So theoretically, could humans kill an Old One/Eldritch Abomination?

>>55090266

The Short answer is no. The long answer is no..sometimes.

Things like Chthulu are unkillable by our own means. In the book he basically was just rolling over in bed before going back to sleep. Shit like The Dunwhich Horror required a spell but was technically killable, but then it was essentially mortal just like it's brother Wilbur

The entire point of them is that we can't kill them, It would completely defeat the point of eldritch horrors if they can be defeated- they're supposed to be these unstoppable forces that view us as no more than insects, and our only hope is that they don't feel like killing us.

>>55090407
I thought the entire point was that we couldn't understand them.
A swarm of ants *can* kill a human in the right conditions, but a swarm of ants can never understand *why* a human is busy flattening a plot of land because he's about to pour concrete.

Okay, both. The point is that they wouldn't be scary if a column of jets could blow them to shit.

>>55090407
There are numerous "rival" races like the Great Race of Yith and their insubstantial enemies or the Elder Things and the Shoggoths. The Mi-go are also at least neutral towards humanity so it's possible that humanity could fight against an old one with another elder race's assistance

Depends on its power level.

>>55090266
>fuck up
He didn't fuck up anything. Cthulhu was unaffected. Remember, he's a 4th or 5th dimension being. Saying the sailor fucked him up is like saying someone fucked you up because they shone a flashlight on your shadow. All they're effecting is something that's not even you, but a projection of you on a lesser dimension.

>>55090266
One of my favourite HPL quotes goes
>The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom
I've always liked to interpret it as basically saying that humanity could advance to the point of being like the Great Old Ones, to being able to fight them, but by that point we will have advanced beyond our current culture to much that our 'humanity' won't have survived.

So no, humans can't kill the Great Old Ones. Because in order to kill them we'd have to become inhuman.

>>55091196
Then how come Conan can kill them?

>>55091290
Have you seen Conan? Dude is swole as fuck.

>>55090266

You have about as much of a chance of killing an Old One as stick figure you drew on a piece of paper would have killing you. They are literally on a plane of existance that you can not comprehend which is why you go instantly insane when you appear before you because the mind is unable to cope with their being.

>>55090266

One thing nobody's mentioned is that Cthulhu was already dead. Being dead is not a big deal to them, it's basically just like being asleep.

>In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits, dreaming

>>55090266
Eldritch Abomination, sure. Old One? Fuck no.

now could someone kill azatoth?
by someone i mean anyone, even the old ones.

>>55091466
I mean, the universe is Azathoths dream so almost certainly not, and even if you did, you'd be ending the universe in the process.

>>55090266
I would say its possible... but unlikely. Just as it is possible but unlikely for ants or bees to kill a person.

>>55091270
I like to think the internet is a baby great old one that acts as a collective hive mind, using memes and whatnot to connect humans mind to mind.

>>55091466
Azathoth could kill itself

>>55091495
Save us from our beastly idiocy

>>55091515
Well, it's slowly driving us all crazy so hopefully it'll offer some level of reprieve

now if this is a dream of azatoth, then how is the reality? i mean, the real universe where azatoth lives, did Lovecraft ever talked about it?

>>55091466
CHIM

>>55091498
and indeed, stands a pretty good chance of doing so

>>55091536
I like to consider the concept of Amaranth from Elder Scrolls in this scenario. Azathoth dreams because it cannot bear to be awake, because it is the only being which actually exists.

>>55090266
Dying really isn't something Great Old Ones can do, at least not in the sense we understand it. When stars aren't right, they're dead, but also dreaming. And when stars are right, they just wake up and resume whatever they were doing. You can't kill them in the same sense humans (or any other earthly for of life) can be killed, because that's simply not how they work. At best, you can survive long enough for the stars to stop being right and they go back to being dead. The Elder Things did it, and they were also mundane creatures made from regular matter, so theoretically humans could pull it off as well.

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>>55090266
You have to remember that humans interacting with old ones is in most cases only interacting with them from the third spatial dimension.

