Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Bubbles and Faye: "The truth is a strange, wonderful and terrible thing and must be treated with caution."

Renee and Brun: "I'm going to buy you a decent alarm clock!"

Brun and Elliott: "You find me attractive. Take me on a date. Now."

Marten and Claire: "Marten, Chad has dumped Mom and we need to cheer her up!"

Clinton and Emily: "Clinnn-tonnn... Help me catch Fairy Girl!"

Wil and Penny: "My sweet muse! Spend the night with me amidst the wonders of prose!"

Steve and Cossette: "Hon... Why is there a robot elf sitting on the table?"

Clinton and Claire: "We are NOT having HIM as a stepfather!"

Veronica, Jim and Sam: "I've never done Christmas 'straight' before!"

Sven and Hannelore: "No-one should celebrate Christmas alone."

Two weeks of Bembo!!!

Other (Please Specify in Comment)

[Gyrre]

Jeremy's gonna be dead when they get back, isn't he?

I fear you may be correct.

There are two other option, though.
1) They could return to find that some of his memories have now been partitioned off and encrypted.
2) Corpse Witch will have been partially dismantled by him as he successfully defends himself from CW attempt at additional option 1.

[Kugai]

And this is where Pintsize joins the conversation.


Or Hanners makes one of her 'Mysterious And Startling Appearances' and says  "Umm, I couldn't help but overhear your conversation and ....."

[Tova]

Plot twist: Jeremy is Eve.

[Is it cold in here?]

Even if the procedure can be done legally it looks like Corpse Witch is the equivalent of a back alley abortion provider.

Crypto that can be broken feasibly is useless and there's no reason to apply it to anything.

Can AIs lie in court? Or do they testify via authenticated memory read outs? If the latter, proving blackmail beyond a reasonable doubt gets easy.  CW could take the 5th but Bubbles could assent to a memory dump.

Jeph didn't answer when, long ago, I asked how life could be endurable for a being who experiences painful emotions and also has a perfect memory. We're starting to see his answer.

[BenRG]

I'm still betting that this arc is heading towards Bubbles realising that, firstly, Corpse Witch is never going to let go of her leverage over her and, thus, the memories are gone for good, absent a Deus Ex Machina. Secondly, a realisation that what is needed is for her to get on with her life as a least worst solution. That involves Corpse Witch in jail and the Fighting League legitimised in some way.

Can AIs lie in court? Or do they testify via authenticated memory read outs? If the latter, proving blackmail beyond a reasonable doubt gets easy.  CW could take the 5th but Bubbles could assent to a memory dump.

Can humans lie in court? There isn't any real difference except the amount of silicon in the mix.

As for the memory dump, I've the feeling that this would have the same legal controls as audio-video recordings. Without the clear consent of the person filmed, they are not admissible.

Two million years or ten years in Corpse Witch's employment.  Seems like an easy enough choice since we don't know how long Bubbles has been working for her already.  However, I suspect that after ten years Bubbles will be so complicit in Corpse Witch's business that she'll have no choice, but to continue working for her even if gets the key back. 

I agree with others who say that there is a zero percent chance of Corpse Witch ever giving Bubbles the encryption key. There will always be an excuse for not doing so and the threat that if Bubbles objects, it is deleted.


[edit]
Oops, forgot to mention what the second thing was!

[USS Martenclaire]

I hope Faye cools her cannons. She punched CW in a moment of rage - she cannot afford any recklessness in things going forward or Bubbles will permanently pay for it.

[Scarblac]

I like the idea of Jeremy being Eve! After all he probably did the actual operation, so he was in the middle. But is QC that nerdy? 

[WoaLG]

Just a heads up for those of us who aren't totally in the loop: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/google-ai-neural-network-cryptography/

That's what Bubbles is referencing in the last panel of today's comic. It's an interesting read.

Edit: I'm very, very wrong. Still an interesting read.

[swapna]

Just a heads up for those of us who aren't totally in the loop: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/google-ai-neural-network-cryptography/

That's what Bubbles is referencing in the last panel of today's comic. It's an interesting read.

To be fair, I think the reference is to the much more famous pair Googles AIs are named  after
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob
But the article is neat!

