What do the 3.x stats mean?

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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

Sigma, keep your stupid politics out of D&D. No one bleeds into what they drink. They bleed into what other people drink because they don't give two shits about other people.

When someone uses the words "harmonious with their environment" I know they are the stupid fucking retard kind of environmentalist that doesn't actually understand anything.
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Post by Zinegata »

The idea that how intelligent you are is different from how civilized you are frankly has merit.

I know Mouse Guard makes such a distinction in its stats.
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Post by Zinegata »

Judging__Eagle wrote:TheFlatline, I think that was me. XD
Then let me chime in and say I thought it was fairly novel as well.

-----

Also, a general comment regarding the subject, because it is devolving into a pointless bashfest:

Virtually all stats in RPGs are actually abstractions. It's not just Intelligence or Wisdom.

You can't actually measure stuff like Armor Class in the real world. Sure, you can measure the thickness of the armor, but armor thickness is not always indicative of its effectivness against various forms of attack.

So all of this talk about "You can/can't measure people's intelligence" is frankly useless. Because an RPG is cannot simulate every human quirk. It just tries to generalize a person's capabilities into a relatively small set of variables.

-----

What RPGs should instead do, is to make sure that stats matter in the context of conflict-resolution within a campaign.

Charisma in 3.5 doesn't suck because it's undefineable (all stats are). It sucks because it very rarely comes up in conflict resolution in most D&D campaigns.

-----

Finally, regarding the issue of players who insist you roleplay a certain way because of stats.

Avoid them if you don't like to play that way. Because this problem doesn't stem from the rules. It stems from the player's mindset.

Most players understand that stats are abstractions. Having a +10 BaB doesn't mean you can swing a sword 10 times more forcefully than a guy with +1 BaB. They understand that this is a general representation of each fighter's ability.

Some don't. And they are the ones who insist on the stuff like "You must talk stupidly if you have an Int of 3". That's not really a problem that the rules should even bother addressing.
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Post by Kaelik »

Zinegata wrote:The idea that how intelligent you are is different from how civilized you are frankly has merit.

I know Mouse Guard makes such a distinction in its stats.
Those things are different, but I see no reason for a civilized stat in D&D.

Dragons are uncivilized, Aboleths have like a -40 penalty to civilization, ect.

None of that is useful, and is better represented by actual creature attitudes.

What sigma is blabering about is how birds are smarter because they don't do as much ecological damage.

News flash, birds don't do ecological damage only because they don't have significant effect. If birds were smart enough to develop industrious tools, they would too fucking destroy the ecology. Diggers would be starving out the worm population after only a few years from the bird industrial revolution.

The post-modern inability to distinguish lack of power to fuck things up from better judgment leads to all kinds of stupid, like fapping to other animals being "in balance with nature" and therefore better than humans, and minority groups being smarter than white males, and therefore better, ect. Even though, yes, if you give all the power to minorities, they will also turn out to be people too, and fuck things up just as bad as the white people have been doing. (And if you give power to the birds, they will fuck things up like the humans were doing.)

TL:DR, I hate sigma and his birdies too. :)
Last edited by Kaelik on Fri Nov 26, 2010 6:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Zinegata »

Kaelik wrote:Those things are different, but I see no reason for a civilized stat in D&D.
I didn't say D&D should have a "civilized stat". I said the idea has merit.

That I pointed to Mouse Guard (a completely different game) should already tell you that I wasn't talking about D&D specifically.

----

As for your rantings against sigma, that's just your interpretation, and I frankly couldn't care less. It's just irrelevant noise in terms of game design.

Because game-design wise, sigma's point is that it should be possible to seperate "intelligence" and "being civilized". And that's not a bad idea - Mouse Guard has pulled it off quite successfully in my view.

I'm just pointing it out before it gets lot in the clutter.
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Post by Kaelik »

Zinegata wrote:Because game-design wise, sigma's point is that it should be possible to seperate "intelligence" and "being civilized".
No that has nothing to do with Sigma's point. His point has shit to do with civilization being different from intelligence. That has literally nothing to do with point. Carry on being retarded.
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Post by JonSetanta »

Kaelik wrote: TL:DR, I hate sigma and his birdies too. :)
That's fine. You're only angry disembodied text. But if you listen to mockingbird songs long enough you'll hear the sentence and symbol structure too.
Last edited by JonSetanta on Fri Nov 26, 2010 6:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Dean »

Kermit was a frog and he was smart as shit.

