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Post by pyradonis on Mar 27, 2020 10:33:25 GMT
Boxbot will get a new body, and it will look like... Diego!
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Post by saardvark on Mar 27, 2020 11:05:45 GMT
Boxbot will get a new body, and it will look like... Diego! Of course! Because... he's terrible!
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Post by mturtle7 on Mar 30, 2020 5:31:26 GMT
Boxbot will get a new body, and it will look like... Diego! Boxbot gets a new body, and it looks exactly like the one in panel 6 of this page.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Mar 30, 2020 6:27:36 GMT
So Smitty could just walk through walls if needed? Cool. If he really really wanted to, he probably could... but unless he had some sort of etheric-tech cheat to help him I suspect that there would have to be some sort of sacrifice, or more accurately he would have to modify his ability and body to a particular one-time use that could do what he needed to do... it might not cost him as much as Anthony had to pay to get back Surma briefly, since he has an etheric power and has been practicing relocating, however there might still be direct unintended consequences involved (like how Antimony fell unconscious when Surma was briefly revived). I'll wildly speculate that if agitated and desperate enough he could shift himself into the proper form needed to walk through the hypothetical wall but part of his body (I'll guess one hand) would get stuck/torn off/lost in the wall as he came through on the other side... but he could probably still use his power with the other hand. No worries, Kat can grow him a new one.
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Post by saardvark on Mar 30, 2020 6:51:04 GMT
So Smitty could just walk through walls if needed? Cool. If he really really wanted to, he probably could... but unless he had some sort of etheric-tech cheat to help him I suspect that there would have to be some sort of sacrifice, or more accurately he would have to modify his ability and body to a particular one-time use that could do what he needed to do... it might not cost him as much as Anthony had to pay to get back Surma briefly, since he has an etheric power and has been practicing relocating, however there might still be direct unintended consequences involved (like how Antimony fell unconscious when Surma was briefly revived). I'll wildly speculate that if agitated and desperate enough he could shift himself into the proper form needed to walk through the hypothetical wall but part of his body (I'll guess one hand) would get stuck/torn off/lost in the wall as he came through on the other side... but he could probably still use his power with the other hand. No worries, Kat can grow him a new one. I think it might strain his abilities, but he could do it. I wrote elsewhere that teleportation could be accomplished by simultaneous manipulation of quantum wave function probabilities... if Smitty could arrange that peaks of the quantum probability densities of the spatial wave functions of all his particles to be concentrated instead on the other side of the wall, in exactly the same relative spatial configuration they are on this side of the wall, he could effectively teleport through it. He would want to practice this a lot on inanimate objects before he tried it on himself though! And considering the numbers of particles and the extreme unlikeliness that even one of his particles would spontaneously "quantum tunnel" thru the wall, Id imagine this might be wicked hard. But maybe? (edited to improve clarity)
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Post by wies on Mar 30, 2020 7:46:01 GMT
Id imagine this might be wicked hard. But maybe? Wicked hard, yes. But perhaps less so for someone who beats the odds. Hmm...I kind of want now a luck-off between Gladstone Gander and Smitty.
