It’s a little weird that Baron likes the video game liking qualities more when the avatar is female. It’s a lot weird that he’s a robot who is attracted to humans, or anything really. He’s like, Equus sapiens robotis attracted to a Homo sapiens digitalis or something?
Maybe one of the thesis of this whole thing is that sentience has the hots for sentience.
Sentience having the hots for sentience is pretty much the entire plot of about half the original “Star Trek” episodes. Must have been something in Shatner’s contract.
Oh, there’s a more disturbing aspect, as noted previously, the Baron is a unicorn! Of course, after any consummation — well, talk about “love-’em-and-leave’em”!
The power of love is a curious force,
Makes you want to be a better robot horse,
Gives your nobility a bit of a shove,
Not Wimsey’s mindwarp, it’s the power of love.
Don’t need money, don’t need fame,
Don’t need VR code messing with your brain,
It’s strong and it’s sudden, it’ll take your breath,
And your life it could changeth.
That’s the power of love.
Oh, that might be it. Aimee isn’t simply there to test the influence code, she’s there to become a part of it. Whimsy knows this is so powerful it could prematurely start a war (look what happened to her father!), so she needs a subroutine to censor the use of this outstandingly effective but potentially problematic tool. It’s used to thinking of people as parts of a well-designed whole, and who better to understand the nuance of cognitive editing than a personality profile trained to despise having her head messed with? The need for a gender flip isn’t immediately obvious, but it’s possibly simply because Whimsy finds it amusing. