Rusty;
First off, most impressive. I would argue that you are looking more at my diction, inverted and mis-spaced typing, and other such sundries to edify your point moreso than other things. However, I'm the one that came here on this website and announced myself, so I can only applaud your efforts.
I have somewhat restrained from my usual hurried manner of typing, to decrease my grammatical errors, and have likewise restrained from getting fugazied before I answer you.
I'll requote you here, for the purpose of clarification.
"An interesting post. Your usage of analogies is impressive, but comparisons are generally unfair or incorrect."
It is the doom of all that we tend to use Ricardan Vanity when we debate. However, any comparison I may make is simply a way of clarifying without getting too obtuse.
Your analogy about spilling a drink on somebody illustrated to me that you carry the assumption that I am meddling in what I am observing. What I am observing, and hencely studying somewhat, has nothing to do with raising resources for the TP. I am here to learn about the brain can as much as I can, perhaps even find the prototype of the interface, and report that. Whilst I am here, I do need to operate in my normal capacities and get some funding for others that will be operating in the near subjective future.
"What I can't figure is that you're unable to supply, probably, one of the most important details (to you as an individual) of an exact date of birth. Date of birth is probably one of the few specific peices of information anyone could provide."
Has somebody asked me my birthdate and I missed it? I was born on June 2nd, 1969. I have no siblings, have never had anything but a passing contact with any extended family, and both of my parents were dead by 1987. My father killed hmself when I was only 6 years old, and my mother died in an automobile accident in the Southeast section of the United States in the Summer of 1987.
My quote of: It was have been 1989....led to:
"Again, grammar issues with the usage of two words which both fill the same role (I figured you would claim the one I brought up would be claimed as being technically not at fault). If it was in 1989 that you were recruited, then this provides another conflict (I'm also wondering why, for someone with expertise in fund-raising, that basic counting skills are a low-point). You would have only gone missing for 18 (11+7), and not 20 years (as you claim not to remember)."
How's this? 20, or so, years?I was merely repeating Paladius' comment of 20 years in reposte to your argument of 40 years.
I was recruited in July of 1989, barely 20 years old. I spent some time at a remote seocndary base in the 23rd century and then was shot into the 24th, when I now reside.
Tense, having a direct connection to liner time, becomes muddled. It becomes hard sp3eak of events, most especially in a tense, to somebody that is so ingrained to a linear and stoic view of time.
I went directly from 1989 to 2287. From there I went to 2346. From there I been everywhen. In my personal history, I skipped out on several hundred years...including the 1990's, and everything else for that matter. From my subjective view of time, I have aged for roughly ten years, but have no real means to keep track of that, and everything here, for me, happenes in my personal past; as I came from the 2300's, but also in my subjective future, had I stayed in the stream (as my personal time would be in the 1990's).
For me, everything from July of 1989 back happened in a liner time frame. However, my 2007 happens in what would have been the 1990's, and my 2300's occur several years before that.
To me, something that happened to me in my personal past had happened. However, some thinhgs that happened to me in the 2300's have also happened, but they will not happen for you.
To me, it as happened, to you it will happen.
So what tense do I use? Do I speak from my personal view of time; having sipped about the time pool, or do I put everything into a chronological term that you will understand? I tend to mix the tenses, as i don't know exactly how to relate something that will happen to you, has happened to you and will happen to me, occured to me, but may not end up being true, etc.
And you wonder why basic counting skills are a low point? Yes, I can do the simple math, I can even do some very basic calculus. However, I have grown very accustomed to speaking in terms of subjective time as "more or less" rounding them for ease of conversation. You must remember that the people that I associate with share, by experience, my fluid ideas of chronology and subjective time; not even to mention lier time as you know it. Actually, it would be much more accurate to say that I've adopted their stance on the matter. In an example of your era, you do say that you'll arrive someplace in 17.2 minutes, or do you say "twenty minutes"?
"For history, all sorts of methods. Visual. Vietnam. Audio. Tutor Danasty. Kinesthetic. History of Medcine. Did I forget American West, Civil Rights Movement, The Wiemar Republic, The Rise and Fall of Hitler, Monarchy of Britain, The Korean War, The Cold War, The Roman Empire..."
You speak of ideas, perceptions, and events. The Civil War, for example, is not a fact, it is an event. Visual is NOT a fact, most especially to a blind person, it is a perception. Is the Korean war history? No. The grouping of events bundled into that title may be studied as hostorical events, but it is not history, it is merely a string of related events in your past that can be studied, as it is assumed that those events are static.
