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Post by arf on May 13, 2020 7:04:13 GMT
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Post by justhalf on May 13, 2020 7:08:51 GMT
Kat finally can't stand it anymore.
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Post by philman on May 13, 2020 7:13:35 GMT
Hmm, short-hair Annie is taking it worse than long-hair Annie. Could we be seeing the start of a split between the two of them over their relationship with Kat as well?
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Post by theonethatgotaway on May 13, 2020 7:16:38 GMT
Oh Kat, it's not impossible, it's MAGIC! Wait here, we'll get Zimmy, she's GREAT at explaining this stuff!
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Post by imaginaryfriend on May 13, 2020 7:29:30 GMT
Antimony is arguably one person who has four arms. If she was forewarned or not remains to be seen.
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Post by flowsthead on May 13, 2020 7:36:07 GMT
That took a turn for the much less serious. With Paz's reaction last time, I was expecting Kat to have a much more personal problem. Maybe more will be revealed in the coming weeks, but so far, this seems surprisingly silly?
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Post by arf on May 13, 2020 7:55:01 GMT
Antimony is arguably one person who has four arms. If she was forewarned or not remains to be seen. To be forewarned is to be four armed, perhaps, but I don't think the converse holds. |
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Post by csj on May 13, 2020 7:57:16 GMT
[S] Kat: Mental breakdown.
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Post by stclair on May 13, 2020 8:05:54 GMT
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Post by madjack on May 13, 2020 8:11:47 GMT
Annie, looking back at everything they've experienced since coming to the Court: ".....Yes..?"
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Post by aline on May 13, 2020 8:59:36 GMT
That took a turn for the much less serious. With Paz's reaction last time, I was expecting Kat to have a much more personal problem. Maybe more will be revealed in the coming weeks, but so far, this seems surprisingly silly? It's not silly to her. I don't know how to explain it, but uderstanding how the world works is what Kat does. It's no surprise if she's obsessed with this and can't let go. |
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Post by flowsthead on May 13, 2020 9:21:16 GMT
That took a turn for the much less serious. With Paz's reaction last time, I was expecting Kat to have a much more personal problem. Maybe more will be revealed in the coming weeks, but so far, this seems surprisingly silly? It's not silly to her. I don't know how to explain it, but uderstanding how the world works is what Kat does. It's no surprise if she's obsessed with this and can't let go. Is it no surprise? After all they have been through together? She's literally seen Annie be a guide for a ghost. She's seen a million different examples of magic from not just Annie, but from her mother, other people in the Court, Forest people, etc. Her girlfriend speaks to animals. Sure, maybe some of this she could rationalize, but a lot of she can't. Even if she'll never understand magic and it bothers her, why this particular thing? |
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Post by ghostiet on May 13, 2020 10:08:00 GMT
Sure, maybe some of this she could rationalize, but a lot of she can't. Even if she'll never understand magic and it bothers her, why this particular thing? Because those other things don't really affect her on an emotional level and are also ultimately mundane in their implications and utility. Her mom's barrier magic or Paz' ability aren't fundamentally that different from an interest in field and track, biochemistry or being vegan, especially since both use their magic affinity for relatively understandable, scientific pursuits. Hell, even the magic used to seal Jeannie is ultimately very utilitarian and logical. This time, her best friend is suddenly two distinct, separate people with whom she has two separate relationships and experiences. There's no indication that this is a permanent development, no indication why that happened and what for, or what does it entail - one of the Annies might be a fake, it might be time shenanigans at play, or perhaps cloning, or multiverses. And she likely feels guilt over her not getting which one is "her" Annie. |
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Post by aline on May 13, 2020 10:26:38 GMT
