[RHat]

Look, I have my personal opinions on how the Matrix and Magic work, and to be straight up, this ain't it.  This is entertaining as an exercise, though, so ...

See, that's the thing.  I'm trying to get at the connection between Magic and Resonance (and whether or not Resonance is distinct from the Matrix), how they're similar, how they're different, and why.  What I've presented here is my particular theory on the subject, and I think it is or at least has the potential to be a strong theory; all the same I'd love to see other people posting their theories in here.  Might be an even more fun to argue their relative merits, and we might even e able to find a synthesis that creates a better one.

Regardless of definition, part of the point is that the truth value is a big part of the difference between Resonance and Dissonance.

However, I'd argue there's a difference between actually knowing something and believing you know something.  And per this definition, would Resonance not be the most complete set of valid data that exists?

Still phone posting, so apologies for lack of detail.

You keep on insisting that Resonance actually can differentiate right from wrong. Data is data. It just is. If a few thousand, or million, pages, insist that a groundbreaking new theory hammers away gravity as a theory only Awakened have the power to disbelieve, then according to the Matrix, Mages should float. This, innately, would mean that Technomancers would be 'lighter' in the matrix, and unbound by coding specifications towards gravity.

What makes you think that the Resonance cannot?  It has an opposite.  Resonance would be 'all the data that fact-checks correct with the universe'.  Dissonance would be 'all the data that fact-checks incorrect with the universe'.  Resonance is fact; Dissonance is false.  Or, if you will, Resonance is Data; Dissonance is False Data.  If a few billion pages insist, and lead people to believe strongly, that people with magic should by default float, then people with magic still will not float by default - but the Dissonance gets stronger, and possibly the ability of people to think clearly and firmly would be affected, because it's everyone trying to believe a lie.  (Well, since it already has, eh?)

This is pretty much entirely what I'm getting at.

If Resonance is 'alive', it's likely Xenosapient, and incomprehensible to humans. I doubt that, given the immense and conflicting data it has on the world, it would have an accurate view of anything, really. It's safer if it isn't alive. If it isn't alive, then it can be influenced and used. And we all know that Horizon would be all over that shit in a heartbeat.

Ouroboros, you seem to be on the same page as I am. But, following your train of thought with a stray idea...If the Matrix operated on Knowledge, that'd imply that A.I.s were...Children, of the Matrix? In a literal sense. Deus being one of the oldest, and most influenced by its daddy. That there are so many differing AI indicates either a constantly shifting nature within the Matrix, or an enormous personality that is simply beyond mortal comprehension entirely - truly xenosapient.

Don't buy into the idea that Deus is the biggest, best, baddest, etc.  Yes, he was working on that, and yes, he was the most aggressive, but no, despite all his actions and how significant he made himself to be, he did not have all the information.  He, too, was working on incomplete data - and was neither Resonance nor Dissonance.  You want my opinion, the one you need to watch out for is Mirage - an AI that went literally decades without being noticed, who actually altered the way a mind worked without ever being in obvious contact with it.  That's my opinion, though, so .... take it with some NaCl.

As for the rest of the argument, an attempt is being made to make absolute things that are not.  Belief can be very, very active without being thought; thought is the analyzer, and one can believe incredibly strongly and, yes, actively without analyzing one's beliefs.  At the same time, though thought can change belief, it often takes months and years to do so, for people will hold beliefs despite all evidence to the contrary, even to the point of the extreme - which is what we call madness.  (To make matters worse, sometimes madness is highly functional.)

In any case.  It's an interesting theory, but like most ready theories it falls down somewhat during the specifics.

I'd be curious to see specifically what you consider to be the weaknesses.  As I said, it's likely the theory has a lot of room for further refinement, especially given that until this thread it sort of lived in my own head only - and for most of my posts here, I've been endeavouring to explain the theory.

[I_V_Saur]

Perhaps, rather than trying to explain bits of your theory into my own view, (Stupid idea, really, but interesting debate) I should explain how I consider it to work.

A friend of mine, back in DnD, came up with a view of how Arcane Magic worked. It makes a whole lot of sense.

'The Weave'. If the infinite reaches of the multiverse are a single tapestry, then Arcane Magic is the thread that holds it together.

I go a bit further with that. If you're twisting this thread this way and that, it's going to get bent out of its place. (Mana Storms, UGE, anyone?) It can be, eventually, shifted back into order, but that takes interference, time, and effort beyond what it took to open things up in the first place. While that thread is out of place, there's a 'hole'. If, say, that tapestry was packed in a heap with a few thousand others in a warehouse, and an adjacent tapestry had some thread out of place...

Hey, look. Shedim.

