The Oracle Paradox

That's a great idea! Here are a few things I'd like to ask the Oracle...

1. What do you know of the Obsidians?
2. What do you know of the Titans?
3. What is Virtue? (No answer to that, surprisingly...)
4. Where do you get all your gold?
5. What are your agents up to?
6. Why were you created?

More facetiously:

1. Where did you last see <insert player name here>? (I miss that feature of UO, heh.)
2. What is the strongest foe I've defeated? (Or any other superlatives.)

 

If the oracle is actually a machine or even part machine if we could issue a verbal command to get it to return information like discovering a hidden command left by the maker like "Joshua" or some other command to get into some sort of privileged mode that can give us access to stuff like statusreport to discover diagnostic information regarding that confirmatory's operational status, or virtureport to briefly return its record of our virtue in the form of "Pathoflove - values path/enlightened pathofcourage - no progress pathoftruth - no progress" (WHICH MIGHT ACTUALLY BE USEFUL), and maybe a listcommands and using exit to end the conversation once in that mode instead of bye.

Also making it risky by having a few commands that look like we should not use and require a secret passphrase that if we proceed to try to dishonestly guess the passphrase it returns a scary sounding unauthorized access detected, eyes go cukoo, starts smoking etc, and say something scary like unauthorized access identity Isaiah, safeguard initiated, defensive field initiated, emergency lockout, error code sent to oracle, attacker data sent to oracle, location offline while renegotiating secure connection to ... and then we cannot access the oracle for a while.

 

You are lucky. When I try to visit the Oracle, I am being judge to having been so bad... that she locks me in and I have to reload the game just to get out

 

Jaan's Visit to the Oracle
Act I

From The Oft-Stolen Journal of Jaanelle the Druidess












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Great writing as always, Jaan! I think you captured what it means to be human here. I feel that there will be instances where players will be faced with this sort of dilemma. The Artifice room with the family in the cage is going to be one of them, I'm sure. The nuance of justifying the greater good while struggling with one's own selfishness while keeping sight of the idealistic values taught by one's predecessors is a beautiful dilemma! I love it. I want to have more of this in the game -- gut-wrenching, hand-wringing decisions to be made followed by the thought of "Well, how's the Oracle going to tally this one?"

 

Jaan's Visit to the Oracle
Act II

From The Oft-Stolen Journal of Jaanelle the Druidess









​

 

does anybody have the cliffsnotes or a paraphrase of what this says.

 

Sure thing! I went to the Oracle and asked her a couple of questions about some ethical dilemmas...

Is that concise enough for you?

 

Jaan's Visit to the Oracle
Act III

From The Oft-Stolen Journal of Jaanelle the Druidess









​

 

That didn't go well

 

Perhaps you should attend the church of Chaos, I'm sure @Amber Raine will be happy to welcome you

 

@Jaanelle DeJure

Loved it, and Flame Fist for the win!

 

Mysteries are best made with false assumptions of truth. How we take for granted that what we read is truth, or what may be "the whole truth" is also I feel based on assumptions which could be false or coming from a source to assume it's importance by attachment much in the same way as humans have always taken what is myth (falsely assumed as truth) and then applied it to themselves as it's incarnate.

How to save an Oracle's life...


@Lum the Mad ... as to what our Oracle should respond to, I would suggest Easter Eggs of conversation lines possibly leading nowhere or hinting into a future content while preserving it through saying much about nothing at all that is actually useful.

Passing the time of day or playful conversations...

• Hey baby what's happening?
• How are you feeling today?
• Have you ever heard the one about the Outlander, the watcher and the Novian sexual screwdriver?
• Want to play a game?

Possible answers to these...

• Have you come for advise? or enters into "chatbot mode".
• I could use some olive oil before the river rises... (reference to Lord British's Popeye virtue ethics challenge leading to the same questions as a further exchange in dialog and ethics checking).
• I think I did hear that one... did you here the one about the fish, the tale and the stolen fishing rod? <insert "whatever" funny joke told by the Oracle this is only an example>
• Oracle enters into Novian question and answer game about different locations and what the player saw while there. Such a conversation then leads or compels the player to seek out the answers to become more interactive with our game. Such a game could have many levels of play and in attention to detail about our game.