It's not silly to her. I don't know how to explain it, but uderstanding how the world works is what Kat does. It's no surprise if she's obsessed with this and can't let go. Is it no surprise? After all they have been through together? She's literally seen Annie be a guide for a ghost. She's seen a million different examples of magic from not just Annie, but from her mother, other people in the Court, Forest people, etc. Her girlfriend speaks to animals. Sure, maybe some of this she could rationalize, but a lot of she can't. Even if she'll never understand magic and it bothers her, why this particular thing? It's not that it "bothers" her, she just wants to understand what is going on, like she always does. She's never shrugged and let magical things go past her without asking questions. Kat questions the ether, and she uses the ether in her machines, she actually knows a great deal about it by now. She uses an etheric computer to make things go from one place to the next and she transfers robot souls in living bodies. There are forces she can't fully understand, she doesn't know why exactlythey do this or that, but she can find out what they do, and predict what they'll do next, and use that knowledge. That's science. The double Annies means there isn't one universe, but a multiverse out there. It's a huge, huge thing and the fact that nobody else is even remotely interested in that is what surprises me. Of course Kat needs to understand. I look forward to what she'll do once she does. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on May 13, 2020 10:30:13 GMT
I would think that Kat could think of ways to make an exact duplicate of a person. Maybe she can't do so, but she should be able to construct a theoretical framework using etheric tech where it could be done. Kat making no progress probably means that her expectations about learning how it was done are being undermined or outright thwarted by the data she's been able to glean... So maybe what's bothering her is (in addition to having to look at two "wrong" versions of her friend) the knowledge-problem the Antimonies represent.
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Post by fia on May 13, 2020 10:53:09 GMT
Kat, I grok you. And Tom, I feel personally attacked, haha. Quoting oneself is still weird but Tony totally has to be joking. "There is no evidence to suggest that she is not who she claims to be"?! It is a good joke, but I think Eggs is too scrambled to get it. Nerdtime: I wonder what definition of 'evidence' you would have to have for Tony's statement to be true. It is true that there is no specific evidence that discounts the proposition [Fannie is Annie], or that discounts the proposition [Courtney is Annie]; but it would be odd to say there is no evidence that increases the probability that one-or-the-other of them are fake (that is, there is evidence that supports [Either Courtney or Fannie is not Annie], namely, the evidence that if [Courtney AND Fannie are Annie] were true, then you might have a violation of the Identity of Indiscineribles / Indiscernibility of Identity, aka Leibniz's Law –– but Leibniz's Law is supposed to be a priori necessary, so there if you accept it, there just can't be any evidence to disprove it; ergo, there is reason to think either Courtney or Fannie is not Annie). So strictly speaking, what Tony said is true, but it is misleading. Since one way of there being evidence of Fannie failing to be who she claims to be (Annie) is if there is evidence someone else might be who she claims to be, which there most certainly is evidence of, in the form of two seemingly identical non-identicals. Follow-up nerd post: So, we have a classic philosophical problem here. In cases where 1 person splits into 2 people, if we are to continue believing Leibniz's Law, then neither new person is identical to the person before the split. That is to say, if Fannie and Courtney are BOTH split off from Annie, then neither of them gets to be Annie. That would mean that Annie has effectively died. One contemporary way of getting over this issue is to posit that neither of the new people are identical to the old person, but that the old person 'survives' in the two new people. So, it's not quite identicality, and the old person is not quite alive, but they are better than dead, in that they at least get to survive. (Those curious about this should read Derek Parfit, who was a nice man, and passed away only recently. He has lots of good writing on ethics and metaphysics that is accessible). The other option might be to give up on Leibniz's Law. But I really don't recommend that; it makes your metaphysics kind of ugly, unless you accept some form of multi-valued logic, which is messy and not fun to work with. This last option might still resonate with Tony though, since he is a scientist, and probably a fan of quantum mechanics, which has weirder things in it than multi-valued logic. So by Tony's lights Annie might well just be two people now, and he may be more fine with it than the average person (or the average philosopher, who might take the split as a tragedy). I have to admit I am now realizing maybe, on my own theory of personal identity, it might be the case that Annie is dead. I don't see yet how this is related to Leibniz' Law, which simply states that identicals are indiscernible (which is either untrue or a lead-in to another question, which I can't see the answer to in your post, see (I)) and indiscernibles are identical (which is valid in theory for the perfectly-discerning mind, and egregiously untrue in practice, but it's also how abstraction