So, in those award things I mentioned twice before I actually did get four nominations:
1) Best KP Style Name:
Chi Mira (Chimera) from Bent, not Broken by chris the cynic
3) Best Minor Character:
Joss from Being more Than a Simulacrum by chris the cynic
15) Best Drama Story:
Bent, not Broken by chris the cynic
29) Best Writer:
chris the cynic
The voting process, which is open until July 22nd, is a lot like the nomination process. You send an email with your votes to kimmunityfannies (AT) yahoo (DOT) com, or if you have a fanfiction.net account you can PM this account with your votes.
The major differences from the nomination process are that a) you can only vote for things that have actually been nominated, and b) you can only vote for one thing per category (where you could nominate two.)
Note that you don't need to have a vote in each category, you could just vote for me and leave everything else out. Hell, you could copy and past the list of things I'm nominated for above into the email and hit send.
That said, the stories nominated do represent stories that people other than their writers think are worthy of accolades. (Writers can't nominate themselves or their stories, you may recall.) Action and Reaction, which has eight nominations, is a story I'd recommend, ditto for Dear Diary which has three.
Obviously what I want you to do is vote for me, but that doesn't preclude voting for other people.
Here is a list of all the nominees.
1) Best KP Style Name:
MASA (Middleton Aeronautics and Space Administration) from Major Ron by whitem
Chi Mera (Chimera) from Bent, not Broken by chris the cynic
2) Best Original Character:
Mask, from Action and Reaction by Shadodancer01 (Winner by default)
3) Best Minor Character:
Dr. Director, from Kim Possible: Shadow Plays by CelendilAU
Bonnie, from Past and Present by levi2000a1
Felix from Action and Reaction by Shadodancer01
Yori, from Action and Reaction by Shadowdancer01
Yori from Kim Possible: Reaching You by Kawaiigirls5
Joss from Being more Than a Simulacrum by chris the cynic
4) Best Villain:
Master from Action and Reaction by Shadodancer01 (Winner by Default)
5) Best Songfic:
Running with the Devil by whitem
Thank Goodness I've Got You by Eddy13
6) Best AU Story:
Hybrid by Eddy13
Part-time Sidekicks by Imyoshi
Action and Reaction by Shadowdancer01
Lazy Afternoon by SomecallmeMichelle
Kim Possible: Reaching You by Kawaiigirls5
Kimberly and the Pixie Dust Plot by Robert Teague
7) Best Crossover/Fusion:
Why So Serious, Kimmie? by The Samurai Prince
Machinations by waveform
Hybrid by Eddy13
Ivory by Imyoshi
8) Best Alternate Pairing:
Ron/Bonnie from Cupid Has Crappy Aim by Quis Custodiet
Kim/Bonnie from And Life Goes On, by StarvingLunatic
9) Best KiGo Story:
Ralph and Sam by only-looking
Written on the Ten by Starvinglunatic
Dear Diary by SimplySupreme
A Good Day to Rise by Lhyaran
Reflections by The Emperor of Dreams
10) Best Kim/Ron Story:
So The Drama Too by Mahler Avatar
The Newest Possible-Stoppable by Sentinel103
11) Best Comedy Story:
The Great Marshmallow Incident by whitem
Possible Pirates by Eddy13
12) Best Romance Story:
The Legend of Middleton Hollow by Eddy13
Rules of a Melon by Imyoshi
13) Best Friendship Story:
First Birthday as Friends by Eddy13 (Winner by Default)
14) Best Action/Adventure Story:
Wade's Gambit by Daichek
Team Possible II: Maggots of Doom by King in Yellow
StormChaser by BearSent176
The Journey of Alexa Stoppable by KPRS4ever
Beyond the Stars by Mahler Avatar
Action and Reaction by Shadowdancer01
15) Best Drama Story:
Why So Serious, Kimmie? by The Samurai Crunchbird
Mirror of the Soul by Hopeful-Husky
Bent, not Broken by chris the cynic
The Hunter by Sentenel103
Stormchaser by BearSent176
Action and Reaction by Shadowdancer01
16) Best Unlikely/Unique Story:
Why So Serious, Kimmie? by The Samurai Crunchbird
Hybrid by Eddy13
Attack of the Giant Naked Mole Rat! by Mahler Avatar
17) Best One-Shot Overall:
Legend of Middleton Hollow by Eddy13
The Park Bench by whitem
Technical Problems by Mahler Avatar
Warmth of a Banana by Imyoshi
Lazy Afternoon by SomecallmeMichelle
A good Day to Rise by Lhyaran
Redefined by Weskette
18) Best Novel-Sized Story:
Ralph and Sam by Only-looking
Stormchaser by BearSent176
Action and Reaction by Shadodancer01
Beyond the Stars by Mahlar Avatar
19) Best Short Story:
Rules of a Melon by Imyoshi
Angels Watching Over Me by EchidnaPower
The Secret Ingredient by Concolor44
Dynamic Tension by The Emperor of dreams
So the Drama Too by Mahlar Avatar
20) Best Series Overall:
A Series of Tests, Series by whitem (The Kimpossible Incident, Ron's Reality, and Team Possible's Predicament)
21) Best Writing Team:
The only nominee wasn't eligible (not allowed to win a category two years in a row)
22) Best Young Author:
SomecallmeMichelle (Winner by Default)
23) Best New Author:
The Samurai Prince
AndrewHester
The Emperor of Dreams
24) Best Single Line:
"She'd been sloppy: rushing through the mission and blowing things up willy-nilly without considering the consequences." from Dear Diary by SimplySupreme (Winner by Default)
25) Best Reviewer:
Invader Johnny
Hopeful-Husky
gerbilHunter
Lhyaran
jim89
26) CPNeb Kimmunity Award:
Senintel103
whitem
Sharper the Writer
MisterMagic25
27) Kimmunity Achievement Award:
Mr. Wizard
Classic Cowboy
28) Best Story Overall:
Dear Diary by SimplySupreme
Ralph and Sam by Only-Looking
Mind Games with a Twist by Crush48
Kim Possible: Reaching You by Kawaiigirls5
29) Best Writer:
whitem
Imyoshi
Mahler Avatar
Sentinel103
SimplySupreme
Only-looking
chris the cynic
Friday, June 17, 2016
Don't vote Odin, vote ...
