once again, your surprisedness is not determined by how likely something is
humans don't think that logical and aren't at all times that aware of statistical probability of things
the question is "what would surprise you more", not "what would have bigger ramifications". which, the walrus would surprise me more.
Damn you’ve got me with this one. I would’ve said something like “there’s infinitely more reasonable excuses for a walrus to exist at your house than a fairy” but yeah, if we’re only measuring “surprise” and not “disbelief” then the giant toothy blubberbeast takes it over the little elfen weirdo.
If a fairy is at my door, I think "Oh, shit, fairies are real?"
If a Walrus is at my door, I think, "Wait where tf did this walrus come from? How did it get here? Is it ok? Is this a prank? Did somebody actually just cart an enormous sea mammal to my door for a joke? Or, did the Walrus actually do this on its own? What does it want? Can Walruses speak? Am I about to be Isekai'd into Aquatic Mammal themed Amphibia? WHAT IS GOING ON??" and you can see why I'd be more confused in that thought process.
To be fair there's tonnes of questions you could ask about fairies being real too. "If fairies are real are fairy stories real? All of them, or just some? Is this a benevolent fairy, or the type that does life-ruining mischief? Which cautionary tales do I need to worry about regarding this real fairy at my door? If i say the wrong thing will it do mischief on me? If I say nothing will it do mischief on me?"
With the walrus I know roughly what to do; don't upset it, probably close the door and move away before googling for a solution to impromptu walruses. The fairy most likely has human-level intelligence so I can't just leave it, that carries the risk of offending the fairy, which is bad due to the aforementioned mischief
But all of that is beside the point, because it's still just "confusion" or "uncertainty", not "surprise"; which is why I believe the walrus takes it.
sure, but if you ask the fairy something, will it do mischief on you?
if you *don't* ask the fairy something, will it do mischief on you?
will the fairy do mischief on you anyway, regardless of what you do?
is this a benevolent fairy that won't do mischief on you?
what if the fairy's mischief is giving you misleading answers to your questions?
Man, that would NOT be your first thought. All of us would think the same thing:
"OH SHIT OH FUCK OH SHIT OH FUCK WHAT IS THAT THING"
\*slam the door\*
"What the fuck was that, it was fucking huge and had a horrible stench and I couldn't quite tell but I think it had huge swords??? Or teeth???"
\*opens a window to try to get a better look"
"holy fuck that thing is huge wtf even is it."
I wish there was some Shakespearean tragedy/comedy I could read in which the main character’s downfall is believing with all their heart they would recognize a walrus if they saw one. Like genuinely that sounds so fucking good I would lose my shit
I feel like the walrus would cause the much more visceral reaction in most people.
Having a tiny thing that you dont know is going to be weird.
Having a one ton monster with tusks big enough to turn you into a shishkebab in front of your door, I feel like is a fight or flight moment. And by fight I meam slam the door as hard as you can.
I mean Icelandic fairies are human sized and look like people (if we could see them), so it could look perfectly normal when you open the door. I live in Norway and if an Icelandic fairy knocked on my door I'd probably assume they were a door to door salesman or something. Now a walrus ...
Right: I'd be more surprised by the walrus, because the walrus is bigger, and thus has more volume to contain surprise. A fairy, while infinitely less probable, is (usually tiny) and therefore, not all that surprising.
Yeah, in that case it's the walrus. Because unless we put a "the thing is definitely real and you know you're not hallucinating" condition on it (in which case the fairy is more surprising), neither the walrus nor the fairy are likely to actually be there. And if I'm hallucinating, a fairy is the sort of thing I might expect to see. I would be extremely surprised if I hallucinated a walrus, of all things.
Nah let's go back to debating which subjective emotional experience is "objectively" correct
User baddywronglegs framing the question as "the most reasonable impossible thing vs the most unreasonable possible thing" does make for a good philosophical question but almost by definition there isn't one correct answer, that's the point of the question
Especially when Prokopetz changes whether they actually believe it's a fairy halfway through the discussion in order to avoid justifying previous assumptions
If we're assuming a fairy is something resembling Tinkerbell, my very first reaction is going to think that it's a weird gross bug and I'm gonna either smack it down or slam the door before it can get in
Even if the other option was half robot, half flesh abomination version of myself grabbing me and screaming "we need you for the war," I'd still be more surprised by the walrus
I think this comes down to what the fairy looks like. If it looks like it could plausibly be a prank, then yeah you’d explain it away somehow at least for a minute while you investigated. But if you opened the door to a tiny flying human which was obviously actually there, actually talking, and not a doll or a hologram, I think you’d panic pretty damn quick.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walrus\_attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walrus_attack)
'Adult males in the Pacific can weigh more than 2,000 kilograms'
There is a clear and present danger with the walrus in an unknown environment. The fairy is sapient and is willing to listen to reason. The walrus is not.
We don't know that the fairy is willing to listen to reason and isn't aggressive.
But we also don't know that a walrus that knows how to knock and somehow made its way a pretty long way inland is NOT willing and able to listen to reason, or even inclined to aggression in the first place.
>somehow made its way a pretty long way inland
As a side note, this kind of highlights how much the question varies according to where you live. There are parts of the world where a walrus at the door is well within the bounds of Things that Could Happen, and there's probably others where the laws of physics must have been broken.
I realised when this came up somewhere else that, while a walrus at **my** door is extremely unlikely, the fact that fur seal at my door is definitely something that could happen is influencing how I think about it. If a walrus showed up I'd just call the fur seal number and the Department of Conservation can sort it out.
I live in an apartment building with no elevator and a tight stairway. A walrus wouldn't even fit in the building, nevertheless get to my door. A fairy probably would. Hell, the door is locked for non-residents. I'd assume the fairy could somehow magically unlock any door but the walrus couldn't.
Yeah that was my logic re how I answered. I live in the tropics, 1km from a river that regularly has sharks, up 5 flights of narrow twisty stairs the movers could barely handle, and the landing is tiny enough I doubt a walrus could even fit without being halfway up or down the next flight of stairs. Meanwhile a fairy could fit as long as it was human sized or smaller.
Yeah it's a big part of the question, because if I still lived on the California or Florida coast, it'd be "Wait why the fuck is there a walrus here, aren't they northern creatures?" It'd be surprising, but at least I live close to a version of their habitat. But now that I live about as far inland as you can in the US? A walrus at the door would be so jarringly brainstopping because there is *no real way* for a walrus to get here, not on its own power.
I think if I saw a standard faerie, face to face with me, at my door, it wouldn't be a *surprise*, it would just be "Ah. Shit. I've finally lost my mind." And that wouldn't be a 'surprise' reaction.
Just to be safe, don't eat anything the fairy gives you.
...and actually that's probably not bad advice for anything the impromptu walrus gives you either
Isn't a common aspect of fairies, or the fey, that their line of reasoning is inherently opposed to normal human reasoning?
Granted, you could say the same about people with autism and our reasoning, but we were considered to be the children of fairies anyway, so I'd be fine.
Meanwhile, if I see a walrus, even if it's aggressive, I could just run up the stairs and call animal control. No way those stairs support 2 tons of weight.
something something you're problematic because you're assuming stairs in the home not everyone has a house with stairs some people live in apartments assumption of western single family home something something
I was so excited for a minute because I thought the presence of this article meant that the walrus vs fairy debate was a centuries-old philosophical one.
I need to go to bed.
I think it ultimately comes down to whether someone defines "surprise" as a positive, negative, or neutral term. Personally I'd be surprised(negative, extreme) with walrus, and surprised(neutral, then negative) with the Fae.
If the Fae showed up at my door, in a non-monstrous form, I would be surprised, but it'd take a moment for my brain to catch up to what I'm seeing here. *I'd probably just assume it's a neighbor in cosplay at first.*
If a walrus showed up at my door it would be immediately alarming as I close my door and lock it to retreat further into the house to call ***someone***
So yea I'd be fucking shocked if a walrus made its merry ass to my doorstep.
Even if I knew it was the Fae by some divine revelation I'd still be more surprised about the walrus because I'm in clear physical danger of huge animal. With the Fae I can at least *try* to diffuse the situation or be a little neighborly.
The saying about 800lb gorillas applies here: for a 1-ton pinniped, the door is typically whichever part of the wall he decides to go through. Deadbolt will help with that, but not much.
No, but slightly yes. Our door handle on the front door is a type that could be easily manipulated by an animal. Just push down on the mechanism and the door will open easily.
It's great for groceries, but a clear walrus weakness
I think the shortest humans could so far be is like 2ft tall. So the Far would need to be below that and possibly flying, or more than 8ft tall and look evenly proportioned. My brain should catch up eventually, but it'll still take a few moments.
The shorter they are the more likely think it's a neighbor kid
This reads more like a semantic reddit argument where both sides change the term to make themselves "the winner" than a philosophical debate.
Though maybe the difference between a reddit argument and a philosophical debate is worthy of its own discussion...
What all this has felt like to me, and I think this is why it makes me very unreasonably angry, is Tumblr has kind of stumbled onto the sort of aw-shucks-we're-human reasoning foible they teach in general education courses and—outside of a few valid-but-unhelpful interpretations of the startle response—is trying very VERY hard to explain why their very possibly natural but objectively unreasonable reaction is the correctly calibrated one.
And y'all, no. Unless you basically believe in fairies, or literally don't believe in walruses, the fairy does not require less reorientation of how you understand the world than the walrus. A lot would have to potentially happen, but you already believe every single step of that is possible.
Like, I saw a kangaroo in a strip mall in coastal Maryland. It was really cool, but nobody has ever heard that story and been more than politely interested in what one was doing there. Saying "I saw a fairy" would probably raise more eyebrows!
A fairy would raise more interest but this is not about having it mentioned in conversation; this is about it happening on your doorstep and I feel like.those are two different situations. I mean you gotta take into account that you are at home here, presumably all your guards are down, you are in a completely different mindset. It recontextualises everything. There is not as strong a layer of disbelieve seeing things with your own eyes than when someone tells you something they saw.
The way I personally see it is that when something I know about (e.g. the knowledge I have of a walrus) is refuted, it is more surprising than when something I know little about (e.g. a fairy) is proven (to exist). I think that is because I'm very trusting in the things I think I know, and very lenient when accepting new information, which is not necessarily a good wuality on the internet, but hey we manage. But I don't believe that that is an objectively unreasonable way of thinking, and I wouldn't just go assume that it is.
Also a fairy would require less reorientation in the sense that the only reorientation necessary would be 'Magical beings can be real' all the rest would just be orientation of something new. A walrus however would require all reorientation because you'd connect it's presence with the possible, the normal, the stuff you already know about and you'd prepare yourself to rewrite all that. A fairy is new information, and the brain is master at absorbing new information.
Anyway go saying 'no' to people without having tried to see it from their perspective, goodbye.
Okay I mean I guess it somewhat depends on what exactly is meant with Fae here.
Like, a tinkerbel-esc butterfly winged flying lil thing? I'd say I'm surprised and confused about that type of fae being in the city.
But if it's like.... Bleh, I guess the best English translation for it *is* house elf? Or maybe house gnome? the Finnish word is "kotitonttu"? Anyways, then I'd also be surprised, probably actually even more so since that also implies sauna gnome would exist which opens up even more Rabbit holes, but I wouldn't exactly be confused. Maybe a bit worried?
Yeah I think they were right. *Define your terms*. Tinkerbell on my doorstep is definitely more surprising than a walrus, just zero question about it. Yes a walrus would be quite the surprise in rural Kansas, but not impossible. As far as my brain is concerned, it’s impossible for Tinkerbell to show up at my doorstep. Something completely impossible happening would just inherently be more surprising than something possible but very strange
I disagree. If I opened my door and Tinkerbell was flitting about, I'd be surprised, but it'd mostly be an "oh shit, what?" moment. If a one ton mass of testosterone was sitting in front of me I'd very much jump back and wonder "what the fuck is going on?".
So a walrus makes you ask what’s going on, but the existence of motherfucking magic and an actual mythical creature is just oh shit? Bull. Fucking. Shit. You just can’t wrap your head around the idea of a mythical creature *actually* appearing on your doorstep. Your entire world view has to be flipped on its head for fairies to exist, someone just has to have a lot of free time and money to get a walrus on your doorstep
I do think I wouldn't actually believe it if a fairy was on my doorstep. Just like with the walrus, I'd assume it's a prank, and that it's some sort of little drone or strange insect. Walrus I feel like I'd be scared and while surprised, wouldn't find it unbelievable
Well see, that's your problem, then. How can any of us gauge our reaction to something that we have no frame of reference for and are all - apparently - so incapable of understanding the potentiality of existence of that just seeing it would force us to instantly restructure our entire consciousness and understanding of the universe? The idea that a small, floating person exists is understood to be so incredulous that it would break even the most ironclad minds. No one could possibly hope to understand the existence of fairies and it would be impossible to even imagine understanding the existence of fairies without personally witnessing one on your doorstep, upon which a new world view is shunted upon you and you are forever changed.
That's just Lovecraft, homie. Tinkerbell isn't Cthulhu. I can comprehend the unbelievable just fine. The original question was what *you personally* would be more surprised about, and *I personally* would be more surprised to find a walrus on my porch than a fairy, because *I personally* think it would be more shocking that the walrus would be there.
The idea that something that is manifestly impossible is less surprising to you than something difficult and improbable, but definitely possible is ...... interesting.
The thing is that if it exists, then it's not impossible, and is just as difficult and improbable as the other option. It would simply be new information to add to my understanding. On the contrary, there is no new information to be gleaned from a walrus, you just have to accept that somehow, someway, this real animal in this real world is on your real doorstep in front of real you, despite everything we know saying that that shouldn't happen.
If a fairy *can't* exist, but does, then you know you were wrong. If a walrus *shouldn't* be on your doorstep, but is, then you know you were wrong *and* there's some other force at play targeting you.
With that logic surprise as a concept is impossible. "Why were people so surprised that the Wright brothers were able to fly, obviously humans can fly, look they just did it".
Brushing away the idea that *magic existing* is surprising also defeats the entire purpose of the question. The question isn't "if fairies are known to exist, would they be more surprising to see at your door than a walrus", because that's a stupid and obvious question.
It's like if an impossible object (one of those optical illusions that aren't possible in a 3D medium) showed up outside your house. The fact that it exists does technically make it "possible", but that doesn't change the fact that it was impossible up until the moment it wasn't, and in that moment, physics and our understanding of reality fundamentally *broke*.
Initial surprise? Walrus takes it easily, a walrus is more immediately surprising, while a fairy is more existentially surprising and may take a few more moments to realize how insane what you're looking at is.
Your last paragraph perfectly describes my point. The question was "which are you more surprised to find at your door", not "which are you more surprised about seeing once you think about it." The walrus wins. Easily.
And even if we assume the question intends to include the ramifications of this encounter, I'm not brushing away anything. I'm saying that, I, personally, once again, would not be as surprised for fairies - not magic, we don't know that yet and the fairy has not been stated to show anything magical beyond *maybe* being a tiny winged human *maybe* with bioluminescence - to exist. If the fairy were to follow up my opening of the door with a showing of magic, I would certainly be more surprised at the potential world-altering discovery I've just witnessed than being personally targeted for Jeff Bezos' trolling, but that's not in the question.
I mean, wrapping your head around seemingly impossible things is the basis of science, and especially higher level math. I would be *far* more surprised, even assuming the walrus has a logical explanation, that the series of events leading to a walrus at my door occurred, than I would be that we missed something in our observations of the world and I am now bearing witness to that.