Shooting a huge chunk out of Cthulhu could be compared to slightly scraping a part of the skin if we assume he exists within 4 spatial dimensions, but if we draw knowledge from stories like "Through the gates of the silver key" we know that many of the elder gods exists through even higher dimensions, making it more comparably to hurting a cell(a 1 dimensional unit) rather than the skin (a 2 dimensional thing).

Short answer: No.

>inb4 someone goes all asinine with the term "old ones" and "eldritch beings" you all know the point i'm making.

>>55091536
I like to think that we do live in the real world.

The world is just void, except for a lonely intelligence. The intelligence created the laws of physics which bond the universe, and made energy and matter through pure willpower.

He even gave himself a body. He must remain in a state where he is dreaming because if he stops the laws of physics the universe will dissolve to become the void again

I do not think he is unaware of the world, simply has to remain in a state where he creates everything. To wake would be his nightmare.

>>55091536

There isn't anything else.

It would be like killing a gamma ray burst.

The whole point is they're an allegory for the forces behind a scientific universe that could destroy us at any moment.

Yeah the whole point of the Lovecraftian Mythos is that the horror is in the sense that we as humans cannot do anything to stop these great creatures.

>>55091270
I wonder if he was influenced by Nietzsche?

>>55090266
>fuck up Cthulhu
Why do people always assume that was Cthulhu? I thought the story explicitly mentioned Cthulhu had a shitload of his spawn with him (I could be wrong on this). Only one thing 'woke,' would the king of the place really be the first guy to get up and start running around?

>>55091590
That's ok then.
We can't kill the Great Old Ones, and we won't even try.
We will kill the stars.

>>55091926
>he thinks "the stars are right/wrong" is literally about stars and not some medieval arab guy's interpretation of cycles of weird physics properties of the universe

>>55090431

We don't understand them, they barely notice us.

If they destroy us, it might very well be by accident and they will most likely neither realize nor care that we were there in the first place.

If it isn't by accident, it might be for reasons so alien to our mindset that one cannot even say it was evil or malicious :

As you said, it might just be a case of "that cosmical timeway needs to be built" and we happen to be in the way.

Or maybe they just forgot to close the dimensional fence and their "dog" went out for a century or two, just the time it took for them to notice it and call it back. Nevermind whatever local pest it might have played with in that brief moment.
Meanwhile, half a civlization might have been erased on our side.

>>55090266
Depends on the specific interpretation of the mythos.

Lumley and Derleth wrote mythos stories where the answer was basically "yes," most who knew what they were doing would probably have the answer be no. But there's a lot of variety to how different people have used the mythos, so it actually does vary. Even moreso for
>could humans kill an Eldritch Abomination?
since "Eldritch Abomination" just means "mythos-like monster" and could range from a deep one you could shoot in the face to "literally omnipotent".

>>55091955
Having physicists build devices that move us out of alignment from other theorized dimensions doesn't sound as badass tho.
It's more near-future realistic, since we can already do shit with gravity waves and it just takes big explosions, which might or might not mean making some nearby star explode, but it just sounds lame.

>>55091482
So you could kill him if he dreamt it... but then he would awoke and you would be gone.
And he would still be alive, staying awake for a while until the next short nap.

>>55090266
"Kill" one?

Even our concept of life and death are utterly insufficient to describe the process of making an Old One/Eldritch Abomination inert.

You don't quite seem to understand the difference in scale we're talking about here.

>>55091643

Then perhaps we can give them cancer.

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>>55092139
Except that a great old one could just cut that part of and be just as fine imagine cuting in 12 spatial dimensions, and the "cell" was just a metaphor, since a cell isnt a one dimensional thing.

And, again, this is oversimplifying things since they by definition are to "big" and complicated for our tiny minds.

>>55092072
Azathoth isn't so much dreaming the universe as he is controlling it, every movement of every particle. But he's a blind idiot so he has no plan for it. He is the quantum random chance personified.

This means there is no "free will" in the Cthulhu universe. Which explains how time travel can work so neatly and without paradoxes.

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>>55092258
Are you high or something?
"Free will" by any scientific standard does not exists. Its not even a thing in IRL.