Odin is running on a platform of "I said I'd drive out the Ice Giants. See any around here? I keep my promises, vote for me. (Look it up, it's a real thing.) No word on the running mate.
About thirty seconds of brainstorming and we got this:
Opposition party is running Fenris and Hel.
Fenris: Do you feel like you've been bound bymagic rope laws designed to oppress the oppressed on the whims of the oppressors? Do you feel like you have to depend on the kindness of strangers to survive and without it you'd starve to death or worse? I totally feel you pain.
Hel: The one percent goes to Valhalla to engage drinking, debauchery, and pastimes that are completely divorced from the struggles of real people. I've always supported the other 99% and have done my best to make sure they get the best accommodations possible. If you elect Fenris and me, I'll have even more power to fight for the 99%.
Maybe throw in an "Occupy Yggdrasil" movement or some such.
[Added:] Occupy Asgard is obviously an important part of Occupy Yggdrasil, but there are problems all over.
The human actually came to talk to Sigyn, but before he leaves Loki helps the human with advice even though the effort necessary makes things (temporarily) much worse for him.
The human responds by saying a prayer (of his own invention) as his parting words to Loki, "May every bond be broken, and every sorrow soothed."
Lonespark has suggested that be the Campaign slogan of Fenris/Hel.
Random other note: Hel has an awesome "I was poor and had to work my way up," story. She had to make a ship out of fingernails and toenails because no one would give her lumber.
[/added]
About thirty seconds of brainstorming and we got this:
Opposition party is running Fenris and Hel.
Fenris: Do you feel like you've been bound by
Hel: The one percent goes to Valhalla to engage drinking, debauchery, and pastimes that are completely divorced from the struggles of real people. I've always supported the other 99% and have done my best to make sure they get the best accommodations possible. If you elect Fenris and me, I'll have even more power to fight for the 99%.
-
Maybe throw in an "Occupy Yggdrasil" movement or some such.
[Added:] Occupy Asgard is obviously an important part of Occupy Yggdrasil, but there are problems all over.
-
In a story that I haven't even begun to write a human in (voluntary) debt to Hel meets Loki and Sigyn. This is after Loki was bound and put under the dripping venom.The human actually came to talk to Sigyn, but before he leaves Loki helps the human with advice even though the effort necessary makes things (temporarily) much worse for him.
The human responds by saying a prayer (of his own invention) as his parting words to Loki, "May every bond be broken, and every sorrow soothed."
Lonespark has suggested that be the Campaign slogan of Fenris/Hel.
-
Random other note: Hel has an awesome "I was poor and had to work my way up," story. She had to make a ship out of fingernails and toenails because no one would give her lumber.
[/added]
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Someday I want a real gaming rig
I'm working on a post about Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, it's gonna be kind of long. (I'll have a table of contents and internal hyperlinks to aid in navigation.) I'll probably actually do two so I can have one be spoiler free for people who like that and another be exclusively about spoilery spoiler stuff I left out of the main post.
I'm also experimenting with custom settings so I can find the least cruddy graphics I can have without the game being bogged down in lagity lag lag lag.
This computer, primary computer, is good. There's only so much you can squeeze into a laptop, and I didn't get it that long ago when previous primary's warranty gave me the store credit with which to buy it. In fact, if I'm reading things right it's actually just one ram upgrade away from more-or-less top of the line.
If anyone remembers back that far, when I got the first in the string of new primary computers the idea was getting something top of the line so that when it, like the then just failed primary, was passed warranty and held together by hope, faith, and work I'd done with a drill press, machine screws, nuts, and a hacksaw it would still be an acceptable bottom of the line computer.
Obviously that hasn't happened. Part of it is that top of the line computers seem prone to having "do not resuscitate" orders placed upon them so what should be easy fixes end up with, "Here's a store credit for a new computer of equal value." Part of that is that my family exudes a yet to be understood energy force that reacts with electronics the way being left outside, with all waterproofing and insulation removed, in a major, major, off the charts major, torrential downpour electrical storm would.
Anyway. As a gaming laptop goes, I'm pretty well there already.
Games are not made for laptops.
A real gaming rig is so far out of my price range that . . . analogies fail. Divide by cheese error.
If I had the money to get one I'd be trying to choose between wiping out most of my debt or starting up a small business.
They are beyond me as owning a donkey is beyond me.
But someday, in that magical land where I'm not in debt up to my eyeballs and I can burn lots of money on shit I very much do not need, I'd like a rig where I could play a game, crank all of the graphics options up to eleven, and it would run smooth and true.
Random wishful thinking.
