What RPG are you playing right now?

[Ack]

So I feel I've overdone things a bit in Super Mario RPG. Mario is level 10, Mallow is level 9, and I just got Geno. I had maxed out my coins by the time I made it to the Tadpole Pond, or whatever it was called. My inventory is also full, to the point I've been using mushrooms to heal 2 or 3 points of health damage simply to not feel like I'm wasting things when I get rid of them.

Now I really need to work on mastering the Super Jump ability. I can consistently get around 14-15 jumps, but beyond that I'm having problems.

[Valkyrie-Favor]

Not even brains in a vat. Just raw data. And there's no need for an actual design like you're thinking. If you have a sufficiently powerful computer you can give it a physics engine and the initial conditions for the big bang and let the simulation run its course.

I think there's a need for a design and the Big Bang theory can't stand up anymore without a huge helping of fudge factors, but this is the RPG thread...

actually, there should be a JRPG about that.

[MrPopo]

Now I really need to work on mastering the Super Jump ability. I can consistently get around 14-15 jumps, but beyond that I'm having problems.

If I remember right, the timing changes subtly at various milestones in the quest for 100 jumps. And if you're playing on an HDTV you'll have to deal with the lag when it processes the low-res signal from the SNES.

I think there's a need for a design and the Big Bang theory can't stand up anymore without a huge helping of fudge factors, but this is the RPG thread...

Life is the ultimate role playing game. And just like a roguelike there's permadeath. And I'm amused "can't stand up anymore" is synonymous with "well-tested scientific theory and is widely accepted within the scientific community".

[Valkyrie-Favor]

Well-tested? No one has ever tested the Big Bang.

[Dylan]

I think there's a need for a design and the Big Bang theory can't stand up anymore without a huge helping of fudge factors, but this is the RPG thread...

Life is the ultimate role playing game. And just like a roguelike there's permadeath. And I'm amused "can't stand up anymore" is synonymous with "well-tested scientific theory and is widely accepted within the scientific community".

The Big Bang does make sense as it literally only explains the universe expanding. How the universe came around or how it's even possible for it to exist are very important questions (which is what I'm guessing Valkyrie is getting at), but technically out of the scope of the Big Bang.

[MrPopo]

I think there's a need for a design and the Big Bang theory can't stand up anymore without a huge helping of fudge factors, but this is the RPG thread...

Life is the ultimate role playing game. And just like a roguelike there's permadeath. And I'm amused "can't stand up anymore" is synonymous with "well-tested scientific theory and is widely accepted within the scientific community".

The Big Bang does make sense as it literally only explains the universe expanding. How the universe came around or how it's even possible for it to exist are very important questions (which is what I'm guessing Valkyrie is getting at), but technically out of the scope of the Big Bang.

Correct. There are a variety of theories as to how the Big Bang started, but none are particularly compelling over the others. The biggest problem there is that we essentially cannot determine if theory A or B was what triggered the bang because the bang's energy is an observational wall; we can't see past it. Some theories even state that the concept of "before" is meaningless when applied to the Big Bang. An appeal to a creator leads inevitably to "how did the creator come about", and the rationales there apply equally well to the Big Bang being spontaneous.

Well-tested? No one has ever tested the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is a rich theory which makes numerous predictions, and those predictions have been verified through observation. They boil down to "if the Big Bang occured, we would observe X today" and "objects very far away would have an observed quality Y", and the specific example of the cosmic background radiation.

[AppleQueso]

Sometimes I think people believe that the scientific community just pulls random ideas out of a hat and agrees to support them for no good reason.

[MrPopo]

Sometimes I think people believe that the scientific community just pulls random ideas out of a hat and agrees to support them for no good reason.

I saw a comment on a youtube video that made me dumber just from reading it. "That's biology, not science".

[Valkyrie-Favor]

The Big Bang is a rich theory which makes numerous predictions, and those predictions have been verified through observation. They boil down to "if the Big Bang occured, we would observe X today" and "objects very far away would have an observed quality Y", and the specific example of the cosmic background radiation.

You've fallen victim to Thanksgiving logic.
1. I am very full.
2. Eating turkey could have made me full
3. I must have eaten turkey

There are numerous conflicts between the theory and the evidence we have today. We can't do "proper science" with the scientific method because we're talking about the beginning of a universe, which is both non-observable and non-testable.

Sometimes I think people believe that the scientific community just pulls random ideas out of a hat and agrees to support them for no good reason.

I'm not anti-establishment for the sake of it

I was fascinated by the Big Bang as a child, which is what sparked my interest in science generally. I never stopped studying it, and I think I've got a pretty good understanding of it. I still love talking about it.
Big Bang rant:

While the theory is really popular (and super cool, easy to understand, compatible with naturalism, and great for mid-90s edutainment CG) it isn't wholly accepted by the scientific community. Check out this open letter to the scientific community: http://www.cosmologystatement.org/
Lots of names! I actually found this letter just today, I came up with the phrase "fudge factors" independently from them. I'm not just quoting everything on this letter

And speaking of that popularity, that may be the reason it survives. No other physics model has been so well-liked that its holes are filled with imaginary constructs like dark matter, dark energy, and inflation (for which no real mechanism exists).

Why is the universe expanding, and why is that expansion accelerating? Where does the energy come from? No hard evidence, just soft delicious fudge. The Big Bang actually doesn't explain the expansion of the universe.

@ CBR - Even though there are ~14 billion years involved with this model, it's still not enough time. If the Bang distributed the energy in the universe randomly the same way the matter was, there hasn't been enough time for it to radiate uniformly through the universe. John Mather was correct that the Bang would leave some kind of "afterglow," but never considered the light-travel problem. He still managed to win a Nobel Prize on it, as opposed to Raymond Damadian

We can't explain that if those regions of space haven't communicated. We detect the same background radiation from everywhere in the universe in every direction. How did it get there?

14 billion years is also too slow for the Francis Fragment to have formed. These galaxies about 11 billion light years away should still be in the "proto-galaxy" stage but they're mature. Dr. Paul Francis said: "The simulations tell us that you cannot take the matter in the early universe and line it up in strings this large’, he said. ‘There simply hasn’t been enough time since the big bang to form structures this colossal.'"

I'm surprised that the scientific community, which tends to appreciate new approaches, shuts out all alternatives. The letter mentions a lack of funding, but sometimes the community just refuses to hear the views. Refusal to publish in peer reviewed journals is a big problem. It's even hard for rival evolutionary theories. However, if you're really sure of the prevailing theory, you shouldn't be afraid to examine it critically. Many other questions:

Why are there chemical elements?

Where did stars come from? My textbooks say from hydrogen, which can't even form stable molecules (molecular hydrogen is destroyed by UV and needs heavier elements to form). How could they have formed from clouds of hot gas when the gas is too hot to condense?

Why are there laws of physics, and when did they appear? How could an explosion create them, or if they existed before the Bang, why were they there? Basically, why do things make sense?

The Big Bang model does posit a beginning, which makes it a problem for philosophical and commonsense logical reasons (turtles anyone?) Other theories replace the beginning with an infinite regression, which is just as bad if not worse.

@God: The universe has to be dependent on something outside of time, because time can't have caused itself. Everything that has a beginning has a cause, but God exists outside of time. He created it, so how could he be bound by its rules? God needs no cause because he has no beginning. That's why God is different.

[Dylan]

Big Bang rant

I have nothing to add, but I thought I'd mention that I found this thought provoking.