Motherfucker plays instruments and runs a theatre.
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Post by fectin »

sigma999 wrote: A simple INT damage/drain attack can shut down animals like it was nothing. A dire creature drops to unconsciousness due to its INT of 1-2 with a single attack.
That's not right.
Couldn't you fix that more easily by giving them "-" Int?
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Post by JonSetanta »

fectin wrote: Couldn't you fix that more easily by giving them "-" Int?
I was thinking more like 10 or 11.
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Post by Zinegata »

DragonChild->

Okay, no more "civilized vs int" stat talk from me except for this one last rejoinder:
Kaelik wrote:No that has nothing to do with Sigma's point.
:bored:

"Rather, like a Barbarian 1 that is described as "Illiterate", nonsapient beings should have an ability (or anti-ability) that says "This creature can't anticipate the future, use written language, or complete abstract thought," and yet the INT score would be roughly the same as any humanoid.
Hell, you could have animalistic dragons with INT of over 20 and they don't know a single word of Common or plan farther than an hour in advance, but they get by."

Yes Kaelik. Continue to live in your own little bubble. You remain, as always, a complete waste of time.
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Post by Saxony »

FrankTrollman wrote:
Saxony wrote:I never said my three definitions could be the foundation of anything. As above, I was merely attempting to prove those three real world words could be given a definition (I'll address the issues of giving them definitions below).
Ah. So you were wasting everyone's time and calling me out over nothing at all. Thanks for playing.

So to get this straight, you were complaining that I said those words had "real world meaning".....

-Username17
Yes, that was a mistake. My mistake. I've admitted it before. Can we move on from my imperfection and to something somebody is still defending?

The one thing I didn't like about your post was stating in-game term names corresponding to real-world meanings of those names has no value. In-game term names corresponding to their real-world meanings eases learning (which is valuable). In-game "Strength" should correlate somehow to real-world strength. An in-game term called "Xel-crag-muffer" which closely corresponds to real-world running speed should be called running speed instead.

And then you said my definitions were bad (which they were), and to keep arguing with you I expanded my definitions.
Kaelik wrote:So we are still back to my deconstruction of your shitty definitions.

No one goes around talking about how Wise Einstein was for figuring out relativity or quantum effects. We praise him for being intelligent.

In fact, "taking lots of little things you already know, and applying them well to come up with new stuff" is the primary use of the word intelligent.

We say someone is "Wise" when they say stupid shit that isn't true but sounds cool, or take something that is true in one situation and generalize it to things that it doesn't actually apply to.

We call people who are good at rote memorization or have a lot of knowledge: Good at rote memorization or knowledgeable.

So once again, your definitions of Wisdom and Intelligence are wrong and stupid and backward.
I do think Einstein was wise. But not because he is credited with "Relativity". "Relativity" was not a new concept, Einstein didn't come up with a new answer, and he wasn't being asked a new question either! He just made the existing answer work well and better than anyone else's version of "Relativity". That's intelligence, we're agreed.

I think he was wise because he would have gave up his fame and intelligence to stop the atomic bomb's invention ("If I had known of the atom bomb, I would have been a plumber" is a good quote). That's a new answer to the new question "What's worth losing to stop the atomic bomb?".

Also, you make me lol for stating Einstein figured out quantum effects. Einstein did make a small contribution (The photoelectric effect, which was one of the catalysts for future thought on quantum mechanics) and died disbelieving in what we now know as "Basic Quantum Mechanics" (stuff like things existing in many places at once and only snapping to one location when observed, things Wikipedia can tell you). The guy was funny in both good ways and bad ways.
As for Cha. WTF? Intimidation? Seriously? When I am intimidated by someone, it's not because I have a weaker for charisma or mental fortitude, it's because I genuinely believe that they are willing and capable of hurting me if I don't. Mike Tyson doesn't have higher Charisma than me. A Gun is not a +20 circumstance bonus to Charisma.

Charisma is the ability to be fucking likable. To present an impression such that people like you when they meet you, and are less likely to judge you harshly. This can be "instinctual" or it can be a practiced application of knowledge. I know that people respond better when I smile at them instead of frowning, thus, I smile at people. That's me having knowledge, applying it well to convince people of things. Because all these definitions are arbitrary.
I didn't mean physically intimidate. I meant mentally intimidate them, making them not want to verbally fight with you because you'll make them feel drained because you're so difficult and you'll make them feel stupid after you inexorably prove them wrong. People sometimes give up an argument because they don't like the cost of arguing. That was my one example.