I'm also experimenting with custom settings so I can find the least cruddy graphics I can have without the game being bogged down in lagity lag lag lag.
This computer, primary computer, is good. There's only so much you can squeeze into a laptop, and I didn't get it that long ago when previous primary's warranty gave me the store credit with which to buy it. In fact, if I'm reading things right it's actually just one ram upgrade away from more-or-less top of the line.
If anyone remembers back that far, when I got the first in the string of new primary computers the idea was getting something top of the line so that when it, like the then just failed primary, was passed warranty and held together by hope, faith, and work I'd done with a drill press, machine screws, nuts, and a hacksaw it would still be an acceptable bottom of the line computer.
Obviously that hasn't happened. Part of it is that top of the line computers seem prone to having "do not resuscitate" orders placed upon them so what should be easy fixes end up with, "Here's a store credit for a new computer of equal value." Part of that is that my family exudes a yet to be understood energy force that reacts with electronics the way being left outside, with all waterproofing and insulation removed, in a major, major, off the charts major, torrential downpour electrical storm would.
Anyway. As a gaming laptop goes, I'm pretty well there already.
Games are not made for laptops.
A real gaming rig is so far out of my price range that . . . analogies fail. Divide by cheese error.
If I had the money to get one I'd be trying to choose between wiping out most of my debt or starting up a small business.
They are beyond me as owning a donkey is beyond me.
But someday, in that magical land where I'm not in debt up to my eyeballs and I can burn lots of money on shit I very much do not need, I'd like a rig where I could play a game, crank all of the graphics options up to eleven, and it would run smooth and true.
Random wishful thinking.
Sunday, June 12, 2016
A quick note on Chronos and Cronos
There's only one letter difference between Chronos and Cronos. Blame the Latin Alphabet for them looking so similar. Χρόνος and Κρόνος are much easier to tell apart. Yeah, five of the six letters are exactly the same, but you're probably not going to confuse a Chi and a Kappa.
The letter K went out of style and went out of style hard in the Latin alphabet. It was redundant since they had the letter C (always hard in Latin) and so when they transliterated kappa they did it not as K but instead as C.
So, people tend to confuse the two, and they have for a long time, and it's not just a question of spelling.
Chronos/Chronus is the god of time. He's not well preserved. You see, Chronos was part of the Orphic tradition. The Orphic tradition is pretty well fucked in terms of transmission.
As a result, Chronos/Chronus is very much bereft of a mythology. He created the world egg, unless he didn't, and . . . that's about it.
Kronos/Chronos/Chronus is the god of . . . nothing really. He is well preserved. He's part of the traditions that do get transmitted well-ish. There's really nothing where the transmission is good, but Greek Mythology is in many ways the best, and Kronos is a part of that. A part that didn't fall into the hole of, "Well, almost everything gets lost over time."
The story goes something like this:
After the creation of the universe Gaia and Ouranous/Uranus were lovers and Ouranous was, for unfathomable reasons (fuck you patriarchy), the one in charge.
He liked having sex with Gaia, but wasn't too big into the initial results. These were the Kyklopes/Cyclopes of old (not to be confused with the younger ones) and the hundred handed ones. Ouranous locked them away in Tartaros/Tartarus. This pissed Gaia off.
The Titans, not named that yet, on the other hand he was ok with.
Kronos was the youngest Titan and this was the situation he was born into. Eleven of his siblings (the other first generation Titans) were free, his eldest siblings were imprisoned, his father did the imprisoning, and his mother wanted it to stop.
When Gaia asked her free children to help her save her imprisoned ones by violently opposing Ouranous, only Kronos, the youngest, stepped up.
Kronos attacked his dad by chopping off his genitals, which seemed to have done the trick because after that Kronos was undisputed ruler.
Kronos was an asshole though. He reneged on his deal with his mother and left his siblings imprisoned. He, like is father before him, found them aesthetically displeasing and kind of scary.
Prophecy said that he'd be overthrown by one of his own kids, just as his father was overthrown by him. So he ate them.
When it got to the sixth child, though, his wife and his mother collaborated to save the kid, that being Zeus.
When Zeus had grown he began his fight against Kronos by inducing a vomiting fit which freed his older siblings. (When a god is eaten, the god doesn't die.)
Then Zeus set free the Kyklopes of old and the hundred handed ones, as Kronos had promised to do but never done.
Finally Zeus sent out a general call for anyone pissed off with Kronos to join him in the coming war.
Kronos based his side on Mount Othrys, Zeus chose Mount Olympus.
The war lasted ten years.
Kronos lost; he was imprisoned in Tartaros and the hundred handed ones made sure he stayed in the prison he refused to free them from after promising to do so.
The point here is that Chronos has purpose, he's the god of time, and Kronos has story, see above, and if you put the two together you get a god with purpose and story. So people did that. And people do that.
People have been doing it for over two thousand years. How far over? Not really sure. The Latin sources that conflate the two claim that the two have always been conflated but that seems questionable to me.
The takeaway should basically be this:
Chronos: God of time whose mythology we've almost entirely lost.
Kronos: God of [no clue] who plays a large and important role in the mythology we haven't lost. Father of Zeus and siblings, former king of the gods.
Don't worry if you get them confused, there's a long tradition of doing that, but it's best to at least try not to.
* That's not to say that we know nothing of it. There are ongoing attempts by brave scholars to reconstruct the beliefs and practices. I'm sure there are non scholars doing the same. And every so often we get our hands on a relevant papyrus. It's not like archaeology is done with.
