Ask Chaos Anything!

[Thaidakar the Ghostblood he/him]

4 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

Topic Page 2, Chaos said: (not using quote so as to not summon wrath upon me (yet))

 

that's awesome.

[Treamayne]

6 minutes ago, Thaidakar the Ghostblood said:

that's awesome.

His answer, or that I'm such a geek I not only read all 19 pages of this thread but remembered he had answered this question and found the reference?

[The Stick]

Hmm, maybe I shouldn't be necroing the head admin's thread.

What do you think about Godel in general, as well as his God proofs and incompleteness theorems.

[Chaos he/him]

On 2/11/2024 at 2:51 PM, Anguished_One said:

*a little bit of intimidation* 

What's your favorite breakfast food???

*nervous squeak*

Sorry for the delay!

Breakfast is my least favorite meal of the day and I typically eat a bagel for breakfast, but this has a lot of problems. I need something a bit bigger, but it's way too much effort to actually cook something in the morning

On 2/14/2024 at 8:13 AM, Lego Mistborn said:

Can you explain Euler's formula, my textbook is not helping me figure it out.

What does it find?

How can you use it without solving the differential equation first?

None of it makes sense.

This is quite late, but you don't need differential equations in this at all. It's a proven result from the power series for sine, cosine, and e^x (it can be shown that exponents work for complex numbers, but you probably wouldn't do that until complex analysis). It is quite a surprising fact, but perhaps not that surprising, considering sine, cosine, and e^x all have power series with infinite radii of convergence. Also perhaps not surprising considering the powers of i go in a pattern of 4's: 

i^0 = 1

i^1 = i

i^2 = -1 (by definition)

i^3 = -i

i^4 = -(i^2) = -(-1) = 1

What else does the same thing? Well, take four derivatives of sine or cosine, and you get right back to the same spot! 

Many things in the complex plane don't quite work the way you might expect. In particular, if you have a function that is differentiable everywhere on the complex plane, there are only two situations: 1. It is a constant, or 2. It blows up to infinity when you get far from the origin. Isn't that strange? There are no differentiable functions that are bounded like sine and cosine are, oscillating between 1 and -1. That cannot happen. Complex valued sine and cosine do blow up to infinity as you go along the imaginary axis. 

But yes, it's a weird one. In some sense, you just have to look at the proof and if you can't find an issue with it, we roll with it. And we do! We express complex numbers in polar this way and it can be very useful. In fact, you can prove a lot of trig identities by going into the complex plane through it.

On 5/17/2024 at 9:22 PM, The Stick said:

Hmm, maybe I shouldn't be necroing the head admin's thread.

What do you think about Godel in general, as well as his God proofs and incompleteness theorems.

Not a worry at all.

Dense stuff. I'll trust experts on that. It's kind of unintelligible to me unless I spent a lot of time trying to parse it.

In general, ontological proofs of God always seem like they are trying to define God into existence. Cool, but that's not exactly persuasive when in my opinion--and many other atheists--the universe is remarkably silent about the existence of God, and how the universe and Earth came to be certainly seems to discredit the idea of an all-good and all-powerful God. Theism has a lot of work cut out for it, and I've been looking at apologists, and the answers look... extremely weak. This is the best world that could be, and it required millions and millions of years of animals to suffer and die to make the process of evolution work? It sure looks like a very directionless process that seems more in line with no one in the driver's seat to me. Of course, there are many, many theistic evolutionists around, but if you have no horse in the race on whether or not God exists, I'd certainly say the universe seems much more in line with the hypothesis that there is not.

[Thaidakar the Ghostblood he/him]

On 5/19/2024 at 9:24 PM, Chaos said:

In general, ontological proofs of God always seem like they are trying to define God into existence. Cool, but that's not exactly persuasive when in my opinion--and many other atheists--the universe is remarkably silent about the existence of God, and how the universe and Earth came to be certainly seems to discredit the idea of an all-good and all-powerful God. Theism has a lot of work cut out for it, and I've been looking at apologists, and the answers look... extremely weak. This is the best world that could be, and it required millions and millions of years of animals to suffer and die to make the process of evolution work? It sure looks like a very directionless process that seems more in line with no one in the driver's seat to me. Of course, there are many, many theistic evolutionists around, but if you have no horse in the race on whether or not God exists, I'd certainly say the universe seems much more in line with the hypothesis that there is not.

Quoting you because my question is related to this.

Would you consider yourself a believer in darwinism? If so, which branch of it would you say that you associate your beliefs with?

