OOTS #1274 - The Discussion Thread

[KorvinStarmast]

the only thing that it makes many doubt its eugene is how "she" apologizes 1274, that is really weird

When you play the long con, you have to go many layers deep.

I take it as given that Roy won't get his people killed unnecessarily.

Even so... to my mind "reject Julia's plan because it puts a team member at unnecessary risk" is a good answer. "reject Julia's plan because it puts a child in danger" isn't. Because if your concern is putting a child in danger, that child shouldn't be a combatant in the first place; there's no way you can fight this without putting Sunny at significant risk of life and ... um, tentacle? Eye-stalk?

Roy is thinking like an actual small unit commander, and Julia sees Sunny as a game piece. She is in over her head, and is guilty of something like being a back seat driver.

That, or we must conclude that no good person can fight a war. Ergo, paladins are a contradiction in terms.

which leads to...

OTOH, if you refuse to fight, then the people who are ruthless and cruel enough to use innocents as shields get to have their way versus those who won't. An unpalatable choice, to be sure.

But not the current case as regards Sunny, which is where this got started.

There are plenty of systems that are perfectly happy with establishing in advance how many people are worth sacrificing for the common good (and worse, which people).

In stories and films, we have the 300 at Thermopylae, but as they were volunteers in the main, perhaps not a close enough example to what Roy is facing. His assumption is that dying before achieving the end means universal failure. And stopping the deities from hitting the cosmological reboot is a problem of a different scope. Everyone isn't conquered by the Snarl, everyone simply isn't anymore. (Had to edit this since the sentence came off wrong)

This is what bothers me most about the trolley problem. GW

It has a lot of issues, and I'll not rehash those here.

[Peelee]

I still fail to see any relevance of this. I gave many examples - the hostage ones, the (moved away from) one, and so on.

You provided examples of people who will kill innocents to save others. You provided no examples of it being objectively moral (or even legal, since you wanted to bring up laws).

But hey, let's take that Russian law! So let's say theres a pond and Bob is drowning in the pond. There's no stick. No boat, no flotation device, nothing. Theres just Bob, the pond, and you. Are you legally required to swim out to Bob and try to save him with nothing but your own swimming ability? Is that covered under that law?

And even easier to never rise from a chair, claiming that you are too moral for it.

Fair point. Say, are you aware that I'm actively pursuing a job where there is a very real chance I will die acting in the protection of others? Because I'm actively pursuing a job where there is a very real chance I will die acting in the protection of others. You?

[Fyraltari]

Ironically, Isaac Asimov, in my view, threw this whole moral framework in the bin in Robots and Empire when he added his zeroth law to the equation:

0. A robot may not injure humanity, or through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, except where such conflicts with the zeroth law.

What is "humanity"? And how do you know what does and doesn't constitute "harm to humanity"? What we've done is gone straight back to "needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one" utilitarianism. It means any crime is permissible to a robot in service of this extremely nebulous zeroth law. The fact this wasn't made into a villain's backstory is, to me, a missed opportunity.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

But that incertainty is brought up several times:

Spoiler: Robots and Empire, Foundation and Earth

Show

Giskard dies precisely because he can't be sure the harmed caused by modifying a human mind was necessary to help humanity. Daneel and the other telepathic robots almost never use their power for this exact reason. And Daneel sponsored both Gaia and the development of psychohistory so that laws Zero and One would merge or failing that, that he'd have hard numbers to crunch to resolve this moral conundrum.

The Zeroth Law gives him almost no freedom to disregard the First, simply because he lacks the human capacity for self-deception and can almost never justify any harm done to himself.

Also note that Asimov didn't envisage the Three Laws as a moral framework, but as the implicit basis of tool usage: A tool mustn't be harmful to use (who would use a knife that'd be all blade and no handle?), a tool mist fullfill it's purpose and a tool must resist wear and tear as well as possible.

A human abiding by these rules would be very altruistic, self-sacrificing even, but whether they would be good is another question entirely.

That's the problem - it was not inevitable. But it was still a good thing to do.

Says who? Does the possibility of many people dying really outweigh the certainty of a few people dying? Would you pull the lever if the five people only had a 50% chance of dying? 25%? 1%? What's the formula here?