Again, I was being very vague and you were totally right to assume I meant physically intimidate (by threatening with a gun as you said). I was very unprofessional. My mistake.

Charisma is being able to successfully mentally pressure people and withstand their mental pressure. My expanded definition was "Mental fortitude and pressure" and my example was "overcome intimidation and intimidate successfully". One can be nice (likable as you said Kaelik), one can be mean (intimidating as I said), but one who gets their way often is probably charismatic. Being nice just means you want people to feel good as you convince them to buy the shitty car, but you still got your way and the buyers still crumbled under your sales pitch pressure.
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Post by Kaelik »

Saxony wrote:I do think Einstein was wise. But not because he is credited with "Relativity". "Relativity" was not a new concept, Einstein didn't come up with a new answer, and he wasn't being asked a new question either! He just made the existing answer work well and better than anyone else's version of "Relativity". That's intelligence, we're agreed.
Are you being deliberately stupid, or are you just stupid? Since you insist on trying to be a stupid fucker:

Stephen Hawking is intelligent. He is not intelligent because he is good at rote memorization. He is intelligent because he is good at applying things he knows to new and interesting things. You are stupid. Stop being stupid.
Saxony wrote:I think he was wise because he would have gave up his fame and intelligence to stop the atomic bomb's invention ("If I had known of the atom bomb, I would have been a plumber" is a good quote). That's a new answer to the new question "What's worth losing to stop the atomic bomb?".
Yes, exactly. "Wisdom" is saying stupid things that make no sense in reality, but sound cool in theory, and it only makes sense under a false dualistic version of the brain where the universe cares about things.

Thus, Wis has shit to do with applying knowledge.
I didn't mean physically intimidate. I meant mentally intimidate them, making them not want to verbally fight with you because you'll make them feel drained because you're so difficult and you'll make them feel stupid after you inexorably prove them wrong. People sometimes give up an argument because they don't like the cost of arguing. That was my one example.

Again, I was being very vague and you were totally right to assume I meant physically intimidate (by threatening with a gun as you said). I was very unprofessional. My mistake.

Charisma is being able to successfully mentally pressure people and withstand their mental pressure. My expanded definition was "Mental fortitude and pressure" and my example was "overcome intimidation and intimidate successfully". One can be nice (likable as you said Kaelik), one can be mean (intimidating as I said), but one who gets their way often is probably charismatic. Being nice just means you want people to feel good as you convince them to buy the shitty car, but you still got your way and the buyers still crumbled under your sales pitch pressure.
Once again, wtf. You can't force someone to not argue with you in any way other than 1) winning the argument 2) agreeing with them from the beginning 3) them not wanting to argue about it.

That's fucking it. Because otherwise, they still disagree with you. You can't force them into agreeing with you other than by winning an argument.

You can be nice, so their brain takes statements you make at face value. Or you can be a raging dick who happens to be right. But you can't force someone to agree with you other than by convincing them, which involves arguments.

What you are saying makes no fucking sense. I know that the popular fantasy trope is battle of wills, but that doesn't happen in reality. In reality, you can't change reality through force of mind.
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Post by Sashi »

Einstein was obviously wise, his spot score was good enough that he never needed glasses.
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Post by Saxony »

Kaelik wrote:
Saxony wrote:I do think Einstein was wise. But not because he is credited with "Relativity". "Relativity" was not a new concept, Einstein didn't come up with a new answer, and he wasn't being asked a new question either! He just made the existing answer work well and better than anyone else's version of "Relativity". That's intelligence, we're agreed.
Are you being deliberately stupid, or are you just stupid? Since you insist on trying to be a stupid fucker:

Stephen Hawking is intelligent. He is not intelligent because he is good at rote memorization. He is intelligent because he is good at applying things he knows to new and interesting things. You are stupid. Stop being stupid.
You have a limited vernacular.

Since my statements on Newton and Einstein are uncontested, we're moving on to Hawking? Uh... Okay.

Hawking is wise because he's told everyone to stop broadcasting earth's location to the galaxy in hopes of finding aliens because it's fucking stupid (First contact tends to go awry between groups of different advancement levels. Look at the Native Americans. Earth might be the less advanced civilization. We don't want to be genocided). Now that is a new answer to the new question "Do we want to find aliens?"

In terms of his physics related theoretical work, he could be applying physics' progress' age old formula of making sure dimensional analysis works before moving on to real theory. As a shot in the dark opinion, I give it a 50% chance of Hawking using wisdom in his physics related work.