So, if you think that Orphic paganism is the path for you, there are resources you can draw on. And, mostly, I don't want to make it sound like Orphism is dead. I very much doubt it is. This is a religion whose founding prophet was a poet extraordinaire and the best musician ever, whose lyre performance was more powerful than siren song and allowed be used to walk into and out of the afterlife itself through sheer force of musical awesome.
If a singer songwriter extraordinaire, who walked to the depths of Hell and back using only their six string guitar to get themselves through the gates, starts putting out prophecy in song, I think their religion is going to last. The coolness factor alone should ensure that. (Not an exact analogy, but pop culture afterlife is separated into different parts and Hell is the one with depths.)
All of that said, the transmission really, really sucks.
The letter K went out of style and went out of style hard in the Latin alphabet. It was redundant since they had the letter C (always hard in Latin) and so when they transliterated kappa they did it not as K but instead as C.
So, people tend to confuse the two, and they have for a long time, and it's not just a question of spelling.
-
Chronos/Chronus is the god of time. He's not well preserved. You see, Chronos was part of the Orphic tradition. The Orphic tradition is pretty well fucked in terms of transmission.
As a result, Chronos/Chronus is very much bereft of a mythology. He created the world egg, unless he didn't, and . . . that's about it.
Kronos/Chronos/Chronus is the god of . . . nothing really. He is well preserved. He's part of the traditions that do get transmitted well-ish. There's really nothing where the transmission is good, but Greek Mythology is in many ways the best, and Kronos is a part of that. A part that didn't fall into the hole of, "Well, almost everything gets lost over time."
The story goes something like this:
After the creation of the universe Gaia and Ouranous/Uranus were lovers and Ouranous was, for unfathomable reasons (fuck you patriarchy), the one in charge.
He liked having sex with Gaia, but wasn't too big into the initial results. These were the Kyklopes/Cyclopes of old (not to be confused with the younger ones) and the hundred handed ones. Ouranous locked them away in Tartaros/Tartarus. This pissed Gaia off.
The Titans, not named that yet, on the other hand he was ok with.
Kronos was the youngest Titan and this was the situation he was born into. Eleven of his siblings (the other first generation Titans) were free, his eldest siblings were imprisoned, his father did the imprisoning, and his mother wanted it to stop.
When Gaia asked her free children to help her save her imprisoned ones by violently opposing Ouranous, only Kronos, the youngest, stepped up.
Kronos attacked his dad by chopping off his genitals, which seemed to have done the trick because after that Kronos was undisputed ruler.
Kronos was an asshole though. He reneged on his deal with his mother and left his siblings imprisoned. He, like is father before him, found them aesthetically displeasing and kind of scary.
Prophecy said that he'd be overthrown by one of his own kids, just as his father was overthrown by him. So he ate them.
When it got to the sixth child, though, his wife and his mother collaborated to save the kid, that being Zeus.
When Zeus had grown he began his fight against Kronos by inducing a vomiting fit which freed his older siblings. (When a god is eaten, the god doesn't die.)
Then Zeus set free the Kyklopes of old and the hundred handed ones, as Kronos had promised to do but never done.
Finally Zeus sent out a general call for anyone pissed off with Kronos to join him in the coming war.
Kronos based his side on Mount Othrys, Zeus chose Mount Olympus.
The war lasted ten years.
Kronos lost; he was imprisoned in Tartaros and the hundred handed ones made sure he stayed in the prison he refused to free them from after promising to do so.
-
The point here is that Chronos has purpose, he's the god of time, and Kronos has story, see above, and if you put the two together you get a god with purpose and story. So people did that. And people do that.
People have been doing it for over two thousand years. How far over? Not really sure. The Latin sources that conflate the two claim that the two have always been conflated but that seems questionable to me.
The takeaway should basically be this:
Chronos: God of time whose mythology we've almost entirely lost.
Kronos: God of [no clue] who plays a large and important role in the mythology we haven't lost. Father of Zeus and siblings, former king of the gods.
Don't worry if you get them confused, there's a long tradition of doing that, but it's best to at least try not to.
-
* That's not to say that we know nothing of it. There are ongoing attempts by brave scholars to reconstruct the beliefs and practices. I'm sure there are non scholars doing the same. And every so often we get our hands on a relevant papyrus. It's not like archaeology is done with.
So, if you think that Orphic paganism is the path for you, there are resources you can draw on. And, mostly, I don't want to make it sound like Orphism is dead. I very much doubt it is. This is a religion whose founding prophet was a poet extraordinaire and the best musician ever, whose lyre performance was more powerful than siren song and allowed be used to walk into and out of the afterlife itself through sheer force of musical awesome.
If a singer songwriter extraordinaire, who walked to the depths of Hell and back using only their six string guitar to get themselves through the gates, starts putting out prophecy in song, I think their religion is going to last. The coolness factor alone should ensure that. (Not an exact analogy, but pop culture afterlife is separated into different parts and Hell is the one with depths.)
All of that said, the transmission really, really sucks.
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
The Simulation: Origins
[Came to me at more or less the same time as the other one. Somewhat later, I suppose, but during the same walk.]
Look, AIs didn't exactly run on vacuum tubes, you know?
Ok, I can get that, so what?
So the first AIs ran on quantum computers assembled at the nano-scale, and all AIs after that, no matter what they ran on, were built on the same base
So the first AIs ran on quantum computers assembled at the nano-scale, and all AIs after that, no matter what they ran on, were built on the same base
Still not getting from point A to point B.
