[2911] "Here in the distortion he's still just a machine."

[imaginaryfriend]

True form? Wait a bit longer, we're still building suspense.

[edit] Also: That height difference keeps making me think of Shell. [/edit]

[stclair]

and you would know that how, miss?

[gpvos]

Aha, the black-haired NP can talk.

[Isildur]

It's puzzling. It seems to undermine Kat's protestation that what she did was not truly what made the NPs alive -- that they were alive even before, even if beings like the Arbiter and the Psychopomps couldn't perceive it.

But maybe it's still just that
1. the transfer and augmentation process she did ties their lives to the ether like humans are tied to it (though that's been confusing, because she doesn't actually seem to understand the ether, so why would her process does that by accident?)
and
2. being tied to the ether gives one immunity to distortions... for some not-yet-clear reason... but that doesn't really have bearing on whether they are alive (at least outside of the distortion). Could a distortion not treating a being like Robot as alive somehow be a matter of the distortion phenomenon reflecting the biases of its creator(s)?

For that matter, the other seraph robots did get changed (back then and now again), but not nearly as changed as the boat-whale and Robot. What protects them from such wild change?

[Hatredman]

Mar 6, 2024 8:36:00 GMT gpvos said:

Aha, the black-haired NP can talk.

Didn't she talk before?

[pyradonis]

Makes sense, I guess.

Mar 6, 2024 10:09:05 GMT Isildur said:

For that matter, the other seraph robots did get changed (back then and now again), but not nearly as changed as the boat-whale and Robot. What protects them from such wild change?

Maybe the mysterious extra part on their CPUs.

[blahzor]

Messy phrasing implies the cult seraphs have non standard bodies as they are different even before Kat finished the body process and were fine. Robot is similar yet wholey different from the other seraphs as he has partially transformed at least and shouldn't be object-fied

[blahzor]

There is no real thing the distruption can't change because it's been shown and implied Zimmy is as powerful as Coyote. She could if she had full control her passive distortions doesn't not can't

[ctso74]

Again with some HR Giger vibes. I'm liking it.

[atteSmythe]

Mar 6, 2024 8:19:33 GMT stclair said:

and you would know that how, miss?

So many little clues to her identity, but I just can’t put it together…

[mturtle7]

Mar 6, 2024 15:26:26 GMT atteSmythe said:

Mar 6, 2024 8:19:33 GMT stclair said:

and you would know that how, miss?

So many little clues to her identity, but I just can’t put it together…

Her mannerisms and actions up to this point actually put me most in mind of Gamma, but that can't be right, because Gamma can't be affected by the distortions...

Zimmy is the obvious choice, and almost certainly what Annie is thinking right now, but she's not acting like Zimmy at all, or like any NP that Zimmy might want to imitate...

My next best guess is Omega, but they/it are such an unknown at this point that it feels like this would be a rather cheap reveal. So yeah, I also continue to be stumped.

[hp]

Kat will blip in and gesture a body for him out of the ether, like she was doing for the cruise ship in the Zimmy distortion it created

[TBeholder]

Mar 6, 2024 8:19:33 GMT stclair said:

and you would know that how, miss?

This does narrow the set of possibilities, indeed.
Shell is the most obvious, but we don’t really know what others may know, especially Gamma.
Then again, she is probably merged. Hmm. One hell of a way to leak secrets. Would be a good attack against secretive people who get ready to screw over everyone else, wouldn’t it…

[blahzor]

Mar 6, 2024 15:26:26 GMT atteSmythe said:

Mar 6, 2024 8:19:33 GMT stclair said:

and you would know that how, miss?

So many little clues to her identity, but I just can’t put it together…

shell being on the shadowman team would know more court research including how george's bwip is used sorta

[Gemminie]

Annie, the mystery New Person, and presumably Shadow are still taking in what they're seeing below, as the bird-skeleton S-Series robots dance around Robot's new Barnacle/Cilia/Seraph form. Annie has a flashback to chapter 49, when the series S robots looked just like they do now, but Robot didn't change appearance. The MNP responds that Robot hasn't gotten a New Person body yet. He was still an object when the distortion hit. So he was changed, along with many other objects.

First of all, I'm astounded that one of my explanations was actually right for once! Annie said that in this distortion, contrary to what usually happens, it seems that people are left unchanged while the world is affected. And that's what happened here. This is Robot's distortion-altered form now, just as the Seraph Squad look like bird skeletons.

So, um, MNP, how do you know this? Another bit of evidence for who MNP could possibly be. We can take Robot, any of the Seraphs, and Shadow off our list, I think.

