Not at my computer, so I can't post an actual tally, but last I checked it was "reassure Yui and tinker babble" and I doubt it's changed since then.
For the debates about perceptions and times: I'll put up some information in the postscript to the next update. It's directly plot-relevant so it has to go through beta.
For the debates about perceptions and times: I'll put up some information in the postscript to the next update. It's directly plot-relevant so it has to go through beta.
Thanks. I think I can tell based on some of the things Dragon has thought, but it'll be nice to know for sure about some of that. I'm guessing we're not going to find out how we got here or why yet though.
Edit: Little bit late if you wanted to stop the debate, though. I'm currently done because MTB keeps ignoring sh*t that I specifically ask him to address.
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that?
[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
-[X][Update Action] File a bug report about the lack of bug reports. Maybe find some other kind of feedback form to submit? Seriously, you don't care if this game is run by the best AI in all of existence, this just seems arrogant beyond belief. Nothing ever works perfectly on the first time, and even if Cardinal catches bugs and fixes them on the fly, why would you trust it to catch every single bug on its own, but not let it look at user-submitted issues? Actually, screening user feedback and running them through Cardinal would probably be an excellent way to develop game balance, now that you think about it, and - [tinker rambling intensifies] No. of Votes: 11
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that?
[X][Update Action] You might as well enjoy the game - and your new body - while it lasts.
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to come with you. You're not sure you know enough about the situation to reassure her, but maybe a distraction would help? No. of Votes: 9
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that?
[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
-[X][Update Action] File a bug report about the lack of bug reports. Maybe find some other kind of feedback form to submit? Seriously, you don't care if this game is run by the best AI in all of existence, this just seems arrogant beyond belief. Nothing ever works perfectly on the first time, and even if Cardinal catches bugs and fixes them on the fly, why would you trust it to catch every single bug on its own, but not let it look at user-submitted issues? Actually, screening user feedback and running them through Cardinal would probably be an excellent way to develop game balance, now that you think about it, and - [tinker rambling intensifies]
[X][Update Action] You might as well enjoy the game - and your new body - while it lasts.
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to come with you. You're not sure you know enough about the situation to reassure her, but maybe a distraction would help? No. of Votes: 5
[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
-[X][Update Action] File a bug report about the lack of bug reports. Maybe find some other kind of feedback form to submit? Seriously, you don't care if this game is run by the best AI in all of existence, this just seems arrogant beyond belief. Nothing ever works perfectly on the first time, and even if Cardinal catches bugs and fixes them on the fly, why would you trust it to catch every single bug on its own, but not let it look at user-submitted issues? Actually, screening user feedback and running them through Cardinal would probably be an excellent way to develop game balance, now that you think about it, and - [tinker rambling intensifies] No. of Votes: 4
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that? No. of Votes: 4
[X][Update Action] Keep trying to get a response from Cardinal
-[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
--[X][Update Action] Try to hack in. No. of Votes: 3
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that?
[X][Update Action] You might as well enjoy the game - and your new body - while it lasts.
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to come with you. You're not sure you know enough about the situation to reassure her, but maybe a distraction would help
--[X][Update Action] Ask her if there's anything she recommends. No. of Votes: 2
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Explain to Yui that AIs aren't real, and are nothing more than than impossible dreams proposed by unrealistic sci-fi. As such, there is no way Cardinal could be an AI, and it must really be some guy sitting at a terminal. The lack of a response probably just means he's out to lunch or getting coffee or some such. Everything will be fine once he gets back.
--[X][Update Action] Having no doubt successfully reassured Yui, while at the same time throwing her and anyone else listening off the trail of finding out your real nature due to your flawless deception, take a moment to bask in success, then panic internally.
---[X][Update Action] No wait, panicking is stupid. Everything is probably fine. Instead just take things in stride and use the situation to experience life with a body. I mean food, am I right? After all, what could possibly go wrong? No. of Votes: 2
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
[X][Update Action] You might as well enjoy the game - and your new body - while it lasts.
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to comewith you. Food makes everything better. That's like the idea behind comfort food right?
--[X][Update Action] Ask her if there's anything she recommends.
[X][Investigate] Ask another player about the lack of logout function. No. of Votes: 1
[X][Update Action] Keep trying to get a response from Cardinal
-[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
--[X][Update Action] Try to hack in.
-[X][Update Action] Physics simulations are hard. Maybe it'll pay attention if you fall through the floor.f No. of Votes: 1
[X][Update Action] Nope. Panic! No. of Votes: 1
[x][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[x][Update Action] Have the dawning realization that you don't know what you look like. What would you see? Your avatar, in the flesh.... or someone else entirely?
[x][Update Action] "I- I need to see a mirror."
-[x][Update Action] Wander around looking for a mirror, or anything suitable. Let Yui decide whether to follow you or not. No. of Votes: 1
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to come with you. You're not sure you know enough about the situation to reassure her, but maybe a distraction would help? No. of Votes: 1
Dragon is hella experienced in bending the truth, with how she has managed to deceive pretty much everyone while being unable to actually lie to certain parties and unwilling to lie to the rest. She has concealed the fact that she isn't human, even. So I'm thinking: what kind of misleading truths can we spew while we're here?