[Chaos he/him]

3 minutes ago, Thaidakar the Ghostblood said:

Quoting you because my question is related to this.

Would you consider yourself a believer in darwinism? If so, which branch of it would you say that you associate your beliefs with?

Generally, Darwinism and "Darwinist" are words that are derogatory, trying to paint anyone who accepts the overwhelming amount of evidence for the theory of evolution as a follower of just another belief system. I don't think any biologist or scientist would use that label. Darwin lived in the 1800s, and did not even know of the mechanism on how traits were passed down. No Mendel, no genetics. We have over a hundred and fifty years of additional scientific knowledge on evolution, and the theory has been expounded upon immensely. Natural selection and gradualism are things, but there are lots of evolutionary mechanisms, and natural selection isn't the only one! All of the mechanisms are directly observable, as is speciation (yes, we've literally witnessed species changing into new species, and it's happened multiple times, both in the wild and in controlled laboratory settings). We know so much more than Darwin ever did. Current evolutionary biology is so much more robust and explanatory. Scientists do not worship Darwin, he's just a guy who had some revolutionary ideas that panned out well. I'm not an Einsteinist or a Newtonist, either. 

However, evolution very much is as strong a scientific theory as any other (and by that, compare to things like "theory of gravitation," "germ theory," or "atomic theory"). Not only do we directly observe evolution--be it novel traits that require multiple simultaneous mutations to function at all (a great example is Cit+ in the Long Term Evolution Experiment, it's awesome), or speciation itself--but now we have genetics, which corroborates evolution and gives even more mountains of evidence! The entire genome of everything forms beautiful nested hierarchies, both in functional regions of the genome and parts that have no function at all. It beautifully corroborates the tree of life and common descent. 

And this is barely scratching the surface, and I didn't even talk about fossils at all! I could talk about that a lot, but how many times do scientists need to predict, "Hey, I think I will find a species with this mix of traits" to find a common ancestor, and not only that, but predict which time and location the species would be, and then they find that exact thing, for people to repeat it? Because that's happened a lot! Predictions and repeatability!

So, if you mean, "Do I accept the theory of evolution?" Of course the answer is yes. There is so much evidence! It is literally foundational to biology. For a very simple primer to evolution, check out this video series below. It's beautifully simple at its core.

If you've seen some of my answers here or on the religion thread, when I say I'm not convinced a God exists, I want to be dazzled with incontrovertible evidence that even the most ardent skeptic would be convinced by. Not one thing, but mountains of things. Theism, if true, should fit the data perfectly and be able to make predictions that we see bear out in the evidence over and over again. And I should not need to already believe a thing to see the evidence in this light. Because that's how evidence works. Yes, scientists have ego, and their own ideas they like the best, but at the end of the day, people judge the evidence. It doesn't matter if it sounds insane that spacetime is warped by gravity and light can bend, because when Einstein could calculate and see a star around the Sun in the exact position he calculated, you just have to say... well crap, guess you're right! Belief is irrelevant. If someone says something fantastical and has the receipts, then there you go. And by the way, I have receipts on all the evolution and science stuff I said! 

Anyway, that's probably more than you asked for, but I am still thinking of a comment in the Religion thread with fundamental misconceptions about evolution, so this has been bubbling in my head for months.

Also, "Social Darwinists" are full of crap and bastardize the entire notion of "survival of the fittest." Humanity, as a whole, has done a very good job of removing selection pressures and making natural selection not really a thing for us now. For example, C-sections are literally removing a selection pressure on skull size! Neat! 

[The Stormfather He/Him]

When is the next WTCC episode?

 

[Chaos he/him]

10 hours ago, The Stormfather said:

When is the next WTCC episode?

We haven't recorded it and won't for a while, so likely July. Things could shift, though.

[Thaidakar the Ghostblood he/him]

4 minutes ago, Chaos said:

Generally, Darwinism and "Darwinist" are words that are derogatory, trying to paint anyone who accepts the overwhelming amount of evidence for the theory of evolution as a follower of just another belief system. I don't think any biologist or scientist would use that label. Darwin lived in the 1800s, and did not even know of the mechanism on how traits were passed down. No Mendel, no genetics. We have over a hundred and fifty years of additional scientific knowledge on evolution, and the theory has been expounded upon immensely. Natural selection and gradualism are things, but there are lots of evolutionary mechanisms, and natural selection isn't the only one! All of the mechanisms are directly observable, as is speciation (yes, we've literally witnessed species changing into new species, and it's happened multiple times, both in the wild and in controlled laboratory settings). We know so much more than Darwin ever did. Current evolutionary biology is so much more robust and explanatory. Scientists do not worship Darwin, he's just a guy who had some revolutionary ideas that panned out well. I'm not an Einsteinist or a Newtonist, either. 

However, evolution very much is as strong a scientific theory as any other (and by that, compare to things like "theory of gravitation," "germ theory," or "atomic theory"). Not only do we directly observe evolution--be it novel traits that require multiple simultaneous mutations to function at all (a great example is Cit+ in the Long Term Evolution Experiment, it's awesome), or speciation itself--but now we have genetics, which corroborates evolution and gives even more mountains of evidence! The entire genome of everything forms beautiful nested hierarchies, both in functional regions of the genome and parts that have no function at all. It beautifully corroborates the tree of life and common descent. 

And this is barely scratching the surface, and I didn't even talk about fossils at all! I could talk about that a lot, but how many times do scientists need to predict, "Hey, I think I will find a species with this mix of traits" to find a common ancestor, and not only that, but predict which time and location the species would be, and then they find that exact thing, for people to repeat it? Because that's happened a lot! Predictions and repeatability!

So, if you mean, "Do I accept the theory of evolution?" Of course the answer is yes. There is so much evidence! It is literally foundational to biology. For a very simple primer to evolution, check out this video series below. It's beautifully simple at its core.

If you've seen some of my answers here or on the religion thread, when I say I'm not convinced a God exists, I want to be dazzled with incontrovertible evidence that even the most ardent skeptic would be convinced by. Not one thing, but mountains of things. Theism, if true, should fit the data perfectly and be able to make predictions that we see bear out in the evidence over and over again. And I should not need to already believe a thing to see the evidence in this light. Because that's how evidence works. Yes, scientists have ego, and their own ideas they like the best, but at the end of the day, people judge the evidence. It doesn't matter if it sounds insane that spacetime is warped by gravity and light can bend, because when Einstein could calculate and see a star around the Sun in the exact position he calculated, you just have to say... well crap, guess you're right! Belief is irrelevant. If someone says something fantastical and has the receipts, then there you go. And by the way, I have receipts on all the evolution and science stuff I said! 

Anyway, that's probably more than you asked for, but I am still thinking of a comment in the Religion thread with fundamental misconceptions about evolution, so this has been bubbling in my head for months.

Also, "Social Darwinists" are full of crap and bastardize the entire notion of "survival of the fittest." Humanity, as a whole, has done a very good job of removing selection pressures and making natural selection not really a thing for us now. For example, C-sections are literally removing a selection pressure on skull size! Neat! 

I appreciate the response and agree with a lot of what you said and I'll definitely give the video a watch, even though I definitely do disagree with you on some of the things you said. I immensely respect Darwin, and I definitely want to know more about him. Have you read his book? 

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I wasn't asking if you worshipped Darwin, or follow a belief system such as a church. What I was asking is which mutation of the theory of evolution you hold as the standard of explaining it all. The original, Neo darwinism or some other reformation of ideas. 

[The Stick]

On 5/20/2024 at 12:24 AM, Chaos said:

Sorry for the delay!

Breakfast is my least favorite meal of the day and I typically eat a bagel for breakfast, but this has a lot of problems. I need something a bit bigger, but it's way too much effort to actually cook something in the morning

This is quite late, but you don't need differential equations in this at all. It's a proven result from the power series for sine, cosine, and e^x (it can be shown that exponents work for complex numbers, but you probably wouldn't do that until complex analysis). It is quite a surprising fact, but perhaps not that surprising, considering sine, cosine, and e^x all have power series with infinite radii of convergence. Also perhaps not surprising considering the powers of i go in a pattern of 4's: 

i^0 = 1

i^1 = i

i^2 = -1 (by definition)

i^3 = -i

i^4 = -(i^2) = -(-1) = 1

What else does the same thing? Well, take four derivatives of sine or cosine, and you get right back to the same spot! 

Many things in the complex plane don't quite work the way you might expect. In particular, if you have a function that is differentiable everywhere on the complex plane, there are only two situations: 1. It is a constant, or 2. It blows up to infinity when you get far from the origin. Isn't that strange? There are no differentiable functions that are bounded like sine and cosine are, oscillating between 1 and -1. That cannot happen. Complex valued sine and cosine do blow up to infinity as you go along the imaginary axis. 

But yes, it's a weird one. In some sense, you just have to look at the proof and if you can't find an issue with it, we roll with it. And we do! We express complex numbers in polar this way and it can be very useful. In fact, you can prove a lot of trig identities by going into the complex plane through it.

Not a worry at all.

Dense stuff. I'll trust experts on that. It's kind of unintelligible to me unless I spent a lot of time trying to parse it.

In general, ontological proofs of God always seem like they are trying to define God into existence. Cool, but that's not exactly persuasive when in my opinion--and many other atheists--the universe is remarkably silent about the existence of God, and how the universe and Earth came to be certainly seems to discredit the idea of an all-good and all-powerful God. Theism has a lot of work cut out for it, and I've been looking at apologists, and the answers look... extremely weak. This is the best world that could be, and it required millions and millions of years of animals to suffer and die to make the process of evolution work? It sure looks like a very directionless process that seems more in line with no one in the driver's seat to me. Of course, there are many, many theistic evolutionists around, but if you have no horse in the race on whether or not God exists, I'd certainly say the universe seems much more in line with the hypothesis that there is not.

As a devout Catholic, you make some decent points, but from my knowledge, there are already answers to this devised by theologians. I believe in evolution, due to a huge amount of evidence. As to your point on it seeming to disapprove God, the theological answer would be that God allowing evil and defeating it glorified him more than it simply never existing in the first place.

[Chaos he/him]

2 hours ago, Thaidakar the Ghostblood said:

I appreciate the response and agree with a lot of what you said and I'll definitely give the video a watch, even though I definitely do disagree with you on some of the things you said. I immensely respect Darwin, and I definitely want to know more about him. Have you read his book? 

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I wasn't asking if you worshipped Darwin, or follow a belief system such as a church. What I was asking is which mutation of the theory of evolution you hold as the standard of explaining it all. The original, Neo darwinism or some other reformation of ideas. 

I... don't really think evolutionary biologists would really phrase their thoughts as a "mutation" of it. I don't even understand what that is supposed to mean. 

I haven't read On the Origin of Species, no.

2 hours ago, The Stick said:

As a devout Catholic, you make some decent points, but from my knowledge, there are already answers to this devised by theologians. I believe in evolution, due to a huge amount of evidence. As to your point on it seeming to disapprove God, the theological answer would be that God allowing evil and defeating it glorified him more than it simply never existing in the first place.

Well, I mean, it doesn't really seem all-good to allow such suffering for hundreds of thousands of years of our species existence just to... eventually defeat evil. He could do it right now. He has a realm where he's glorified forever in Heaven. Yet all the suffering is worth it so he can be even more glorified? Yikes. I'm sure he will get around to destroying Satan eventually. In the meantime, sucks for humans, right? I guess we just have to suck it up and once God does destroy evil then those people remaining... don't have to suffer like we did? Interesting strategy.

But let's grant that the theological answer is actually sufficient (which to be clear, I think is very weak). There's still been animals for hundreds of millions of years old. There's been untold death inherent in the cycle of evolution. So much suffering. Was it evil for animals to eat other animals? At least most religious definitions seem to not say animals are moral actors. But certainly nature can be horrifically brutal. How much pain and suffering have animals gone through in millions of years purely based off of natural laws--not human caused evil--that God created? His best plan required all of that suffering? All that starvation and death? All to eventually just have humans eventually exist and to glorify God? That seems... kind of insane to justify that, frankly. So I think animal suffering at the very least shows God cannot be all loving. 

Even if we discount animals feeling pain, so many humans die from natural reasons that are not caused by humanity's "fall". There are so many viruses and parasites and horrible maladies in God's incredible creation just to destroy us and make us miserable. To make us suffer. That's been happening to humanity and its ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years. 

It seems to me like a lot of ad-hoc rationalization to make theism fit this. I would say theism would seem a lot more digestible if Earth was actually young and God did create species as there was. He's omnipotent, He could do it. He went with the plan of millions of years of suffering instead. 

It would be pretty compelling evidence for God if we did descend from two people and could see it in genetics. Or if there were separately created kinds, perfectly designed. But that's just not where we are at.

Let's be real though. When infants die, isn't the common refrain that they are in a better place? That means it is not actually necessary to do the song and dance of suffering on Earth to get to Heaven. You can just skip that part and get eternal joy, and it happens so often. That just makes no sense to me. Either living life and suffering is important for the afterlife, or it isn't. You can say that, yeah, sure, you can't truly appreciate Heaven unless you have suffered, so what, those babies can't truly appreciate it? 

The system seems totally nonsensical under scrutiny. I think things make far more sense that, yeah, the universe doesn't care about us and suffering sucks, but it's a thing. It's so much harder to make this work with some all powerful, all knowing, all loving God to think that He is actually totally cool with this. Allowing evil only gets you so far.