• Eglamore: Never count Jimmy Jims out.
• Paz: Last we saw her she was going back to Spain.
• Anja: She could be doing something magic-ish to try to help her daughter.
• Parley or Smitty: We haven't seen them for a while, but I don't think so. Why wouldn't they just look like themselves?
• Coyote: He is somewhere in this distortion, guaranteed to be where he can make the most trouble.
• Jones: We haven't seen her for a while either, but she's a lot more emotionless than we've seen MNP be. Then again, she thinks she's an inanimate object, so what does she look like in this distortion?
• Tony: He's also a lot more emotionless around multiple people than we've seen MNP be. And as a plain human, why wouldn't he just look like himself?
• Winsbury or Janet: Again, why wouldn't they just look like themselves?
• Ysengrin: As part of Loup, he's around somewhere in some way.
• Any of various other human charagers: again, why wouldn't they look like themselves?
• Zimmy: She participated in some way in the creation of this distortion, so she's certainly within it somewhere. Why she would look like a NP, I don't know.
• Red, Ayilu, or any of the various fairies: I don't know why they would even be here.

Still thinking that she's some kind of mashup of bits of Coyote/Ysengrin/Zimmy, maybe with some Lana and Gamma thrown in. Why she looks like a NP and is trying to get close to Kat, I don't know; I can only guess that it's because she's part Coyote and wants to get at this new deity.

[gpvos]

Indeed an interesting question what Jones would look like, given what happened to Robot.

[gpvos]

Mar 6, 2024 12:53:35 GMT Hatredman said:

Didn't she talk before?

Ah yes, even two pages ago. She seemed remarkably silent recently, so I guess I had forgotten and overlooked that one (and on 2890, and quite a few times between 2837 and 2862 actually).

[gpvos]

Mar 6, 2024 13:00:43 GMT pyradonis said:

Maybe the mysterious extra part on their CPUs.

I thought Robot also still had such a CPU?

[Gemini Jim]

The fact that she's gone into Ms. Exposition mode makes me think that she knows she's been caught, so there's no sense in playing dumb.


Of course, we still haven't ripped off the Scooby Doo mask to find out just which suspect on the Big Board™ she is. But there's no way that an NPC should know all this.

[arf]

My guess is the mystery NP is an amalgam of Lana, Zimmy, Coyote, and Loup. No idea which of them is driving the agenda, though.

[Sky Schemer]

Eggers looks weird here.

[Hatredman]

Mar 6, 2024 19:49:14 GMT Gemminie said:

So, um, MNP, how do you know this? Another bit of evidence for who MNP could possibly be. We can take Robot, any of the Seraphs, and Shadow off our list, I think.

• Eglamore: Never count Jimmy Jims out.
• Paz: Last we saw her she was going back to Spain.
• Anja... and so on

Still thinking that she's some kind of mashup of bits of Coyote/Ysengrin/Zimmy, maybe with some Lana and Gamma thrown in.

I'm still putting my coins on Omega, but someone's comment somewhere else grabbed my attention. Others have made this suggestion as a joke, but I think now it may make sense.

Zoob:

• Is awkward
• Always does the wrong thing
• Needs attention
• Is happy and smiles when everyone is sad
• Always says the wrong thing
• Is clueless

.
There is only one character in the whole comic that has all these traits:


Boxbot

[Hatredman]

Double post: Boxbot is Omega.

[pyradonis]

Mar 6, 2024 20:45:35 GMT gpvos said:

Mar 6, 2024 13:00:43 GMT pyradonis said:

Maybe the mysterious extra part on their CPUs.

I thought Robot also still had such a CPU?

Whoops. I forgot that. Then maybe the reason S13 changed so much is because while still being a robot, he already knows the experiences of an organic body, so is in some weird limbo state. That, plus belief into the Prophet might change his Etheric form just like belief into the Angel likely gives Kat her other Etheric form.

[silicondream]

Mar 6, 2024 10:09:05 GMT Isildur said:

But maybe it's still just that
1. the transfer and augmentation process she did ties their lives to the ether like humans are tied to it (though that's been confusing, because she doesn't actually seem to understand the ether, so why would her process does that by accident?)

I think organic nervous systems just happen to generate and interact with the ether, for whatever reason. Once Kat's team put robot minds in sufficiently organicky brains and bodies, they were automatically connected to the ether.

2. being tied to the ether gives one immunity to distortions... for some not-yet-clear reason...

Well, humans in the distortion aren't really immune to it. They can still be hurt, killed, possessed, swap identities, lose their memories, and so forth. They just aren't twisted up as badly as the architecture. Maybe their own etheric connections/auras let them put up a little resistance to it, or maybe Zimmy subconsciously senses their humanity and goes easier on them.