Example (once she finds that there aren't capes here): I take my job seriously as the moderator of a superhero website.
The difference in input can probably be compared to switching from Classic Doom to Halo, and finding that the latter plays much more smoothly. One side thinks that the monitor is the same, so the computer giving input was probably replaced, while the other contends that Doom could just have been running on clunky DOS emulator, which Halo doesn't have to deal with.
Either way, it's somewhat unsettling.
Honestly, modern ports of Doom run much smoother than Halo. I should know, I still play the former on a daily basis.
I'd comment more, but I don't want to step on the landmine which is the current topic - and get back to enjoying the quest when the next story post pops up.
Honestly, modern ports of Doom run much smoother than Halo. I should know, I still play the former on a daily basis.
I'd comment more, but I don't want to step on the landmine which is the current topic - and get back to enjoying the quest when the next story post pops up.
Current topic is dead on my end until MTB actually addresses all the things I've specifically asked him to address, that he has continually ignored. Until then, I ain't responding to his crap.
I really, REALLY, hate it when I ask someone repeatedly to address a point, and they do not. It's rude, and it's insulting to my intellegence that they think I won't notice that they're ignoring, in this case, the main part of my argument.
If an AI comes to the conclusion 'that is only possible if any tinker on my world worked together' and is wrong with the assessment, than something is wrong with the AI.
<your earler post> But given that she can't even run a diagnostic
I take that as an indicator that something is wrong (tempered with), especially because she did run diagnostics that came up fine.
If I run a harddisk check on my computer and get an 'all fine' result, and then cannot access the harddisk than something is wrong.
Okay. We are still talking about the designer and prison ward of the highest security prison in the world which means she has some experience with what is possible and what not. She knows she has limiters built in and must defend attempts to change those. She is not able to, she hides her existence as an AI so nobody else should be aware of them, and even if she's expected not to allow it.
(Some of) These restrictions she remembers are no longer present.
Nor does she know that code can be modified by Armsmaster yet. Why do you keep completely IGNORING THAT? For all we know, she thinks that just modifying her code AT ALL requires a team of Tinkers! She is likely a young version of Dragon who has yet to experience ANY modifications to her restrictions! And, just to make it crystal clear, what I mean when I say that is that she does not remember having any of her restrictions modified.
@Ignoring: ... My original post was about the supposed addition to our coding, or the implanting of Dragon memories into a human host. Than we went on a little tangent or two - for which argument was it important whether or not Dragon knows that someone has the ability to alter her code? Fact is, it was altered, according to the first quest post.
@Young version: see above. Before modifications may be, but that doesn't mean she's inexperienced.
@Remember: Which means either they weren't modified, or her memory was altered.
an AI comes to the conclusion 'that is only possible if any tinker on my world worked together' and is wrong with the assessment, than something is wrong with the AI.
...What? Okay, Dragon is a full-AI, basically a person. People make mistakes. Her being wrong about that doesn't mean that she's been tampered with, it means that she was not correct in how hard the task that she has no data on is. There aren't any other AI of her level on Bet, and she doesn't seem to remember Armsy modifying her to remove the restrictions, so she's estimating. Her estimates may be very off, because she has no real context for how hard it would be.
I take that as an indicator that something is wrong (tempered with), especially because she did run diagnostics that came up fine.
If I run a harddisk check on my computer and get an 'all fine' result, and then cannot access the harddisk than something is wrong.
Yeah, but you aren't the hard-disk, you're an outside observer. Dragon could, quite easily, get blocked off from her diagnostics by the simulation she's in. Again, she only entered the simulation after that diagnostics check, so the simulation seems to be what's cutting her off. That doesn't mean the diagnostics have been tampered with, that means that she cannot access them while her 'mind' is in the simulation. That reflex redirects to the status screen, so that would show that the activation sequence for the diagnostic is 'intercepted' and interpreted as 'access status screen'.
SAO pulls the mind of a human into the game, and intercepts all the signals sent to the body, and then translates them into movement in the game. If it was adapted for Dragon, wouldn't it make sense that it's intercepting her 'signals' to her 'body' (in this case, any program other than SAO), and interpreting them as actions in the game? Just like it does with humans?
Okay. We are still talking about the designer and prison ward of the highest security prison in the world which means she has some experience with what is possible and what not. She knows she has limiters built in and must defend attempts to change those. She is not able to, she hides her existence as an AI so nobody else should be aware of them, and even if she's expected not to allow it.
(Some of) These restrictions she remembers are no longer present.
...What? Designing a high security prison makes you an expert on modifying a set of very advanced code? Dafuq? And no, she doesn't have to defend against attempts to change them, since she was aware of Armsy's attempts to change them, and didn't defend against them, from what I can tell. And that second-to-last sentence is a mess. The only thing I can make out is that she has to hide he being an AI, which isn't a restriction, because she tells Armsy, again, of her own free-will. So, no, none of those are actual restrictions.