Resonance, then, would be technology so advanced as to be able to perfectly (Or nearly) mimic the way the universe itself works. Perhaps because Mana is affecting the unseen ebb and flow of data, but, in a way, humans have created a 'tapestry' within their own. Technomancers are in tune with this. Perhaps they can be considered 'moderators' or 'administrators' fixing bugs in the system.

If Magicians and Adepts are unconsciously 'aware' of the 'hole', of the loose thread, and able to take advantage of it, they are essentially granted the ability to eventually fix the hole. They are the Tapestry's self-repair system.

Resonance is a newer force. It's brand new, and buggy. It doesn't need to be 'repaired', it needs to be 'upgraded' and 'improved'. Functionally, many things that Technos and Mages can do are similar, in their respective worlds, but for different purposes.

Much like your theory, RHat, quite unpolished. Some parallels exist, here and there. Your take?

[Sichr]

Long time ago, in the thread far far away:)

http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=1142.0

[RHat]

Perhaps, rather than trying to explain bits of your theory into my own view, (Stupid idea, really, but interesting debate) I should explain how I consider it to work.

A friend of mine, back in DnD, came up with a view of how Arcane Magic worked. It makes a whole lot of sense.

'The Weave'. If the infinite reaches of the multiverse are a single tapestry, then Arcane Magic is the thread that holds it together.

I go a bit further with that. If you're twisting this thread this way and that, it's going to get bent out of its place. (Mana Storms, UGE, anyone?) It can be, eventually, shifted back into order, but that takes interference, time, and effort beyond what it took to open things up in the first place. While that thread is out of place, there's a 'hole'. If, say, that tapestry was packed in a heap with a few thousand others in a warehouse, and an adjacent tapestry had some thread out of place...

Hey, look. Shedim.

Resonance, then, would be technology so advanced as to be able to perfectly (Or nearly) mimic the way the universe itself works. Perhaps because Mana is affecting the unseen ebb and flow of data, but, in a way, humans have created a 'tapestry' within their own. Technomancers are in tune with this. Perhaps they can be considered 'moderators' or 'administrators' fixing bugs in the system.

If Magicians and Adepts are unconsciously 'aware' of the 'hole', of the loose thread, and able to take advantage of it, they are essentially granted the ability to eventually fix the hole. They are the Tapestry's self-repair system.

Resonance is a newer force. It's brand new, and buggy. It doesn't need to be 'repaired', it needs to be 'upgraded' and 'improved'. Functionally, many things that Technos and Mages can do are similar, in their respective worlds, but for different purposes.

Much like your theory, RHat, quite unpolished. Some parallels exist, here and there. Your take?

A few things.

First, The Weave is actually the canon explanation of Arcane Magic in the Forgotten Realms setting.  Complete with having a "second tapestry", specifically the Shadow Weave.

Secondly, stuff like UGE isn't things being out of place.  Elves and Dwarves are part of how things are supposed to be, not some "error" of magic.  The same is true of Goblinization.

Further, advanced technology isn't really (to me) a satisfactory explanation for the Resonance for a fairly specific reason:  No one made it.  The Resonance isn't, by any evidence, designed and built - which is precisely what an "advanced technology" explanation suggests.  That said, the tapestry metaphor strikes me as a pretty good demonstration of a number of phenomena.  It may well be that as the mana level rises and the physical world draws closer to others, perhaps the membrane is made more porous in this place or that - corresponding not to locations in the world, but to its borders with certain others - and that this is caused by various things in the physical world.  It could well be that the Matrix, and computing more generally, created that hole through which Resonance could enter the world, but its ability to do so is somehow limited...  That might work a good deal better than Resonance simply being passively present until it has something to latch onto.

Overall, you've got some good ideas in there - I don't think, however, that it has quite the explanatory power to stand on its own as is.

[The_Gun_Nut]

Quick bit:  I didn't describe hermetic traditions.  My explanation was completely tradition neutral (assuming that feelings and emotions are a more primal form of thought energy, of course YMMV).  This is, IMO, the basic explanation of the interaction of mental energy and mental states with the energy of the astral.

Beliefs are not active, they are passive.  They are a checkpoint, an assumption, a branch on a decision tree within the mind/brain.  When a thought hits this branch, the brain makes a comparison between the thought and the belief and determines whether or not the thought is compatible with the belief (REALLY oversimplifying this, but hey).  Thus the belief is just there.  It directs thoughts, but unless and until the person actively examines the belief, it will remain in the mind as a branch in the decision tree.

Does it shape what the person does, how they act, and how they think?  Sure it does.  Just like the banks of a river determine the course of a river.  However, rivers tend to be more malleable than beliefs in humans (oooo, BURN).  Seriously, though, beliefs can be altered by experience, but are rarely truly changed until the thinker examines the belief itself.  Thus, the belief is fairly fixed and, therefore, passive within the thinkers mind.