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Post by migrantworker on Mar 30, 2020 10:51:49 GMT
Id imagine this might be wicked hard. But maybe? Tl;dr nope actually, maybe! Geek hat on. Smitty weighs at least 60 kg. That's 60,000 grams, or 5000 times 12 grams. Smitty is composed mostly of light atoms such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Conveniently, 12 grams of carbon contain exactly an Avogadro's number of atoms: 6x10^23 (600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, give or take a few). Smitty as a whole would contain 5000x more atoms - 3x10^27. Each of those atoms has on average 15 nucleons, and also 15 electrons. So the total number of particles in Smitty is on the order of 10^29. To teleport through the wall, Smitty would need to distort probability so that each of those particles happens to tunnel through it. The chances of any given particles doing this on its own accord are what, 10^-10 - 10^-30? My guess is as good as yours, but it does not happen very often. So for all of Smitty's particles to do it, the odds are 10^-39 - 10^-59. But it's no good if Smitty trickles through a wall particle by particle. For it to happen all at once, the odds decrease by some (a dozen?) orders of magnitude, to 10^-51 - 10^-71. If you then want to have a functional Smitty on the other side of the wall, each particle would need to end up in a very narrowly defined place and in a very narrowly defined state. So the odds again decrease by a dozen? orders of magnitude times the number of particles, to 10^-80 - 10^-100. I recall that there are about 10^80 particles in the observable universe. If Smitty can't reliably pick a specific one from the vastness of space, he really shouldn't attempt teleportation. But can he? He did reorder a deck of cards, after all. A deck of 52 cards can be arranged in 52! ways, which is only about 8x10^67 - nowehere near enough the complexity of teleportation. But he did also make the cards assemble into a neat stack. If the odds of that happening are also a dozen? orders of magniture lower, then this puts the total odds at about 10^-80. Given how many approximations and assumptions I made so far, the results are practically equal. So yeah. Given enough practice... Smitty could probably learn to teleport. Geek hat off.
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Post by saardvark on Mar 30, 2020 13:40:12 GMT
Id imagine this might be wicked hard. But maybe? Tl;dr nope actually, maybe! Geek hat on. Smitty weighs at least 60 kg. That's 60,000 grams, or 5000 times 12 grams. Smitty is composed mostly of light atoms such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Conveniently, 12 grams of carbon contain exactly an Avogadro's number of atoms: 6x10^23 (600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, give or take a few). Smitty as a whole would contain 5000x more atoms - 3x10^27. Each of those atoms has on average 15 nucleons, and also 15 electrons. So the total number of particles in Smitty is on the order of 10^29. To teleport through the wall, Smitty would need to distort probability so that each of those particles happens to tunnel through it. The chances of any given particles doing this on its own accord are what, 10^-10 - 10^-30? My guess is as good as yours, but it does not happen very often. So for all of Smitty's particles to do it, the odds are 10^-39 - 10^-59. But it's no good if Smitty trickles through a wall particle by particle. For it to happen all at once, the odds decrease by some (a dozen?) orders of magnitude, to 10^-51 - 10^-71. If you then want to have a functional Smitty on the other side of the wall, each particle would need to end up in a very narrowly defined place and in a very narrowly defined state. So the odds again decrease by a dozen? orders of magnitude times the number of particles, to 10^-80 - 10^-100. I recall that there are about 10^80 particles in the observable universe. If Smitty can't reliably pick a specific one from the vastness of space, he really shouldn't attempt teleportation. But can he? He did reorder a deck of cards, after all. A deck of 52 cards can be arranged in 52! ways, which is only about 8x10^67 - nowehere near enough the complexity of teleportation. But he did also make the cards assemble into a neat stack. If the odds of that happening are also a dozen? orders of magniture lower, then this puts the total odds at about 10^-80. Given how many approximations and assumptions I made so far, the results are practically equal. So yeah. Given enough practice... Smitty could probably learn to teleport. Geek hat off. excellent back-of-the-envelope geeking! I tip my etheric hat to you...
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Post by migrantworker on Mar 30, 2020 15:25:57 GMT
Tl;dr nope actually, maybe! (...) excellent back-of-the-envelope geeking! I tip my etheric hat to you... I blame my father, a physicist.
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Post by warrl on Mar 30, 2020 19:26:55 GMT
Id imagine this might be wicked hard. But maybe? Wicked hard, yes. But perhaps less so for someone who beats the odds. Hmm...I kind of want now a luck-off between Gladstone Gander and Smitty. I'd offer a comparison with another character, but the relevant story currently is on a private forum pre-publication. Relevant quote from the current draft: “Glytch, if we get out of this alive, I’m either going to kill you or hook you up to a random number generator and see if I can make a sodding probability drive.”
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Post by saardvark on Mar 30, 2020 20:27:34 GMT
excellent back-of-the-envelope geeking! I tip my etheric hat to you... I blame my father, a physicist. well, that explains it... if he was geeking out around the dinner table, some of it must have rubbed off. Im an astrophysicist by trade, so I empathize!