And let's be real, you can blame Adam and Eve for the fall all you want, but God put the tree there. He didn't have to. He could have explained the consequences. He did none of that. Sounds like he specifically created the world and the conditions to make us suffer. I can only assume that He wanted it this way, and it is just preposterous to me that this was really the best way. I just can't get behind a God who punishes people and all their descendents to suffer when they did no crime, nor can I get behind a supposed all-loving God who lets so many infants starve every single day. 

Is all of that all worth some greater good later? I mean... I guess, but God doesn't sound very good to me. He finds glorifying himself more important than all the suffering in hundreds of millions of years. If a human ruler did that even for a short time, they would rightfully be called a monster. If a parent did that to their children, letting some starve to death so the other kids could truly understand how thankful they should be to have food themselves... The parent would not be considered good! I don't see why even if God was the creator that He gets a pass there. "He works in mysterious ways" or "His ways are higher" is not sufficient, when to me, "Theism makes no sense" is right there for the taking.

[WhyEverNot_8 he/him]

Holy guacamole, I come in here to ask you if you’re having a good day, and I see a very philosophical discussion!

Anyways, two questions!

1. What is your favorite video game?

2. How are you today?

Edited May 24 by WhyEverNot_8
The question was already asked lol

[Treamayne]

2 hours ago, WhyEverNot_8 said:

1. What is your favorite movie?

FYSA, when you are in a thread, the search bar at the top will change to "search this topic" which lets you search a single thread for information. Here is the previous answer (note that you can click on the curly arrow on the top-right corner of a quote box to jump to that location in the thread):

Spoiler

On 8/5/2022 at 8:52 PM, Chaos said:

On 8/4/2022 at 7:55 PM, Thaidakar the Ghostblood said:

1. what is your favorite type of drink?
2. who is your favorite character in Brandon's books?
3. how many signing have you been to?
4. who is your favorite actor?
5. what is your favorite movie?
6. have you ever considered writing a book?

If so, did you try and write it?

1. Dr Pepper, but my favorite alcoholic drink is amaretto and ginger ale.

2. Kelsier and Adolin, I think? Oh, and Ba-Ado-Mishram, obviously.

3. Oh man, that's tricky. Before 2011 gets tricky, I'm not sure if I went to a signing before then, but I did meet Brandon before then. I went to Alloy's release, Words of Radiance release, and Shadows of Self's release. I drove at least twice from Montana to SLC for Brandon signings. I remember one in December Brandon was surprised to see me that I drove all the way down there. Hilarious. There was SpoCon 2013 and MisCon 2018, and then the Skyward San Francisco signing in 2018. So a lot! I probably forgot some. 2018 was my last one though.

4. I can't say I have one. I usually don't have favorites quite in this way like most people have.

5. Similar to the last one, but in a pinch, I say Inception. I do love that movie. The Dark Knight is also incredible.

6. Wrote half of a big epic fantasy before but ran out of steam in undergrad. I'm writing an even more ambitious epic fantasy book right now. 

Hope that helps

Edited May 24 by Treamayne
Link/SPAG

[The Stormfather He/Him]

Have you ever thought about inviting some random Sharders to a Shardcast? (Obviously it would be WAY too choatic, but y'know.... who needs rails?)

[WhyEverNot_8 he/him]

14 hours ago, Treamayne said:

FYSA, when you are in a thread, the search bar at the top will change to "search this topic" which lets you search a single thread for information. Here is the previous answer (note that you can click on the curly arrow on the top-right corner of a quote box to jump to that location in the thread):

  Hide contents

 

Hope that helps

Oh! Shoot, I missed that, thanks for pointing it out! (I’ll go edit the post rq)

(I made it “What’s your favorite video game?” Sorry for any confusion )

Edited May 24 by WhyEverNot_8

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

On 8/6/2022 at 8:52 AM, Chaos said:

Wrote half of a big epic fantasy before but ran out of steam in undergrad. I'm writing an even more ambitious epic fantasy book right now. 

If it is alright for me to ask… what kind of magic system are you thinking about using? If any of course.

Edited May 26 by RoyalBeeMage

[Chaos he/him]

On 5/23/2024 at 4:08 PM, WhyEverNot_8 said:

Holy guacamole, I come in here to ask you if you’re having a good day, and I see a very philosophical discussion!

Anyways, two questions!