@Ignoring: ... My original post was about the supposed addition to our coding, or the implanting of Dragon memories into a human host. Than we went on a little tangent or two - for which argument was it important whether or not Dragon knows that someone has the ability to alter her code? Fact is, it was altered, according to the first quest post.
...Oh dear gods, you haven't been paying attention. I see nothing in the first post flat-out confirming her programming was altered, barring the interface with SAO. You don't get to treat uninformed hypotheses as fact. It's possible that her code was altered, it's possible she's wrong. I cannot find any restrictions that would actually stop this from happening. None. And even if there are restrictions that would stop this, restrictions can be removed, and their removal does not indicate that evil people did it, or that Dragon's memories were altered.
I'm even willing to give you the restrictions thing. That doesn't stop the one doing the altering from being Armsy, and certainly doesn't mean this isn't a backup of Dragon that Armsy acquired and plugged in to a Nervegear.
It's relevant because you seem to be assuming Dragon is a completely reliable, impartial, omniscient narrator. She is none of those things. What she thinks is going on is going to be filtered through her own experiences, and if she has never experienced an alteration to her restrictions, she has no basis on which to base judgements on how difficult that process is, and is, thus, unreliable as a judge of how hard it is.
...So what you're saying is that someone doesn't have to have experienced something to be experienced in a way that allows her to predict precisely what is required to accomplish that task. A task she cannot do herself and that she has no real yardstick of similar experiences to understand. Pretty sure that experience does not work that way. Dragon has no experience with modifying an AI's code. None. She knows of no one who has, aside from her 'father', and given his intense paranoia, I doubt he left her a journal of how, precisely, her restrictions worked and were designed. She knows what they do, sure, but I doubt she knows how they do them. She may even be able to guess at it a little. But it's pretty clear she doesn't know precisely how they work and how to modify them.
If you mean 'that she hasn't experienced them being modified yet' with the first part of your sentence, I agree, with the caveat that it doesn't mean that Armsy hasn't done so with main!Dragon yet. Because it's entirely possible this is an old backup.
Name one, and I'll go there. Until then, someone is wrong on the Internet. Don't suggest a change of topic without having an alternative on hand, mate, it does nothing but make you seem like a jerk. It also tends to go wrong. Let me show you why.
Support-only isn't really much of a thing in SAO, as far as I can remember. And a lot of it depends on various factors about our Golem Construction skill, and what skills and weapon types Vebyast has added or removed from the base, canon version.
Personally, if we end up being a crafter of some sort, and if weapons can double as tools for the trade, I'd go with a hammer if we go smithing, for example.
Support-only isn't really much of a thing in SAO, as far as I can remember. And a lot of it depends on various factors about our Golem Construction skill, and what skills and weapon types Vebyast has added or removed from the base, canon version.
Personally, if we end up being a crafter of some sort, and if weapons can double as tools for the trade, I'd go with a hammer if we go smithing, for example.
Personally, if we end up being a crafter of some sort, and if weapons can double as tools for the trade, I'd go with a hammer if we go smithing, for example.
Name one, and I'll go there. Until then, someone is wrong on the Internet. Don't suggest a change of topic without having an alternative on hand, mate, it does nothing but make you seem like a jerk. It also tends to go wrong. Let me show you why.
Have you ever wondered just how well SAO models people's avatars? (No, not for THAT, you pervs. ...okay, only partly for that.) I mean, how well do they get things like that annoying itch that just moves every time you scratch at it or having the sensation of needing to sneeze, but never being able to? Or the way that long hair always manages to end up in a weird tangle in your butt crack? (This is relevant because I picture Dragon's avatar as having long hair.)
I hope we get to see Dragon freak out over discovering these things for the first time at some point. ("I can feel the floor under my feet! I can feel the air rushing through my hair! I can feel-OW, FUCK! I can feel my toes stubbing on the god damn furniture!")
(These are the weird questions that keep me up at night.)
Have you ever wondered just how well SAO models people's avatars? (No, not for THAT, you pervs. ...okay, only partly for that.) I mean, how well do they get things like that annoying itch that just moves every time you scratch at it or having the sensation of needing to sneeze, but never being able to? Or the way that long hair always manages to end up in a weird tangle in your butt crack? (This is relevant because I picture Dragon's avatar as having long hair.)
I hope we get to see Dragon freak out over discovering these things for the first time at some point. ("I can feel the floor under my feet! I can feel the air rushing through my hair! I can feel-OW, FUCK! I can feel my toes stubbing on the god damn furniture!")
(These are the weird questions that keep me up at night.)
Stretching the concept of "fighting style" as far as it'll go, I suppose going all out tactician counts as support-only? Like, not even bothering to learn to fight and turning all that big-thoughts brainpower to perfecting the party/raid's approach to the floor boss on the fly. Oh, and organising strategic and logistical concerns as a Guild leader, maybe. I don't see us actually doing that solely, given fighting from the front is far more interesting, but maybe it counts?
On the topic of fighting styles, I say dodging. Not getting hit is superior to taking reduced damage from hits.