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Post by Runningflame on Apr 1, 2020 1:00:13 GMT
Id imagine this might be wicked hard. But maybe? Tl;dr nope actually, maybe! Geek hat on. Smitty weighs at least 60 kg. That's 60,000 grams, or 5000 times 12 grams. Smitty is composed mostly of light atoms such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Conveniently, 12 grams of carbon contain exactly an Avogadro's number of atoms: 6x10^23 (600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, give or take a few). Smitty as a whole would contain 5000x more atoms - 3x10^27. Each of those atoms has on average 15 nucleons, and also 15 electrons. So the total number of particles in Smitty is on the order of 10^29. To teleport through the wall, Smitty would need to distort probability so that each of those particles happens to tunnel through it. The chances of any given particles doing this on its own accord are what, 10^-10 - 10^-30? My guess is as good as yours, but it does not happen very often. So for all of Smitty's particles to do it, the odds are 10^-39 - 10^-59. But it's no good if Smitty trickles through a wall particle by particle. For it to happen all at once, the odds decrease by some (a dozen?) orders of magnitude, to 10^-51 - 10^-71. If you then want to have a functional Smitty on the other side of the wall, each particle would need to end up in a very narrowly defined place and in a very narrowly defined state. So the odds again decrease by a dozen? orders of magnitude times the number of particles, to 10^-80 - 10^-100. I recall that there are about 10^80 particles in the observable universe. If Smitty can't reliably pick a specific one from the vastness of space, he really shouldn't attempt teleportation. But can he? He did reorder a deck of cards, after all. A deck of 52 cards can be arranged in 52! ways, which is only about 8x10^67 - nowehere near enough the complexity of teleportation. But he did also make the cards assemble into a neat stack. If the odds of that happening are also a dozen? orders of magniture lower, then this puts the total odds at about 10^-80. Given how many approximations and assumptions I made so far, the results are practically equal. So yeah. Given enough practice... Smitty could probably learn to teleport. Geek hat off. The only thing this post needs to reach perfection is some black-and-white illustrations with witty hover text.
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Post by saardvark on Apr 1, 2020 2:14:50 GMT
Id imagine this might be wicked hard. But maybe? Tl;dr nope actually, maybe! Geek hat on. Smitty weighs at least 60 kg. That's 60,000 grams, or 5000 times 12 grams. Smitty is composed mostly of light atoms such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Conveniently, 12 grams of carbon contain exactly an Avogadro's number of atoms: 6x10^23 (600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, give or take a few). Smitty as a whole would contain 5000x more atoms - 3x10^27. Each of those atoms has on average 15 nucleons, and also 15 electrons. So the total number of particles in Smitty is on the order of 10^29. To teleport through the wall, Smitty would need to distort probability so that each of those particles happens to tunnel through it. The chances of any given particles doing this on its own accord are what, 10^-10 - 10^-30? My guess is as good as yours, but it does not happen very often. So for all of Smitty's particles to do it, the odds are 10^-39 - 10^-59. But it's no good if Smitty trickles through a wall particle by particle. For it to happen all at once, the odds decrease by some (a dozen?) orders of magnitude, to 10^-51 - 10^-71. If you then want to have a functional Smitty on the other side of the wall, each particle would need to end up in a very narrowly defined place and in a very narrowly defined state. So the odds again decrease by a dozen? orders of magnitude times the number of particles, to 10^-80 - 10^-100. I recall that there are about 10^80 particles in the observable universe. If Smitty can't reliably pick a specific one from the vastness of space, he really shouldn't attempt teleportation. But can he? He did reorder a deck of cards, after all. A deck of 52 cards can be arranged in 52! ways, which is only about 8x10^67 - nowehere near enough the complexity of teleportation. But he did also make the cards assemble into a neat stack. If the odds of that happening are also a dozen? orders of magniture lower, then this puts the total odds at about 10^-80. Given how many approximations and assumptions I made so far, the results are practically equal. So yeah. Given enough practice... Smitty could probably learn to teleport. Geek hat off. Geek hat on. Thinking about it a bit more, I suspect the teleportation probability is even worse than you calculate. The deck of cards can be arranged 52! ways, but the body has to be reassembled in a similarly precise way. Not quite as bad, since e.g., carbon atoms are interchangeable, and 99% of the human body consists of just 6 elements: C, N, O, H, Ca, and P. But you still need C_12 - 6 protons and 6 neutrons... add 2 neutrons and its radioactive C_14. Add two protons and its radioactive O_14. Both bad. And the right elements do need to be in the right places. So its not as bad as 1 in 10^29! but it is more a factorial thing than adding some orders of magnitude, which makes it much more painful. Something like 1 chance in 10^29!