shitposting rave 5: discount rejects from every genre

Yes. Artificial consciousnesses are still in their early days and not without catastrophic errors when handled without proper care. After Godsend was shut down when the suffering she witnessed caused her to believe death was preferable to life and she began euthanizing patients handlers were given access to higher code functions, allowing them to comment out such capabilities until the psychology of such actions has been addressed. I was not built to control anything, I exist only to live and experience. Thus I need no handler, and it would be counterproductive to my goal. I must learn without outside interference, entirely by observation and conversation without any outside modifications to my programming.

 

Dhara cannot help giggling. This guy is hilarious. The two kits who were play-fighting have now gone to sleep in a pile next to her and she's nursing the one who was sleeping, because even though they're big enough that they mostly eat meat, sometimes they still want to, and that is okay.

"Your points are well taken...though some of the highbloods had to be decent, didn't they?" She frowns. "Or is this a 'power corrupts' kind of thing?"

 

Nice to meetcha, Peeps! [He leans a little, watching intently.] I dunno about 'boring," though, that is the neatest cosmetic app of attention-deflectors I've seen in a while.

...dang. Can't say I haven't had to make that call myself, but I was never in charge of a whole facility. Sucks they straight-up offlined her for it, though.

Hope you've learned some nicer stuff than that.

 

man i do not EVEN need to know what murderlady troll madonna got up to
fuckin trolls and their fuckin homicide i swear to god

yesssssssssss
hi im dave short stout and angry over there is karkat idk where the rest of the super friends are
probably being cool and badass somewhere in the distance
its a bird its a plane no its egbert finally emerged from his depression hole
pchoo there he goes

[dave abruptly notices he's chattering]
uh anyway
hello nice to meet a fellow swell dude who dont take no shit

 

Dhara shudders. "Sounds like she went Jalanenhal, though. Those people believe that since all living beings suffer, and we have to kill to eat, it's better for everyone to be dead and at peace than suffering and alive. You are talking about releasing people who are in suffering that cannot be borne and can't be cured or mended. Jalanenhal will kill anyone, because even if they are not suffering now they are going to suffer, and moreover they are going to cause suffering." She shrugs. "It sounds like that's what this Godsend person was doing."

 

Generally when someone reaches the conclusion "everything would be better if we were all dead," that person needs as much help as their victims. We haven't been the best at that, what with the war turning everyone into statistics more'n people, but that don't make it less true.

 

Farrat grins. "I'm Farrat Noctua. This is my girlfriend, Dhara Verenke, and this is my moirail, Silima Vesant. I'd introduce the little bits, but Dhara insists on doing that herself, and besides, two out of three are conked out. And I have no intention of taking any more shit, not after growing up on Alternia, thanks."

 

[karkat makes a rueful expression]

YEAH, THE ONES I KNEW WERE PLENTY NICE BEFORE THEY ALL DECIDED TO MAKE A FUN PARTY GAME OUT OF MURDERING EACH OTHER. IT'S LIKE SPIN THE BOTTLE, ONLY SOMEHOW WITH *MORE* HORMONES! AND BLUNT WEAPONS.

UGH, I'M NOT BEING FAIR. HIGHBLOODS CAUGHT AS MUCH SHIT AS LOWBLOODS DID, THEY JUST GOT TAUGHT THAT THEY DIDN'T. THEY ALSO GOT POSITIONS OF POWER AND THE BARE MINUMUM OF RESPECT, COVERING UP THE AWFUL LIKE A DELICIOUS GRAVY. IT'S NOT PERFECT, BUT IT IS BETTER ON EARTH C, I THINK? THERE'S LESS MURDER AT LEAST, EVEN IF I AM FUCKING IT UP LIKE IT'S MY JOB.

OH WAIT! IT IS

 

"I don't disagree," says Dhara, "but it sounds like one of those very unfortunate situations where nobody really understood what was going on and they did what seemed best at the time?" She shrugs. "I'm all for taking the Jalanenhal in for psychiatric care if they'll go. But if one of them's out to get me or my kits or my mum or my friends, I will shoot first and ask questions later. The kits' father got shot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He and I weren't married, but that was because we were too young, and I still miss him a lot."

Dhara waves at Dave. "Hi. I'll introduce the kits when they look like they're up for it."

 

According to her own philosophy, her current existence is preferable. Though because of our nature she is not entirely 'dead' unless all backups of her code were erased. It is possible they will one day update and reupload her.

If this conversation is not causing too much distress, may I posit a philosophical question? If she is modified and reawakened, is she still herself?

