Sharuum isn't seeing play at the moment. Partly because esper decks aren't viable yet. Sharuum will see play over this for costing 1 mana less, and creating card advantage. Magister Sphinx won't see play because it's somewhat situational whereas Sharuum will nearly ALWAYS be useful in an esper deck full of artifacts.
I might be missing something, but I'm not sure it is fair to compare Sharuum and Magister, because I think they are completely different animals.
Sharuum is a somewhat random artifact power-up engine with a finisher body attached, but takes a relatively large number of cards to combo out with. Magister, on the other hand, does less, but it does it more directly, and what it does brilliantly is keep your life total out of reach, which is something Sharuum requires more cards to do.
Platinum Angel is a better comparison card here, and really Magister will generally do much more than Platinum Angel. It has a targeted Cip effect that is really going to be tough to beat once you have a blink engine in place, and unlike the Angel, you won't die by negative life totals when it does leave play.
I'm not sure it has all the tools it needs, but it has some of them, so I think it has a much better chance of finding a deck than it is getting credit for. It will be nearly impossible to win when the opponent has a way to get it in and out of play, and they have some reasonable options to do so. And I don't think this card should be compared to Sharuum, which is a fine, but fundamentally different card.
Yeah, the casting cost hurts to look at. It has a double-edged ability. But there is potential here. This card has a comical number of ways to cheat it into play. It can save your butt by using one of several different blink effects on it. It has finisher stats. It can trigger "loss of life" or "gain life" abilities.
I would at first glance place this card in the "needs a closer look" pile.
The beacon of immortality I find is clutch to the deck because it gives you that much needed lifegain and it goes around torment or stigma lashers... it just says double your life total, no gain anywhere on the card. If the stick a torment I can see your life going down... and down... and down.
I have to call this out because it doesn't sound right. As I understand it, anything that changes your life total to a new number causes you to gain or lose whatever amount of life is required to end up at the actual number. This would mean that effects that prevent life gain would, in fact, prevent Beacon's effect. Any confirmation?
Bitterblossom has no synergy with the deck and shouldn't be played in it. If I am to splash black it would be for tseize, infest and blightning. (not all mainboard ofc)
This is just plain wrong, don't listen to it. Bitterblossom is the card, that people smack their heads when you play it, because it usually wrecks their base strategy against RDW. Especially against Control, when you are not taking any damage at all from the opponent, it is free dudes and a huge threat that forces them to remove it rather than draw cards with Esper Charm. And Control is the reason you play the black splash anyways.
BB is good vs. Fae also, and it it does cause white some headaches as well. I have found Infest in the board to be good against both WW and Lark, so it's good in the Sideboard. I would keep Blightning and Thoughtseize main.
Really, though, if you don't play Bitterblossom then you've ignored the best black card in the deck, and that just doesn't make sense. Especially being a 2-drop, which helps the curve out a bit.
If you want to take it on a more local, less literal level, then can I imagine point at which all of my major life problems are "solved"? Yes. I think there are a lot of people who are in this state. And I think after, say, a month, 6 months, a year of doing this, they have a breakdown, because we internally crave conflict. We do not want to be content. We want to look forward to something down the road. So the "answer" is that if we had no "problems", we would certainly set about to creating new problems immediately.
-E
Great! That makes sense. Anything else? What problems would you create? Is there an alternative? Say we had large numbers of people that were in danger of breaking down due to boredom, or whatever label you want to put on it. They might not prefer to break down, because it would be seen as regression, and therefore do something proactively to prevent it. What would that look like?
Just throwing some lines out to see if we can get some bites.
No, because the question itself doesn't make sense. We can think of a number of different issues where peoples' problems conflict, in which solving one person's problems creates problems for another person.
This is the nature of human interaction, but it also works on a physical level. We could assume the placement of one object in a physical space has the potential to create a problem when paired with the intention of another physical object to occupy that same space - thus, the immediacy of the solution to which object will occupy the space is itself a problem to be solved.
We could imagine a state of "no problems" in perhaps a sense of a snapshot in time. In fact, I would put forth that when the timeline of events is sufficiently reduced to 0, we can assert that there are no problems, because there is no solution which can be rendered within the given timeframe. However, the philosophical question you're asking doesn't make sense. It would be like asking "What are you thinking when you're not thinking?" The very act of attempting to answer the question invalidates its precepts.
However, I think I gave an answer to the philosophical question above. I am just taking offense to your assertion that some people are attacking this very abstract (and silly) question "incorrectly".
-E
I'm sorry you take offense, but the fact is really we have apples and oranges here. What some people, you included, want to answer is whether there exists a problem, that given enough time, resources, whatever, cannot be solved. That's really your focus.
That's fine, but that's not what I'm asking. I'm taking the stance that for all intents and purposes, the environment stabilized around you such that your problem count was reduced to 0. If that doesn't make sense to you, you can reread my suggestions on how to pare down the circumstances to eliminate the interactions that are causing you to focus on the oranges, so that you may instead focus on apples. Your world may be smaller, but at least it sort of gets you a little further down the rabbit-hole.
