Comic Discussion > ALICE GROVE
Alice Grove MCDLT - April 2017
Method of Madness:
Oh, I'm not disputing that Alice would be extremely difficult to kill, and maybe impossible with even Church's pure strength. I don't think she straight up can't die, though at this point that's speculation.
That being said, why did people think that Church couldn't talk?
derech:
--- Quote from: sitnspin on 23 Apr 2017, 14:29 --- I'm just wondering how he is projecting sound through a vacuum.
--- End quote ---
Assuming that there isn't more atmosphere here nearby the Praeses than we think there is? Perhaps akin to how they can move. Instead of artificial gravity or magnetic currents or coalesced particles etc, this is Church creating a localized and in this case sound-carrying (300 Hz, 3KHz, whatever) atmosphere between him and Alice. Or he's just really loud, a few thousand bels is beating down space into verbal submission.
If he's not creating some density for the two that supports human speaking/hearing frequencies, that could work too. It's true that normal empty space doesn't have enough density to support such sounds (in the human-hearing sense of it). But space isn't a total vacuum either, it's just a very thin medium that can carry only very long wavelengths. If he's sending at a low enough frequency and she is capable of receiving that. Sound, just not in the sense of human-audible. Him speaking and her hearing at something a few billion times lower than human limits, and certainly the two are not exactly limited to human specs. What problem might infrasound be to them, given how they are out here with essentially no protection against pressure and temperature (say, one side of them is -250F and the other +250F) and nothing to breathe. Which would also mean nobody but these two (and perhaps Sedna, if she wasn't too far away) could either receive or understand what he just said. Just like the others can't do what they are doing.
If none of the above, it could be via another mechanism entirely, which is displayed here in a way that approximates what we're used to, but is nothing like what is actually happening. Notional and figurative, not literal. Communication bubbles, presented in a certain way just for us the reader.
--- Quote from: Method of Madness on 24 Apr 2017, 09:05 ---Oh, I'm not disputing that Alice would be extremely difficult to kill, and maybe impossible with even Church's pure strength. I don't think she straight up can't die, though at this point that's speculation.
--- End quote ---
Nobody knows if any of these are killable or not, but both Alice and Sedna have been damaged, and Church apparently not unduly put out by being encased within lava etc for thousands of years. We also know that at least in short time scales (geologically speaking) they haven't died. We don't really know about how many others there might have been or what happened to them if there were.
Although given that Alice seemed pretty serious in the flashback, perhaps she was tasked with killing/incapacitating all the others, and missed or spared Sedna. Or Sedna was another one doing that work. If Alice destroyed all the other special mechanisms, or there were more and some found an ending some other way, it would seem reasonable to think that most can die or be killed or be destroyed. If Church can't be, maybe not the two others either, or maybe only Church is an outlier. Or perhaps Alice neutralized him for some specific reason, and he could have been destroyed. Well, whatever she's planning on doing now, we don't know what it is or if it will work. 5000 years is a lot of time to change for better or worse.
As far as that, perhaps Alice was lying or wrong or telling Jedi truth when she said all the AI was destroyed. We don't know any of that either, but that she said it doesn't prove these three are not AI any more than it does. So, just more speculation.
--- Quote ---That being said, why did people think that Church couldn't talk?
--- End quote ---
Given that Church has never spoken, it seemed likely he couldn't. Speculation. A tentative assumption. Of course, it's also possible he still hasn't (that what we just saw wasn't speech) or that he can only talk (whatever that entails) with something like Alice, in space, during battle, while near a Praeses.
TheEvilDog:
--- Quote from: Method of Madness on 24 Apr 2017, 09:05 ---That being said, why did people think that Church couldn't talk?
--- End quote ---
The trope of the Voiceless and combined with the Elective Mute. Add in the physical build and you have someone who would fit in as the insane killer in most slasher films. Big guy, strong enough to leave a victim in a bad enough state that we can only see her remains from an angle. Its easy to draw the conclusion that Church couldn't speak.
But it also ties into the fact that while webcomics are a visual media, we are still somewhat reliant on what a character says to understand them. Given that Church didn't say a word until now, left Church a dangerous enigma. Which emphasises the fact that Church is vicious, not a rabid dog, foaming at the mouth, but downright vicious with a cunning streak.
Case:
--- Quote from: sitnspin on 23 Apr 2017, 14:29 ---I'm just wondering how he is projecting sound through a vacuum.
--- End quote ---
Same way that Tie-fighters do it, obviously!
Samik:
--- Quote from: sitnspin on 23 Apr 2017, 11:29 ---
--- Quote from: Samik on 21 Apr 2017, 22:25 ---
Why are we certain that it's even possible for there to exist an information system of sufficient complexity and orderedness that it can arbitrarily increase its own complexity and orderedness? That always sounded to me like the kind of thing that some mathematician will eventually prove to be impossible.
--- End quote ---
Humans are an information system that finds ways to improve itself. Why would a sufficiently advanced software system not be able to do the same? If anything, a software system should be even more capable.
--- End quote ---
(click to show/hide)Well, two things. First of all, improvement wasn't my question, improvement to an arbitrary degree was. It's one thing to say that there can exist an information system that can improve itself to some degree. It's another to say that there can exist an information system that can improve itself with no bounds. Both may be true, but the first doesn't necessarily entail the second. (Or am I wrong? That's just my intuition...)
Second, there's ambiguity to me in the word "improvement". I've probably been very clumsy here because I really lack knowledge in this area, but I chose the words "complexity" and "orderedness" for a reason. I can imagine a system that can increase its complexity only at the cost of its orderedness, and vice versa. So, something like: it can begin at a certain state, and then become more precise but lesser in scope (specialization), or less precise but greater in scope (generalization), or maintain its precision and scope but reconfigure for another function. Depending on its needs, either course could be considered "improvement".
The reason I kind of retracted my question, though, is because it occurred to me that even systems obeying this kind of "conservation of potential" might be able to sustain a sort of "improvement" indefinitely, if there is no limit on their precision or number, or restriction on their communication. I.E. the human brain not having changed in modern times, yet the species keeps marching forward as the individual members further specialize, multiply, and get better at sharing our output.
So, my concept of "information system" was probably flawed here in the first place. An AI doesn't need to be an analogue to a single human mind.
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