Board Thread:Skyrim/@comment-12599067-20130928060857/@comment-24590102-20140811090853

King in the North wrote: Phantasys wrote: 80.216.198.94 wrote: Twigman55 wrote:

Slicer1225 wrote: I think that the reach men have gone to far with spilling Nordic blood but that they do deserve some support and tat they should have there own kingdom as composition for past wrongs. No, they should not get anything. If they were peaceful than maybe it would be considered, but the people of the reach are evil. They sided with Molag Bal during the planemeld, kidnap children, murder members of all races, associate themselves with hagravens, and participate in necromancy. This, a thousand times this. There you have it...the idea of them ever being peaceful is laughable at best considering you find the skulls of children in their sacrificial bowls to Molag Bal. The Bear of Markarth can't be trusted because it was written by an IMPERIAL SOLDIER who's probably never been to the area. Scholar, not soldier, and to state than any source written by an indivudal of a certain race must inherently be incorrect on certain matters is close minded and certainly inaccurate. Should it be considered with some skepticism? I suppose, but when there is little information of some matters, we have no choice but to go to that source for information. Besides, Imperial scholars used to be widely well received and regarded, and the Civil War should not neccessarily discount that. The distinction between "Scholar" and non-"Scholar" in the eyes of the community is pure subjectivity owing to the simple fact that anyone can and often does teach themselves any branch of expertise without the community's knowledge or endorsement. My programming skill is a well-kept secret and will continue to be a well-kept secret thanks to the intentional emptiness of this boast. Moreover, and to the point made in the above quote, the status of the person is immensely irrelevant to the reliability of the person's assertions. In point of fact, "Scholars" make as many errors as "non-"Scholars" with the key difference that the errors of "Scholars" get subjected to less scrutiny and, thereby, are propagated much longer than those made by people of "lower" status (e.g. "luminiferous aether"). This goes to further the point that the person is no indication of the fact. I could have just simply said, "I agree" but I wanted to leave no room for misunderstanding.

The bottom line is that unless you can, personally, verify the facts of an assertion, then it is not possible for that assertion to have any bearing on your reality or your way of life. For this reason, it is an utter waste of intelligence to accept any information which requires any amount of belief or faith.

And may I remind people of what Sun Tzu said (1:18, Art of War) "All warfare is based on deception." What this means in the context of hearing the claims of various people during wartime is that nearly all such claims are lies which are propagated for the purpose of gaining a strategic advantage via the manipulation of public perception at various levels. Coming back to the issue of faith, it follows from this that all deception is based on faith. I know, nearly all of us (which includes myself) have been brainwashed since early childhood that faith is "good" and even indispensable but, in reality, faith only serves to uphold lies and the kind of information which has no demonstrable relationship with any aspect of verifiable reality. Moreover, I challenge anyone who would dispute this to provide us with an example of a deception which succeeded without some form of faith. This dependency of deception on faith is why even the most secular politicians instantly start bleating about the virtues of faith and the vices of doubt whenever people start to question their assertions.

So, returning to Planet Nirn, I think it is especially important to allow ourselves to exercise our mental discipline during role-play because this allows our role-play to pit us against some of the more overwhelming conflicts we face in our day to day lives and doing so can give us a sense of where this takes us in terms of the type of character or person we ultimately become. This is a lot of fun because we inevitably make the most unexpected discoveries in the journey.