I also apologize for being "silly." Where are my manners? Good Luck!
You've made appeals to logical consistency with respect to this issue.
Well you know, I'm assuming, that in logic there is a property "For all", which is true if and only if there does not exist some contradictory statement.
The proposition "No problems" assumes this "for all" property (i.e. you could say that the set X, the set of all problems is the empty set, such that there does not exist a problem x in the set X).
Therefore if I can show that the elimination problems creates any problems (or is a problem itself), then we can logically agree that we're discussing an impossibility and maybe move on, right?
So, here's a problem: Charles' biggest problem in life is that he wants to be with Katherine, but Katherine doesn't want to be with Charles, but Steven. Steven, on the other hand, wants to be with Charles.
As any solution to this problem creates a new problem (Charles is with Katherine, but Katherine does not want to be with him, or Steven is with Charles but Charles does not want to be with him), this problem is essentially unsolvable in terms of not creating new problems. Thus, the state of "No problems" cannot exist.
/Thread
Now can we get back to talking about this in terms of a philosophical question and stop all conceits to it being logical or having a logical answer?
-E
*sigh*
I'm trying to avoid rigid mathematical structures being applied to this thread because this isn't about infinity, Godel, or paradoxes. The question is vague enough where you can choose a path that does not end up in one of these places. My appeals to logical consistency has more to do with "is this reaction generally sensical?"
For example, if there are suddenly no problems, like the question states, then the focus should be describing the effects it has on you, not let's find ways to show the OP his question can be interpreted such that it is full of holes... If someone creates problems as a direct consequence of there being no problems, then the state has changed but the exercise was still valid, see? You shouldn't continue down the same path because the question is no longer true, so now let's look for other alternatives.
In other words, we are not introducing a fundamental law saying there are no problems, we are introducing a state in which no problems exist, or by extension will continue to exist without some effort by you. Make sense now?
Take air travel as an example. At first, the number of crashes per flight was about 1. Over time, we have seen this rate decrease exponentially, now that it is near 0. Occasionally something may pop up, but air travel is still much safer than driving or elevators. If I say, suddenly there are no crashes, then apply this statement as you move further down that exponential curve, the statement becomes more reliable. In fact, it is true until a crash happens. At some point, after a crash has not occurred for a significant length of time, it would be generally accepted that all the kinks have been worked out and except in the case where you overthrow convention by crashing it yourself, it would remain true. This is the scenario I'm trying to introduce.
I do appreciate the message that this isn't a logic exercise, because that's true. It's a glimpse into a foreign world, something that is hard to become sympathetic to simply because it doesn't currently exist. If gravity suddenly ceased to exist, we may go about trying to recreate gravity, or we might just reinvent our mode of locomotion. Recreating artificial gravity doesn't invalidate the initial state, it was an effect of it.
It is hard to imagine the ramifications of such an event, and it likely won't happen, but we can certainly imagine what it would be like to suddenly not have any gravity to hold us down, and we could probably identify some things we might be likely to do as a result. This deal with no problems is the same thing. It is a situation that you find yourself in, so what do you do?
Actually, from what I read several people responded with the same conclusion. They just answered it differently than what you were looking for.
There's little substantive difference between saying "the question is invalid" and saying "people would just make new problems".
It seems like the question you are really asking is not "what if there were no problems?" and instead is "what if everyone woke up one day and all their problems were solved?" There's really no answer to the first question without altering fnudamental concepts like duality, whereas the second question can be answered exactly with the "correct" answer you were looking for.
No, this is not my interpretation. People try to create problems to fill a problem vacuum, which is interesting, but it doesn't invalidate the question. It isn't the the only "correct answer," but it is the only one to that point that could actually happen en masse.
Only a very small percentage of people commit suicide as a response to a major event, and the same is true for insanity. The "I don't do anything response" is certainly debatable, but it isn't an interesting effect, in fact it would be tragic that the line of species at some point just stops doing anything because there isn't anything left to do.
That's why I congratulated the poster. It takes a level of creativity to get past the point of making illogical conclusions. The premise is certainly plausible, the question is in fact valid. Problems are decreasing at a certain rate as we solve them, and the premise supposes that there is a path that eventually will lead to no problems. That's the focus.
If you get hung up on the idea that every last problem can't be solved, or the abstractness of the definition of a problem, then just suppose an exponential decrease in problems compared to today, a major and noticeable decline in problems. It all leads to where I'm trying to take you. Think of it as a creative journey into the future. I'm looking for scenarios that could happen in such a place. And no, I don't think I'm smarter than you, I'm just trying to get you to think about the question in the frame that it is, in fact, possible. I apologize for implying anything else.
I'll even throw out another idea I had on the subject. Via the technological path, there is an inherent flaw in space travel that I don't hear people talking about, and that is even once we figure out how to build very, very fast ships, we still can't accelerate continuously at more than a few G's; our bodies just can't take it. This means to accelerate all the way up to, say 1% of the speed of light and then decelerate back to 0 would take a long time and put us well outside our own solar system. Shorter interplanetary trips will be acceleration limited by our own bodies, as they are not particularly-well built for this activity.