I believe it's important to play with the questions which surround the Oracle by deepening the mystery if she is a this or a that, controlled by a this or a that, has purposes of a this or a that which deepen her mysteries rather than confine her outcome or define her as a this or a that.

The Oracle should become more "assumed" than described into any finite box of our understanding. There's only two ways to go within this thread's direct questioning in answers and that is to confine her or free her to either gathering even more mystery as her history moves along, or confine her to her box and by thus kill all her mysteries she could have been as if we are grave robbers just attempting to piece together a story by what she took with her into her coffin of personal death.

Confine her to a coffin as much as you like, because it's your game to do with what you wish Portalarium... "but I'd rather have a living mystery where artistic freedom can live to go into any and many directions, rather than a dead mystery we could read in discovery from our dead Oracle's tombstone.

She's either a living fossil or a dead one ...

~Time Lord~...

(See also thread: "Oracle forcing gold on us")
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-deny-money-from-the-oracle.67603/page-4#post-682319

 

YES


It is of greatest importance to understand that the most destructive force we face on planet earth today is not unrighteousness. It is, without question, self-righteousness.

 

My Avatar thinks that the Oracle is a remnant of ancient technology or alien technology that is an AI that collects data and stores it in an Oracle database. It was given the name Oracle because of the word appearing in ancient texts. It is going to exterminate the people that it deems will not serve it when it has collected enough enough data and power.

I don't plan on hanging out with it much because it scares me.

Also on a serious note. @Lum the Mad The questions I have for the oracle that I get default answers to that I would like a non default answer to:

Who is your creator?
Where is your data stored?
(I would expect the Oracle to dodge the real answer on those two)
and for a silly question:
Do automaton dream of electric sheep? ("More human than human is my motto" is the answer I would like to see)

 

the quest for the avatar can be a different experience for each person who seeks virtue and if we persist we will discover it for ourselves. There really is no way hand holding can ever come into play at all in the story, asside for some help finding a location or whatever.

No matter what, the oracle cannot ruin this experience even if she is good or bad. Richard Garriott causes us to think and be open to new ideas. Somehow I'm hopeful that avatars of this era will discover something that is beautiful and truly virtuous.

 

What I Think of Our Oracle... "Get it On!"

 

~What Came First, The Coffin or the Egg~?'

One of the concepts I feel has been underplayed by our gaming industry has to do with the ages of which our gaming fantasy godlike creatures speak from. They "all" seem old and decrepit coming from distant pasts where they know so much and are discussed by so much that they always wish our human demise from that standpoint.

Old deities blink in and out of existence and the more powerful we assume they are, then we writers continue that false assumption that they are old. It's false because it is an assumption that they evolved from something weak into the great old ones we then assume that they are. Yet true evolution never dose this and never does that actually happen in real life. It's only through gathered powers as if they had an attic to store such knowledge in or drag it out of, such knowledge that had to have come from somewhere beyond where they themselves were ever born into, otherwise they should have been empowered long before they ever became so old and cenacle.

If we choose to, we can see evolution for what it is and that each born after would be more empowered than their predecessor. If we can look at our own Oracle as such a creature or thing that is "new and not so old", then she can be hip and extremely more cool as she acts out her childish and childlike nature to insist that her way is the best way, the only way and she's going to throw a temper tantrum like we've never seen before if and when she doesn't get her way with all things from her childlike mind.

We need to get our Oracle out of her wheel chaired retirement home of the cenacle and bring her into the personality she was born into which is the new and exploratory, which is then far more unique than digging around in some coffin for more dominations by rite of the old. She should be that personality that we all know so well, of the early teenage adolescent who's spoiled attitudes then can lead her to act out her own discovery of demising everything and everyone who would ever get in her way. She should be on a path to her own destruction because of her own self important assuming nature.

Currently we can see her as a child which is so evident within her ridged thoughts of what is right or wrong, virtuous or anti-virtue which "she is not judging us by from some position of authority, she's attempting to learn by our acted out examples". A child is read fairy tales by the parent, yet as they get older they then face the real world where mom and dad had promised them a rose garden only to find that well wishes rarely are achieved because of what reality is instead of that fantasy world we taught them by. Then the child acts out upon the parent because it's not what world they had been promised or they continue their childlike fantasy to right the world, their parents and all that stand in the way of what false assumptions they were raised up to believe in.

