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Distance Learning for fun and profit...

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I got some things to say.
The first is that cauldron not knowing anything about taylor can be blamed on a combination of whatever bullshit is blocking thinkers (my bet is on the subspace receiver tripping red flags and crashing whatever simulation the shards are running irrelevant of direction) and the second is that prior to Gravitec brockton bay and darpa were beneath their notice. Darpa because of Cauldron's parahuman superiorty complex and the bay because they had more pressing issues that they needed their thinkers for and by the time the bay and Darpa became relevant, none their thinkers were working and they had no non-thinker assets in any position to get empirical data.

edit: grammar and spelling
 
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Elfalpha said:
Trolling is not my intention.

I just feel like everything great she's building is based on the lie that she invented this with no help. But maybe it's becoming a smaller and smaller lie in comparision to everything else she's doing, and you're likely right that no-one else could do what she can do.

I guess we'll see where it goes and what happens if Taylor decides or is forced by circumstance to share.
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If Taylor could be considered a plagarist or IP thief, then every other scientist in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuaries need to be also.
They learnt the basics from someone elses work, just as Taylor did, only hers was literally out of this world.

Also, as I recall, she only learnt the mathematiccs and built the hardware from her understanding of said mathematiccs and a quick glimpse of a demo unit on the show.
No step by step instructions on how to buuild the unit and even if there was, how would she know what component was what without understanding their language.
She even picked up on other possible uses which weren't shown on the show.
 
MTB said:
Alternately:
DARPA: "How did you watch alien TV?"
Taylor: "I made a receiver. It's really cool, it works based on <succint explanation making listening physicists resemble goldfish>. And after that, all I had to do was understand their symbology, derive their advanced understanding of maths and physics from that and proof I understood it correctly by making the frame generator."
DARPA: "Wow that sounds amazing. Please keep watching the aliens! Here's ALL OF THE MONEYS for R&D, a team of experts to work with on the alien thing and bounce ideas off and we'll pay you even more moneys for any other alien radio stations you find. Also, could we get your notes? You did make notes, didn't you?"
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It's bigger than the mere immediate tech, it's the chance to tap an external source of data even if Taylor had a sudden case of dead. It may not be as easily packaged as a well written design document, but it's there, and it is unlikely to vanish. That is the intrinsic value to being able to listen in on others work, the fact that you are no longer dependent on the one source, and the US government would understand that. They'd throw a ton of linguists and scientists at the problem to try to get their own dubbed/redone version and then just simply get a bunch of people to study them. An ever growing library of such recordings would be HUGE for the government in the longer term. And by longer term I mean Generationally.
 
Staff Notice: Gonna need you to calm down a bit here. Even if you disagree with how the story was written, that doesn't mean that you need to go out of your way to insult them. Let's avoid that in future discussions.
On the (off-topic) topic of Earth Witch.
Look, let's check the CANON again.
What part of Taylor's story (past the locker, sadly) is CRUCIAL for her to become Khepri and FORCE tons of people into compliance?
1%?
5%?
Definitely NOT MORE than that.
Everything ELSE merely would only need to ensure her survival - which "locking her up on Earth Witch" would ensure JUST AS NICELY.
Sure, they didn't know that, but, wait a second, can't the Path PATH the exact same thing I just said?
And if NOT - then why even PATH in the first place?
It's WORTHLESS!
And, like I HAVE said elsewhere before - why were they 100% SURE that there was NO WAY to even talk to Scion peacefully efficiently?
Did they ever MENTION looking for it AT ALL, let alone TRYING it?
Or was it "we MUST kill the Evil Devil, PERIOD" - and anything else was RELIGIOUSLY discarded at the start of a thought itself?
ARE there any discussions on ANY non-violent solutions to Scion in the CANON?
I definitely think that NOPE, which is a part of the CANON's "religious dogma" in the first place, of course.
WildAss created a world for the sole PURPOSE of CONFLICT, and it shows in how STUPID its inhabitants are in every OTHER aspect.
Even IF (big IF) we assume that Contessa literally Mastered (through the PATH) everyone else, this only shows how STUPID those are anyways.
You can't Master a person into a MODE of THINKING, if they are actually THINKING differently.
That is, of course, IF they are THINKING, period.
These morons, though, NOPE, not even close.
So I refuse to blame the fault of the characters for the intentions of the writer - when it's OBVIOUS that it WAS the case all along.
Conflict drive or no conflict drive (especially since it's NO) - you don't make a high-level Thinker this much STUPID.
The end.
 
