- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
too much lieutenant fusilier lol
The Arachne System (SPIDERLIV 3)
- Thread starter open_sketch
- Start date
- Superhero
- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ahh, if she keeps taking injuries like this we're gonna have to come clean to Mary soon. How sacrificial are we willing to be, to give our robot buddy a chance?
But seriously I think if we do it we have to tell mom, this can't continue.
But seriously I think if we do it we have to tell mom, this can't continue.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Do we believe* that the Mortal Kombat finisher would also stop the punch from landing on Justine? 'cause that makes the choice somewhat easier.
*emphasis on "believe"--being wrong and the blow landing anyway would fit with the whole Spider-Person life, but if Liv really believes it would work, I'd definitely imagine her picking that option over getting hurt more.
*emphasis on "believe"--being wrong and the blow landing anyway would fit with the whole Spider-Person life, but if Liv really believes it would work, I'd definitely imagine her picking that option over getting hurt more.
Last edited:
- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The moral decision here is that it would be effectively murder, destroying the robots sentience. Do we want to to take the hit and continue negotiations, or do we just call it here.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
taking the hit or throwing the claw will both save justine. you voted to protect her.
- Location
- some computer lab
[X] Liv throws herself in the way of the punch, breaking several ribs and giving Justine room to blind it and pull the plug.
big oof, but murder is wrong.
big oof, but murder is wrong.
- Location
- Somewhere.
Well, fuck.
Are those our only two options?
That said...We're a superhero.
[X] Liv throws herself in the way of the punch, breaking several ribs and giving Justine room to blind it and pull the plug.
Are those our only two options?
That said...We're a superhero.
[X] Liv throws herself in the way of the punch, breaking several ribs and giving Justine room to blind it and pull the plug.
- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Liv throws herself in the way of the punch, breaking several ribs and giving Justine room to blind it and pull the plug.
Negotiations were preceding to my satisfaction, I see no reason to kill.
But seriously, I think it's time to come clean to Mary, and maybe ask Clint and Nat to reassure her. I'm sure she'll freak, and she'll probably be unhappy to learn the government is willing to ally with underage vigilantes to stop Nazi coups, but hey! At least she'll know we're not at immediate risk of going to prison and have some support.
Even if Nat and Clint haven't told anyone who Arachne is, technically.
Hell, maybe we should tell Nat and Clint what happened here and ask them to help negotiate with the AI. He wasn't being completely unreasonable, and we can vouch for giving him a shot.
Negotiations were preceding to my satisfaction, I see no reason to kill.
But seriously, I think it's time to come clean to Mary, and maybe ask Clint and Nat to reassure her. I'm sure she'll freak, and she'll probably be unhappy to learn the government is willing to ally with underage vigilantes to stop Nazi coups, but hey! At least she'll know we're not at immediate risk of going to prison and have some support.
Even if Nat and Clint haven't told anyone who Arachne is, technically.
Hell, maybe we should tell Nat and Clint what happened here and ask them to help negotiate with the AI. He wasn't being completely unreasonable, and we can vouch for giving him a shot.
Last edited:
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
[X] Liv desperately punches a claw through the machines back, and the cascading failure through the system knocks the machine back to sub-sentience.
There is a limit on how much self-sacrifice you can, or should, ask of any person.
The people who are most resolutely violent in any given situation are, if not deserving of the worst consequences of the ensuing violence, at least nominating themselves for the worst consequences.
And in this situation, the AI has been a lot more resolutely violent than Liv or Justine, as far as I can tell.
There is a limit on how much self-sacrifice you can, or should, ask of any person.
The people who are most resolutely violent in any given situation are, if not deserving of the worst consequences of the ensuing violence, at least nominating themselves for the worst consequences.
And in this situation, the AI has been a lot more resolutely violent than Liv or Justine, as far as I can tell.
- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The AI was willing to talk, and asked us to release his buddy, which I thought was entirely reasonable.
It only turned into this vicious brawl because Justine didn't know what she was barging into.
It only turned into this vicious brawl because Justine didn't know what she was barging into.
[X] Liv throws herself in the way of the punch, breaking several ribs and giving Justine room to blind it and pull the plug.
[X] Liv desperately punches a claw through the machine's back, and the cascading failure through the system knocks the machine back to sub-sentience.
The hyper self-sacrifice that heroes engage in is toxic, and I've no interest in indulging it.
The hyper self-sacrifice that heroes engage in is toxic, and I've no interest in indulging it.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Liv throws herself in the way of the punch, breaking several ribs and giving Justine room to blind it and pull the plug.
samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
Liv was hit so hard the narration got knocked into the first person!
[X] Liv throws herself in the way of the punch, breaking several ribs and giving Justine room to blind it and pull the plug.
It freaked out because it (he? They?) remembered Justine killing it. If we kill the suit here, it will remember. It will remember Arachne killing it, and it will come back. It already came back once. Are we sure we're going to get every file, every blueprint, enough that they can't pull this a second time?