/[(10^29 - 6)! x 6!] ~ (10^29)^6/6! ~ 1.4e171. Then you have the timing thing. You would have to have the tunneling to all occur on a timescale shorter than the time for chemical bonds to form - otherwise some of your atoms would arrive early and bond with the wrong nearest neighbor to form the wrong molecule. Br_2, for example, dissociates under a laser in ~1e-13 s. That is a pretty tight window! Geek hat off.
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Post by migrantworker on Apr 1, 2020 11:13:38 GMT
It is in fact the type of humor to which I aspire. One day, maybe.
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Post by migrantworker on Apr 1, 2020 11:22:30 GMT
Tl;dr nope actually, maybe! Geek hat on. Smitty weighs at least 60 kg. That's 60,000 grams, or 5000 times 12 grams. Smitty is composed mostly of light atoms such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Conveniently, 12 grams of carbon contain exactly an Avogadro's number of atoms: 6x10^23 (600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, give or take a few). Smitty as a whole would contain 5000x more atoms - 3x10^27. Each of those atoms has on average 15 nucleons, and also 15 electrons. So the total number of particles in Smitty is on the order of 10^29. To teleport through the wall, Smitty would need to distort probability so that each of those particles happens to tunnel through it. The chances of any given particles doing this on its own accord are what, 10^-10 - 10^-30? My guess is as good as yours, but it does not happen very often. So for all of Smitty's particles to do it, the odds are 10^-39 - 10^-59. But it's no good if Smitty trickles through a wall particle by particle. For it to happen all at once, the odds decrease by some (a dozen?) orders of magnitude, to 10^-51 - 10^-71. If you then want to have a functional Smitty on the other side of the wall, each particle would need to end up in a very narrowly defined place and in a very narrowly defined state. So the odds again decrease by a dozen? orders of magnitude times the number of particles, to 10^-80 - 10^-100. I recall that there are about 10^80 particles in the observable universe. If Smitty can't reliably pick a specific one from the vastness of space, he really shouldn't attempt teleportation. But can he? He did reorder a deck of cards, after all. A deck of 52 cards can be arranged in 52! ways, which is only about 8x10^67 - nowehere near enough the complexity of teleportation. But he did also make the cards assemble into a neat stack. If the odds of that happening are also a dozen? orders of magniture lower, then this puts the total odds at about 10^-80. Given how many approximations and assumptions I made so far, the results are practically equal. So yeah. Given enough practice... Smitty could probably learn to teleport. Geek hat off. Geek hat on. Thinking about it a bit more, I suspect the teleportation probability is even worse than you calculate. The deck of cards can be arranged 52! ways, but the body has to be reassembled in a similarly precise way. Not quite as bad, since e.g., carbon atoms are interchangeable, and 99% of the human body consists of just 6 elements: C, N, O, H, Ca, and P. But you still need C_12 - 6 protons and 6 neutrons... add 2 neutrons and its radioactive C_14. Add two protons and its radioactive O_14. Both bad. And the right elements do need to be in the right places. So its not as bad as 1 in 10^29! but it is more a factorial thing than adding some orders of magnitude, which makes it much more painful. Something like 1 chance in 10^29!/[(10^29 - 6)! x 6!] ~ (10^29)^6/6! ~ 1.4e171. Then you have the timing thing. You would have to have the tunneling to all occur on a timescale shorter than the time for chemical bonds to form - otherwise some of your atoms would arrive early and bond with the wrong nearest neighbor to form the wrong molecule. Br_2, for example, dissociates under a laser in ~1e-13 s. That is a pretty tight window! Geek hat off. ...bugger. The only hope is that he was able to routinely beat those ~10^-80 odds with little more than his natural ability. It only took the Court a few months to teach Parley to perform some amazing feats; maybe they have something up their sleeve which could boost Smitty's skills as well.
