Topic: WCDT Strips 3011-3015 (27 - 31 July 2015) (Read 42487 times)

Thrillho · « **Reply #200 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 00:56 »

Every trend has the few that get sadly dragged along by mistake - the man bun is more than a hairstyle, it is an insignia, along with appalling tribal tattoos.

BenRG · « **Reply #201 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 01:35 »

Thinking about it, I'm wondering if the APex 7M chassis is being used outside of its normal intended function. Maybe the APex was designed for a relatively sedentary occupation like receptionist-bot or PA-bot. Actually walking around, going up and down stairs and the like were not part of the intended function of the chassis. As for running? Forget about it!

P.S.
I just wanted to add that I really liked the art in Monday's strip. It did an excellent job of communicating a busy street scene with a lot of movement behind Sven and Hannelore as they walked along the road. Maybe I'm not as discerning as others but I've got to say that I've never seen the art problems that others have claim to have detected in Jeph's visual work of late.

katsmeat · « **Reply #202 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 02:44 »

Though would she have to shut down for head removal? If not, she could do an awesome Marie Antonette at fancy dress parties.

Kugai · « **Reply #203 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 03:24 »

But wouldn't be easy for her to download a program to llearn to dance?

Zebediah · « **Reply #204 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 03:52 »

The lack of dancing ability, the low movement rate, and the poor stair-climbing ability may all be related. I'm suspecting that there are significant design flaws in the legs of that chassis.

Akima · « **Reply #205 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 04:22 »

Momo dancing.

Quote from: T on 29 Jul 2015, 19:58

Six km/h is just walking speed, not even walking fast. It is slower than those electric scooters for old people.

Yeah, but those scooters are capable of well above walking pace (depending on the model and speed setting). Many are capable of over 10km/h (around 3m/s), leading to questions about their safety on pedestrian footpaths. I can walk six kilometres in an hour (three laps of a 2km circuit round streets near my home, as measured with my bicycle GPS), but it is definitely a brisk walk for me.

ReindeerFlotilla · « **Reply #206 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 04:24 »

I argued previously that uploading new skill to an AI in the QC verse is nontrivial.

Think of it this way. A baby is basically a blank slate, though that's not quite accurate. The human brain does not fully wire until 4 months after birth (this makes sense. Our brains are friggin huge, and having them finish growing after they've passed through mom's bits is actually reasonably nice to mom. Our oversized heads still cause issues there, but I can only assume they would be worse if we had even bigger heads). So that baby is more like the ingredients to make a blank slate.

The tricky bit is that there are pretty much no instructions on how to make the slate or what to write on it. There are rules. If A then B. Amazingly, these simple rules generate enormous complexity. The notable thing about that complexity is that it is all that baby's. Yours is totally different.

Let's say you could copy your brain to software. It would then be a faithful electronic avatar of you. Let's say you also had a copy of my brain. If you could identify the patterns in my brain that represented my wicked keen knowledge of ISO 9001, and put them in your avatar, the result wouldn't make a damn bit of sense. Because those representations are unique to me. It's a software code that only makes sense in my "OS."

But let's take a physical skill. Let's say we could abstract it somehow so that your avatar was simply given the instructions on how to move. Your brain is holographic. The only way to get that info in there as an innate skill would be to be able to read and understand your OS. But the only thing that can read that is you, or an exact copy of you. So the high-level abstraction would be about as good as a youtube video of how to do that thing. The only way you could learn to do it is by practice.

Consider the psychedelic paintings created by Google's image search AI. It might be that the folks at Google have too much free time, but that's not the case here. Image search is a group of neural networks. These networks are self-organized. All they had were simple rules. They programmed themselves. No one knows exactly how they do what they do. The image creation thing was a means to test what they know. Sure, if you ask the AI to find pictures of dogs, it does a fairly good job. But what does it think a dog looks like? The only way to know was to ask it to draw pictures of dogs (or more accurately, give it a picture of random noise and tell it, "There are dogs here. Find them," then each neural net layer does its level best to find the dogs, with layer 1 feeding its output to layer 2 and so on). One of the interesting results they got was that AI thought that dumbell weights had human arms attached to them.

Let's say Bing has it own, home grown net. And that net knows that dumbell weights are two masses connected by a pole of some kind and that human arms are something else. Even if you could isolate exactly what code "knows" this and give it google's AI, google's couldn't use it. To learn that arms are not dumbells, it has to practice the art of finding dumbells in arbitrary pictures that contain dumbells.