Then again, you probably know less than I know about Hawking's physics related work (which is jack shit) so you might want to pick an example at least one person knows anything about.
Saxony wrote:I think he was wise because he would have gave up his fame and intelligence to stop the atomic bomb's invention ("If I had known of the atom bomb, I would have been a plumber" is a good quote). That's a new answer to the new question "What's worth losing to stop the atomic bomb?".
Yes, exactly. "Wisdom" is saying stupid things that make no sense in reality, but sound cool in theory, and it only makes sense under a false dualistic version of the brain where the universe cares about things.

Thus, Wis has shit to do with applying knowledge.
Uh, what? That almost as vague my previous posts. You were talking about the mind and could have been right and suddenly mid-sentence switched to the universe caring about things. Could you please explain further?
I didn't mean physically intimidate. I meant mentally intimidate them, making them not want to verbally fight with you because you'll make them feel drained because you're so difficult and you'll make them feel stupid after you inexorably prove them wrong. People sometimes give up an argument because they don't like the cost of arguing. That was my one example.

Again, I was being very vague and you were totally right to assume I meant physically intimidate (by threatening with a gun as you said). I was very unprofessional. My mistake.

Charisma is being able to successfully mentally pressure people and withstand their mental pressure. My expanded definition was "Mental fortitude and pressure" and my example was "overcome intimidation and intimidate successfully". One can be nice (likable as you said Kaelik), one can be mean (intimidating as I said), but one who gets their way often is probably charismatic. Being nice just means you want people to feel good as you convince them to buy the shitty car, but you still got your way and the buyers still crumbled under your sales pitch pressure.
Once again, wtf. You can't force someone to not argue with you in any way other than 1) winning the argument 2) agreeing with them from the beginning 3) them not wanting to argue about it.
I agree and your quote agrees.
That's fucking it. Because otherwise, they still disagree with you. You can't force them into agreeing with you other than by winning an argument.

You can be nice, so their brain takes statements you make at face value. Or you can be a raging dick who happens to be right. But you can't force someone to agree with you other than by convincing them, which involves arguments.
You can bully or persuade someone into believing something contrary to their normal belief system. That involves arguments... but not arguments which are actually logically valid. Fooling someone into believing a lie or a logical contradiction (like "This shitty car is a good purchase") probably involves arguments, but probably fallacious arguments.
What you are saying makes no fucking sense. I know that the popular fantasy trope is battle of wills, but that doesn't happen in reality. In reality, you can't change reality through force of mind.
In reality, you can change someone else's perception of reality to get your way ("This shitty car is actually really good for its price"). In reality, changing someone's perception is a very good way to change their belief system to match yours (IE: Make them agree with you).

Charisma only comes into play when two minds interact (My expanded definition was "Mental fortitude and pressure"). I never mentioned a mind interacting with reality to change it through force of will.
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Post by JonSetanta »

Saxony wrote: You can bully or persuade someone into believing something contrary to their normal belief system. That involves arguments... but not arguments which are actually logically valid. Fooling someone into believing a lie or a logical contradiction (like "This shitty car is a good purchase") probably involves arguments, but probably fallacious arguments.
Changing beliefs is still a matter of personal choice, unless they were tricked... which is another game entirely (Bluff)
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Post by Username17 »

Saxony wrote:Since my statements on Newton and Einstein are uncontested, we're moving on to Hawking?
No. Your statements on Einstein and Newton are completely insane, and unworthy of serious consideration or discussion. For fuck's sake, this is an actual line from Albert Einstein's Wikipedia entry:
Wiki on Einstein wrote:His great intelligence and originality has made the word "Einstein" synonymous with genius.
At the moment you attempt to claim that Einstein is an example of something and "Intelligence" is one of the options, and you chose some other option, your examples are gobbledygook. Whatever the fuck you have "Intelligence" mean, Albert Fucking Einstein had better be an example of that if you want your terms to mean anything that is even on the same planet as they do in Natural English.

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Post by Kaelik »

Saxony wrote:Since my statements on Newton and Einstein are uncontested, we're moving on to Hawking? Uh... Okay.
No, your statements about Einstein are you specifically trying to avoid the topic, because you are a dishonest shill. So I am trying to force you to talk about the actual topic. But of course, I underestimated the level of dishonest shill you are willing to throw out.
Saxony wrote:Hawking is wise because he's told everyone to stop broadcasting earth's location to the galaxy in hopes of finding aliens because it's fucking stupid
Stop being a lying asshat for two fucking seconds. Is Stephen Hawking intelligent? Yes. Why is he intelligent? Is it because he is good at memorizing things? No. Is it because he is good at taking the same things that everyone else can also memorize, and really understanding it, and using that knowledge to synthesize new better understandings of more complex things? Yes.

