...based on everything I've read about their relationship.
That's what makes your opinion less valuable. You've read a lot of parole evidence. That is, you know more than is true.
--M. J. Young
John Connor wasn't born in a Los Angeles hospital either. He was born by emergency C-section somewhere in Central America. Sarah had a bottle of 151 rum for her anesthetic. I don't always feel the need to repeat all of the facts I know.
If I knew a lot about a factual topic that you didn't, you wouldn't dream of questioning my knowledge. Why is that not true about a fictional topic?
(Doing Therapy)
John Connor wasn't born in a Los Angeles hospital either. He was born by emergency C-section somewhere in Central America. Sarah had a bottle of 151 rum for her anesthetic. I don't always feel the need to repeat all of the facts I know.
If I knew a lot about a factual topic that you didn't, you wouldn't dream of questioning my knowledge. Why is that not true about a fictional topic?
O.K., let's suppose that I decided to run Hogwarts Academy, but without the Harry Potter stories. That is, Harry doesn't exist. That's problematic, because of course Voldemort a.k.a. Tom Riddle is thwarted by Harry several times; but then Harry is also the villain's primary target. But at some point what's in the books and movies is true, and at some point it is not true.
That's probably a poor illustration, but it's a starting point.
Let's suppose that I decide to run The Hobbit, but at the same time I decide that The Lord of the Rings is not part of this world. I've got Bilbo, and Smeagol a.k.a. Gollum, and Gandalf the Grey, and I think maybe Radagast the Brown, and a batch of dwarfs plus the Wood Elves and the Men of Dale, and the Dragon. I've got a substantial world. But now, anyone who knows the books knows that the silly little trick ring of invisibility which Bilbo manages to get from Gollum is also The One Ring of Power--
- One ring to rule them all,
One ring to find them,
One ring to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them.
Even a cursory consideration of the details in The Lord of the Rings will tell you that this ring empowers its bearer with far more than the ability to be invisible. It can find the Elven Rings of Power; it can force the will of the wearer on someone he targets. Used aright, it can make the wearer the supreme ruler of Middle Earth. Even having it makes one a target of evil forces, and wearing it puts you in the world with those evil spirit beings; and it is a great temptation for all strong people, who are drawn to the ring and want to possess it themselves.
Not one word of that appears in The Hobbit. It is all backstory presented in The Lord of the Rings. In fact, the fact that Gollum was once a hobbit named Smeagol is also never mentioned in The Hobbit.
Therefore, when your character tries to use the One Ring in ways recognized in The Lord of the Rings, I don't have to allow it, because it's not part of the world I am running, even though it is part of the main story the creator of this world was telling even as he wrote this book. You might be full of knowledge about Middle Earth and the One Ring from having read The Lord of the Rings, or indeed from having read the backstory in The Silmarillion, but none of that is part of this world, because this world is limited to the facts presented in The Hobbit.
That's what you're trying to do here. You know all this stuff about the world from having read The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. You've even read interviews with J. R. R. Tolkien concerning how he created this world and why he did it, with hints about some of the things that he always thought were true about the world but never happened to mention in the books. And you're trying to tell me that because Tolkien included these details in his vision of the world, they're binding on me.
And I'm telling you that when I run The Hobbit, the only parts that are binding on me are the parts in The Hobbit. I might decide that it makes sense for Smeagol to have found his ring long ago and become Gollum; but then, that implies that the ring also confers longevity, which is a fact we learn in The Lord of the Rings, not in The Hobbit. I might prefer to have Gollum be a unique "monster" lifeform who found an ordinary ring of invisibility and has not been alive an outrageously long time. It doesn't matter to me what Tolkien did with this world outside this one book; it only matters what was happening in that one book, and how I decide to make sense of it.