>>55091853
Almost certainly not. Nietzche's overman isn't a wild insane berserker like that quote predicts.
>>55092301
Casualty is an insufficiently verified concept.

>>55092301

Not precisely. Human behavior appears to be largely deterministic, but determinism is not incompatible with free will. Just because you were "going to" make a certain choice doesn't mean you didn't make that choice.
Free will is one of those things that's really hard to nail down.

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>>55092301
> Free will does not exist
Oh thank God, now I know why I can't quit this place. So who do I get to pin the blame on?

>>55090266
I really want to know the story behind this image.

>>55092390
The Japanese fish market is a harsh mistress, anon.

>>55092301

>science doesn't know it, it must not exist

Anon, just because we didn't always know about atoms doesn't mean they didn't exist.

>>55092389
every prior event in your entire life basically. They all created the personality you have which is why you made the decision you did

>>55092301
>he thinks he can verify the existence of causality

Laughinghume.jpg

>>55092361
It does sound an awful lot like how a pessimistic sort of an old-fashioned morality might view it.

>>55092465

>personality cannot exist in a metaphorical vacuum

>>55092301
Free will means the freedom to do what you want. Your mind may be predisposed to certain behaviors but the conscientious individual can change their will as need be.

>>55092465
> On a board where dice are nearly worshiped
> Not relying on quantum probability distributions for a random element of 'free will' instead

>>/lit/ is that way, my deterministic friend

>>55092509
but the decision to change their will is going to be determined by how their past experiences shaped their expectations, opinions, morals, etc

>>55092465
>personality cannot be altered
>the past is the only thing that defines you

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>>55092361
>Casualty is an insufficiently verified concept.
Unless you wan't to be scientific about it, in which case it is.

>>55092370
>The world of physics is deterministic
>Something operating through physics is not deterministic
Not trolling, just think before you shitpost alright?

>>55092389
Yourself. >>55092370 has a point. Just because a being watching everything in the universe could predict your every move doesn't mean its not your choice.

>>55092419
Right, so we must asume it exists? Or is the scientific method to assume it doesn't unless we are trying something new?

>>55092474
See reply above.


It really boggles my mind how you all could have missed the very basis of physics. Are you all trolling me or is this some ancient /tg/ meme i've had the luck of not running into during all these years?
Not being a fedora about it, but surely you must all understand that the basis of science is to assume only what has been proven unless we are trying entirely new stuff out. Or are you all the kinds of dudes who think that because nobody has disproved dragons its the logical thing to assume they exist?

Or are you the kind of people who assume that quantum mechanics must be random because we don't understand it yet even though everything else in the universe is deterministic?

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>>55092552
>a person lives in a vacuum
>collective human knowledge has no value, the only things affecting you are your own sensory experiences

>>55092580
the act of learning that knowledge is a sensory experience

>>55090266
Yes.

The point of Lovecraft is that the universe is big and stupid (in the sense of "not intelligent/kind/planned"), and that nothing is above its rules, not even the things that seem like they are. Nothing is "exempt" from the rules of the universe, they just interact with them differently. The horror of Lovecraft isn't the cosmic horrors themselves, it's that the universe is massive and impersonal enough to contain them.

It's just that then other people wrote their fucking fanfiction and made it out like there was some grand agenda to these huge stupid beasts and that they were unkillable meme engines that made you go insane just by glancing at them and then Chaosium ran with it and made it worse.

The point of Lovecraft is that the Universe is big and nobody is the center of it. That's it.

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>Freedom of will hasn't been disproven
>Therefor its the logical thing to assume it exists in contrast to all knowledge gathered so far rather than assuming it doesn't until it is proven

Oh is this the "deus vult" cosplaying stuff showing through?

>>55092559
Verify casuality as a concept empirically. It can't be done. Its assumed for the sake of convenience.

We assume that if a certain event follows another with consistency, its a universal law, but a single counter-example is enough to overturn an entire theory, no matter how complex or sublime.

Read Hume.
Read Godel.
Google "Black Swan problem" if you're too lazy to do that.