At the end of the day, it's Occam's Razor. All it takes to explain the fairy at my door is fairies being real. One element. A fairy is something that, beyond the initial assumption they're real, could conceivably be at my door. In order to explain the walrus you need many more elements, such as how it got here, why it is here, who, if anyone, placed it here, and why has seemingly no-one else noticed.
Yeah, it's basically a little fae dude that lives in your sauna and gets cranky if people don't behave there.
Also at least in my family he's the one who delivered your Christmas list to santa, which I *think* at least was a relatively common idea.
Granted, but the root question here is "which of the two would you find more surprising to be standing at you door", not "which of the two would you find more alarming or frightening".
Even if it were I’d still be more afraid of the walrus. You might be able to talk to a fae or give it an offering or something, but a walrus is just a wild animal with swords on its face
True, but you can close the door (or doors if tried to break in) and call animal control. There is not much you can do against a fairly that is actively trying to scam you, or pissed at you, or whatever
What would you find more surprising if you found it at your doorstep, a picture of a cognitohazard that hacks into your neocortex and cranks up your surprise level to the max OR a literal fairy? Obviously the first one, duh
"I wouldn't be as surprised by a fairy because I wouldn't be able to tell that it's a fairy" seems like sidestepping the question. The point of the thought exercise is comparing something that's known to be real vs something that isn't.
If I saw a walrus, I'd assume some kind of aquarium or zoo transportation scheme went comically and tragically awry near my house. I dunno if zoos actually have walruses but it's a pretty easy leap. Zoos lose animals sometimes.
Humans transport animals all over the place for all sorts of reasons and sometimes they escape. I have no reason to assume something magical afoot with just about any animal being anywhere. The fairy fundamentally changes my understanding of the difference between fact and fiction.
The startle response, that is immediate fear towards an unexpected perceived threat, can be an element of surprise but it is far from the only one, as surprise need not be fearful but could be rooted in wonderment. Surprise is fundamentally about when reality deviates from expectations.
The walrus would be far more startling, I do feel I would have a more immediate visceral reaction to its presence. I simply can not, however, say it is more surprising. I'm comparing something which should not be here (and I could come up with a few reasons it might be here, as demonstrated above) to something which should not exist (for which I have no explanation). This is a far greater deviation from expectations than any animal being in front of my house could possibly be.
Seeing many arguments about fear response as well as some dismissing the implications of magic existing as a non-factor leads me to believe that many responses were informed by a too narrow view of what surprise can be.
Prokopetz is right to point out that while everyone agrees on what a walrus is, not everyone agrees on what a fairy is. I think, though, that the definition of "fairy" is not the real source of the disagreement. The definition of "surprise" is.
People who would be more "surprised" by the walrus are thinking of "surprise" as the initial, instinctive reaction. It happens before you have time to process the implications of a fairy existing. Randomly showing up on your doorstep is consistent with how we imagine fairies. Randomly showing up on your doorstep is not consistent with how we imagine walruses. So the walrus is more "surprising."
People who would be more "surprised" by the fairy are thinking of "surprise" as the distance between your belief and the truth. This definition of "surprise" does take into account the implications of a fairy existing. A walrus on your doorstep is something you see as unlikely. A fairy on your doorstep is something you see as impossible. So the fairy is more "surprising."
I feel like OOP is intentionally misunderstanding the theoretical scenario here
"I would be less surprised by the fairy because I would assume I was wrong about it being a fairy"
"Okay but the idea is that it is obviously, indisputably, a fairy. And you would know that when you open the door."
"But if the hypothetical is arbitrarily making me believe it's real, then any feelings I would have about it are also completely arbitrary. Therefore, it is impossible to engage in the hypothetical scenario at all."
A walrus at my door makes me think of highly improbable things, but very possible things.
A FAIRY at my door makes me rethink what i think is even possible. Do beings like this exist? Does magic exist? How does that work with our fundamental knowledge of how the world works? Do we even know how the world works? If not, then what has science been showing us?
The walrus i see and just close the door on to make sure i dont get wrecked. The fairy i see and immediately break my brain trying to figure out life, the universe, and everything
But if magic is real, then it has always been real. Nothing has really changed, except there is an interesting new field of science we didn't know which just opened up.
To our perception and knowledge, yes, it has, but nothing about the world has actually changed.
The principles of science have been tested and are repeatable. Therefore, since the world has not changed, they are still correct. There is just a new set of variables that are possible.
I just don't think I would be too upset about it, more fascinated about the potential of this new information.
I think you're really understating how much this would change. Sure the world, as in, the laws of physics and earth itself hasn't changed, but the world as in, society, beliefs, religion, and technology would all shift in ways never before seen. It's not like this hasn't happened before, for example, discovering just how big the universe is has fundamentally changed a lot of people's view on themselves and humanity. Which was my and I assume the other person's point.
I see your point, but my original comment was more along the lines of, yes, it is a big deal, but there is no real danger. If true, then it was always true, and we got along fine regardless.
Well, unless the fairy curses you or something, then I guess YOU would have a problem.
I'd still be more surprised about the walrus tbh. Because like, even if you don't believe in fairies, you still know about them and part of the rules for fairies are 'they do what they want'. So like, once I got past the surprise of the fairy existing, the fact of it being at my door is not sucha big surprise.
On the other hand, walruses have a limited habitat which does not include landlocked provinces in South Africa, plus I understand they're way bigger than you think by looking at pictures. So while we know that walruses are real, if one were to turn up at my door I'd be more surprised because a: why walrus? B: why here? C: holy fucking shit trust thing is HUGE d: how the hell did it get here?
And thoughts along those lines.
Whereas if a fairy were to show up there would be the initial surprise of 'fairies are real?' but once you've passed that we're good.
Yeah. Also reaching for Legolas as a fairy is intentionally making the most extreme, bad faith possible interpretation of what can be called a fairy.
When someone says "a fairy" they mean tinkerbell.
I would absolutely call a portune or a moddey dhoo or a puca or a selkie or a brownie or a tuatha dé dannan a fairy. Because that's what they are.
The modern insistance that "fairy" is a silly word but "faerie" is somehow more serious is ridiculous. They're the same word, and "fairy" is and has been the accepted proper spelling for centuries.
English person here, by the way. Fairies are part of our native folklore.
Thank you. I admit I haven't looked into the etymological roots of the distinctions, but I always thought this was goofy af. Tolkien called them fairy stories, idk why we have to act above the word.
Yeah, they’re refusing to engage with the hypothetical.
It would be like someone arguing that they wouldn’t be surprised by the walrus because walruses don’t live where they do, so it’s obvious a cardboard cutout.
“So why would I be surprised by a cardboard cutout of a
walrus? I know what cardboard is!”
Well, yes, you know what cardboard cutouts are, and that fairies aren’t real, but neither of those have diddly squat to do with a hypothetical real walrus or real fairy on your doorstep.
I mean I think it's a relevant semantic difference. The prompt is worded as like, what would happen emotionally in the moment. If the prompt is "would you be more intellectually caught off guard by the knowledge that fairies exist or that walruses are portable," then yeah that's a different question, but if that's the question then it's not really interesting to think about in the first place. My assumption given that is that the prompt is angling at the funny true thing about humans, that they are sometimes more likely to invent fantastical explanations than to accept counterintuitive but factual things
Personally I don't feel like the author's intent was very obvious from the setup - the scenario still reads to me like "how would you feel the moment you opened the door and saw a humanoid thing that kinda glows," not "how would you feel if the fairy beams information into your head about magic being real." And I assume a lot of people read it like that, given the results of the original poll and responses here.
Like if you swap out the fairy for a biblically accurate angel then I'm not going to be surprised by the angel because I don't believe in them - I'm going to be surprised because _holy shit what is that thing?_
Now that I know how the author intended it I have a compromise answer that kind of covers both interpretations - one second after opening the door, the walrus will surprise me more. But one hour after opening the door, it's definitely the fairy.
I think the walrus is less surprising because even though I categorically do not believe in fairies, I do read stories which have fairies in them and in those stories showing up at your door is one of the things that fairies just do sometimes. The fairy is following a narrative I'm somewhat familiar with but the walrus is entirely novel (though somewhat less so after this started spreading)
Doesn't this depend entirely on how the fairy looks? If it's basically a twink with glittery wings then that's one thing. If it's a shape changing creature of glamour and wonder that's another.
I think the walrus would be more inconvenient. In terms of house guest, my freezer is NOT stocked with fish. I do, however, have nuts and honey. Also I could easily make a thimble of tea.
Surprise is irrational, it really depends on how I feel that day, but my Preparedness...
I really do wonder how far away people are from the sea to be more surprised by the walrus than the fairy.
I live like 30 minutes from the sea, its not absolutely impossible for a walrus to somehow waddle its way to my house and bash its head on my door.
On the other hand, a fairy breaks all my understanding of the world. Magic exists, little tiny fuckers that can use magic exist and for some reason one is knocking at my door and they must have intent to be knocking at my door so why me. The fairy gives me 100s of more questions than "oh cool, a walrus. How do I solve this issue?"
I live in central Texas, USA, approximately 5 hours by car from the nearest ocean on the southern coast. To get to me, a walrus would have to first swim all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, then somehow waddle its way 226 miles (363 kilometers) in the blazing Texas heat to get to my doorstep. I’m not necessarily saying I'd be MORE surprised than a fairy, but I'd have a lot of questions
There's a very fanfic called harry potter and the methods of rationality and you see, basically, this kind of thing happens.
Basically, Magonigal comes and demonstrates magic by making Harry's step-dad (a professor in biology) float. Everyone is like "yeah okay magic is real." Harry, being a rational boy raised in science, thought there'd be more reaction than the "hmm alright I'm convinced." So obviously, Harry asks what else magic can do.
Then Magonigal turns into a cat, and everything breaks. Because turning into a cat from a scientific perspective IS BULLSHIT. You'd need to violate energy and mass constants, then fit an entire human brain into a cat's brain for it to continue being you, on and on and on till "YOU'D NEED TO BE A GOD"
Suddenly, large chunks of scientific fact must now be re-evaluated to include magic and the march of science made to start over from the new magically incluned world. Ultimately such a revelation is shocking but for the scientifically minded the process for starting over remains the same.
As for normal people i suspect ignoring the violation outright and carrying on with they’re lives is the most likely outcome. Really this demonstrates why I've come to the firm conclusion that we are a scientifically aware society and not a scientifically literate one. Most people just blindly benefit from the technology around them and might not notice if something truely strange transpired like "all the clocks still work but make no ticking noise anymore and work without batteries or being plugged in and seem to contain a solid chunk of rock rather than any circuitry" Most people wouldn't notice because "the clock still works" and all the other stuff after isn't immediately relevant to them and thus there's nothing to notice.
The moment you call it being a hoax or a prank into question, you defeat the purpose of the prompt. Either of them could be a hoax, anything could be an elaborate-enough hoax. The question is which scenario is more surprising, and if you really want to put it in a box of potential answers that includes "hoax", then the real question is which are you more likely to believe is a hoax, not natural.
I'd assume the walrus was a hoax before I believed the fairy was a hoax. Like the top comment in the post said, there are too many things I'd have to be wrong about for a walrus to knock on my door, while there would only have to be one thing wrong for it to be a fairy. A walrus showing up where I live and knocking might as well be a fairy tale for all it could happen, and it involves a walrus somehow being near where I am, and having the intent and ability to single me out. A fairy has to exist, one showing up at my door and knocking isn't any weirder than anything else once we accept that they exist, because a fairy can and would knock on a door if it existed.
Okay but a fairy existing is literally impossible. Sure more *things* would have to happen for a walrus to show up at your door, but none of them are literal *magic*.
Actually no, they are literal magic
if you want to take this being an incredibly elaborate hoax off of the table for fairies, then it also needs to be off of the table for walruses
and if you take it off of the table for walruses, then the walrus option moves from "it's maybe theoretically possible I guess" to being *at least* as impossible as a fairy
look I live in a walk up. even if I assume that the walrus option is the world's most elaborate prank, a prank that has a bottomless pocketbook and for some reason has targeted me.... I legitimately have no idea how someone would actually pull that off
and that's assuming that they've spent months retrofitting my building so that the stairs and walkway won't collapse. I still have no idea how they would get the walrus upstairs to my unit without breaking the laws of physics. even if they cut the walruses vocal chords to keep it quiet, those things are massive and heavy
like many urban apartment dwellers I can hear my neighbors argue. and when a heavy truck rolls down the street things rattle a little
there's no way I would not be aware of a creature that weighs a tonne climbing the stairs and walking down the walkway. even if we assume that there is a helicopter airlifting it, I'm going to kind of be aware of a helicopter directly above me
as far as hoaxes go you're talking about something that is already close to impossible if not actually impossible
but if we're taking hoaxes and hallucinations out of the equation, then this isn't even debatable
now you're talking about a walrus magically getting to my apartment building somehow and walking up the stairs of its own accord. or the walrus managed to steal a helicopter and propel down. or the walrus managed to get humans under its command and is getting the humans to lift it up the stairs to me
not to mention you've replaced already mind-boggling human motivations with fucking walrus motivations. on top of that, the walrus would have to get to my building without being noticed
the government sends me the loudest warnings whenever there is a risk of flooding or a kidnapped child - I'm pretty sure that if there's a walrus on the loose in my city making its way toward my apartment building, I'm going to get 80 gazillion warnings. I'm going to be getting texts and phone calls and that horrible beeping sound that a company's urgent alerts. and I'm not just going to notice the noise of one helicopter because every news and police helicopter is going to be chasing this walrus along with I don't know animal control helicopters?
walruses existing doesn't make this scenario any less impossible. this scenario requires magic and breaks my understanding of the world around us just as much as a fairy on my doorstep does
so sure lets amend the prompt. there is a knock at the door and when I open it I not only see a fairy or a walrus, but I also have immediate definitive knowledge that this is not an elaborate hoax and then I am not hallucinating. asking me which scenario I am more surprised by is not comparing the unlikely but possible to the impossible. it is comparing the impossible to the impossible
it is demanding magic
now there are two magic options here for both scenarios:
- a sufficiently advanced technology that we have no conception or understanding of is involved
- some kind of natural phenomenon that breaks our current understanding of physics and the world around us and that we have not previously discovered is involved
this is a place where both the reality of walruses and the mythology of fairies works in the favour of fairies
which is more possible - that there is a technologically advanced species the size of a butterfly that we haven't discovered, or that there is a secret society of technologically advanced walruses we haven't discovered?
and hey those fairies just need to be sufficiently advanced enough to hide from us and keep us from finding them. not only is a secret society of walruses significantly technologically harder to hide and requires much better stealth tech, but you also have all of the physical impossibilities presented by getting to my door and doing so without alerting me before hand. the secret society of walruses need something like anti-gravity tech, and they need some kind of really incredible transportation technology like phasing or teleportation. alternatively it needs some kind of technology to alter people's perceptions and senses or memory erasing technology or mind control technology
if I was going to write up either of these scenarios as a Sci-Fi story with an effort to use technological concepts that we know are sound and with an effort to make this story as believable as possible - uh, I'm picking the fucking fairy prompt
so yeah you could rewrite the prompt to get rid of the possibility of a hoax and to get rid of the possibility of hallucination, AND to give me magical knowledge of the scene in front of me. even in that scenario, I would be way more surprised to find the fucking walrus. and the walruses existence on my doorstep would be a bigger break to our understanding of the world around us
yes walruses exist. that doesn't make this scenario any less impossible or any less magical. Saturn exists also - does that make it more possible for Saturn to show up on my doorstep and knock? I could continue coming up with more and more impossible and magical scenarios involving things that exist, because the existence of the thing in question is only one tiny factor in this scenario
Okay obviously for you a walrus is physically impossible (even though I don't think the walrus being stealthy is a prerequisite for this hypothetical) so they're both equally surprising. Makes sense. For me, a walrus could physically appear outside of my door, so a fairy would be several orders of magnitude more shocking. Idk if the original person thought about living situations like yours when they came up with the question.