And so when I said that my Terminator world was limited to "My understanding of the four movies," that means that nothing you ever read, saw, or heard anywhere outside those movies is binding on me, and in fact nothing you ever thought or understood from watching those movies is binding on me, because the only thing that is binding is the on-screen content of the movies as I understand it. Anything you contribute to that is interesting trivia about some other completely unrelated universe about which you read.
It was already giving you a great deal of power to put you in the movies as a story you knew. It was completely unreasonable for you to expect that information from outside the story parameters I defined would be true within that world.
--M. J. Young
It was already giving you a great deal of power to put you in the movies as a story you knew. It was completely unreasonable for you to expect that information from outside the story parameters I defined would be true within that world.
That's true. That made complete sense. You can't exactly know what all I've read. But, is it completely unreasonable for me to ask you to conform it a little to what I suggest? I make a suggestion about the way the world should be, based on what I've read. Is it unreasonable of me to think you would give it consideration and include it? There's a lot of details about the story. You might have been sitting here wracking your brain for what to do with the world, and remember a factoid that I blurted out and get inspiration. Everything you get and use from me is that much less you have to invent out of whole cloth. Is that unreasonable?
You could certainly make a good world from your understanding of the four movies. Is it unreasonable of me to ask you to make an even better world based on MY understanding? I was hoping the world design and creation would be more collaborative.
Do you know what a Centurion is? Do you know the name of the hyperalloy from which the T-800 is constructed? Do you know how a Phased Plasma Rifle operates? I do. Is it unreasonable of me to ask you to use little tidbits like that, which you get from me to improve the story? I don't think so, but that's just me.
Believe it or not, all I ever wanted was to improve the story. Take what I said and make it your own. Is that unreasonable?
(Doing Therapy)
Two
I will give you this. I now see why you don't like running worlds where the players knows the world better than you. What I will never give you is that it is completely unreasonable for the referee to listen to and do what the player suggests, when the player does know the world better. You knew I was a Terminator superfan before you started it. You pray to God to make the world the way you want it, don't you? What's the difference, really? Oh, that's right. You DON'T know the world better than God.....
(Doing Therapy)
Three
Mistake.
(Doing Therapy)
Is it unreasonable of me to ask you to make an even better world based on MY understanding?
O.K., the creation of the world would have become collaborative at some point where your character was able to interact with it more directly.
That is, your character grows up and he has your memories of all the things you've read about which I am ignorant. So I toss in a T-300. I know nothing about T-300s except that it is reasonable to assume that they are early humanoid robotic killing machines that don't look very human at all and are not very functional. Your character then says, "I read somewhere that the T-300 has poorly-functioning articulated joints, and that it is easy to get them off balance by forcing them to turn sharply, and to cripple them by direct blunt trauma to knees, hips, shoulders, and elbows. I wonder if that's true."
Then I roll a GE roll, and if the roll is favorable then your knowledge is correct, and if it's unfavorable your knowledge is incorrect. Maybe if I think your knowledge likely (or unlikely) I roll a modified GE roll or interpret the roll favorably (or unfavorably).
It's a bit like an alien invasion world in which you say, "I wonder whether the aliens are vulnerable to ordinary things, like salt water or Don Ho records." They might be. I would roll for that if you attempted to use something like that against aliens. After all, saline solution is deadly to the Alienation aliens, and Don Ho records were, if I understand correctly, fatal to those in another movie. In this case, though, you'd have cited something that is "true in some version of this world", and that would make it favorable unless I had reason to think otherwise (e.g., if I had already created details of my version of the T-300 which were contrary to that).
Does that make sense?
--M. J. Young
and Don Ho records were, if I understand correctly, fatal to those in another movie.
Mars Attacks!!! I think.
Makes sense. I've forgotten a great deal of the minutia of the details. As far as the T-300, about all I could tell you is that, up to about a T-600 or T-700, that barrage of shotgun fire Reese unleashed would have crippled or destroyed it. The T-800 was a huge leap forward. Everything before that could be killed with conventional weapons.