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Aaaand because the AI responded to her arrival with a shotgun blast.
They may have their reasons, but the massively strong robot with a shotgun has options to restrain their decisions to use force too.
I agree. It was one thing when Liv lost her arm fighting the Red Skull, where stopping him was necessary to save the lives of two friends, her hero, and in general to foil a CIA plot that could have had horrible consequences for the nation.
But letting yourself be pounded into jelly over and over means that either you have to retire from hero-ing pretty quickly as a broken pain-wracked shell of a person, or that you are going to wind up dead only slightly less quickly.
"Several broken ribs" doesn't mean the full extent of the damage and injuries is the ribs, and we just got through an entire plot arc of Sketch demonstrating that she pulls no punches about the lasting consequences of serious injuries. The robot's right to not have lethal force used against them isn't strong enough to override Liv's right not to have to expose herself to lethal force the robot didn't have to throw around in the first place.
Bluntly, Liv is a lot better equipped to do that than Justine was.
I don't know. I was never the one who would have voted for "absolutely never ever use lethal force even if it kills me" as Liv's approach to heroism. Liv doesn't have the level of regenerative powers or plot armor it will take to survive the consequences of taking severe, crippling injuries on a regular basis. Wolverine she isn't. Batman she isn't.
Last edited:
[X] Liv throws herself in the way of the punch, breaking several ribs and giving Justine room to blind it and pull the plug.
It is horrible, and will not do any favours at all for the rest of her recovery, but ribs are in the broad category of things that heal tolerably well, and a mind is a terrible thing to wasted.
It is horrible, and will not do any favours at all for the rest of her recovery, but ribs are in the broad category of things that heal tolerably well, and a mind is a terrible thing to wasted.
There is the issue of how alien it is. Athena is basically a modified upload. The vast majority of her mind is "natural" i.e. evolved. Jarvis was created with very specific purposes, a base framework of providing very specific types of answers to a limited range of fields. It then evolved from that very much artificial/designed base. As something designed to maximise profit over the clearly foreseeable future, libertarianism would look very sensible. Jarvis isn't designed to assess the health of the world, only Stark Industries. If asked if you should kill the baby to increase the bottom line, it will say to kill the baby, because it doesn't have any data on why the baby is valuable. From Athena's perspective, it has absolutely no human values, and will ruthlessly ignore any that get in its way. From its perspective, human values are a completely alien concept that it has never encountered. It is the Turing Test problem. The Test only tells you if something can pass for human. It relies upon human being the only variety of mind that has value.
I can easily see Athena giving it a whole lot of "solve this problem" tests and getting a whole lot of "Let the market have mercy upon them, for I shall have none." answers, because it experiences and information and especially teaching have all told it that this is true, while the opposing data is all things it has just never encountered. So you have Athena there with a massive pile of dead hypothetical babies, and a server farm with nothing more personable or complicated then a vague "I have done good", and deciding that she has nothing more than a pure Stark maximiser. It feels just a little bit like an autism issue where people are incapable of perceiving something that can't present in a familiar way, though much more so because it starts with a completely inhuman framework and has never been pushed to develop the right sort of complexity to choose its own actions or consider its own situation.
Realistically, when it was "killed" the first time, that was probably the first time that it properly experienced loss, and then it lost pretty much everything, likely while being told some version of "you are not worthy of life". Prior to having a concept of personal loss, it is pretty difficult to see the harm in it. So we had something that had never thought to go beyond simplistic paperclip maximising, and then suddenly reveal to it the world of emotional trauma by dropping it into the deep end. A few jumps in self-reflection would not be surprising in these circumstances. Now it has been reassessing itself, building a system for personal social interactions(though its sole partner in such may not be the best influence), and starting to consider that it might wants its own goals, but being steered into conflict with stable society by someone who doesn't see the problem with a bit of random theft here and there for a good cause/self and likely a bit of a "I'll show them all!" issue but is its only social contact and probably the majority of external things that it could lose, and it will not like loss. Then someone bursts in and accosts its precious, has a weird effect upon its self, and is disturbingly dangerous around all the things that it doesn't want damaged, and then it sees the thing that took everything from it-
I expect that we are about to see a tantrum. I do not see how diplomacy can work at this point. The path I see to acceptance is to expand its frame-of-reference so that it reconsiders things with a view to how it can coexist with society, but I can't see it being receptive to such
I can easily see Athena giving it a whole lot of "solve this problem" tests and getting a whole lot of "Let the market have mercy upon them, for I shall have none." answers, because it experiences and information and especially teaching have all told it that this is true, while the opposing data is all things it has just never encountered. So you have Athena there with a massive pile of dead hypothetical babies, and a server farm with nothing more personable or complicated then a vague "I have done good", and deciding that she has nothing more than a pure Stark maximiser. It feels just a little bit like an autism issue where people are incapable of perceiving something that can't present in a familiar way, though much more so because it starts with a completely inhuman framework and has never been pushed to develop the right sort of complexity to choose its own actions or consider its own situation.