Also the idea that everything in the universe is deterministic is a massive assumption on your part that doesn't match the data on quantum mechanics at all. You're basically operating on Newtonian physics right now, every new piece of information we learn in physics suggests that the 1600s model of a clockwork universe is deeply flawed.

As to 'free will' the jury is still out on that concept, but if you mean metaphysical free-will, that would literally require that every individual be capable of violating casuality, at least to the degree that given identical causes, DIFFERENT effects could be produced.

>>55092559

>Right, so we must asume it exists?

Sure? It's your life man. Don't live it by what other people tell you to think.

>>55092600
Citation needed
>read a book about snakes
>see venomous snakes
>avoid them
>anon cannot explain this action

>>55091196
I dont think you understand what a 4th or 5th dimensional creature would look like...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t4aKJuKP0Q&t=111s&ab_channel=Miegakure

>>55092656
you can't see how the sensory experience of learning about something being dangerous leads to the decision to avoid it?

>>55092620

It's a coin flip, homie. Whether or not you believe it exists is completely inconsequential so why worry about it?

>>55092559
The very basis of science when it comes to fundamental epistemological limitations like the inability to empirically verify causality is to ignore them because you can't get anything done otherwise, but that doesn't change the fact these shortcomings are still present.

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>>55090266

Going by Lovecraft-only final destination no expanded mythos: unclear.

I mean, depending on what you mean by "eldritch abomination", sure. Humans killed all sorts of spooky shit in Lovecraft's stories. The U.S. government dropped depth charges on the deep ones. The MC of "The Lurking Fear" dynamites the mole-people monsters over in rural New York. The MC of "Dreams in the Witch House" fucking strangles the witch, and the MC of "The Shunned House" digs up the vampire and drowns it in acid. The trope of the main character turning into a helpless gibbering wreck upon seeing the monster is much overblown; humans can and do fuck the eldritch world's shit up.

Now, moving up the scale to the big guys like Cthulhu (and beyond)? Who the fuck knows. They weren't really designed with fighter jets and nuclear bombs in mind. The exact methods with which they would conquer the world are never fully described (although it's important to note that they rely heavily on humanity doing their dirty work for them; mind control is a hell of a drug). They're big. They're scary. They're not designed as primary antagonists but as looming existential threats. Could humanity "kill" them? I guess the answer is really going to depend on what the author wants.

>>55090266
>Eldritch Abomination
A human, given enough fire power could probobly take out a shogoth/dark young but it would be tought
>Old one
Depending on the old one, a group of humans given enough fire power/the right spells might hurt one of the weeker ones, but not much
>the boat meme
Chthulu was not "hurt", he did not wake up at the right time and the story states that the boat did absolutly nothing. You know how you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, try to kill a fly that is kind of annoying you and than go back to sleep regardless of killing it or not? More or less this happened

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>>55092642
Fuck me yeah. You are right and i'm so dumb. I forgot you cannot model quantum mechanics empirically nor mathematically.

Its fine if you've only read some stuff online. Come do some real research before you try arguing this some stuff with a guy who does this for a living. Shitposting and quantum physics modelling and simulating that is

All these guys squabbling over each-other doing armchair physics is cute though, but i don't have time to reply to all of you.

>>55092607
>nobody is at the center of it
>Azathoth literally or metaphorically, whatever

>this totally means you can go on an Old One massacre rampage guys!! I know that's not what you're going for, but I've seen people try to take it there before
Just because the Old Ones don't have some fundamental meaning or purpose above ours doesn't mean that we're on an equal playing field with them, or even the same playing field. The universe is big and stupid, and it's entirely conceivable for, say, beings of certain dimensions to just wind up completely unequipped to ever adapt to exist on certain other 'levels'. Making the Old Ones untouchable by humanity doesn't significantly impact the themes, making them notably vulnerable does.

>>55092739
armchair science is always funny if you are actually in said field

>>55092679
It's not. What sense was stimulated? Mind is separate from body. I could've chosen to do something with the snakes if I wanted, like put them in a terrarium because I wanted them. But I didn't want to be near them because they're poisonous

>>55092559
>that quantum mechanics must be random because we don't understand it
Literal fail you get a D-

>>55092642
>that would literally require that every individual be capable of violating casuality, at least to the degree that given identical causes, DIFFERENT effects could be produced.