And the site didn't recognize your posting. It didn't bump the page for your post. I just happened to check it. Could it be the system is seeing The Moderator as a spammer?
(Doing Therapy)
MJ, now I gotta ask. We had a thing going where we were trying to decide if a Terminator was sentient. I had asked for a Terminator verser. I couldn't get it because it was biased out. However, a sentient summoning wasn't. You were saying that since I asked for a Terminator, it wasn't sentient. What if I had asked for a "Sentient, artificial life-form of comparable size, strengths and abilities of a Terminator"? Or something similar. Would that have worked? Was the specification that it be a Terminator what killed it? All I needed to do was make a more vague description? I'll have to keep that in mind.
Also, you said that if I bring in a protector, you have to put me up against something capable of defeating said protector. That something would be too powerful for an untrained woman and a baby. Not necessarily. A techie from CyberDyne could do it. Surely they would want to get their hands on an endoskeleton, even if it wasn't quite a Terminator. A techie with an EMP weapon could take out the Terminator, and still be an appropriate threat to an untrained woman and baby. Would you have considered that as a viable option? You just know the person at CyberDyne who found the chip had an interest in Sarah Connor.
Yeah MJ, I didn't mean it when I called you arrogant for thinking I would want to come back. I was talking angry. I do that a lot. I'm still thinking about it. I know you say it's not gonna happen, but who knows what tomorrow will bring?
(Doing Therapy)
What if I had asked for a "Sentient, artificial life-form of comparable size, strengths and abilities of a Terminator"?
If a referee allowed that, I wouldn't think twice about it. I, however, probably would not have allowed it, because I have a peculiar attitude about versers.
I believe that there are only a few dozen of them in the entire multiverse, that they are rare in the extreme and very few universes ever produce them. I also believe that they only do so for a very brief period of time, and then they realize that you can't use scriff in those dangerous ways, and stop doing so.
Thus within my lifetime I expect that scriff will no longer be used in consumer products, and like the smallpox virus will be kept under tight security in a limited number of labs.
There will be no scriff-infected artificially intelligent machine creatures, because by the time artificially intelligent machine beings are possible scriff will be tightly controlled and protected so that no one will become infected by it.
Sure, there is a logic to Eric's notion of billions of versers coming from millions of planets over thousands of years, so that there are all kinds of versers out there. By my reckoning, though, if it wasn't a character in the original books or a player in my game or an associate drawn from a world I know by a player in my game, it's not out there. (Characters in the original book were all player characters or characters drawn from worlds they visited.) The five I created for Bah Ke'gehn are really stretching my idea of how many versers there are in the multiverse, as are the four in my novels, but I created them conceptually as player characters starting careers since the game was published, and I still keep a tight limit on the number of scriff-infected beings that are out there.
I really don't like making versers commonplace. They're supposed to be rare in the extreme.
So in short, if I don't already know that such a verser exists, he doesn't. You can only summon or meet versers I have allowed to exist in my game worlds. I don't have any artificial lifeform versers in my games, so you can't get one.
And since the tech level of the universe in which you were playing wasn't high enough to support the creation of such a machine, you couldn't get it from there--it would be like praying for a leprechaun. If they don't exist in that universe, you can't get one.
--M. J. Young
I believe that there are only a few dozen of them in the entire multiverse, that they are rare in the extreme and very few universes ever produce them. I also believe that they only do so for a very brief period of time, and then they realize that you can't use scriff in those dangerous ways, and stop doing so.
Then how would the people in Why Spy know how to track and capture versers? From what you're saying, they're lucky any landed there at all. I'm with Eric. Billions of versers. To say only a few diminishes the scope of the Multiverse, in my humble opinion. Scriff must occur naturally in some form or it wouldn't exist at all. That means there's caveman versers who found a pool of it by accident. There's versers native to every facet of evolution of a world where it is present.