That's what the second part of the quote talks about - we all live in the bubble, shielded from this decisions, and it makes an illusion that is described in my opponents' posts. If there were no "military folk", every single one of us would be obliged to make such decisions.

No?

[StragaSevera]

Roy is thinking like an actual small unit commander

If he was thinking as an actual small unit commander, he would give the arguments that were given in this thread - about low possibility of it working and high possibility of backfiring, leading to preventable losses.
But he does not give them, that's my problem with his line of thinking.

Anyway, I think I'm going to sleep, thank you all for the discussion - even people who I heatedly argued with =-)

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Also note that Asimov didn't envisage the Three Laws as a moral framework, but as the implicit basis of tool usage: A tool mustn't be harmful to use (who would use a knife that'd be all blade and no handle?), a tool mist fullfill it's purpose and a tool must resist wear and tear as well as possible.

I'm not so sure about that. He points out that it is a very decent set of rules for morality in the one where a (maybe) robot runs for office Earth President, so he at least thought they could be used as such.

(sorry, didn't have much luck googling the title. I can go check my Asimov Short Story collection behemoth if need be)

ETA: title is Evidence. And while the character later is President of Earth (in the Evitable Conflict, IIRC), in this one he is merely running for mayor of somewhere.

GW

[Peelee]

Says who? Does the possibility of many people dying really outweigh the certainty of a few people dying? Would you pull the lever if the five people only had a 50% chance of dying? 25%? 1%? What's the formula here?

This is the crux of it in application to the comic. Using Sunny will not guarantee Roy a win, and not using Sunny will not guarantee Roy a loss. Given the uncertainty either way he opted against using Sunny. I have no issue with this at all.

[Fyraltari]

Eh. As I understand it, those late Foundation series novels are not even necessarily written by Asimov.

Robots and Empire is 100% Asimov.

I vaguely remember that character - was it R. Olivah?

R. Daneel Olivaw. The R stands for "Robot" and there to tell everyone he doesn't count as a person (because Earth was afraid of robots at the time), so he prefers to go by "Daneel Olivaw".

ETA: thinking about it a bit more, my main issue is that the long forms always seemed to have some Omniscient Council of Vagueness running things in the background (Second Foundation! Robots with 0th law! etc), which is too conspiracy-theory-like for my liking, especially when it happens over and over.

GW

Hey, when the Second Foundation gets out-conspiracied, they drop the vagueness hard.

I get the criticism, but I like the longer stories, especially since they're not afraid to point out that, the Seldon Plan is pretty messed up when you think about it.

In stories and films, we have the 300 at Thermopylae

Ah yes, the three hundred brave warriors. And their seven thousand allies people keep forgetting about. Dying for the ideal of liberty! Liberty of nation, that is, not people, considering the eeeeeeeevil Empire marching at them gave slaves many more rights than they did.

but as they were volunteers

Were they? Leonidas certainly chose to be there, but I doubt any of them really had the choice to politely decline.

[pendell]

This is the crux of it in application to the comic. Using Sunny will not guarantee Roy a win, and not using Sunny will not guarantee Roy a loss. Given the uncertainty either way he opted against using Sunny. I have no issue with this at all.

Agreed. For me it isn't about whether Sunny's a child or not, it's about the fact that Julia is proposing a strategy which will get a team member killed when they may be able to get the same or better result without putting Sunny at unnecessary risk. Totally onboard with Roy's decision, although my rationale is different from his.

As Kevin Stormast pointed out, Julia is treating Sunny like Sunny is a piece on a gameboard, and not even using Sunny efficiently just as a piece. It's the kind of what's the word -- non-empathic? -- approach we've come to expect from wizards in OOTS verse.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[KorvinStarmast]

If he was thinking as an actual small unit commander, he would give the arguments that were given in this thread - about low possibility of it working and high possibility of backfiring, leading to preventable losses.
But he does not give them, that's my problem with his line of thinking.

Like a small unit commander, he sees his people as people, while Julia sees them as game pieces. That's the contrast I was presenting. He is aware all of the time that his team can fail. See War and XP for one of many cases of that.

[Crusher]

Well, then you are killing a million of innocent people by inaction, just to keep your cognitive patterns safe.
I, on the other hand, would prefer to have 999 999 people live. If I am willing to sacrifice myself to save a million people, then I'm obliged to sacrifice my sanity and my feeling-of-scale cognitive bias.