"...and I'm fairly sure that if I was to focus specifically on one area and learn it, I would be able to recall facts with an incredibly uncanny ability like most historians. Unlike myself, your subject area only spans a small few years with only a key focus on one country (which, obviously, is America as you unjustly assume everyone here is from)."
But of course, if you studied one singular area, and learned all viewpoints, and then wieghed those, foudn a median that accomidated all of those views, and then meorized each minute detail, you wuold be an historian. Well said, but pointless. Historians make extremely poor operatives, as they tend to care far too much about preserving things rather than making 'your' distant future a better place. Knowing too much is far more dangerous than knowing too little. Likewise, having a specialized knowledge in one thing and on thing only, tends to leave one useless for anything else.
My subject area, as you so named it, is not even America. And I made no assumptions that EVERYONE here is American. That is simply your impression because I still retain the "obnoxious American" stance that most did during my youth.
"Which is why Historians study a vast array of sources, and do not just take the official line for granted. Of course, depending on the era, sources can be hard to come by and make for difficult work in extracting accurate and unbias information. For example, in Churchill's famous Iron Curtain speech, he made out that the Eastern Bloc states were 'ancient', when really, they were only a few years old and had only been recently formed!"
If you think that accurate resources are difficult to find now, imagine what it would be like further upstream where the things that historians hold on to so dearly here are of a less than trivial import. Also, it sounds like you assume that I would be a scholared expert, this is far from the case. I ahve roughly about 1 day's worth of background training within which I must learn several things; hardly enough to cover anything but general major events, some background details (if any) and learn of the situations of our possible allies, contacts, and any other influences operating in the same grid.
"In reply to:
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I am amazede that you have picked out certain parts of my prose, and ignored others...we've already had this conversation twice!
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Twice? Man, time-travel must suck for debates on forums. I picked out certain parts as picking out all of them would just form an incredibly long post. This would both prove to be unneccessarily lengthy reading and writing, and if there are any doubts, it can be later covered in a seperate, more accurate post."
Rusty, you have no clue! Things get very confusing once you're out of the stream. There were 20 recruits chosen to be trained at the moment I was. Only about half of them survived the first shoot. Of us remaining eleven, 4 went Lunar before our training was even done. Of the rest of us, only three remain in my subjective now.
As far as debating goes, it becomes difficult. For myself mostly, I find that my slang does not mech with the slang of this era, and things regarding the past, present, and future, get extremely convoluted and muddled because my perspective is not yours, and my set of facts (that I ill understand at best) is an almagem of twoenty (or so!) of your years ago, and the viewpoints of the science geeks that speak what amounts to another language. This means that my inefficient typing is not only countered by my poor skill at using the keyboard, but I have to pick and choose words to attempt to best illustrate my points. Although I have no particular problems being verbose, my comments will seem more like an incoherent rant than anything else.
In regards to one, such as yourself, that picks particular quotes, this becomes much more difficult. If I use the word "may", instead of "will happen/ did happen/ should happen" a challenge is issued, when I was simply attempting to retouch a topic already explained.
"In reply to:
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are sometimes required to do things that are not your specialty
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There is no doubt that occurs, as there are strengths and weaknesses. However, your role is a polar opposite to your job, as in, fund-raising would require active and out-going work to meet and greet people who could be potiential investers. Observing would be watching to see what happens. By directly interfering, your observations could produce false positives, IE Subject A made harsh angry comment - this may be a result of something you have done, rather than what occurs normally.
It would like saying you're here to observe how a chemical reacts, but you directly interfere and tweak with the chemical during observations - which would mean, at best, they are incomplete and unfair observations"
My role is NOT the polar opposite to my job. You assume that I am meddling within the events that I am observing. I am not. My going to the library and reading science journals to find the events I am looking for has nothing to do with the funds I was also sent here to invest. And if you must know, it is invested in insurance annuities fo rthe short-run, and a portion into Euro's for the longer run. I was also supposed to check how many dollars a certain computer company's stock is worth here so another Muse agent could do some investing further up my stream, but down yours.
The events I am to review have nothing to do with any of those things. The first lesson in observing is that to observe, one must observe in a passive position, and not interfere.
And as an aside, one does not have to be a oring accountant to invest a sum of this era's money into another currency, or stock, they merely need access to an account.
"What would I be doing else-wise if it was not for your comment? Researching and building AI? Making detailed enqueries over information? Level design? Artwork? How do I know what you're doing isn't distracting me from making the worst disaster or the greatest discovery of my life."