There will be no scriff-infected artificially intelligent machine creatures, because by the time artificially intelligent machine beings are possible scriff will be tightly controlled and protected so that no one will become infected by it.
Ah, but what if it was scriff technology that made the artificial intelligence possible? It's certainly reasonable that the discovery of scriff could be the token component to someone working in AI research. Artificial intelligence wasn't possible until they discovered the property of scriff to accelerate electrical activity. (or whatever the scriff supposedly does) They could have been discovered at the same time. So, the AI robot springs a leak in his scriff containment, "dies", verses out, and only the fact that the verser keeps scriff permanently is what keeps the guy up and running. Give me some time. I can give you a pseudo-plausible explanation for damn near anything.
I have no doubt there's a version of me who makes a living as an author. It's just not this version.
(Doing Therapy)
Two
Do us both a favor. Don't waste a lot of time with the reply. I don't want you wasting any more time than absolutely needed with my psychotic babble. It's just a pseudo-plausible explanation for it. (And I'm giggling because I think this is funny.)
(Doing Therapy)
Scriff must occur naturally in some form or it wouldn't exist at all.
Clever, but no. Scriff exists only in universes in which something is happening that smashes sub-subatomic particles. A high-speed supercollider does it, smashing atoms so they break into electrons and tachyons and such, then smashing these so they break into quarks, then smashing the quarks. Not even supernovae smash quarks. The Big Bang would have done so, but since scriff is unstable and leaks out of universes quickly, any residual scriff from that would have been long gone before there were stars.
You get similar problems with high-level skills in other bias areas, but you really do have to have indigs who achieved high bias in something to have it work. In tech, you're talking 12@ nuclear power. You might get it in psi 9@ manipulate chemistry. With mag it's probably 14@ physical creation, and bod is clearly 15@ non-physicality. Until you have scriff-related skills (T15@, P14@, M14@, B15@) you can't get it intentionally, but only as a by-product of other activities.
So worlds that are primitive in every bias area have no scriff; it is not a "naturally occurring" substance, but the result of high-bias skill use.
And although people will experiment with scriff as a superconductor, they'll abandon it because 1) it leaks out of the circuitry and ceases to function rather quickly, and 2) it's incredibly dangerous, which will be discovered--causes people to disintegrate sometimes. So it won't be used in electronic brains because it's too dangerous and not reliable.
--M. J. Young
So it won't be used in electronic brains because it's too dangerous and not reliable.
As you pointed out, that fact wouldn't be discovered right away. Also, if the dangerous and unreliable element was the ONLY WAY KNOWN to make the AI function properly, you're deluding yourself if you think that no one would use it for that purpose, regardless of the dangers. Nitroglycerin is unstable, dangerous and unreliable at times. Please note, it's still widely in use to this day.
Scriff must occur naturally in some form or it wouldn't exist at all.
Clever, but no. Scriff exists only in universes in which something is happening that smashes sub-subatomic particles.
And so that means that God couldn't design a naturally occurring formation that smashes sub-subatomic particles? It can plausibly occur naturally.
(Doing Therapy)
And so that means that God couldn't design a naturally occurring formation that smashes sub-subatomic particles? It can plausibly occur naturally.
O.K., you're right, God could have created such an unformed and unfinished universe and put creatures in it. He could also have created people in a world where the only thing they could eat was each other.
He didn't.
--M. J. Young
He didn't.
Says who? The individual writing the story, that's who.
It's like saying that you could never become a molecular biologist. You're diminishing the power of God. You're saying that God could not have possibly steered your life that direction. Saying that something "can't" happen diminishes the power of God.
doublepost.
Saying that something "can't" happen diminishes the power of God.
Well, it doesn't, and I'm the theologian. I know there are certain things God cannot do. Off the top of my head, Hebrews tells us that it is impossible for God to lie. That also means he cannot break his promises. There are two things God cannot do.