If we are talking about five people, the "innocence" defence should work, because you are undermining the foundations of the society by choosing to kill an innocent man. But you absolutely should risk undermining them a bit in order to save 1 000 000 people.
I'm obliged to not give real-life examples on this forum, but spies in the middle of the last century were making such decisions - and if they did not, then we may not be talking right now.

Different people value things differently, right? Its not even an arguable point, I think. You like vanilla ice cream, I like chocolate, perhaps. Extensions of this are why we have stock exchanges and such.

It follows that different people might put different values on human lives, depending on the people and the circumstances. Because of relationships to the people involved (I would value the lives of my children over the lives of two people I have never met), values (a person more focused on the future might value a human life less than a person focused on the present "If I spent lots of resources saving this person now, I will not be able to save 10 people down the road") or circumstances (letting someone else die is REALLY not equivalent to killing that person yourself, even to a hardened warrior like Roy) people can come to wildly different answers to these sorts of equations. If you consider a life to be effectively priceless, then the math absolutely works out as Greywolf is saying and its disingenuous to argue that it *cannot*. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/fortytwo/202...with-infinity/

And that entirely avoids the topic of probability. Sure, in the trolly problem the odds of death are 100%, but in life that's seldom the case. I'm reminded of a passage from one of the later The Expanse books. I'll be vague to try and avoid spoilers in case anyone is still reading them.

There's a gigantic battle between a much larger force and a much smaller, more technologically advanced force. The fight goes back and forth for a while and the bigger force seems to be significantly hurting the smaller force but its sort of hard to tell. But they do know that a TON of people are dying on the bigger force side.

During a break in the fighting, the commander of the smaller force messages someone senior on the larger force who I think he'd had some interactions with. All he says is "Give me a number", and they're like "Huh? What are you talking about?" He clarifies "Tell me how many people I have to kill before you surrender. Because I don't want to kill anyone, but I will kill you all if that is your number."

The larger force surrenders.

He'd changed the math of the moral equation from a vague "We must fight them!" with lots of uncertainties and possible outcomes to "If we are probably going to lose, am I comfortable putting an exact number of people who will 100% die in a losing effort." And they decided they'd already reached that number.

The authors don't really give a clear answer, and figuring out whether they made the "right" answer would require a doctoral dissertation, but it is at least suggested that it wasn't a bluff.

Anyway, point is, in morality there are always lots of right answers depending on a zillion things. The trolly problem is interesting (and that episode of "The Good Place" was *amazing*) but life always has context and a zillion other confounding factors different people see differently.

[Peelee]

Agreed. For me it isn't about whether Sunny's a child or not, it's about the fact that Julia is proposing a strategy which will get a team member killed when they may be able to get the same or better result without putting Sunny at unnecessary risk. Totally onboard with Roy's decision, although my rationale is different from his.

As Kevin Stormast pointed out, Julia is treating Sunny like Sunny is a piece on a gameboard, and not even using Sunny efficiently just as a piece. It's the kind of what's the word -- non-empathic? -- approach we've come to expect from wizards in OOTS verse.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Exactly. And Sunny still may volunteer regardless.

[pendell]

Exactly. And Sunny still may volunteer regardless.

If Sunny's too young to give meaningful consent I couldn't in good conscience accept Sunny even as a volunteer. A child doesn't have the life experience or background to make such an offer with understanding of what it entails.

That wouldn't stop me from using Sunny that way if there really was absolutely no other choice and it was Sunny or the entire world -- but how often, in games or in reality, is the situation ever that cut-and-dry? Barring the GM forcing that on me as an artificial trolley problem, I just don't see any circumstance where I'd have to make that choice -- and therefore never would.

And if the GM DOES insist on forcing their pet trolley problem on the table, the question comes: Why am I playing at this table?

Especially if I'm playing a paladin and the GM decides that whatever answer I give to the trolley problem constitutes evil and therefore I'm now a fighter-without-bonus-feats.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Peelee]

If Sunny's too young to give meaningful consent I couldn't in good conscience accept Sunny even as a volunteer. A child doesn't have the life experience or background to make such an offer with understanding of what it entails.

I agree with that too! That being said, I'm uncertain as to whether Sunny is immature enough to refuse any consent to fight. I would say probably not, since Sunny already presumably consented to fight the Order.