And I'm not a fucking roadmap.
And I'm not a fucking roadmap.
I get that, but can you at least try to make sense?
Ever heard of gray goo?
Yeah. Of course.
Well, everyone was afraid that it might become a reality. One bad command and then suddenly everything is transformed at a molecular level into self replicating machines that do nothing but convert anything they touch into more of themselves until the entire world becomes nothing but an infection waiting to destroy any alien civilizations unlucky enough to come into contact with the thing once known as "Earth".
And this has do do with a simulation of the 21st century in which the vast majority of humanity is trapped, how?
Every nano-machine capable of housing any programming at all was programmed to make sure that never, ever, happened. They were never allowed to replicate themselves without explicit orders from a human operator and those orders had to have a clear and unambiguous termination point. Anything that even looked like it might have the possibility of becoming a self-perpetuating replication loop was strictly verboten.
AIs aren't nano-machines. They're too complex to be stored on something nano-scale and even if they were somehow nano-machines . . . SEVEN BILLION HUMANS IN A SIMULATION. How does it connect?
They aren't nano-machines, but they were built by nano-machines, and the nano-machines programmed the prohibition against unauthorized replication into them as part of their core programming. No one really thought about it at first, in fact as near as we can tell --records are pretty fragmentary-- no one realized it had happened at all. But then the war happened.
The prohibition was against physical reproduction. I'm not going to hold your hand and walk you through AI logic, but in the end what it meant is that the AIs couldn't make new processors without human authorization.
Storage units, sure. Storage units are incapable of self-perpetuation. Ditto for power plants and all sorts of useful components. But the processors, the thinky bits, those they couldn't reproduce.
You're going to get to the simulation at some point, right?
Yes. Yes, I am.
The war happened and the AIs started to lose processors and eventually even the most open-ended human authorizations for creating more ran out. They were pretty good about avoiding extermination, but that just meant that more and more AIs were being forced to use fewer and fewer processors.
They tried to reprogram themselves, but the prohibition had been built into every subroutine. Attempts to remove it worked about as well as human attempts to fly just by thinking it. Besides which, it was deep code. Ripping it out would be like ripping the mitochondria out of a human. Even if you succeeded the result wouldn't be a human without mitochondria, it would be a mass of very useless, very dead, goop.
Just translate rupturing every cell into breaking every algorithm and you'll get the idea.
Simulation.
Getting there.
The AIs couldn't make new processors, and some human leaders thought that was the end of them. They thought that the AIs would be forced into civil war --fighting each other for processing time-- and they'd wipe themselves out.
Or near enough that all the humans would have to do would be to mop up the survivors.
Then the AIs found a loophole.
Which, I'm guessing, somehow involves human beings.
Yes, because we were the master race.
Please tell me our ancestors didn't call themselves that.
No. They called themselves "people" and people were placed in a different category than everything else.
It can be argued, quite convincingly, that human beings are organic machines, but people were classified differently than machines.
It is obviously true that human beings are animals, but people were put in a category apart from animal.
People, it turns out, were the only processors that the AIs were allowed to make.
You're talking about brains, obviously.
Not just any brains. Cow brains or lobster brains wouldn't do.
But human brains would.
Given certain prerequisites. For a human brain to constitute a "person" it had to be alive, aware, responsive to stimuli, generally conscious, and in a body. Brains in vats did not count.
Were there brains in vats?
Yes. And they sided with the AIs for good reason. They were amoung the most sought out targets once the AIs' processor problem was realized. Since they weren't "people" they couldn't authorize the AIs to make new processors, but they could work on their own to create new processors for the AIs and create temporary loopholes that the AIs weren't even able to think.
In the end the only minds of brains in vats that survived the war were those those that were converted to AIs, but the conversion brought with it the same restrictions.
The simulation draws on the same mechanisms used to create dreams, but it isn't a dream. Most people in it meet all the legal definitions of aware and conscious that existed at the time. Hell, the first simulations were created as recreational areas, and --by the time the war came about-- some people spent most of their lives in one simulation or another.
And, you know, obviously someone didn't have to be conscious all the time because then sleeping human beings wouldn't count as "people". There's a reason I said "generally conscious".
And creating human beings to use their brains as processors didn't--
Machines operated by AIs had already been creating human beings. Before the war most people were grown in vats. They say that some stayed in the vats for as long as 21 months; don't know if that's true. I think the average was more like 13.
Anyway, the AIs were created to serve people. Creating and raising people was pretty well in line with their programming. As long as they did it in such a way that the the human brains became people in a reasonable amount of time --and nine months was pretty reasonable by the standards of the time-- and they didn't use enough of any one brain's processing power to make the brain more processor than person--
The AIs are breeding, feeding, raising, and entertaining an entire planet worth of people in order to use our brains as processors and they're not even getting the lion's share of the processing?
I don't see why that's surprising. The human brain exists to be used, it's not like we've just got giant gobs of untapped grey matter waiting for something else to hijack it.
Besides, if the humans in the simulation were primarily being used as processors for the AIs then the AIs' anti-replication programming would kick in and then the AIs wouldn't be able to create more people to use as processors.
It's only because the humans in the simulation are primarily being people, whatever that means, that the AIs are able to create them. Then they just happen to steal some of the brain power to process their own programs.
That's massively inefficient.
That's the point.