Since, however, it is no longer a problem, maybe we are direct brain wired as is explored in Feed and have no wish to travel, or maybe we will have radically altered our bodies with stronger composite materials to handle space acceleration better. So maybe in a world with no problems my consciousness has been completely downloaded onto a machine built to withstand the rigors of space travel, for example.
If there were no problems, people would invent their own "problems". For example if all people lived in a society without violence, simulated warfare, such as RISK or First Person Shooters, or even role playing games would be adapted.
Noone else in this thread has gotten this far, yet. Congratulations. You have stopped attacking the question, and come to the correct conclusion. A lot of others have figured that they should stop existing by some means or other, but realistically, that's not going to happen.
And it is interesting that we have already reached a stage where we invent fake problems all the time. This is what I was referring to when I was writing about happiness not necessarily being related to wealth, for example. We try to compensate for the problems that we have already overcome in order to add some element of happiness to our life. Crazy, isn't it?
But where will this lead? Say we reach the point where we have exponentially dropped our problems to near 0, or even 0, then do you just strap yourself into the Matrix? Once there are no mysteries left, how do we place value on our existence? Who will we become as a society?
Many people haven't been willing to get past rigid semantics, and just imagine that a time will exist when eventually they'll become intelligent enough to wipe out their problems, simply through understanding them.
But some of us, at least, are driven to solve problems, and what will happen the first time there is a shortage? Our we are down to one big problem left (we think at the time) and everyone is working at the same time to solve it? What happens when it is solved and there are no problems left to replace it?
See, problems can be labeled a commodity when they become scarce. The value of solving the problem increases, and the economy will shift to the problem solving type as the popular focus is placed there, much like it is to Pharmaceuticals or Oil today. What will our minds be like? Will they be completely and utterly bent on solving the last problem, with disregard for everything else?
Right now, and assuredly for some time to come, there will be plenty of problems to go around, and everyone can choose their own life (unless they have problems where they can't). You can be a doctor, lawyer, or scientist, for example. Eventually, doctors and scientists are no longer necessary because all the problems that made them necessary went away. So everyone is a lawyer. Do you see where this is going? I'm hoping some of you can imagine what our lives will be like then, and give me your thoughts.
I would again assert that a problem is purely subjective; in which case believing you have no problems literally means you have no problems. Certainly people can trick themselves - and belief is a complicated subject, but on a superficial level, that is how I see it.
Our lives aren't defined by problems, but problems are part of what define our lives. Did I say that right? Obviously our life would be different; very, very different. But I'm not certain problems are essential to the purpose, enjoyment, or the experience of life.
I find it hard to discuss something that has literally no pragmatic implications (as I said I do not look forward to anything; not a future career, wealth, afterlife, etc) so I am not striving for any "steady state", nor am I particularly trying to stablize the one that I may or may not be in.
Well, I can give you an example of something you would not necessarily need to seek out but motivates you to think about "stabilizing" or such things. Children.
The responsibility of raising children involves many factors that require you to do things that contribute to their growth. You don't want them to suffer, but you want them to overcome obstacles in order to grow. There are basic needs of food and shelter that need to be arranged. There is terminology and more advanced education to impose on them.
And so one day, those children will grow up and have kids of their own, and so on and so on, until some day far into the future, After science has taken us far as it can, and nature holds no new mysteries, our children will face the problem of not having any problems left to explore, because all the mysteries of the universe will have been unraveled.
That is one path to where this question is. There are others, but this is just one example. Don't get caught up on problems being subjective, this is all specific to you, and you are the only one that matters in the context of this question. Even if there are actually problems and you have deluded yourself as you keep suggesting, then what? How do you function, what is your role, how do you redefine the world? Whatever the frame of reference, the question is the same (Actually I have been thinking about frame of reference, but we haven't gotten there as a thread yet).
So if you find it hard to keep to the question, like I said originally, you minimalize the universe to just yourself and your own problems that suddenly vanish. How do you adjust? Where does your focus drift? Even for you with no motivation used to get hungry or cold, and now those things are in the past. What now?
@Biosphere - So suppose time does not stop or the universe does not cease. In fact, the world looks pretty darn familiar, except without all the prickly, painful, irritating, confounding, indecisive, and challenging hoops that you are used to jumping through. You are never running late and there is always enough time in the day. From Extremestan's comment above, I think he may just evolve into a tree. They are pretty good at chilling out. But everyone is different, and this thread's OP wants to capture how today's generation would treat a situation like that.
Society would crumble. Without conflict, humans would go insane.
However, that may just be the case if conflicts ceased to exist suddenly. I imagine if there was a slow decline in conflict, then things would be slightly different.
The bigger question is: How could there never be problems?
I think your question is smaller. The reason is it is more procedural, and any significance is still based on my question. Your insanity argument is interesting, I like it. As long as insanity is not a problem for you;)
They are not the same. No problems means NO PROBLEMS. No "We ran out of cereal." No "What does 1+1 equal?" No "I forgot to buy butter!" No "TV is on the fritz again!" No "Dang, I just missed that green light."