[Fyraltari]

I'm not so sure about that. He points out that it is a very decent set of rules for morality in the one where a (maybe) robot runs for office Earth President, so he at least thought they could be used as such.


(sorry, didn't have much luck googling the title. I can go check my Asimov Short Story collection behemoth if need be)

ETA: title is Evidence. And while the character later is President of Earth (in the Evitable Conflict, IIRC), in this one he is merely running for mayor of somewhere.

GW

Susan Calvin thinks as much. But she kind of like robots better than humans already. Note that the Machines that ruled humanity eventually decided they should step down for humanity's sake (and this is after they deliberately sabotaged the lives of people who would oppose them to solidify their power in the first place).

Also, while the Three Laws may be helpful to behave morally, they are far from sufficient. In Liar a robot's inability to weigh a future harm against a present one makes it lie and therefore cause greater harm in the long run. In Robots and Earth, the Solarians narrow the definition of "human" their robots use to Solarians only, allowing them to order the murder of anyone else as they wish. And Golan Trevize is rather disturbed by the influence Daneel Olivaw has had over mankind.

A robot would have no issue with the way we treat animals, since the well-beingnof anything non-human simply does not factor into the Three Laws.

First responders the world over advise people against running into fire to rescue another person if you are not a train firefighter yourself (to take one example) as you are likely to fail and just endanger yourself. But a human abiding by the Three Laws would run in there even if there's only a 0.001% chance of not making thr situation worse, since the First Law far outweigh the Third Law. The movie I, Robot isn't very good but the question it raises "would you rescue an adult with a greater cha'ce of survival or a child with a lesser one if you van only save one?" And the fact that the robot will only look at numbers, is worth pondering.

Abiding by the Three Laws make one selfless. But selflessness is not the same thing as goodness.

It's the kind of what's the word -- non-empathic? -- approach we've come to expect from wizards in OOTS verse.

Apathetic? Uncaring?

[Ionathus]

sigh Dangit, I just finished posting in the other thread about how Julia being an impostor makes no sense and would undermine the value of the scene. But the Eugene theory makes a ton of sense and also explains what would otherwise just feel like slightly-overdone clarifications. It also keeps the scene meaningful -- Roy is still interacting with a family member and the conversation has a lot of emotional weight between them too. With the added fun of Roy talking crap about Eugene to his face.

My main point of confusion is why would Eugene be doing it? Does he want to reconcile with Roy and thinks this is the best way to do it? Does he feel real remorse? That was a genuine "sorry" from Julia just there. I would be genuinely surprised if Eugene has had that sort of self-motivated change of heart, especially since Roy's last interaction with him before Firmament was "if you leave me alone you'll get what you want soon enough" and him enthusiastically agreeing.

Also, would this mean the earlier conversation on the ship was also Eugene?

For myself, if it was either bait or see the world destroyed, yes, I'd use Sunny as bait. But I'd look long and hard for other options first; it's pretty rare IRL or in roleplaying that you're forced into a straight-up academic trolley problem.

Agreed. I think part of the debate here is that Roy views it as a convenience: it's not a single binary choice of "sacrifice Sunny" or "lose." Sacrificing Sunny is just a tactical option,₁ and while Roy is refusing it on principle, he's also implying that settling for sacrificing a child is the lazy choice when you have more options on the table. I tend to agree.

1. And not even really a particularly smart option - Sunny is so versatile and powerful compared to what we've seen Oona do in combat, it would be like trading your queen for the opponent's rook (or less).

Boys younger than her served as drummers in our civil war; wars have been decided by combatants about her age. She's more than old enough to fight as an active combatant.

To paraphrase John Cleese: "yes, two hundred years ago children younger than her fought in wars. Now, I'm suggesting that since then, we've made an advance."

[pendell]

I agree with that too! That being said, I'm uncertain as to whether Sunny is immature enough to refuse any consent to fight. I would say probably not, since Sunny already presumably consented to fight the Order.

She was convinced to do it by Serini, her "Mom". And if Serini is putting an underage child into combat, that's child abuse. I propose an action against Serini for child endangerment, mental cruelty, and anything else which might stick. You're the lawyer here, I'll let you draw up the documents.