1. What is your favorite video game?

2. How are you today?

1. So the game I play the most has been Guild Wars 2, with an embarrassing amount of playtime. Probably my favorite ever was Mass Effect 2 or Fire Emblem: Awakening.

2. This was true when you posted it, and true now, but I'm doing great! Semester is done, so it's summer! I do have some summer tutoring work to do but that's fine. But today is a great day because I have finished Part Three (out of five) on my novel, putting me at the 2/3rds mark, so I'm doing awesome.

On 5/23/2024 at 6:15 PM, Treamayne said:

FYSA, when you are in a thread, the search bar at the top will change to "search this topic" which lets you search a single thread for information. Here is the previous answer (note that you can click on the curly arrow on the top-right corner of a quote box to jump to that location in the thread):

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Hope that helps

I know you're trying to be helpful, and I appreciate that, but I am more than happy to take repeat questions. I don't expect people to read up or search the giant thread, to be honest. 

On 5/24/2024 at 5:39 AM, The Stormfather said:

Have you ever thought about inviting some random Sharders to a Shardcast? (Obviously it would be WAY too choatic, but y'know.... who needs rails?)

So the first and most obvious thing is that audio and video quality are very important to the show. Headset mics are not good enough. Internet quality is also essential. I just can't control that if I picked a random Sharder, and if I wanted to buy such things for people, this adds up very quickly. 

The other main issue is that... you just don't really know how well you'll jive with a guest. How good are they at public speaking? How well will the rapport be? They could be very knowledgeable in text but a bad option for a show.

The last issue--and this is the most minor, really--is that if I pick some, but not others, I feel like people will think there's favoritism, and get upset? Even if it's totally meritless and I was choosing randomly (which, let's be honest, is a bad idea because you would need some level of vetting), there are just not that many episodes. Some people won't get to be on, and that will feel bad.

It's possible we may do that, but you'll see me gravitate towards other content creators for all of these reasons. For one, I can give back to other content creators (like RAFO, for Emberdark), but also they have tech setups already and generally can talk pretty well. You'll see another episode in June where we had a guest

On 5/25/2024 at 9:14 PM, RoyalBeeMage said:

If it is alright for me to ask… what kind of magic system are you thinking about using? If any of course.

Everyone is welcome to ask questions about Prophet King! In fact, on our Discord, Fridays are our #writing channel's weekly "ask people questions about their stuff" day, so I am very okay with answering. I'm honored! Here's a great place to ask.

This is a high magic setting and there's kind of a lot going on. I will describe the three abilities that are inherent to people on this world.

The first is teleportation. Yep, everyone can teleport.  

The next one is anchoring, where you can lock an object to a specific location, or relative to another object. This allows for airships.

The last ability is viewing. People have a natural location sense and can feel objects around them, and have an intrinsic understanding of location and direction that humans on this world lack. They can use this to literally remote view and watch events from a different place.

The general premise for combat in the book is that there are pegasus riders, and that with airships and teleportation means we get aerial combat where everyone can teleport. It was both extremely cool--and was a reason why this book felt special--but also very overwhelming. For many years I thought I was not capable of capturing the chaos of such fight scenes, and that they would feel incomprehensible to a reader. (Fun story, many years ago when I told Brandon that everyone could teleport, I believe he said that it would be "very difficult.")

I am very happy to report that my alpha readers really liked the first aerial combat scene. Yesterday I just finished writing the largest scale battle that I've ever written. I find action scenes to be pretty challenging, and this one was a big boy with eight scenes across two POVs. It was all the aerial combat with teleportation writ large across the sky, and so I procrastinated to the bitter end in actually writing it. But, guys, it turned out really well. It was a lot of effort, but I am so pleased. 

This book is ultimately too long for it to really be picked up by a publisher for a debut author, but alpha feedback has been really good. I have historically been far too critical of my own work and always wanted to revise things midway through, which led to me never finish anything. Let me just say: I think this is going very well, and this book is something special and intriguing. Some day you'll all get to read it, and I hope you enjoy it!

(Except for what I did in the second to last chapter of Part Three. No one will know what I'm talking about for years, but, yeah. Sorrrrrrrrry, that was always planned to happen!)

[Trutharchivist he/him]

3 hours ago, Chaos said:

So the first and most obvious thing is that audio and video quality are very important to the show. Headset mics are not good enough. Internet quality is also essential. I just can't control that if I picked a random Sharder, and if I wanted to buy such things for people, this adds up very quickly. 

The other main issue is that... you just don't really know how well you'll jive with a guest. How good are they at public speaking? How well will the rapport be? They could be very knowledgeable in text but a bad option for a show.