On the topic of sadism, I just thought of the poor guy who had to go through all the things that players may touch ingame to calibrate the sensors. I mean even if pain is lower, there must be a sense of touch, and a sword to the gut still stings.
On the topic of fighting styles, I say dodging. Not getting hit is superior to taking reduced damage from hits.
On the topic of sadism, I just thought of the poor guy who had to go through all the things that players may touch ingame to calibrate the sensors. I mean even if pain is lower, there must be a sense of touch, and a sword to the gut still stings.
No, it doesn't. That's the point of removing the pain. It's an uncomfortable tingling, at worst.
It also seems like touch may have take a slight hit, as well. Or at least, there is a way to increase tactile sensation, but it involves stripping naked with the Moral restrictions off. I think the reason this is a thing is fairly obvious. Also not something we're likely to get into in this quest, despite Datcord's presence.
Stretching the concept of "fighting style" as far as it'll go, I suppose going all out tactician counts as support-only? Like, not even bothering to learn to fight and turning all that big-thoughts brainpower to perfecting the party/raid's approach to the floor boss on the fly. Oh, and organising strategic and logistical concerns as a Guild leader, maybe. I don't see us actually doing that solely, given fighting from the front is far more interesting, but maybe it counts?
So, something like Shirou from Log Horizon? It has merit, though it remains to be seen if Dragon here has any experience with MMOs of any kind.
Maybe she plays some when it's downtime? Inb4 Dragon is level 90 in Skyrim and has all the DLC. She RPs as an actual dragon.
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that?
[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
-[X][Update Action] File a bug report about the lack of bug reports. Maybe find some other kind of feedback form to submit? Seriously, you don't care if this game is run by the best AI in all of existence, this just seems arrogant beyond belief. Nothing ever works perfectly on the first time, and even if Cardinal catches bugs and fixes them on the fly, why would you trust it to catch every single bug on its own, but not let it look at user-submitted issues? Actually, screening user feedback and running them through Cardinal would probably be an excellent way to develop game balance, now that you think about it, and - [tinker rambling intensifies] No. of Votes: 11
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that?
[X][Update Action] You might as well enjoy the game - and your new body - while it lasts.
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to come with you. You're not sure you know enough about the situation to reassure her, but maybe a distraction would help? No. of Votes: 9
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that?
[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
-[X][Update Action] File a bug report about the lack of bug reports. Maybe find some other kind of feedback form to submit? Seriously, you don't care if this game is run by the best AI in all of existence, this just seems arrogant beyond belief. Nothing ever works perfectly on the first time, and even if Cardinal catches bugs and fixes them on the fly, why would you trust it to catch every single bug on its own, but not let it look at user-submitted issues? Actually, screening user feedback and running them through Cardinal would probably be an excellent way to develop game balance, now that you think about it, and - [tinker rambling intensifies]
[X][Update Action] You might as well enjoy the game - and your new body - while it lasts.
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to come with you. You're not sure you know enough about the situation to reassure her, but maybe a distraction would help? No. of Votes: 5
[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
-[X][Update Action] File a bug report about the lack of bug reports. Maybe find some other kind of feedback form to submit? Seriously, you don't care if this game is run by the best AI in all of existence, this just seems arrogant beyond belief. Nothing ever works perfectly on the first time, and even if Cardinal catches bugs and fixes them on the fly, why would you trust it to catch every single bug on its own, but not let it look at user-submitted issues? Actually, screening user feedback and running them through Cardinal would probably be an excellent way to develop game balance, now that you think about it, and - [tinker rambling intensifies] No. of Votes: 4
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that? No. of Votes: 4
[X][Update Action] Keep trying to get a response from Cardinal
-[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
--[X][Update Action] Try to hack in. No. of Votes: 3
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that?
[X][Update Action] You might as well enjoy the game - and your new body - while it lasts.
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to come with you. You're not sure you know enough about the situation to reassure her, but maybe a distraction would help
--[X][Update Action] Ask her if there's anything she recommends. No. of Votes: 2
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Explain to Yui that AIs aren't real, and are nothing more than than impossible dreams proposed by unrealistic sci-fi. As such, there is no way Cardinal could be an AI, and it must really be some guy sitting at a terminal. The lack of a response probably just means he's out to lunch or getting coffee or some such. Everything will be fine once he gets back.
--[X][Update Action] Having no doubt successfully reassured Yui, while at the same time throwing her and anyone else listening off the trail of finding out your real nature due to your flawless deception, take a moment to bask in success, then panic internally.
---[X][Update Action] No wait, panicking is stupid. Everything is probably fine. Instead just take things in stride and use the situation to experience life with a body. I mean food, am I right? After all, what could possibly go wrong? No. of Votes: 2
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
[X][Update Action] You might as well enjoy the game - and your new body - while it lasts.
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to comewith you. Food makes everything better. That's like the idea behind comfort food right?
--[X][Update Action] Ask her if there's anything she recommends.
[X][Investigate] Ask another player about the lack of logout function. No. of Votes: 1
[X][Update Action] Keep trying to get a response from Cardinal
-[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
--[X][Update Action] Try to hack in.
