Goonhub
01-11-2015, 10:37 AM
BaneOfGiygas Wrote:To provide some context to the above.
In the IRC chat, popecrunch gave the IRC channel a message to decode, and promised that he would answer any question given to him, within reason, with 100% accuracy. My question was: "given all of our findings and what we have documented...are we still missing an item or multiple items that are necessary to achieve the good ending of solarium? or have we had all of the pieces but simply failed to put them together in the correct manner?"
popecrunch's response was: "Yes and no. Consider Ahab."
He later clarified with:
"clarification: you have found pretty much everything you need to work out the questions you are asking specifically. whether these questions are the right questions to ask is something i'm pointedly not talking about."
"Consider the fact that the translated codephrase was a HUGE hint as to the nature of the puzzle, and the clarification i gave you will start to ring with a certain clarity"
The translated codephrase was "Wisdom begins when you stop trying to make sense."
We've been approaching Solarium in the mindset of trying to make sense out of it. And I mean, why wouldn't we? That's basically science in a nutshell: We see something that doesn't make sense, so we try to make sense out of it.
But consider where we are. Consider the server that we play on. This is Goonstation, for fuck's sake! The place where you can permanently staple butts to heads, reach temperatures exceeding the core of the sun in a simple pipe, create life just by mashing together a few chemical reactions, make a staple gun come to life and staple people to death, fart on a bible and explode into bloody giblets! This isn't a place that makes sense by our definition of sense, and as a result, why should we expect Solarium, the central component of one of the things exclusive to Goonstation, to make any sort of sense?
We've been trying to mash different pieces of this puzzle together in a way that we think makes sense, but the truth is that it doesn't make sense, won't ever make sense, and any attempt to make sense out of it will ultimately be futile. All of the overanalysis and the careful examination of every single miniature detail is leading us down the wrong path.
And that Hamlet quotation about Yorrick everyone keeps trying to decode? Yorrick was a jokester. A trickster. Someone who made fun of things. This entire Solarium good ending business is one gigantic joke, and the ending itself is no doubt the punchline. Perhaps not a joke at our expense, as so many people frequently say, but it's something funny, nonsensical, and made to entertain.
As for the philosopher's stone: If wisdom begins when you stop trying to make sense, perhaps handing over the philosopher's stone is significant of having achieved this wisdom. Of having been shown the joke and understood the joke. Or, hell, maybe you just need to deep-fry the damn thing and give that to the automaton, I don't know.
You know what? Maybe we are a bunch of nerds, and maybe that nerdy approach is exactly our downfall. Science and the scientific method will, I suspect, do us absolutely no good in this scenario, because we need to stop making sense. Then, so the hint would have us believe, the real knowledge of how to achieve this good ending will become apparent.
Alright, I'm ready to