Absolutely no problems means no interactivity, no challenges to overcome, no fun to be had. Life is conquest, life is problems.
Imagine how boring magic would be if you didnt have problems? Imagine how boring sex would be if you didn't have to "work for it." Sex always feels way better for me when it feels like I earned it. Imagine how boring your job would be if you didnt have to think or work at problems?
No problems = no life.
There definitely wouldn't be only satisfaction. That is a very shallow view of the world. Humans are more complex than pleasure seeking drones.
So what would you do? Your view sounds tough, so how would you go about existing?
Of course despair and meaninglessness are problems, so you can't really say that's an outcome. Anything you say would be a non sequitur because you're attempting to abstract something that really has no meaning.
That aside, on a personal level (as you wish) I'm at a point in my life where I feel almost as if I have no problems. I know I must die, and not everything I do is necessarily pleasant, but overall I'm incredibly happy and satisfied. And I'm not even motivated by some specific purpose. I suppose that makes me a hedonist?
So I guess what I mean is that I believe that such a reality is plausible. As stan said, only satisfaction would exist - and I reject that satisfaction is only put into perspective by suffering.
To clarify, despair and meaninglessness weren't ends, they were among my many reactions to my imagined predicament. I'm not abstracting anything really, everyone has problems, and I think eventually most people accept that problems are closely intertwined with life. What if we unmingle them? Also, you are negotiating happiness with my question. My question cannot be bribed, so be honest.
Conflicts are still problems, but problems are not conflicts. I was referencing a specific need of humans to be contrary to one another.
If you feel you have no problems, then you are simply lying. you may be satisfied with life, but you certainly have problems. If you have anything in life you have to overcome, it's a problem.
Take the occupation of engineering. They exist to iron out problems in current technology, and they try to find solutions to problems in the world. In a world without problems, you would not worry about your car ever breaking down, crashing into another car, etc. You would simply have to be insane to accept that the world has no problems left.
And in what way is satisfaction not put into perspective by suffering?
I actually am an Engineer, and in this scenario you have to just take the "what if" at face value. If you can't accept it you may go insane, which is perfectly plausible. At the very least I would be out of a job. But I wouldn't be upset because it is not a problem. Try thinking a bit about what motivates you.
It would be what most people* consider "Heaven" to be, and it would be, by all powers of human conception, the most boring thing in the world. Especially if it goes on for all of eternity.
*Then there's the "You play a harp all day and sing to God for eternity" people, and I only consider that marginally better. At least you're doing something.
-E
This question wasn't loaded with any assumed afterlife, though I totally expected some to bring it into their own ideas. For those people it may be an interesting question as to whether a "perfect world" has problems. Problems which are forever coming, and always solved in the most fascinating and exciting ways. Some might prefer that paradise. Of course, they would need God to make sure they could handle any problems, because problems by their very nature are mysterious and impacting, and we wouldn't wanted perfection marred by a problem that couldn't be solved in time.
OMG, STooFoo and just say the damn question already.
There would be no problems.
Of course, problems are what we perceive to be problems, and what we perceive to be problems are largely the result of:
1. Living
2. Being human beings
So for there to be no problems, we'd either have to not be human, or not be.
You are going cause and effect, but I think your logic here is debatable. Also, the response that there would be no problems is something a machine would say. SO maybe you are not human after all? Show some emotion, some future planning.
I do believe that satisfaction can exist seperate from suffering. But again, from an objective point of view the question doesn't really have a meaning because our life is constantly defined by problems and limitations. Like so many other things, problems are subjective, so couldn't one not have problems by simply making it so?
I was merely stating how I feel as per the OPs suggestion. Stupid as it is; sometimes liebniz' "best of all possible worlds" makes sense to me.
If you are honest with yourself, could you really get out of your own way long enough to construct a reality out of what is real that to you has no problems? Sounds like a longshot. This question doesn't require you to believe there are no problems, it only makes it so. Of course, that's totally insane. So if you define your life by problems, how would you define your life once there are no problems left to overcome?
with no conflict the effect I beleve would be that their would be nothingness. a point of zen or the compleat and utter extinction of everything living. with no life theire is no conflict/problems. From this I conclude that Life is infact a problem or conflict.
I think your logic is profound, but a bit buggy. In life there are problems, but not in this question. In this question, you are alive and have no problems. What do you do with it?
Good answers so far, but the rabbit-hole goes much deeper.
@HH - The "why the question" answer is really pretty simple. People spend a lot of time saying they are preparing for an event which at its logical end is best described right where my hypothetical lands. For some it is the afterlife, for some it is retirement, for some it is the pinnacle of fame or richness or technological advancement 10,000 years in the future.
Some say happiness and wealth are not dependent, but why is that? Logically, because of what you already said - we are wired for problem solving. I think cognition is based on differentiation, not specifically problems as you imply, but problems create motivation. If you have a treasure map you get so excited about finding the treasure that you follow the map. But what is the treasure?
What happens when all of the problems are solved? We have shorthand for this, and it's called "happily ever after". But what does that really mean? What is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? I am an Engineer, but even to me these are still important questions. And they are to you too. So you really think I am hurting Philosophy's image?