[WoaLG]

Just a heads up for those of us who aren't totally in the loop: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/google-ai-neural-network-cryptography/

That's what Bubbles is referencing in the last panel of today's comic. It's an interesting read.

To be fair, I think the reference is to the much more famous pair Googles AIs are named  after
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob
But the article is neat!

Right. That would make more sense. When I googled to try to figure it out, that article came up and I assumed (you know what they say about assuming) that because it was about Alice, Bob, and encryption that it was about that.

Sorry.

[Neko_Ali]

There is no particular reason for CW to do anything to Jeremy though, as far as we know. When we last saw them, she was feeling quite self satisfied and Jeremy was wisely keeping his thoughts to himself. Right now Bubbles is probably in the best position she's going to be in the knowable future for getting out from under CW's thumb. Whether it's for betraying her now, or if CW decides that ten years wasn't enough when time runs out, she's not giving the key back, ever. Without that, she has no hold over Bubbles, so she has no reason to give it back, other than to keep her word. Something I have no trust in her doing. So either Bubbles needs to accept that the locked memories are gone, or she turns to Hanner's contacts. Which I'm surprised that Faye hasn't mention she knows the daughter of the guy who invented AIs... Between him and Station they've got the best chance of anyone to break the encryption on Bubbles memories. Assuming this hasn't been CW lying the entire time.

[Thrudd]

And that is just it - if the idea of CW having the key is all that is needed then there is no need to keep the actual key.
Heck the memories might not even be locked and encrypted but only partitioned behind a door that Bubbles is to afraid to even try to open.
Again the idea and suggestion is all that is required for the ruse to work and the key is a just blank file.

[Is it cold in here?]

If Station can decrypt something without knowing the key then so can the NSA and anybody who can rent a botnet. Nobody's going to use an algorithm that vulnerable for anything they care about.

The skills required here are Susan Calvin's. Station might be very good at that.

[wlewisiii]

I acrtually agree that even station can't hack the key by brute force. No, what Station can hack is _CW_. There are no defenses, no "Black Ice" for those of you who remember Neuromancer, that could stand between her and an AI with the strength of station. Station could walk in and like in Walter Jon Williams' tale "hand that texan his as*hole"

If you can break the ai holding the key, the strength of the key is irrelevant. This has always been true and is why physical security is a small part of overall security.

[Morituri]

For anybody who's not in on the joke, Here's a page with a good explanation of who "Alice and Bob" are:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/tivoli/tutorials/s-crypto/s-crypto.html

Theyre stock names for the participants in any crypto protocol.   Pretty much every textbook on crypto uses these names.  Alice is the name assigned to the actor who initiates the protocol, and Bob is the name assigned to the actor who receives the first protocol message (the one sent by Alice). 

'Eve' is the eavesdropper who tries to penetrate private communications. 

If you have a complicated protocol, there are more stock names like Carol, Dave, Eunice, Fred, Gina ...... Xavier, Yvette, Zebulon, for further honest participants.

If you have different kinds of attacks there are different standard names for the opponents mounting those attacks:  Trent is the 'trusted' server (Trusted, in this sense, means the actor who can screw you over by acting in bad faith - usually a central server that everyone relies on, like a mail server handling unencrypted mail, or a cloud backup company with backdoor keys).  Mallory is the opponent who can alter messages in flight, like someone who's hacked your home router.  Trudy is the intruder who tries to gain illicit access to something, like the opponent who's still trying to hack your home router.  Harold and Nancy are relatively recent additions - Harold is the hardware manufacturer who can manufacture things with hidden backdoors or stupid default passwords, and Nancy is the nation state actor which performs pervasive surveillence and can also use force of law to force an otherwise trustworthy Trent or Harold to act in bad faith.

[mattcoz]

Ha, encryption jokes.

[Nepiophage]

Alice is the name assigned to the actor who initiates the protocol, and Bob is the name assigned to the actor who receives the first protocol message (the one sent by Alice). 

'Eve' is the eavesdropper who tries to penetrate private communications. 

Yes, but see it from Eve's point of view

[Method of Madness]

Oh! Now I actually get that comic! Thanks!