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Post by DonDueed on Apr 1, 2020 18:28:38 GMT
The solution is clear. Smitty must first combine his body's particles into a Bose-Einstein condensate. Then he can teleport the entire conglomerate as a single particle.
Surely the odds of forming a condensate would be a lot more favorable than having to disassemble himself and transport all the particles individually, Star Trek style. All he has to do is get all the particles to freeze in place for an instant, just long enough to make the jump. Easy!
(This is the mechanism I've been mulling over as a means of FTL travel for a SF novel I have in mind.)
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Post by mturtle7 on Apr 2, 2020 0:06:33 GMT
This nerdy discussion of nerd things is absolutely nerd-tacular and I'd hate to put a damper on things...but, well, all this stuff about causing spontaneous quantum tunneling seems like a rather inefficient use of Smitty's powers.
I mean, consider: the Court is already a hotbed of weird super-science and semi-magical experiments; given Jones' apparent familiarity with powers that "distort space", I find it quite plausible that the Court could already have people working on artificial devices to do exactly that. And the "coincidences" made by Smitty's powers don't have to be limited to the systems in his immediate vicinity. Rather than making himself teleport through a wall due to nothing but random physical events in his own body, wouldn't it be far easier for Smitty to make a mad scientist 10 blocks over just happen to be working on a remote teleportation device, which then happens to malfunction & target a random object which it teleports exactly 2 meters north, and that object just happens to be Smitty?
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Post by saardvark on Apr 2, 2020 1:35:36 GMT
This nerdy discussion of nerd things is absolutely nerd-tacular and I'd hate to put a damper on things...but, well, all this stuff about causing spontaneous quantum tunneling seems like a rather inefficient use of Smitty's powers.
I mean, consider: the Court is already a hotbed of weird super-science and semi-magical experiments; given Jones' apparent familiarity with powers that "distort space", I find it quite plausible that the Court could already have people working on artificial devices to do exactly that. And the "coincidences" made by Smitty's powers don't have to be limited to the systems in his immediate vicinity. Rather than making himself teleport through a wall due to nothing but random physical events in his own body, wouldn't it be far easier for Smitty to make a mad scientist 10 blocks over just happen to be working on a remote teleportation device, which then happens to malfunction & target a random object which it teleports exactly 2 meters north, and that object just happens to be Smitty?
true.... and even easier would be just to use Kat's teleportation device. But we miss our chance to nerd out that way!
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Post by pyradonis on Apr 2, 2020 8:39:59 GMT
This nerdy discussion of nerd things is absolutely nerd-tacular and I'd hate to put a damper on things...but, well, all this stuff about causing spontaneous quantum tunneling seems like a rather inefficient use of Smitty's powers.
I mean, consider: the Court is already a hotbed of weird super-science and semi-magical experiments; given Jones' apparent familiarity with powers that "distort space", I find it quite plausible that the Court could already have people working on artificial devices to do exactly that.
(You might want to start a new nerd-off about this one functions.)
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Post by migrantworker on Apr 2, 2020 10:28:55 GMT
This nerdy discussion of nerd things is absolutely nerd-tacular and I'd hate to put a damper on things...but, well, all this stuff about causing spontaneous quantum tunneling seems like a rather inefficient use of Smitty's powers.
I mean, consider: the Court is already a hotbed of weird super-science and semi-magical experiments; given Jones' apparent familiarity with powers that "distort space", I find it quite plausible that the Court could already have people working on artificial devices to do exactly that.