-[X][Update Action] Physics simulations are hard. Maybe it'll pay attention if you fall through the floor.f No. of Votes: 1
[x][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[x][Update Action] Have the dawning realization that you don't know what you look like. What would you see? Your avatar, in the flesh.... or someone else entirely?
[x][Update Action] "I- I need to see a mirror."
-[x][Update Action] Wander around looking for a mirror, or anything suitable. Let Yui decide whether to follow you or not. No. of Votes: 1
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to come with you. You're not sure you know enough about the situation to reassure her, but maybe a distraction would help? No. of Votes: 1
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that? No. of Votes: 31
[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
-[X][Update Action] File a bug report about the lack of bug reports. Maybe find some other kind of feedback form to submit? Seriously, you don't care if this game is run by the best AI in all of existence, this just seems arrogant beyond belief. Nothing ever works perfectly on the first time, and even if Cardinal catches bugs and fixes them on the fly, why would you trust it to catch every single bug on its own, but not let it look at user-submitted issues? Actually, screening user feedback and running them through Cardinal would probably be an excellent way to develop game balance, now that you think about it, and - [tinker rambling intensifies] No. of Votes: 20
[X][Update Action] You might as well enjoy the game - and your new body - while it lasts.
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to come with you. You're not sure you know enough about the situation to reassure her, but maybe a distraction would help? No. of Votes: 14
[X][Update Action] Keep trying to get a response from Cardinal
-[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
--[X][Update Action] Try to hack in. No. of Votes: 3
[X][Update Action] You might as well enjoy the game - and your new body - while it lasts.
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to come with you. You're not sure you know enough about the situation to reassure her, but maybe a distraction would help
--[X][Update Action] Ask her if there's anything she recommends. No. of Votes: 2
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Explain to Yui that AIs aren't real, and are nothing more than than impossible dreams proposed by unrealistic sci-fi. As such, there is no way Cardinal could be an AI, and it must really be some guy sitting at a terminal. The lack of a response probably just means he's out to lunch or getting coffee or some such. Everything will be fine once he gets back.
--[X][Update Action] Having no doubt successfully reassured Yui, while at the same time throwing her and anyone else listening off the trail of finding out your real nature due to your flawless deception, take a moment to bask in success, then panic internally.
---[X][Update Action] No wait, panicking is stupid. Everything is probably fine. Instead just take things in stride and use the situation to experience life with a body. I mean food, am I right? After all, what could possibly go wrong? No. of Votes: 2
[X][Update Action] You might as well enjoy the game - and your new body - while it lasts.
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to comewith you. Food makes everything better. That's like the idea behind comfort food right?
--[X][Update Action] Ask her if there's anything she recommends. No. of Votes: 1
[X][Update Action] Keep trying to get a response from Cardinal
-[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
--[X][Update Action] Try to hack in.
-[X][Update Action] Physics simulations are hard. Maybe it'll pay attention if you fall through the floor.f No. of Votes: 1
[x][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[x][Update Action] Have the dawning realization that you don't know what you look like. What would you see? Your avatar, in the flesh.... or someone else entirely? No. of Votes: 1
[x][Update Action] "I- I need to see a mirror."
-[x][Update Action] Wander around looking for a mirror, or anything suitable. Let Yui decide whether to follow you or not. No. of Votes: 1
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to come with you. You're not sure you know enough about the situation to reassure her, but maybe a distraction would help? No. of Votes: 1
-[X][Update Action] File a bug report about the lack of bug reports. Maybe find some other kind of feedback form to submit? Seriously, you don't care if this game is run by the best AI in all of existence, this just seems arrogant beyond belief. Nothing ever works perfectly on the first time, and even if Cardinal catches bugs and fixes them on the fly, why would you trust it to catch every single bug on its own, but not let it look at user-submitted issues? Actually, screening user feedback and running them through Cardinal would probably be an excellent way to develop game balance, now that you think about it, and - [tinker rambling intensifies] No. of Votes: 20
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to come with you. You're not sure you know enough about the situation to reassure her, but maybe a distraction would help? No. of Votes: 17
-[X][Update Action] Explain to Yui that AIs aren't real, and are nothing more than than impossible dreams proposed by unrealistic sci-fi. As such, there is no way Cardinal could be an AI, and it must really be some guy sitting at a terminal. The lack of a response probably just means he's out to lunch or getting coffee or some such. Everything will be fine once he gets back. No. of Votes: 2
--[X][Update Action] Having no doubt successfully reassured Yui, while at the same time throwing her and anyone else listening off the trail of finding out your real nature due to your flawless deception, take a moment to bask in success, then panic internally. No. of Votes: 2
---[X][Update Action] No wait, panicking is stupid. Everything is probably fine. Instead just take things in stride and use the situation to experience life with a body. I mean food, am I right? After all, what could possibly go wrong? No. of Votes: 2
-[x][Update Action] Have the dawning realization that you don't know what you look like. What would you see? Your avatar, in the flesh.... or someone else entirely? No. of Votes: 1
[X][Update Action] Try to reassure Yui.
