. I'm not an economist nor am I remotely knowledgeable in the inner workings of the economy, so I really can't judge here, either way * As for the Iraq war, Palin definitely lost here. The Obama/Biden plan is sooo much better for America, Iraq, Afghanistan and the whole world than the McCain/Palin "plan"

I agree with you 100% And I thought it was interesting that your last word was "choice" - this is what I mean by free will. I thought about it more last night and early this morning, and came to the conclusion [via some free will paradoxes and stuff and that we clearly affect the world around us with the choices our brain makes] is that free will is this: Free Will = we have the ability to choose what we think And, in a way, we do. Our brain chooses what to think about and how to think about it, and then comes up with a conclusion. We are our brain and thus we are this thinking process. So our consciousness is actively making these choices. The brain uses its biological makeup to think, solve problems and even be creative. Most of our brain's activity is largely out of the control of our thinking, of course. We feel emotions, we don't choose to feel them. Same for many thoughts, urges, etc. I'm definitely not saying that we have total free will, and most of the "decision-making" falls under the 'unconscious' circle of our brain, or rather OUTSIDE of the 'consciousness' circle (think of an intersecting Venn diagram), but part of the "decision-making" of the brain intersects with the 'consciousness' part. Think of two circles, the left is "consciousness", the right is "decision making". The intersect is free will, at least with my definition of it, and I think yours too Aaaanyway, I think responsibility is more interesting, actually. Free will is so vague and paradoxical that I'm starting to not care as much lol. Can we be held responsible for our actions? I say yes. Can an animal? It depends on the animal. We aren't much different from many other intelligent mammals, ones that know what they're doing, and as long as they know what they are doing is wrong according to the society that can punish them, they shouldn't do it. I mean that's what it boils down to, right? Criminals should be held responsible not just philosophically (we are our brains, our brain did choose to commit that crime. Choices are definitely part of life), but also in a more grounded way, based on the fact that they are likely to commit another crime in the future. "Detain the uncooperative organisms" would be a nice evolutionary way to say it lol

This may be out of place, so any moderator/admin can delete it as they please: Prime, spoiler tags are there for a reason If you don't want the answer, don't open it ;D Assuming bn used spoilers of course, if he didn't then it's his fault

Yeah I agree - unfortunately with the wishy-washy-ness of today's politicians, moderators play a bigger role in the debate than they should

I agree about the Dems playing safe and the spotlight on the Reps... and I didn't know that about the moderator. You would tihnk that at least someone in the political hierarchy would bring her book to attention, so it must've been considered and they made the decision that she was going to be unbiased. I guess we'll see how it turns out

Any more similar problems, Ysan? This one was great

Any predictions/comments about the VP debate?

Questions From PG: 1 - Can we cast as many spells as we want? One on each player? 2 - Can we cast the same spell on more than one person in the same round? 3 - What are the "locked" spells?? 1- Each round you cast one of each spell. You can choose not to cast any spell. Special Case: if you choose to not cast Shield, you cannot cast Curse either, and vice versa. For each spell you cast, you cast it on ONE player only (the target), except for Choice Spells, which have no target 2- You can't cast the same spell twice in one round. Each round, you cast each spell exactly once Sorry if that wasn't clear in the OP 3- I haven't made them up yet There's no list of locked spells or anything From Frost: What would happen if multiple people cast Magelore? Would that only unlock one spell per round? Answer: Each Magelore spell cast would unlock one spell. Remember that Magelore only unlocks Spells of Choice Does that help? edit: If rounds are going to be 24 hours (this would work best for the game as well as my schedule), there's about 20 hours left to PM in your spell choices

He obviously meant 47, with 1 more to go to, then Alaska and Hawaii off limits (2 more). While he said 57+1+2 = 60, he meant 47+1+2 = 50. I personally don't care if a candidate slips up their speech every now and then, of course they're going to. But if he actually thought there was 57 states, that would be really bad But the numbers fit so perfectly that if he pronounced "forty" as "fifty" instead, I find it hard to believe he actually thought there was 60 states

the AI would also have "free will" in the sense that you and I do, if we did. But I think we're thinking about different definitions - I'm not talking complete, free, independent free will. More of the fact that we do have responsibility for our decisions as our consciousness is a manifestation of our brain and thus we make the decisions we do based on our stimuli, our environment, and our brain. On a particle level, of course we don't have free will. Particles bouncing around randomly endows no such behavior. But on a higher concept, for example human interaction, we don't deal with particles, we deal with people, and thus "free will" in the way I'm defining it exists if it's only an illusion BECAUSE it's an illusion (on the lower level). Which is why it's a vague concept

No computer week?

