Fun with Chaos...

[OmegaPsi]

So while I was listening to my favorite song, Requiem for a Dream(No relevance to this..except it brings up images of the very dramatic), I was thinking how awesome would it be if all of a sudden you were struck with a sudden inspiration and you knew exactly how to bring down someone, somewhere, or something in to total chaos. Even though they would be perfectly fine in the current direction of history without intervention. Would you do it?

For example, if you knew all you had to do was press a magic button and it will set events into motion which would bring some foreign country into complete and utter despair and chaos, socially, ecconomically, and what ever other fashion you can imagine and it will incite a huge civil war bringing the country to its knees...would you do it? Why or why not?

[PHS Philip]

I wouldn't, because I care about my fellow human beings. I wouldn't get any entertainment out of watching a country's population plunge into poverty and despair and even if I could, I couldn't justify plunging them into that state for my own entertainment.

[Thrifty]

O.o

Get help. Now.

Jokes aside, I would maybe consider doing something like that if I was in possesion of an alternate reality where all the inhabitants were philosophical zombies (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.), dummies. Could be fun. Chaotic Evil yay !

Ah yeah, and the song is called Lux Aeterna in case anybody is interested (:P). It's awesome.

[OmegaPsi]

O.o

Get help. Now.

Jokes aside, I would maybe consider doing something like that if I was in possesion of an alternate reality where all the inhabitants were philosophical zombies (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.), dummies. Could be fun. Chaotic Evil yay !

Ah yeah, and the song is called Lux Aeterna in case anybody is interested (:P). It's awesome.


Still it would be awefully hard to do so with something so close to a human.

[Thrifty]

I guess if it's a very empathic person that can't bring him/herself to remember that those dummies don't feel anything, yes.

[Jakalwarrior]

Goes against my fairness principle. My moral compass hates unfairness in any form.

[muguly]

Oh yeah! Just to see what would happen.

[Cicatrix]

Interesting question.

Reminds me a bit of a comic I had as a teenager where the omnipotent protagonist discovered that the sum of all the currently living people on earth exceeded the sum of the all those who had ever died. With a click of his fingers he blinked a random half of the world’s population out of existence.

For some reason this little tit-bit has stuck with me and I think its an interesting concept because its a decision made with rationale entirely valid for the character but entirely invalid for all the others. When I read the comic I think this was time I understood that there could be 2 versions of the same truth.

Coming back to the question. Do I think about doing it and the consequences of doing it? Yes, but purely from a "I wonder what would happen" viewpoint.

[misterSM]

I feel compassion for people as well as empathy. If I were to be quite honest with myself though, I would have to say it's all very 'selfish'. For I only, truly feel this way about people that I have some sort of relationship with, or people that intrigue me, or just out of fear that it could come back around in some way.

all you had to do was press a magic button

But if someone had this 'magic button'... I would have to ask myself ,why else would they have it if it were not to be pushed?

[Tablelamp]

Chaos resulting in guaranteed sorrow, death, and destruction? No. Never.

Chaos resulting in, well, unpredictable chaos? Yes.

Chaos resulting in a generally peaceful upsetting of the status quo in such a way as to change the way we look at things forever? Yes. In a heart beat.

I love chaos, chaos in a chaotic sense anyway. Most people these days believe the status quo=god anyhow. Either because the unknown is scary, they never thought about things being any other way, or because they are at the top of the heap and are comfortable...
I would love to upset them. Make them think a bit.
Just think back to how many people you have met that seem to have the potential for greatness, maybe other INTJ's who seem closed minded, or friends that seem to be stuck in an eternal loop of conformity to try and be happy! All they needed was for someone to show them another way.

I've seen it, to a smaller degree anyway. I was always doing something or saying something to counter general assumptions. A great example was a horrible teacher I had in middle school. She was one of those "evil" teachers that no kid would talk back to or clown around in her class.
(fun fact: we ALWAYS knew when she was taking a sick day, the sun would be shining in through the window, the birds would be chirping, and there was a general feeling of happiness to be found. :laugh:)
She was also "always right". She was notorious for loosing or miss-filing homework and blaming it on the students.
Once, I had to stay after school to make up for some work I missed because I had to go to a funeral (what a nice teacher), and I had only 15 minutes before I had to leave. (I had family plans that day) I was down to only two items left: an essay or a worksheet. I told her I didn't have time to do the essay, so I wanted to do the worksheet real quick.
She got angry, and started to argue with me over it. She quickly declared that she wasn't going to give me the worksheet, so I could do the essay, or I could leave.

I looked at her. I looked at the door. Said "Okay." And walked out.
The sound of my classmates jaws dropping could be audibly heard, and I left her posed with one finger pointing at the door, and a perplexed look on her face. Last time I checked little freshmen were still getting told stories about "the one who talked back" to the teacher. ;D
It just took someone to show them that her word wasn't law. Sure she tried to make my life miserable after that, but she coud never intimidate me, and it allowed other kids who normally recieved straight A's to file complaints about her loosing their work. And since then, even other teachers stopped taking so much of her crap. (she had once arranged the firing of a teacher because she wanted her job.)

