video

[looksfine]

As a recent...demonstration...[perhaps the best way to phrase the recent Network Reading of a Certain Story]...the hobby of creating works of fiction appears to be quite popular.

I have long conceded that this is simply a means of entertainment for many, and do not question such a motive.  However, I am curious as to which...alternative variations of storytelling are to one's personal preference.

[ie: please don't read the 5-year-old bb bot any more porn plskthnxbai]

Comments

[looksfine]

[...possible. Although, it wasn't as if Aya had been shielded from the concepts of discrimination and oppression. Maybe not so much for her gender, but definitely for being a "robot".]

Perhaps that is one tradition that would be worth re-examining.

[commandandcontrol]

It's not like a program that we can just end the process of. It's more like a recurring theme of code that runs throughout the entire operating system.

It might be possible to surgically remove it, but not without causing the system to crash.

[looksfine]

[She sees what you're trying to do. And while it is appreciated....]

Your metaphor is more suited when speaking of a mere machine. One that is incapable of learning and growing from example as living beings are.

Unless I have misunderstood or made false assumptions, your species are not machines. They are capable of independent thought and free will, and can be influenced by others, as I was.

[commandandcontrol]

That's a very gracious view, but I think you give us a bit too much credit.

Human beings are just complicated machines. They're products of their environments with a relatively large capacity for variables that results in some individuals interpreting the same data in different ways.

And when you expand that view to a society, where an individual human is just a cog in an immensely complex interconnected web, we act much less like individuals than you might think.

Human beings are, largely, predictable, given enough data points and at a large enough scale.

[looksfine]

Perhaps you are not giving your species enough credit.

I will admit, I have limit experience with those from Earth originating from my own universe. However, the earthling I do know, I know well. And he is precisely the opposite of 'predictable'.

Here, as well, those who have claimed to come from parallels earths have often surprised me, regardless of previously offered experience and data.

[commandandcontrol]

Or maybe you're just not very good at predicting people.

[ Oh, shit. Whoops. Good thing this is anon. ]

[looksfine]

[...that was uncalled for. But still not the worst thing anyone had ever said to her, and so she was able to brush the criticism relatively easily.]

Perhaps people are simple not so easily predictable. By anyone. Yourself included.

[commandandcontrol]

Unfortunately suggesting an alternative reality in place of the actual reality does nothing to undermine it.

Human beings have built many societies, all of them plagued with rational fallacies, hidebound traditions, and dangerous ideologies. This is fact.

In option one we attribute the growth of these traits much like one would a diseased gene in a growing organism, where every individual human is just a cell in a massive system. No one cell is responsible for anything, they only tend to their own special roles, performing their own particular functions.

In option two, every single human being a completely rational agent, with total power over their own mind and body, and they have decided, collectively and consistently, that some people should be treated better than others, receive more resources, be given more opportunity, given the right not to be demonized and othered, for completely arbitrary reasons.

Which reality is true? Which one would you rather be true?

[looksfine]

Your words indicate a strictly binary way of thinking.

Perhaps I am not as intimately familiar with the ways of your world and culture. However, I have ventured to many others in my relatively short lifespan, and as such, allow myself to remain open to possibilities which can not be theorized in their entirety by one extreme or the other.

[commandandcontrol]

[ Blah blah blah, everything has nuance, etc. There's no room for nuance in statistical analysis!

...but fine, point made. ]

Well if you can think of some way to orchestrate sweeping social change without a coup d'etat, I'm certainly open to hearing it.

[looksfine]

[Aya was increasingly fond of nuance the more she evolved.]

At this time, I have not formulated such an idea. The only incident I have witnessed in the past of the beginnings of such a chance involved a heated battle between myself and my fellow Lanterns against members of their royal court.

Although it was in partial defense on our part.