Before the Triumvirate, before the PRT, before even Cauldron... There was a little girl. She stood before the corpse of a godling, and in her sorrow, knowing that another of its kind still roamed the lands, looked within herself and asked... "Path to killing the other."

And That is what everyone gets wrong. Cauldron was not formed to protect anyone, they were not brought together to save humanity, they were not creating parahumans to save anyone.

The Path cares for naught but the goal. And the goal is to to kill a god.
 
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karloss99 said:
Before the Triumvirate, before the PRT, before even Cauldron... There was a little girl. She stood before the corpse of a godling, and in her sorrow, knowing that another of its kind still roamed the lands, looked within herself and asked... "Path to killing the other."

And That is what everyone gets wrong. Cauldron was not formed to protect anyone, they were not brought together to save humanity, they were not creating parahumans to save anyone.

The Path cares for naught but the goal. And the goal is to to kill a god.
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The trouble is, in her death-throes, the goddess said "thou shalt not" and the Path was occluded.
She literally can't do the thing using her power; it's blocked at the root superuser level. At best she might be able to run a workaround involving killing all the shards that make up said god. Except she's not even allowed to find half of them.
 
In this case, my personal theory (which has been stated in this thread before) as to what's happening is that shards aren't actually as perfect at emulating humans as everybody thinks they are. Most minor mistakes in simulation get paved over, but when something like this happens, a once-in-several-generations genius, the shards simply can't simulate them correctly. And since the Entities arrived less than a generation ago, it's possible that they straight up hadn't encountered one such genius before. Maybe among other species, but in those cases, the cycle would've been going undeterred and the world would've been in total chaos, which is a bad place for a genius to be.

Whatever you think of Cauldron, you have to agree that the Entities and their shards are, most definitely, idiots by human standards.
 
The point is that it all ultimately comes down to the fact that from day one Cauldron operated with 'Kill Scion' as the win condition. Even though there doubtlessly were much, much easier ways to ensure the golden man never kills everyone.

And considering this is PtV we are talking about, there is every chance that the selection process for Cauldron was skewed to make sure the ones who learn about 'THE TRUTH' don't 'endanger the Path' by... I dunno, proposing alternatives?
 
mp3.1415player said:
Settling back, he added with a somewhat larger smile, "Should that change in future, of course, we would then read you in on the situation as required. But for now, there's no Parahuman activity for you to involve yourself with, or to distract you and your agency from their own important tasks."
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Of course, this means that if Cauldron gets fed up enough they start throwing villain capes at the project just so that the PRT can get read in.
 
Anti-No said:
Of course, this means that if Cauldron gets fed up enough they start throwing villain capes at the project just so that the PRT can get read in.
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No, no, see:

1. Cauldron keeps poking at things
2. Taylor gets annoyed.
3. Tay makes a, mass-producible, parahuman detector-disruptor.
4. PRT gets shut down/absorbed into 'mundane' law enforcement
 
karloss99 said:
No, no, see:

1. Cauldron keeps poking at things
2. Taylor gets annoyed.
3. Tay makes a, mass-producible, parahuman detector-disruptor.
4. PRT gets shut down/absorbed into 'mundane' law enforcement
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It's quite plausible - if Cauldron uses agents they will almost inevitably be Parahuman, and if she solves that issue the military will definitely pick up and run with it. Then, two weeks later, every major military base in the US has towers generating a Parahuman jamming field and Cauldron sees their entire model implode - the collapse of civilisation would go from inevitable to a hell of a lot less likely overnight. Whether or not that's good for the Scion issue depends heavily on Taylor, but I can guarantee the military would immediately stomp the S9 given the chance, the tech and a legal figleaf.
 
cryptoam said:
Had a feeling that would be a problem still...
Although I would like to know how Taylor would like to fix that. Erosion due to extremely hot plasma acting like a a fetmosecond laser in intensity is not easy to stop or mitigate.
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Would finding a way to dump the charge before the projectile fully leaves the barrel before breaking the circuit work? Something like the opposite of a capacitor? Or would merely breaking the circuit before the projectile can leave the rails accomplish the same thing?
 
Super Vegeta said:
Too many wordz to filter through, so here's a simple question:
Why NOT "Door to the main person behind DARPA"?
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Because, turning up in the President of the United States' office unannounced like that is a good way to get shot. While it wouldn't do much to Alexandria, the PRT and Protectorate would find themselves very much sanctioned for what could easily been seen at an attempted assassination, and lots of non-Cauldron assets would start some rather probing investigations that they'd prefer to avoid.