That Momo can't DL "dance" (which was a skill I used as an example, and one assumes she would to remove her secret shame) implies that she's a neural net and that no one understands her program. If we assume that there is an Ur-Momo, that she is copy of, then we must assume that the self-organizing method she uses to think and learn rewrites her network such that any copies of her would rapidly become unique people who can no longer share schemas.

Getting into odd spaces, we know she has drivers. It might possible to execute code that would tell her drivers to dance for her, but then she would not be dancing. She'd be a puppet in her own body. I'm guessing that AIs in the QCverse find that distasteful, if it is even possible.

snubnose · « **Reply #207 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 07:18 »

Actually, since dancing is mostly about technique only, if Momo had a normal processor aside from her neural net, she can download programs into that quite easily.

The normal processor would then be able to give her positive or negative response, depending upon how well or not so well she would dance, thus enable her neural net to learn dancing - quite quickly, most likely. She would have a "perfect" teacher that could correct any error.

The normal processor could also do general computations much faster than her neural nets, so its reasonable to assume that she would have such a processor anyway.

Even human brains kind of have such a processor, though we cant use it for mathematical processing. Its the cerebellum. It contains a lot more computational cells than other parts of the brain, but its function seem to be much more automatized and mechanical, unable for creativity. Interestingly there are people who dont have a cerebellum who still seem to be able to live quite normally.

Once Momo would have learned the basics, she could turn the program off again and turn creative with her neural net.

ReindeerFlotilla · « **Reply #208 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 07:43 »

It's not that easy, though. Not because it couldn't be, in theory, but because we have a fact. Momo, like Phil Collins, can't dance (whether she can sing is unknown).

If self=aware AI existed, we could fully judge the realism of the assertion that this is an issue such that it is her secret shame. They don't, so it's still SciFi. So then we have to ask if it is plausible SciFi. Based on what we know about neural nets, it is.

Based on what we know about Momo's subjective experience of the world (she explained it) she doesn't actually have "computer speed" versus the human mind. She thinks as fast as we do.

So, while any of us could learn to dance (assuming working legs), even with a perfect teacher, it would take time.

Now, I would say that the fact that Momo can't dance suggests she doesn't have the means to perform the trick you suggest, but if she did, the evidence of QC would suggest that she would only have a slight advantage over a human in terms of learning speed. This would be an investment of time. As I argued wrt to robot welders, the evidence of QC suggests that AI are like us. They pick and choose what they want to invest time in, and it seems likely, secret shame or not, it actually not high on Momo's priority list to be a better dancer.

BenRG · « **Reply #209 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 07:58 »

Dancing perfectly to rhythm is a skill that can be taught and, one assumes, be encoded. Momo could indeed download a program to help her dance perfectly. However, it would look exactly what it is, a robot following a pre-encoded sequence of movements to a certain tempo. What she lacks (and a lot of people do) is the natural aptitude to dance from the heart.

katsmeat · « **Reply #210 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 08:25 »

Quote from: snubnose on 30 Jul 2015, 07:18

Actually, since dancing is mostly about technique only, if Momo had a normal processor aside from her neural net, she can download programs into that quite easily.

The normal processor would then be able to give her positive or negative response, depending upon how well or not so well she would dance, thus enable her neural net to learn dancing - quite quickly, most likely. She would have a "perfect" teacher that could correct any error.

This. I am actually a registered, Level One Snowboard instructor. Teaching would be trivial if I could download into people's brains a program that did perfect carve turns. Then they could be a meat-puppet passenger observing the exact muscle movements and micro-weight shifts needed to get it all to work.

Without that, I'm reduced to things like - "knee apart, try to imagine there's a beach-ball between you knees, now try to imagine you've got a really heavy shopping bag in your leading hand, and you're pushing your front knee out and putting the bag down next to your front toe, while keeping your back straight." etc etc etc. Essentially it's difficult to communicate to people how to do a lengthy series of subtle, hard to describe, motor actions. And even if the instructor manages that, it's difficult for the inexperienced pupil to remember the sequence when barreling down the hill.

Actually, sometimes I think people really ignore me. And just work out how to start turning, and stop falling over by trial and error.

ReindeerFlotilla · « **Reply #211 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 09:16 »

I certainly believe it would help, but I still maintain that Momo's neural net would have wire in dance in a manner similar to mine. She could become better at it a little faster, but since she doesn't think faster that 100 hours of practice to reach basic, and 10000 hours to master become 90 and 9000 respectively.

To riff on ski instruction without talking about skiing, how much thought do you put into driving your car?