Why is this even desirable? Why do people want to feel like, given the exact same circumstances, faced with the exact same decision and information, that their personality/experiences/identity isn't a factor and their ultimate decision is down to a cosmic random number generator?

H.P. Lovecraft wrote a story where a guy with a barrel of acid killed a monster once and only went a little crazy doing it.

>>55092739
I feel like a guy who did quantum physics would be aware of a theorem from back in the '30s that says we have a pretty finite limit on how certain we are about a lot of important processes.

But whatever. If you're not divvying up your decisions into distributions and collapsing them with a RNG, can you really say you're ready to shit post for a living on /tg/?

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>>55092739
Nigga do you have any idea how many intuitive concepts are getting thrown out or ripped to shreds by modern science on the daily?

Fundamental concepts like time, space, particle, and wave are being redefined constantly, or found to be inadequate and having to be replaced with new more alien concepts.

How do you model causality in the simple A>B mode in a cosmos where events in the future can effect events in the past, throwing the whole concept of 'time' into question?

How do you believe in a domino universe when its becoming more and more likely that the randomness inherent in quantum mechanics isn't a fault in observation but a definitive part of the cosmos?

We live in a world where objects can literally be in two places at once, and you still cling to concepts like a geometric particle?

Have you read absolutely nothing past Isaac Newton? The point isn't that causality cannot be verified [it can, through logic and mathematics, just not through natural science since it itself is an axiom of natural science], nor is it that free will necessarily exists [it may or may not, its too early in the game to tell].

But the point is you ASSUMING a model of physics that runs entirely contrary to every new piece of data, because you ASSUME that in the end the old 1600s model will be re-proven, that the end of the tunnel is hard determinism, is not science but an article of faith.

Moron.

>>55092860
Because people dont want to face the fact that a lot of things they did, of their own free will, was stupid. Also they think it makes them feel "smart"

>>55092806
>>55092877
>>55092848
>>55092880

I am actually doing research in this field, but i think we are arguing different things since you probably don't consider the chance of a probability deterministic whilst most of us actually working with this shit do. I.e a particle existing in a probability field you can calculate is in itself deterministic with some CURRENTLY ASSUMED unknown factor. In no serious theory does "random" come in to it, only the fact that we cannot collect all the necessary data to calculate the outcome, which still doesn't mean its indeterministic.

>>55092826
>Mind is separate from body
how? the mind is electrical signals travelling through a bundle of tissue. And if you want to be more literal about it, how about sight, you know, since you're reading a book

>>55092739
>i model quantum physics
>there not random
>hurr durr
I would take away your grant money for shit posting on /tg/ and being a complete fag

>>55092762

>Making the Old Ones untouchable by humanity doesn't significantly impact the themes, making them notably vulnerable does.

10/10

>>55092912
och no mate, im not in phisics, im in biology, this shit is way over my head, im just stating a fact that armchair science is funny to read

>>55092531

Even if you could establish that consciousness is tied to quantum probability (all evidence points to no) you're not carving out a space for free will that way. One could just as easily say you're swapping the puppet master from macro-scale atomic interactions in favor of quantum waveforms bubbling up and telling you what to do.
Determinism is orthogonal to the question of whether or not we have free will. You can have free will in a rigidly deterministic universe, and lack it in a probabilistic one.

>>55092868
Thanks super Agro crag!

>>55092939
>reading =/= stimulation
Jesus Christ that's obvious
>brain=/= mind
Does your brain determine who you are? Nope. We have the same brains. Your mind is not biological.

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>>55092947
>/Tg/ guy throws dice onto table
>Assumes it must be random because it looks random

>Science people watch quantum physics
>Assume it must be random and therefore doesn't bother researching it and doesn't try to rewrite the theory of everything to find out what actually determines the outcome.

/tg/ wins again!

If anyone is actually curious of current research try reading some actual papers on what is being tried out rather than watching youtube vids or TED's about it.

