Animated Avatars

[Monroe]

Actually, that was back during the dual title phase of the boards. Back when one had both their custom title and their normal one. So I don't think Alorael ever had just a custom one.

[Rowen]

Nothing confines Alorael other then our imaginations.

[Dantius]

No, I distinctly recall him giving himself the custom title "Proving a Point" to, well, prove a point. It was definitly in early 2010, the forums werethe same style and format.

[Alorael at Large]

I did, in fact, do that to prove the point to someone doubting my titling ability. I've also had some other titles, most lasting one day. My favorites are "Postmaster General" from when it was displayed above the identical post count title and "This just feels like cheating" because it does.

 

—Alorael, who isn't really stuck with his registration date or post count. He just isn't willing to switch to an ever-changing account. Re-registering every day would be too much work.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: How to space your words

—Alorael, who now has to fight off the urge to have a frequently-changing avatar.

Heaven forbid you give in to that temptation, unless you then give up the ever-changing PDN. One ever-changing aspect is cool, but two or more... Thanks, but I think I'll pass.

[Alorael at Large]

You keep throwing out these challenges.

 

—Alorael, who is, in fact, easily manipulated. He's just not so easily manipulated in useful or satisfying ways.

[Monroe]

Originally Posted By: Honor-Bound

My favorites are "Postmaster General" from when it was displayed above the identical post count title and "This just feels like cheating" because it does.

That's the one I was thinking of.

Custom titles seem like they're for the ego heads. Kudos to you for resisting giving yourself one.

[Ephesos]

Meh, I think mine was clever, thank you very much.

[Monroe]

Clever, sure. And there's certainly nothing egotistical at all about saying you're a God of your own little world.

[Alorael at Large]

Writing is as close as humans can come to being gods.

 

—Alorael, who contents himself with writing forum posts and PDNs.

[Monroe]

Really? I always found writing to be a very clumsy form of communication. I mean, there has to be thousands upon thousands of rules just so that it's reasonably decipherable. Even if you follow them all, at any given point the vast majority of the world will still not understand what you've written. That's no way to communicate.

 

Animated avatars on the other hand, those could get a universal point across. Probably why they had to go.

[Ephesos]

Originally Posted By: Monroe

Clever, sure. And there's certainly nothing egotistical at all about saying you're a God of your own little world.

It would be more egotistical if it weren't so true.

But honestly, aren't we all gods of our own little worlds whenever we indulge in a creative act? I feel like we've already got a lot of that impulse floating around in this community... between Blades, the various scripts and stories of the years, and our tradition of RPs. And after all, we're all here because we like spending time in imaginary worlds, so it's no surprise we tend to wax fantastic in our spare time. I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing to have a richly detailed world inside one's head, as long as you manage to step out of it once in a while.

This post if nothing else confirms that I should be asleep, but I think I've got a point in there somewhere.

[Student of Trinity]

We can tell we're not gods, because the complexity daunts us. Human creativity always seems to me to be like walking into a kitchen full of fresh ingredients, realizing you can't possibly cope with this, and settling for cutting a fresh basil leaf into the packaged soup.

 

Well, maybe that's too extreme. Maybe it's like making bread starting with flour and water, but realizing that you are never going to plow the field or reap the grain, or drill the well.

[Triumph]

Originally Posted By: Ephesos

But honestly, aren't we all gods of our own little worlds whenever we indulge in a creative act?

I'm think J.R.R. Tolkien would back you up in this, or something similar. Not that the opinion of one the most influential fantasy author's ever would count or anything. I seem to recall that in "On Fairy-Stories," he basically described writing to create a fantasy world as an imitation of the divine creative act. Rather cool idea, IMHO.

[Monroe]

Claiming godhood for humans is treading on dangerous ground. I like Student of Trinity's analogy. If I understand it right, it's basically like saying even the greatest of human achievements pales in comparison to just about anything that already existed in nature.

 

Speaking of nature, why is Ephesos's avatar strangling that poor tree? Does he hate nature or something?

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Monroe

Speaking of nature, why is Ephesos's avatar strangling that poor tree? Does he hate nature or something?

While we're on the subject of ridiculous questions, what is it like to live under a bridge?

Dikiyoba would like to point out that there are probably thousands and thousands of rules for spoken and non-verbal communication as well as written communication. They're just less obvious.

[Monroe]

I never said spoken word was any better. You can look at a painting or sculpture from anywhere of anytime in the world and possibly draw meaning from it. But read a Japanese haiku or the Koran, even translated into your native language, and most of the meaning is simply lost. Images need no translation.

 

What's it like living in a tower, Dikiyoba?