Intelligence is not measured by rote memorization ability, and is measured by being able to apply the same knowledge better than other people.

Whether or not you personally think someone is wise because you can point to some random time they said something that sounds cool but doesn't make sense, or generalized something to the point that it becomes false doesn't matter, is it just you attempting to distract people from the fact that your definition of intelligence is completely wrong.

The fact that both of your claims demonstrate my definitions of Wisdom as correct is just fucking weird.
Uh, what? That almost as vague my previous posts. You were talking about the mind and could have been right and suddenly mid-sentence switched to the universe caring about things. Could you please explain further?
You claim that it is wise to want to sacrifice stuff to not have the bomb, ignoring for the moment that Einstein being a plumber wouldn't mean the bomb never comes.

Hidden behind this is the assumption that the nuclear bomb existing is a bad thing. Why is it a bad thing? There is no objective reason why it is, because the universe doesn't give two shits, only specific humans. Since that is the case, Einstein can only be "wise" to give things up to prevent the bomb from happening if having the bomb is bad.

Ignoring for the moment that the bomb has probably saved more lives than it has taken by this point, and you probably falsely believe that human life is objectively good, and therefore you are wrong, even under your own false assumptions:

The universe doesn't give two shits, so Einstein being "wise" depends on if you personally dislike the bomb. Therefore, unlike intelligence, it's not an objective thing that can be judged. You fail. Your definition fails.
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Post by TheWorid »

(Ported over from the other thread)
Saxony wrote: I think he was wise because he would have gave up his fame and intelligence to stop the atomic bomb's invention ("If I had known of the atom bomb, I would have been a plumber" is a good quote). That's a new answer to the new question "What's worth losing to stop the atomic bomb?".
In your conception, wouldn't it have been "wise" to see it coming, rather than only in hindsight? Moreover, how is it "wise" and not "intelligent" to decide that atomic bombs are bad based on the facts one knows about them; which of course assumes that Einstein's plumber assertion even made sense, which it doesn't because him not contributing to the bomb's invention wouldn't prevent it from being made, just slow it down.

For that matter, can we just all agree to stop using the word "wisdom" ever? All it does is show an anti-intellectual worldview that tries to downplay the importance of intelligence by positing the existence of a difficult-to-pin-down (in reality, impossible to pin down because it doesn't exist) concept of "intelligence, but only kinda sorta".
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Post by Kaelik »

TheWorid wrote:For that matter, can we just all agree to stop using the word "wisdom" ever? All it does is show an anti-intellectual worldview that tries to downplay the importance of intelligence by positing the existence of a difficult-to-pin-down (in reality, impossible to pin down because it doesn't exist) concept of "intelligence, but only kinda sorta".
This is almost precisely what I am saying, and why I keep pointing out that Wisdom is a stupid thing invented by stupid people to mean other people who are stupid in the same way as them.
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Post by JigokuBosatsu »

Saxony wrote: You have a limited vernacular.
Did you just say "vernacular" when you meant "vocabulary"? Irony fail, hard. HARD.

And in other news, was anyone disappointed with the fact that the "Sokka learns blademastery" plot point was dropped like a hot turd? Fighters and nice things, indeed.
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Post by Sashi »

Years ago a friend of mine pointed out that since 3d6 approximates a normal distribution with a standard deviation of 3 and IQ is built on a normal distribution with a standard deviation of 15, that the Intelligence stat is perfectly correlated to IQ with an 11=104.5 and every point +/- being 5 IQ points.

I spent about four months thinking that question had an answer before I looked up IQ and realized that neither I nor anyone else actually understands what it is.
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Post by Saxony »

Kaelik wrote:
Saxony wrote:Since my statements on Newton and Einstein are uncontested, we're moving on to Hawking? Uh... Okay.
No, your statements about Einstein are you specifically trying to avoid the topic, because you are a dishonest shill. So I am trying to force you to talk about the actual topic. But of course, I underestimated the level of dishonest shill you are willing to throw out.
Saxony wrote:Hawking is wise because he's told everyone to stop broadcasting earth's location to the galaxy in hopes of finding aliens because it's fucking stupid
Stop being a lying asshat for two fucking seconds. Is Stephen Hawking intelligent? Yes. Why is he intelligent? Is it because he is good at memorizing things? No. Is it because he is good at taking the same things that everyone else can also memorize, and really understanding it, and using that knowledge to synthesize new better understandings of more complex things? Yes.