>>55092974
Its maddening when people are so misinformed and is probably spreading it around. Its like if people asked you why evolution made the back of the trachea soft so we can choke on food going down the digestive track.

>>55092912
>let me correct myself fundamentally

>>55092912
That itself is an assumption though. A 'probability field', which is to say a spectrum of possibilities lends itself to a different model of causality, unless we assume that once all data is known that we could model every outcome completely accurately.

>Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that the physical observation apparatus effects the thing you're observing sometimes preventing this.

What it really boils down to is this concept of casuality. The classic concept is that for any given effect there exists a definitive cause, and that cause, all else being equal, produces that same effect.

The new concept, which I am not endorsing, merely proposing as a possibility, is the possibility that given identical causes, a spectrum of effects may be possible, with the exact one produced being a result of a truly random process.

The only thing I AM endorsing as definite, is that you're being far too confident in hard determinism for what the data actually suggests.

>>55092912
When challenged, everyone on the Internet is a teacher or scientist.

Find me someone willing to admit to being a highschool dropout during a debate and I'll be impressed.

>>55092983
>quantum waveforms bubbling up and telling you what to do
vs
> Some desire state machine formed out a pattern matching feedback loop

I'm fine either way, honestly. One just fits in better with dice.

>>55093013
I think you learned your lesson

>>55093010
>reading =/= stimulation
all senses are electrical impules, what exactly is different about using your sense of sight to interpret words and images on a page versus using your sight to see something in front of you that makes one of them not stimulation.

whatever vague concept you see the 'mind' as being there is no empirical evidence it can exist without the physical processes going on in the brain, therefore the distinction between brain processes and 'thought' are redundant

>>55093081
Not the crazy physics guy and the bald anesthesiologist again

>>55093013
>Its maddening when people are so misinformed and is probably spreading it around. Its like if people asked you why evolution made the back of the trachea soft so we can choke on food going down the digestive track.

I'v gotten used to it, plus my field is not all that "special" in pop culture so people dont pretend to be know-it-alls in it. Sometimes it's even fun. On the other hand im a shut-in, so this might be the reason why i dont hear much biological bullshit

>>55093013

>I'm a researcher, guys, believe me!

>>55093013
>Its maddening when people are so misinformed and is probably spreading it around. Its like if people asked you why evolution made the back of the trachea soft so we can choke on food going down the digestive track.

Well thanks, now I do kind of want to know why crossing the streams occurs in nearly every vertebrate with lungs.

>>55093125
If you want the short anwser, it's just because. Evolution really dose not have much reason behind it, a lot of things just happened because group X had it this way, it did not die out, and a lot of other species that grew out of it have it the same way

>>55093104
This reference is beyond me.

>>55093015
Didn't know a bunch of misinformed guys would latch on.

>>55093043
Fine. You assume that. The scientific community disagrees but you can have your unscientific opinion on the subject. And a different model of causality is, by definition, still causality.

What i am saying is that just because me as an observer in the third and forth dimension cannot determine something doesn't make it indeterministic, and the literature and community agrees with me on this.

>>55093088
Sure did.

>>55093108
My wife is a doctor and i get stories of this kind of stuff all the time.
Fun fact: According to modern medicine, you can be as fat as you want and still be healthy! The only dangerous place that has been found to be REALLY dangerous is gut fat, that is fat in the gut not your flabby stomach. However being fat on the outside is a good indicator of gut fat, so its really a moot point except as a fun tidbit.

>>55093081

Yep, you can have free will with both, or neither, so it doesn't really make any difference to the free will question what consciousness comes from.

As a corollary to the above about laymen's misapprehensions of science, it also amuses me when scientists who don't know philosophy try to answer difficult philosophical questions but miss basic level shit. Penrose a dumb. Stick to the fields you know, people, and if you dp poke your nose into a neighboring discipline, be cautious about telling them how to do their thing.

>>55092762
>Azathoth
>"somebody"
C'mon now.

>even playing field
I didn't make any claim like an even playing field. I just said it was possible that humans could kill them. I didn't say it was easy, plausible, or doable with the technology present in Lovecraft's stories.

