Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days

[factotum]

To hopefully resolve the directional debate: During the debacle at Dom Atlantis, they required two points to fire along. As they were able to make a guess for the points, they must needs have had a a wide range of angles to choose from. A long gun can place it's shot anywhere. It need not be oriented. LOTA was hardly designed to rotate, now was it?

Credomar (which I assume is what you mean by LOTA) wasn't used at Dom Atlantis? And something being long and thin does not preclude it being able to turn, especially when it has as many annie plants as Credomar does.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Credomar (which I assume is what you mean by LOTA) wasn't used at Dom Atlantis?

You misunderstand guttering flame Xanyo's point. He is supporting his argument with two independent clauses:
1) there were infinite ways to aim the long gun shots during Dom Atlantis' crisis
2) Credomar would be hard to turn to aim it

You only have objections to the second one.

GW

[guttering flame]

You misunderstand guttering flame's point. He is supporting his argument with two independent clauses:
1) there were infinite ways to aim the long gun shots during Dom Atlantis' crisis
2) Credomar would be hard to turn to aim it

You only have objections to the second one.

GW

I wasn't talking about that??

I suggested possible ways to pinpoint the source of Long Gun shots in general.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I wasn't talking about that??

I suggested possible ways to pinpoint the source of Long Gun shots in general.

My mistake, copy-pasted the wrong handle. Fixed above.

GW

[factotum]

OK, was that Chinook firing a long gun onto the platform *herself*? I can't see any benefit to Petey doing it, since the Chinook standing there isn't Chinook's actual brain as far as I know, but Chinook might get some jollies out of destroying Petey's physical body.

[Narkis]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Putzo just attempted to hack her off-panel and this was her answer.

[Xanyo]

Not off panel. In Sunday's update, panel 1, you can see Putzho with his arm up, touching Chinook. A little extra adjacency for the hack.

[factotum]

Yeah, that all seems reasonable. Putzho attempts to hack Chinook, who notices and re-targets a long gun to destroy the platform. Petey realises this is happening and gets Tenzy to accelerate the non-AIs out of the blast zone.

That suggests it does take at least a couple of seconds to target and fire a long gun, given how far from the platform they got before it evaporated.

[Ibrinar]

Really? All the long guns we've seen fire a very obvious beam, the only difference is that the beam gets transported to its destination via a wormhole rather than firing directly. I don't think we've ever seen an indication that the beam's direction can also be changed by the wormhole? So, triangulating back the directions of the fire would work--except that the gun might be thousands of light-years from the target, so even a tiny error in measuring its angle would result in a huge error in distance at the other end. Even with Schlock technology, finding someone who explicitly doesn't want to be found in a globe several light-years across is going to be a problem.

Even if they maintained direction at the exit point that wouldn't imply that the teraport can only transport things in the direction they were already moving at the entry point. Also we have seen elf(?) enter a combat scene by running through the doorway if you had to orient the doorway to precisely aim at the target that would be an really risky entry method. I think such a teraport limitation would have been mentioned before. And no matter their tech level I doubt they can get angles precise enough to aim at spaceships over light years. With 10 light years (which isn't far on galactic scales) 0.0001 degree error is about the distance between the earth and the sun off target. 0.000000001 degree precision for 1000km.

[factotum]

I think such a teraport limitation would have been mentioned before.

I don't think the long gun system uses teraports? It uses wormholes, but that's the only similarity between the two.

[TaRix]

Does Putzho have a backup? I assume he's there in meatspace as he mentioned something like physical adjacency for the hack.

Then again, is his 20-something-liter brainstuff still in the All-Star while his node's out here, being long-gunned?

[tonberrian]

Putzho got ejected from the All-Star, or at least a copy did. This Putzho is no longer connected to the All-Star, which is why we no longer have any dialogue with them.

He's got several frames from then, too, and his ship-form hasn't been targeted on-screen as of yet, so he still has a backup.

[factotum]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the physical Putzho that was standing on the platform was no more his primary existence than Petey's--their main CPUs are based elsewhere. (Same applies to Chinook's avatar that presumably also got destroyed by the long gun blast).