[Storel]

If Station can decrypt something without knowing the key then so can the NSA and anybody who can rent a botnet. Nobody's going to use an algorithm that vulnerable for anything they care about.

Not only is Station one of the most powerful AIs around, but his employer is a very brilliant man who is on the cutting edge of many areas of research. If anyone is likely to be well beyond "current technology" as Bubbles knows it, he's the one. (At least, I'm pretty sure true invisibility [as opposed to the radar invisibility commonly known as "stealth"] is not "current technology" as far as anyone else knows.)

In particular, I would not be surprised if Hannerdad has a working (if still experimental) quantum computer, which have the potential to make all our current encryption methods obsolete by massively parallel-processing all the calculations that take us so long by current methods. If he does, "two million years" might very well be reduced to "within our lifetime" or better.

Still, I agree that this would be a deus ex machina solution that would not give Bubbles as much character growth as having to recognize that she's never getting the memories back. Unless, perhaps, she acknowledges that fact, does what is necessary to take down Corpse Witch, hears CW telling her "That key is history now!", deals with the melancholy mood that results... and then we get the Hannerdad surprise that she may get the memories back after all, even if it does take more than ten years.

The skills required here are Susan Calvin's. Station might be very good at that.

Ah, excellent thought! After all the time he spent helping Hannelore heal her mind, Station is probably a better psychologist than anyone short of Susan Calvin. But will he be willing to help "a pariah among AIs"? Once he hears her story... maybe!

[Method of Madness]

Well, so much for Station. And apparently Bembo is back next week.

[LTK]

That's a very subtle Dark Souls reference Jeph worked in, I wasn't expecting that.

[brasca]

I'm actually pleased that they can't just go to Hannelore for help.  It would be too easy a way to resolve this situation. 

[TheEvilDog]

Early comic and

[hedgie]

I'm actually pleased that they can't just go to Hannelore for help.  It would be too easy a way to resolve this situation.

Hannerdad is not the parent they should be thinking of in the first place.  Now, the Bond-villain mother probably has ways of making even an AI comply with her whims.  That is, of course, assuming that Faye can remain on the wagon whilst feeding Ms. Chatham the required martinis.

[Perfectly Reasonable]

In our world, the forensic examination of a compromised computer would mean a shutdown and multiple backups made of the hard drive. Then you can restart a copy in a virtual environment and see how it reacts to being examined closely. But Jeph can posit whatever tech works to make the story proceed in the direction he wants. And we still know next to zip about Corpse Witch. So speculation is kinda futile.
For all we know, Corpse Witch could have installed a daemon process which does something nasty when a simple maintenance shutdown is performed.

Or the key is 'BEMBO'.

[HoneyBadger]

To begin, I'm operating on the assumption that under normal circumstances only one copy of each AI's consciousness exists, and that there is not a giant file server somewhere with a backup of every single AI's mind, or at least that if there is the file server would only store the original seed of the AI's mind, since Bubbles cannot use any such server to get a clean and unedited copy of her consciousness containing the now encrypted memories restored. As such, my assumption seems reasonable.

Given that assumption, this whole scenario with Bubbles and Corpse Witch just seems outright implausible. Bubbles has an obviously powerful military grade chassis. Corpse Witch is a pencil neck which Faye can dent with a punch. Bubbles could easily simply crush Corpse Witch out of existence entirely. While it is true that taking this action might have the result that Bubbles would forever be unable to access those memories, it would also have the outcome that Corpse Witch would cease to exist, which, given Corpse Witch's actions, would surely be a source of satisfaction to counterbalance the loss of the memories for Bubbles. More to the point, Corpse Witch, standing to lose her entire existence rather than merely a few memories, stands to lose considerably more than Bubbles in this interaction. Therefore, Bubbles should be successful in obtaining the encryption key for her memories by simply threatening to crush Corpse Witch out of existence. It is a credible threat, one which Bubbles has the means and ability to execute at any time she pleases. The truth is that there would be no need for her to follow through with the threat unless Corpse Witch either has no fear of death, or is exceedingly stupid.