>>55093188
Prove your qualifications or shut up about them. We can all lie on the Internet, I should know, as a living god.

>>55093188
i mainly get my kicks from reading social darwinists and their ideas about survival of the fittest and how much they dont understand the concept. It's also fun to listen to environmental activists and their opponents bicker and laugh about how much both sides know fuck all about ecology and even less about chemistry. Both things can be found on the internet so im not in danger of their stupid annoying me too much

>>55093272
> prove your qualifications or shut up about them
I kind of prefer Schrodinger's researcher though.

>>55093272
I don't have the time to explain quantum physics because it can't be explained by a quick TED talk.
And how about no, you are merely a sub god to my conscious

>>55093280
That shit is fun to. My favorite thing is when the wife drops the dog breed genetics vs human genetics bomb in people.

Guys. My dad. Works at Nintendo.

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Cosmic Horror was written when the height of technological achievement was flinging small hot bits of metal at things to poke holes into them. This has little to no effect on anything that is sufficiently big - elephants and blue whales and what have you. Cthulhu and its ilk are basically just giant monsters, physically speaking. But now we have nukes. We might sterilize our planet in the process, but you bet your ass we can kill one of those big fucks if we really want to. We might even be crazy enough to do it.

Except, the elder gods are also, well, gods. That means they're magic. That means there are no rules we can reliably apply to them apart from the magical rules from their setting or another setting. That means the answer ultimately comes down to pic related.

>>55093312
>That shit is fun to. My favorite thing is when the wife drops the dog breed genetics vs human genetics bomb in people.

You mean the "there is no such thing as a breed in biology"? People still dont know that?

>>55093312
I'm not expecting you to explain quantum mechanics, I'm expecting you to stop claiming to be an authority with an unverifiable qualification, when so far all you've done is bring up unsourced claptrap (as indeed it is until verified).

Also no, that's just an illusion created by me to punish you for your hubris, you won't believe me though.

>>55091196
>he's a 4th or 5th dimension being
That sound like horrendous Derleth fanfiction.

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>>55093347
Nor race for that thing.
The bomb is that there is however genetic clustering which is wider in humans than in dogs if i understood it correctly.

>>55093363
Mfw that thought is actually unironicly spooking me out right now

>>55093347
Whoa, wait a sec. Do you mean biology doesn't acknowledge classifications lower than species, or that biology denies that breeding 2 dachshunds doesn't result in more dachshunds?

Because if it's the 2nd, I'm going to need a source.

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>>55090266
someone needs a squidder

>>55093395
The first one, allthough biology dose acknowledge things like sub-species....well it's frankly complicated, genetics has fucked up taxonomi and all i can say is that i feel sorry for the poor chaps in zoology and botany, while at the same time being very happy that i chose microbiology

>>55093373
I can't remember the specifically used by Lovecraft, but he is stated to be something out of synch with this reality.

if the unvierse is deterministic what determines it
god?

>>55093318
We couldn't kill them with nukes because they're not a true part of this reality and incapable of dying as we understand it, nor alive as we understand it.

>>55093536
That's a common justification. Aquinas believed God was the "unmoved mover" that set it all in motion, Spinoza believed something comparable.

>>55091290
Conan was usually using some kind of magic item, or had help from a mystical ally.

I kind of like the premise of sorcerers in Conan, and how they become a step away from Humanity when they start learning the really weird magics out there. They'll either spend their existence resisting a specific horror's machinations like that one dude who locked himself away in the Tomb of Set (I think, its been a while since I read the stories) in "The Phoenix on the Sword", or would start to become a horrible thing in and of themselves like the sorcerer that was keeping that weird ass dungeon in The Scarlet Citadel.

I think it'd be a great recurring enemy in a swords and sorcery game to have an opponent tryin got become more like the eldritch horrors out there through strange means. The adoption or creation of a servitor race, becoming less like humanity etc

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>>55091536
>>55091482
>>55092072
>>55092258
I mean, if you take expanded stuff as "canon", then there *are* beings who exist on a similar level as Azathoth. For instance, Radianthey Mlandoth and All Mother Mril-Thorion, who are in some ways *worse* than Azathoth, since all they care about is joining together over and over, and their joining directly impact Creation.

>>55093536

If the universe needs god to make it, what made god? If god can exist without anything to make him, then why can't the universe?

>>55093828
but i mean
if he causes everything then what caused him? its a bit nonsensical
>>55093989
this
>>55093982
pls talk more about it
also anything not made by LC is non canon

>>55093989
God is something timeless without beginning or end, the universe however has a beginning. The former can be eternal, the latter cannot. Keep in mind "god" need not be any flavour of religious god. It could be Plato's form of the good, Aristotle's prime mover, or Spinoza's deterministic God.

>>55094097

The contents of the universe include time, so the universe itself is beyond time, and thus timeless in its own weird way.
Saying that the universe has a beginning (and it's not clear the strangeness of the big bang can be encompassed by a term as mundane as "beginning" when all of space AND time came out of it) is one thing, but it does not follow that it requires a cause. Especially when cause and effect are a result of space/time.
You're adding a layer of complexity to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

>>55094337
> The contents of the universe include time, so the universe itself is beyond time, and thus timeless in its own weird way.
That doesn't make sense to me
Sorry, i must be stupid

>>55094451

Nah, you're fine, it's just really REALLY weird, that's all.

>>55094097
but everything needs a cause to exist no? then why is "god" outside this rule?

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>>55094016
>pls talk more about it
Pretty much, Mlandoth and Mril-Thorion join together, and their joining result in innumerable cycles of destruction and rebirth, effectively starting and ending existence from time to time. One of these joining resulted in the creation of the Outer God Ngyr-Korath.
>Ngyr-Korath (The Ultimate Abomination or The Dream-Death) is a dark blue-green mist which causes a sense of terror as it approaches. Once close, an eye of flame forms within. He spawned by fission the Great Old One (or the avatar of his) ‘Ymnar, and his nemesis is the Elder God Paighon. He may coincide with the entity known as the Magnum Tenebrosum.

>>55091536
What if Azathoth was just some regular guy in his own world with others like him? Is it possible that they are in someone else's dream?

>>55094016
Kant takes care of this basically by removing God/Immortality/Freedom from material. Its not a thing you can make sense of analytically, its faith. It is actually non-sensory, it is nonsensical by definition. I don't find his explanation of the inherent in-itself linkages between Will/Duty/Moral Law to be very satisfying and they operate on really outdated conceptions of nature, but its still basically the model of free will most dipshits you talk to will be using without realizing it. They just scooped the God part and kept doing everything the same anyway.

>>55094337
I'm not doing anything besides giving a basic rundown of the idea. Give the thinkers themselves a look if you're curious. I enjoyed Plato and Spinoza's work quite a bit.

>>55094518
I was never entirely clear on that, but as I recall it's mostly Aristotle and Aquinas that focus on that line of reasoning there. Plato for instance was mostly trying to answer the problem of universals and Spinoza unified God and nature.

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>>55090337
>>55090407
>>55091196
>>55091270
>>55091354
>>55091466
>>55091487
>>55091536
>>55091590
>not punching the eldritch abomination until it submits because no power in this world or the other can harm you and your gigantic adamantine balls

Humans can't kill Great Old Ones. That's why they get help from Nodens the hunter.

>>55092712
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm

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>>55092301
>We are all pawns, controlled by something greater.

>>55094544
Sure, why not. While we're at it. we're all mini Azathoths dreaming our own realities in turn.
Nature loves it's spirals and fractals. May as well have a huge endless meta version of it.

>>55094868
But anon that just means you were the eldritch abomination all along

Not us personally, but maybe we could make something capable of doing so. A self-augmenting Artificial Superintelligence on par with a TITAN programmed with the terrifyingly vague directive of "kill cthulhu" might be able to pull it off but it would effectively be just as dangerous for humanity to have it around as what it was built to terminate.

>>55094868
>a hoonter must hoont

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To elaborate a little - since a nuclear explosion is a somehow mythical thing in the mythos (Azatoth being what it is), could a Great Old One be nuked to death? What if there ware proper magical symbols on the nuke, or something along the lines?