The last issue--and this is the most minor, really--is that if I pick some, but not others, I feel like people will think there's favoritism, and get upset? Even if it's totally meritless and I was choosing randomly (which, let's be honest, is a bad idea because you would need some level of vetting), there are just not that many episodes. Some people won't get to be on, and that will feel bad.

It's possible we may do that, but you'll see me gravitate towards other content creators for all of these reasons. For one, I can give back to other content creators (like RAFO, for Emberdark), but also they have tech setups already and generally can talk pretty well. You'll see another episode in June where we had a guest

This sounds very sensible, but leads me to wonder... Generally, mods appear in Shardcasts, right? Are they required to buy proper equipment first or something?

It's kind of odd that I'm asking that, considering I don't even watch Shardcast most of the time, but I'm curious.

3 hours ago, Chaos said:

The first is teleportation. Yep, everyone can teleport.  

The next one is anchoring, where you can lock an object to a specific location, or relative to another object. This allows for airships.

Does anchoring protect against teleportation? I mean, the usual teleportation rules are teleporting everything you touch, so what if you touch something that was anchored? (I'm guessing this is a very basic question...)

Also, I think teleportation would drastically change a society. Are there limits on distance, mass etc? Would it influence the world's maps?

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

3 hours ago, Chaos said:

The first is teleportation. Yep, everyone can teleport.  

by this does this mean that only the person teleports or also objects? if it is the first option what about clothes? sorry completely random question that I don't even know why I thought of it.

4 minutes ago, Trutharchivist said:

Also, I think teleportation would drastically change a society. Are there limits on distance, mass etc? Would it influence the world's maps?

that is a grate question. world borders. how would they be enforced. also if anyone can teleport anything than what if some dictator wants to move a mountain for some diabolical reason...

3 hours ago, Chaos said:

The next one is anchoring, where you can lock an object to a specific location, or relative to another object. This allows for airships.

would anchoring move the object say if you anchor it to something that is in front of you would it move towards what it was anchored to, a bit like gravitation only slower?

3 hours ago, Chaos said:

The last ability is viewing. People have a natural location sense and can feel objects around them, and have an intrinsic understanding of location and direction that humans on this world lack. They can use this to literally remote view and watch events from a different place.

 so it sounds like there is absolutely zero privacy of any kind that would exist in this world. this sounds like it would impact society far more than anything else...

3 hours ago, Chaos said:

The general premise for combat in the book is that there are pegasus riders, and that with airships and teleportation means we get aerial combat where everyone can teleport. It was both extremely cool--and was a reason why this book felt special--but also very overwhelming. For many years I thought I was not capable of capturing the chaos of such fight scenes, and that they would feel incomprehensible to a reader. (Fun story, many years ago when I told Brandon that everyone could teleport, I believe he said that it would be "very difficult.")

I am very happy to report that my alpha readers really liked the first aerial combat scene. Yesterday I just finished writing the largest scale battle that I've ever written. I find action scenes to be pretty challenging, and this one was a big boy with eight scenes across two POVs. It was all the aerial combat with teleportation writ large across the sky, and so I procrastinated to the bitter end in actually writing it. But, guys, it turned out really well. It was a lot of effort, but I am so pleased. 

This book is ultimately too long for it to really be picked up by a publisher for a debut author, but alpha feedback has been really good. I have historically been far too critical of my own work and always wanted to revise things midway through, which led to me never finish anything. Let me just say: I think this is going very well, and this book is something special and intriguing. Some day you'll all get to read it, and I hope you enjoy it!

(Except for what I did in the second to last chapter of Part Three. No one will know what I'm talking about for years, but, yeah. Sorrrrrrrrry, that was always planned to happen!)

yes that battle does sound insanely chaotic. how did you go about solving it? by that I mean making it far less chaotic for the reader and for you to write?

[The Sibling she/her]

Question about Secrets in Stained Glass 

Spoiler

What was Jenna's childhood like? How would you describe her relationship with Petrine while she was growing up?

 

[Chaos he/him]

5 hours ago, Trutharchivist said:

This sounds very sensible, but leads me to wonder... Generally, mods appear in Shardcasts, right? Are they required to buy proper equipment first or something?

It's kind of odd that I'm asking that, considering I don't even watch Shardcast most of the time, but I'm curious.

Does anchoring protect against teleportation? I mean, the usual teleportation rules are teleporting everything you touch, so what if you touch something that was anchored? (I'm guessing this is a very basic question...)

Also, I think teleportation would drastically change a society. Are there limits on distance, mass etc? Would it influence the world's maps?