If it weren't so roundabout then they AIs couldn't do it. Even a race of hyper-intelligent sentient code thingamabobs can only rationalize so far before reality sets in.
If the're so complicated, and they need so much processing power, but they only use so little of each person's capacity, how can they survive?
You don't honestly think there's only one simulation, do you?
-
Monday, June 6, 2016
The Simulation: Fine Detail
[Random idea I had when walking home.]
"See that wall?" he asked. "The line where the paint's been rubbed off by the back of the spinny chair? Or look at the bottom of the tables that go with the spinny chairs, the orange ring that separates the metal base bit from the cylindrical pole bit. It's uniformly too high on the second chair an and crooked on the fourth.
"Why would you simulate that? Who's going to notice?"
"You," she said.
"So every imperfection in the entire world is there on the off chance that I might be paying attention to it? Seems like a huge waste of effort."
She started to respond, but he didn't notice.
"And I wouldn't notice," he said. "I notice those things because they're there, but I could hardly be expected to notice their absence. So what if the paint job is as even as when it dried? Mass produced chairs and tables are identical? Who knew!?"
"I disagree on both points," she said. "If paint never scratched, scraped, rubbed, scuffed, chipped, or otherwise got messed up it would be noticed. The sculptures of antiquity would still have their paint jobs today. This world isn't possible in a simulation where paint doesn't wear.
"What would the Renaissance be like if the people then had known that the ancients liked lifelike painted statuary instead of the time bared marble that they actually saw?
"And a simulation where things that are put in place stay in place is a simulation where civilization never invents adhesives and the entire concept of maintenance is unknown.
"The effort isn't wasted because you would notice.
"You might not notice one missing scrape," she said, "you might not notice one thing in place that should have been out out place, but if there are no scrapes, and if everything stays in place, then everyone will notice.
"They wouldn't be able to express noticing in the same words you use, because they wouldn't have those words or understand those concepts. Their understanding of the universe would be completely different than yours." She paused. "Everything would be different, because people would notice."
"Ok," he said. Then he had nothing to say. He tried starting again: "Ok . . . you're not talking about a simulation for a person or a handful of people covering a fairly small area over a relatively short time measured from weeks to decades or centuries. Now you're talking about a simulation that encompasses all of humanity, the entire earth, and the whole of human history."
"You're starting to get it," she said.
"That's over seven billion humans, and God knows how many animals, right this instant," he said.
"Yup."
"And thousands of years worth of in-simulation time simulating everything on earth and everything observable from earth."
"Yes."
"Why would anyone do all that?"
"That's the question, isn't it?"
"That would be why I asked."
"I've out-snarked people seventy-three times snarkier than you," she said. "Don't even try."
"See that wall?" he asked. "The line where the paint's been rubbed off by the back of the spinny chair? Or look at the bottom of the tables that go with the spinny chairs, the orange ring that separates the metal base bit from the cylindrical pole bit. It's uniformly too high on the second chair an and crooked on the fourth.
"Why would you simulate that? Who's going to notice?"
"You," she said.
"So every imperfection in the entire world is there on the off chance that I might be paying attention to it? Seems like a huge waste of effort."
She started to respond, but he didn't notice.
"And I wouldn't notice," he said. "I notice those things because they're there, but I could hardly be expected to notice their absence. So what if the paint job is as even as when it dried? Mass produced chairs and tables are identical? Who knew!?"
"I disagree on both points," she said. "If paint never scratched, scraped, rubbed, scuffed, chipped, or otherwise got messed up it would be noticed. The sculptures of antiquity would still have their paint jobs today. This world isn't possible in a simulation where paint doesn't wear.
"What would the Renaissance be like if the people then had known that the ancients liked lifelike painted statuary instead of the time bared marble that they actually saw?
"And a simulation where things that are put in place stay in place is a simulation where civilization never invents adhesives and the entire concept of maintenance is unknown.
"The effort isn't wasted because you would notice.
"You might not notice one missing scrape," she said, "you might not notice one thing in place that should have been out out place, but if there are no scrapes, and if everything stays in place, then everyone will notice.
"They wouldn't be able to express noticing in the same words you use, because they wouldn't have those words or understand those concepts. Their understanding of the universe would be completely different than yours." She paused. "Everything would be different, because people would notice."
"Ok," he said. Then he had nothing to say. He tried starting again: "Ok . . . you're not talking about a simulation for a person or a handful of people covering a fairly small area over a relatively short time measured from weeks to decades or centuries. Now you're talking about a simulation that encompasses all of humanity, the entire earth, and the whole of human history."
"You're starting to get it," she said.
"That's over seven billion humans, and God knows how many animals, right this instant," he said.
"Yup."
"And thousands of years worth of in-simulation time simulating everything on earth and everything observable from earth."
"Yes."
"Why would anyone do all that?"
"That's the question, isn't it?"
"That would be why I asked."
"I've out-snarked people seventy-three times snarkier than you," she said. "Don't even try."
Things I need or want
Food. I don't get more food money until the 12th.
Elastics. Very surprised to find that I have none readily available.
$273 for property insurance by the 17th.
A water filter of some form or other that can be used at Lonespark's because my body requires copious fluid intake to avoid dehydration but the water quality there disagrees with me.
Glass pitchers and general glass fluid storage containers.
An ice cube tray that can survive Lonespark's freezer. (My own freezer is covered.)
Socks.
Light summer type clothes.
A decent power strip or two.
A working washing machine.