Certainly I agree that creating a world in which the raw material is still dangerously lying around and there are intelligent indigs who might be badly harmed by it is not impossible. However, it is inherent in the definition of scriff that loose scriff leaks out of universes; therefore within a few hours after this world was created, all the scriff would have leaked out of it, and there wouldn't be any.
Think of it like this: it is perfectly possible for me to suspend a bucket's worth of water thirty feet in the air without a container, for an instant. Then it's going to fall to the ground. It's perfectly possible for there to be loose scriff in a universe for a short time, but then it's going to spill through the cracks between the atoms and back out into the sea of scriff in which the universes float.
--M. J. Young
Mistake
(Doing Therapy)
Think of it like this: it is perfectly possible for me to suspend a bucket's worth of water thirty feet in the air without a container, for an instant. Then it's going to fall to the ground. It's perfectly possible for there to be loose scriff in a universe for a short time, but then it's going to spill through the cracks between the atoms and back out into the sea of scriff in which the universes float.
Think of it like this: It's perfectly possible for God to suspend thousands of buckets' worth of water in the air without a container, indefinitely. (They're called "clouds".) So, it's reasonable that God could also make a way for scriff to stay in a universe as long as He desired.
You don't REALLY want to argue with me about this, do you?
(Doing Therapy)
(OOC) This is going to sound strange, even coming from me, but I've got another one of those little things that won't get out of my head. Even though I know that the character of Sarah Connor was played by a 50 something man named Mark, I know that my character feels weird about running out like that. In his mind, he NEEDS to get back here so he can tell Sarah what happened and explain everything. I'm not asking you to pick the game back up, but if you would please indulge me by answering as Sarah Connor, it would put my mind to rest. Shouldn't take more than one or two posts from you. I've got the Verser's Survival Pack and all the guns, so Sarah can't shoot me. The scene is I've teleported back into the living room with Sarah, in the body of John Connor, age 18. It's just another one of those little things that won't get out of my head. Humor me. I must agree, these games can be dangerous for the mentally unstable.
So, I've just teleported in.
"Mom, it's me. John, your son. I'm actually not who you think I am. I'm an inter-dimensional traveler, known as a "Verser". I was born as John Connor because I know about the coming war, and I know about time travel and how to use it. I was supposed to be here to help you fight the war, but apparently God has something more important for me to do. I don't know what's going to happen now, if the machines will win the war, or what will happen next in the timeline, except that I won't be here. I've been told that the condition of versing can be passed by physical intimacy, and what is more intimate than a mother and child? You're probably going to become a verser as well when you die. Perhaps we will find one another in the verse. Everything that happened, all of the strange things you saw, that was me. I have certain powers that I was trying to use to get your attention. To show you who I was and communicate with you. You're not crazy, and there was no threat from SkyNet. The machines won't attack you again for about 13 years. By then, you will be ready for them. The machine that comes for you next will be liquid metal. Ballistic penetration will shock it, but only for a few seconds. It is vulnerable to extreme freezing and temperatures hot enough to melt steel. Strong corrosives are also rumored to be effective in fighting it. (From a Terminator fan site) Don't worry about SkyNet for about 13 years. I hope to see you in the verse mom."
OOC) After you reply, he teleports back to Eric's game. I know it's strange, but just humor me. My character needs to tell Sarah, or it's gonna drive him crazy. And since he's me, well, you can see the conundrum.
On a different note, does anyone else think they should have had Michael Biehn (Who played Kyle Reese in T1) play the adult John Connor? He's the age now that John Connor would have been at this point in the war, and who else would John grow up to look like if NOT his father? It would have kind of brought the story full circle, ya know?
(Doing Therapy)
Um--no.
Doublepost.
Eh, yer no fun. You wouldn't think it was strange if it was you that had it stuck in your head.
I don't need you to reply anyway. As far as I'm concerned, my character just told Sarah. He doesn't need to hear what she says back.