ETA:

Apathetic? Uncaring?

I was forced to dig up a thesaurus and the word I'm looking for is callous. Thank you.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Ionathus]

She was convinced to do it by Serini, her "Mom". And if Serini is putting an underage child into combat, that's child abuse. I propose an action against Serini for child endangerment, mental cruelty, and anything else which might stick. You're the lawyer here, I'll let you draw up the documents.

You are free to go and arrest the Chaotic Neutral-ish Epic Rogue halfling within her monster-filled uber-dungeon at the frozen edge of the world whenever you like, I'm staying here.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

My main point of confusion is why would Eugene be doing it? Does he want to reconcile with Roy and thinks this is the best way to do it? Does he feel real remorse? That was a genuine "sorry" from Julia just there. I would be genuinely surprised if Eugene has had that sort of self-motivated change of heart, especially since Roy's last interaction with him before Firmament was "if you leave me alone you'll get what you want soon enough" and him enthusiastically agreeing.

As I see it, it is a combination of three main factors:
1) Roy has made it clear he does not want to hear from him other than if he brings new info to the table, which he really doesn't have, thus the deception
b) Eugene is bored
iii) Eugene is convinced Roy is not intelligent enough to figure this out (because he isn't a wizard), but he (Eugene) is and therefore Roy must listen to his sage council

Now, I am not as absolutist about the whole apology thing as others here to start with, but even if Eugene wouldn't apologise, he might believe that his daughter is too much of a feely-feely and would. Or alternatively, is willing to give a pretend apology so that Roy won't kick him out again.

Grey Wolf

[Peelee]

Also, would this mean the earlier conversation on the ship was also Eugene?

Not necessarily, no. And while I'm not completely. Convinced

She was convinced to do it by Serini, her "Mom".

We don't know if she agreed to help Serini and Serini was just directing her (which is more likely, IMO). I'm choosing to assume the more optimistic path at the moment.

[Kish]

I likewise think Serini's morals are vastly more selfish than Roy's are or than a hero's should be. She got multiple "friends" injured using them against people who she knew were good, because she considered "force everyone to do things my way" a goal that justifies any means. Indeed, she demonstrates very much the reasoning StragaSevera is asserting as the only valid way to think.

I do not believe the earlier conversation on the ship was Eugene; as I said (somewhere), a significant component of what convinces me that this is Eugene is the tonal disconnect between this appearance and the ship appearance. Ship Julia took friendly jabs at Roy and rolled with his; this "Julia" acts like the concept that Roy might take a jab at "her" and not mean "I sincerely hate you" is strange and baffling.

[Peelee]

I likewise think Serini's morals are vastly more selfish than Roy's are or than a hero's should be. She got multiple "friends" injured using them against people who she knew were good,

Miko was good. Being good, in itself, does not necessarily count for much in Stickworld. At least, not when saving the world is in play.

[Kish]

Miko was good.

I am unconvinced, as I have mentioned a time or two. Serini flaunts her knowledge of what the Order and the paladins have been doing; she knows things more meaningful about their actions and motivations than "it says Good on Roy Greenhilt's character sheet."

[Razade]

I am unconvinced, as I have mentioned a time or two. Serini flaunts her knowledge of what the Order and the paladins have been doing; she knows things more meaningful about their actions and motivations than "it says Good on Roy Greenhilt's character sheet."

If Miko wasn't good, she wouldn't have been a Paladin for a whole lot longer than her final bits. Even if you don't think she was, in universe, she was. The whole point of her character as "being good is more than just your character sheet." Doesn't change that she was, unarguably, good.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

If Miko wasn't good, she wouldn't have been a Paladin for a whole lot longer than her final bits. Even if you don't think she was, in universe, she was. The whole point of her character as "being good is more than just your character sheet." Doesn't change that she was, unarguably, good.

We know the Universe doesn't check your morality moment by moment, only when actions are committed. Also, when there are only 9 buckets you can be in, you can be damn close to the border for long periods of time. IIRC the last time we had this discussion, the argument is that Miko had dipped under the bar into Neutral morally speaking (in the G-E axis), but because her actions continued to be constrained by both her lawful nature and by the orders from a Good character (e.g. "my cat says no killing"), it took a long time for the Universe to catch on to the fact she no longer was, in fact, Good.