(That, or Eisenhower's grave, since he started the entire department off...)

The request might need wording better. Especially since there is no indication that Doormaker could even parse a request like that into a portal — it's always been a location, or a specific individual, never a riddle or a puzzle. Doormaker is also incapable of communication, while Clairvoyant has a mental disability that leaves him at a mental age of about 8. All in all, not the best pair to be searching for and deducing the identity of a mysterious individual.

They might be able to use PTV to backtrace from GravTech to Professor Drekin, and then again to get the relevant CCTV logs to show Danny and Taylor meeting him (assuming that they've been kept this long). But there are sufficient butterflies from "out of scope" influence that most precog is scuppered.

(The best way to think of this: if I set up a load of dominoes, marble runs, bells, and buzzers for a fancy Heath Robinson contraption, you can probably look at it, take a photo of it, and predict what will happen —and in what order — after the timer kicks it off. If, after we leave, next door's cat runs through and messes things up, that proceeds to make your predictions and photos invalid. Even if you can hear the bells and buzzers going off, you don't know what the cat has changed in order to correct your model.)
 
Astrobot said:
Would finding a way to dump the charge before the projectile fully leaves the barrel before breaking the circuit work? Something like the opposite of a capacitor? Or would merely breaking the circuit before the projectile can leave the rails accomplish the same thing?
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I do not think that would work, else DARPA and the US Navy would've tried that.
 
cryptoam said:
Had a feeling that would be a problem still...
Although I would like to know how Taylor would like to fix that. Erosion due to extremely hot plasma acting like a a fetmosecond laser in intensity is not easy to stop or mitigate.
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kelgar04 said:
On to tech still need to deal with rail erosion maybe change up the alloy? As well as probably do some destructive testing but all seems to be going well. As does Taylor's various other projects seem to be moving along at a rapid pace.
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The "spark" that is generated when a rail gun projectile leaves the rails can easily be compared to a bolt of lightning in terms of heat and intensity. No known conductive material can stand up to those temperatures for very long.

One option would be to somehow create regenerating rails; ones where the ends are replaced after being vaporized between shots. Or, to have the rails be longer then needed, with loading taking place near the middle with the rails being advanced with each shot to compensate for the lost ends. Or developing an entirely new class of materials that can withstand higher temperatures while still being sufficiently conductive; perhaps something like a superconductive ceramic....

On the subject of Patents and Copyrights; those are protected by international agreements. Since the broadcasts are not from any of the signatory nations for those agreements, they are not protected, and thus are freely available to the Public Domain. So, no issues of that sort exists in this case.
 
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Astrobot said:
Would finding a way to dump the charge before the projectile fully leaves the barrel before breaking the circuit work? Something like the opposite of a capacitor? Or would merely breaking the circuit before the projectile can leave the rails accomplish the same thing?
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The plasma is caused by arcing across the gap between the rail and the projectile vaporising the surface of both. If you break the circuit in time to stop it, you don't actually have a railgun; just a very expensive one-use switch stuck in the on/closed position. That is to say, the plasma is generated along the entire length of the rail – it just gets worse towards the muzzle as the projectile is increasingly more pitted, making the arcing worse.

The solution that occurred to me is some form of low-friction superconducting lubricant fluid but that's a tall order. And it has to be superconducting or resistive heating will vaporise it anyway unless it has a ridiculous boiling point or you detune the weapon to the point where conventional artillery is competitive again.
 
kelgar04 said:
I don't think the path can protect against human error though so that may factor into how effective she can be.
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...the Path can most certainly, given the bullshit-level stuff it was shown to do in canon, predict "human error" very precisely and take advantage of it. It's a precog level that basically invalidates free will, limited only by the limits Eden put on it, which specifically included "can't Path Endbringers" and "can't Path the results of trigger events beforehand". The first one apparently echoed through Eidolon's control of the Endbringers enough that he couldn't be Pathed either.

In this tale, there's info coming in from outside the absolutely huge subset of the multiverse the Path has access to, which it can't 'see' beforehand at all; it ought to be able to see the results of what Taylor has done ... but that may be dependent on at least one Shardbearer getting close enough to find out that info, and right now none have. (Taylor appears to be Shardless in this tale, though the author is a trolling troller who trolls, and QA may just have decided to keep all this delicious tasty DATA to herself for a while.)

Dave, we'll see what happens once Legend gets there
 
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