This whole scenario is implausible to the point of ridiculousness. (Unless, perhaps, Corpse Witch has also installed protocols into Bubbles which prevent her from physically threatening Corpse Witch. But this has not been indicated anywhere, and the earlier discussion of AI minds in the comic seems to indicate that it is the kind of thing that would be nigh on impossible to do.)

[Tova]

It's not a credible threat.  What's more, she has already made the threat. Rather foolishly, I'm sorry to say. It didn't work. Unsurprisingly.

Bubbles wants that key. If she crushes Corpse Witch, she'll never get it. Corpse Witch knows it.

I realise she is able to follow through, but unless Bubbles is actually willing to do so, or at the very least Corpse Witch believes she is willing, then all Corpse Witch has to do, as she has already done, is call her bluff.

It's as simple as that.

Never make a threat you're unwilling or unable to carry out.

[HoneyBadger]

It would be a credible threat if executed properly. What you're protesting is not the credibility of the threat but the competence with which Bubbles made it in the linked comic. Bubbles did not really present the threat in a credible fashion, but that does not prevent it from being a credible threat when credibly presented. Bubbles did not make the terms of the threat clear, all she really gave was vague allusions to it. What she needed to do was say:

"I am about to begin crushing your chassis, the last thing that I will crush is the module containing your consciousness. The only thing that will stop me is your relinquishment of the encryption key. I suggest you relinquish it before I crush the parts of your chassis that are necessary in order for you to share the encryption key with me, because at that point I will have to assume that you have chosen not to supply it, and thus elected death. I suggest you make your decision quickly, because crushing your puny chassis into nothing will not take me long. *Crushing commences*"

And if Corpse Witch had responded by saying "Are you willing to default on those memories you had me lock away?", as in suggesting that she might not hand the encryption key over despite the threat, Bubbles ought to respond by saying "If you are not going to supply me with the encryption key, I will just have to satisfy myself with the knowledge that your own scheming and plotting turned out to be your undoing."

At that point Corpse Witch would hand it over if she had any sense at all, because she would have no way of knowing whether Bubbles would ultimately follow through or not, and she would stand to lose inordinately more than Bubbles would. Personally, I think under those conditions Bubbles ought to simply follow through with the threat if Corpse Witch didn't hand the key over. It's what I would do.

[Method of Madness]

That relies on Bubbles being a murderer, which as far as we can tell...she isn't.

[HoneyBadger]

Perhaps, perhaps not. We don't really know that one way or the other. We do know that she was in the military. It is, perhaps, reasonable to assume that a military AI with combat experience has used lethal force in the past. Given that knowledge it is not such a large or ridiculous leap.

All the same, another point here is that even if Bubbles is in principle not a murderer, an alternative credible threat which is almost as bad also exists. Bubbles could crush everything except the consciousness module, and lock that away in a vault somewhere which would prevent Corpse Witch from being able to take any actions in the world for as long as Bubbles felt like it. And if anything happened to Bubbles, then the location of the vault might be lost to history. She still technically would not have murdered Corpse Witch.

[Storel]

The trouble is, Bubbles is a softie. Whatever she has done while she was in the military, it's evident that she feels very troubled by her experiences and is doing her best to live a nonviolent life now. We've seen plenty of evidence of this ourselves, and so clearly Corpse Witch must have too, since she's had much longer to observe Bubbles than we have. Bubbles can't follow through on that threat, and CW knows her well enough to know that, so all she has to do is threaten to delete the key if Bubbles makes a single dent in her chassis. As long as Bubbles is (a) unwilling to give up those memories for good, and (b) unwilling or unable to kill CW, CW has control.

[brasca]

I'm actually pleased that they can't just go to Hannelore for help.  It would be too easy a way to resolve this situation.

Hannerdad is not the parent they should be thinking of in the first place.  Now, the Bond-villain mother probably has ways of making even an AI comply with her whims.  That is, of course, assuming that Faye can remain on the wagon whilst feeding Ms. Chatham the required martinis.

That's still too easy and it also means dealing with someone who in my opinion is worse than Corpse Witch.  It may also put Hannelore in a spot where her mother will help in this matter, but then she'll want something from her.  Perhaps she thinks it's time for her to stop wasting her life working in a coffee shop and take her place within her empire.  Removing Corpse Witch from the picture is not worth it if they owe Beatrice Chatham a favor. 