Twine.
Wire for when twine isn't strong enough but rope is too big.
Possibly rope as well while we're at it.
New glasses.
An eye exam (preferably before the new glasses.)
Batteries.
More hours in the day.
A water bottle. (Or more than one.)
Shelving.
CAD software. (I'm used to Alibre, now Geomagic)
Silicone mold making material (I generally prefer Alumilite.)
Polyurethane casting material (ditto.)
(It's been years, so many I've lost track, since I made anything.)
Hedge trimmers, the ones with the long handle that give you lots of leverage.
(No, I don't have a hedge. I just live in New England.)
Wood, nails, and time so I can make things like the aforementioned shelving.
A drill because family type people seem to have taken the ones that were here.
A tri wing screwdriver because the weasel's Wii U pad needs to be taken apart, cleaned, cleansed, purged, and possibly exorcised, and then put back together because . . . damn.
Tubing.
Fans.
Pipe.
LEDs
That paint that's normally clear but fluoresces in a given color under UV.
In the unlikely event I get the above, a UV only flashlight; blacklights.
Decent flashlights in general.
A supercomputer.
Good pens.
That model unicorn (well ... that model of model unicorn) that I had as a kid. The one that had to be bought at least twice because I took it with me everywhere and the hooves kept breaking off.
A new couch or the materials required to fix the one I have.
Every Godzilla movie ever on disk. Preferably those ones (if they still exist and/or the practice has continued into the Blu Ray era) where you can choose between the American and Japanese versions (a lot more changed than the dubbing.) Obviously I'd need the Japanese versions have an optional English sub as I am not currently able to understand Japanese.
A lack of melancholy.
Motivation.
Nice notebooks.
A new pocketbook of my own design.
A deck of tarot cards and the knowledge of how to use them, because why not?
Clear memories from that time I studied Norse divination.
(I might not believe in divination, but I find it interesting.)
Wings.
One of those things that's tighter than a hair net but less rubbery than a bathing cap, for times when my hair needs to be kept the fuck out of the way.
A better mattress.
A walking-stick flute. (I once got my mother one for her birthday from Serenity Bamboo Flute.)
A cloud to run interference for me on sunny days.
The determination, drive, and mental endurance needed to stick with things (playing guitar, skateboarding, word domination, C++ programming, parkour, cooking, drawing) through the "everything you do is shit" part of the learning process.
The ability to make my glasses repel liquid, or at least get rid of it quickly in the way duck-oil disposes of drops of water that have the temerity to try to stay on a duck.
A wearable wide spectrum camera hooked into a live heads up display so that I can see UV or infrared if I want to.
Ink. And a syringe or something. So that I can refill pens.
Peons.
A donkey.
This thing.
My body to be uninjured for long enough to exercise enough to change the equilibrium point it tends toward because I know that one with less fat and more muscle than this feels a lot better to be living in.
The ability to stick with a story long enough to write a book.
An OLED 4k TV.
Cashews.
19mm transparent blue marbles that match the ones I have because I don't have enough marbles for the fucking game and non matching sets are aesthetically displeasing and blah.
An Allen wrench in the right size to replace the wheels on my kick scooter because it's probably been a year or something since I bought the replacement wheels and they're just sitting there: mocking me.
An adequate explanation for why the olives that Lonespark buys go with Phillips screwdrivers but the ones I buy have a five pointed star --that will cause a satanic freak out the moment a fundie really looks at one of the olives-- in place of the Phillips head drive.
Maybe a moped?
A place where I can do archery again, equipment to do archery.
Cups, glasses, and other drinking vessels to replace ones that I've broken in the "Oh my fucking God, THE WORLD IS ENDING!" stress-filled often-depressed time that was the last two or three years.
The ability to feel normal-sad/down/bad (at times when it is healthy to feel such) instead of the patterns of clinical depression it took half a lifetime to create and hardwire into my brain.
Multifaceted glass things that are all sparkly and make rainbows.
The equipment to do glass working.
The luck and prudence not to kill or maim myself should I ever get my hands on the previous.
An illustrator.
(The munchkin weasel wants me to be a writer, I tell her I am, she complains that I don't have an illustrator. She's right, an illustrator would be desirable and even useful. Might even help to break up the giant walls of text that are the things I write.)
The ability to throw a ball in a way that doesn't make people laugh.
A nearby freshwater --fucking leach free-- place to swim.
Someone to downhill ski with in the winter and the money and logistical necessities to make that skiing a reality.
Opportunities to use my kayak. Because I have a fucking kayak. I might want to canoe, but it's not like I have one of those. My kayak, though, is right in the garage just waiting to be used. It never is. Not for years.
All of the knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek that I have lost.
A Proto-Indo-European dictionary.
A USB keyboard.
A stable computer that runs Windows 98 because in spite of what microsoft may want you to believe compatibility mode Does Not Fucking Cut It.
Ceramic and glass bowls to replace all the ones I've broken over the past two years (see above.)
A nice, full size, modern Staunton chess set and matching board that uses magnets to make it so that bumping the board doesn't knock everything out of place.
Better insulation for my house.
Potting soil.
Pots. The type you put potting soil in for the purpose of keeping plants.
Stuff.
Things.
Things and stuff.
Elastics. Very surprised to find that I have none readily available.
$273 for property insurance by the 17th.
A water filter of some form or other that can be used at Lonespark's because my body requires copious fluid intake to avoid dehydration but the water quality there disagrees with me.