Could a distortion not treating a being like Robot as alive somehow be a matter of the distortion phenomenon reflecting the biases of its creator(s)?

Sure. Zimmy's powers are etheric, so she probably doesn't connect with robot minds the way she does with human ones. Alternately, Robot may have a strong conviction that he isn't yet alive, rather like Jones.

For that matter, the other seraph robots did get changed (back then and now again), but not nearly as changed as the boat-whale and Robot. What protects them from such wild change?

I think the Ship, and the current Robot, desperately wanted to be changed. They've got maxed-out species dysphoria, you might say, and the distortion may have reacted to those feelings in its typically creepy way.

[imaginaryfriend]

Mar 8, 2024 17:12:06 GMT silicondream said:

Mar 6, 2024 10:09:05 GMT Isildur said:

But maybe it's still just that
1. the transfer and augmentation process she did ties their lives to the ether like humans are tied to it (though that's been confusing, because she doesn't actually seem to understand the ether, so why would her process does that by accident?)

I think organic nervous systems just happen to generate and interact with the ether, for whatever reason. Once Kat's team put robot minds in sufficiently organicky brains and bodies, they were automatically connected to the ether.

I believe it's the subjectivity. What's the difference between a mind and a sophisticated detector? The Noobs' bodies contain organic chemistry, analogs for nervous systems that the ether would find familiar in structure, and they take in (and presumably expel) nutrients (all of which help, particularly the last) but the deciding factor is that they're complex enough to make human-like errors and act on them.

[Isildur]

Mar 8, 2024 17:12:06 GMT silicondream said:

Mar 6, 2024 10:09:05 GMT Isildur said:

But maybe it's still just that
1. the transfer and augmentation process she did ties their lives to the ether like humans are tied to it (though that's been confusing, because she doesn't actually seem to understand the ether, so why would her process does that by accident?)

I think organic nervous systems just happen to generate and interact with the ether, for whatever reason. Once Kat's team put robot minds in sufficiently organicky brains and bodies, they were automatically connected to the ether.

2. being tied to the ether gives one immunity to distortions... for some not-yet-clear reason...

Well, humans in the distortion aren't really immune to it. They can still be hurt, killed, possessed, swap identities, lose their memories, and so forth. They just aren't twisted up as badly as the architecture. Maybe their own etheric connections/auras let them put up a little resistance to it, or maybe Zimmy subconsciously senses their humanity and goes easier on them.

Could a distortion not treating a being like Robot as alive somehow be a matter of the distortion phenomenon reflecting the biases of its creator(s)?

Sure. Zimmy's powers are etheric, so she probably doesn't connect with robot minds the way she does with human ones. Alternately, Robot may have a strong conviction that he isn't yet alive, rather like Jones.

For that matter, the other seraph robots did get changed (back then and now again), but not nearly as changed as the boat-whale and Robot. What protects them from such wild change?

I think the Ship, and the current Robot, desperately wanted to be changed. They've got maxed-out species dysphoria, you might say, and the distortion may have reacted to those feelings in its typically creepy way.

Interesting points, especially that robot may not view him(?)self as alive, yet. 

Yeah, by immune to distortions, I was using "distortions" in a more descriptive sense, that time.  Immune to being distorted, I should have said. (I actually did do some rewriting of the post before I submitted it, to try to correct that ambiguity in some of the other parts, but I missed fixing that unclear instance.)

I guess the organic organicness thing you said is probably right, but it doesn't feel entirely satisfying to me.

[Isildur]

Mar 6, 2024 13:00:43 GMT pyradonis said:

Makes sense, I guess.

Mar 6, 2024 10:09:05 GMT Isildur said:

For that matter, the other seraph robots did get changed (back then and now again), but not nearly as changed as the boat-whale and Robot. What protects them from such wild change?

Maybe the mysterious extra part on their CPUs.

Robot has that too, though. 

[silicondream]

Mar 8, 2024 18:10:53 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Mar 8, 2024 17:12:06 GMT silicondream said:

I think organic nervous systems just happen to generate and interact with the ether, for whatever reason. Once Kat's team put robot minds in sufficiently organicky brains and bodies, they were automatically connected to the ether.

I believe it's the subjectivity. What's the difference between a mind and a sophisticated detector?

Nothing, I would say. Self-consciousness just implies that some of the sub-detectors are aimed at each other.

The Noobs' bodies contain organic chemistry, analogs for nervous systems that the ether would find familiar in structure, and they take in (and presumably expel) nutrients (all of which help, particularly the last)

I think it probably also has to do with the fact that organic bodies are capable of growth, adaptation and healing. If souls are released into the ether on death, and an organic being's cells are constantly dying and being replaced, that probably gives it a permanent low-level etheric connection.