Intelligence is not measured by rote memorization ability, and is measured by being able to apply the same knowledge better than other people.

Whether or not you personally think someone is wise because you can point to some random time they said something that sounds cool but doesn't make sense, or generalized something to the point that it becomes false doesn't matter, is it just you attempting to distract people from the fact that your definition of intelligence is completely wrong.

The fact that both of your claims demonstrate my definitions of Wisdom as correct is just fucking weird.
Alright, I admit my definitions of Intelligence and Wisdom were wrong.

I still feel there might be a distinction and I'd like to give one more go at hashing a definition out just for fun.
Kaelik wrote:
Uh, what? That almost as vague my previous posts. You were talking about the mind and could have been right and suddenly mid-sentence switched to the universe caring about things. Could you please explain further?
You claim that it is wise to want to sacrifice stuff to not have the bomb, ignoring for the moment that Einstein being a plumber wouldn't mean the bomb never comes.

Hidden behind this is the assumption that the nuclear bomb existing is a bad thing. Why is it a bad thing? There is no objective reason why it is, because the universe doesn't give two shits, only specific humans. Since that is the case, Einstein can only be "wise" to give things up to prevent the bomb from happening if having the bomb is bad.

Ignoring for the moment that the bomb has probably saved more lives than it has taken by this point, and you probably falsely believe that human life is objectively good, and therefore you are wrong, even under your own false assumptions:

The universe doesn't give two shits, so Einstein being "wise" depends on if you personally dislike the bomb. Therefore, unlike intelligence, it's not an objective thing that can be judged. You fail. Your definition fails.
Yes, the universe doesn't care. The concept of "pleasure" or "pain" inherently involves people. That people feel pleasure or pain is an arbitrary unprovable assumption.

I don't objectively believe anything, being agnostic about everything (except in believing agnosticism is correct, which might be wrong. Still figuring that out).

Here's another go at defining Intelligence and Wisdom.

Intelligence is knowing things and applying that knowledge to form new knowledge; your definition, Kaelik, which says Hawking and Einstein and Newton are intelligent for figuring out new scientific discoveries. Okay, coolio.

Another way to put that is having a high ability to work within rules (like mathematical axioms, scientific laws) to reach conclusions (like Hawking radiation exists, relativity works in a certain way, making calculus work correctly to prove Kepler's laws).

I'm having a hard time pinning down wisdom. You might be right (it could just not exist). My initial idea was that intelligence is effective logical thinking and that wisdom is effective valued thinking. Getting to a mathematical answer doesn't care about what's good or bad as long as you follow the rules. But being wise is taking pleasure/want and pain/dislike into account.

But "pain" and "pleasure" are subjective. We can't have a definition with subjective elements because it's useless (As you said, Kaelik).

So I was wondering if want and dislike could be objectively defined. First I thought "wanting something" meant one would get/do that thing if nothing gets in the way (and the opposite for dislike). But that means a rock "wants" to lay on the ground forever and air "wants" to evenly distribute itself and fill vacuums, and for some reason, I want the definition of "want" to only include animated things. Perhaps that is just an arbitrary distinction I'm making so "sentience" not only exists but feels special.

Side idea: Sentience is the ability to change location without external influence. A rock must stay on the ground forever, but we can get up and lay down somewhere else without being picked up.

And we hit another roadblock of defining the boundaries between objects ("Where does one end and where does one begin?"). For a "thing" to be disturbed by another "thing", those two "things" must be different things. Otherwise the Earth as a whole moves itself around (A rock can be disturbed by a river) and is sentient.

I'm leaning towards "sentience" being an arbitrary concept created by humans who want to feel more special than rocks.

How do people like my definition of want (You will get/do the thing you "want" if nothing gets in between you and that thing you "want")?

And wisdom is understanding wants well. Blegh. Intelligence is understanding rules well (including the rules of "want"). I'm heavily leaning towards wisdom not existing.
Last edited by Saxony on Sat Nov 27, 2010 10:06 am, edited 11 times in total.
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Post by Saxony »

double post
Last edited by Saxony on Sat Nov 27, 2010 9:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Maj »

Where does knowledge obtained with study and research (insight) fit? Ignore?
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