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Honor-Bound

You keep throwing out these challenges.

—Alorael, who is, in fact, easily manipulated. He's just not so easily manipulated in useful or satisfying ways.

I wasn't trying to give you a challenge, I was just saying. If you honestly and truly want some challenges, I can oblige; just don't say I never warned you.

Cool fractal avatar, BTW. Where'd you get it?

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Monroe

You can look at a painting or sculpture from anywhere of anytime in the world and possibly draw meaning from it. But read a Japanese haiku or the Koran, even translated into your native language, and most of the meaning is simply lost. Images need no translation.

Symbols, paintings, and photos can be lost in translation as quickly as words are.

Dikiyoba.

[Monroe]

What makes you think that? Examples?

[waterplant]

Originally Posted By: Monroe

Clever, sure. And there's certainly nothing egotistical at all about saying you're a God of your own little world.

Well, that's entirely egotistical but just not in a bad way. It's maybe how it should be (or is) for everybody.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Monroe

What makes you think that? Examples?

Rock art. Most Mariko Mori's work. A photograph of a major historical event if you've never heard of the event before and the photo has no caption. This.

Dikiyoba.

[waterplant]

Originally Posted By: Monroe

If I understand it right, it's basically like saying even the greatest of human achievements pales in comparison to just about anything that already existed in nature.

Human achievements exist within nature - unless you believe that human creativity stems from some supernatural source. Humans, and all that spring from us, are achievements of nature, if you follow me.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Monroe

You can look at a painting or sculpture from anywhere of anytime in the world and possibly draw meaning from it. But read a Japanese haiku or the Koran, even translated into your native language, and most of the meaning is simply lost. Images need no translation.

Art can convey meaning, but language conveys information.

—Alorael, who thinks the problem is that two people can look at a painting or a sculpture and draw two entirely different meanings from it. If you read a book, while you may disagree on the subtleties, the basic "what happens" should be the same. Of course, sufficiently non-prosaic writing is indistinguishable from poetry, from which two readers can draw two entirely unrelated meanings.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

Originally Posted By: Monroe

What makes you think that? Examples?

Rock art. Most Mariko Mori's work. A photograph of a major historical event if you've never heard of the event before and the photo has no caption. This.

 

Dikiyoba.

This can be handwaved aside with ease by simply claiming that that's not true art. Too easy.

 

A challenge: I will give you a painting of a historical event you don't know about, and we'll see if you can guess the emotions and message the artist was trying to portray. If you know the even't, don't post it.

 

Painting

 

It depicts a foreign event in a country that doesn't speak English, so clearly something should be lost in translation according to you.

[Monroe]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

This can be handwaved aside with ease by simply claiming that that's not true art. Too easy.

I would have tackled it differently. I'd say one can get meaning from Mori's art without any context, and it may even be the meaning he intended. Even if I was way off on the meaning I got from his art, I'd still be way closer than if I tried to understand a tablet with cuneiform on it.

As for your picture, it's great. While you might be able to convey emotions from that event by writing about them, it's just not the same.

[Niemand]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

A challenge: I will give you a painting of a historical event you don't know about, and we'll see if you can guess the emotions and message the artist was trying to portray. If you know the even't, don't post it.

You can't really prove your point that way, since Dikiyoba wasn't arguing that there exist no images whose meaning can be incomprehensible out of context. To prove your point, it appears that you must show that all images (perhaps all images of events involving humans) retain their original meaning for all viewers in all contexts.

[Monroe]

I feel like your attempt to make a point by using semantics proves my earlier point that language is clumsy quite neatly. I got what Dantius was saying, and I got what Dikiyoba was saying. Who needs rules on how to win an argument to decide which one is more appealing? Well, besides you.

 

*High-Fives Dantius*

[cfgauss]

Originally Posted By: Monroe

I feel like your attempt to make a point by using semantics proves my earlier point that language is clumsy quite neatly. I got what Dantius was saying, and I got what Dikiyoba was saying. Who needs rules on how to win an argument to decide which one is more appealing? Well, besides you.

*High-Fives Dantius*

Is it ironic that your argument doesn't make any sense? I can't figure this out at all.

Edit:
To contribute, formal symbolic logic is the correct way to communicate.

[Monroe]

If my point was that language is clumsy, and you can't figure out what I'm trying to say even though it is all there in plain English, then it is not really ironic at all, right? It's the opposite of ironic.

[cfgauss]

No, no.

[Monroe]

Come on now, no need to spam up the thread with meaningless contradictions. Do you have a point to make?

