Captain:Lightbringer/Guide to Incomprehensible Minds

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS OBVIOUSLY SUBJECTIVE CANON, DUE TO THE COMMENT IT MAKES ON CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE FICTION UNIVERSE.

The Guide to Incomprehensible Minds

By Alikos, the Lightbringer

It is a fact that, in general, immortals have an expanded awareness that can comprehend things that mortals simply cannot. However, the implications of this fact are often misunderstood to a high degree. In this post, I plan to explain certain aspects of incomprehensible minds and in the process debunk a few myths surrounding them.

Now, obviously this is going to be difficult, as I am explaining this to a mortal audience, and therefore my target readers by definition cannot comprehend what I am explaining. As a result, I will be using a lot on analogies here. This is simply the only option I have. The alternative, being literal, will often result in mortals being unable to comprehend my speech.

Now then, allow me to start with a point that many mortals seem not to understand. Truths you cannot comprehend build upon, better explain, and add to the truths you can comprehend. They do not contradict what was already correct.

Let’s take the law of non-contradiction as an example. For our purposes, we will define it as “A and Not A cannot be true at the same time and in the same sense.” This is true. It is not contradicted anywhere in immortal hyper-logic. It may seem to be, but is not.

For example, one true fact in immortal hyper-logic is that an object may have a spin and have no spin. This is not comprehensible to mortals. You must understand, though, that what you lack is not the ability to comprehend contradictory things. What you lack is the understanding of how this is not contradictory. It seems to be to you, because of limitations to your faculties, but it simply is not.

One example of this principle is Zeno’s paradox. The logical factors that lie behind it are appearing to be a paradox are all valid or mostly valid. What you cannot comprehend is not how infinity can be traversed in a finite period of time. This is partially because you can comprehend how this is possible, infinite speed, but more importantly what you do not and cannot understand is how it gets around these principles, not how these principles can be false.

The reason that this point is important is because many seem to get this wrong. They act as though the existence of incomprehensible minds itself disproves these axioms, and use this as an excuse to reject them.

Before I move on to the next topic, let me make one note. Your minds are very, very good in general. The number of actually possible things that are ruled out by your common misapplications of axioms is very small. You can generally trust your logical faculties, and should assume that they are right unless you have a good reason to do otherwise.

Now that that topic is out of the way, I wish to move on to trying to describe as best I can a few of the concepts that you cannot comprehend. My hope is that my analogies are faithful enough to allow you to come away better informed than you otherwise would have, also because I just plain want to.

First, debate with descended beings often turns to the subject of the universe’s “ortho.” You of course, my dear mortal, are unable to contradict any statements made to you about it because it is among the incomprehensible concepts.

First, what I can explain without analogies is that everything and everyone is said to have an ortho. What is not as easy to explain is what an ortho is. It can be said that a thing’s ortho is a state that it could possibly be in, but the next bit is more difficult.

If I must strain to find an analogy, I would call an ortho a thing’s “proper place.” This is merely an analogy. It differs from reality in that two things utterly alien to all mortals are here being replaced with “proper.” I use this word because it is considered to be another set of things (gludual and gludial) which I will analogize as “desirable” to arrange that all things are in their ortho.

Speaking of which the next two concepts I want to discuss are gluduality and gludiality. These are two related concepts in hyper-logic. In fact, they are so similar in certain respects that any analogy comprehensible to mortals which applies to either one applies equally well to the other. The analogy I prefer, and indeed the only two I’ve seen seriously used to describe the broader concept and not merely isolated aspects, are “desirable” and “proper.” Both of these analogies break down in different ways when applied to gludiality and gluduality in a few circumstances, but they do better than anything else.

These are just a few of the concepts which exist, and in future posts, I shall attempt to explain more. However I do want to make it clear that immortal hyper-logic differs in other ways too. There are whole new argumentative forms evoking concepts from hyper-logic similar to “if” or “only” in logic. It is generally a beautiful array of fascinating interactions between propositions. The possibilities for proofs of conclusions and understanding of the world are expansive and great, and it is sad that most mortals will never ascend to understand it.

But alas, I now want to discuss the idea of motivation as it relates to this.

Incomprehensible minds come up most often when discussing the motivations of immortals in their actions. Mortals are often confused by the actions of immortals, which seem illogical and contradictory in nature.

Here is where my ability to describe things decreases. Firstly, understand that many immortals, especially the descended are simply jabberingly insane. They are as swayable by hyper-logic as insane mortals are by logic, and their actions are as founded in it.

Others though, can be explained by what I have already presented. In many cases, incomprehensibly motivated entities are simply motivated by philosophies and ideologies which take elements from immortal hyper-logic, for example believing that the ortho of any mortal is a state of enslavement to an immortal, and thus he would try to increase the size of his very oppressive cult. By the way I would like to point out that just as mortal logic can be done badly, hyper-logic can also be done badly. In fact, with it comes a whole new list of logical fallacies, both formal and informal.

Now of course immortals are not motivated solely by their ideologies any more than mortals are, and the motivations of some immortals are completely independent of all logic and instead based on emotion, or still more things that may or may not be so remote from mortal understanding that I cannot even analogize them. The important thing for you to understand is that they are all invalid.

Immortals making up excuses to behave immorally is similar to mortals doing it, in that it is just that, an excuse. Do not allow anyone to excuse their immorality by claiming that you merely cannot understand their reasoning, but that it shows them to be right. Recognize excuses for what they are, whether they are made on the pretense of logic you can understand, or logic that you cannot.