I don't put in any, myself. I buckle in, start her up and roll. If I want to turn, the car turns. Stop? It stops. There's actually a complex bit of signaling and feedback going on. That information is interpreted by skill I have. Skills I've developed over a long history of driving. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.

Wait, not those skills.

Anyway. The difference between a n00b skier and a level one instructor is probably the same. I mean, you've probably got a better level of skill. I'm actually pretty damned good at driving, but if spend too much time thinking about what I'm doing, I get in my own way. As an instructor, you can probably think about what you're doing without significant degradation in performance.

N00bs have to think about it. Even if they had instant kinesthetic sense download of what feels right, they still have to think their way through to that place. You don't. You can, as Nike said, just do it. Just like I just drive.

None of this even gets into the possibility that Momo's lack of skill is a consequence of the fundamental structure of her net. That she happens to be wired for two left feet, as it were. I still believe she could learn, but to suddenly replace that basic config with skill would necessarily turn her into a different person. Frankly, learning skill the human way changes humans into different people. But the change is gradual enough that a sense of continuity is preserved. I'm not sure that continuity would remain if you could just upload a new mental map for "dance," especially if your basic map was shitty in that area. One has to ask why you are wired that way, and what it's doing for you.

Ultimately, I still think that, no matter what hack you come up with, there is only one way for Momo to overcome this lack. The same way any other human does. Because, AI or regular I, they are all human. At least mentally. I think that if you find a way to instantly load new maps into their nets, they would necessarily become someone else, pretty much instantly.

T · « **Reply #212 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 11:51 »

Quote from: Akima on 30 Jul 2015, 04:22

Momo dancing.

Quote from: T on 29 Jul 2015, 19:58
Six km/h is just walking speed, not even walking fast. It is slower than those electric scooters for old people.
Yeah, but those scooters are capable of well above walking pace (depending on the model and speed setting). Many are capable of over 10km/h (around 3m/s), leading to questions about their safety on pedestrian footpaths. I can walk six kilometres in an hour (three laps of a 2km circuit round streets near my home, as measured with my bicycle GPS), but it is definitely a brisk walk for me.

From about.com

Easy Health Walk: If you take an easy walk around the neighborhood or park, able to keep up a full conversation, use 3 miles per hour or 5 kilometers per hour as a rule of thumb.

Moderate to Brisk Walk: If you are walking at a determined to swift pace and breathing noticeably, use 4 miles per hour or 6.5 kilometers per hour.

Fast Walking: Fast walkers usually know their speed or have measured it. Racewalkers can walk 5-6 miles per hour or even faster. That is 8-10 kilometers per hour.

So she can walk faster than a relaxing walk in the park, almost as fast as a kid going to school but not as fast as someone late to work and certainly not capable of anything close to running.

She probably have a very light body lacking powerful electric motors. Probably as powerful as an adorable old lady

Rghfrgl · « **Reply #213 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 15:06 »

More like Slowmo

(click to show/hide)

Zebediah · « **Reply #214 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 18:31 »

Argh. Comic is not-up. Meaning the page for the new comic is up, but the image isn't displaying.

Method of Madness · « **Reply #215 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 19:45 »

He posted it on his tumble thing.

(click to show/hide)

Penquin47 · « **Reply #216 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 20:54 »

Seems to be fixed, worked just fine for me just now.

Method of Madness · « **Reply #217 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 20:55 »

No new AG though.

chaospersonified · « **Reply #218 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 20:59 »

"Mouth is a white void, unclear how he ingests objects"

I love this one descriptor so much, it is unreasonable.

Game and Watch Forever · « **Reply #219 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 21:02 »

So wait... only two of his appendages are meant for jacking off? I don't know if I'm more surprised or disappointed...

chaospersonified · « **Reply #220 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 21:14 »

Quote from: Game and Watch Forever on 30 Jul 2015, 21:02

So wait... only two of his appendages are meant for jacking off? I don't know if I'm more surprised or disappointed...

Personally, I'm disappointed that wasn't an afterthought added to literally every limb Pintsize could potentially use to pleasure himself, which is to say, every fucking one, because it's goddamn Pintsize, the Houdini of masturbation.

Omega Entity · « **Reply #221 on:** 30 Jul 2015, 22:15 »

For all we know, he has hidden limbs explicitly for that purpose.

Wooloomooloo · « **Reply #222 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 00:23 »

Actually, about that "Unclear how he handles and manipulates objects" - I'm pretty sure I do know how. You're not gonna believe this, but... using coffee! Turns out, a balloon filled with coffee conforms to most simple objects then hardens around them when you apply vacuum: http://phys.org/news/2010-10-robotic-gripper-coffee-balloons.html

...but how did Jeph know this so many years ago ?!?