[Sudanna]

He just did. Who knows what it was, though, thanks to the clumsiness of language?

[Alorael at Large]

lojban for everyone!

 

—Alorael, who will happily agree that language is a clumsy system. It's just better than the alternatives. Try communicating complex abstractions solely in images!

[Student of Trinity]

I doubt that pictures are really any kind of pure, unmediated communication, except insofar as one is literally only trying to communicate the picture itself. (And at that level, speech and letters can also be perfect at communicating raw sounds, or graphical shapes.)

 

If there is any attempt to make a picture represent something more abstract, then I think that there is probably about as much context and implicit knowledge built into human image processing as there is in human language. It's just that there seems not to have been any visual tower of Babel; we all use pretty much the same visual language, possibly with minor dialectical variations.

 

If we ever encounter aliens, our pictures and pictograms may not go very far.

[Sudanna]

We'll have instant translationators by then, though.

[Niemand]

Quote:

If we ever encounter aliens, our pictures and pictograms may not go very far.

Even should such aliens be as reliant on sight as are we, just the fact that they might do so with different wavelengths could really get in the way of their perception of a lot of our pictorial data, to say nothing of interpreting that data.

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

A challenge: I will give you a painting of a historical event you don't know about, and we'll see if you can guess the emotions and message the artist was trying to portray. If you know the even't, don't post it.

Painting

It depicts a foreign event in a country that doesn't speak English, so clearly something should be lost in translation according to you.

The image quite clearly shows a survivor of the Nostromo and what happens when he returns to Earth. It's easy to miss the first time, but I've highlighted a section of the painting showing the chestburster about to arrive. The other people are understandably puzzled as to what this might be, having never seen the alien before, and are waiting with baited breath. Also included in the picture is a man who appears to have been attacked by a facehugger (which must have already infected the man, since it is no longer on his face).

Click to reveal.. (Highlighted image)

What do I win?

[Monroe]

Originally Posted By: Niemand

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

If we ever encounter aliens, our pictures and pictograms may not go very far.

Even should such aliens be as reliant on sight as are we, just the fact that they might do so with different wavelengths could really get in the way of their perception of a lot of our pictorial data, to say nothing of interpreting that data.

Any alien unable to process pictures the same way we do would also have a difficult a time reading our language, you know. I guess language would be more useful if they could only receive audio information, which would be strange, but even then I'd probably prefer to have a mathematician with me when I first met them as opposed to a linguist. Even then, he would have to be extra clever, as they would undoubtedly have different symbols/pictures to represent numbers than we do.

Then there are the aliens who rely mostly on telepathy. Do you see words in your head when you think of something, or images?

[Student of Trinity]

Even different human cultures can understand facial expressions very differently (though it seems some particular expressions are quite universal). And of course a lot of pictures use symbolic conventions that are culturally specific. The degree of difference may be much less than a language barrier; but, on the other hand, I wonder what kinds of ideas actually can be conveyed well by pictures. Not everything, I suspect. Having to communicate by pictures alone would probably be a crippling limitation, in fact.

 

I find I can hold an image in my head — a rotating cube or something, or a diagram — and simultaneously recite words or sing a song. I cannot really keep two different pictures at once (though of course I can try to make one picture with two things in it), or follow two different texts. So my theory (which I know has been suggested by many people before me) is that there are somehow at least two processing cores in my brain, dedicated to text and images respectively.

 

I'm inclined to doubt that telepathy exists at all, but of course it is possible for all kinds of different kinds of perception and communication. One of the more interesting fictional concepts in this direction was Vernor Vinge's 'tines', from A Fire Upon the Deep. These are collective consciousnesses formed by up to six or eight individual dog-like creatures, who maintain constant communication through short range ultrasound (transmitted and received biologically). The conscious units are the packs, not the individuals. Two packs cannot normally move too close to each other, or their identities start to merge as their ultrasound signals overlap.

[Zummi]

Why can't you guys let the aliens have it easy and just have them probe us?

[Dantius]

Actually, communicating to aliens is much easer than you would think. The trick is to rely on universal constants instead of arbitrary language markers. For example, instead of saying "Humans average five feet plus ten inches" you could say "A human is 1.6234x10e12 hydrogen atoms tall"(I made that number up). Likewise, language can also be modified. Instead of saying where our planet is, you could define our location relative to pulsars, and then draw a picture of our orbit, highlighting the third planet. Then, basic math can be used to give an impression of language. You would tart with 1 = O, 2 = OO, 3 = OOO, 4 = OOOO, and then advance to 1 + 2 = 3 = OOO. Then, you could give them hints into the language. |1/0| = infinity, and then, you could clue them into other words by a similar process. This is all really elementary stuff. Read Carl Sagan's Murmurs of Earth if you want a better picture. It is actually quite fascinating, the way it was went about.