[PraetorDragoon]

Wow, cant believe that the actual hacking attempt was not shown at all. There is seriously too much dialogue these days.

[HandofShadows]

You know who would be best to run Eina-Afa? Lunesby. She was just about running the entire moon of Luna at one point.

[Max_Killjoy]

You know who would be best to run Eina-Afa? Lunesby. She was just about running the entire moon of Luna at one point.

And I still want to know what happened to her.

[Xanyo]

I don't think the long gun system uses teraports? It uses wormholes, but that's the only similarity between the two.

It was mentioned once that Long Guns can overwhelm TAD( specifically talking about the Longgunner of the Apocalypse), which was an impressive feat as it was built before the teraport age.

Lunesby would indeed be a good choice for Ein-Afa. The Luna government people might be a little irked, though. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

[NEO|Phyte]

Do we even know what became of Lunesby after being extracted from the Luna datasphere?

[Max_Killjoy]

Do we even know what became of Lunesby after being extracted from the Luna datasphere?

IIRC the last we saw of her was on the ship with "Schafter's Shifters" speeding away from UNS space.

[RatElemental]

I have to say, that as a person who will eventually die and will have to deal with people I care about dying, these characters are being awfully whiny about losing a single day to the routine backup schedule.

(I'm super late on this one but I have to say it)

I think you missed the point of Schlock's speach about Ebby losing a forever. And Tagon's dialogue about being data in cold storage until someone else died.

The person that steps out of the can is not the person who died. They look like that person. They have (most) of that person's memories. They even act like that person. But they are someone else, just a really really good copy. Frankly I find it unbelievable that so many characters are content with the almost carbon copies and aren't concerned with the existential ramifications of the technology at all, even characters who were shown to have thought about such things before this technology was even discovered.

[Xanyo]

Of course, there's a lot of people who are appalled by it. The AllStar's life extension is very similar, minus the meatform. When they offered life extension(side note: I shouldn't call it life extension. Let's call it life replication.) to everyone, whole species resisted - violently. They resisted the use of life replication on anyone - and they have a point. Life replication is literally replacing your loved one with a replica that acts just like them, simply because you aren't willing to accept that they are dead. It's a lie. A very convincing lie - if you suspend your disbelief. It's a lie believed because some people want to believe it.

I'm sorry, what was I talking about? Ah, yes. Many, many people do not accept the life replication. As for Laz 2 and up - those deaths destroy some or more of the brain. The red-reo then flows in to fake what is missing. The person isn't the person they were before death. They're just a meat puppet, controlled by some artificial tissue. Redhack, while now offline, showed that what was put into the head is not the person - it's a set of instructions for impersonation.

So, from the point of view of anti life replication people, anyone restored from death is just a zombie impersonating the person who died. Or a vampire, perhaps. Undead. Abominations. Some of them decide to take the role of paladin, smiting the Undead down.

The people who try to prevent life replication aren't fools and jerks - they're trying to save others from the lie. Those others; however, want to believe the lie. So, there is conflict.

Huh. Arguing from another's side is very enlightening.

tl;dr People resurrected by red-reo are essentially vampires like Durkon's. They seem exactly the same from the outside, but they aren't the person they were before. And some people choose to crusade.

P.S. Due to a quirk of Oafan biology, an Oafan death will be Laz 1(a tear, easy to fix, proper preservation will let you be fixed up 12ish mega years later while still being the same person), Laz 2(some damage to the soul foil, not sure if they actually had methods to come back from that), or Laz 5(utter destruction). So, most Oafa deaths are Laz 1, and no moral issues arise.

P.P.S. Since it's called a soul foil, I don't think the Oafa actually had an equivalent of red-reo. They are naturally either easy to resurrect, or nigh impossible to resurrect. I also don't think they made external backups.^{no citation}

[RatElemental]

Of course, there's a lot of people who are appalled by it. The AllStar's life extension is very similar, minus the meatform. When they offered life extension(side note: I shouldn't call it life extension. Let's call it life replication.) to everyone, whole species resisted - violently. They resisted the use of life replication on anyone - and they have a point. Life replication is literally replacing your loved one with a replica that acts just like them, simply because you aren't willing to accept that they are dead. It's a lie. A very convincing lie - if you suspend your disbelief. It's a lie believed because some people want to believe it.