[HoneyBadger]

First off, I don't know that I agree that Bubbles is a softie. We already saw in the Volleyball contest that she likes to win. She might have been trying to live a non-violent life, but that does not imply that she is actually a softie. A reasonable alternative might be that she possibly has some sort of ethic. Given that she has some sort of ethic, in this situation she has been gravely wronged, and she has conclusive evidence pointing to the responsible party. Satisfaction of justice might easily justify some degree of violence which might be permitted within her ethical framework. Especially given that AI chassis' can be replaced. I think that there is a reasonable argument to be made that she is at least partly a giant badass.

But all of that is besides the point. The point is that even if Bubbles is a big softie, that point is ultimately irrelevant. Corpse Witch cannot know with 100% certainty that Bubbles is too soft to murder her, or make use of the secondary alternative that I've already pointed out. That is the only relevant fact here. Even if she strongly suspects that Bubbles would not do it, the difference in the magnitude of the stakes that each of them would be respectively gambling is so large that Bubbles never needs to have the intention to murder her. She only needs to create a sufficient level of uncertainty in Corpse Witch about whether she will survive the encounter or not, and the only rational thing for Corpse Witch to do will be to surrender the encryption key to try and secure her own survival and/or freedom. And in fact, if Corpse Witch really does believe that Bubbles is a softie, it becomes even more rational for her to surrender the encryption key, because doing so would, in the case that Bubbles was a softie, guarantee Corpse Witch's survival. A sufficiently badass individual might well continue crushing Corpse Witch even after the encryption key had been surrendered. I agree that Bubbles is probably not the sort of individual that would do that. But that point only increases the probable effectiveness of the tactic I have suggested.

[ZoeB]

The CW effector might be a drone controlled by a remote Big Bad.

Ok, I'm paranoid. I've worked on military AIs. I've worked with the Australian Federal Police on their computer forensic systems. I've worked on secure diplomatic communications systems too. Also intel analysis, where intentions are of secondary importance compared to capabilities.

So it's not whether I'm paranoid, it's whether  I'm paranoid enough.

Jeph hasn't done any of this stuff as far as I know. But the ability of an entity to perform psychosurgery not just on COT civvie stuff but military grade, said entity's expressed phobia against H.Sap and psychopathy, seeing other persons regardless of implementation as things to be used, does not give me warm fuzzies. Hannibal Lector really is an accurate parallel rather than Scarface Al. .It's the power as well as the intent. What made HL such a threat was his psychological knowledge and stratospheric intelligence, not just the eating other people's livers with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

CW might be just an extraordinarily and inexplicably talented small time hood. Might be one of possibly many simultaneous parallel avatars of Something Nasty.

[Morituri]

One thing that the US military insists on with all its AI projects is to maintain a record of every single thing it has ever done, and they really really want them to be able to explain why each decision was made.  It's all about accountability and who can/can't be blamed if something goes wrong.

It would astonish me if the same people who insist on minutely detailed records of everything their AIs do, and who are now installing helmet cams & mikes on some soldiers for realtime monitoring and after-action scraping for intel details that might not have been noticed the first time around, don't have a record of everything Bubbles saw/heard/did/said. 

It wouldn't be first-person memories (with recall of what she was thinking at the time or why she did what she did, etc), but every sensory impression in those memories is backed up on some kind of storage media somewhere.

if the army were to actually cooperate, track it down, and turn it over, Bubbles could have restoration of (most of) her memory without Corpse Witch's help.

[HoneyBadger]

The CW effector might be a drone controlled by a remote Big Bad.

...

CW might be just an extraordinarily and inexplicably talented small time hood. Might be one of possibly many simultaneous parallel avatars of Something Nasty.

Now THERE'S a more effective counter argument! Yes, that's an interesting thought, but have we been given any reason to suspect that something like this might be true in the world of QC? Most of the story lines have been rainbows and unicorns so far, comparatively speaking. In order for the comic to go down that road, it would really have to take a sharp turn for the dystopian.

On reflection, I suppose Bubbles employing the sort of strategy I have suggested might well be an appropriately dark beginning for a turn towards the dystopian. Is Bubbles the harbinger of the QC Apocalypse?

