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More questions, this time from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dbsurfeit. If you want your own seven questions I am still gradually handing them out when inspiration strikes...
1. What band or musician would you most recommend to someone whose tastes you know nothing about?
Jars of Clay. They're a Christian band so quite a lot of people won't have already heard of them, they're musically varied and quite good, so there's likely to be a track of theirs that the person likes somewhere. Also, the often subtle but definitely extant Christian content in their lyrics means I've done my Good Deed For The Day, or something.
2. How much of the bible is true?
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.
I don't know how much of the Bible is true, in the literal, physical, scientific sense of the word 'true'. What I do believe is that all of the Bible is useful. Treating it as true is often a decent way to make use of it, but it certainly isn't the only way, and there are definitely factual contradictions that would have a very hard time all being true at once.
3. What cheers you up in the morning?
My husbandtienelle, with whom I am still somehow in love with, despite all confident proclamations about how being married for over five years is meant to knock that kind of silliness out of you :).
4. You are charged with recreating the human race, for seeding a new planet. Your tools are divine-grade. What do you change about them, if anything?
My morality is whispering 'you should leave them as they are, because that's how God made them' - I don't object to incremental improvement of the human condition by humanity, even to quite extreme endpoints, but wholesale upgrades with divine-grade tools seem likely to break some kind of fundamental no-I-did-that-for-a-reason that a limited human being like me can't understand.
I probably wouldn't be able to resist, though. I want to get rid of the planned obsolescence thing that makes the death curve shoot up at around 80. I want it to be easy for the individual to control all aspects of their appearance and health; the new humanity should be able to have the body they imagine and optimise it themselves for the situation they find themselves in.
To support this capacity they should have default options available that let them gain sustenance from basically anything, including e.g. sunlight, although I imagine the energy sources we don't currently use would be less efficient on the whole.
Messing with the mental aspects are more dangerous; I would be very strongly tempted to hardwire them all for belief in and love of God, which is undoubtedly a massively bad plan as not being hardwired for it is part of the point, but I'd probably do it anyway because if they're my creations I get to force them to be happy, dammit. (They should also get emotions-on-tap by default if that's not too energy-expensive for the planet and technological circumstances, too.) I would probably go for widespread intelligence even though it's detrimental to doing repetitive dull tasks and staying happy, too.
In fact, you can basically get the template for what I would engineer them into from the Culture novels, except ideally innate and efficient if they've got to rebuild planetary civilization from 'dropped naked on the surface' levels. (One of the problems with the question is it doesn't say what 'seeding' means - the mentality I would give a modern human who already has tamed the wild and destroyed or can contain harmlessly anything else likely to kill them is distinctly different to what I would give something that's got to be an alpha predator for a bit...)
5. What is love?
There's 'love', in which the target makes you irrationally happy to be around them and irrationally unhappy when deprived of them for too long; you probably want to touch them and that makes you irrationally happy, too. (It might or might not come with sexual attraction.) There's not much you can do about this, it just happens. It sucks when it isn't reciprocated, but that's life.
Then there's 'love', in which you value the other person's happiness / benefit / gain above your own; to be virtuous you ought to hold this for everyone. Parents normally get this for their kids as a kind of biological default; it can also be found in tribes, communities, and families of other kinds.
Usually I get told there are three kinds of love, but actually I think there are only really those two; I might be wrong though. I took a lot of time to understand the first one, much to the distress of the poor guys who had it for me when I didn't have it back...
6. What is the theological fallacy in this parody: http://memegenerator.net/instance/9284756 ?
The traditional angle on this is the 'He did it for their own good / the greater good' angle.
The test isn't for God - as the meme says, He already knows what you're going to do. It's either for you - because you need the confidence, because it will help later, because you will grow as a person, or anything else people say when they're being really fucking irritating and using phrases like 'character building' - or it's for posterity, it's because other people will learn from your example, because the story will possibly even resonate down the ages carrying its lessons to countless future readers.
But I must confess I'm not exactly sure which kind of testing the meme is supposedly referring to.
Is it talking about one of the Biblical stories, which are generally pretty clearly 'this is an important lesson for your friends and also for people down the ages' (e.g. Job) or 'this is important to you, and incidentally to future generations' (e.g. Abraham) cases? Or is it talking about 'oh, God is testing you' as a cop-out excuse for Why God Allows Suffering? (In which case: it's probably something to do with Free Will, but if you find out, do tell me...)
7. What are you most picky about?
I don't think there's anything I'm especially picky about.
I have to be awkward about food at restaurants and events because I actually get sick when I eat something that's in a defined range of Wrong Things; otherwise, I like good food, but I will cheerfully eat any old rubbish as long as it's not actually going to poison me.
I have very particular requirements of pens that I have developed in concert with my peculiar doodling style, which I guess might be especially picky, but I will cheerfully do rubbish smudgy doodles with whatever pens come to hand if necessary; I just have the luxury of being picky when I'm choosing my own pens.
I get quite worked up about consistency in LARP, which some would consider really quite picky. LARP not being an essential, I can pick and choose games based on my consistency fetish, but I guess that I am picky about it in the same way as I would say someone who was unhappy about the modern fleece peeking out under my costume was picky about costume.
I also have strong preferences in clothing material, due to hypersensitivity via Asperger's Syndrome, although not quite as bad as I used to be (or possibly I've just learned which clothes work and subconsciously select for them).
It's hard to judge which of these is the area I'm most picky in, as none of them really stand out; also I would expect external judgements to be more accurate in this kind of assessment, as it's very easy to be subconsciously 'picky' without even noticing it yourself.