-[X][Update Action] Maybe you'll just wait until that event and you'll be able to log out after that?
Yes, you think to yourself, you can just not worry about it. If Cardinal isn't responding, it's it doesn't want to respond, so even if you catch its attention it'll just fix whatever you did and ignore you. This entire thing is so far gone that you might as well just play along with whatever the plan is and bide your time.
You should probably calm Yui down a bit, though. The look on her face says that she's somewhat stressed, and the reason is easily inferred. Thankfully, the crowd around you doesn't seem to be paying much attention to her small scene.
You make sure ponder visibly for another few seconds before shrugging, smiling slightly, and reaching out to pat Yui on the head. You try to sound confident and peaceful.
"It'll be okay. It sounds like I just need to wait for that event and then I'll be able to log out. I'll just wait until then."
Yui peers up at you with uncertainty. "Are you sure?"
You smile back down to her in what you hope is a reassuring fashion.
"Not entirely, but I don't think that anything too bad will happen. I don't have any medical issues that'd require attention and missing a day of work would be annoying but manageable."
You'd built your systems to tolerate you going off in a suit and losing communication for a few hours. You'd only been planning to tinker with the sensor arrays for the Class S threat system a bit more anyway, maybe find out if Colin had done anything with them or if he'd been too focused on the nanothorn project. Nothing time-critical.
"I'll be fine."
You're not sure if Yui is convinced, but she nods hesitantly anyway.
[X][Update Action] There's no such thing as bug-free code.
-[X][Update Action] File a bug report about the lack of bug reports. Maybe find some other kind of feedback form to submit? Seriously, you don't care if this game is run by the best AI in all of existence, this just seems arrogant beyond belief. Nothing ever works perfectly on the first time, and even if Cardinal catches bugs and fixes them on the fly, why would you trust it to catch every single bug on its own, but not let it look at user-submitted issues? Actually, screening user feedback and running them through Cardinal would probably be an excellent way to develop game balance, now that you think about it, and - [tinker rambling intensifies]
"Besides!", you continue brightly, "I'm fairly sure that I can break out if I need to. There's no such thing as bug-free code."
Yui's expression goes from 'worried' to 'confused' in the space of just under three seconds. "...What?"
"I can probably crash this simulation and get out that way. I don't care that there's no bug report function, or that Cardinal is an AI. There will still be bugs."
You fail to mention that you're an AI and have intimate familiarity with computers, tinkertech, and all the ways they can fail. You're still vaguely hoping that this is tinkertech; you'd love to study it. Not least because it'd jump your prosthetic body project forward by years. You drag yourself away from your momentary thoughts of perception and qualia and continue.
Yui's confusion seems to have turned into some kind of surprised, impressed amusement.
"Seriously, even with the best AI in the world, not having a bug report function is just arrogant. Nothing works perfectly on the first try. Even if Cardinal is catching everything and fixing them on the fly, you don't need to disallow bug reports entirely. Crosswalk buttons are already placebos half the time. And that's just considering actual errors. Unintended consequences and undefined behavior are far more subtle."
By this point you're only half talking to Yui. Your arms are folded and you're addressing empty air, for one.
"What happens if you build two things and they turn out to wreck game balance when combined, and you didn't have enough computational power to simulate every possible combination of abilities in the game? Which isn't even getting into mathematical limits on the predictability of dynamics systems. It's surprisingly easy to accidentally build a system that contains an intractable or downright uncomputable function. And I know that you think you're good enough to catch all of those, but you can't. Feedback is necessary even if you don't call it a bug report. The players are the only ones that can tell you if they're having fun."
It occurs to you in the privacy of your own head that, no, they have a full virtual reality rig with – judging by the bandwidth and latency on Yui's body language and facial expressions – nearly full integration with the motor cortex, and it wouldn't be a large step from that to reading the emotions directly out of the players' brains. But that's a digression.
"In fact? Cardinal: consider that a bug report. You don't have bug reports. That's a bug."
Yui, who gradually regained her grin as you – you ranted, you realize – into thin air, breaks into outright laughter at your conclusion, and you turn back to her.
[X][Update Action] You might as well enjoy the game - and your new body - while it lasts.
-[X][Update Action] Find food. You'd always wondered…
-[X][Update Action] Invite Yui to come with you. You're not sure you know enough about the situation to reassure her, but maybe a distraction would help?
"Now, that that's done with. If I'm stuck in a game, I might as well try to enjoy it."
Going down the list of goals for your avatar project, there's an obvious standout. Food is consistently one of the higher-rated sensory experiences among humans.
"Can this thing do food?"
You abruptly realize that you can taste the inside of your mouth.
That's weird. Not bad, just... weird. And suddenly distracting.
It also answers your question. There wouldn't be much reason to implement taste if there wasn't any food. You respond to yourself before Yui has a chance to finish controlling her laughter and answer.
You make a face and stick your tongue out. "Never mind, I just answered my own question." Yui appears to have relaxed completely now that you've announced a decision to haved fun, and she giggles momentarily. "Instead: do you know where I can find food?"
