# Summa Contra Hieros *The Urth list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 14 Jul 2008* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Dan'l Danehy-Oakes *14 Jul 2008, 15:46* When you come right down to it. Isn't what the Hiero-Foos are doing, the same thing Mr. Million/Maitre/Number 5 do, only on a cosmic scale? Rather than warping their own children to ensure their own repetition they are warping entire cosmic cycles to do so. If what the Line of Millions do in "Cerberus" is wrong, then what the Hiero-Foos do is insanely wrong. ``` Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant ----- http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer http://www.danehyoakes.com I once absend-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce. -- T. Pratchett ``` --- ### b sharp *14 Jul 2008, 18:36 · follows Dan'l Danehy-Oakes* Dan'l Danehy-Oakes posts: > When you come right down to it. > Isn't what the Hiero-Foos are doing, > the same thing Mr. Million/Maitre/Number 5 do, > only on a cosmic scale? > Rather than warping their own children to ensure their own repetition > they are warping entire cosmic cycles to do so. > If what the Line of Millions do in "Cerberus" is wrong, > then what the Hiero-Foos do is insanely wrong. Hah! DDO, you'll get no argument from me. Personally I tend to value the results of natural selection over carefully planned and engineered products. But forced as I am to play Angel's Advocate I must say no, the Hiero-foos are superhuman and know just what the results of their tampering will be. Mr. Million was human (originally) and (obviously) did not know what the results of his experiments would be. Gosh, his offspring are so much meaner than he is. I guess nurture matters after all ;-). _________________________________________________________________ The i’m Talkaton. Can 30-days of conversation change the world? http://www.imtalkathon.com/?source=EML_WLH_Talkathon_ChangeWorld --- ### Paul B *14 Jul 2008, 19:38 · in reply to b sharp* You persist in making unwarranted assumptions. Tzadkiel says, and I doubt you'll claim he's lying in this case, that he made a probabilistic guess about Severian, which did indeed turn out right. Ergo, even a Hierogrammate's foresight is not perfect. If you intend on making unusual claims about various properties of the Hierogrammates, be it angel-hood or omniscience, please substantiate them with some references. Paul > On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 2:36 PM, b sharp wrote: > > Dan'l Danehy-Oakes posts: >> When you come right down to it. >> Isn't what the Hiero-Foos are doing, >> the same thing Mr. Million/Maitre/Number 5 do, >> only on a cosmic scale? >> Rather than warping their own children to ensure their own repetition >> they are warping entire cosmic cycles to do so. >> If what the Line of Millions do in "Cerberus" is wrong, >> then what the Hiero-Foos do is insanely wrong. > Hah! DDO, you'll get no argument from me. Personally I tend to value > the results of natural selection over carefully planned and engineered > products. > > But forced as I am to play Angel's Advocate I must say no, the Hiero-foos > are superhuman and know just what the results of their tampering will be. > Mr. > Million was human (originally) and (obviously) did not know what the > results > of his experiments would be. Gosh, his offspring are so much meaner than > he > is. I guess nurture matters after all ;-). > > > _________________________________________________________________ > The i'm Talkaton. Can 30-days of conversation change the world? > http://www.imtalkathon.com/?source=EML_WLH_Talkathon_ChangeWorld > _______________________________________________ ---