Perfectly Reasonable · « **Reply #223 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 00:45 »

Quote from: hedgie on 29 Jul 2015, 23:10

Actually, the 250mA has been canon even before she upgraded her chassis:

http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1995

It annoyed me then too. Canon and consistent, yes. That's not the same thing as being reasonable. 250 ma is laughable. 250 volts makes more sense. Not something I really want to debate, anyway. (I mean, shooting eels out of unspecified orifices?)

WRT today's comic, why don't we have a Pintsize T-shirt: "I am full of delicious porn" ?

pwhodges · « **Reply #224 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 01:09 »

Quote from: Perfectly Reasonable on 31 Jul 2015, 00:45

250 ma is laughable. 250 volts makes more sense.

250mA is deadly. And as for the voltage, in high impedance situations she presumably provides what it takes! 250V is small beer.

katsmeat · « **Reply #225 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 01:27 »

I always figured his limbs were advanced versions of the coffee-ground manipulators that were announced a few years ago....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86G9DLJEagw

Probably would be quite good for spanking the USB port.

snubnose · « **Reply #226 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 02:51 »

Quote from: Perfectly Reasonable on 31 Jul 2015, 00:45

250 ma is laughable.

Thats enough to kill a person.

About 1-5 mA is the sensation barrier.

About 5-10 mA are enough that you can no longer get rid of the cable shocking you. Its also the level at which it starts getting painful.

About 50-100 mA and your life is in danger, because the heart will start to fibrillate and you can no longer breathe.

About 200 mA will cause unconsciousness, severe burns and damage to internal organs. The heart will stop beating; on the bright site it also wont fibrillate anymore.

All these values are approximations because if you have stronger muscles, you can actually handle more shock and are better at fighting back. Thats also why men are on average can handle current better than women.

Also, AC is worse than DC.

pwhodges · « **Reply #227 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 04:24 »

Quote from: snubnose on 31 Jul 2015, 02:51

Also, AC is worse than DC.

My understanding is that in practice DC was considered more dangerous than AC, because the muscles are more likely to seize up and hold on to the source of the shock rather than letting go.

bhtooefr · « **Reply #228 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 05:13 »

Seeing the sparks being thrown in previous comics, I'd say sane values are 300 kV and 10 mA. Apparently police tasers are somewhere around 50 kV and 2.1 mA, FWIW, but Momo's system isn't just intended to incapacitate, it's intended explicitly to knock an attacker back.

Method of Madness · « **Reply #229 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 05:26 »

Obviously she shows restraint, but just because it's a ridiculous amount doesn't mean she's not capable of it.

bhtooefr · « **Reply #230 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 05:36 »

Except she demonstrably doesn't show restraint.

See http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1474 - she fires the weapon in sheer annoyance at her companion. That's not a controlled reaction, and that's probably at full power. Marigold would have been dead if it weren't for her computer being a better path to ground, if she were capable of 250 mA.

While Jeph has shown a character plotting first-degree murder of her friends (Hannelore in 1576), I really don't think Jeph would show a character attempting either second-degree murder or involuntary manslaughter (1474 could go either way, although it'd likely lean towards involuntary manslaughter) of one of her friends. Therefore, Momo's not capable of 250 mA.

Method of Madness · « **Reply #231 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 05:51 »

I'm pretty sure that's not her full power.

Neko_Ali · « **Reply #232 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 06:15 »

Oddly enough, you can take a swing at people out of annoyance without it being a lethal blow. And if it is intentionally that a civilian model chassis has an onboard weapon capable of lethal discharges I would imagine that it has safety precautions to prevent them from using full power without deliberately turning off those safeties. I personally would make it at least a two step process to increase the amperage. 'stun' to 'dangerous' to 'lethal'. That way even if you do get an accidental discharge it won't mean homicide. Also, computers are a lot more sensitive to electrical and static discharges. A shock that would barely register to a human can easily fry a motherboard, popping capacitors and releasing the magic smoke that makes it work.

ReindeerFlotilla · « **Reply #233 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 07:22 »

You're right, Spock. The local fauna might be more dangerous than I thought. Set Momos to stun.

BenRG · « **Reply #234 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 10:58 »

It's rare that I say it but... Didn't like it. Hurried, unfunny and a bit too self-referential.