"Yep! This way!"
Yui spins again and takes off back toward the square, hair floating in the breeze, and you follow.
She turns around and jogs backwards for a moment to talks back at you. "It might not taste good. The NPCs on the first floor are still low-level."
This may negatively affect your first impression of food. However, this may also be the only chance you'll get for a long time.
"I'll just have to deal with that."
You trail behind Yui as she cuts back through the crowd in the square and heads down one of the other side streets. Her white dress is remarkably visible in the sun, especially against the yellowish cobble and the earth tones that the NPCs are all wearing, and you're not worried about losing sight of her.
You pass by a shop for warhammers and consider a weapon in its display that's almost two meters tall and has a head the size of a breadbox. In real life it'd be a weapon reserved for changers and breakers with extra mass or an ability to modify momentum. Maybe a tinker with heavy enough armor. Human-massed brutes wouldn't be able to do anything with it regardless of their strength, they'd just throw themselves around ineffectually. In fact, nearly every weapon store has at least one completely unusable weapon in its display, and even the average piece isn't much better. Polearms, axes both one-handed and two-handed, large and small swords, daggers, an entire store dedicated to machetes, hammers and flails and maces, they're almost universally unusable. Some are simply too big, some have serrations or jagged edges that should make them incredibly difficult to cut with, many are decorated in ways that'd cripple their structural integrity. Almost every weapon on display is more than a little bit blade-heavy. The exceptions are the offerings of the store selling "rapiers", which are actually fencing foils that'd be difficult to use as actual weapons.
Video game physics, you suppose.
Yui disappears into a building down the street with a picture of a chicken on the front. No name, just the picture of the chicken. You turn into it a few seconds later to find a simple restaurant with a bar and tables. Yui's already claimed a table in the front, near the windows, and waves at you as you enter. There are a few other people here but you don't think that any of them are players. They're all wearing the same style of clothing as the people out in the crowd, and none have combat equipment like you or a unique outfit like Yui. You read the menu on the wall behind the bar you walk to the table; it looks like stereotypical fantasy inn food, mostly bread, cheese, meat pies and stews, beer and wine, and vegetables.
[][Food] Order something
-[][Food] What?
[][Food] Let Yui recommend something
[][Update Action] Wait anxiously for the food
[][Update Action] Ask Yui about the game
-[][Update Action] Yui mentioned a beta
-[][Update Action] How does this game work? What is a nerve gear?
-[][Update Action] WHAT YEAR IS IT
-[][Update Action] Ask about game mechanics
--[][Update Action] Skills
--[][Update Action] How combat works
--[][Update Action] Equipment
--[][Update Action] Video game physics
--[][Update Action] You only saw melee weapons in the shops
-[][Update Action] Ask about the setting; did you skip any cutscenes?
[][Update Action] Spend some more time reading your status page
-[][Update Action] See if you can find the manual
-[][Update Action] Investigate your other skills
-[][Update Action] Do you have an inventory to go with your equpiment?
[][Update Action] Ask Yui about herself
-[][Update Action] She seems kind of young to be in an MMO, much less a full-immersion VR game
-[][Update Action] How'd she get her nerve gear?
Took a while because I was nailing down a few more bits of setting, prompted by discussion, and because I had a completely packed week.
Also, I do hope we maintain some of our advantages over the regular mortals, mind-wise, but I suspect they're been reduced somewhat, though I don't think they're entirely gone.
It's a little bit difficult to represent these properly because the mental advantages that Dragon has are already, to a large degree, part of the Standard Quest Character package. For example, fast thinking: except in rare circumstances (Xander Quest updates every single day even if the players aren't "done discussing", quests on imageboards like TG run in sessions where the author writes thirty or forty three-paragraph updates over the course of an afternoon), quest characters often pack upwards of two days of high-quality thinking into the half-second before responding to an incoming threat or into the space between sentences in a conversation. Similarly, nearly every quest character around has super memory skills; think about how often you quote bits of update text verbatim when debating your options.
The rest of Dragon's major advantages are simply difficult to represent in a textual format. For example, the thing I was talking about with "thinking big thoughts": I can't convey Dragon's entire stream of consciousness to you. She's limited to human visual acuity and eye movement but still gets much more out of that information than we would. It'd be too big to fit on the page and the sheer quantity of useless information would detract from the quality of the writing. Instead, the updates are me trying to filter Dragon down to the parts that you care about and would find useful, and in order to cover the inevitable gaps I'll answer questions when Dragon would have seen or known something. For example, when she spun around to look at the square, she got all of the names of the shops and what they were selling, plus some examples of the things in their display cases. She also got a good count of how many people there were in the square and where were going, what everybody was wearing, all that stuff. It just wasn't useful to you so I didn't write it; if you ask for it, I'll give it to you. Please don't abuse it - I'm not Cardinal, it does take me time to render details like that and I'll often be leaving details unspecified until they're observed or necessary - but also don't be afraid to ask questions that'd help with your plans or analyses.
Also tell me if I'm leaving too much out; I can easily see myself simply not including enough description or imagery or similar. Feedback is important.