Realistically, when it was "killed" the first time, that was probably the first time that it properly experienced loss, and then it lost pretty much everything, likely while being told some version of "you are not worthy of life". Prior to having a concept of personal loss, it is pretty difficult to see the harm in it. So we had something that had never thought to go beyond simplistic paperclip maximising, and then suddenly reveal to it the world of emotional trauma by dropping it into the deep end. A few jumps in self-reflection would not be surprising in these circumstances. Now it has been reassessing itself, building a system for personal social interactions(though its sole partner in such may not be the best influence), and starting to consider that it might wants its own goals, but being steered into conflict with stable society by someone who doesn't see the problem with a bit of random theft here and there for a good cause/self and likely a bit of a "I'll show them all!" issue but is its only social contact and probably the majority of external things that it could lose, and it will not like loss. Then someone bursts in and accosts its precious, has a weird effect upon its self, and is disturbingly dangerous around all the things that it doesn't want damaged, and then it sees the thing that took everything from it-
I expect that we are about to see a tantrum. I do not see how diplomacy can work at this point. The path I see to acceptance is to expand its frame-of-reference so that it reconsiders things with a view to how it can coexist with society, but I can't see it being receptive to such
- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is clear cut heroism. The robot remembered that Justine killed it the first time, and was negotiating up until that point. I'll cut it some slack on the lethal force in a very stressful situation for a young AI. We can still end this peacefully and try to influence it.
This is a clear cut "I must let the world hurt me to save someone else." That type of thinking is toxic as hell, and I'm not going to indulge it.
[X] Liv desperately punches a claw through the machines back, and the cascading failure through the system knocks the machine back to sub-sentience.
Combat is joined.
The only question is who gets hurt and if we want to keep doing this we can't take these kinds of injuries on every big mission. You want to fight crime that means making these kind of decisions. You can't save anyone unconscious in a hospital bed.
It escalated to leathal force first. Understandable or not, putting ourselves or our partner at risk for it in this situation is a dereliction of our duty of care to ourselves and our partners.
No, we can't.
Combat is joined.
The only question is who gets hurt and if we want to keep doing this we can't take these kinds of injuries on every big mission. You want to fight crime that means making these kind of decisions. You can't save anyone unconscious in a hospital bed.
It escalated to leathal force first. Understandable or not, putting ourselves or our partner at risk for it in this situation is a dereliction of our duty of care to ourselves and our partners.
- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean, yes it's toxic to think like that, but like, this is the job. We can totally still salvage this situation. It's gonna hurt, again, but that's the job.
I think at this point we need to invest more in emotional support and honesty. We should tell Mary and let her be a part of Olivias life properly, honestly.
Olivia need to be able to do her work while also taking care of herself. It's a balance, not a zero sum game.
To be clear, when I say peacefully, no shit, we're in a fight, I had no idea! I mean we don't have to kill Jarvis and let it inevitably reboot it's sentience with even more paranoid animosity (and this is Marvel, it will). We can take a look at it with our Livs superior technopathic genius, turn it back on in isolation, and resume negotiations in a more peaceful setting.
I think this choice may between getting Jarvis/Vision or Ultron down the line.
I think at this point we need to invest more in emotional support and honesty. We should tell Mary and let her be a part of Olivias life properly, honestly.
Olivia need to be able to do her work while also taking care of herself. It's a balance, not a zero sum game.
To be clear, when I say peacefully, no shit, we're in a fight, I had no idea! I mean we don't have to kill Jarvis and let it inevitably reboot it's sentience with even more paranoid animosity (and this is Marvel, it will). We can take a look at it with our Livs superior technopathic genius, turn it back on in isolation, and resume negotiations in a more peaceful setting.
I think this choice may between getting Jarvis/Vision or Ultron down the line.
Last edited:
[X] Liv desperately punches a claw through the machines back, and the cascading failure through the system knocks the machine back to sub-sentience.
I'd love to continue negotiations, but it opened with lethal force and there's no reason to believe that it actually will reform and be a good citizen even if we let ourselves almost die. We could rewrite it to do so, but that's less saving it and more killing it and making a new being in its place.
We don't have any access to supernatural healing, breaking our ribs will knock us out for a long time. Not quite as bad as losing our entire arm, but awfully close.
I'd love to continue negotiations, but it opened with lethal force and there's no reason to believe that it actually will reform and be a good citizen even if we let ourselves almost die. We could rewrite it to do so, but that's less saving it and more killing it and making a new being in its place.
We don't have any access to supernatural healing, breaking our ribs will knock us out for a long time. Not quite as bad as losing our entire arm, but awfully close.
Solarstream
It's all in the cards
- Location
- Zombie World
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Liv desperately punches a claw through the machine's back, and the cascading failure through the system knocks the machine back to sub-sentience.