MJ, I was kind of a jerk when you declared Terminators to be not sentient. I would like to explain. Admittedly, this is kind of a bad example, but I think it's one you will understand. I've studied Terminator. I've read comics, books, cannon websites, seen the movies, and several other sources. You've seen the movies. In my mind, you saying that they aren't sentient based solely on information from the movies would be comparable to me reading the book of James in The Bible and then declaring everything you know about The Bible to be completely false. You'd never stand for that. You'd protest that with your dying breath. That's the only comparison that I can make that I think you will fully understand. I just needed to explain why I was such a jerk about it.
(Doing Therapy)
I understand your example, but can I show you where the flaw is?
Let's suppose that you read the Book of James a hundred times. That might actually be more times than I've read it (not sure, but probably). Let's also suppose that you have studied it meticulously in the original Greek, along with all the resources connected to it, so that I can't possibly know anything about James that you don't know. Now, let's suppose that I told you that you misunderstood something in James, because in my superior knowledge of Paul I know that the Bible doesn't mean what you think it means, and so James couldn't have meant what you think he does. You would be perfectly justified in saying that what Paul says, or John or Peter or Luke or Matthew or Mark or that unidentified guy who wrote Hebrews (and I think I hit all the main ones, although Timothy, Sosthenes, Silvanus, and a bunch of unnamed "all those with me"'s are also authors) has nothing to do with what James means.
As long as the discussion is solely about James, nothing I know about any other book of the Bible is relevant to the discussion, except in the sense of "well, he might have meant what this other author who knew him wrote". It's a given here that I know more about everything in the Bible outside James than you; but it's also irrelevant.
It's a given that you know a lot about a bunch of universes that are similar to the Terminator Movies Universe, but are not that universe. Arguing that because it was in the Terminator comics or the Sarah Connor Chronicles it must be so for the Terminator universe is like me insisting that what James wrote has to mean what Paul wrote somewhere else.
--M. J. Young
Made more sense, except that, just as my understanding of the book of James is nowhere close to yours, your understanding of even the Terminator movies is nowhere close to mine. In the extended cut of T2, there was a scene where Sarah and John remove Arnold's CPU. ("The Chip") On the chip, there is a switch which turns the chip from "Read Only" to "Write Mode". For all practical intents and purposes, this was a "Sentience Switch". SkyNet would preset it to whichever way it wanted for the mission it was on. Flip the switch one way, the Terminator was an automaton. A robot. Flip it the other way, and it was a thinking, sentient life form. So really, it would just be a standard T-800 model with the switch flipped. That scene was cut out because it took up 3 minutes that had to go. The entire scene was replaced with the line "The more contact I have with humans, the more I learn."
In the extended cut of T2....
Ah, but you know my parole evidence rule: the extended cut is not the movie, and nothing that isn't in the theatrical version counts.
On the chip, there is a switch which turns the chip from "Read Only" to "Write Mode". For all practical intents and purposes, this was a "Sentience Switch". SkyNet would preset it to whichever way it wanted for the mission it was on.
I've known enough about computers over the course of my life that I don't think I'd have made that mistake in high school. You're looking at the difference between whether the chip is Read Only Memory (ROM) or Random Access Memory (RAM). If it's ROM, then you can't change the programming; if it's RAM then you can. So assuming such a chip existed, any programmer would know that if you want to change the programming you have to flip the switch to give you the necessary permissions to make changes. It has nothing to do with whether or not the machine is sentient; it has to do with whether a programmer can alter the programming.
--M. J. Young
Oh. My mistake. I still say they're sentient though.