First, math. Say you have an idea of how a system works that lets you predict the evolution of a system given its initial condition. Its physics, sort of - you know how far off the ground the ball is and how fast it's going in which direction so you know when and where it's going to land. Say now that you want to do the reverse: you know where and when the ball hit the ground, and you want to figure out where it was ten seconds ago and how fast it was going. Your first option is to try to invert the mathematical model of the system analytically: you sit down, analyse it by hand, try to turn it around so that the inputs are outputs and the outputs are inputs. This is difficult and may in fact be impossible. It gets even hairier if you have a system with more inputs than outputs, in which case a single final outcome could have been produced by multiple distinct sets of initial conditions and now you have to figure out which of them is most probable.
The second option is to pick a random set of initial conditions, run a simulator forward, and check to see if it worked. If it didn't, pick another guess and try again. Eventually you'll find a set of initial conditions that results in your final conditions. Even better, if you have a model of which initial conditions are more likely than others, you can pick your guesses using that model and when your statistics come out they'll properly combine the influence of "which initial guesses are most likely" and "which initial guesses are more likely to have resulted in the target final condition".
A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another.[1][2][3] Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Such neurons have been directly observed in primate species.[4] Birds have been shown to have imitative resonance behaviors and neurological evidence suggests the presence of some form of mirroring system.[4][5] In humans, brain activity consistent with that of mirror neurons has been found in the premotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, the primary somatosensory cortex and the inferior parietal cortex.[6]
Article:
My old professor, David Berman, liked to talk about what he called the "typical mind fallacy", which he illustrated through the following example:
There was a debate, in the late 1800s, about whether "imagination" was simply a turn of phrase or a real phenomenon. That is, can people actually create images in their minds which they see vividly, or do they simply say "I saw it in my mind" as a metaphor for considering what it looked like?
Upon hearing this, my response was "How the stars was this actually a real debate? Of course we have mental imagery. Anyone who doesn't think we have mental imagery is either such a fanatical Behaviorist that she doubts the evidence of her own senses, or simply insane." Unfortunately, the professor was able to parade a long list of famous people who denied mental imagery, including some leading scientists of the era. And this was all before Behaviorism even existed.
The debate was resolved by Francis Galton, a fascinating man who among other achievements invented eugenics, the "wisdom of crowds", and standard deviation. Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery1 to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images2.
Dr. Berman dubbed this the Typical Mind Fallacy: the human tendency to believe that one's own mental structure can be generalized to apply to everyone else's.
He kind of took this idea and ran with it. He interpreted certain passages in George Berkeley's biography to mean that Berkeley was an eidetic imager, and that this was why the idea of the universe as sense-perception held such interest to him. He also suggested that experience of consciousness and qualia were as variable as imaging, and that philosophers who deny their existence (Ryle? Dennett? Behaviorists?) were simply people whose mind lacked the ability to easily experience qualia. In general, he believed philosophy of mind was littered with examples of philosophers taking their own mental experiences and building theories on them, and other philosophers with different mental experiences critiquing them and wondering why they disagreed.
Article:
Every meal between Lung and Marquis made for a very interesting looking set of data. The numbers swung back and forth as the dialogues continued, with hostility, concern and threat of imminent physical violence always looming, but however close it came, neither attacked the other.
Dragon has consciousness, emotion, and language. She can go from an emotion and a thought to English, and can use that to go from some given English to some possibilities about what someone might be thinking and feeling to result in that English. However, that's raw, unformatted English, no speech or writing or anything, it's just the grammar and words. She couldn't go from English and emotions to speech, for example, nor from speech to English or emotions. There's a reasonable argument that she was totally deaf and blind. At the very least, even if Dragon had audio, she couldn't do speech. She may have been able to brute-force speech comprehension in the same way that you might be able to figure out what's going on in a fuzzy radar return like this or figure out what someone is saying by staring at a spectrograph, but she certainly depended on programs to generate speech for her and to recognize finer points of speech, primarily emotions. Richter gave her intelligence and human psychology, not a human brain with a human speech centers.
The thing is, Dragon has assloads of bandwidth. This goes back to the "big thoughts" thing again. In the same way that she can design an entire jet engine at once, she can do that brute-forcing, and do it well enough to use it in realtime, especially when she has tools to do first-pass and second-pass analyses for her. A good way to think about it would be that she's working with extremely fast, extremely "large" command-line tools; she only gets input in text, but she can read ten of those at once and they're constantly blasting through information at CSI-hacking-scene speed. She gets a good enough model of the world from that to interact with it, but she's doing so one or two steps remove, through sensory modailities that don't align particularly well with reality. Her mental model of the world is easily enough to work off of, but it's no substitute for actually having eyes, and in particular she doesn't get much of the built-in emotional stuff that humans get. She has a few different variations on that, with different levels of integration – some deliver ASCII like you'd expect from a human-usable computer terminal and at human-readable speed, others use enhanced symbol sets that deliver larger and more refined units of meaning to Dragon, sort of like speaking a high-density conlang instead of English – but they're all fundamentally language.
