#walrus fairy

[walmart-the-official]

reblogs for greater sample size always appreciated

[3hobbitsinatrenchcoat]

This fine fellow just knocked politely on my door. What do I do?

[jeida-chi]

Was talking about the Fairy VS walrus poll with some friends which led to "but what about a walrus dressed as a fairy?" and so this was born 😌

[fancykraken]

insp

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

I mean, here's what's realistically gonna happen.

If I see a fairy at my door, it's just gonna be like. "Wait, what is this". Fairies are small, so there's no real ... presence to them. They're just tiny! Unless they're human-sized, in which case my first impression is "what's this cosplayer doing here." I'd be more confused than anything else.

If this fairy cast a spell which imparted knowledge into my brain, well, I mean first of all, if it could do that, it could give me all the surprise it wanted. But the option on the poll wasn't "fairy surrounded by an aura which will destroys your brain and increases your level-of-surprise to an arbitrary level", it was "fairy". Of course, if it merely bewitched me with a spell that caused me to believe anything that it said, and said "I am a fairy, and I am real" ... well, I certainly wouldn't have any reason to doubt it after the spell wore off! I'd definitely have to lie down for a bit, it'd be a great big mind-bender that I'd have to unpack for a while, and it's certainly shocking. But once the initial shock has worn off, and it's gotten what it wanted out of the conversation, like ... okay, I'll just have to deal with that now. I didn't know fairies were real until a minute ago, so I can't make any definitive statements about how they work. This might as well happen.

(I also disagree with the idea I've seen third-hand that if you're less-surprised by the fairy, you're gullible and superstitious or whatever. In the scenario described by the poll, fairies are real! This hypothetical scenario is one in which they actually exist! It is reasonable to believe in something which is genuinely real when you see it with your own eyes! *cackle*cackle*cackle* Hiiihihihihihihih! ... sorry.)

Whereas with a walrus, my thought process is gonna be "HOLY SHIT IT'S A WALRUS", since walruses are big and instinctively potentially dangerous. And walroids have a very clearly defined set of behaviors, which does not include knocking on doors, and a highly specific range of locations where you'll find them, which does not have any overlap with landlocked houses, let alone the umpteenth floor of an apartment building, which means that my next several questions are going to be "HOW!? WHY??? WHAT." in no particular order.

[catschimericalcreations]

Walrus Fairy modified TY Beanie Babies hybrid plush by Cat's Chimerical Creations

Like what I do? Please consider supporting me here: https://ko-fi.com/catschimericalcreations

[melancholia-ennui]

So the thing that I find fascinating about the ongoing debates around the "walrus vs fairy" poll is how much it reveals about the ways people reason and argue, and how those break down.

Like, on the one hand, I'm #teamwalrus, but the ways that some walrus voters argue about this poll are so hilariously disingenuous. "What if the 'fairy' is a gay man?" "What if it's Halloween?" "What if it's a medieval fae that just looks like some guy?" "What if I'm hallucinating?" - shut up shut up that's not the point and you goddamn know it. The question is only interesting at all if both the walrus and the fairy are instantly and equally recognisable as such. Otherwise you're just dodging the question. (As an aside, this is why I advocate for imagining the fairy as a kind of Tinkerbellish pixie creature, as this has all the desired instant recognisability and acts as a kind of opposite to the vastness of the walrus.)

On the other hand, a lot of fairy voters put forward the argument that "a fairy is impossible". But here's the thing: this represents a fundamental failure to adjust your beliefs under counterfactuals. If a fairy is knocking on your door, that fact in itself proves more or less definitionally that a fairy knocking on your door is not impossible in the possible world of the question, irrespective of your beliefs about the actual world, because it just happened.

And this is really where my walrus vote comes from, because the question was never "what is more probable (given your beliefs about the world", but "what would surprise you more".

If a fairy is knocking at my door, then yes, I have been fundamentally wrong in some assumption about what sort of things exist in the world - but otherwise, the fairy is behaving exactly as I would expect a fairy to behave, given what I have been told in fictional contexts about the behaviours of fairies. It would shake my world-view, force me to re-evaluate a lot of what I believe, but it wouldn't elicit surprise so much as confusion, self-doubt, and perhaps some existential dread.

By contrast, a walrus on my doorstep would be deeply surprising. There is not a single walrus in captivity in my country, so it must have come from the wild somehow. I do live by the sea, but I'm on a first floor flat with a locked door to the building, at the top of a hill, and on the other side of some flood defences relative to the water. While the walrus does not make me question any of my ontological beliefs, it does fundamentally undermine almost everything I believe about walruses, where they can be and what they do, which altogether will elicit much more surprise, emotionally, than a mere previously-thought-to-be-impossibility.

The issue with getting hung up on "but a fairy is impossible" is that to me it seems to function primarily as a kind of thought-terminating cliche. Because if there is a fairy knocking at your door, then obviously a fairy is not impossible, or else it wouldn't be knocking.

What I find interesting is how this really highlights how much people get emotionally invested once the category of "impossibility" is introduced - so much so that they extend that category across all possible worlds, even when the modal/counterfactual structure of the question clearly indicates that doing so undermines the entire premise of the question.

(Honestly, I could go on here about the ways in which the category of "impossible" circumscribing rational considerations impacts other areas of thought, especially politics, but this ramble has already gone on long enough and I don't want to derail it even more. Suffice to say that this seems to be a very general thought pattern, that once someone becomes invested in some sense in something being "impossible", this will, unless they are very careful, permanently colour every consideration they have about that something, often even over and above evidence to the contrary of this impossibility.)

[ass-deep-in-demons]

@staff we need a fairy🧚‍♀️/walrus🦭 tumblr badge

[oi-lucy]

[juststarsandthemoon]

the question of the poll was 'which would make you more confused' Just because a walrus is more LIKELY does not mean I would be less confused than if i saw a fairy. I know what a fairy is, I HAVE NEVER SEEN A WALRUS

[elevenmayfieldz]

For clarification, they keep their original features. They both have tusks and wings.

[dizzyhslightlyvoided]

Re: walrus vs. fairy:

"The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something which works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say, 'Yes, but he or she simply wouldn't do that.'"

"Well, it happened to me today, in fact," replied Kate.

"Ah yes," said Dirk, slapping the table and making the glasses jump, "your girl in the wheelchair - a perfect example. The idea that she is somehow receiving yesterday's stock market prices apparently out of thin air is merely impossible, and therefore must be the case, because the idea that she is maintaining an immensely complex and laborious hoax of no benefit to herself is hopelessly improbable. The first idea merely supposes that there is something we don't know about, and God knows there are enough of those. The second, however, runs contrary to something fundamental and human which we do know about. We should therefore be very suspicious of it and all its specious rationality."

-- Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul

[mirnsey]

What is going on.. why are there so many knocks on my door?? Why do i hear walrus noises and why is pixie dust falling under the door??..

[felseal]

POV: You're a walrus

(not my art, this is from a drawception game)