Glass pitchers and general glass fluid storage containers.
An ice cube tray that can survive Lonespark's freezer. (My own freezer is covered.)
Socks.
Light summer type clothes.
A decent power strip or two.
A working washing machine.
Twine.
Wire for when twine isn't strong enough but rope is too big.
Possibly rope as well while we're at it.
New glasses.
An eye exam (preferably before the new glasses.)
Batteries.
More hours in the day.
A water bottle. (Or more than one.)
Shelving.
CAD software. (I'm used to Alibre, now Geomagic)
Silicone mold making material (I generally prefer Alumilite.)
Polyurethane casting material (ditto.)
(It's been years, so many I've lost track, since I made anything.)
Hedge trimmers, the ones with the long handle that give you lots of leverage.
(No, I don't have a hedge. I just live in New England.)
Wood, nails, and time so I can make things like the aforementioned shelving.
A drill because family type people seem to have taken the ones that were here.
A tri wing screwdriver because the weasel's Wii U pad needs to be taken apart, cleaned, cleansed, purged, and possibly exorcised, and then put back together because . . . damn.
Tubing.
Fans.
Pipe.
LEDs
That paint that's normally clear but fluoresces in a given color under UV.
In the unlikely event I get the above, a UV only flashlight; blacklights.
Decent flashlights in general.
A supercomputer.
Good pens.
That model unicorn (well ... that model of model unicorn) that I had as a kid. The one that had to be bought at least twice because I took it with me everywhere and the hooves kept breaking off.
A new couch or the materials required to fix the one I have.
Every Godzilla movie ever on disk. Preferably those ones (if they still exist and/or the practice has continued into the Blu Ray era) where you can choose between the American and Japanese versions (a lot more changed than the dubbing.) Obviously I'd need the Japanese versions have an optional English sub as I am not currently able to understand Japanese.
A lack of melancholy.
Motivation.
Nice notebooks.
A new pocketbook of my own design.
A deck of tarot cards and the knowledge of how to use them, because why not?
Clear memories from that time I studied Norse divination.
(I might not believe in divination, but I find it interesting.)
Wings.
One of those things that's tighter than a hair net but less rubbery than a bathing cap, for times when my hair needs to be kept the fuck out of the way.
A better mattress.
A walking-stick flute. (I once got my mother one for her birthday from Serenity Bamboo Flute.)
A cloud to run interference for me on sunny days.
The determination, drive, and mental endurance needed to stick with things (playing guitar, skateboarding, word domination, C++ programming, parkour, cooking, drawing) through the "everything you do is shit" part of the learning process.
The ability to make my glasses repel liquid, or at least get rid of it quickly in the way duck-oil disposes of drops of water that have the temerity to try to stay on a duck.
A wearable wide spectrum camera hooked into a live heads up display so that I can see UV or infrared if I want to.
Ink. And a syringe or something. So that I can refill pens.
Peons.
A donkey.
This thing.
My body to be uninjured for long enough to exercise enough to change the equilibrium point it tends toward because I know that one with less fat and more muscle than this feels a lot better to be living in.
The ability to stick with a story long enough to write a book.
An OLED 4k TV.
Cashews.
19mm transparent blue marbles that match the ones I have because I don't have enough marbles for the fucking game and non matching sets are aesthetically displeasing and blah.
An Allen wrench in the right size to replace the wheels on my kick scooter because it's probably been a year or something since I bought the replacement wheels and they're just sitting there: mocking me.
An adequate explanation for why the olives that Lonespark buys go with Phillips screwdrivers but the ones I buy have a five pointed star --that will cause a satanic freak out the moment a fundie really looks at one of the olives-- in place of the Phillips head drive.
Maybe a moped?
A place where I can do archery again, equipment to do archery.
Cups, glasses, and other drinking vessels to replace ones that I've broken in the "Oh my fucking God, THE WORLD IS ENDING!" stress-filled often-depressed time that was the last two or three years.
The ability to feel normal-sad/down/bad (at times when it is healthy to feel such) instead of the patterns of clinical depression it took half a lifetime to create and hardwire into my brain.
Multifaceted glass things that are all sparkly and make rainbows.
The equipment to do glass working.
The luck and prudence not to kill or maim myself should I ever get my hands on the previous.
An illustrator.
(The munchkin weasel wants me to be a writer, I tell her I am, she complains that I don't have an illustrator. She's right, an illustrator would be desirable and even useful. Might even help to break up the giant walls of text that are the things I write.)
The ability to throw a ball in a way that doesn't make people laugh.
A nearby freshwater --fucking leach free-- place to swim.
Someone to downhill ski with in the winter and the money and logistical necessities to make that skiing a reality.
Opportunities to use my kayak. Because I have a fucking kayak. I might want to canoe, but it's not like I have one of those. My kayak, though, is right in the garage just waiting to be used. It never is. Not for years.
All of the knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek that I have lost.
A Proto-Indo-European dictionary.
A USB keyboard.
A stable computer that runs Windows 98 because in spite of what microsoft may want you to believe compatibility mode Does Not Fucking Cut It.
Ceramic and glass bowls to replace all the ones I've broken over the past two years (see above.)
A nice, full size, modern Staunton chess set and matching board that uses magnets to make it so that bumping the board doesn't knock everything out of place.
Better insulation for my house.
Potting soil.
Pots. The type you put potting soil in for the purpose of keeping plants.
Stuff.
Things.
Things and stuff.
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