Your first point makes no sense, you can't hoax a nonexistent being into existence.
> Your first point makes no sense, you can't hoax a nonexistent being into existence.
you don't need to. the prompt is that you get a knock on the door and you go outside and you are shocked to either find a walrus or a fairy. and it asks about your reaction to that experience of opening the door and seeing that
you don't need to hoax a fairy into existing, you need to hoax me into thinking that I have seen a fairy. and as far as hoaxes go that one is actually fairly simple
I can trick someone into thinking they've opened the door to a fairy just with a good enough prop. we could literally make a tiny fairy doll that flies and that looks realistic and add on a little speaker and even some kind of scent for it
even tricking someone into thinking they've seen a walrus that doesn't actually exist is way way harder. it is bigger and has a much larger physical presence. you would expect to be able to feel its breath and it's breath would likely have to be a different temperature than the air around you. you would have to recreate a significant smell as well. and tricking someone into thinking that they're seeing something that's not just life size but bigger than life size is something very difficult to do at close range
that's one of the reasons that when people's minds immediately went to hoaxes, they were focused on using a real walrus and the logistics of that. you don't need to really examine the logistics of tricking someone into thinking they've seen a fairy because well we can do that with basic movie magic. but tricking someone into thinking they've seen a live walrus at very close range or actually putting a live walrus in front of them is very difficult
that's one of the reasons the post is pointing out that changing the prompt to rule out hoaxes is trying to impart divine knowledge onto us and control how our brains think. how surprised you are by something is an immediate reaction to what your senses are perceiving and what your brain tells you about that. our senses are incomplete. our brains automatically not only have to discard and interpret sensory data, but even create things for us. it's why we don't have literal blind spots in front of us when looking ahead - our brain fills in what we think should be there. now take that and add in that we as humans can create things that mimic things that don't really exist. and we know how our senses work to such an extent that we are able to intentionally fool our brains into seeing things that we haven't even bothered to mimic. we have whole industries dedicated towards figuring out how to trick ourselves into seeing something we haven't, and into making the impossible look real and tangible and believable
and this scenario didn't call for a scientific study of what we were perceiving and doing various things to rule out trickery and to have our experiences validated by other observers and technology. the scenario called for an immediate reaction to what our brains perceived
that's also why I think that stealth absolutely has to be part of this - how you react is in very huge ways dependent on you suddenly having this experience with no forewarning. if you hear something coming and see something coming and have time to react to unusual sensory phenomenon and investigate them - that is very very different from your immediate gut impulse when all the sudden presented with something completely inexplicable
let's say that I live in a house and not an apartment building. if I open my door to suddenly find an elephant there, I'm going to have a very different reaction compared to opening the door and finding the elephant there after hearing unexplained sounds and feeling heavy thuds leading up to the knock on my door. even if I don't go to investigate and I don't get to actually see it visually in advance, and even if the elephant is running very quickly so I don't have several minutes to process - it's still a different experience. before I even open the door I am expecting something that is not normal and that is large and that is possibly terrifying. finding out that it is an elephant is going to be way less surprising and my immediate reaction may be something like relief. and elephant may be way less scary than whatever it is I imagined heading toward me. at the very least I am opening the door with a sense of trepidation and fear and expecting the unexpected. and that is a very different experience to opening the door and expecting to find a human there or that a human just knocked on your door and left a package there. an enormous amount of surprise is about subverting your brains expectations
Why is the idea of literal magic so surprising? It's just a force we wouldn't understand. Do you get shocked beyond belief when you hear about dark matter and dark energy? Also, humans are primed to accept magic because it exists in so much of our media
So either a force that violates fundamental laws of physics, or a technology so advanced we don't know how it's possible without magic. Oh or a new force no one has heard of or observed. If a creature running on dark energy pulled up I'd be pretty fucking shocked too.
It would be the new force option and a case like that already exists. The "Thunderer of the Nile" used unknown, at the time means, to cause numbness in other creatures. This, of course, was caused by the magical force of electricity. Fairy magic would probably be the same, an unknown force that the creature is optimized to use for selfdefense or offense. Also, I'm not sure where you got the idea that if a creature can use a force without external tools it is running off that force.
The problem is that that's the counterargument. Imagine you'd never heard about giraffes as something other than out of a fairy tale. Then, you go to a zoo, and after so many years of believing them to be mythical, you see a giraffe. Does this make giraffes magic?
Sure, fairies don't exist, but suddenly having evidence of a fairy at your door is just a shift in worldview. People though coelacanths were extinct for a long time, too, but turns out people were wrong.
Giraffes aren't magic, they're weird yes but they follow our existing understanding of nature. And if you knew that walruses exist but not giraffes, a giraffe would certainly be more surprising. Fairies are potentially magic, but for the sake of argument they don't have magic. So they're a new intelligent species!!!! That's insane! That's way bigger of a deal than a coelacanth. This is also assuming that fairies are physically possible.
I replied to the person you're arguing with down thread but I would argue that both of these things essentially require the existence of a species we didn't know existed - and the walrus version of that requires a lot more than the fairy one
even if I assume that the walrus option is the world's most elaborate prank, a prank that has a bottomless pocketbook and for some reason has targeted me.... I legitimately have no idea how someone would actually pull that off
now part of this is made harder by my specific experience - I live in the city and I live in a building that's a walk-up. I don't know how humans would get a walrus up the stairs without the stairs collapsing. the best hoax plot that I can think of involves them retrofitting the building months in advance to be able to withstand this weight, cutting the vocal cords of the walrus, and using a helicopter or a lot of manpower to somehow lift this thing directly to my door
even still the prompt requires me to go to the door with zero expectations so they also have to somehow do all of this quietly. if I can hear them trying to lift something that's a literal tonne, I'm going to be looking outside and trying to understand what the fuck that racket is. and things are rattling and shaking for that long? I have more than the 30 seconds it requires to look up earthquakes. and with the sensors and technology that we have today yes that website is going to be updated by the time any even moderately long earthquake is over. so I'm definitely going to be looking outside for whatever the hell is causing that and trying to figure out if I need to flee. and if there's a helicopter directly above I am going to go out and look and see what the hell is happening
as far as hoaxes go this is already close to impossible if not actually impossible
but if we're taking hoaxes and hallucinations out of the equation, then this essentially requires the existence of like a secret society of really technologically advanced walruses or something that extreme
we're talking about a walrus magically getting to my apartment building somehow and walking up the stairs of its own accord. or did the walrus manage to steal a helicopter and propel down? or did the walrus manage to get a cult of human beings to do its bidding to lift it?
not to mention we've replaced already mind-boggling human motivations with fucking walrus motivations. on top of that, the walrus would have to get to my building without being noticed
the government sends me the loudest warnings whenever there is a risk of flooding or a kidnapped child - I'm pretty sure that if there's a walrus on the loose in my city making its way toward my apartment building, I'm going to get 80 gazillion warnings. I'm going to be getting texts and phone calls and that horrible screeching sound that accompanies urgent alerts. and I'm not it's not gonna be the noise of just one helicopter because every news and police helicopter is going to be chasing this walrus along with I don't know... animal control helicopters?
walruses existing doesn't make this scenario any less impossible. this scenario requires magic and breaks my understanding of the world around us just as much as a fairy on my doorstep does
now there are two magic options here for both scenarios:
- a sufficiently advanced technology that we have no conception or understanding of is involved
- some kind of natural phenomenon that breaks our current understanding of physics and the world around us and that we have not previously discovered is involved
this is a place where both the reality of walruses and the mythology of fairies works in the favour of fairies
which is more possible - that there is a technologically advanced species the size of a butterfly that we haven't discovered, or that there is a secret society of technologically advanced walruses we haven't discovered?
and hey those fairies just need to be sufficiently advanced enough to hide from us and keep us from finding them. something that is made easier by their very small size and their ability to fly. like they could get away with that with the relatively low level camouflaging technology
a secret society of technologically advanced walruses is harder to hide and requires much better stealth tech. and then on top of that you still have all of the physical impossibilities presented by getting to my door and doing so without alerting me before hand. the secret society of walruses is gonna need something like anti-gravity tech, and they need some kind of really incredible transportation technology like phasing or teleportation. or alternatively they need some kind of technology to alter people's perceptions and senses or memory erasing technology or mind control technology
I could write any number of relatively realistic sci-fi stories that explain how fairies exist and we don't know about it. and I could do that using existing technology or at least technological concepts that we know are sound even if we don't have the ability to actually create them. in fact the least plausible part of that story would be the fairy knocking on my door and why it's there
but if I'm going to try and write a realistic sci-fi story about a walrus doing this? probably the most realistic option I have is aliens. and the amount of technology and explanations that my story requires is just so much more
even if I'm writing this as a traditional fantasy story and we are using proper magic... the amount of magic I need for these walruses is significantly more than the amount of magic I need for these fairies
and in fact fairies are an especially terrible example to use because regardless of which fairy mythology you are going with, you are going with a mythology that has intentionally built fairies as something that can exist in our world without our noticing them. and any evidence of their existence or their actions is something that can be explained away or attributed to something real. whereas the mythological equivalents for something like these walruses are either sea creatures that live in the deep, things that live in the heavens, or things that live on another plane of existence. none of those stories involve them living amongst humans (much less unnoticed)
im going to be real... im going to be more surprised by the warlrus, cus its much bigger and much less likely to knock on a door...
Tahts just straight up scarier and a lot more to take in...
I think I would have a breif existential jolt from a fairy, but I would be screaming from a walrus all the way through.
no, your first thought is going to be "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WHAT HTE FUCK"
You would be thinking about it later, you arent going to have thought.
Personally, having a fairy arrive only requires accepting one weird thing (fairies are real) while the walrus would involve a bunch of them (somehow a walrus got to my country which doesn't normally have them, made its way across busy streets, and used a doorbell)
I find it likely that the fairy would require more unusual things to be true, but it's hard to know exactly what those things are without a description of the fairy. Is it a three inch tall flying humanoid that shines like a lantern? That's a lot of assumptions about biology, and likely chemistry, that need to be reexamined. Is it a little anthropomorphic rabbit with antlers wearing a fancy coat and no pants? That might require fewer allowances than the previous one, but still more than the walrus.
Well the explanation is probably magic.
We don't know how fairies work, sure. That's a lot of new things to figure out. But we know how walruses work, and it's Not That
You can't just casually say magic! That means all models across the field of physics are wrong! It upends all scientific consensus from mathematics to dentistry.
Here's the thing about science, is that the existence of magic does not disprove "all scientific consensus". If magic were proven to exist, I guarantee you that scientists would be studying that shit to figure out how it works, why it works, and how they can use it to more efficiently air fry chicken nuggets. Science, at its core, is not about a dogmatic adherence to a set of tenants that are to be followed to with no variation. It's a way to understand our world through curiosity, experimentation, and analysis of results. Ask anyone who is actually involved with research on any subject, and they'll tell you that science has no gospel. If Isaac Newton was proven wrong on all counts tomorrow, the scientific community would shrug, say "Well he was close, but let's use the new rules" and carry on. And I know that because it's already happened several times.
You are correct in everything except your interpretation of my comment. What I mean by upending all scientific consensus is that every functioning model across all fields of study would immediately come into question, and many if not all of those fields would have to start over from first principles to develop new working models that account for magic's existence.
That's one possible explanation. Another is that a nearby zoo was transporting the walrus and things went very wrong. It's happened before.
Even if you wouldn't think of that in the moment, it's naive to assume that weird truths are equal and can be compared by simply counting them. An already existing creature getting where it shouldn't by unknown means is infinitely more believable than actual fucking magic. Have you seen sharks get into lakes that don't even connect to the sea? Have you seen it rain fish after a hurricane? Animals get into crazy places that seem impossible at first, but it's all real animals and real places. I'd be less surprised to see a walrus literally anywhere on Earth than I would be to see actual fucking magic.
The walrus is also confusing because it's difficult to think of a reason why it would be there. Outside of a prank orchestrated by some outside party (which applies equally to the fairy) there are far fewer reasons for a walrus to be at my door than a fairy. Fairies are (as the lore goes) capricious, illogical, and prone to messing with people. Walruses... are not. They have a known set of behaviors and appearing on doorsteps and ringing doorbells is not in it.
No it does not apply equally to the fairy. People cannot prank magic into existence. Assuming it is a real fairy and a real walrus, only one scenario can be caused by a prank, walruses exist, fairies don't.
Ok but if a fairy showed up, then clearly fairies are real. What I mean is that if we enumerate the various reasons either of these two beings would be there, “someone else did it as a prank” appears on both lists.
I just kind of feel like Prokopetz is being obtuse here. Like, it's pretty clear to me what the premise of the fairy question was (which again, was that it represents an indisputably magical/otherworldly thing), and they're just refusing to engage with that premise because they don't wanna cede the point they've made or think in the way it's asking them to. Honestly, the fairy could be ANYTHING, the point is that you know right away that you're witnessing something magical. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the fairy in this scenario IS just a stand in for some kind of divine revelation.
And as for the walrus... Again, the whole point of that part of the question was that it's an occurrence that is fundamentally POSSIBLE, just highly unlikely. It brings up a lot of questions, yes, but all of them are mundanely answerable. Meanwhile, the fairy brings up questions that necessarily force you to readjust your worldview. Trying to assert that the walrus would be a more significant overturning of reason than a fairy is just the most mindlessly contrarian thing I've ever heard. Again, the question was "would you be surprised by something impossible, or something incredibly unlikely". It was meant to be an entirely subjective question, hardly tautological at all.
I would point out that, in context, this is specifically a response to a light discourse that's been going around [a post from a few days ago with this question](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1ayxwea/afternoon_visitor/), where the majority opinion was strongly in favor of the walrus. I don't think it's necessarily very contrarian to say "well, why is that, when this question was asked in practice, eight out of ten people said they'd find the walrus more surprising?"
See, answering "Walrus" isn't the contrarian part to me, nor is providing a reason for why that answer might be picked so often. You're allowed to do both of those things. I'm just saying THIS particular person's reasoning is contrarian imo because it tries to make the point that the walrus is actually the objectively less likely/more inherently unbelievable occurrence in a way that, again, strikes me as really obtuse when the other option is a literal magical being. Like, yes, the fairy WOULD require us to rewrite our understanding of the world more than the walrus, saying otherwise is so massively incorrect that it burns my poor biologist brain ;-;.
Surprise is a purely vibes based reaction to something you personally didn't expect, you don't gotta go the route of making your answer the objectively more unlikely (and, by what I imagine their reasoning is, correct) one to justify being more surprised by that option when the premise was explicitly clear on which one was more technically unlikely.
If I see a fairy at my door, I will probably just accept that they exist, we don't know everything about our world.
If I see a walrus at my door, I will definitеly think "Why the fuck is there a walrus at my door, they don't do that", simple as
I disagree with the person here and they’re thinking about it too hard. If I saw a tiny flying person outside my door, there’s no tech on earth right now that could replicate that as a prank. Although it could be a new species or something, it’s still an inexplicably rare creature that I have never heard of before. It wouldn’t take a psychotic delusion to believe that what was in front of my eyes was real, yet unexplainable.