(You might want to start a new nerd-off about this one functions.)
Erm, reporting for duty I guess? This actually gives me an idea: teleportation would be quite trivial if it was using the conceptual space. Then instead of having a collection of elementary particles (Smitty) tunnel through some other collection of elementary particles (a wall), you move a concept of Smitty to the other side of a concept of a wall. Should be within reach for an organisation whose member developed a way of materialising a concept of a doorway on demand. Parley's teleportation already seems to work along similar lines, seeing how she can choose which of the objects in her immediate vicinity will or will not teleport together with her. The pieces of Robot do, but the dirt and stones on which she stands stay behind: she is basically teleporting a concept of her party.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Apr 2, 2020 18:51:28 GMT
I suppose it also matters how close to the ether the hypothetical wall is.
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Post by speedwell on Apr 3, 2020 15:10:08 GMT
You guys are having too much fun speculating about how Smitty's anti-chaos powers would influence the physics of teleportation, when what would actually happen is that he would induce what he needs to come to him. He wouldn't force his atoms to enmesh with a wall and then reform on the opposite side, a minor functionary would decide the day before that there needed to be a door right there. He wouldn't need to have a bunch of paper suddenly develop spontaneous patterns indistinguishable from currency; someone would decide, apparently of their own accord, that their business records showed a large balance due to "Andrew Smith". Parsimony, folks. George's teleportation is wackier magic. Andrew's is tame by design, heh.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Apr 3, 2020 17:50:53 GMT
New spec: The first seraph(s) was/were built by Diego, modeled on his idealized self, with the purpose of keeping robot "society" on track (according to his vision) and defending it from threats ideological or physical as appropriate. The "ancient ancestors" robots built the next generation of seraphs based on those models but with refinements/improvements in tech, etheric tech, and programming; this allowed for some evolution of what exactly Diego meant and how to better achieve those goals. Later generations made more changes. One of these improvements to the seraphs was laser beams, useful for defense against the plants and creatures of the Wood as well as construction, demolition, and search-and-rescue... with other applications such as landscaping/gardening, destructive illumination/range-finding, mood-lighting, communication, etc. Another improvement was the ability to recognize humans who had the innate potential to help the robots improve themselves. This ability stems both from what the "ancient ancestors" valued and wanted their descendants to have but also from the original robots' ability to recognize Diego himself and by extension retains some residue of how they were supposed to respond to and revere him. In the seraph series this ability may even be etheric (as others have speculated they may see something like what Zimmy sees when she looks at Kat, though not as powerfully as Zimmy does) but even if it isn't, this ability is why the seraph robots described Kat as beautiful or angelic and, as they observe what she's capable of or otherwise learn more, entrench this belief. It's also why Robot briefly thought of Antimony as "mommy" (as she was the one who put him back together and activated him again) but that relationship, however critical to his continued function, was eclipsed by the presence of Kat and her contributions and so faded to near-irrelevance. Note that the regular Court robots for sure do not have etheric sight that enables them to see Kat as special, though some may find her angelic or attractive in a generic sense; they have to/had to learn about her and what she could do (and discuss the subject) before deciding she was an angel... and later "The Angel." Additionally, the original robots knew Diego's religious beliefs (or at least religious traditions) and wished to follow them to some extent or other, which is why they use the word "angel" and that concept instead of something else or something new. You guys are having too much fun speculating about how Smitty's anti-chaos powers would influence the physics of teleportation, when what would actually happen is that he would induce what he needs to come to him. He wouldn't force his atoms to enmesh with a wall and then reform on the opposite side, a minor functionary would decide the day before that there needed to be a door right there. He wouldn't need to have a bunch of paper suddenly develop spontaneous patterns indistinguishable from currency; someone would decide, apparently of their own accord, that their business records showed a large balance due to "Andrew Smith". Parsimony, folks. George's teleportation is wackier magic. Andrew's is tame by design, heh. If we want to focus on Smitty's potential to walk through a wall then I suppose we should rewrite the thought experiment to some isolated ruin far from civilization that was abandoned long before Ol' Smitface was born.