Perhaps that is my true mission...to misdirect you with a calculated amount of minor inconsistencies (which I have alluded to in my other wirtings) to bait you into frittering away your time so that you do not set off the calamity that destroys the world! Or perhaps, I am a Lunar working fo rmy own profits and wish to take credit for an invention that would have been yours, had I not prevented that event and then take credit for it myself later.
"I also fault your system on claiming events don't affect time. Events might be independent of time itself, but the events cause the development of technology, which in turn affects the development of time travel, which in turn... affects time."
Events have an effect on events. Just because we humans impose a measurement of duration that we call time, does not mean that events are dependant upon time, nor does it mean that time is dependant upon events.
If the universe NEVER had an intelligent being, ever; would there still be time? Objectively and logically, you will say yes, as events occur and they are measured in terms of what humans choose to call time.
To rephrase, again, we measure time as a related series of events. That is not time, that is how we impose a measurement of it upon ourselves. AS the clock ticks (events) we call it time, but it is actually a measuring of events, not time. Events have a direct effect on events, but time is a rule of these events, not a factor until one imposes the humanocentric ideal of one event having to precede another.
This is our perception of time, it is nto time. We impose time upon ourselves to give us a correlation of one event to another. In all actuality, they all happen at once, and we merely sort them out from our extremely limited perception of dimensions.
Events are events, I cannot stress that enough. Though almost everyone on the universe perceives tem as a chronological order (hence time), this does not mean that siad perception is wrong, or flawed, or limited.
As designer stated: events are event driven. However, although we force a union of liner time into events, this does not mean that this self-imposed measurement is correct. One might argue that physics says that it is so, Quantum mechanics says that it so, but on a different level with differeing results, our perception says that it is so.
I would counter with the fact that we tend to describe things, either in our own words or in the mathematics of science, into our own realm of expericne and understanding, even if it is flawed or incorrect.
Can you argue the point that the light form the sun is white, but yet we tend to see the sky as either Blue or Grey? You may speak about the crests of wvaelengths being shorn off, etc, but it does not change the fact that we describe the sky as blue, when in all actuality it is not, we merely perceive it as so.
Perception, understanding, and what is, are usually differing things.
""pasters"
Surely isn't it a simplier explaination that you misspelt 'posters', given that pasters was only used one, and post/posters several times in the very same post?"
Trust me, pasters are those from the past. I have attempted not to use my perosnal vernacular here, as it is impolite to not attempt to adopt the language of the erans, but it does pop through every now and then. My explatives, such as Frag, snarf, Fugazi, and others are fairly easy to discern, so I did not change those.
We also use 'Wilbees' , 'condrum' and lots of other terms that are pretty much or own adopted terms for things. My personal favorite is "orangefest".
"In regards to the comment on Quake, computers are not limited just to basements, and can, surprisingly be moved upstairs or downstairs (the amazing power of muscles). In an even more interesting twist, I don't own Quake or any of it's series, nor does this semi-detached house have a basement (probably an American thing) - frag is an overused term on the internet which practically everyone knows the origins (and if you didn't know, you will probably be told anyway), which is to 'kill', and fragged 'killed'. Could I just ask, were you involved in Vietnam?"
Frag is an overused term? Well that probably explains why it is in heavy use when I come from. I imagine that if a new slang term is not used, then it will die out.
Sure you may ask about myself in Vietnam. Not my area, not my era. I don't usually do war zones, if I can avoid it. The thuggies handle the tough jobs, and most of the intentional alterations. I am a minor player in this, I do non-obtrusive things. If you are speaking of whether I was involved in Vietnam in my personal history before I shot upstream, no. I was far too young then.
And if yo uthink that computer are portable now...wait! I was merely paraphrasing what my boarders told me about the game Quake.
"I don't expect you to meet any 'gauge'. You make the claims, I compare you to what you claim. You claim to spell, then double-back in your post that you can't, for example."
Yes, I can spell quite readily, thank you. I also like to get pretty fugazied, as this is a sort of vacation for me, so my typing gets worse as things go on. I tend to not go back to look for grammatical errors or mistypes as it is simply a waste of nanos to do so. Having re-read some of my entries, I am astounded by the diferences between what seemed to be a flowing sentence that came out looking like I had typed with my eyes closed.
"Well, you answer that question yourself. I like your sudden display of good english for that single line, almost as if it was some sort of effort to look good. Whether the general populace use good or bad grammar does not mean I should follow suit. If the general population all jumped off a cliff I would equally not follow suit. "
I very much enjoy the Lemming remark.