To boil it down into a very simple paragraph: We have the ability to affect our surroundings. Many things do. Every thing does. Our brains, ant colonies, and everything else. The difference is that our brains, and ant colones, have developed, over time via evolution, the ability to make decisions based on input. Input -> Output Stuff goes in, decision gets made, stuff goes out. So what happens in the brain? Well (okay two paragraphs ), reread my OP about emergent behavior in complex systems and whatnot, and that's how the decisions get made. Many individual autonomous parts following simple rules, and from this emerges intelligent behavior and decision-making. Intelligent as in 'it can solve the problems that it's presented with'. Now what else is an emergent behavior of our brains? (okay three paragraphs ) Consciousness! A feeling of self that we hold special, but really many other mammals are also self-aware. Anyway, so "we" (our consciousness) and our brain are linked in that one results from the other. We aren't just the residents of our brain and our body, we ARE our brain and our body. Even though our "higher consciousness" may not be aware of all the goings-on of the more autonomous body parts, we ARE our brain. We ARE the decision-making processes that it does. That's why we are held accountable for our actions. Even if there is no free will (as it really depends on how you define the concept, in certain definitions I would say no, in others I would say yes), saying that you can't be held accountable for your actions is a silly excuse. You ARE your actions, and your mind = brain = the decisions you make based on your input. In the end, it doesn't matter whether or not free will exists, because we can't go back in time and see if an outcome would happen differently, and if we could it would change everything so it would be different no matter what. I'm saying that we react to our stimuli, but that we do have 'choice' in the matter of how we react. It may not be much choice - it could be as small as neurons disconnecting and reconnecting elsewhere to transmit an electrical signal - but from simple rules comes complex structures, and we didn't really consciously move that neuron, it's what our brain does. But we ARE our brain, so the brain's decisions are OUR decisions. That's what I'm trying to say. There were different ways we could've solved a problem, but we chose to solve it in a certain way, perhaps because over time the brain learned to solve it that way. And we are our brain So maybe there was a misunderstanding about the definition of free will, but I think that the whole concept is vague and complex enough so that in a way it doesn't matter much ;D

Final Roster: Duel Master: Unreality 1) Frost 2) Frozen in Fire 3) CL 4) PG 5) GC 6) Panther 7) Dragonjest22 8) foolonthehill 9) Mekal 10) Dawh 11) Alyanna "And go!" the Duel Master bellows, stepping backward just in time to avoid a blur of spells as powerful arcs cross paths with blazing lightning and rippling waves of force. The Mage Duel has begun! PM in your spell choices Template: * Freeze - * Shield - * Curse - * Coup de Grace - * Flummox - * Vacuum - * [spell of Choice Name Here] Remember that no target is needed for the Spells of Choice ;D

I'm not sure I follow what you're doing... is there any input in that? Where exactly are the 200 or so lines of the VNA? (The VNA size is a changeable variable in mine actually) Well, I'll explain: SPLIT a - unless there's already 5 executors running, a new executor is created, primed to run at the line denoted by 'a'. The current executor (the one that executed the SPLIT) jumps forward 1 as usual MERGE - deletes the most recently created executor, and unless the deleted executor is the executor that ran the MERGE, the current executor jumps forward 1 as usual

Yeah I know that it was an infinite regress, but I assumed that Logician > Merlin in decided "where" to stop in the infinite regress, just cuz the Logician is that good

I think I understand now where Izzy was confused. She associated randomism (my name for what she called "indeterminism") with free will. Clearly they are both opposites of determinism. But free will vs TOTAL randomism is a separate debate WITHIN randomism. I'm saying that free will emerges from complex structures within randomism, allowing for manipulation of the environment, while total randomism would say that we have no control whatsoever over our actions

I think I've got it covered, you can if you want It'd probably be better and more accessible to everyone than mine ;D I'll work more on mine tomorrow - let us know if you decide to make one too

Also, this post was made with an atheistic standpoint. I'm gonna be honest and say that we don't care what your religion preaches about free will, we know already . So if you're just going to post to say what your holy book says that a prophet said that a deity said about the issue, please don't bother ;D

You're associating this with determinism/indeterminism debate, which was over a long time ago: determinism loses, randomism wins. I even stated that in the beginning of the post All of the above was assuming that you accept quantum physics and random particle motion. But either way it doesn't matter, because the OP was based on free will. Clearly there is randomness in chaos in the universe (I stated such in the first paragraph). What I'm addressing is whether or not we have free will, which is different. My OP was not a "drawn out argument for indeterminism". If you think it was then reread it, please

Um, no. This has nothing to do with determinism or indeterminism. At all.

Of course, just don't cheat Hehe, I'm just kidding, no offense taken I hope ;D Duel Master: Unreality 1) Frost 2) Frozen in Fire 3) CL 4) PG 5) GC 6) Panther 7) Dragonjest22 8) foolonthehill 9) Mekal anyone else?

thanks

I don't follow. There's no such thing as determinism or "clockwork", the universe is very random & chaotic. But none of that makes or breaks free will