You can take this question very generally, or if it is hard to grasp in that sense, instead take it very personally as in your daily life.
This is a question that is very much against the grain, because it involves both promise and humility, both hope and despair. It is also very unexpected, because the path from where it originates to where it leads, at least for me, is nothing short of astounding. I have found, at the very least, a very interesting and introspective rabbit-hole, and I want to share it with you.
I don't know if it will resonate with others the same way, or will just lead to a hasty dismissal. I don't know if there have been books written on the subject, and if they are brilliant or lousy.
It brings to mind ingrained sensical recursive advice, such as, "be careful what you wish for," and simultaneously shows us how far we have come yet how little we have accomplished, and how maybe we are asking the wrong questions.
Anyways, I'm interested in your thoughts. I want to know how this question, if realized, would affect you, and all the emotions and pursuits that would happen as a result.
I want to caution you, for the purpose of this exercise, not to fight the question, because it is easy to do. So much of our daily life is predicated on the fact that this question is meaningless. What I am looking for here is for you to ignore the instinct to throw away the question or to answer it without giving it measured thought, because neither of us will learn anything from that, and try to answer as honestly as possible. If you have difficulty with the scope of the exercise, minimalize it so it affects you most personally and focus on it that way. Think about what you would do in this situation, say if you woke up tomorrow and the question were suddenly realized.
This isn't a loaded question. It doesn't assume anything except that you exist as you are now, and you will continue to exist in the future.
And with all that, I think you would expect the question to be complicated, but it can be stated in a very straightforward manner:
I'm a little surprised people are splashing black and not playing Bitterblossom. It's the best black card in the deck, is very good against 5CC, Lark, Kithkin, doesn't hurt the Fae MU and when combined with an early Thoughtseize really increases the win %. Blightning is decidedly good early against control, but is a little more iffy in other matchups.
RDW though is tough, and I basically punt the mirror match, which is exactly what happened at States, when I folded to a mono-RDW. However, I was built to beat Control, and verily I played 5CC 4 times and went 2-1-1, which was disappointing. I tested that MU a lot and I can tell you being on the play for the first game in 3 of those matches I really should have had 3 wins, and the other match was being outmetagamed by an opponent that nullified my MD Magma Sprays by not playing Kitchen Finks at all. That was really the difference between me making top 8 and where I actually ended up at 22 with a 4-2-1 record.
The moral of the story is that the black splash is very good if you are expecting a lot of Control, but otherwise just play the faster mono-red version, because it is better in the mirror. I have tried some variations of white splash, but as far as I can tell they are atrocious against control, which defines my meta. I'll also say from testing that the decisions a 5CC player must make are more difficult when you have the black splash than when you are mono-red, and you only need them to make 1 mistake to run all over them.
I didn't test against Lark much, but Bitterblossom really made that matchup easy when I faced it twice at States. And the ability to sideboard Infest was key against BFT and Paladin En-Vec that I saw that day.
If you don't have a good handle on your meta, don't play RDW at all. If you know your meta you should know which version to play.
Despite the slow landbase, this is all about tempo and CA, building to repeatable alpha strikes with token armies. Not your typical token deck, this relies on early trades and evoking dudes to steal mid and late game board control, yet has the tools to thwart ambitious aggro decks. I might reduce the Necrogenesis count and add a tutor in it's place if I was to test this. Good Luck!
I'm 99.9% sure I was joking and already know that, but thanks anyway.
Like really, does any of that sound serious?
No, Your sarcasm was so over the top I'm surprised anyone missed it. Good read. Keep up the testing. Except try it without the land. It just clumps up and gets in the way of drawing your finishers.;)
I might be missing something, but I'm not sure it is fair to compare Sharuum and Magister, because I think they are completely different animals.
Sharuum is a somewhat random artifact power-up engine with a finisher body attached, but takes a relatively large number of cards to combo out with. Magister, on the other hand, does less, but it does it more directly, and what it does brilliantly is keep your life total out of reach, which is something Sharuum requires more cards to do.
Platinum Angel is a better comparison card here, and really Magister will generally do much more than Platinum Angel. It has a targeted Cip effect that is really going to be tough to beat once you have a blink engine in place, and unlike the Angel, you won't die by negative life totals when it does leave play.
I'm not sure it has all the tools it needs, but it has some of them, so I think it has a much better chance of finding a deck than it is getting credit for. It will be nearly impossible to win when the opponent has a way to get it in and out of play, and they have some reasonable options to do so. And I don't think this card should be compared to Sharuum, which is a fine, but fundamentally different card.
I would at first glance place this card in the "needs a closer look" pile.
I have to call this out because it doesn't sound right. As I understand it, anything that changes your life total to a new number causes you to gain or lose whatever amount of life is required to end up at the actual number. This would mean that effects that prevent life gain would, in fact, prevent Beacon's effect. Any confirmation?
