Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous

[Keltest]

Of course that still brings to question why a computer isnt able to put the pieces together as to why it doubts what it has been told. As an android data doesnt have a subconscious, he has a memory bank that he can either access or he can not. So either he noticed something was wrong or he didnt. If he did he would know what was wrong.

The missing data of course. Logic says to believe the "vulcan", the information he has says "this is unusual", but since he doesnt have all the information, he cant logically and correctly then make the connection to "therefore it is wrong." Human emotional responses tell us to skill that and take a gamble on it, but by strictly logical reasoning, if you cant actually demonstrate that something is wrong, you cant really say its wrong.

[Radar]

The missing data of course. Logic says to believe the "vulcan", the information he has says "this is unusual", but since he doesnt have all the information, he cant logically and correctly then make the connection to "therefore it is wrong." Human emotional responses tell us to skill that and take a gamble on it, but by strictly logical reasoning, if you cant actually demonstrate that something is wrong, you cant really say its wrong.

You can still do a wide analysis of various possible scenarios and estimate their probabilities based on the given knowledge of this and previous situations. Lack of subconscious would not prevent an android from not taking all the input at face value as over the years Data surely has encountered contradictory inputs often enough. He surely learned how to deal with imperfect information and is capable of solving abstract problems.

Besides even with current technology we can train a neural network to detect lies.

[Morgaln]

as emotional beings, i think humans just can't understand what "no emotions" is.

i mean packbonding is a thing for a reason. i used to treat my humidifier like a hungry, whiny pet i had to feed with water every other day before it broke.

So you think your humidifier had emotions because it needed to be refilled? Or what was the point of that anecdote?

[Willie the Duck]

So you think your humidifier had emotions because it needed to be refilled? Or what was the point of that anecdote?

Pretty sure they're saying they ascribed emotions to their appliance because they anthropomorphized it and then couldn't mentally view it as not having emotions.

[Draconi Redfir]

Pretty sure they're saying they ascribed emotions to their appliance because they anthropomorphized it and then couldn't mentally view it as not having emotions.

pretty much this. anyone who's seen the story of "stabby the Roomba on a starship" will get the general idea.

or more generally, anyone who mentally assigned a personality to a stuffed animal or a toy as a child.

[Willie the Duck]

I certainly think conceiving (and more importantly portraying to an audience) a truly emotionless sapient sentient character is no mean feat.

[Morgaln]

pretty much this. anyone who's seen the story of "stabby the Roomba on a starship" will get the general idea.

or more generally, anyone who mentally assigned a personality to a stuffed animal or a toy as a child.

Even as a child, I was perfectly aware that my stuffed animals or other toys where not alive and had no inherent personality, even while pretending they did during play.
I also don't attribute sentience, much less sapience to household appliances, computers or other devices. They are not alive and don't have motives for doing or not doing anything. They work the way they were constructed, nothing more or less. Judging from other people I know, however, I might be the odd man out here.

I certainly think conceiving (and more importantly portraying to an audience) a truly emotionless sapient sentient character is no mean feat.

I agree.
In addition, it's very easy for the audience to attribute emotions to an action even when it wasn't meant to be. Therefore it is important in writing such a character to regularly lay open the reasoning behind decisions and show that it is rational.

This is the issue I have with the "you're his mother" argument. By any rational reasoning, she's not his mother. Ears is technically not even her "flesh and blood" as Pawlush claims, because horns are not made from flesh, and Complains specifically said that there is no blood in the horn (yes, I know, figure of speech, not to be taken literally). Appealing to her as Ear's mother is trying to evoke a purely emotional bond. That bond she just shouldn't be able to feel; and there's no rational reasoning why she would spare his life based on the mother argument; so why did she?

[Vinyadan]

I certainly think conceiving (and more importantly portraying to an audience) a truly emotionless sapient sentient character is no mean feat.

Ears isn't emotionless though?

(yes, it's a joke about conceiving).

[Willie the Duck]

so why did she?

Again, despite what Elli has told us about angels, all evidence points to this angel having emotion (or having a response pattern which perfectly emulates it in outward display).

[Vinyadan]

I suppose you mean like Jones?

Yes, although I got the impression that Jones isn't really as emotionless as she supposedly is. Annie also did.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Of course that still brings to question why a computer isnt able to put the pieces together as to why it doubts what it has been told. As an android data doesnt have a subconscious, he has a memory bank that he can either access or he can not. So either he noticed something was wrong or he didnt. If he did he would know what was wrong.