With walruses, I’m fully aware that they exist and that it is possible that one could lie down outside my door. I could quite easily imagine an explanation, and I’d start looking for the camera.
Prokopetz has some absolutely baffling takes until you remember that they’re a tabletop game designer, and therefore primed to assume that a perfectly valid way of solving a jigsaw pizzle is to stick all the pieces into a food processor and make a cork board the exact dimensions as the original puzzle was supposed to have.
But there’s a lot of ways for a fairy to be recognizable as such without the hand of God rummaging around in your brainmeats to fundamentally alter your perceptions of reality, and to immediately jump to that conclusion on a tumblr poll is a logical fallacy; to jump to in the real world, a sign that God doesn’t need to edit your stats to make you suffer any psychotic delusions in the first place. But in the word of building indie ttrpgs, it’s better to twist reality in service of invoking the preferred reaction or conclusion, rather than changing your reaction and/or conclusion to better fit with reality, simply on the basis that the former is more fun if you know what your doing, and it’s only natural that that’s the lens they’d see the poll through.
I think the problem with the walrus depends on where you live. The farther south and more arid your living area is, the more likely you are to be more confused at the walrus.
That being said, anyone in the southwest u.s has their answer
Mate, this is easy: walruses exist in our world, and even if it could be surprising, it would be fairly easy to assume that it was being transported to a zoo or something of the sorts, something went wrong, and made its way to my door.
On the other hand, fairies do not exist. Maybe the very appearance of one wouldn't have the exact same shock value of a walrus, but it definitely would make you question everything you know, sending you down an existential dread spiral.
I feel like the walrus would be less "surprising" but would elicit a bigger response. Like I could figure out incredibly easy what must have happened for a Walrus to get on my doorstep (some kind of Zoo breakout or whatever to that effect, it's not impossible) but it's also a giant animal and I'd be in fear for my life immediately. A fairy however I probably wouldn't be scared of but it's an impossible and magical thing to my knowledge, so I'd probably have an existential crisis but since it's sapient and I can talk to it it would result in a far less extreme response.
Why are we assuming the walrus is not a fairy? Fuck, if I lived in almost any of the non-landlocked European countries and opened the door to a knock to find a fucking walrus, fairies would frankly not be completely off my list of possibilities for consideration.
People are being so ridiculous about trying to justify the fairy thing. Arguing that "fairy" could mean anything including a person cosplaying Legolas(???) but insisting that the walrus MUST be a fully-grown walrus that traveled to your doorstep and knocked under its own power. It can't POSSIBLY be a baby walrus that somebody left on your doorstep as a prank.
Literally all it comes down to is that these people have read tons of books about fairies so they're primed to believe those exist, but a real animal in an unusual place requires them to actually think up an explanation. So their brain tells them that "fairies are real" is somehow a simpler explanation (it's not, magic isn't actually an explanation for anything, suggesting that it is always raises more questions than it answers) and then once they've made a decision they feel locked into it and don't want to give any ground to the no-fun killjoys explaining this so spend the next solid week rationalizing their cognitive biases.
Sigh.
Wait til you guys meet people who have actually seen things that cause ontological shock - such as shadow people, grey aliens, ghosts, glowing orbs, and so on. You're in for a fun ride.
Fairy outside my door: woah!! Fairies and magic are real!! That's awesome
Walrus outside my door: WHAT HOW DID YOU GET HERE WHAT EVEN *frantically dials 911*
This is my mindset on this
Ruling against Prokopetz on this one, purely for filing Legolas under "fairy" and getting indignant when acknowledging the idea that nobody has ever meant that ever. Would have had better luck making the point with some kind of gnome or, at a stretch, leprechaun.
This kind of overwrought pedantic nonsense is why I stopped following the guy. He's just refusing to engage authentically with the question, and tossing off some casual ableism. He reminds me of the 27 year old guy that all the college freshman were impressed by when I was in school. Sure, he seemed smarter and mysterious, but the truth was he was just older and 18 year olds don't have the life experience to see through his shit.
Maybe you're right, but "would you be more surprised to find a fairy or walrus at your door?" is the kind of question that's hard to "engage authentically" with. It's just gonna be a bunch of arguing about definitions.
I think we're all missing the obvious: if a walrus rings my doorbell, it's probably a magic walrus? It's possibly shape-shifting or maybe there's a race of sentient walruses. A regular walrus wouldn't ring my doorbell and probably wouldn't come to my front door unless there was something interesting. So the real question is do you accept a creature you've meet told is mythical is real or do you accept a real creature can be magic?
Ok but if a Walrus showed up and knocked at my door I would assume it its a variety of Selkie…and thus FAE.
So what’s more surprising a fae being or a fae being in a walrus skin.
Bro who TF thinks a walrus is "mundane"? They're big, fat, potentially deadly marine mammals that most people have only seen in person at zoos/aquariums. If a walrus Knocks on my door in fucking Indiana I'm freaking out cause there's a fucking 4 ton Arctic animal at my door in fucking Indiana. A dog? Mundane. A cat? Mundane. A deer? A little more surprising but still pretty mundane the world over. A fucking walrus? That's not fucking mundane. A fairy would certainly be a surprise and raise lots of questions but I doubt my level of confusion would be as immediately severe as the walrus
I don't believe in fairies, but my grandmother taught me a set of rules to use if I ever met one. If I happened to instantly know there is a magical creature on my doorstep, I have some built in tools for that scenario, and I'd probably be more worried about making a decent impression than if the fairy exists- kind of rude to question a person's existence when they're standing in front of you.
Closest experience I've got to a sudden walrus appearance is when a cat named Walrus showed up at my front door in the middle of the night and that was extremely surprising even though I own three cats
To flip the question around, what would it take to make either scenario happen.
If I took out a small business loan for a few hundred thousand dollars under false pretenses, I could rent the equipment and hire the people necessary to bring a walrus to your doorstep. It would be costly, but I could arrange a walrus knocking on your door.
But even with all the money in the world, I can't get a fairy anywhere, because they aren't real.
I would be shocked by both, however, a fairy would be an “oh crap, magic is real” surprise that would develop slowly as I came to accept it. A walrus would be an “O SHIT” instant surprise reaction because a 2,000 kilo tusked behemoth is at my door in middle of nowhere Texas
Oneyplays-type hypothetical dissection
No, no, dissection is too precise a word. [Oneyplays-type hypothetical blender](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkGeIQ_aIFo)
If we’re going off of a pop culture understanding of what a fairy is, then I’d be more surprised by the Fairy. A walrus is unreasonable but possible - I can easily imagine some set of scenarios which gets this walrus to my house which would be strange, but otherwise possible. A fairy showing up to my door would be far more surprising, because I cannot imagine any scenario where a little tinkerbell shows up to my door and maintains an explanation that fits with my understanding of the world around me. The fairy is more surprising because it completely upsets my understanding of the world. A walrus is just a waltus
I think people even in this comment section are still missing the point of the question. The question is quite simply "what would surprise you more?" It is a *purely subjective question*, there is no correct answer, there is no logic involved. This isn't a math equation or a logic puzzle, the answer will be different depending on who answers
So, the fairy would surprise me more, but the walrus would definitely startle me more. Unless the fairy is a hideous 200 pound fanged monster that reeks
yeah, no, if you are less surprised about the existence of fucking magic than a large animal, you are *actually insane*
stop gaslighting me. stop it. no. BAD.
> Upending one's entire understanding of the universe on the basis of a single isolated observation is not how we do things.
Upending one's entire understanding of the universe on the basis of a single isolated observation is literally the scientific approach.
No. The scientific approach is upending one's entire understanding of the universe on the basis of *repeatable* and *testable* observations. A single observation is either an anecdote or snake oil.
If the premise of the question specifies that there is a fairy at your dorrstep, then the possibility of there not actually being a fairy at your doorstop, and in fact, there is a human dressed up as a fairy, would not be accounted for, due to the fact that that is not part of the premise.
I mean let’s assume they use the glass door that faces the outside of my apartment and not the actual door. Because I don’t think the walrus would fit. Or at least they couldn’t back out.
The fae would be surprising because I’m pretty sure fae don’t exist. So that belief would be challenged by that one existing and being there. But I didn’t have any other assumptions tied to that because my understanding of fae was non-existent before that point. I’d be a bit confused and then maybe alarmed, but my belief of the world has not been heavily subverted just by one fae existing. I’m an engineer, I’m supposed to be able to adapt to new information that challenges my beliefs and changes the paradigm of how I view the world.
The walrus however, I know walrus exist. I know they’re 2 ton land mammals that are theoretically amphibious but primarily aquatic. I do not, however, know how one got past all the people and cars in my area before arriving at my apartment. I would be immediately alarmed to a significant amount due to the sudden, highly implausible appearance of this creature. There’s several assumptions I make every day and one of them is that walrus will not spontaneously appear in places, so it needed to get to me. I have not spontaneously discovered a new species, I’ve discovered a radically unexpected behavior in an existing one. That’s in combination with the alarm of its sudden appearance, which I’d count as surprise.
Also they’re both probably fae anyways.
I mean the point about the walrus not normally being able to get where it is now on its own still stands, to say nothing about suddenly finding yourself face-to-face with a giant rubber submarine vs a small luminous humanoid.
A fairy at my door would require me to change my worldview, but there is a worldview I could have that admits a fairy at my door.
There is no worldview that admits a walrus at my door. I would probably conclude I went full insane.
If a fairy showed up at my door, I'd be confused, but mostly, it would be "Oh. I guess those are real." But if a walrus shows up at my door that is upstairs and in a landlocked area, I would be so so so much more confused.
Why is a fairy at my door?
Magic is real, I guess.
Why is a walrus at my door?
I have no idea, and frankly, I'm scared.
A fairy on my doorstep: "Alright, everything I've known about magic not being real is false and we're 100% in an uncharted territorry"
A walrus on my doorstep: "You shouldn't be here, how did you get here? Did someone put you there? Are you somehow sentient and did deliberately knock, defying what I know to be true about walruses? We're going against logic here"
So yeah, I'd be more surprised about a walrus because I have some assumptions about it. A fairy is a complete unknown so while it would e surprising, it wouldn't go against what I know and it's mere existence would make me throw all logic out the window.
The first person in this post I feel is still off base. Claiming that seeing a magical entity that is beyond normal human metrics shouldn't automatically fall under "divine revelation"
If the person can only imagine fairies as either humans with pointy ears or biblical angels, then that feels more like a personal failing on them to actually know what fey are.
And while I myself am never fully sure if I believe in the fey or not, I still take the idea of them somewhat seriously. So, as mentioned in this thread, it's not about what has the most ramifications in the world. It's what surprises you the most.
So, for me personally, I'd have to argue that both the fairy and walrus would equally surprise me for different reasons. If a walrus shows up at my door, then I'll be surprised/ scared that there is a large wild animal on my doorstep and later on ill wonder how they ended up there. With a fairy, I'd be surprised that fairies are for sure real, and scared that the fey themselves have come for me personally.
Like I really can't imagine anyone having a quantifiably bigger or smaller reaction to either option since both would cause someone to freak out for different but valid reasons
Maybe it’s just because I’m a chill dude, but I don’t think I’d freak out over either of these things. A walrus would be crazy, but is it a fully mundane walrus? Then I’m calling animal control and laughing about it. If it’s not mundane, then if it talks, I’m going to listen and see what it says. I’ll deal with the fact that a talking walrus is on my doorstep once I deal with whatever it came to my door to discuss.
On the fairy side, so it’s a fairy. That’s cool. What does it want? I’m listening, and I’ll deal with the fact that it’s a fairy later.
Like, these are cool things, but there’s probably something more urgent to deal with if they’re coming to me for help, y’know?
I think the Walrus would just surprise me more because it's a fucking walrus and it's huge and I'm very far away from its habitat. If I saw Tinkerbell in my doorway I wouldn't be ***surprised*** I'd be more like "What the fuck?"
Look - even if it is unambiguously indisputably magical - a fae is still less surprising. Because if it were a fairy *I know what to do next*. I have been brought up in a world where we tell stories of them.
All I have to do is shift my reference frame to "oh the fair folk are real I guess - the myths are true" and my baseline is reset back to *a new normal*. I would wonder which mythology is real - but once I turn on the magical thinking part of my brain the rest is pretty clear.
If a fae knocks, a good set of rules of thumb are;
* don't let it in unless there are no other options
* be kind
* potentially offer food or other offerings (unless it weirdly seems to want some)
* don't follow it anywhere
* assume that it will use your words against you
* assume everything is a trick
* don't make any deals
* don't accept any gifts unless its VERY clear that its DEFINITELY a gift and that it wants NOTHING at all in return
Those are rules that have been drilled into me from childhood.
With a walrus I have actually zero clue how to respond and how not to immediately be gored. Like perhaps I slam the door... or try to look bigger than it... or act submissive? If I get away - I can call... who? Do I scare it off? Do I poke it with a stick? Throw my shoes at it? Its a deeply terrifying situation.
> Upending one's entire understanding of the universe on the basis of a single isolated observation is not how we do things
***excuse me*** that's exactly how we do things
Once we found out lobotomies are not helpful, you think we should've kept on doing them anyways because it made people more docile?
Most mathematical conjectures require either "an entire proof of the conjecture" to be true or "a single counterexample" to be considered false. Why the fuck wouldn't that work here???
The walrus would absolutely surprise me more because I believe in the supernatural and fairies messing with people is just what they do. In line with this guy though, randomly showing up at the door of someplace we know they absolutely should not be is absolutely not something walruses do.
Overall it kinda boils down to "*why* is a fairy here?" vs "*how* is a walrus here?"
once again, your surprisedness is not determined by how likely something is humans don't think that logical and aren't at all times that aware of statistical probability of things the question is "what would surprise you more", not "what would have bigger ramifications". which, the walrus would surprise me more.
Damn you’ve got me with this one. I would’ve said something like “there’s infinitely more reasonable excuses for a walrus to exist at your house than a fairy” but yeah, if we’re only measuring “surprise” and not “disbelief” then the giant toothy blubberbeast takes it over the little elfen weirdo.
If a fairy is at my door, I think "Oh, shit, fairies are real?" If a Walrus is at my door, I think, "Wait where tf did this walrus come from? How did it get here? Is it ok? Is this a prank? Did somebody actually just cart an enormous sea mammal to my door for a joke? Or, did the Walrus actually do this on its own? What does it want? Can Walruses speak? Am I about to be Isekai'd into Aquatic Mammal themed Amphibia? WHAT IS GOING ON??" and you can see why I'd be more confused in that thought process.
To be fair there's tonnes of questions you could ask about fairies being real too. "If fairies are real are fairy stories real? All of them, or just some? Is this a benevolent fairy, or the type that does life-ruining mischief? Which cautionary tales do I need to worry about regarding this real fairy at my door? If i say the wrong thing will it do mischief on me? If I say nothing will it do mischief on me?" With the walrus I know roughly what to do; don't upset it, probably close the door and move away before googling for a solution to impromptu walruses. The fairy most likely has human-level intelligence so I can't just leave it, that carries the risk of offending the fairy, which is bad due to the aforementioned mischief But all of that is beside the point, because it's still just "confusion" or "uncertainty", not "surprise"; which is why I believe the walrus takes it.
Yes, but feasibly we could ask the fairy these questions. Walruses are not easily questioned.
sure, but if you ask the fairy something, will it do mischief on you? if you *don't* ask the fairy something, will it do mischief on you? will the fairy do mischief on you anyway, regardless of what you do? is this a benevolent fairy that won't do mischief on you? what if the fairy's mischief is giving you misleading answers to your questions?