This is just plain wrong, don't listen to it. Bitterblossom is the card, that people smack their heads when you play it, because it usually wrecks their base strategy against RDW. Especially against Control, when you are not taking any damage at all from the opponent, it is free dudes and a huge threat that forces them to remove it rather than draw cards with Esper Charm. And Control is the reason you play the black splash anyways.
BB is good vs. Fae also, and it it does cause white some headaches as well. I have found Infest in the board to be good against both WW and Lark, so it's good in the Sideboard. I would keep Blightning and Thoughtseize main.
Really, though, if you don't play Bitterblossom then you've ignored the best black card in the deck, and that just doesn't make sense. Especially being a 2-drop, which helps the curve out a bit.
Great! That makes sense. Anything else? What problems would you create? Is there an alternative? Say we had large numbers of people that were in danger of breaking down due to boredom, or whatever label you want to put on it. They might not prefer to break down, because it would be seen as regression, and therefore do something proactively to prevent it. What would that look like?
Just throwing some lines out to see if we can get some bites.
I'm sorry you take offense, but the fact is really we have apples and oranges here. What some people, you included, want to answer is whether there exists a problem, that given enough time, resources, whatever, cannot be solved. That's really your focus.
That's fine, but that's not what I'm asking. I'm taking the stance that for all intents and purposes, the environment stabilized around you such that your problem count was reduced to 0. If that doesn't make sense to you, you can reread my suggestions on how to pare down the circumstances to eliminate the interactions that are causing you to focus on the oranges, so that you may instead focus on apples. Your world may be smaller, but at least it sort of gets you a little further down the rabbit-hole.
I also apologize for being "silly." Where are my manners? Good Luck!
*sigh*
I'm trying to avoid rigid mathematical structures being applied to this thread because this isn't about infinity, Godel, or paradoxes. The question is vague enough where you can choose a path that does not end up in one of these places. My appeals to logical consistency has more to do with "is this reaction generally sensical?"
For example, if there are suddenly no problems, like the question states, then the focus should be describing the effects it has on you, not let's find ways to show the OP his question can be interpreted such that it is full of holes... If someone creates problems as a direct consequence of there being no problems, then the state has changed but the exercise was still valid, see? You shouldn't continue down the same path because the question is no longer true, so now let's look for other alternatives.
In other words, we are not introducing a fundamental law saying there are no problems, we are introducing a state in which no problems exist, or by extension will continue to exist without some effort by you. Make sense now?
Take air travel as an example. At first, the number of crashes per flight was about 1. Over time, we have seen this rate decrease exponentially, now that it is near 0. Occasionally something may pop up, but air travel is still much safer than driving or elevators. If I say, suddenly there are no crashes, then apply this statement as you move further down that exponential curve, the statement becomes more reliable. In fact, it is true until a crash happens. At some point, after a crash has not occurred for a significant length of time, it would be generally accepted that all the kinks have been worked out and except in the case where you overthrow convention by crashing it yourself, it would remain true. This is the scenario I'm trying to introduce.
I do appreciate the message that this isn't a logic exercise, because that's true. It's a glimpse into a foreign world, something that is hard to become sympathetic to simply because it doesn't currently exist. If gravity suddenly ceased to exist, we may go about trying to recreate gravity, or we might just reinvent our mode of locomotion. Recreating artificial gravity doesn't invalidate the initial state, it was an effect of it.
It is hard to imagine the ramifications of such an event, and it likely won't happen, but we can certainly imagine what it would be like to suddenly not have any gravity to hold us down, and we could probably identify some things we might be likely to do as a result. This deal with no problems is the same thing. It is a situation that you find yourself in, so what do you do?
No, this is not my interpretation. People try to create problems to fill a problem vacuum, which is interesting, but it doesn't invalidate the question. It isn't the the only "correct answer," but it is the only one to that point that could actually happen en masse.
Only a very small percentage of people commit suicide as a response to a major event, and the same is true for insanity. The "I don't do anything response" is certainly debatable, but it isn't an interesting effect, in fact it would be tragic that the line of species at some point just stops doing anything because there isn't anything left to do.
That's why I congratulated the poster. It takes a level of creativity to get past the point of making illogical conclusions. The premise is certainly plausible, the question is in fact valid. Problems are decreasing at a certain rate as we solve them, and the premise supposes that there is a path that eventually will lead to no problems. That's the focus.
If you get hung up on the idea that every last problem can't be solved, or the abstractness of the definition of a problem, then just suppose an exponential decrease in problems compared to today, a major and noticeable decline in problems. It all leads to where I'm trying to take you. Think of it as a creative journey into the future. I'm looking for scenarios that could happen in such a place. And no, I don't think I'm smarter than you, I'm just trying to get you to think about the question in the frame that it is, in fact, possible. I apologize for implying anything else.
I'll even throw out another idea I had on the subject. Via the technological path, there is an inherent flaw in space travel that I don't hear people talking about, and that is even once we figure out how to build very, very fast ships, we still can't accelerate continuously at more than a few G's; our bodies just can't take it. This means to accelerate all the way up to, say 1% of the speed of light and then decelerate back to 0 would take a long time and put us well outside our own solar system. Shorter interplanetary trips will be acceleration limited by our own bodies, as they are not particularly-well built for this activity.