 

Also, congratulations Nikki, you win log(-1) internets. Enjoy.

[cfgauss]

Originally Posted By: Dreaming Under Elderberries

He just did. Who knows what it was, though, thanks to the clumsiness of language?

Thank god someone got this, I was starting to worry .

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

there are somehow at least two processing cores in my brain, dedicated to text and images respectively.

Yes! This is true and very cool. In fact, they process information very differently, and even at different speeds. In fact, there's a famous story about this (but with counting and reading at the same time) due to Feynman. Apparently he'd noticed some people could do these at once, and some couldn't, and eventually figured out that all the people who could pictured the numberline as an actual numberline.

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Actually, communicating to aliens is much easer than you would think. The trick is to rely on universal constants instead of arbitrary language markers.

Well, you have to be careful not to use dimensionful constants, don't you? And you'll of course run into the difficulty of, e.g., how do you tell the aliens what a hydrogen atom is? It's a big step up nothing to even basic physics.

For example, check out the hundreds of pages of background material in logic you have to understand in order to properly define addition of two integers axiomatically! Of course, that specific step could be skipped in teaching aliens how to count, but it still serves as a more understandable concrete example of why it's really hard.

And then we always run the risk of the aliens saying "oh those silly humans still believe in a particle description of nature, let's do the universe a favor and wipe them all out" .

[Khoth]

We need to figure out a completely culturally-independent way of saying "we taste horrible and our atmosphere is poisonous".

[Celtic Minstrel]

Originally Posted By: Monroe

but even then I'd probably prefer to have a mathematician with me when I first met them as opposed to a linguist. Even then, he would have to be extra clever, as they would undoubtedly have different symbols/pictures to represent numbers than we do.

No, no, no, you're going about that the wrong way. The symbols for numbers aren't universal, of course, but numbers themselves are. So, you bypass the symbols and work directly with numbers. To convey the number 6, for example, you could show them 6 apples.

Originally Posted By: Dantius

You would start with 1 = O, 2 = OO, 3 = OOO, 4 = OOOO, and then advance to 1 + 2 = 3 = OOOOOO.

Fixed your post.

[Monroe]

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel

To convey the number 6, for example, you could show them 6 apples.

We totally agree here. My original point was that images are better than language, and numbers are indeed a language. I got a bit off track with my last sentence in your quote, both otherwise, I'm glad we agree.

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: Ephesos

But honestly, aren't we all gods of our own little worlds whenever we indulge in a creative act? I feel like we've already got a lot of that impulse floating around in this community... between Blades, the various scripts and stories of the years, and our tradition of RPs. And after all, we're all here because we like spending time in imaginary worlds, so it's no surprise we tend to wax fantastic in our spare time. I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing to have a richly detailed world inside one's head, as long as you manage to step out of it once in a while.

Originally Posted By: Neil Gaiman

Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.

The whole 'first contact' question appeared on Slashdot not that long ago, and one of the first posters gave a link to this (obligatory mod warning: contains some language). There are some problems with it (that later posters on Slashdot pointed out), but the main idea is there.

Me, I think space is big. Really, really, big. No, bigger than that. It is big. I think we can ignore the possibility of the greys stumbling across us -- if they reach Earth, it was a deliberate act, presumably a well researched one. The "Take us to your leader" quote is a dumb one. Either they know about us, and will ask for a specific leader by name, or they don't care about our cultures and just want to exploit our resources and steal our finest products (the "Take us to your poutine" hypothesis).

(And I can't let a discussion about alien contact go by without posting a link to my favourite short story.)

EDIT: I think this whole discussion would become clearer for everyone if the word "symbol" was used instead of "image".

[cfgauss]

Originally Posted By: Monroe

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel

To convey the number 6, for example, you could show them 6 apples.

We totally agree here. My original point was that images are better than language, and numbers are indeed a language. I got a bit off track with my last sentence in your quote, both otherwise, I'm glad we agree.

Wait, I have a plan. Why don't we replace this clumsy language with pictures. Each idea, we can represent with a picture, instead of words. Or, even better, we can have some pictures that represent atomic ideas, and we can string these pictures together into more complicated ideas! Perfect!

[Upon Mars.]

Re: Animated Avatars

 

Like the hieroglyphs carvers in Ciaro, let us build temples of complicated art language! Death to word users!

[Triumph]

Yeah, if pictures are so much better...whatever happened to pictograms, to hieroglyphics and such?