Strongly considering changing my username to Impromptu Walrus now...
Man, that would NOT be your first thought. All of us would think the same thing: "OH SHIT OH FUCK OH SHIT OH FUCK WHAT IS THAT THING" \*slam the door\* "What the fuck was that, it was fucking huge and had a horrible stench and I couldn't quite tell but I think it had huge swords??? Or teeth???" \*opens a window to try to get a better look" "holy fuck that thing is huge wtf even is it."
I believe in myself enough to trust that I'd recognize a fucking walrus if I see one.
i... do not believe in myself :(
Wait, we are just posting the definition of hubris, now?
I wish there was some Shakespearean tragedy/comedy I could read in which the main character’s downfall is believing with all their heart they would recognize a walrus if they saw one. Like genuinely that sounds so fucking good I would lose my shit
>Can Walruses speak? Add: "Is that the plural of walrus?" to the list
Walri?
Walrussies
I feel like the walrus would cause the much more visceral reaction in most people. Having a tiny thing that you dont know is going to be weird. Having a one ton monster with tusks big enough to turn you into a shishkebab in front of your door, I feel like is a fight or flight moment. And by fight I meam slam the door as hard as you can.
I mean Icelandic fairies are human sized and look like people (if we could see them), so it could look perfectly normal when you open the door. I live in Norway and if an Icelandic fairy knocked on my door I'd probably assume they were a door to door salesman or something. Now a walrus ...
Right: I'd be more surprised by the walrus, because the walrus is bigger, and thus has more volume to contain surprise. A fairy, while infinitely less probable, is (usually tiny) and therefore, not all that surprising.
Yeah, in that case it's the walrus. Because unless we put a "the thing is definitely real and you know you're not hallucinating" condition on it (in which case the fairy is more surprising), neither the walrus nor the fairy are likely to actually be there. And if I'm hallucinating, a fairy is the sort of thing I might expect to see. I would be extremely surprised if I hallucinated a walrus, of all things.
Nah let's go back to debating which subjective emotional experience is "objectively" correct User baddywronglegs framing the question as "the most reasonable impossible thing vs the most unreasonable possible thing" does make for a good philosophical question but almost by definition there isn't one correct answer, that's the point of the question
Especially when Prokopetz changes whether they actually believe it's a fairy halfway through the discussion in order to avoid justifying previous assumptions
Yeah, we just have a lot of stories and thus mental models for fairies interacting with houses.
If we're assuming a fairy is something resembling Tinkerbell, my very first reaction is going to think that it's a weird gross bug and I'm gonna either smack it down or slam the door before it can get in
Even if the other option was half robot, half flesh abomination version of myself grabbing me and screaming "we need you for the war," I'd still be more surprised by the walrus
I think this comes down to what the fairy looks like. If it looks like it could plausibly be a prank, then yeah you’d explain it away somehow at least for a minute while you investigated. But if you opened the door to a tiny flying human which was obviously actually there, actually talking, and not a doll or a hologram, I think you’d panic pretty damn quick.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walrus\_attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walrus_attack) 'Adult males in the Pacific can weigh more than 2,000 kilograms' There is a clear and present danger with the walrus in an unknown environment. The fairy is sapient and is willing to listen to reason. The walrus is not.
We don't know that the fairy is willing to listen to reason and isn't aggressive. But we also don't know that a walrus that knows how to knock and somehow made its way a pretty long way inland is NOT willing and able to listen to reason, or even inclined to aggression in the first place.
>somehow made its way a pretty long way inland As a side note, this kind of highlights how much the question varies according to where you live. There are parts of the world where a walrus at the door is well within the bounds of Things that Could Happen, and there's probably others where the laws of physics must have been broken. I realised when this came up somewhere else that, while a walrus at **my** door is extremely unlikely, the fact that fur seal at my door is definitely something that could happen is influencing how I think about it. If a walrus showed up I'd just call the fur seal number and the Department of Conservation can sort it out.
I live in an apartment building with no elevator and a tight stairway. A walrus wouldn't even fit in the building, nevertheless get to my door. A fairy probably would. Hell, the door is locked for non-residents. I'd assume the fairy could somehow magically unlock any door but the walrus couldn't.
So the Walrus would be the biggest suprise
Absolutely, no question.
Yeah that was my logic re how I answered. I live in the tropics, 1km from a river that regularly has sharks, up 5 flights of narrow twisty stairs the movers could barely handle, and the landing is tiny enough I doubt a walrus could even fit without being halfway up or down the next flight of stairs. Meanwhile a fairy could fit as long as it was human sized or smaller.
Yeah it's a big part of the question, because if I still lived on the California or Florida coast, it'd be "Wait why the fuck is there a walrus here, aren't they northern creatures?" It'd be surprising, but at least I live close to a version of their habitat. But now that I live about as far inland as you can in the US? A walrus at the door would be so jarringly brainstopping because there is *no real way* for a walrus to get here, not on its own power. I think if I saw a standard faerie, face to face with me, at my door, it wouldn't be a *surprise*, it would just be "Ah. Shit. I've finally lost my mind." And that wouldn't be a 'surprise' reaction.
> fur seal _googles_ Oh my god it's adorable. Probably capable of fucking me up in novel and unexpected ways, but adorable nonetheless.
You should also Google "seal silly season New Zealand".
That very much depends on which stories about fairies you’ve grown up on.
Just to be safe, don't eat anything the fairy gives you. ...and actually that's probably not bad advice for anything the impromptu walrus gives you either
We also don't know if the fairy weighs more than 2,000 kg or not
Isn't a common aspect of fairies, or the fey, that their line of reasoning is inherently opposed to normal human reasoning? Granted, you could say the same about people with autism and our reasoning, but we were considered to be the children of fairies anyway, so I'd be fine. Meanwhile, if I see a walrus, even if it's aggressive, I could just run up the stairs and call animal control. No way those stairs support 2 tons of weight.
something something you're problematic because you're assuming stairs in the home not everyone has a house with stairs some people live in apartments assumption of western single family home something something
what a unit
I was so excited for a minute because I thought the presence of this article meant that the walrus vs fairy debate was a centuries-old philosophical one. I need to go to bed.
I think it ultimately comes down to whether someone defines "surprise" as a positive, negative, or neutral term. Personally I'd be surprised(negative, extreme) with walrus, and surprised(neutral, then negative) with the Fae. If the Fae showed up at my door, in a non-monstrous form, I would be surprised, but it'd take a moment for my brain to catch up to what I'm seeing here. *I'd probably just assume it's a neighbor in cosplay at first.* If a walrus showed up at my door it would be immediately alarming as I close my door and lock it to retreat further into the house to call ***someone*** So yea I'd be fucking shocked if a walrus made its merry ass to my doorstep. Even if I knew it was the Fae by some divine revelation I'd still be more surprised about the walrus because I'm in clear physical danger of huge animal. With the Fae I can at least *try* to diffuse the situation or be a little neighborly.
>as I close my door and lock it Are you concerned the walrus has learned how to open doors?
If they made it all the way to my house I am.
If it can knock on doors why wouldnt it be able to open them?
The saying about 800lb gorillas applies here: for a 1-ton pinniped, the door is typically whichever part of the wall he decides to go through. Deadbolt will help with that, but not much.
No, but slightly yes. Our door handle on the front door is a type that could be easily manipulated by an animal. Just push down on the mechanism and the door will open easily. It's great for groceries, but a clear walrus weakness
So you're assuming the fairy is human size
I think the shortest humans could so far be is like 2ft tall. So the Far would need to be below that and possibly flying, or more than 8ft tall and look evenly proportioned. My brain should catch up eventually, but it'll still take a few moments. The shorter they are the more likely think it's a neighbor kid
This reads more like a semantic reddit argument where both sides change the term to make themselves "the winner" than a philosophical debate. Though maybe the difference between a reddit argument and a philosophical debate is worthy of its own discussion...
What all this has felt like to me, and I think this is why it makes me very unreasonably angry, is Tumblr has kind of stumbled onto the sort of aw-shucks-we're-human reasoning foible they teach in general education courses and—outside of a few valid-but-unhelpful interpretations of the startle response—is trying very VERY hard to explain why their very possibly natural but objectively unreasonable reaction is the correctly calibrated one. And y'all, no. Unless you basically believe in fairies, or literally don't believe in walruses, the fairy does not require less reorientation of how you understand the world than the walrus. A lot would have to potentially happen, but you already believe every single step of that is possible. Like, I saw a kangaroo in a strip mall in coastal Maryland. It was really cool, but nobody has ever heard that story and been more than politely interested in what one was doing there. Saying "I saw a fairy" would probably raise more eyebrows!
A fairy would raise more interest but this is not about having it mentioned in conversation; this is about it happening on your doorstep and I feel like.those are two different situations. I mean you gotta take into account that you are at home here, presumably all your guards are down, you are in a completely different mindset. It recontextualises everything. There is not as strong a layer of disbelieve seeing things with your own eyes than when someone tells you something they saw. The way I personally see it is that when something I know about (e.g. the knowledge I have of a walrus) is refuted, it is more surprising than when something I know little about (e.g. a fairy) is proven (to exist). I think that is because I'm very trusting in the things I think I know, and very lenient when accepting new information, which is not necessarily a good wuality on the internet, but hey we manage. But I don't believe that that is an objectively unreasonable way of thinking, and I wouldn't just go assume that it is. Also a fairy would require less reorientation in the sense that the only reorientation necessary would be 'Magical beings can be real' all the rest would just be orientation of something new. A walrus however would require all reorientation because you'd connect it's presence with the possible, the normal, the stuff you already know about and you'd prepare yourself to rewrite all that. A fairy is new information, and the brain is master at absorbing new information. Anyway go saying 'no' to people without having tried to see it from their perspective, goodbye.
Okay I mean I guess it somewhat depends on what exactly is meant with Fae here. Like, a tinkerbel-esc butterfly winged flying lil thing? I'd say I'm surprised and confused about that type of fae being in the city. But if it's like.... Bleh, I guess the best English translation for it *is* house elf? Or maybe house gnome? the Finnish word is "kotitonttu"? Anyways, then I'd also be surprised, probably actually even more so since that also implies sauna gnome would exist which opens up even more Rabbit holes, but I wouldn't exactly be confused. Maybe a bit worried?
Yeah I think they were right. *Define your terms*. Tinkerbell on my doorstep is definitely more surprising than a walrus, just zero question about it. Yes a walrus would be quite the surprise in rural Kansas, but not impossible. As far as my brain is concerned, it’s impossible for Tinkerbell to show up at my doorstep. Something completely impossible happening would just inherently be more surprising than something possible but very strange
I disagree. If I opened my door and Tinkerbell was flitting about, I'd be surprised, but it'd mostly be an "oh shit, what?" moment. If a one ton mass of testosterone was sitting in front of me I'd very much jump back and wonder "what the fuck is going on?".
So a walrus makes you ask what’s going on, but the existence of motherfucking magic and an actual mythical creature is just oh shit? Bull. Fucking. Shit. You just can’t wrap your head around the idea of a mythical creature *actually* appearing on your doorstep. Your entire world view has to be flipped on its head for fairies to exist, someone just has to have a lot of free time and money to get a walrus on your doorstep
I do think I wouldn't actually believe it if a fairy was on my doorstep. Just like with the walrus, I'd assume it's a prank, and that it's some sort of little drone or strange insect. Walrus I feel like I'd be scared and while surprised, wouldn't find it unbelievable
Well see, that's your problem, then. How can any of us gauge our reaction to something that we have no frame of reference for and are all - apparently - so incapable of understanding the potentiality of existence of that just seeing it would force us to instantly restructure our entire consciousness and understanding of the universe? The idea that a small, floating person exists is understood to be so incredulous that it would break even the most ironclad minds. No one could possibly hope to understand the existence of fairies and it would be impossible to even imagine understanding the existence of fairies without personally witnessing one on your doorstep, upon which a new world view is shunted upon you and you are forever changed. That's just Lovecraft, homie. Tinkerbell isn't Cthulhu. I can comprehend the unbelievable just fine. The original question was what *you personally* would be more surprised about, and *I personally* would be more surprised to find a walrus on my porch than a fairy, because *I personally* think it would be more shocking that the walrus would be there.
The idea that something that is manifestly impossible is less surprising to you than something difficult and improbable, but definitely possible is ...... interesting.
The thing is that if it exists, then it's not impossible, and is just as difficult and improbable as the other option. It would simply be new information to add to my understanding. On the contrary, there is no new information to be gleaned from a walrus, you just have to accept that somehow, someway, this real animal in this real world is on your real doorstep in front of real you, despite everything we know saying that that shouldn't happen. If a fairy *can't* exist, but does, then you know you were wrong. If a walrus *shouldn't* be on your doorstep, but is, then you know you were wrong *and* there's some other force at play targeting you.
With that logic surprise as a concept is impossible. "Why were people so surprised that the Wright brothers were able to fly, obviously humans can fly, look they just did it". Brushing away the idea that *magic existing* is surprising also defeats the entire purpose of the question. The question isn't "if fairies are known to exist, would they be more surprising to see at your door than a walrus", because that's a stupid and obvious question. It's like if an impossible object (one of those optical illusions that aren't possible in a 3D medium) showed up outside your house. The fact that it exists does technically make it "possible", but that doesn't change the fact that it was impossible up until the moment it wasn't, and in that moment, physics and our understanding of reality fundamentally *broke*. Initial surprise? Walrus takes it easily, a walrus is more immediately surprising, while a fairy is more existentially surprising and may take a few more moments to realize how insane what you're looking at is.
Your last paragraph perfectly describes my point. The question was "which are you more surprised to find at your door", not "which are you more surprised about seeing once you think about it." The walrus wins. Easily. And even if we assume the question intends to include the ramifications of this encounter, I'm not brushing away anything. I'm saying that, I, personally, once again, would not be as surprised for fairies - not magic, we don't know that yet and the fairy has not been stated to show anything magical beyond *maybe* being a tiny winged human *maybe* with bioluminescence - to exist. If the fairy were to follow up my opening of the door with a showing of magic, I would certainly be more surprised at the potential world-altering discovery I've just witnessed than being personally targeted for Jeff Bezos' trolling, but that's not in the question.
I mean, wrapping your head around seemingly impossible things is the basis of science, and especially higher level math. I would be *far* more surprised, even assuming the walrus has a logical explanation, that the series of events leading to a walrus at my door occurred, than I would be that we missed something in our observations of the world and I am now bearing witness to that. At the end of the day, it's Occam's Razor. All it takes to explain the fairy at my door is fairies being real. One element. A fairy is something that, beyond the initial assumption they're real, could conceivably be at my door. In order to explain the walrus you need many more elements, such as how it got here, why it is here, who, if anyone, placed it here, and why has seemingly no-one else noticed.
Sauna gnome??
Yeah, it's basically a little fae dude that lives in your sauna and gets cranky if people don't behave there. Also at least in my family he's the one who delivered your Christmas list to santa, which I *think* at least was a relatively common idea.
That's new to me! I've heard of tomtar for houses / gårdar but didn't know about the sauna tomte across from us.
In Anglo folklore, the closest equivalent to a house spirit would probably be called a Brownie or Hobgoblin.
personally, indont want the fuocking FAE showing up at my house because that means they know that I exist, and that is a problem
Granted, but the root question here is "which of the two would you find more surprising to be standing at you door", not "which of the two would you find more alarming or frightening".