So, for those playing along at home - what do you think I'm most picky about?
dbsurfeit. If you want your own seven questions I am still gradually handing them out when inspiration strikes...1. What band or musician would you most recommend to someone whose tastes you know nothing about?
Jars of Clay. They're a Christian band so quite a lot of people won't have already heard of them, they're musically varied and quite good, so there's likely to be a track of theirs that the person likes somewhere. Also, the often subtle but definitely extant Christian content in their lyrics means I've done my Good Deed For The Day, or something.
2. How much of the bible is true?
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.
I don't know how much of the Bible is true, in the literal, physical, scientific sense of the word 'true'. What I do believe is that all of the Bible is useful. Treating it as true is often a decent way to make use of it, but it certainly isn't the only way, and there are definitely factual contradictions that would have a very hard time all being true at once.
3. What cheers you up in the morning?
My husband
tienelle, with whom I am still somehow in love with, despite all confident proclamations about how being married for over five years is meant to knock that kind of silliness out of you :).4. You are charged with recreating the human race, for seeding a new planet. Your tools are divine-grade. What do you change about them, if anything?
My morality is whispering 'you should leave them as they are, because that's how God made them' - I don't object to incremental improvement of the human condition by humanity, even to quite extreme endpoints, but wholesale upgrades with divine-grade tools seem likely to break some kind of fundamental no-I-did-that-for-a-reason that a limited human being like me can't understand.
I probably wouldn't be able to resist, though. I want to get rid of the planned obsolescence thing that makes the death curve shoot up at around 80. I want it to be easy for the individual to control all aspects of their appearance and health; the new humanity should be able to have the body they imagine and optimise it themselves for the situation they find themselves in.
To support this capacity they should have default options available that let them gain sustenance from basically anything, including e.g. sunlight, although I imagine the energy sources we don't currently use would be less efficient on the whole.
Messing with the mental aspects are more dangerous; I would be very strongly tempted to hardwire them all for belief in and love of God, which is undoubtedly a massively bad plan as not being hardwired for it is part of the point, but I'd probably do it anyway because if they're my creations I get to force them to be happy, dammit. (They should also get emotions-on-tap by default if that's not too energy-expensive for the planet and technological circumstances, too.) I would probably go for widespread intelligence even though it's detrimental to doing repetitive dull tasks and staying happy, too.
In fact, you can basically get the template for what I would engineer them into from the Culture novels, except ideally innate and efficient if they've got to rebuild planetary civilization from 'dropped naked on the surface' levels. (One of the problems with the question is it doesn't say what 'seeding' means - the mentality I would give a modern human who already has tamed the wild and destroyed or can contain harmlessly anything else likely to kill them is distinctly different to what I would give something that's got to be an alpha predator for a bit...)
5. What is love?
There's 'love', in which the target makes you irrationally happy to be around them and irrationally unhappy when deprived of them for too long; you probably want to touch them and that makes you irrationally happy, too. (It might or might not come with sexual attraction.) There's not much you can do about this, it just happens. It sucks when it isn't reciprocated, but that's life.
Then there's 'love', in which you value the other person's happiness / benefit / gain above your own; to be virtuous you ought to hold this for everyone. Parents normally get this for their kids as a kind of biological default; it can also be found in tribes, communities, and families of other kinds.
Usually I get told there are three kinds of love, but actually I think there are only really those two; I might be wrong though. I took a lot of time to understand the first one, much to the distress of the poor guys who had it for me when I didn't have it back...
6. What is the theological fallacy in this parody: http://memegenerator.net/instance/9284756 ?
The traditional angle on this is the 'He did it for their own good / the greater good' angle.
The test isn't for God - as the meme says, He already knows what you're going to do. It's either for you - because you need the confidence, because it will help later, because you will grow as a person, or anything else people say when they're being really fucking irritating and using phrases like 'character building' - or it's for posterity, it's because other people will learn from your example, because the story will possibly even resonate down the ages carrying its lessons to countless future readers.
But I must confess I'm not exactly sure which kind of testing the meme is supposedly referring to.
Is it talking about one of the Biblical stories, which are generally pretty clearly 'this is an important lesson for your friends and also for people down the ages' (e.g. Job) or 'this is important to you, and incidentally to future generations' (e.g. Abraham) cases? Or is it talking about 'oh, God is testing you' as a cop-out excuse for Why God Allows Suffering? (In which case: it's probably something to do with Free Will, but if you find out, do tell me...)
7. What are you most picky about?
I don't think there's anything I'm especially picky about.
I have to be awkward about food at restaurants and events because I actually get sick when I eat something that's in a defined range of Wrong Things; otherwise, I like good food, but I will cheerfully eat any old rubbish as long as it's not actually going to poison me.
I have very particular requirements of pens that I have developed in concert with my peculiar doodling style, which I guess might be especially picky, but I will cheerfully do rubbish smudgy doodles with whatever pens come to hand if necessary; I just have the luxury of being picky when I'm choosing my own pens.
I get quite worked up about consistency in LARP, which some would consider really quite picky. LARP not being an essential, I can pick and choose games based on my consistency fetish, but I guess that I am picky about it in the same way as I would say someone who was unhappy about the modern fleece peeking out under my costume was picky about costume.
I also have strong preferences in clothing material, due to hypersensitivity via Asperger's Syndrome, although not quite as bad as I used to be (or possibly I've just learned which clothes work and subconsciously select for them).
It's hard to judge which of these is the area I'm most picky in, as none of them really stand out; also I would expect external judgements to be more accurate in this kind of assessment, as it's very easy to be subconsciously 'picky' without even noticing it yourself.
So, for those playing along at home - what do you think I'm most picky about?