Method of Madness · « **Reply #235 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 11:00 »

I agree with hurried, but the other two I don't agree (ok, it is self-referential, but not too self-referential). But to be fair I'll take this over nothing, considering he's busy with con shit.

ReindeerFlotilla · « **Reply #236 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 11:36 »

Got to agree with BenRG on a critical level. If you look at Bubbles, Momo, Pintsize as a three part gage, the joke peaked at Momo. Humor and a bit of the unexpected. Pintsize was utterly predictable.

Knowing nothing of what Jeph might say on the subject, May would have been a better choice, just because we know a lot less about her. Or Pintsize could work if there had been a point made (and one of the gags) that was unexpected, or twisted what we knew into a new shape. The theory of humor being the violation of expectation. Pintsize's spec sheet offered nothing new and nothing from a new POV.

That's a purely critical look, given an artist, myself. As a producer of art, I know how fucking hard it can be to spit out regular high-quality stuff, and I acknowledge that this is free stuff. That said, I don't think being critical of whether the joke was sold or not is actually incompatible with otherwise supporting the joker. In fact, I suspect it's a good thing when not taken to the point of malice. And In my limited time here, BenRG has proven to be far from malicious. Rather he's what I'd call a super fan, in a carefully thought out way.

That's just my POV.

Method of Madness · « **Reply #237 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 12:02 »

Yeah, I can support that. Also, I sincerely hope that my post wasn't taken as telling him off for doing so (and I certainly hope nobody took it as speaking as a mod), I just happened to find it kind of amusing as a silly follow-up gag.

ReindeerFlotilla · « **Reply #238 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 12:07 »

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply you were telling him off. I just got on a roll with the idea that you can criticize what you love and still respect it in the morning.

Method of Madness · « **Reply #239 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 12:23 »

Of course! And I didn't mean to imply that you were...ok, this is going to go in an infinite courtesy loop if I don't cut this off here, haha. But yeah, we're all good

Kugai · « **Reply #240 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 15:26 »

*Draws line underneath*

I think that this one may have been a bit rushed on Jephs part. It's funny, but it's not up to his usual standard.

Zebediah · « **Reply #241 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 15:33 »

So this one was below average. Big deal. It happens once in a while. The flip side of that is that every once in a while we get something epic like "I END MESSES."

Kugai · « **Reply #242 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 15:48 »

That's why I think it was a rush job. It's good, but not as good as it could have been.

wlewisiii · « **Reply #243 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 18:48 »

Better a dull pintsize drawing than Yelling Bird.

Perfectly Reasonable · « **Reply #244 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 19:58 »

Quote from: pwhodges on 31 Jul 2015, 01:09

Quote from: Perfectly Reasonable on 31 Jul 2015, 00:45
250 ma is laughable. 250 volts makes more sense.

250mA is deadly. And as for the voltage, in high impedance situations she presumably provides what it takes! 250V is small beer.

Skin resistance is in the megaohm range, so yeah, once you have enough voltage to get through that, it doesn't much matter what the current is. Car batteries can put out AMPS -- does that make then super dangerous? (Not from a shock standpoint but they should still be treated with respect. If your watch shorts a couple of wires, you can get it welded into a solid band while it's still on your wrist.)

Is it cold in here? · « **Reply #245 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 20:28 »

Skin resistance varies wildly. If you hold the leads of an ohmmeter tightly, loosely, or while sweating, you'll get order of magnitude differences.

If it were in the megohm range, though, household voltages wouldn't be dangerous.

It's the legal aspects that I wonder about. She's carrying a concealed deadly weapon in Massachussetts. Did she need a permit, or has the law not caught up to the idea of people whose bodies are tasers?

Kugai · « **Reply #246 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 22:21 »

I think Momo is capable of varying the amperage of the charge anyway.

Anything from "That Tickles' to "Smoking Pile Of Goo On The Floor"

hedgie · « **Reply #247 on:** 31 Jul 2015, 23:54 »

And Momo is polite enough to clean up said pile of goo if she has to do it.

jwhouk · « **Reply #248 on:** 01 Aug 2015, 05:40 »

Quote from: hedgie on 31 Jul 2015, 23:54

And Momo is polite enough to clean up said pile of goo if she has to do it.

Which she may have done at one time or another.

(click to show/hide)

Method of Madness · « **Reply #249 on:** 01 Aug 2015, 05:58 »

They chased it out of the apartment, hitting Angus in the face with a couple of brooms in the process.

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Author Topic: WCDT Strips 3011-3015 (27 - 31 July 2015) (Read 42487 times)