[LionsPride]

Wouldn't do it. I wouldn't even do it to virtual people in a video game, ie. leveling a section of Sim City. I couldn't break a plate in a rage. I have issues destroying things. It's a wonder files even make it into the recycle bin...Electronic files no less.

[misterSM]

When I used to play the Sims, I would take away the free willl that they had. They will pee on themselves and frantically wave up at you and cry for help... good times good times

[Tablelamp]

Why does "Chaos" always seem to mean "Destruction" to people?!

Chaos is sheer uncontrollability! Nature is pure chaos, if it wasn't weather forcasters would give you the years' forecast in advance and then go to the bahamas the rest of the time. Not all weather kills people! Most of it is enjoyed year round! A sunny day with a light breeze is as equally chaotic as a hurricane, but you don't cower from a little sun, do you?

If you try to debate me, by saying the weather is just an extraordinary complex system, and if we knew it all we could predict it....
I would feel inclined to beat you half to death with a large, fresh salmon.

Then I would give you a run down on basic quantum theory, which shows that particles interact with almost no consideration of physical location. Neutrinos go through everything... except the things they hit. Light is a wave AND a particle. Electons DO orbit an atom's nucleus, but they don't move around it, they teleport, and they can be over 3 miles away from the atom it is "orbiting". Dark matter cannot be interacted with, but it's gravity is real...
All this affects the sun, the sun's affect on the earth. the earth, the earth's weather, the earth's moon, the earth's moon's affect on the earth, ect, ect...

It is not just complex, it is INFINITELY complex.
As is the rest of the universe.
So don't make me break out the fish, and don't consider chaos to be bad, it is just a fact of life.





Tablelamp added to this post, 3 minutes and 5 seconds later...

And I stopped playing the sims after my sister created a sim-sociopath that killed off my multi-millionaire family.:irked:

[PoeticBohemian]

Is it amusing or deplorable that we seem to be the only species on this planet (...and possibly in the Universe) which will dream, plot and plan to harm its own kind in mass numbers, even to the point of the elimination of whole sections of it, and most of the time, we do it in the name of some righteousness or high moral ground?
Or just for the sheer thrill of it?
Or just because we can?
Are we the only species in Existence which holds a Sword of Damacles over its own head?
Are we the "cutters" of the Universe?

Do monkeys visualize the mass destruction of the tribe in a neighboring tree?
Do a few Emporer penguins harbor fear and mistrust of all Little Blue penguins just because they are shorter and do they rally their kind with rhetoric and slogans so that they will march en masse to cleanse the world of this obvious abberation of Nature?

Hmmm... I think not.

Then why, given the second paragraph of the initial post of this thread, do we have dreams of such control over others of our species?
Granted, there are hierarchial social interactions within groups of many species, but this "dream of total domination" or "total control of another's fate" seems to be peculiar to our species. Why?

[Tablelamp]

Is it amusing or deplorable that we seem to be the only species on this planet (...and possibly in the Universe) which will dream, plot and plan to harm its own kind in mass numbers, even to the point of the elimination of whole sections of it, and most of the time, we do it in the name of some righteousness or high moral ground?

Amusing... or at least I think so.
But, I am a self admitted cheerful fatalist, what do I know?:laugh:

Or just for the sheer thrill of it?

That would be your people more in tune with their animal natures.


Or just because we can?

That would be your rationalist people. *laugh* If you can't enjoy it, why should anyone else?

Are we the only species in Existence which holds a Sword of Damacles over its own head?

Yep. We are the first species on our planet capable of manipulating said sword over our own heads. Feel proud, everything else needed a differant species or situation's help to die off. *grin*

Are we the "cutters" of the Universe?

See previous responce. We manipulate, thus we are manipulated. If all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail.

Do monkeys visualize the mass destruction of the tribe in a neighboring tree?
Do a few Emporer penguins harbor fear and mistrust of all Little Blue penguins just because they are shorter and do they rally their kind with rhetoric and slogans so that they will march en masse to cleanse the world of this obvious abberation of Nature?

Hmmm... I think not.


Nope, they are much simpler. Do you not think penguins will eliminate leopard seals if they thought they could? Don't chimp tribes kill off nearby tribes to maintain a steady food supply with less hassle? Death is a part of life, and in that, humans are the first species to be dangerously naive.

Then why, given the second paragraph of the initial post of this thread, do we have dreams of such control over others of our species?

Humans are smart enough to realize that other humans are dumb...


Granted, there are hierarchial social interactions within groups of many species, but this "dream of total domination" or "total control of another's fate" seems to be peculiar to our species. Why?

...but not smart enough to recognize our own lack of intellect. More often than not, the wisest men recorded in our species' history are those that admitted that they didn't have a fucking clue. Get a clue with me and join them. :clown: