Hey, guys... I've been extremely reluctant to interject my thoughts into this Egypt discussion, because it's not my place to tell anyone to stop playing a game (or meta-game) the way they enjoy playing it, and because I'd feel like a total jerk. However, with a new thread and, more importantly, discovery of a piece of new factual data for the first time since I started following this, I feel like it's now or maybe never.
The purpose of this trilogy of threads is to solve the UA mystery, operating from the premise that there is some actual solution that exists within the game at this time, right? That solution may not give us satisfying answers, but we've been told that there's still some significant discovery yet to be made that will move the UA story forward. I'm a scientist IRL, and believe me when I say that the purpose of a PhD program is to teach you how to think about questions you want to answer, and how to make sure you are answering the question you think you are asking. Testing hypotheses is part of the scientific method, but it's not where you start. First you come up with a model that could answer the question, which has to be consistent with all the facts you already know. Then you make predictions about how things would look if your model were correct. You want to come up with testable hypotheses, and then figure out what experiments you need to do in order to prove that your hypothesis (and thus, model) is wrong.
I'm not advocating that we have to do rigorously controlled experiments, because it's a game. For the most part, the experimental design that's been done here has been great. Unless someone happens to hit on the solution by luck, though, it's not enough (as demonstrated by the last 10,000 posts or so...). You could spend 10 more threads finding connections between different ancient mythologies and connect them to locations in the game, and you'd be learning a ton of really cool stuff (I've spent way too many hours trawling Wikipedia speculating about certain series of fantasy novels...). But ultimately, what you're actually testing is the theory of the relationships between those various human civilizations, and making a strong case that ancient mythologies were closely tied to astronomy/astrology. I guess you're also making a pretty convincing argument that the devs in charge of naming vehicles and systems tend to be fans of Egyptian mythology, but I'd say the reason there's a ship called the "Asp" has more to do with almost all the ships being named after snakes. None of it is likely to be relevant to solving the UA mystery, though, because things can look and sound similar to lots of things, and you're always going to be able to find connections between those things and even more things. It's not impossible that you could hit on the solution that way, but the scientific approach will work a lot more effectively, if your objective is to find the answer that moves the story forward (or whatever it does).
Crap, I spent way too long writing that instead of working >_>
The purpose of this trilogy of threads is to solve the UA mystery, operating from the premise that there is some actual solution that exists within the game at this time, right? That solution may not give us satisfying answers, but we've been told that there's still some significant discovery yet to be made that will move the UA story forward. I'm a scientist IRL, and believe me when I say that the purpose of a PhD program is to teach you how to think about questions you want to answer, and how to make sure you are answering the question you think you are asking. Testing hypotheses is part of the scientific method, but it's not where you start. First you come up with a model that could answer the question, which has to be consistent with all the facts you already know. Then you make predictions about how things would look if your model were correct. You want to come up with testable hypotheses, and then figure out what experiments you need to do in order to prove that your hypothesis (and thus, model) is wrong.
I'm not advocating that we have to do rigorously controlled experiments, because it's a game. For the most part, the experimental design that's been done here has been great. Unless someone happens to hit on the solution by luck, though, it's not enough (as demonstrated by the last 10,000 posts or so...). You could spend 10 more threads finding connections between different ancient mythologies and connect them to locations in the game, and you'd be learning a ton of really cool stuff (I've spent way too many hours trawling Wikipedia speculating about certain series of fantasy novels...). But ultimately, what you're actually testing is the theory of the relationships between those various human civilizations, and making a strong case that ancient mythologies were closely tied to astronomy/astrology. I guess you're also making a pretty convincing argument that the devs in charge of naming vehicles and systems tend to be fans of Egyptian mythology, but I'd say the reason there's a ship called the "Asp" has more to do with almost all the ships being named after snakes. None of it is likely to be relevant to solving the UA mystery, though, because things can look and sound similar to lots of things, and you're always going to be able to find connections between those things and even more things. It's not impossible that you could hit on the solution that way, but the scientific approach will work a lot more effectively, if your objective is to find the answer that moves the story forward (or whatever it does).
Crap, I spent way too long writing that instead of working >_>
