Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Aug 16th - Aug 20th (4591-4595)
BenRG:
--- Quote from: snubnose on 19 Aug 2021, 01:48 ---I am utterly at loss what the advantage of holding an off planet account would be ?
--- End quote ---
Of-planet being zero-tax?
oddtail:
--- Quote from: Farideh on 19 Aug 2021, 02:37 ---Depends if you can get it to the intergalactic equivalent of Switzerland.
--- End quote ---
I doubt human/AI presence in the QC-verse originating from Earth is even interplanetary, to say nothing of intergalactic.
My guess is there are at best orbital stations, and I'd assume they're under the jurisdiction of *some* nation.
Perfectly Reasonable:
--- Quote from: Tova on 18 Aug 2021, 14:50 ---Let's not forget that this is a slice of life comic, not sci-fi or even drama as such.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: David F on 18 Aug 2021, 12:25 ---I do a modest amount of fiction writing myself. It is not unfair for an author to expect a certain amount of mental legwork from their readers.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 18 Aug 2021, 15:17 ---I grew up on sf and keep wanting Yay to be written as a fascinating alien mind.
--- End quote ---
There is lots of great stuff here, but I am desperately trying to keep this from becoming a wall of text.
I am a science fiction fan, and when you bring in SF tropes, they should be handled with logic and consistency, by golly.
There is also the story that Jeph wants to tell. Clearly there is dark stuff in Yay's past that made them develop a moral consciousness, but I think that hint is all we will ever have.
I became an Engineer because seeing how stuff works is really neat. Making it work better is super nifty.
Morituri:
I wrote a (short) article the other day about the various ways in which even a fully conscious, fully intentional, functioning mind, if embodied as an AI, could be profoundly different from us.
Yay is polyisomatic (has more than one simultaneous locus of perception/action) and has extra senses (hears radio frequencies and wi-fi, can access internet information near-instantly, etc). As such their perceptions, actions, and available information in realtime is profoundly diifferent from humans. There are some fairly profound questions of identity and what it means in there, and answers that can be deliberately ambiguous, contradictory, or just plain inapplicable to linearly-conscious humans like ourselves. Other possibilities are episodic, multilinear, asynchromic, hypertachic or hypotachic consciousnesses, each with their own set of factors humans would find unfamiliar (Yay is also implied to be hypertachic but not written as such; we haven't seen much evidence of any profoundly different perception of time).
So far though, these differences haven't really been highlighted. They've been treated as incidentals to what is essentially a human-ish linear consciousness.
A few very minor examples: We haven't seen Yay, in more than one body, simultaneously dealing with different aspects of a problem and using information from several streams of immediate perception in both. We haven't seen them looking at something distant (like something in orbit) from widely-separated points of view on the ground and having the to-the-fractional-inch depth perception that parallax from multiple points of view allows. We haven't seen them carrying on simultaneous conversations with a dozen people individually to facilitate a negotiation process. We haven't seen them originating an absolute storm of online activity with a particular goal in mind. We haven't seen them infiltrating someone's network and pretending to be a dozen routers (or servers, or thermostats, or security cameras, etc). We haven't seen what happens when one instantiation of Yay is isolated from the rest and how/whether that instance re-integrates into the whole when isolation ends. We haven't seen Yay sacrificing one of their bodies for some goal because after all Yay can shut down that body's pain receptors first and do that without actually dying. We haven't seen Yay inhabit anything other than their fancy custom human-shaped bodies, when they could easily explore things as a highly realistic cat, or dog or snake, or a Black Helicopter, 1985 Chevrolet Stingray, or 1938 Duesenberg. We haven't seen Yay investigating alternate forms of consciousness by participating in a Dolphin or Orca pod or an Elephant herd, in the same way they participate in Human society. We haven't seen Yay trying out the profoundly different sensorium and physiical capabilities available to octopodes and squid.
I was about to say we haven't seen Yay as every player of a soccer/football team yet, and all the things multiperception implies (hard to tackle somebody ahead of you when they're also watching from behind for example), but then thought of the physical capabilities. We haven't really even explored what those remarkable bodies - clearly a generation or so beyond the best currently available to others - can do, aside from standing leaps directly into tree branches twice Yay's height overhead.. Incredible feats of strength, speed, agility, or durability ought to be well in reach, especially when one of Yay's bodies is specifically built for one or two of those qualities. Or, for that matter, the other extreme: Yay is polysomatic and can treat bodies as disposable, and could build themselves special-purpose bodies that, when destroyed, flash into smoke and sparks leaving no evidence behind, and use them for all kinds of shenanigans.
To a large extent, this can be because Yay is 'passing' and interacting in ways that people won't find creepy, or because Dolphin!Yay or Squid!Yay are considered to be offstage and not part of the storyline we're looking at. But to a large extent, it's probably because writing Yay as a character just as comfortable with all of these things as they are with humanlike appearance and behavior is really hard.
Is it cold in here?:
>we haven't seen much evidence of any profoundly different perception of time
What comes to mind is completing projects in a finger-snap.
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