[RHat]

So, how do you fit your "fatigue of thought" drain notion into a Charisma tradition?

And beliefs are not truly passive.  There is quite a bit of psychology to demonstrate this.  Hence why I suggested looking motivated cognition - an effect by which beliefs actively control your perception and interpretation of information before and after you actually think about any of it.

[Mason]

So, how do you fit your "fatigue of thought" drain notion into a Charisma tradition?

And beliefs are not truly passive.  There is quite a bit of psychology to demonstrate this.  Hence why I suggested looking motivated cognition - an effect by which beliefs actively control your perception and interpretation of information before and after you actually think about any of it.

My personal explanation follows.

A shaman envisions the natural forces of the spirit world questing outward to contact the specific spirit or form the pattern of mana, then pull it back to you. The energy flows out of you as you envision what you believe can and should happen - your raw will and belief in what you do shaped by your thought and the training you received from your mentor and the power instilled in you by your totem.

In other words, I agree with the Gun Nut on this one.

[RHat]

So, how do you fit your "fatigue of thought" drain notion into a Charisma tradition?

And beliefs are not truly passive.  There is quite a bit of psychology to demonstrate this.  Hence why I suggested looking motivated cognition - an effect by which beliefs actively control your perception and interpretation of information before and after you actually think about any of it.

My personal explanation follows.

A shaman envisions the natural forces of the spirit world questing outward to contact the specific spirit or form the pattern of mana, then pull it back to you. The energy flows out of you as you envision what you believe can and should happen - your raw will and belief in what you do shaped by your thought and the training you received from your mentor and the power instilled in you by your totem.

In other words, I agree with the Gun Nut on this one.

See, you say you agree with Gun Nut, but your explanation reads as being more in line with the idea of magic as a force of belief - you may think about it to use it, but you seem to be suggesting that belief is defining what you can do; that you have to believe in it to do it with magic a la The Dresden Files.

[Mason]

So, how do you fit your "fatigue of thought" drain notion into a Charisma tradition?

And beliefs are not truly passive.  There is quite a bit of psychology to demonstrate this.  Hence why I suggested looking motivated cognition - an effect by which beliefs actively control your perception and interpretation of information before and after you actually think about any of it.

My personal explanation follows.

A shaman envisions the natural forces of the spirit world questing outward to contact the specific spirit or form the pattern of mana, then pull it back to you. The energy flows out of you as you envision what you believe can and should happen - your raw will and belief in what you do shaped by your thought and the training you received from your mentor and the power instilled in you by your totem.

In other words, I agree with the Gun Nut on this one.

See, you say you agree with Gun Nut, but your explanation reads as being more in line with the idea of magic as a force of belief - you may think about it to use it, but you seem to be suggesting that belief is defining what you can do; that you have to believe in it to do it with magic a la The Dresden Files.

Yes, you must believe in something for it to be possible with magic, that is why Willpower is used with all mages. However, no amount of raw belief causes magic to happen on its own. You must channel the energies actively, envisioning your outcome and then causing it to happen. The only time magic occurs by belief alone is spontaneous magic.

[RHat]

So, how do you fit your "fatigue of thought" drain notion into a Charisma tradition?

And beliefs are not truly passive.  There is quite a bit of psychology to demonstrate this.  Hence why I suggested looking motivated cognition - an effect by which beliefs actively control your perception and interpretation of information before and after you actually think about any of it.

My personal explanation follows.

A shaman envisions the natural forces of the spirit world questing outward to contact the specific spirit or form the pattern of mana, then pull it back to you. The energy flows out of you as you envision what you believe can and should happen - your raw will and belief in what you do shaped by your thought and the training you received from your mentor and the power instilled in you by your totem.

In other words, I agree with the Gun Nut on this one.

See, you say you agree with Gun Nut, but your explanation reads as being more in line with the idea of magic as a force of belief - you may think about it to use it, but you seem to be suggesting that belief is defining what you can do; that you have to believe in it to do it with magic a la The Dresden Files.

Yes, you must believe in something for it to be possible with magic, that is why Willpower is used with all mages. However, no amount of raw belief causes magic to happen on its own. You must channel the energies actively, envisioning your outcome and then causing it to happen. The only time magic occurs by belief alone is spontaneous magic.

Saying its worked through thought does not, to my mind, make it a force of thought.  And casting spells/summoning spirits isn't the extent of metahumanity's influence upon the manasphere.

[Mason]

So, how do you fit your "fatigue of thought" drain notion into a Charisma tradition?

And beliefs are not truly passive.  There is quite a bit of psychology to demonstrate this.  Hence why I suggested looking motivated cognition - an effect by which beliefs actively control your perception and interpretation of information before and after you actually think about any of it.