[BenRG]

I suspect that at least some of Bubbles fears are the 'chains' of her own self-doubt that she's constructed herself to give her an excuse for not looking for help in undoing what Corpse Witch did to her. I, personally, find it unlikely that she left a 'tripwire bomb' in Bubbles' system. Why do I say that? Because she is the sort of being who would have boasted about it endlessly as a way of yanking Bubbles' leash. Instead, she's let Bubbles manhandle and threaten her and only ever waved the encryption key around as a threat. If she had another weapon to use, she would have used it.

Bubbles isn't wrong to question what Corpse Witch may have done in there. I, for one, strongly suspect that Bubbles' unwillingness to seek help and constructing paranoid scenarios to justify not doing so might be Corpse Witch's fail-safe modification. Indeed, I'm wondering if her memories were ever that traumatic in the first place or if that's a construction Corpse Witch installed to make Bubbles less likely to defy her.

If there is a bomb in her head, it is this: If what Corpse Witch did was undone... would she still be Bubbles?

[brasca]

Can you be so certain of that?  Corpse Witch is smug, but not stupid.  The first time we witnessed her pull Bubble's leash was when she warned her about the legal ramifications if the police raided her establishment.  That doesn't seem to be enough to keep Bubbles working for her these days so then she reminds her about the key.  However, if that too fails or if Bubbles attempts to actually kill Corpse Witch I wouldn't be surprised that she installed some countermeasure. 

I'm reminded of Babylon 5 when Garibaldi tries to kill Psi Cop Bester and can't because even someone as smug as he knew there was a chance that Garibaldi could possibly get the opportunity to kill him so he installed a mental block in his head.  Garibaldi could desire to kill him all he wanted, but never be able to pull the trigger or move a muscle that would make this happen.  Bubbles might be able to grab Corpse Witch by the throat, but if she tried to crush her skull or rip out the AI component her chassis would not respond. 

[HoneyBadger]

I find all of the scenarios relating to Corpse Witch putting those kinds of fail safes into Bubbles unlikely. In order to do it she would have to be able to make very subtle changes, and Bubbles has already explained that these sorts of changes can't really be done for a range of reasons.

I like BenRG's reasoning that Corpse Witch would have already used other weapons if she had them. Though, having said that, the more devious part of me thinks that sometimes it is wise to keep one's best trump cards hidden, and I wouldn't put that past Corpse Witch.

[theMarc]

the only rational thing for Corpse Witch to do

This right here is the problem with your logic: people don't always do rational things. We've already seen that Corpse Witch has less control over Bubbles than she thinks she does, when, rationally, CW should be playing it safe, and underestimating how much control she has over Bubbles. And Faye's departure from the fight club was triggered by CW threatening May, which, rationally, she shouldn't have done, as May stood little to gain and a lot to lose from squealing.

The thing is, Corpse Witch thinks she's pretty hot shit. She believes she is better and smarter than than everyone around her. And nothing dampens rational thought as efficiently as hubris. The more infallible you think you are, the less you consider your failure a possibility. The less you consider the possibility of failure, the less action you take to avoid failure. With the size of the ego on CW it shouldn't be surprising that her control over Bubbles is tenuous, and is largely predicated on the fact that Bubbles has infinitely more scruples than she.

[Tova]

It would be a credible threat if executed properly. What you're protesting is not the credibility of the threat but the competence with which Bubbles made it in the linked comic. Bubbles did not really present the threat in a credible fashion, but that does not prevent it from being a credible threat when credibly presented. Bubbles did not make the terms of the threat clear, all she really gave was vague allusions to it. What she needed to do was say:

"I am about to begin crushing your chassis, the last thing that I will crush is the module containing your consciousness. The only thing that will stop me is your relinquishment of the encryption key. I suggest you relinquish it before I crush the parts of your chassis that are necessary in order for you to share the encryption key with me, because at that point I will have to assume that you have chosen not to supply it, and thus elected death. I suggest you make your decision quickly, because crushing your puny chassis into nothing will not take me long. *Crushing commences*"

And if Corpse Witch had responded by saying "Are you willing to default on those memories you had me lock away?", as in suggesting that she might not hand the encryption key over despite the threat, Bubbles ought to respond by saying "If you are not going to supply me with the encryption key, I will just have to satisfy myself with the knowledge that your own scheming and plotting turned out to be your undoing."