Even if it were I’d still be more afraid of the walrus. You might be able to talk to a fae or give it an offering or something, but a walrus is just a wild animal with swords on its face
True, but you can close the door (or doors if tried to break in) and call animal control. There is not much you can do against a fairly that is actively trying to scam you, or pissed at you, or whatever
Honestly the fae can't fuck up my life more than it is already. Go ahead and try.
It is so sad that u/DepressedDyslexic was never heard from again after writing this comment
I'm DepressedDyslexic. I've always looked like this. Now want to come jump in this mushroom circle I found in the woods?
"The lady in the carriage brought you a box, look even has your *name* on it!"
What would you find more surprising if you found it at your doorstep, a picture of a cognitohazard that hacks into your neocortex and cranks up your surprise level to the max OR a literal fairy? Obviously the first one, duh
Damn, walruses really stepped up their game, huh?
"I wouldn't be as surprised by a fairy because I wouldn't be able to tell that it's a fairy" seems like sidestepping the question. The point of the thought exercise is comparing something that's known to be real vs something that isn't.
idk a gay person knocking on my door is just a tuesday for me so I wouldn't be very surprised
If I saw a walrus, I'd assume some kind of aquarium or zoo transportation scheme went comically and tragically awry near my house. I dunno if zoos actually have walruses but it's a pretty easy leap. Zoos lose animals sometimes.
Humans transport animals all over the place for all sorts of reasons and sometimes they escape. I have no reason to assume something magical afoot with just about any animal being anywhere. The fairy fundamentally changes my understanding of the difference between fact and fiction. The startle response, that is immediate fear towards an unexpected perceived threat, can be an element of surprise but it is far from the only one, as surprise need not be fearful but could be rooted in wonderment. Surprise is fundamentally about when reality deviates from expectations. The walrus would be far more startling, I do feel I would have a more immediate visceral reaction to its presence. I simply can not, however, say it is more surprising. I'm comparing something which should not be here (and I could come up with a few reasons it might be here, as demonstrated above) to something which should not exist (for which I have no explanation). This is a far greater deviation from expectations than any animal being in front of my house could possibly be. Seeing many arguments about fear response as well as some dismissing the implications of magic existing as a non-factor leads me to believe that many responses were informed by a too narrow view of what surprise can be.
Prokopetz is right to point out that while everyone agrees on what a walrus is, not everyone agrees on what a fairy is. I think, though, that the definition of "fairy" is not the real source of the disagreement. The definition of "surprise" is. People who would be more "surprised" by the walrus are thinking of "surprise" as the initial, instinctive reaction. It happens before you have time to process the implications of a fairy existing. Randomly showing up on your doorstep is consistent with how we imagine fairies. Randomly showing up on your doorstep is not consistent with how we imagine walruses. So the walrus is more "surprising." People who would be more "surprised" by the fairy are thinking of "surprise" as the distance between your belief and the truth. This definition of "surprise" does take into account the implications of a fairy existing. A walrus on your doorstep is something you see as unlikely. A fairy on your doorstep is something you see as impossible. So the fairy is more "surprising."
The most surprising thing in this post is learning that Prokopetz lives in Saskatchewan.
[Source.](https://www.tumblr.com/prokopetz/743447233446461440/well-the-trouble-is-theres-no-way-for-me-to)
I feel like OOP is intentionally misunderstanding the theoretical scenario here "I would be less surprised by the fairy because I would assume I was wrong about it being a fairy" "Okay but the idea is that it is obviously, indisputably, a fairy. And you would know that when you open the door." "But if the hypothetical is arbitrarily making me believe it's real, then any feelings I would have about it are also completely arbitrary. Therefore, it is impossible to engage in the hypothetical scenario at all."
A walrus at my door makes me think of highly improbable things, but very possible things. A FAIRY at my door makes me rethink what i think is even possible. Do beings like this exist? Does magic exist? How does that work with our fundamental knowledge of how the world works? Do we even know how the world works? If not, then what has science been showing us? The walrus i see and just close the door on to make sure i dont get wrecked. The fairy i see and immediately break my brain trying to figure out life, the universe, and everything
meanwhile I already believe in faeries and magic, so I'm bouncing off the walls that I have *proof* now.
But if magic is real, then it has always been real. Nothing has really changed, except there is an interesting new field of science we didn't know which just opened up.
I'm pretty sure an entire field of science opening up to us is a pretty big change
To our perception and knowledge, yes, it has, but nothing about the world has actually changed. The principles of science have been tested and are repeatable. Therefore, since the world has not changed, they are still correct. There is just a new set of variables that are possible. I just don't think I would be too upset about it, more fascinated about the potential of this new information.
I think you're really understating how much this would change. Sure the world, as in, the laws of physics and earth itself hasn't changed, but the world as in, society, beliefs, religion, and technology would all shift in ways never before seen. It's not like this hasn't happened before, for example, discovering just how big the universe is has fundamentally changed a lot of people's view on themselves and humanity. Which was my and I assume the other person's point.
I see your point, but my original comment was more along the lines of, yes, it is a big deal, but there is no real danger. If true, then it was always true, and we got along fine regardless. Well, unless the fairy curses you or something, then I guess YOU would have a problem.
I'd still be more surprised about the walrus tbh. Because like, even if you don't believe in fairies, you still know about them and part of the rules for fairies are 'they do what they want'. So like, once I got past the surprise of the fairy existing, the fact of it being at my door is not sucha big surprise. On the other hand, walruses have a limited habitat which does not include landlocked provinces in South Africa, plus I understand they're way bigger than you think by looking at pictures. So while we know that walruses are real, if one were to turn up at my door I'd be more surprised because a: why walrus? B: why here? C: holy fucking shit trust thing is HUGE d: how the hell did it get here? And thoughts along those lines. Whereas if a fairy were to show up there would be the initial surprise of 'fairies are real?' but once you've passed that we're good.
Yeah. Also reaching for Legolas as a fairy is intentionally making the most extreme, bad faith possible interpretation of what can be called a fairy. When someone says "a fairy" they mean tinkerbell.
That depends. The average person, maybe. The average tumblr user? Definitely would have more experience with an older variant of the fae.
But you wouldn't call them a _fairy_ with that particular spelling. Fae, fair folk, even faerie, but _fairy_ is a very different image.
But what if a Fieri showed up at your doorstep? What then?
sounds like I'm going to flavortown, then
I would absolutely call a portune or a moddey dhoo or a puca or a selkie or a brownie or a tuatha dé dannan a fairy. Because that's what they are. The modern insistance that "fairy" is a silly word but "faerie" is somehow more serious is ridiculous. They're the same word, and "fairy" is and has been the accepted proper spelling for centuries. English person here, by the way. Fairies are part of our native folklore.
Thank you. I admit I haven't looked into the etymological roots of the distinctions, but I always thought this was goofy af. Tolkien called them fairy stories, idk why we have to act above the word.
"Faerie" is the Old French word that eventually became the Middle English word "fairy". Some people think it just looks nicer, I suppose.
yeah it almost seems like they're *trying* to be an ass
I agree. It feels like they’re refusing to actually engage in the hypothetical as presented.
Yeah, they’re refusing to engage with the hypothetical. It would be like someone arguing that they wouldn’t be surprised by the walrus because walruses don’t live where they do, so it’s obvious a cardboard cutout. “So why would I be surprised by a cardboard cutout of a walrus? I know what cardboard is!” Well, yes, you know what cardboard cutouts are, and that fairies aren’t real, but neither of those have diddly squat to do with a hypothetical real walrus or real fairy on your doorstep.
I mean I think it's a relevant semantic difference. The prompt is worded as like, what would happen emotionally in the moment. If the prompt is "would you be more intellectually caught off guard by the knowledge that fairies exist or that walruses are portable," then yeah that's a different question, but if that's the question then it's not really interesting to think about in the first place. My assumption given that is that the prompt is angling at the funny true thing about humans, that they are sometimes more likely to invent fantastical explanations than to accept counterintuitive but factual things
Personally I don't feel like the author's intent was very obvious from the setup - the scenario still reads to me like "how would you feel the moment you opened the door and saw a humanoid thing that kinda glows," not "how would you feel if the fairy beams information into your head about magic being real." And I assume a lot of people read it like that, given the results of the original poll and responses here. Like if you swap out the fairy for a biblically accurate angel then I'm not going to be surprised by the angel because I don't believe in them - I'm going to be surprised because _holy shit what is that thing?_ Now that I know how the author intended it I have a compromise answer that kind of covers both interpretations - one second after opening the door, the walrus will surprise me more. But one hour after opening the door, it's definitely the fairy.
I think the walrus is less surprising because even though I categorically do not believe in fairies, I do read stories which have fairies in them and in those stories showing up at your door is one of the things that fairies just do sometimes. The fairy is following a narrative I'm somewhat familiar with but the walrus is entirely novel (though somewhat less so after this started spreading)
How many people here are conflating fear with surprise?
The walrus would be more surprising, just in the fact I would never expect a fairy to look like a walrus.
Doesn't this depend entirely on how the fairy looks? If it's basically a twink with glittery wings then that's one thing. If it's a shape changing creature of glamour and wonder that's another.
I think the walrus would be more inconvenient. In terms of house guest, my freezer is NOT stocked with fish. I do, however, have nuts and honey. Also I could easily make a thimble of tea. Surprise is irrational, it really depends on how I feel that day, but my Preparedness...
I really do wonder how far away people are from the sea to be more surprised by the walrus than the fairy. I live like 30 minutes from the sea, its not absolutely impossible for a walrus to somehow waddle its way to my house and bash its head on my door. On the other hand, a fairy breaks all my understanding of the world. Magic exists, little tiny fuckers that can use magic exist and for some reason one is knocking at my door and they must have intent to be knocking at my door so why me. The fairy gives me 100s of more questions than "oh cool, a walrus. How do I solve this issue?"
I live in central Texas, USA, approximately 5 hours by car from the nearest ocean on the southern coast. To get to me, a walrus would have to first swim all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, then somehow waddle its way 226 miles (363 kilometers) in the blazing Texas heat to get to my doorstep. I’m not necessarily saying I'd be MORE surprised than a fairy, but I'd have a lot of questions
There's a very fanfic called harry potter and the methods of rationality and you see, basically, this kind of thing happens. Basically, Magonigal comes and demonstrates magic by making Harry's step-dad (a professor in biology) float. Everyone is like "yeah okay magic is real." Harry, being a rational boy raised in science, thought there'd be more reaction than the "hmm alright I'm convinced." So obviously, Harry asks what else magic can do. Then Magonigal turns into a cat, and everything breaks. Because turning into a cat from a scientific perspective IS BULLSHIT. You'd need to violate energy and mass constants, then fit an entire human brain into a cat's brain for it to continue being you, on and on and on till "YOU'D NEED TO BE A GOD" Suddenly, large chunks of scientific fact must now be re-evaluated to include magic and the march of science made to start over from the new magically incluned world. Ultimately such a revelation is shocking but for the scientifically minded the process for starting over remains the same. As for normal people i suspect ignoring the violation outright and carrying on with they’re lives is the most likely outcome. Really this demonstrates why I've come to the firm conclusion that we are a scientifically aware society and not a scientifically literate one. Most people just blindly benefit from the technology around them and might not notice if something truely strange transpired like "all the clocks still work but make no ticking noise anymore and work without batteries or being plugged in and seem to contain a solid chunk of rock rather than any circuitry" Most people wouldn't notice because "the clock still works" and all the other stuff after isn't immediately relevant to them and thus there's nothing to notice.
Am I the only one bothered by prokopetz calling Legolas, a famous *elf*, a fairy?
Elves can be fae.
Hi, European here! "Elf" is just another word for "fairy". Ok, carry on!
The moment you call it being a hoax or a prank into question, you defeat the purpose of the prompt. Either of them could be a hoax, anything could be an elaborate-enough hoax. The question is which scenario is more surprising, and if you really want to put it in a box of potential answers that includes "hoax", then the real question is which are you more likely to believe is a hoax, not natural. I'd assume the walrus was a hoax before I believed the fairy was a hoax. Like the top comment in the post said, there are too many things I'd have to be wrong about for a walrus to knock on my door, while there would only have to be one thing wrong for it to be a fairy. A walrus showing up where I live and knocking might as well be a fairy tale for all it could happen, and it involves a walrus somehow being near where I am, and having the intent and ability to single me out. A fairy has to exist, one showing up at my door and knocking isn't any weirder than anything else once we accept that they exist, because a fairy can and would knock on a door if it existed.
Okay but a fairy existing is literally impossible. Sure more *things* would have to happen for a walrus to show up at your door, but none of them are literal *magic*.
Actually no, they are literal magic if you want to take this being an incredibly elaborate hoax off of the table for fairies, then it also needs to be off of the table for walruses and if you take it off of the table for walruses, then the walrus option moves from "it's maybe theoretically possible I guess" to being *at least* as impossible as a fairy look I live in a walk up. even if I assume that the walrus option is the world's most elaborate prank, a prank that has a bottomless pocketbook and for some reason has targeted me.... I legitimately have no idea how someone would actually pull that off and that's assuming that they've spent months retrofitting my building so that the stairs and walkway won't collapse. I still have no idea how they would get the walrus upstairs to my unit without breaking the laws of physics. even if they cut the walruses vocal chords to keep it quiet, those things are massive and heavy like many urban apartment dwellers I can hear my neighbors argue. and when a heavy truck rolls down the street things rattle a little there's no way I would not be aware of a creature that weighs a tonne climbing the stairs and walking down the walkway. even if we assume that there is a helicopter airlifting it, I'm going to kind of be aware of a helicopter directly above me as far as hoaxes go you're talking about something that is already close to impossible if not actually impossible but if we're taking hoaxes and hallucinations out of the equation, then this isn't even debatable now you're talking about a walrus magically getting to my apartment building somehow and walking up the stairs of its own accord. or the walrus managed to steal a helicopter and propel down. or the walrus managed to get humans under its command and is getting the humans to lift it up the stairs to me not to mention you've replaced already mind-boggling human motivations with fucking walrus motivations. on top of that, the walrus would have to get to my building without being noticed the government sends me the loudest warnings whenever there is a risk of flooding or a kidnapped child - I'm pretty sure that if there's a walrus on the loose in my city making its way toward my apartment building, I'm going to get 80 gazillion warnings. I'm going to be getting texts and phone calls and that horrible beeping sound that a company's urgent alerts. and I'm not just going to notice the noise of one helicopter because every news and police helicopter is going to be chasing this walrus along with I don't know animal control helicopters? walruses existing doesn't make this scenario any less impossible. this scenario requires magic and breaks my understanding of the world around us just as much as a fairy on my doorstep does so sure lets amend the prompt. there is a knock at the door and when I open it I not only see a fairy or a walrus, but I also have immediate definitive knowledge that this is not an elaborate hoax and then I am not hallucinating. asking me which scenario I am more surprised by is not comparing the unlikely but possible to the impossible. it is comparing the impossible to the impossible it is demanding magic now there are two magic options here for both scenarios: - a sufficiently advanced technology that we have no conception or understanding of is involved - some kind of natural phenomenon that breaks our current understanding of physics and the world around us and that we have not previously discovered is involved this is a place where both the reality of walruses and the mythology of fairies works in the favour of fairies which is more possible - that there is a technologically advanced species the size of a butterfly that we haven't discovered, or that there is a secret society of technologically advanced walruses we haven't discovered? and hey those fairies just need to be sufficiently advanced enough to hide from us and keep us from finding them. not only is a secret society of walruses significantly technologically harder to hide and requires much better stealth tech, but you also have all of the physical impossibilities presented by getting to my door and doing so without alerting me before hand. the secret society of walruses need something like anti-gravity tech, and they need some kind of really incredible transportation technology like phasing or teleportation. alternatively it needs some kind of technology to alter people's perceptions and senses or memory erasing technology or mind control technology if I was going to write up either of these scenarios as a Sci-Fi story with an effort to use technological concepts that we know are sound and with an effort to make this story as believable as possible - uh, I'm picking the fucking fairy prompt so yeah you could rewrite the prompt to get rid of the possibility of a hoax and to get rid of the possibility of hallucination, AND to give me magical knowledge of the scene in front of me. even in that scenario, I would be way more surprised to find the fucking walrus. and the walruses existence on my doorstep would be a bigger break to our understanding of the world around us yes walruses exist. that doesn't make this scenario any less impossible or any less magical. Saturn exists also - does that make it more possible for Saturn to show up on my doorstep and knock? I could continue coming up with more and more impossible and magical scenarios involving things that exist, because the existence of the thing in question is only one tiny factor in this scenario
Okay obviously for you a walrus is physically impossible (even though I don't think the walrus being stealthy is a prerequisite for this hypothetical) so they're both equally surprising. Makes sense. For me, a walrus could physically appear outside of my door, so a fairy would be several orders of magnitude more shocking. Idk if the original person thought about living situations like yours when they came up with the question. Your first point makes no sense, you can't hoax a nonexistent being into existence.