works, see (II)) or why this same argument should not lead to the conclusion that I effectively die if I lose my hand because I no longer fulfill the predicate "has two hands". Or: if there is some event in which I "can" lose my hand, and one possible outcome is that I do, and the other is that I don't, regardless of what happens, by your argument, I am not the same person afterwards unless the universe is fully deterministic. In other words, how do you establish continuity? and how exactly does the concurrent existence of Annie 1 and Annie 2, despite that they both would, in isolation, be the only outcome of some "forking" situation (entry to the Forest), disrupt it? (I) Suppose there exist two identical objects; then assume they exist at different points in space or in time; this makes them discernible by their position in space or in time. Whether location is an intrinsic property of the objects does not matter to their discernibility, provided I can establish such a concept as "space" or "time" at all. This implies that identical objects must all exist at the same position in space and time (which makes this trivially true, or rather raises the problem of how to establish continuity between objects moving across space and time). . (II) Humans probably aren't that good at establishing every possible property of an object, or proving that they have. I'd guess that "much" of human error lies in failing to discern important qualities and thus establishing identity where there is none. However, (∀p : p(x) = p(y)) => (x = y) is indeed how you establish "identity by all properties p that I consider relevant to the purpose at hand" (abstraction), which is, in fact, what the Annies seem to have done with each other to verify their mutual "reality" (looking at the Ether, both fulfill that they project a "correct" image there by the other's concept / totality-of-facts that defines "herself") but now (understandably) insist on establishing the other is "less real" by qualifying different properties to themselves as "essential" (such as who stopped the attack, or who helped Tony with his hand) -- maybe only because they discernibly differ in them. Hi Korba –– you are right, of course, that not everyone likes or appreciates Leibniz's Law as a law expressing the necessity of identity (see in particular Max Black's essay on the identity of indiscernibles; Martin Wallace at Oberlin has a useful overview of the responses to Black). Just a quick point: it is not obvious that "discernibility" needs to be indexed here to human capacities. It could be discernibility according to, say, an omniscient being; anything that counts as a property will be relevant to determining identity. I was using Leibniz's Law just as one possible formulation of the necessity of identity. It is at least clear how, on Leibniz's Law, Annie 1 and Annie 2 are non-identical. (I) says that if they were indiscernible, they would be identical (but they are not indiscernible; indeed the contrapostive shows (I) does not hold for Annie 1 and Annie 2); (II) says if they are identical, they are indiscernible (note that if we assume the antecedent, the consequent turns out to be false in the case of Annie 1 and Annie 2). However, something that perhaps I should have been clear about: I was assuming that there may be additional conditions on identity for specific objects, beyond those given by Leibniz's Law. LL does not specify which properties are relevant for determining identity; on a wide reading, it applies to all properties, so if any objects a and b differ in any of their properties, they are non-identical. So in some ways Leibniz's Law is too strong, particularly when we talk about the identity of objects that persist through time. As you say, what if I lose my hand? So we do, for the identity of persons and animals across time, usually use weaker conditions on identity. What we usually do is that we say that identity is indexed to a time, and we might say that there are some essential properties that you must continue to have in order for you, the identical object, to persist at a later time, in spite of differing in some accidental properties from your earlier self (for example). So we might say LL holds most obviously if we hold a particular time fixed; there can't be two identical objects at the same time, unless they are actually a single object. And the only way for two objects to subsist in the same place with the same properties at one time is to have different persistence conditions (like a statue and its component clay: two objects, one place). However, there is almost no way of formulating personal identity such that it is possible for a person at time t1, P, to be identical to two future people at the same future time t2, Pa and Pb. This is because uniqueness is usually taken to be a strong condition on identity. And LL shows us Pa cannot equal Pb. So if we want P = Pa, and P = Pb, but not Pa = Pb, we are in trouble. That is why I was saying that there is a sense in which, if Annie split into Fannie and Courtney, Annie (in a sense) is dead; there is no one present who is