Since, however, it is no longer a problem, maybe we are direct brain wired as is explored in Feed and have no wish to travel, or maybe we will have radically altered our bodies with stronger composite materials to handle space acceleration better. So maybe in a world with no problems my consciousness has been completely downloaded onto a machine built to withstand the rigors of space travel, for example.
I hope that helps clarify this a bit.
Noone else in this thread has gotten this far, yet. Congratulations. You have stopped attacking the question, and come to the correct conclusion. A lot of others have figured that they should stop existing by some means or other, but realistically, that's not going to happen.
And it is interesting that we have already reached a stage where we invent fake problems all the time. This is what I was referring to when I was writing about happiness not necessarily being related to wealth, for example. We try to compensate for the problems that we have already overcome in order to add some element of happiness to our life. Crazy, isn't it?
But where will this lead? Say we reach the point where we have exponentially dropped our problems to near 0, or even 0, then do you just strap yourself into the Matrix? Once there are no mysteries left, how do we place value on our existence? Who will we become as a society?
Many people haven't been willing to get past rigid semantics, and just imagine that a time will exist when eventually they'll become intelligent enough to wipe out their problems, simply through understanding them.
But some of us, at least, are driven to solve problems, and what will happen the first time there is a shortage? Our we are down to one big problem left (we think at the time) and everyone is working at the same time to solve it? What happens when it is solved and there are no problems left to replace it?
See, problems can be labeled a commodity when they become scarce. The value of solving the problem increases, and the economy will shift to the problem solving type as the popular focus is placed there, much like it is to Pharmaceuticals or Oil today. What will our minds be like? Will they be completely and utterly bent on solving the last problem, with disregard for everything else?
Right now, and assuredly for some time to come, there will be plenty of problems to go around, and everyone can choose their own life (unless they have problems where they can't). You can be a doctor, lawyer, or scientist, for example. Eventually, doctors and scientists are no longer necessary because all the problems that made them necessary went away. So everyone is a lawyer. Do you see where this is going? I'm hoping some of you can imagine what our lives will be like then, and give me your thoughts.
Well, I can give you an example of something you would not necessarily need to seek out but motivates you to think about "stabilizing" or such things. Children.
The responsibility of raising children involves many factors that require you to do things that contribute to their growth. You don't want them to suffer, but you want them to overcome obstacles in order to grow. There are basic needs of food and shelter that need to be arranged. There is terminology and more advanced education to impose on them.
And so one day, those children will grow up and have kids of their own, and so on and so on, until some day far into the future, After science has taken us far as it can, and nature holds no new mysteries, our children will face the problem of not having any problems left to explore, because all the mysteries of the universe will have been unraveled.
That is one path to where this question is. There are others, but this is just one example. Don't get caught up on problems being subjective, this is all specific to you, and you are the only one that matters in the context of this question. Even if there are actually problems and you have deluded yourself as you keep suggesting, then what? How do you function, what is your role, how do you redefine the world? Whatever the frame of reference, the question is the same (Actually I have been thinking about frame of reference, but we haven't gotten there as a thread yet).
So if you find it hard to keep to the question, like I said originally, you minimalize the universe to just yourself and your own problems that suddenly vanish. How do you adjust? Where does your focus drift? Even for you with no motivation used to get hungry or cold, and now those things are in the past. What now?
@Biosphere - So suppose time does not stop or the universe does not cease. In fact, the world looks pretty darn familiar, except without all the prickly, painful, irritating, confounding, indecisive, and challenging hoops that you are used to jumping through. You are never running late and there is always enough time in the day. From Extremestan's comment above, I think he may just evolve into a tree. They are pretty good at chilling out. But everyone is different, and this thread's OP wants to capture how today's generation would treat a situation like that.
And then what? For example, the next day. What do you do?
I think your question is smaller. The reason is it is more procedural, and any significance is still based on my question. Your insanity argument is interesting, I like it. As long as insanity is not a problem for you;)
So what would you do? Your view sounds tough, so how would you go about existing?
To clarify, despair and meaninglessness weren't ends, they were among my many reactions to my imagined predicament. I'm not abstracting anything really, everyone has problems, and I think eventually most people accept that problems are closely intertwined with life. What if we unmingle them? Also, you are negotiating happiness with my question. My question cannot be bribed, so be honest.
I actually am an Engineer, and in this scenario you have to just take the "what if" at face value. If you can't accept it you may go insane, which is perfectly plausible. At the very least I would be out of a job. But I wouldn't be upset because it is not a problem. Try thinking a bit about what motivates you.
This question wasn't loaded with any assumed afterlife, though I totally expected some to bring it into their own ideas. For those people it may be an interesting question as to whether a "perfect world" has problems. Problems which are forever coming, and always solved in the most fascinating and exciting ways. Some might prefer that paradise. Of course, they would need God to make sure they could handle any problems, because problems by their very nature are mysterious and impacting, and we wouldn't wanted perfection marred by a problem that couldn't be solved in time.