At that point Corpse Witch would hand it over if she had any sense at all, because she would have no way of knowing whether Bubbles would ultimately follow through or not, and she would stand to lose inordinately more than Bubbles would. Personally, I think under those conditions Bubbles ought to simply follow through with the threat if Corpse Witch didn't hand the key over. It's what I would do.

I'm not protesting anything. I'm telling you how it is. And this is how it is. Bubbles can go ahead and do all those things, and Corpse Witch won't hand it over because she knows Bubbles won't go through with it.

Good thing you're not Bubbles, because if you were, bye bye key. But then again, if you were Bubbles, it would be a totally different story, because Corpse Wench would realise you would go through with it and thus would not have entered into the scenario in the first place.

[brasca]

I find all of the scenarios relating to Corpse Witch putting those kinds of fail safes into Bubbles unlikely. In order to do it she would have to be able to make very subtle changes, and Bubbles has already explained that these sorts of changes can't really be done for a range of reasons.

I like BenRG's reasoning that Corpse Witch would have already used other weapons if she had them. Though, having said that, the more devious part of me thinks that sometimes it is wise to keep one's best trump cards hidden, and I wouldn't put that past Corpse Witch.

In just the last strip Bubbles admits that she could be a walking bomb so it is not out of the realm of possibilities that Corpse Witch may have installed a fail safe if she tries to kill her or something that could turn her literally into a bomb if necessary.  Bubbles claims Corpse Witch is spiteful and I would believe her assessment since she's worked with her long enough and provides unbiased accounts so she may be willing to risk her very existence to get one over on someone.  If that's the case threatening her destruction may be completely ineffective because she's willing to score a posthumous victory if it means Bubbles has to kill someone for reasons that don't include self defense, possibly risk incarceration, and be an even bigger pariah in the AI community.  Consider Bubbles' situation at the time when she met Corpse Witch.  If she killed her and was imprisoned for the murder upon release from detention she'd probably be assigned a substandard chassis like May and she'd be shunned by both the legitimate AI community as well as the underworld since she killed one of theirs.  Hopefully, Faye would still be alive at the end of her sentence or she'd have no one waiting for her on the outside. 

[HoneyBadger]

... because she knows Bubbles won't go through with it.

No, she doesn't. And if you think she does then you are either assuming that she has installed failsafes in Bubbles, which you have not clearly stated, or you are using a different definition of knowledge than what I would think most people use, and certainly a different definition of knowledge than what would typically be accepted in most philosophical analyses of what knowledge is.

[HoneyBadger]

I find all of the scenarios relating to Corpse Witch putting those kinds of fail safes into Bubbles unlikely. In order to do it she would have to be able to make very subtle changes, and Bubbles has already explained that these sorts of changes can't really be done for a range of reasons.

I like BenRG's reasoning that Corpse Witch would have already used other weapons if she had them. Though, having said that, the more devious part of me thinks that sometimes it is wise to keep one's best trump cards hidden, and I wouldn't put that past Corpse Witch.

In just the last strip Bubbles admits that she could be a walking bomb so it is not out of the realm of possibilities that Corpse Witch may have installed a fail safe if she tries to kill her or something that could turn her literally into a bomb if necessary.  Bubbles claims Corpse Witch is spiteful and I would believe her assessment since she's worked with her long enough and provides unbiased accounts so she may be willing to risk her very existence to get one over on someone.  If that's the case threatening her destruction may be completely ineffective because she's willing to score a posthumous victory if it means Bubbles has to kill someone for reasons that don't include self defense, possibly risk incarceration, and be an even bigger pariah in the AI community.  Consider Bubbles' situation at the time when she met Corpse Witch.  If she killed her and was imprisoned for the murder upon release from detention she'd probably be assigned a substandard chassis like May and she'd be shunned by both the legitimate AI community as well as the underworld since she killed one of theirs.  Hopefully, Faye would still be alive at the end of her sentence or she'd have no one waiting for her on the outside.