uniquely identical to her. Parfit's response is to say uniqueness isn't super important; so Annie may not be around exactly as a unique being, but Annie may have survived. LL might be stronger than I needed, but given that we are currently in a condition with two objects/people that are discernible, I thought it was a simple way to go. Hmm. So are you saying that every thing is one thing (itself, uniquely) and there cannot be a thing that is two things? And therefore the statements "Court!Annie is Annie" and "Forest!Annie is Annie," when put together, are equivalent to saying "Annie is not one thing but two things," which is essentially a contradiction in terms? Yes, that is more or less the distillation of the point  ((Of course a lot is happening when you identify a thing as not only "one thing" and as "a thing" ("There is a thing" is a complex thing to say metaphysically), but once you have identified " a thing" as a somewhat independent existence it does become hard to say "that thing is two things".)) |
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Post by fia on May 13, 2020 11:12:41 GMT
And a cookie to you, friend |
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Post by pyradonis on May 13, 2020 11:20:06 GMT
Sure, maybe some of this she could rationalize, but a lot of she can't. Even if she'll never understand magic and it bothers her, why this particular thing? Because those other things don't really affect her on an emotional level and are also ultimately mundane in their implications and utility. Her mom's barrier magic or Paz' ability aren't fundamentally that different from an interest in field and track, biochemistry or being vegan, especially since both use their magic affinity for relatively understandable, scientific pursuits. Hell, even the magic used to seal Jeannie is ultimately very utilitarian and logical. This time, her best friend is suddenly two distinct, separate people with whom she has two separate relationships and experiences. There's no indication that this is a permanent development, no indication why that happened and what for, or what does it entail - one of the Annies might be a fake, it might be time shenanigans at play, or perhaps cloning, or multiverses. And she likely feels guilt over her not getting which one is "her" Annie. She did not seem to have a problem accepting her crush (Alistair) turn into a bird before her eyes (I am referring to her acceptance of this transformation being possible at all), which definitely affected her on an emotional level. |
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Post by speedwell on May 13, 2020 11:24:05 GMT
Sure, maybe some of this she could rationalize, but a lot of she can't. Even if she'll never understand magic and it bothers her, why this particular thing? <snip> This time, her best friend is suddenly two distinct, separate people with whom she has two separate relationships and experiences. There's no indication that this is a permanent development, no indication why that happened and what for, or what does it entail - one of the Annies might be a fake, it might be time shenanigans at play, or perhaps cloning, or multiverses. And she likely feels guilt over her not getting which one is "her" Annie. I sympathise extremely with this thing. I have a dear friend who I have an immense amount of respect for, but after a few years during which we lost touch, she got back in touch with me to let me know that she'd had some troubles and undergone major surgery. And while I have no issues with her choices and fully support her feelings, as I do with anyone in the same situation, the last time I spoke to her before we lost touch that time, she was my ex-boyfriend. My feelings about her are and were less important than accepting and supporting and being happy for her. But it was tough to face my own private feelings about our past together. Guilt was definitely part of it. (Remember we're in our mid-50s; 25 years ago we didn't know how to think about that sort of thing the way people do now.) |
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Post by netherdan on May 13, 2020 13:00:14 GMT
Oh, Kat, Kat... You have already figured out quantum teleportation on a large scale, now you just have to figure out how to not destroy the information at the source object in the process and you're done!
PS: I just hope you've never used your teleporter on living beings or objects that holds consciousness (i.e. robot brains). I know you're smart enough to realize that quantum teleport = destroy the source + recreate exact copy at target
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Post by davidm on May 13, 2020 13:11:09 GMT
Terrible things.
When no one was looking, Lex Luthor took forty cakes. He took 40 cakes. That's as many as four tens. And that's terrible.
When no one was looking, Kat woke old robots. She make organic robots. And moved minds of robots. And that's terrible.
When Kat thinks "this is impossible", yet she grows bodies and transfers/copies minds, that's terrible.
While Kat was born a human, maybe she will one day identify as a boxbot.