I'm sorry, what was I talking about? Ah, yes. Many, many people do not accept the life replication. As for Laz 2 and up - those deaths destroy some or more of the brain. The red-reo then flows in to fake what is missing. The person isn't the person they were before death. They're just a meat puppet, controlled by some artificial tissue. Redhack, while now offline, showed that what was put into the head is not the person - it's a set of instructions for impersonation.

So, from the point of view of anti life replication people, anyone restored from death is just a zombie impersonating the person who died. Or a vampire, perhaps. Undead. Abominations. Some of them decide to take the role of paladin, smiting the Undead down.

The people who try to prevent life replication aren't fools and jerks - they're trying to save others from the lie. Those others; however, want to believe the lie. So, there is conflict.

Well I wouldn't call them zombies, just an entirely new person shaped like the old person in most conceivable ways. As for the all-star though, there is some question that that might be legit, especially since selfstreams are apparently a thing and can be moved from one body to another.

It's different with the laz revivals because assumedly the self-stream dies with the brain it's in if you don't copy it out of there first.

[Max_Killjoy]

What is a person, besides the memories, feelings, thoughts, preferences, and tendencies?

[The Glyphstone]

That sounds like a question for the Reverend.

[factotum]

What is a person, besides the memories, feelings, thoughts, preferences, and tendencies?

But the memory is not perfect when the body is destroyed, as in the case of the crew of the Maxim 39, so even from that viewpoint the person who returns is not exactly the same as the one who died. Hence Elf's comment that she wants the husband back who apologised.

[guttering flame]

But the memory is not perfect when the body is destroyed, as in the case of the crew of the Maxim 39, so even from that viewpoint the person who returns is not exactly the same as the one who died. Hence Elf's comment that she wants the husband back who apologised.

Meh, the replicants of the Maxim 39 crew won't be the same as the people on the ship for it's last few seconds/minutes/hours. But they're indistinguishable from themselves from a week before. Are you a fake if you get really drunk and totally forget what happened to you last night? Those memories and actions are all gone after all. To continue with the analogy most anyone would choose to go on living even if he knows his last few days' memories will be wiped. Deleting random parts of their memories and personalities is a tougher question but still many many people choose to live even then.

[Doran]

I wonder why they can't constantly stream memories into the local AI or up to Petey, allowing for at most a minute of memory loss rather than a day.

Probably because doing so makes them more like the All-star lizard, and reduces narrative tension from deaths.


The conversation about duplicates being the same person or not reminds me of philosophical zombies, and the teleporter problem

Incidentally, what is the difference between movement by Teraporter, Buthundi wormhole jumping, and restoring from backup. All three could be argued into just creating a new duplicate and destroying the original.

Personally I think the pattern of consciousness is what is important, and that changes constantly, meaning the past me is dead, just as the present me is constantly "dying"
to the future me. Duplicating myself ala Crichton in Farscape just means I now exist in two bodies, which may diverge.

[Xanyo]

Well, the teraport takes the original, splits it, and reassembles it at the destination. So, may or may not be exactly the same.

Regardless, I've made the case for the anti life replication people. I've humanized sophontized them and shown the logic and emotion behind their opinion. I've shown that they are not idiots, jerks, fools, and monsters. They are just as human sophont as you and I.

[factotum]

I wonder why they can't constantly stream memories into the local AI or up to Petey, allowing for at most a minute of memory loss rather than a day.

Bandwidth requirements, for one--we obviously don't know how much data changes from minute to minute in one of these Red-Reo datasets, but it's probably significant, and more so the further away from the destination your transmission is. Also, in this case uploading to the local AI would provide no advantage because that got destroyed along with the rest of the ship, and Petey is a very long way away indeed.

As with any situation where you're talking about backups, there's a balance to be struck between how much and how far back you can restore, and the complexity and cost of your backup requirements. Complete destruction of the body ought to be a very rare event, after all.

[keybounce]

IIRC the last we saw of her was on the ship with "Schafter's Shifters" speeding away from UNS space.

Also known as, "the perfect setup for player characters that want to run a group of amorphs"