Apologies, you are correct. I guess, given the earlier comic I quoted in combination with the points you have made, the earlier point raised by BenRG makes a lot of sense. Would Bubbles still be Bubbles if Corpse Witch's work was undone, since her manipulations could not have been subtle.

[Tova]

... because she knows Bubbles won't go through with it.

No, she doesn't. And if you think she does then you are either assuming that she has installed failsafes in Bubbles, which you have not clearly stated, or you are using a different definition of knowledge than what I would think most people use, and certainly a different definition of knowledge than what would typically be accepted in most philosophical analyses of what knowledge is.

Substitute "is confident", "assumes", or whatever phrase you want, then. Doesn't change my central point.

[HoneyBadger]

But it does change your central point, Tova, because confidence, assumptions, and knowledge are all different. Knowledge, true knowledge, cannot be so easily shaken. Confidence and assumption can relatively easily be shaken by contradictory data. That is why, when I was making my earlier argument I specifically said that Bubbles only needed to "create a sufficient level of uncertainty" in Corpse Witch. It is also why I took particular issue with your use of the term 'knowledge'. If it is genuine knowledge then it precludes uncertainty, but neither confidence nor an assumption can preclude uncertainty. Therefore, the point that Corpse Witch would not know is crucially important, because it is that exact point which allows the necessary space for Bubbles to create the required uncertainty by the process of wholesale destruction of Corpse Witch's chassis.

[jheartney]

One other possibility is that CW could have set up other sorts of posthumous revenge. Perhaps another enforcer AI to come kill people Bubbles cares about (Faye, the COD gang) in the event that CW does not check in at agreed intervals.

That would be pretty dark.

[theMarc]

But it does change your central point, Tova, because confidence, assumptions, and knowledge are all different. Knowledge, true knowledge, cannot be so easily shaken. Confidence and assumption can relatively easily be shaken by contradictory data. That is why, when I was making my earlier argument I specifically said that Bubbles only needed to "create a sufficient level of uncertainty" in Corpse Witch. It is also why I took particular issue with your use of the term 'knowledge'. If it is genuine knowledge then it precludes uncertainty, but neither confidence nor an assumption can preclude uncertainty. Therefore, the point that Corpse Witch would not know is crucially important, because it is that exact point which allows the necessary space for Bubbles to create the required uncertainty by the process of wholesale destruction of Corpse Witch's chassis.

Again, you're assuming that Corpse Witch is acting with a minimum amount of rationality. As I said before, that's a flawed assumption. Yes, CW doesn't know how Bubbles will act. But CW thinks she knows.

[hedgie]

That's still too easy and it also means dealing with someone who in my opinion is worse than Corpse Witch.  It may also put Hannelore in a spot where her mother will help in this matter, but then she'll want something from her.  Perhaps she thinks it's time for her to stop wasting her life working in a coffee shop and take her place within her empire.  Removing Corpse Witch from the picture is not worth it if they owe Beatrice Chatham a favor.

Well, a deal with the proverbial devil would most certainly remove this from the "too easy", but I share your doubts.  Summoning Cthulhu to deal with a mere ghoul (something that Hanners, along with Emily is probably capable of) would create more problems than it'd solve.  Probably why Faye didn't mention that option (although it *would* be satisfying to see the greater evil squash the lesser one like a bug).

[themacnut]

Hannerdad is not the parent they should be thinking of in the first place.  Now, the Bond-villain mother probably has ways of making even an AI comply with her whims.  That is, of course, assuming that Faye can remain on the wagon whilst feeding Ms. Chatham the required martinis.

That's still too easy and it also means dealing with someone who in my opinion is worse than Corpse Witch.  It may also put Hannelore in a spot where her mother will help in this matter, but then she'll want something from her.  Perhaps she thinks it's time for her to stop wasting her life working in a coffee shop and take her place within her empire.  Removing Corpse Witch from the picture is not worth it if they owe Beatrice Chatham a favor.

Worse, Ms Chatham may decide she likes having her own military AI on call for any "wetwork". Bubbles may end up recalling her years under Corpse Witch's thumb with fondness after a few of those "errands".