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Post by shadow3 on May 13, 2020 13:54:01 GMT
I hope they're not going to forget that the "real one" is not among them, that the two Annies are both from other parallel timelines.
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Post by Futurismo on May 13, 2020 14:15:18 GMT
Yup, this definitely sounds like what Zimmy was talking about, to me. I think that between her giving the robots a presence in the ether and her attempts to wrap her mind around this whole "Annie has been shifted" business, something has been niggling inside her head and it's only getting more insistent. Zimmy did say that Annie needed to keep an eye on her... I'm starting to wonder if Kat's inability to tear her focus away from this is just a symptom of a change that's been coming to fruition within her, much like I think the same of that light that Loup sees.
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Post by gpvos on May 13, 2020 14:55:16 GMT
I'm concerned that the Annies still say they're working on getting Loup to reverse what he did, which would mean one of them would be zapped to oblivion.
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Post by bicarbonat on May 13, 2020 15:33:39 GMT
I'm concerned that the Annies still say they're working on getting Loup to reverse what he did, which would mean one of them would be zapped to oblivion. I think they assume that "resolution" will look like both of them being returned to their proper realities, and Kat's Annie being restored to the current reality we see. I...do not think it will be that neat and painless. And if it isn't and they jump through all of these hoops only to discover that, I expect there will be a bit of anguish, but that somebody will step up anyhow. |
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Post by Ahakarin on May 13, 2020 15:39:16 GMT
In Kat's defense, this does lead down the black hole of time travel, causality, and the nature of free will and existence as a whole.
"magic duplicate" is such a sci-fi trope she'd be intimately familiar with I can't see that breaking her, but compound the idea of multiple timelines, personal connection, and perhaps the haunting idea that in one of them, Anne... never came back from the forest. Yeah, I could see this getting to her. Sure, she gets double the Anne and double the fun, but another her on another thread is still sitting in the Court, months later, still waiting for her Anne to come back.
Unless something is done, there's no reason to think she ever will.
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jocobo
Junior Member
Posts: 78 
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Post by jocobo on May 13, 2020 15:48:04 GMT
It seems to me on some level Kat is going through grief Specifically, denial.
The Annie she knew before is gone. Annie, on a fundamental level, is gone. But she continues on in Fannie and Courtney.
But Kat cannot accept this change. She wishes Annie was a static constant.
It's kind of ironic. Kat is gifting robots with the capacity to change, as all living things do, but she rejects that in her own friend.
It's sad. She could rejoice in what is. That all the things she loved about Annie now exist in two people. And if she loved Annie Prime, she should surely love and accept these two for despite all that changed, they remain the same (much as the robots despite changing vessels still show their original aspects).
I am not who I was yesterday. None of us are. Annie is simply a much more blunt display of that concept.
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Post by pyradonis on May 13, 2020 16:20:22 GMT
I'm concerned that the Annies still say they're working on getting Loup to reverse what he did, which would mean one of them would be zapped to oblivion. No, sent back to the timeline where she was taken from. |
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Post by migrantworker on May 13, 2020 16:40:55 GMT
Hmm, short-hair Annie is taking it worse than long-hair Annie. Could we be seeing the start of a split between the two of them over their relationship with Kat as well? Could be a result of Anthony opening up more/only to Forest Annie. Without him as an alternative, Court Annie would want to cling more to their existing friendships, especially given how few friends Annies have in general these days. I'm concerned that the Annies still say they're working on getting Loup to reverse what he did, which would mean one of them would be zapped to oblivion. No, sent back to the timeline where she was taken from. Ooh, that would be interesting. I mean, her original timeline has now carried on without her for some time. And then, out of the blue she returns to... well, to what? And how much exactly of her would return - say, does she retain her memories of time spent in the currently portrayed timeline, or the psychic link to Renard? |
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Post by The Anarch on May 13, 2020 18:01:37 GMT
That's not a very scientific attitude, Miss Kat. If something has happened, then it is indeed possible. Therefore you should not be stating that it is NOT possible but instead be asking HOW it is possible.
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