I agree. Not having a gut feeling, done right would be a pretty cool way to distinguish a robot character.

It's not necessarily true for all, or even most robot characters, I mean, even Windows can encounter unexpected errors, but it's certainly not unreasonable to have a robot character with no "black box" part to their brain. All their thinking is conscious, so they always know why they're thinking what their thinking. They would probably be a little puzzled by both emotions and gut feelings. "What do you mean, you just know it's wrong?" The robot can tell if something doesn't add up, but they'll be able to tell what doesn't add up.

The second difference between human subconscious and robots as we imagined them before we started working on things like self driving cars is that everything the robot does is based on hard logic, while our subconscious is more fuzzy logic based. A single braincell can weigh dozens or hundreds of factors, each counting as a positive or a negative with their own weight and their own signal strength, resulting in a single outcome that changes in real time as the factors change. It's a very efficient way of taking everything together. So I'd say that it is at least somewhat plausible that a pop culture android gets confused by situations where you would usually go off of many different small subconsciously noticed clues. Like reading the mood in a room. You see lots of different facial features and expressions, but you can still draw an overall conclusion and because of that pinpoint outliers. That wouldn't be a weird task for Data to fail at. Reading a single spy that he's actually focusing on trying to figure her out? Less likely.

But you know, even if one episode gets something "right"/does an interesting thing the next can take another route. 90's tv writing is inconsistent like that. It's like trying to pinpoint what that Klingon martial art Worf practices looks like. That's one of the reasons these shows got better with the seasons, when the actors were getting more comfortable about standing for what their character would do.

[Lacco]

That bond she just shouldn't be able to feel; and there's no rational reasoning why she would spare his life based on the mother argument; so why did she?

Unfortunately, this one boils down to a simple OOC explanation, regardless of how eloquently people try to argue the IC explanation.

Because the author wants to (feel that).

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Unfortunately, this one boils down to a simple OOC explanation, regardless of how eloquently people try to argue the IC explanation.

Because the author wants to (feel that).

I'd just ignore the older comment that angels and devils are all emotionless in this world. The simplest explanation is that this angel is clearly an emotional being and a world building detail changed since that comment. Even not-Walter was pretty emotional back in the Maze of Many (although that was an alternate universe not-Walter, and a lot of those universes were pretty different, so he doesn't really count either way). It doesn't contradict anything established in the comic itself (right?), so it's not even a real inconsistency. I also don't expect some massive tripplethink situation where 14 years from now it turns out the angel was faking emotions because... For that to work well the rule about no emotions would have needed to be established in the comic.

So, yeah, world detail changed between conception and publication.

Still interesting to see how and why it changed, but I wouldn't overthink it to try and make the situation fit.

[Traab]

I'd just ignore the older comment that angels and devils are all emotionless in this world. The simplest explanation is that this angel is clearly an emotional being and a world building detail changed since that comment. Even not-Walter was pretty emotional back in the Maze of Many (although that was an alternate universe not-Walter, and a lot of those universes were pretty different, so he doesn't really count either way). It doesn't contradict anything established in the comic itself (right?), so it's not even a real inconsistency. I also don't expect some massive tripplethink situation where 14 years from now it turns out the angel was faking emotions because... For that to work well the rule about no emotions would have needed to be established in the comic.

So, yeah, world detail changed between conception and publication.

Still interesting to see how and why it changed, but I wouldn't overthink it to try and make the situation fit.

Also WAY back at the start of the comic, not walter was acting pretty disgusted with minmax and his behavior. Though too be fair those early comics are basically no longer canon iirc. Other than the broadest of strokes.

[Anarchic Fox]

So, yeah, world detail changed between conception and publication.

Still interesting to see how and why it changed, but I wouldn't overthink it to try and make the situation fit.

Thank you for making this argument cogently.

It's hard enough piecing together the comics into a coherent whole, without also having to incorporate world-building remarks from elsewhere. And within the comic itself, there's no rule of seniority saying that early world-building trumps everything subsequent. If a creative work contradicts itself, pick whichever canon makes more sense.

[Traab]

New update

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Yeah Thaco is too old and annoyed to put up with this game. Im pretty sure he is about to call her out on the stupidity of this test where literally everyone fails and yet somehow always manages to come back, generally with a bonus of some sort.

[Fyraltari]

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Wait, how has she already read his sheet? Did she get it before he touched the watches?

[Keltest]

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Wait, how has she already read his sheet? Did she get it before he touched the watches?