My personal explanation follows.

A shaman envisions the natural forces of the spirit world questing outward to contact the specific spirit or form the pattern of mana, then pull it back to you. The energy flows out of you as you envision what you believe can and should happen - your raw will and belief in what you do shaped by your thought and the training you received from your mentor and the power instilled in you by your totem.

In other words, I agree with the Gun Nut on this one.

See, you say you agree with Gun Nut, but your explanation reads as being more in line with the idea of magic as a force of belief - you may think about it to use it, but you seem to be suggesting that belief is defining what you can do; that you have to believe in it to do it with magic a la The Dresden Files.

Yes, you must believe in something for it to be possible with magic, that is why Willpower is used with all mages. However, no amount of raw belief causes magic to happen on its own. You must channel the energies actively, envisioning your outcome and then causing it to happen. The only time magic occurs by belief alone is spontaneous magic.

Saying its worked through thought does not, to my mind, make it a force of thought.  And casting spells/summoning spirits isn't the extent of metahumanity's influence upon the manasphere.

I think I need more detail to illustrate your view, or we won't get anywhere. I am not fully understanding how it is that thought has no place in magic. Can you be more detailed about your view on what belief is or something? Maybe quote some of that psychology? I think that your belief shapes thought, and thought shapes magic. Are you saying that you think magic is shaped BEFORE the magician ever actually decides to act? It is an instinctive reaction based on the beliefs of the magician?

Alternately, we can agree to disagree and let it go.

[RHat]

So, how do you fit your "fatigue of thought" drain notion into a Charisma tradition?

And beliefs are not truly passive.  There is quite a bit of psychology to demonstrate this.  Hence why I suggested looking motivated cognition - an effect by which beliefs actively control your perception and interpretation of information before and after you actually think about any of it.

My personal explanation follows.

A shaman envisions the natural forces of the spirit world questing outward to contact the specific spirit or form the pattern of mana, then pull it back to you. The energy flows out of you as you envision what you believe can and should happen - your raw will and belief in what you do shaped by your thought and the training you received from your mentor and the power instilled in you by your totem.

In other words, I agree with the Gun Nut on this one.

See, you say you agree with Gun Nut, but your explanation reads as being more in line with the idea of magic as a force of belief - you may think about it to use it, but you seem to be suggesting that belief is defining what you can do; that you have to believe in it to do it with magic a la The Dresden Files.

Yes, you must believe in something for it to be possible with magic, that is why Willpower is used with all mages. However, no amount of raw belief causes magic to happen on its own. You must channel the energies actively, envisioning your outcome and then causing it to happen. The only time magic occurs by belief alone is spontaneous magic.

Saying its worked through thought does not, to my mind, make it a force of thought.  And casting spells/summoning spirits isn't the extent of metahumanity's influence upon the manasphere.

I think I need more detail to illustrate your view, or we won't get anywhere. I am not fully understanding how it is that thought has no place in magic. Can you be more detailed about your view on what belief is or something? Maybe quote some of that psychology? I think that your belief shapes thought, and thought shapes magic. Are you saying that you think magic is shaped BEFORE the magician ever actually decides to act? It is an instinctive reaction based on the beliefs of the magician?

Alternately, we can agree to disagree and let it go.

Ah, I think I see the misunderstanding.  I'm trying to get at the fundamental nature of the thing - I don't disagree that though is a core component of how the force is manipulated (that would be ludicrous), rather, I'm saying that the force that is being manipulated is itself a force of belief; belief defines the nature of and shape of magic long before though becomes involved.  Thus does the tradition start to create limits for how a given Magician can manipulate magic.

Basically, there's a difference between the method by which something is manipulated and the very nature of the thing.

[The_Gun_Nut]

Thought is shaped by belief, but it's passive.  Like the shape of a fluid is defined by the container it is placed within or travels through.  The fluid is doing the work, the container is defining its limits and direction.  But it is not actively doing anything.

Is that a bit more clear?

[Mason]

So we can say that belief predetermines the shapes that your magic CAN take, but thought is the spark that takes your belief and lets it affect the world? Is that what you are saying? I can agree with that.

[RHat]

So we can say that belief predetermines the shapes that your magic CAN take, but thought is the spark that takes your belief and lets it affect the world? Is that what you are saying? I can agree with that.

That's not a bad way of putting it.  Magic exists before thought moves it, so it cannot be a force of thought.  It exists outside of a magician doing anything with it.  Belief individually shapes what your magic can or cannot do (you move it through thought, but it is not a force of thought), and collectively shapes the wider world of magic and the metaplanes.

Gun Nut:  You're going to need to provide some argument for your notion that belief is passive, because it cannot be taken as a given.