You are going cause and effect, but I think your logic here is debatable. Also, the response that there would be no problems is something a machine would say. SO maybe you are not human after all? Show some emotion, some future planning.
If you are honest with yourself, could you really get out of your own way long enough to construct a reality out of what is real that to you has no problems? Sounds like a longshot. This question doesn't require you to believe there are no problems, it only makes it so. Of course, that's totally insane. So if you define your life by problems, how would you define your life once there are no problems left to overcome?
I think your logic is profound, but a bit buggy. In life there are problems, but not in this question. In this question, you are alive and have no problems. What do you do with it?
Good answers so far, but the rabbit-hole goes much deeper.
@HH - The "why the question" answer is really pretty simple. People spend a lot of time saying they are preparing for an event which at its logical end is best described right where my hypothetical lands. For some it is the afterlife, for some it is retirement, for some it is the pinnacle of fame or richness or technological advancement 10,000 years in the future.
Some say happiness and wealth are not dependent, but why is that? Logically, because of what you already said - we are wired for problem solving. I think cognition is based on differentiation, not specifically problems as you imply, but problems create motivation. If you have a treasure map you get so excited about finding the treasure that you follow the map. But what is the treasure?
What happens when all of the problems are solved? We have shorthand for this, and it's called "happily ever after". But what does that really mean? What is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? I am an Engineer, but even to me these are still important questions. And they are to you too. So you really think I am hurting Philosophy's image?
This is a question that is very much against the grain, because it involves both promise and humility, both hope and despair. It is also very unexpected, because the path from where it originates to where it leads, at least for me, is nothing short of astounding. I have found, at the very least, a very interesting and introspective rabbit-hole, and I want to share it with you.
I don't know if it will resonate with others the same way, or will just lead to a hasty dismissal. I don't know if there have been books written on the subject, and if they are brilliant or lousy.
It brings to mind ingrained sensical recursive advice, such as, "be careful what you wish for," and simultaneously shows us how far we have come yet how little we have accomplished, and how maybe we are asking the wrong questions.
Anyways, I'm interested in your thoughts. I want to know how this question, if realized, would affect you, and all the emotions and pursuits that would happen as a result.
I want to caution you, for the purpose of this exercise, not to fight the question, because it is easy to do. So much of our daily life is predicated on the fact that this question is meaningless. What I am looking for here is for you to ignore the instinct to throw away the question or to answer it without giving it measured thought, because neither of us will learn anything from that, and try to answer as honestly as possible. If you have difficulty with the scope of the exercise, minimalize it so it affects you most personally and focus on it that way. Think about what you would do in this situation, say if you woke up tomorrow and the question were suddenly realized.
This isn't a loaded question. It doesn't assume anything except that you exist as you are now, and you will continue to exist in the future.
And with all that, I think you would expect the question to be complicated, but it can be stated in a very straightforward manner:
What if there were no problems?
I sincerely look forward to your insights...
RDW though is tough, and I basically punt the mirror match, which is exactly what happened at States, when I folded to a mono-RDW. However, I was built to beat Control, and verily I played 5CC 4 times and went 2-1-1, which was disappointing. I tested that MU a lot and I can tell you being on the play for the first game in 3 of those matches I really should have had 3 wins, and the other match was being outmetagamed by an opponent that nullified my MD Magma Sprays by not playing Kitchen Finks at all. That was really the difference between me making top 8 and where I actually ended up at 22 with a 4-2-1 record.
The moral of the story is that the black splash is very good if you are expecting a lot of Control, but otherwise just play the faster mono-red version, because it is better in the mirror. I have tried some variations of white splash, but as far as I can tell they are atrocious against control, which defines my meta. I'll also say from testing that the decisions a 5CC player must make are more difficult when you have the black splash than when you are mono-red, and you only need them to make 1 mistake to run all over them.
I didn't test against Lark much, but Bitterblossom really made that matchup easy when I faced it twice at States. And the ability to sideboard Infest was key against BFT and Paladin En-Vec that I saw that day.
If you don't have a good handle on your meta, don't play RDW at all. If you know your meta you should know which version to play.
4 Shriekmaw
4 Mulldrifter
4 Sower of Temptation
4 Dusk Urchins
Spells
4 Bitterblossom
4 Necrogenesis
4 Thoughtseize
3 Garruk Wildspeaker
2 Jace Beleren
2 Agony Warp
4 Vivid Creek
4 Vivid Grove
4 Vivid Marsh
4 Reflecting Pool
3 Flooded Grove
3 Twilight Mire
3 Sunken Ruins
4 Cryptic Command
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Cloudthresher
3 Infest
Despite the slow landbase, this is all about tempo and CA, building to repeatable alpha strikes with token armies. Not your typical token deck, this relies on early trades and evoking dudes to steal mid and late game board control, yet has the tools to thwart ambitious aggro decks. I might reduce the Necrogenesis count and add a tutor in it's place if I was to test this. Good Luck!
No, Your sarcasm was so over the top I'm surprised anyone missed it. Good read. Keep up the testing. Except try it without the land. It just clumps up and gets in the way of drawing your finishers.;)