It would seem that our Portalarium is feeling it's way forward in shaping our Oracle's personality type by asking us our opinions and I for one feel that I'd rather ask younger folks more than older folks to come to enjoy our game.

When people get older, they eventually loose their parents and then direct all that dissatisfaction within their life towards their government, or whatever seemingly higher in stature than themselves to blame all their problems on. Then when we come to a game like this, we then demonize the powerful as something that cannot out live us, just as our parents were, or are. This is the vision of the old which is death and the left over childlike natures within us all to always blame someone else when we are not as powerful as everything that stands in our path to what we want, or thought we should have had, "but it's death all the same". It's death into the coffin where the boogyman lives.

Personally, I like things that are new, I like kids, teenagers, young adults and those younger than I am, because the older ones are, "not all", but mostly cenacle old people just looking for something to correct because they don't realize they are still the child they always were and not the empowered young one which will outlive their existence. "Eternal youth is eternal youth" and not some decrepit old one to batter out our insignificance onto, unless we ourselves can readapt ourselves to self discovery, instead of all knowing, all seeing, know all, be all, which no one could ever achieve except in the minds of those who think that theirs is the only way, the right way because it's their way.

I would like to see our Oracle as being in her egg waiting to hatch, instead of in her coffin, waiting to be re-discovered only living in artifact. The artifacts are there because of a very long historical egg timer and anyone who hasn't come to the conclusion that a giant sperm crashed through the moon and then imbedded itself into the planet where an egg could hatch itself from is a fool by their own assumptions not to see it.

I sure hope she's raised so she can be kool, hip and the wild child she should be, because if she's not, then we're only hatching a mirror image of some old decrepit, cenacle and self righteous fantasies of what we falsely see as ourselves to be or we learn nothing by discovering something older than ourselves to take out all our false assumptions of empowerment upon.

Take away these little girl's microphones and shatter their fantasies by telling them that it's an ugly world where singing songs and having all their wishes not come true is all that they will ever get and I'm certain as the stars in the sky that they will not be very happy with any parent figure that would ever tell them such a thing. Then imagine these little girls having magical powers of un-fathomable nature to destroy or create and they will most likely destroy something before they would ever have the wisdom enough to create something. All fantasies end, unless you are a godlike powerful creature in a world where "we" may not fit into what their fantasies might be.

What an Actual Starchild Dreams of... "young, but I'm not that bold" ...

"And yes"... that is their actual voices singing that song who's storylines includes, "I feel something so right, doing the wrong thing" (talented hu?)

It's something to think about ... "No more dragons, we'll be counting stars" ...
It's an egg and not a coffin ... "Everything that kills me makes me feel alive" ...
It's not an authority teaching us, it's a child who's learning from us ...
"Take that money watch it burn, sink in the river the lessons are learnt"...
Isn't that more exciting for a future of unknown, instead of a known?

"Dreaming about the things we could be"...
It could come out very disappointed in us ...
and then want to kill us all
~Time Lord~

 

Word Timelord spot on...

but.. but but... its right now getting even involved in such things as looting and pickpocket.

You ASK it to leave you alone and not protect you yet the first thing you see is her face telling you "the price is right" like an old croon. It basically considers us like a child and still protects us, ruins roleplay and prevents me from being myself.

Its a conundrum...

I see the intent behind it, but it seems so silly that I don't even bother with it, and if anything does not please me with the result, i'll just delete my character and start over, maybe.

The more I play the more I'm seeing WoW and not Ultima...

 

So you think she started out as a machine and became a person or the reverse. Or are we the machines and she is the person attempting to make us alive. SO all this time we thought flesh and blood was living stuff and the machine was really alive...

SO then the obsidians who were oppressive and considered evil by most, and at the very least miss guided might in fact play a part in global liberation. So even their heinous acts against civil liberties might be a bouncing board to universal liberty? People once brought against their will into slavery and corruption (elves, undead, .... and many others all the way through to Sienna's Sister) could all turn out as part of a world where from the ashes the phoenix rises, or a dead wood that buds. That from something totally lifeless comes life?

That's crazy. I like it.