Its an AD&D character sheet. Much easier to read.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

At least the creepy platform eyes seem to be gone. Corruption of all of goblin heaven prevented?

[Vinyadan]

Somehow, this page reminded me of Goblins. https://i.imgur.com/zRlDuiw.jpg

[Jimorian]

Thank you for making this argument cogently.

It's hard enough piecing together the comics into a coherent whole, without also having to incorporate world-building remarks from elsewhere. And within the comic itself, there's no rule of seniority saying that early world-building trumps everything subsequent. If a creative work contradicts itself, pick whichever canon makes more sense.

This is one of the fundamental issues with webcomics or other online serialized storytelling. Whether there's an original detailed outline or not, or if it's even adhered to, it's inevitably a long drawn out FIRST draft with no opportunity that other writers have to go back and account for changes in ideas, character development, and even the changing skill of the author over time.

[Draconi Redfir]

that's not to say it's impossible to fix though. Back when i read Drowtales, they made multiple mentions of re-doing the first few chapters to match the art and plot direction they'd fallen into over time. Which made sense, as the first few chapters were pretty hard to follow, and i only ever really got invested once there as a main character (with a readable name) for the plot to revolve around. Before that it felt a lot more like every page was about a different character with a hard-to-read name, so i had no idea what was going on at the time.

Even in Goblins this has been done to some extent, the first black and white pages are coloured in with characters better resembling who they'd eventually become. Not quite the same as re-doing those early pages in the newer style, but it wouldn't be impossible to do.

[Kornaki]

At least the creepy platform eyes seem to be gone. Corruption of all of goblin heaven prevented?

Good point. This maybe suggests that the whole thing is an illusion of some sort driven by their expectations.

[Kantaki]

Good point. This maybe suggests that the whole thing is an illusion of some sort driven by their expectations.

At least the angel has to be real, considering the chopped off horn. Well, unless Ears turns back to not-blue the moment they leave.

[Anarchic Fox]

This is one of the fundamental issues with webcomics or other online serialized storytelling. Whether there's an original detailed outline or not, or if it's even adhered to, it's inevitably a long drawn out FIRST draft with no opportunity that other writers have to go back and account for changes in ideas, character development, and even the changing skill of the author over time.

*nods* Indeed. This is why serial writers and comic creators should learn to edit. Editing can be as joyful as writing, with enough experience.

[Anarchic Fox]

Good point. This maybe suggests that the whole thing is an illusion of some sort driven by their expectations.

I think it's the silly time dilation at work again. Time passes in the axe at 1000x speed, so an entity that can escape, like a flea demon, does so quicker than we mortals can follow.

I finally figured out what it takes to get a thread locked for something other than necromancy! Go check out the forum immediately above quick, before it disappears.

[Draconi Redfir]

new comic is up!

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He's been wanting to do that for awhile hasn't he? :P

[Radar]

new comic is up!

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He's been wanting to do that for awhile hasn't he? :P

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Oh yes he did. You can see just how satisfied he is that for once he could just cut to the chase, be done with things on his terms and even order an angel around. If I would try to compare this to some other scene, I would probably pick this bit of Star Trek: Next Generation.

[Traab]

He clearly figured SOMETHING out to be that confident. Too bad it will be weeks before we get the chance to find out what. Also, if all he was going to do was refuse to play along and get himself sent back anyways, why go there in the first place? I figured he had a plan to get himself some sort of reward like names and ears got, but instead he basically only showed up to be a jerk. Off topic, any english majors on here? Something odd just popped up. I was going to write, "Only showed up to be an a**" and decided a jerk was a better phrasing going by board rules, so why does one sentence use "a" and the other use "an"?

[Fyraltari]

He clearly figured SOMETHING out to be that confident. Too bad it will be weeks before we get the chance to find out what. Also, if all he was going to do was refuse to play along and get himself sent back anyways, why go there in the first place? I figured he had a plan to get himself some sort of reward like names and ears got, but instead he basically only showed up to be a jerk.

Don't they all get a free level up from this?
Edit: Seems like it.

Off topic, any english majors on here? Something odd just popped up. I was going to write, "Only showed up to be an a**" and decided a jerk was a better phrasing going by board rules, so why does one sentence use "a" and the other use "an"?

Not an English major, but learning the language I was told it's a simple euphony thing. If the next word starts with a vowel sound, then the indefinite article "a" gets an extra n. Because "a elephant" is more awkward to say out loud than "an elephant".