It was a really cool scene. They're at the garage after the escape from the mental hospital and they shut down Arnold and pull the chip. The scene is looking into a mirror and how it was shot was 2 rooms. Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong were working on a dummy Arnold head (Can't pull a chip out of a real head, after all) and Arnold was in the other room (the "Mirror") and Linda Hamilton's twin sister and another actor were playing the mirror images of John and Sarah, with Arnold sitting there telling them what to do. All four of the actors had to synchronize their movements with each other. Really cool shot, took hours to shoot a 3 minutes scene, but it was a 3 minute scene they didn't really need. Sarah tries to destroy the chip, John stops her saying "If I'm supposed to be this great leader, then maybe you should try listening to MY leadership ideas!!!" (Or something very like that) We see the reigns of leadership shift from Sarah to John for the first time. Shame it was cut.
Leslie Hamilton (Linda's twin) played the T-1000 as Sarah Connor, and also did other stand-ins for her in a lot of movies.
(Doing Therapy)
Two
MJ, there was an episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles that I want to tell you about. I know that has nothing to do with my game world, but I want you to tell me if you think the Terminator's actions are those of a mindless automaton, or of a sentient, thinking artificial lifeform.
Season 2, episode Self-Made Man. A Terminator is sent back to 1920 by mistake. It's supposed to be in 2001 for an assassination mission. Whilst in 1920, it accidentally kills the man who is going to build the building where it is going to make the assassination attempt. The only thing for it to do is start up its own construction company and build the building itself. It takes the name Myron Stark. To get the start up money, it robs banks "Armed with a Thompson sub-machine gun and daring disregard for human life." It goes to great lengths to secure the land where the building will be built, even driving a rival businessman out of business. It became somewhat of a local celebrity for its fair treatment of workers and generosity. "Myron Stark could always be seen shoulder to shoulder with his workers, a pickax in his strong hands." It's discovered months before the assassination, hiding in the building awaiting the time of the assassination. Myron Stark "Fell off the face of the earth 2 weeks before the building was completed" It was never programmed to do any of this. It had to make this up as it went along. Are these the actions of a preprogrammed automaton, or of a sentient, thinking lifeform? You tell me.
And yes, I already know that this has nothing to do with the game and wouldn't influence you in the slightest about the movies. That's not what I'm asking you. I'm asking you if you think Myron Stark from the Sarah Connor Chronicles was a sentient lifeform or a mindless, preprogrammed automaton.
(R) Design Decision Machine
Tech 12@5
These robots have the ability to gather information about the environment, compare that information to a program, and select actions according to that program. The best of such machines (-15 to design) are capable of generating random “ideas” and comparing them to attempt to create solutions to situations not covered in the programming. These machines create the illusion of intelligence, but do not think. Botches are very like those for function machines.
I can't say with certainty that it's one of these, but I can't say it isn't. "Problem solving" is not the proof of either intelligence or sentience in Multiverser.
--M. J. Young
"Problem solving" is not the proof of either intelligence or sentience in Multiverser
Then what is?
(Doing Therapy)
A combination of self-awareness and self-determination that combined indicates that the creature in question is capable of choosing freely without constraint of programming. I can be coerced by fear of death or injury from the outside, but if I am constrained by my programming I am not sentient.
And yes, that makes it a referee's judgment call.
--M. J. Young
I can be coerced by fear of death or injury from the outside, but if I am constrained by my programming I am not sentient.
Yeah, but what could we do to coerce them? What could we offer them that they couldn't take from us by force? That would be like a nest of cockroaches begging you not to drop a bug bomb while they do everything they can to further infest your home. We couldn't coerce them.
To be honest, the more I think about it, the less sure I am that they are sentient. Well, let me correct that. I have no doubt that both versions exist in some universes. I'm not certain if the movie versions are sentient.
I still don't understand what difference it makes, really. They frequently turn on humans after reprogramming. Does that count? They made a choice to disobey their reprogramming. I doubt that would count, and it's not in the movies, so it doesn't matter.
(Doing Therapy)
There are a lot of reasons why it makes a difference.