1. We fund it through Patreon. patreon.com/17thshard

2. Anchoring does not protect against teleportation.

3. Yes, dramatically! There are lots of limits. I do think it would drastically change world maps. Exclaves would be very common. That and all the sky islands would make it all very challenging to do a proper world map.

5 hours ago, RoyalBeeMage said:

by this does this mean that only the person teleports or also objects? if it is the first option what about clothes? sorry completely random question that I don't even know why I thought of it.

that is a grate question. world borders. how would they be enforced. also if anyone can teleport anything than what if some dictator wants to move a mountain for some diabolical reason...

would anchoring move the object say if you anchor it to something that is in front of you would it move towards what it was anchored to, a bit like gravitation only slower?

 so it sounds like there is absolutely zero privacy of any kind that would exist in this world. this sounds like it would impact society far more than anything else...

yes that battle does sound insanely chaotic. how did you go about solving it? by that I mean making it far less chaotic for the reader and for you to write?

You can bring objects you are touching with you.

Moving a mountain via teleportation would be impossible. There are many reasons why that would not work, but I don't think a person could take in enough aether to do that even if those reasons did not exist.

The thing with all of these magics is it requires the aether. It's all around, but it can be used up and slowly regenerates. So if you drain the aether, you can make secure spaces that people cannot scry into or teleport into. Indeed privacy is tricky. I think such aether drains--or even teleporting a few times to consume the aether--is very common.

Generally if you're doing an anchoring to stick things together they must be touching. That is not exclusively true but relative anchors at a distance is tricky (and expensive) to maintain.

Regarding the battle, I had to be very careful with the overall fleet movements. It took a bit just to block out, like, "Okay this group teleports here, this group teleports here" and stuff like that.

1 hour ago, The Sibling said:

Question about Secrets in Stained Glass 

  Reveal hidden contents

What was Jenna's childhood like? How would you describe her relationship with Petrine while she was growing up?

 

Oh Jenna... Poor girl.

Spoiler

Jenna had a rough childhood. Petrine demanded perfection and it warped her immensely. I would not say their relationship was warm ever. It's all very calculating and political.

Jenna accidentally killed her uncle sparring with pewter for the first time and that showed her the need to be very precise and that she could not afford to be anything other than the perfection representation than what she needed to be. She didn't really get to have her own hopes and dreams.

So of course once she got older and made political plans for herself, that's why it hurt so much for what Petrine did to her...

Ugh. Matt was so brutal. It's so good.

 

[The Stick]

This world sounds amazingly cool.

In regards to the teleportation, is it a more Sci-Fi deconstruct and rebuild atoms version, or is it more elsecally with the original body just warping? 

Can anchoring be used on liquids and gases as well as solids?

[The Stormfather He/Him]

What are your thoughts on chickens?

[Chaos he/him]

2 hours ago, The Stick said:

This world sounds amazingly cool.

In regards to the teleportation, is it a more Sci-Fi deconstruct and rebuild atoms version, or is it more elsecally with the original body just warping? 

Can anchoring be used on liquids and gases as well as solids?

Glad to hear you think so! It is a very weird fusion of technology and magic. Originally I was going for sort of a Renaissance tech level but it's much weirder now.

I would say the teleportation is body warping.

So anchoring a liquid or gas... interesting, I had not thought of that. I think in the technical sense, yes, but an anchor is an effect on a point. I think if it's not a solid, there's not enough connecting the substance together. You could anchor water, but you'd probably just be left with a water droplet in the air. So the answer is: technically yes, but practically no.

5 minutes ago, The Stormfather said:

What are your thoughts on chickens?

Like, the animal, or them as food? 

[The Stick]

56 minutes ago, Chaos said:

Glad to hear you think so! It is a very weird fusion of technology and magic. Originally I was going for sort of a Renaissance tech level but it's much weirder now.

I would say the teleportation is body warping.

So anchoring a liquid or gas... interesting, I had not thought of that. I think in the technical sense, yes, but an anchor is an effect on a point. I think if it's not a solid, there's not enough connecting the substance together. You could anchor water, but you'd probably just be left with a water droplet in the air. So the answer is: technically yes, but practically no.

Like, the animal, or them as food? 

Continuing on from that, if water was used a something that acted as the absolute position for the relative position of another object, what happens.

Secondly, what would happen if something underwent a phase change as either the object being anchored, or the object a position is being anchored relative too. I am thinking of really cool doors that can only be unlocked by changing the phase, and therefore size and relative position of things.