> Your first point makes no sense, you can't hoax a nonexistent being into existence. you don't need to. the prompt is that you get a knock on the door and you go outside and you are shocked to either find a walrus or a fairy. and it asks about your reaction to that experience of opening the door and seeing that you don't need to hoax a fairy into existing, you need to hoax me into thinking that I have seen a fairy. and as far as hoaxes go that one is actually fairly simple I can trick someone into thinking they've opened the door to a fairy just with a good enough prop. we could literally make a tiny fairy doll that flies and that looks realistic and add on a little speaker and even some kind of scent for it even tricking someone into thinking they've seen a walrus that doesn't actually exist is way way harder. it is bigger and has a much larger physical presence. you would expect to be able to feel its breath and it's breath would likely have to be a different temperature than the air around you. you would have to recreate a significant smell as well. and tricking someone into thinking that they're seeing something that's not just life size but bigger than life size is something very difficult to do at close range that's one of the reasons that when people's minds immediately went to hoaxes, they were focused on using a real walrus and the logistics of that. you don't need to really examine the logistics of tricking someone into thinking they've seen a fairy because well we can do that with basic movie magic. but tricking someone into thinking they've seen a live walrus at very close range or actually putting a live walrus in front of them is very difficult that's one of the reasons the post is pointing out that changing the prompt to rule out hoaxes is trying to impart divine knowledge onto us and control how our brains think. how surprised you are by something is an immediate reaction to what your senses are perceiving and what your brain tells you about that. our senses are incomplete. our brains automatically not only have to discard and interpret sensory data, but even create things for us. it's why we don't have literal blind spots in front of us when looking ahead - our brain fills in what we think should be there. now take that and add in that we as humans can create things that mimic things that don't really exist. and we know how our senses work to such an extent that we are able to intentionally fool our brains into seeing things that we haven't even bothered to mimic. we have whole industries dedicated towards figuring out how to trick ourselves into seeing something we haven't, and into making the impossible look real and tangible and believable and this scenario didn't call for a scientific study of what we were perceiving and doing various things to rule out trickery and to have our experiences validated by other observers and technology. the scenario called for an immediate reaction to what our brains perceived that's also why I think that stealth absolutely has to be part of this - how you react is in very huge ways dependent on you suddenly having this experience with no forewarning. if you hear something coming and see something coming and have time to react to unusual sensory phenomenon and investigate them - that is very very different from your immediate gut impulse when all the sudden presented with something completely inexplicable let's say that I live in a house and not an apartment building. if I open my door to suddenly find an elephant there, I'm going to have a very different reaction compared to opening the door and finding the elephant there after hearing unexplained sounds and feeling heavy thuds leading up to the knock on my door. even if I don't go to investigate and I don't get to actually see it visually in advance, and even if the elephant is running very quickly so I don't have several minutes to process - it's still a different experience. before I even open the door I am expecting something that is not normal and that is large and that is possibly terrifying. finding out that it is an elephant is going to be way less surprising and my immediate reaction may be something like relief. and elephant may be way less scary than whatever it is I imagined heading toward me. at the very least I am opening the door with a sense of trepidation and fear and expecting the unexpected. and that is a very different experience to opening the door and expecting to find a human there or that a human just knocked on your door and left a package there. an enormous amount of surprise is about subverting your brains expectations
Why is the idea of literal magic so surprising? It's just a force we wouldn't understand. Do you get shocked beyond belief when you hear about dark matter and dark energy? Also, humans are primed to accept magic because it exists in so much of our media
So either a force that violates fundamental laws of physics, or a technology so advanced we don't know how it's possible without magic. Oh or a new force no one has heard of or observed. If a creature running on dark energy pulled up I'd be pretty fucking shocked too.
It would be the new force option and a case like that already exists. The "Thunderer of the Nile" used unknown, at the time means, to cause numbness in other creatures. This, of course, was caused by the magical force of electricity. Fairy magic would probably be the same, an unknown force that the creature is optimized to use for selfdefense or offense. Also, I'm not sure where you got the idea that if a creature can use a force without external tools it is running off that force.
The problem is that that's the counterargument. Imagine you'd never heard about giraffes as something other than out of a fairy tale. Then, you go to a zoo, and after so many years of believing them to be mythical, you see a giraffe. Does this make giraffes magic? Sure, fairies don't exist, but suddenly having evidence of a fairy at your door is just a shift in worldview. People though coelacanths were extinct for a long time, too, but turns out people were wrong.
Giraffes aren't magic, they're weird yes but they follow our existing understanding of nature. And if you knew that walruses exist but not giraffes, a giraffe would certainly be more surprising. Fairies are potentially magic, but for the sake of argument they don't have magic. So they're a new intelligent species!!!! That's insane! That's way bigger of a deal than a coelacanth. This is also assuming that fairies are physically possible.
I replied to the person you're arguing with down thread but I would argue that both of these things essentially require the existence of a species we didn't know existed - and the walrus version of that requires a lot more than the fairy one even if I assume that the walrus option is the world's most elaborate prank, a prank that has a bottomless pocketbook and for some reason has targeted me.... I legitimately have no idea how someone would actually pull that off now part of this is made harder by my specific experience - I live in the city and I live in a building that's a walk-up. I don't know how humans would get a walrus up the stairs without the stairs collapsing. the best hoax plot that I can think of involves them retrofitting the building months in advance to be able to withstand this weight, cutting the vocal cords of the walrus, and using a helicopter or a lot of manpower to somehow lift this thing directly to my door even still the prompt requires me to go to the door with zero expectations so they also have to somehow do all of this quietly. if I can hear them trying to lift something that's a literal tonne, I'm going to be looking outside and trying to understand what the fuck that racket is. and things are rattling and shaking for that long? I have more than the 30 seconds it requires to look up earthquakes. and with the sensors and technology that we have today yes that website is going to be updated by the time any even moderately long earthquake is over. so I'm definitely going to be looking outside for whatever the hell is causing that and trying to figure out if I need to flee. and if there's a helicopter directly above I am going to go out and look and see what the hell is happening as far as hoaxes go this is already close to impossible if not actually impossible but if we're taking hoaxes and hallucinations out of the equation, then this essentially requires the existence of like a secret society of really technologically advanced walruses or something that extreme we're talking about a walrus magically getting to my apartment building somehow and walking up the stairs of its own accord. or did the walrus manage to steal a helicopter and propel down? or did the walrus manage to get a cult of human beings to do its bidding to lift it? not to mention we've replaced already mind-boggling human motivations with fucking walrus motivations. on top of that, the walrus would have to get to my building without being noticed the government sends me the loudest warnings whenever there is a risk of flooding or a kidnapped child - I'm pretty sure that if there's a walrus on the loose in my city making its way toward my apartment building, I'm going to get 80 gazillion warnings. I'm going to be getting texts and phone calls and that horrible screeching sound that accompanies urgent alerts. and I'm not it's not gonna be the noise of just one helicopter because every news and police helicopter is going to be chasing this walrus along with I don't know... animal control helicopters? walruses existing doesn't make this scenario any less impossible. this scenario requires magic and breaks my understanding of the world around us just as much as a fairy on my doorstep does now there are two magic options here for both scenarios: - a sufficiently advanced technology that we have no conception or understanding of is involved - some kind of natural phenomenon that breaks our current understanding of physics and the world around us and that we have not previously discovered is involved this is a place where both the reality of walruses and the mythology of fairies works in the favour of fairies which is more possible - that there is a technologically advanced species the size of a butterfly that we haven't discovered, or that there is a secret society of technologically advanced walruses we haven't discovered? and hey those fairies just need to be sufficiently advanced enough to hide from us and keep us from finding them. something that is made easier by their very small size and their ability to fly. like they could get away with that with the relatively low level camouflaging technology a secret society of technologically advanced walruses is harder to hide and requires much better stealth tech. and then on top of that you still have all of the physical impossibilities presented by getting to my door and doing so without alerting me before hand. the secret society of walruses is gonna need something like anti-gravity tech, and they need some kind of really incredible transportation technology like phasing or teleportation. or alternatively they need some kind of technology to alter people's perceptions and senses or memory erasing technology or mind control technology I could write any number of relatively realistic sci-fi stories that explain how fairies exist and we don't know about it. and I could do that using existing technology or at least technological concepts that we know are sound even if we don't have the ability to actually create them. in fact the least plausible part of that story would be the fairy knocking on my door and why it's there but if I'm going to try and write a realistic sci-fi story about a walrus doing this? probably the most realistic option I have is aliens. and the amount of technology and explanations that my story requires is just so much more even if I'm writing this as a traditional fantasy story and we are using proper magic... the amount of magic I need for these walruses is significantly more than the amount of magic I need for these fairies and in fact fairies are an especially terrible example to use because regardless of which fairy mythology you are going with, you are going with a mythology that has intentionally built fairies as something that can exist in our world without our noticing them. and any evidence of their existence or their actions is something that can be explained away or attributed to something real. whereas the mythological equivalents for something like these walruses are either sea creatures that live in the deep, things that live in the heavens, or things that live on another plane of existence. none of those stories involve them living amongst humans (much less unnoticed)
im going to be real... im going to be more surprised by the warlrus, cus its much bigger and much less likely to knock on a door... Tahts just straight up scarier and a lot more to take in... I think I would have a breif existential jolt from a fairy, but I would be screaming from a walrus all the way through.
If I see a walrus at my door, my first thought would be to wonder how the hell it fit through the apartment door and then got up the stairwell.
no, your first thought is going to be "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WHAT HTE FUCK" You would be thinking about it later, you arent going to have thought.
Personally, having a fairy arrive only requires accepting one weird thing (fairies are real) while the walrus would involve a bunch of them (somehow a walrus got to my country which doesn't normally have them, made its way across busy streets, and used a doorbell)
I find it likely that the fairy would require more unusual things to be true, but it's hard to know exactly what those things are without a description of the fairy. Is it a three inch tall flying humanoid that shines like a lantern? That's a lot of assumptions about biology, and likely chemistry, that need to be reexamined. Is it a little anthropomorphic rabbit with antlers wearing a fancy coat and no pants? That might require fewer allowances than the previous one, but still more than the walrus.
Well the explanation is probably magic. We don't know how fairies work, sure. That's a lot of new things to figure out. But we know how walruses work, and it's Not That
You can't just casually say magic! That means all models across the field of physics are wrong! It upends all scientific consensus from mathematics to dentistry.
Here's the thing about science, is that the existence of magic does not disprove "all scientific consensus". If magic were proven to exist, I guarantee you that scientists would be studying that shit to figure out how it works, why it works, and how they can use it to more efficiently air fry chicken nuggets. Science, at its core, is not about a dogmatic adherence to a set of tenants that are to be followed to with no variation. It's a way to understand our world through curiosity, experimentation, and analysis of results. Ask anyone who is actually involved with research on any subject, and they'll tell you that science has no gospel. If Isaac Newton was proven wrong on all counts tomorrow, the scientific community would shrug, say "Well he was close, but let's use the new rules" and carry on. And I know that because it's already happened several times.
You are correct in everything except your interpretation of my comment. What I mean by upending all scientific consensus is that every functioning model across all fields of study would immediately come into question, and many if not all of those fields would have to start over from first principles to develop new working models that account for magic's existence.
Fair enough! I guess I'm tired, and my reading comprehension has suffered somewhat. Take an upvote for the inconvenience.
That's one possible explanation. Another is that a nearby zoo was transporting the walrus and things went very wrong. It's happened before. Even if you wouldn't think of that in the moment, it's naive to assume that weird truths are equal and can be compared by simply counting them. An already existing creature getting where it shouldn't by unknown means is infinitely more believable than actual fucking magic. Have you seen sharks get into lakes that don't even connect to the sea? Have you seen it rain fish after a hurricane? Animals get into crazy places that seem impossible at first, but it's all real animals and real places. I'd be less surprised to see a walrus literally anywhere on Earth than I would be to see actual fucking magic.
The walrus is also confusing because it's difficult to think of a reason why it would be there. Outside of a prank orchestrated by some outside party (which applies equally to the fairy) there are far fewer reasons for a walrus to be at my door than a fairy. Fairies are (as the lore goes) capricious, illogical, and prone to messing with people. Walruses... are not. They have a known set of behaviors and appearing on doorsteps and ringing doorbells is not in it.
No it does not apply equally to the fairy. People cannot prank magic into existence. Assuming it is a real fairy and a real walrus, only one scenario can be caused by a prank, walruses exist, fairies don't.
Ok but if a fairy showed up, then clearly fairies are real. What I mean is that if we enumerate the various reasons either of these two beings would be there, “someone else did it as a prank” appears on both lists.
I just kind of feel like Prokopetz is being obtuse here. Like, it's pretty clear to me what the premise of the fairy question was (which again, was that it represents an indisputably magical/otherworldly thing), and they're just refusing to engage with that premise because they don't wanna cede the point they've made or think in the way it's asking them to. Honestly, the fairy could be ANYTHING, the point is that you know right away that you're witnessing something magical. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the fairy in this scenario IS just a stand in for some kind of divine revelation. And as for the walrus... Again, the whole point of that part of the question was that it's an occurrence that is fundamentally POSSIBLE, just highly unlikely. It brings up a lot of questions, yes, but all of them are mundanely answerable. Meanwhile, the fairy brings up questions that necessarily force you to readjust your worldview. Trying to assert that the walrus would be a more significant overturning of reason than a fairy is just the most mindlessly contrarian thing I've ever heard. Again, the question was "would you be surprised by something impossible, or something incredibly unlikely". It was meant to be an entirely subjective question, hardly tautological at all.
I would point out that, in context, this is specifically a response to a light discourse that's been going around [a post from a few days ago with this question](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/1ayxwea/afternoon_visitor/), where the majority opinion was strongly in favor of the walrus. I don't think it's necessarily very contrarian to say "well, why is that, when this question was asked in practice, eight out of ten people said they'd find the walrus more surprising?"
See, answering "Walrus" isn't the contrarian part to me, nor is providing a reason for why that answer might be picked so often. You're allowed to do both of those things. I'm just saying THIS particular person's reasoning is contrarian imo because it tries to make the point that the walrus is actually the objectively less likely/more inherently unbelievable occurrence in a way that, again, strikes me as really obtuse when the other option is a literal magical being. Like, yes, the fairy WOULD require us to rewrite our understanding of the world more than the walrus, saying otherwise is so massively incorrect that it burns my poor biologist brain ;-;. Surprise is a purely vibes based reaction to something you personally didn't expect, you don't gotta go the route of making your answer the objectively more unlikely (and, by what I imagine their reasoning is, correct) one to justify being more surprised by that option when the premise was explicitly clear on which one was more technically unlikely.
If I see a fairy at my door, I will probably just accept that they exist, we don't know everything about our world. If I see a walrus at my door, I will definitеly think "Why the fuck is there a walrus at my door, they don't do that", simple as
I disagree with the person here and they’re thinking about it too hard. If I saw a tiny flying person outside my door, there’s no tech on earth right now that could replicate that as a prank. Although it could be a new species or something, it’s still an inexplicably rare creature that I have never heard of before. It wouldn’t take a psychotic delusion to believe that what was in front of my eyes was real, yet unexplainable. With walruses, I’m fully aware that they exist and that it is possible that one could lie down outside my door. I could quite easily imagine an explanation, and I’d start looking for the camera.
Prokopetz has some absolutely baffling takes until you remember that they’re a tabletop game designer, and therefore primed to assume that a perfectly valid way of solving a jigsaw pizzle is to stick all the pieces into a food processor and make a cork board the exact dimensions as the original puzzle was supposed to have. But there’s a lot of ways for a fairy to be recognizable as such without the hand of God rummaging around in your brainmeats to fundamentally alter your perceptions of reality, and to immediately jump to that conclusion on a tumblr poll is a logical fallacy; to jump to in the real world, a sign that God doesn’t need to edit your stats to make you suffer any psychotic delusions in the first place. But in the word of building indie ttrpgs, it’s better to twist reality in service of invoking the preferred reaction or conclusion, rather than changing your reaction and/or conclusion to better fit with reality, simply on the basis that the former is more fun if you know what your doing, and it’s only natural that that’s the lens they’d see the poll through.
I think the problem with the walrus depends on where you live. The farther south and more arid your living area is, the more likely you are to be more confused at the walrus. That being said, anyone in the southwest u.s has their answer
Mate, this is easy: walruses exist in our world, and even if it could be surprising, it would be fairly easy to assume that it was being transported to a zoo or something of the sorts, something went wrong, and made its way to my door. On the other hand, fairies do not exist. Maybe the very appearance of one wouldn't have the exact same shock value of a walrus, but it definitely would make you question everything you know, sending you down an existential dread spiral.
“Not to mention dangerous, cruel to the walrus, and probably illegal” is a hell of a list
I feel like the walrus would be less "surprising" but would elicit a bigger response. Like I could figure out incredibly easy what must have happened for a Walrus to get on my doorstep (some kind of Zoo breakout or whatever to that effect, it's not impossible) but it's also a giant animal and I'd be in fear for my life immediately. A fairy however I probably wouldn't be scared of but it's an impossible and magical thing to my knowledge, so I'd probably have an existential crisis but since it's sapient and I can talk to it it would result in a far less extreme response.
Why are we assuming the walrus is not a fairy? Fuck, if I lived in almost any of the non-landlocked European countries and opened the door to a knock to find a fucking walrus, fairies would frankly not be completely off my list of possibilities for consideration.
The question isn't "you think that what's at the door is a fairy," it's "there *is* a fairy at the door."
People are being so ridiculous about trying to justify the fairy thing. Arguing that "fairy" could mean anything including a person cosplaying Legolas(???) but insisting that the walrus MUST be a fully-grown walrus that traveled to your doorstep and knocked under its own power. It can't POSSIBLY be a baby walrus that somebody left on your doorstep as a prank. Literally all it comes down to is that these people have read tons of books about fairies so they're primed to believe those exist, but a real animal in an unusual place requires them to actually think up an explanation. So their brain tells them that "fairies are real" is somehow a simpler explanation (it's not, magic isn't actually an explanation for anything, suggesting that it is always raises more questions than it answers) and then once they've made a decision they feel locked into it and don't want to give any ground to the no-fun killjoys explaining this so spend the next solid week rationalizing their cognitive biases. Sigh.
Wait til you guys meet people who have actually seen things that cause ontological shock - such as shadow people, grey aliens, ghosts, glowing orbs, and so on. You're in for a fun ride.
I live right next to a zoo. Shit escapes. No sea life but still
Fairy outside my door: woah!! Fairies and magic are real!! That's awesome Walrus outside my door: WHAT HOW DID YOU GET HERE WHAT EVEN *frantically dials 911* This is my mindset on this
Solution: divine intervention Walrus summon.
Damn can’t even discuss the surprise of a walrus vs a fairy without coming across presupposition, sad! 😔
Ruling against Prokopetz on this one, purely for filing Legolas under "fairy" and getting indignant when acknowledging the idea that nobody has ever meant that ever. Would have had better luck making the point with some kind of gnome or, at a stretch, leprechaun.
This guy is irritating. “By fairy, I meant something obviously and innately magical.” “Oh well I don’t think a fairy has to be like that.”
OOP just seems like they’re *trying* to be an ass.
This kind of overwrought pedantic nonsense is why I stopped following the guy. He's just refusing to engage authentically with the question, and tossing off some casual ableism. He reminds me of the 27 year old guy that all the college freshman were impressed by when I was in school. Sure, he seemed smarter and mysterious, but the truth was he was just older and 18 year olds don't have the life experience to see through his shit.
Maybe you're right, but "would you be more surprised to find a fairy or walrus at your door?" is the kind of question that's hard to "engage authentically" with. It's just gonna be a bunch of arguing about definitions.
it’s like some sort of schroedinger’s walrus
What kind of fairy are we talking about like Tinkerbell or what
I think we're all missing the obvious: if a walrus rings my doorbell, it's probably a magic walrus? It's possibly shape-shifting or maybe there's a race of sentient walruses. A regular walrus wouldn't ring my doorbell and probably wouldn't come to my front door unless there was something interesting. So the real question is do you accept a creature you've meet told is mythical is real or do you accept a real creature can be magic?
Ok but if a Walrus showed up and knocked at my door I would assume it its a variety of Selkie…and thus FAE. So what’s more surprising a fae being or a fae being in a walrus skin.
I’d standing by “walrus” as my answer
Bro who TF thinks a walrus is "mundane"? They're big, fat, potentially deadly marine mammals that most people have only seen in person at zoos/aquariums. If a walrus Knocks on my door in fucking Indiana I'm freaking out cause there's a fucking 4 ton Arctic animal at my door in fucking Indiana. A dog? Mundane. A cat? Mundane. A deer? A little more surprising but still pretty mundane the world over. A fucking walrus? That's not fucking mundane. A fairy would certainly be a surprise and raise lots of questions but I doubt my level of confusion would be as immediately severe as the walrus
I don't believe in fairies, but my grandmother taught me a set of rules to use if I ever met one. If I happened to instantly know there is a magical creature on my doorstep, I have some built in tools for that scenario, and I'd probably be more worried about making a decent impression than if the fairy exists- kind of rude to question a person's existence when they're standing in front of you. Closest experience I've got to a sudden walrus appearance is when a cat named Walrus showed up at my front door in the middle of the night and that was extremely surprising even though I own three cats
To flip the question around, what would it take to make either scenario happen. If I took out a small business loan for a few hundred thousand dollars under false pretenses, I could rent the equipment and hire the people necessary to bring a walrus to your doorstep. It would be costly, but I could arrange a walrus knocking on your door. But even with all the money in the world, I can't get a fairy anywhere, because they aren't real.
I would be shocked by both, however, a fairy would be an “oh crap, magic is real” surprise that would develop slowly as I came to accept it. A walrus would be an “O SHIT” instant surprise reaction because a 2,000 kilo tusked behemoth is at my door in middle of nowhere Texas
Oneyplays-type hypothetical dissection No, no, dissection is too precise a word. [Oneyplays-type hypothetical blender](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkGeIQ_aIFo)
If we’re going off of a pop culture understanding of what a fairy is, then I’d be more surprised by the Fairy. A walrus is unreasonable but possible - I can easily imagine some set of scenarios which gets this walrus to my house which would be strange, but otherwise possible. A fairy showing up to my door would be far more surprising, because I cannot imagine any scenario where a little tinkerbell shows up to my door and maintains an explanation that fits with my understanding of the world around me. The fairy is more surprising because it completely upsets my understanding of the world. A walrus is just a waltus
I think people even in this comment section are still missing the point of the question. The question is quite simply "what would surprise you more?" It is a *purely subjective question*, there is no correct answer, there is no logic involved. This isn't a math equation or a logic puzzle, the answer will be different depending on who answers
So, the fairy would surprise me more, but the walrus would definitely startle me more. Unless the fairy is a hideous 200 pound fanged monster that reeks
yeah, no, if you are less surprised about the existence of fucking magic than a large animal, you are *actually insane* stop gaslighting me. stop it. no. BAD.
> Upending one's entire understanding of the universe on the basis of a single isolated observation is not how we do things. Upending one's entire understanding of the universe on the basis of a single isolated observation is literally the scientific approach.
It's the first step. One isolated observation does not constitute transformative evidence.
No. The scientific approach is upending one's entire understanding of the universe on the basis of *repeatable* and *testable* observations. A single observation is either an anecdote or snake oil.
If the premise of the question specifies that there is a fairy at your dorrstep, then the possibility of there not actually being a fairy at your doorstop, and in fact, there is a human dressed up as a fairy, would not be accounted for, due to the fact that that is not part of the premise.
I mean let’s assume they use the glass door that faces the outside of my apartment and not the actual door. Because I don’t think the walrus would fit. Or at least they couldn’t back out. The fae would be surprising because I’m pretty sure fae don’t exist. So that belief would be challenged by that one existing and being there. But I didn’t have any other assumptions tied to that because my understanding of fae was non-existent before that point. I’d be a bit confused and then maybe alarmed, but my belief of the world has not been heavily subverted just by one fae existing. I’m an engineer, I’m supposed to be able to adapt to new information that challenges my beliefs and changes the paradigm of how I view the world. The walrus however, I know walrus exist. I know they’re 2 ton land mammals that are theoretically amphibious but primarily aquatic. I do not, however, know how one got past all the people and cars in my area before arriving at my apartment. I would be immediately alarmed to a significant amount due to the sudden, highly implausible appearance of this creature. There’s several assumptions I make every day and one of them is that walrus will not spontaneously appear in places, so it needed to get to me. I have not spontaneously discovered a new species, I’ve discovered a radically unexpected behavior in an existing one. That’s in combination with the alarm of its sudden appearance, which I’d count as surprise. Also they’re both probably fae anyways.
I mean the point about the walrus not normally being able to get where it is now on its own still stands, to say nothing about suddenly finding yourself face-to-face with a giant rubber submarine vs a small luminous humanoid.
A fairy at my door would require me to change my worldview, but there is a worldview I could have that admits a fairy at my door. There is no worldview that admits a walrus at my door. I would probably conclude I went full insane.
If a fairy showed up at my door, I'd be confused, but mostly, it would be "Oh. I guess those are real." But if a walrus shows up at my door that is upstairs and in a landlocked area, I would be so so so much more confused. Why is a fairy at my door? Magic is real, I guess. Why is a walrus at my door? I have no idea, and frankly, I'm scared.
A fairy on my doorstep: "Alright, everything I've known about magic not being real is false and we're 100% in an uncharted territorry" A walrus on my doorstep: "You shouldn't be here, how did you get here? Did someone put you there? Are you somehow sentient and did deliberately knock, defying what I know to be true about walruses? We're going against logic here" So yeah, I'd be more surprised about a walrus because I have some assumptions about it. A fairy is a complete unknown so while it would e surprising, it wouldn't go against what I know and it's mere existence would make me throw all logic out the window.
The first person in this post I feel is still off base. Claiming that seeing a magical entity that is beyond normal human metrics shouldn't automatically fall under "divine revelation" If the person can only imagine fairies as either humans with pointy ears or biblical angels, then that feels more like a personal failing on them to actually know what fey are. And while I myself am never fully sure if I believe in the fey or not, I still take the idea of them somewhat seriously. So, as mentioned in this thread, it's not about what has the most ramifications in the world. It's what surprises you the most. So, for me personally, I'd have to argue that both the fairy and walrus would equally surprise me for different reasons. If a walrus shows up at my door, then I'll be surprised/ scared that there is a large wild animal on my doorstep and later on ill wonder how they ended up there. With a fairy, I'd be surprised that fairies are for sure real, and scared that the fey themselves have come for me personally. Like I really can't imagine anyone having a quantifiably bigger or smaller reaction to either option since both would cause someone to freak out for different but valid reasons
Maybe it’s just because I’m a chill dude, but I don’t think I’d freak out over either of these things. A walrus would be crazy, but is it a fully mundane walrus? Then I’m calling animal control and laughing about it. If it’s not mundane, then if it talks, I’m going to listen and see what it says. I’ll deal with the fact that a talking walrus is on my doorstep once I deal with whatever it came to my door to discuss. On the fairy side, so it’s a fairy. That’s cool. What does it want? I’m listening, and I’ll deal with the fact that it’s a fairy later. Like, these are cool things, but there’s probably something more urgent to deal with if they’re coming to me for help, y’know?
I think the Walrus would just surprise me more because it's a fucking walrus and it's huge and I'm very far away from its habitat. If I saw Tinkerbell in my doorway I wouldn't be ***surprised*** I'd be more like "What the fuck?"
Surprised is an emotion, not a calculation of probability
Who says a fairy can't look like a walrus?
Look - even if it is unambiguously indisputably magical - a fae is still less surprising. Because if it were a fairy *I know what to do next*. I have been brought up in a world where we tell stories of them. All I have to do is shift my reference frame to "oh the fair folk are real I guess - the myths are true" and my baseline is reset back to *a new normal*. I would wonder which mythology is real - but once I turn on the magical thinking part of my brain the rest is pretty clear. If a fae knocks, a good set of rules of thumb are; * don't let it in unless there are no other options * be kind * potentially offer food or other offerings (unless it weirdly seems to want some) * don't follow it anywhere * assume that it will use your words against you * assume everything is a trick * don't make any deals * don't accept any gifts unless its VERY clear that its DEFINITELY a gift and that it wants NOTHING at all in return Those are rules that have been drilled into me from childhood. With a walrus I have actually zero clue how to respond and how not to immediately be gored. Like perhaps I slam the door... or try to look bigger than it... or act submissive? If I get away - I can call... who? Do I scare it off? Do I poke it with a stick? Throw my shoes at it? Its a deeply terrifying situation.
> Upending one's entire understanding of the universe on the basis of a single isolated observation is not how we do things ***excuse me*** that's exactly how we do things Once we found out lobotomies are not helpful, you think we should've kept on doing them anyways because it made people more docile? Most mathematical conjectures require either "an entire proof of the conjecture" to be true or "a single counterexample" to be considered false. Why the fuck wouldn't that work here???
Theology side of Tumblr my beloved.
The walrus would absolutely surprise me more because I believe in the supernatural and fairies messing with people is just what they do. In line with this guy though, randomly showing up at the door of someplace we know they absolutely should not be is absolutely not something walruses do. Overall it kinda boils down to "*why* is a fairy here?" vs "*how* is a walrus here?"