What is easily overlooked is that it is an essential requirement of a summoning spell that the creature summoned be able to come. With a verser, it's already dicey--the verser doesn't have the ability to travel to a specific other universe, but it is at least arguable that a summoning spell that reaches a verser "while" the verser is in the scriff would draw the verser to the summoner, and similarly arguable that since scriff is outside time, any given verser is "always" there. But a sentient creature that does not have the ability to travel to another universe does not gain that ability by virtue of being summoned; the spellcaster would have to create the gate by which it traveled.
And a non-sentient object cannot be "summoned" at all, because it has no ability of self-determination that can be bent to answer the summons. Since it does as it is programmed, it can't "want" to answer the summons. Thus such a spell constitutes a "snatch", a teleportive skill that pulls an object to the skilled user, and in this case a snatch that reaches across universe barriers. That's a very high biased skill indeed.
It's a high bias for a reason. The reason is that the game is designed to force players to work within the limitations of their present universe.
On reflection, I made the right decision for the wrong reason. It does not really matter whether sentient terminators exist in any universe. They did not exist in the universe in which you were located. To bring one from another universe, you would have to open a gate--a M12@10 skill well above the bias curve established for your game. The alternative would be to bring one from the future--a M15@10 skill if you do it yourself. Your expectation seemed at one point to be that you could summon a terminator from the future and it would travel to the past to protect you. The problems were:
- Terminators do not have the ability to travel through time;
- Summoning spells call creatures capable of coming, but do not provide the means for doing so;
- Terminators in this universe are not sentient and therefore cannot answer a summons;
- If there are terminators in other universes that are sentient, they do not have the ability to cross universe boundaries and thus (unlike angels) cannot respond to a summons from another universe;
- If a terminator were to travel from the future, it would create an anomaly such that you would have to play the universe up to the moment the terminator departed and then revert to replay it from the point the terminator arrived, erasing everything that happened in the now erased history, so you wouldn't see the success of the spell for a long time anyway;
- No magic you could perform had the ability to cross either temporal limitations or universe boundaries.
I don't really have enough time in my day to explain fully every game decision I make, or even to think them all through in this detail. I look for the clues that will give me the fastest answer possible, and go by the seat of my pants. The first reason I saw for it not to work was not the best reason, but it was sufficient. Now I've spent twenty minutes looking at it in more detail just today, and I come to the same conclusion, only more firmly.
John, when a referee says that something doesn't work "because", he's being generous. He really only has to say that it doesn't work. If you make him defend his decision, you alienate him. Yes, you can ask for an explanation; you should not then tell him that the explanation is flawed, because it is his explanation, and if it works for him, it's the rule.
--M. J. Young
John, when a referee says that something doesn't work "because", he's being generous. He really only has to say that it doesn't work. If you make him defend his decision, you alienate him. Yes, you can ask for an explanation; you should not then tell him that the explanation is flawed, because it is his explanation, and if it works for him, it's the rule.
If I were refereeing you, and the core of a spell you were casting said that Jesus Christ was the son of God, and I, as referee, said that Jesus Christ never existed, would you just lay down and take it, or would you be tempted to argue the decision? Thank you. Next question.
(Doing Therapy)
Two
It was an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. Worf wants to send his son, Alexander, to the equivalent of a Klingon boarding school. Worf goes to talk to Counselor Troi about it. Troi asks "Have you discussed it with Alexander?" Worf replies "He is a child. I have informed him of my decision."
I feel like that's the way you treated me sometimes.
(Doing Therapy)
Your example is completely different in every way.
--M. J. Young
I knew you were going to say that. No it isn't. It's exactly the same. It's something we both wholeheartedly believe to be true.* I just used the one and only example that I knew you would argue. Hit a nerve did I? You would argue against that. What's the difference? You say it's different, what's the difference? They're both things in which we believe for our own reasons.*
*Don't get me wrong. I don't believe Terminators exist, and it's certainly not my religion. It is, however, every bit as real to me as The Bible is to you. Funny how works of fiction can have that effect on people.
(Doing Therapy)