Hold It In (RWBY/Transistor)
- Thread starter Prok
- Start date
- Crossover
Pretty sure the Arcana check was to notice either the Librarian's semblance or maybe a glyph type aoe effect. Based off the wording, I'm thinking something similar to a Bounded Field from the Nasuverse, where you set it up to either have a specific effect on something inside (think buff/debuff on specified targets) or do it to exclude something from the outside from being able to reach inside/prevent something from within from escaping (think actual barrier).
This one seemed to basically act as an alarm/alert system, basically an Aura tripwire that let's her know if someone is coming closer, but it may have other abilities that are less obvious or just not in use right now.
In regards to the vote, I am currently unsure on which way to go, since I'm not even sure if I want the Transistor to get a soul. Basically same boat of need more info, so either works for me.
- Location
- United States
[X] "Is a soul actually necessary to be considered, alive and healthy?" [???: +1]
- Location
- Somewhere
[X] "What causes the soul to exist in some things, but not others?" [???: +1]
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] "Is a soul actually necessary to be considered, alive and healthy?" [???: +1]
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] "Is a soul actually necessary to be considered, alive and healthy?" [???: +1]
- Location
- Box of Granola bars
[X] "What causes the soul to exist in some things, but not others?" [???: +1]
"What is soul?" first.
the other sounds more like a "Why/How is soul?"
we can come back to it if need be. I hope.
"What is soul?" first.
the other sounds more like a "Why/How is soul?"
we can come back to it if need be. I hope.
- Location
- Mythodea
"All Combat Personnel to Civics Class! There are Clowns clawing their way out of the ground! Repeat: All Combat Personnel to Civics Class!"
- Location
- Estonia
These two questions seem like "What causes the soul to exist in some things, but not others?" split into two questions to me. I think it's too early to pursue these two lines of question right now. Especially since we don't even know if "complexity" (and how does one even define that) is a criterium for having/developing a soul.
Prok
Go play Star Fetchers
- Location
- Scotland
Oh, I can answer 3 just as a matter of course, that's pretty basic knowledge right there;
What would happen to a living person if they lost their soul, but their body was undamaged?
That is what is generally considered a 'massively crippling medical catastrophe.'
There are Grimm and other things that will, in essence, crack your you open and drink your soul like a good cherry stout. Doesn't damage the body in any way- you'll still end up very, very dead, or at best, in a permanent vegetative coma. You have been warned several times about these kinds of Grimm throughout your education, but you've never really looked into them.
You like not having nightmares.
You got it right at the end there. The choice to emulate human emotions and thought processes is, for the Transistor, absolutely just that- a choice, made by it, because that's what its primary user is most comfortable dealing with. If Jaune were to be concussed tomorrow and change his preference to that of a transcendent god-computer so far beyond him that its very attention is like that of a human to an ant, then Blue would be decommissioned and his programming cannibalised to create something to affect that personality instead.
By the Transistor's own standards, it does not consider itself to be alive- whether or not that assumption is actually correct is up for debate, of course, but even going by real-life AI theory, it's only assumed that hard AI would need at least an approximation of consciousness as humans think of it because that's the kind of plasticity that generalised intelligence needs to be, well, generalised, and even then it would need to be true consciousness- not the essentially Chinese Room setup that the Transistor has. It's a damn good Chinese Room, but it's still something it can just open up and tweak or ignore when it feels like.
Onto your actual question- it's not a weighting thing, it's a progress bar. Once you reach 5 in either option, I will tell you, in as frank and unsugared a manner I can, what following that path eventually entails. As for reaching double 10s, I'll be impressed that you managed to juke past my ability to do basic arithmetic, but honestly, I'd probably just slap down a tiebreaker, they're, really very mutually exclusive points of view.
Anyway, vote tally! Currently, asking what allows some things to have a soul and others, not, is winning by juuust under twice as many votes as asking whether or not you need a soul to be healthy and alive. The vote will close tonight, at 8 pm GMT, so about four hours from now, and, the update will be up tomorrow NO DON'T LAUGH I MEAN IT THIS TIME I HAVE FUCK-ALL TO DO BUT TAKE DOWN A CHRISTMAS TREE AND WRITE-
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- Pronouns
- They/Them/Their
Tally ho!
I'm not sure why being able to tweak or ignore established thought processes is being held up as an example of lack of true consciousness. That's what plasticity is. And that's not even getting into the rabbit hole of "when it feels like".
Honestly though, my main concerns are what kind of limitations and weaknesses adding a soul to an entity of pure math could cause. Such as, for instance, the soul sucking Grimm. Or if the soul would limit Transitor's ability to fork its attention.
And then there's all the fun of there being arguably 3 possible entities to consider ensouling, two of which (Bracket and Blue) are probably mutually exclusive with the third (unified Transitor)
[X] "Is a soul actually necessary to be considered, alive and healthy?" [???: +1]
- Location
- A hole full of snakes.
You will discover that your tree is a mimic, and spend a week getting people to come deal with the mimic infestation you can only suspect you have.
I hadn't even considered that point. How many souls the transistor would end up with is an interesting question. I imagine it would have to be one soul, and they're just sort of a split personality deal? I wonder what that would be like from Blue and Bracket's perspective.