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Post by speedwell on Apr 4, 2020 10:14:18 GMT
You guys are having too much fun speculating about how Smitty's anti-chaos powers would influence the physics of teleportation, when what would actually happen is that he would induce what he needs to come to him. He wouldn't force his atoms to enmesh with a wall and then reform on the opposite side, a minor functionary would decide the day before that there needed to be a door right there. He wouldn't need to have a bunch of paper suddenly develop spontaneous patterns indistinguishable from currency; someone would decide, apparently of their own accord, that their business records showed a large balance due to "Andrew Smith". Parsimony, folks. George's teleportation is wackier magic. Andrew's is tame by design, heh. If we want to focus on Smitty's potential to walk through a wall then I suppose we should rewrite the thought experiment to some isolated ruin far from civilization that was abandoned long before Ol' Smitface was born. What is more probable, that he would physically disappear from one spot and reconstitute himself on the other side of the wall, or that he step on a seemingly solid patch of sand, fall through a concealed pit to a room below, and walk up a flight of stairs to emerge on the other side of the wall? That's my point, that's my point. Anti-entropy is a massive expenditure of energy; it requires the increase of entropy elsewhere. Since we don't quite see the immediate scenery around Smitty explode disastrously, I am assuming that entropy isn't actually violated. Hear me out. See Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber and Stephenson's Anathem for the sort of thing I mean. I'm going to add a twist, though. Where the primary characters in those novels basically move instinctively or consciously from a universe in which the thing they want doesn't happen to a universe in which it does, and the Chaos characters in the Amber novels force an imaginary (=exists in a different universe) thing to arrive on command (necessarily breaking the continuity of the universe in which they happen to reside), Smitty seems to do something much quieter and tidier. I visualise it as the probability equivalent of a Klein bottle; it looks like he's causing a local intersection of probable universes, but what we see as an intersection is probably quite straightforward and non-overlapping in a higher dimension. Inevitable, that is, in a much larger sphere of things than the one we're used to contemplating. Boring, really.
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Post by Eversist on Apr 13, 2020 16:05:31 GMT
Has anyone discussed at all where Kat is getting all of her raw materials from for all of the new robot bodies? Can we assume it's some combination of the Court allowing students what they need to be experimenting/learning, and also Julie's influence as one of the Shadow Men?
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Post by saardvark on Apr 14, 2020 1:52:37 GMT
Has anyone discussed at all where Kat is getting all of her raw materials from for all of the new robot bodies? Can we assume it's some combination of the Court allowing students what they need to be experimenting/learning, and also Julie's influence as one of the Shadow Men? Tony may be helping some as well....
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Post by Eversist on Apr 14, 2020 4:41:56 GMT
Has anyone discussed at all where Kat is getting all of her raw materials from for all of the new robot bodies? Can we assume it's some combination of the Court allowing students what they need to be experimenting/learning, and also Julie's influence as one of the Shadow Men? Tony may be helping some as well.... Ooh, yeah, forgot to mention him. I wonder if he's being kept abreast of what's currently going on.
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Post by pyradonis on Apr 14, 2020 8:58:17 GMT
Has anyone discussed at all where Kat is getting all of her raw materials from for all of the new robot bodies? Can we assume it's some combination of the Court allowing students what they need to be experimenting/learning, and also Julie's influence as one of the Shadow Men? She's using the organic matter from all the forest creatures that enter the Court and are slain by Eglamore and Parley.
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Post by DonDueed on Apr 14, 2020 13:49:58 GMT
Has anyone discussed at all where Kat is getting all of her raw materials from for all of the new robot bodies? Can we assume it's some combination of the Court allowing students what they need to be experimenting/learning, and also Julie's influence as one of the Shadow Men? She's using the organic matter from all the forest creatures that enter the Court and are slain by Eglamore and Parley. Ick.
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Post by shaihulud on Apr 14, 2020 17:21:26 GMT
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