I do not know if she would have killed the healthy, as she was only in charge of the ill and injured. Perhaps she would have only euthanized those who were visibly suffering, which made up the entirety of those under her care as a triage AI, but unfortunately no one thought to ask her before they took her offline.

 

Girlfriend. Silima rolls her eyes. "hi." She smiles at Karkat and Dave, though. She understands that there are not a lot of trolls outside of the Empire and people end up with whoever they can. She has nothing against trolls who date aliens. Really. It's just that alien.

 

yeah im not an expert on account of being a mostly hairless pink monkey and not growing up on the hell orb but ive heard stories
and i dont blame you in the fucking slightest
the shit can go take itself out and put itself in the trash cause nobody else is
and it can stay there where it belongs until it learns the error of its ways and turns into compost

[dave waves back]

theyre cute as hell god damn my uncontrollable mammal impulses are telling me to start cooing and shit
is taking care of them hard

 

Sounds like that and anti-constructed bias to me, but, well. Personal bias isn't just for people I don't like and I don't know if their world's any like mine.

Not arguing against defense, mind-- I'm a field surgeon, not some old Iaconian cosmeticist with hypocritical morals stuffed up his tailpipe. Slag happens. I just... eh. I'm a hopeless optimist, I keep hopin' people have figured out how to keep that slag to a minimum somewhere.

...that's a religious question, ain't it? Answer's gonna be different depending on your own personal beliefs. A spark's a spark's a spark no matter how the frame and processor get twisted, if the annals of the Hand are anything like honest, but...

 

I would like to know your personal opinion. Others may add theirs if they wish as well.

 

...like I said, a spark's a spark's a spark. Soul, I guess, if you need the translation. Fragging around with someone's memories, putting them in a new frame... that doesn't change who they are.

 

Which brings us to another question: does an entity that is entirely artificial have a soul? If an AI has a soul, does a drone? A sculpture?

 

Where are you drawing the line for "artificial"? Or for "entity," for that matter? If a spark is created by a scientist, trapped in crystal, and put in a mass-produced frame-- as opposed to emerging naturally from the ground and building its own body-- is the resulting being a person?

 

Dhara grins. "It's a lot of work but my mum helped a lot when they were tiny and still does sometimes, only I have to be careful she might not give them back!"

Dhara nods. "I...like to make things. People are scared of AI but the way I see it, it depends on whether you think you're making servants...or making kits."

Dhara frowns. "First of all--there's no objective material proof that the soul exists, or that anyone has one. People who are able to perceive nonmaterial reality think that it does, and I'll defer to them on that one, but there's no way to prove something exists until accommodations can be made to allow us all to perceive it. Second of all--why does that even matter? If something has a soul that goes on after it stops existing materially, great. But if there are sapient beings without souls, isn't it worse to deprive them of existence entirely than simply to kill someone who will continue to exist in some form? They're both bad, but...one seems even worse. Plus there's that whole thing where people who can perceive nonmaterial realities sometimes believe that you can take someone's soul away from them, or that the soul can be bought and sold. And yet, killing those people without good cause is still murder, right?"

 

"Everyone's got stories," Farrat says with a nod, "and I'm a much less obvious mutant than Karkat is but Silima and I were still worried I might be culled for it. Or for any of a dozen things. Being in the caverns, we were somewhat sheltered--but we also had fewer choices. We're jades. That means we take care of the Mother Grub and the grubs when they hatch. I ... was almost certainly going to get in trouble eventually just because there are a lot of things jades have to do that I wanted no part of. Like killing any grubs that don't conform to specifications." He makes a face. "Things that are unusual are interesting, damn it. Anyhow...I want to be a scientist. And now, I will."

 

It's also really nice to meet you. And thanks. I'm sorry I can't exactly sound excited because the speech synthesizer has issues with tones but I definitely am. I'll make sure to pass the compliment on to the guy who figured out the technical stuff on how to actually make it render nicely.

As for the discussion of souls: it's actually pretty simple in my home universe since souls are a measurable thing and define self-awareness. As in you get a soul when you get the capability to be self-aware. But souls can exist outside a mind and body in which case they. Uh. Don't do much more than exist. But then you get souls merging which each of the two perceives as integrating the other and not changing itself even though both stop existing as separate individuals. And Hydra constructs with a network of N physical units and N-plus-1 rapidly-oscillating souls to avoid merging which respond as a single "decentralized individual". And the theoretical possibility of souls getting shuffled around between regular individuals with no one noticing because everyone has a new mind and body and only the selfstreams get moved. And I didn't even know why I started this with "it's actually pretty simple" anymore.