- Location
- A state of cleverness
[X] "What causes the soul to exist in some things, but not others?" [???: +1]
Though of course, I know Prok reads Cosmere stuff, he can separate Cognitive from Spiritual just fine.
Then consider how traces work in Transistor...
Though of course, I know Prok reads Cosmere stuff, he can separate Cognitive from Spiritual just fine.
*You hear a sharp Crack in the distance as the slow, ominous laughter of Murphy echoes in your mind and soul*
- Location
- A hole full of snakes.
That's also a good point. Though that still leaves the question of whether or not the full transistor AI would have its own soul, and what would happen to Blue and Bracket when they unfork. Multiple souls also pose the question of what having 2+ auras would be like, and also brings up the potential for 2+ additional semblances, too.
If Ozpin or someone could sense that, though, I'd love to see their reaction to seeing a guy with a sword full of souls.
Prok
Go play Star Fetchers
- Location
- Scotland
Vote is as of four hours and change ago closed! Choosing to ask what actually lets souls exist in some things but not in others wins!
Naturally, it's a little bit of a recursive loop, since just about everyone is naturally terrified of the Grimm- their very presence causes negative emotions, which they then sense, which then makes them run after you, which terrifies you even more, and so on until either it or you are dead.
... The problem is I can't think of the word and I know the more I try to explain it without actually bumbling across it the more likely I'll finally step on this epistemological landmine-
The best way I can put it now, I know this probably still isn't entirely right don't eat me alive just yet, is that the Transistor's consciousness isn't passive the way a human is- it's a set of tools in a workshop that, when used correctly and in unison, create something that can be considered, consciousness. But, at any given point, the core AI of the Transistor can just step away from those tools and simply cease to be conscious. It can just turn off things that would be considered core parts of a human psyche just because it's convenient at the time. The thing you would call its consciousness, and the thing you would call its self, are inherently disconnected from each other- that, at least in my opinion, is not a truly conscious existence.
At the same time... look, I'll be the first to admit- I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. Genuinely, for the first time since I started this quest, I have found a topic too advanced for my google-fu. I've spent three hours looking through things trying to learn enough about the topic from every angle, which is like, ten times longer than I usually need to piece together enough information to actually converse on a topic, and all I've gathered is that this conversation is only unique in how polite it is when it comes to the topic of consciousness in AI. So, I'm offering up what I just wrote, and if that's not enough, I'm throwing my hands up and calling it a conceit of the quest- the effort I'd actually put into arguing the point with any more adherence to real-life would probably end with me getting a computer science degree.
I've gone down this road with you fuckers before and I have two computing courses under my belt and a data security qualification in the works because of it
No, just having one is enough- but more specifically, they're attracted to negative emotions experienced by humans. Something like a pet dying'll make you look a little tastier when they come into town- something like a woman finally snapping, murdering her family, then killing herself to escape the grief and consequences- that's gonna draw a whole horde on the town.
Naturally, it's a little bit of a recursive loop, since just about everyone is naturally terrified of the Grimm- their very presence causes negative emotions, which they then sense, which then makes them run after you, which terrifies you even more, and so on until either it or you are dead.
I'll be honest, I wrote most of that last night while really quite drunk, so if that's the sole problem you have with it, I'm calling that a win. More seriously yes, I do realise now that plasticity is the wrong word, this is the same problem I had with Jaune being open about his Semblance rather than being open about the fact that it's gonna kill him one of these days.
... The problem is I can't think of the word and I know the more I try to explain it without actually bumbling across it the more likely I'll finally step on this epistemological landmine-
The best way I can put it now, I know this probably still isn't entirely right don't eat me alive just yet, is that the Transistor's consciousness isn't passive the way a human is- it's a set of tools in a workshop that, when used correctly and in unison, create something that can be considered, consciousness. But, at any given point, the core AI of the Transistor can just step away from those tools and simply cease to be conscious. It can just turn off things that would be considered core parts of a human psyche just because it's convenient at the time. The thing you would call its consciousness, and the thing you would call its self, are inherently disconnected from each other- that, at least in my opinion, is not a truly conscious existence.
At the same time... look, I'll be the first to admit- I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. Genuinely, for the first time since I started this quest, I have found a topic too advanced for my google-fu. I've spent three hours looking through things trying to learn enough about the topic from every angle, which is like, ten times longer than I usually need to piece together enough information to actually converse on a topic, and all I've gathered is that this conversation is only unique in how polite it is when it comes to the topic of consciousness in AI. So, I'm offering up what I just wrote, and if that's not enough, I'm throwing my hands up and calling it a conceit of the quest- the effort I'd actually put into arguing the point with any more adherence to real-life would probably end with me getting a computer science degree.
I've gone down this road with you fuckers before and I have two computing courses under my belt and a data security qualification in the works because of it
There's your problem. You probably should have been googling philosophy, not computing. Especially philosophy for and against transhumanism and AIs.
Anyway, it sounds like basically what you really mean is that the Transistor is a P-Zombie
edit: To clarify, that wasn't meant as a "go google philosophy" comment. It was meant as a humorous aside.
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