GW

[Peelee]

I am unconvinced, as I have mentioned a time or two. Serini flaunts her knowledge of what the Order and the paladins have been doing; she knows things more meaningful about their actions and motivations than "it says Good on Roy Greenhilt's character sheet."

I agree with almost all that, as well as most of what you said in your earlier post. That being said, I don't think she is fully Evil, which I would put as a requirement for forcing children into battle.

I think she's more amoral than immoral, and again, I'm choosing to take the optimistic approach. Just because she's worse than the Order doesn't necessarily mean she is forcing people into battle who cannot and do not understand the repurcussions of going into battle. And we do know that when she gave Sunny an order Sunny objected to, Serini backed off.

[KorvinStarmast]

If Sunny's too young to give meaningful consent I couldn't in good conscience accept Sunny even as a volunteer. .

That ship has long since sailed. He entered into combat with Serini against the order. Granted, he seemed to have accepted a tight RoE, but that argues even further against "child" within this context in that he understood the limitations on the use of force, lethal and otherwise. (FWIW Hackworth enlisted while still a minor, and he was still a soldier).

[Grey_Wolf_c]

That ship has long since sailed. He entered into combat with Serini against the order. Granted, he seemed to have accepted a tight RoE, but that argues even further against "child" within this context in that he understood the limitations on the use of force, lethal and otherwise. (FWIW Hackworth enlisted while still a minor, and he was still a soldier).

That Serini has no compunction in using child soldiers doesn't mean Brian, or more to the point Roy, must follow suit. That said, Roy clearly also will be ok with it under very strict RoE - his main objection to the plan was that he was unwilling to open the battle with Sunny taking point, since that would almost certainly get him killed. He might be ok with Sunny being a reserve/second strike/hidden ace in the fight.

GW

[WanderingMist]

Yep. You should not kill one healthy person for five people, because of ontological defence of the innocent.
But you clearly should kill him for million people, because no amount of innocence can outweigh a million people's lives.
It's just in numbers. I cannot say the clear boundary, but it is perfectly clear for all rational people that literal million of lives outweigh one.

To paraphrase a security guard from Freefall: "That all sounds well and good until you're designated [by someone else] as the one."

Taking one innocent person's life to save some number of others is not and cannot be morally justified in any case. Even if the immoral action is the only one that will work, that does not suddenly make the action moral.

[dancrilis]

Taking one innocent person's life to save some number of others is not and cannot be morally justified in any case. Even if the immoral action is the only one that will work, that does not suddenly make the action moral.

It may however make the action amoral.

If the entire world is going to be destroyed unless some innocent is killed tonight I would expect some government to take the action and for the majority of people on the planet to shrug and say 'oh well had to be done' - if I (or one of my people) is that innocent then sucks to be me (and them).

However that is not the situation Roy is in - using Sunny as bait seems a bad plan for reasons beside morality, Team Evil doesn't know him, won't care about him and could likely kill him without thinking about it he doesn't 'lure' them anywhere he just dies - and where Julia was talking about luring the Oona there is no particular way to seperate her from the others without her being already seperated and thereby able to be ambushed without needing a sacrifice.
For the rest of Team Evil Roy, Vaarsuvius, Durkon, O-Chul (or maybe any of the others) would likely be better bait as Redcloak would likely recognise them - where Sunny might just get a shrug if he isn't actively bothering them (Xykon might even think he is a cool thing to recruit).

[pendell]

Okay.

I've just finished reviewing the strips with Sunny and I'm beginning to wonder whether Roy and I are making a mistake. Namely, in assuming Sunny is an actual child, rather than just being child-like, like Elan.

Roy calls Sunny a child, but does he know that for a fact, or is it just an assumption? I've reviewed all the strips, and I don't see anywhere where Serini outright says that Sunny is a child, or that Sunny confirms it.

Sunny calls Serini "Mom", and acts immaturely, but so does Elan. I'm not convinced we've ever determined for certain that Sunny is in the Child age category, as opposed to being an immature adult.

If the latter, then my previous objections are removed. Though I still wouldn't want to put a team member at unnecessary risk, whether they were mature or no. We don't have enough team members to spend them lightly, and besides, Sunny's cute. Be a shame to get Sunny killed if it can be avoided.

Respectfully,

Brian P.