Those can't be the only factors, though, or Robot would already register as etherically alive because most of his body is now pseudorganic. Actually running a mind on an organicky substrate must be a crucial factor for etheric personhood.

but the deciding factor is that they're complex enough to make human-like errors and act on them.

New People certainly have more complex emotions and sensations in some ways, and they now have the free will to disobey Court orders, but I wouldn't say they weren't complex and capable of subjectivity as robots. The reason that robots kept falling in love with humans is that they're not all that different in the first place. Likewise, the golems made their own decision to shut themselves down after creating the first robots, based on their personal values.

Mar 8, 2024 22:32:58 GMT Isildur said:

I guess the organic organicness thing you said is probably right, but it doesn't feel entirely satisfying to me.

It works for me because it means that the etheric bureaucrats' criteria for personhood are just as prejudiced as the Court's criteria. The Court doesn't care what you think unless you happen to be a living human; the etheric bureacracy doesn't care what you think unless you happen to be made of the right stuff to interact with the ether. Kat's the only one with a functionalist understanding of mind: entities are alive and conscious to her if they act like it, regardless of physical/etheric composition and structure.

[imaginaryfriend]

Mar 9, 2024 22:29:57 GMT silicondream said:

Mar 8, 2024 18:10:53 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

I believe it's the subjectivity. What's the difference between a mind and a sophisticated detector?

Nothing, I would say. Self-consciousness just implies that some of the sub-detectors are aimed at each other.

If the detectors, some of which are aimed at each other, are complex enough to include a durable model of reality that can contain pearl-like flaws, then I think you can call a mind a very sophisticated detector (or cluster of same). I feel that's a bit imprecise, though.

Mar 9, 2024 22:29:57 GMT silicondream said:

The Noobs' bodies contain organic chemistry, analogs for nervous systems that the ether would find familiar in structure, and they take in (and presumably expel) nutrients (all of which help, particularly the last)

I think it probably also has to do with the fact that organic bodies are capable of growth, adaptation and healing. If souls are released into the ether on death, and an organic being's cells are constantly dying and being replaced, that probably gives it a permanent low-level etheric connection.

The souls don't go into the ether by their own agency, though. Even so, I don't think you're wrong.  Fast example chosen for expediency: There can be an etheric connection by the shedding of dead skin cells because it then becomes fodder for other creatures or dust in the background of others' Stories.  

Mar 9, 2024 22:29:57 GMT silicondream said:

Those can't be the only factors, though, or Robot would already register as etherically alive because most of his body is now pseudorganic. Actually running a mind on an organicky substrate must be a crucial factor for etheric personhood.

Kat's robot bodies are probably an extension of her protein crystal growth experiments and while they provide an end result that's comparable to humans they must be radically different in chemical structure, and that mandates differences in physical structure (though some of those could be minimized if Kat wanted). Some components aren't grown but manufactured. Additionally they'd lack the plethora of micro-organisms that humans host.

I think it's an intellectually defensible position to claim that organic bodies are necessary for having a soul in the Gunnerverse but in order to hold it with  consistency I also think one would have to adopt some other views that redefine stuff in the comic... Etheric beings that don't have organic bodies* either somehow have organic bodies conditionally through the ether or are in fact extensions of the ether, for a start. Beings that have organic structures too simple to support human-like behavior yet behave like humans, like the talking octopus or Zeta's spooders, would have to be frauds dependent on the ether or another entity for their appearance of personhood.**  That stuff has implications on the ethics of taking the dead into the ether, I think.

Mar 9, 2024 22:29:57 GMT silicondream said:

but the deciding factor is that they're complex enough to make human-like errors and act on them.

New People certainly have more complex emotions and sensations in some ways, and they now have the free will to disobey Court orders, but I wouldn't say they weren't complex and capable of subjectivity as robots. The reason that robots kept falling in love with humans is that they're not all that different in the first place.

I think they fell in love for the same reason they are fascinated by the portrait of Jeanne... because they were modeled on Diego. In some ways that's similar to humans who fall in love, in other ways it's different.

Mar 9, 2024 22:29:57 GMT silicondream said:

Likewise, the golems made their own decision to shut themselves down after creating the first robots, based on their personal values.

Did they? Their orders were to serve Diego and with his death their orders became impossible.  




*We've seen a bunch of entities that did not appear to have physical bodies but the best example is probably Hetty. Hetty's real form did not appear to leave matter behind when it was destroyed.
**There is an example of that in the comic in Paz, as it was formsprung that it was Paz's mind that was enabling the animals to speak.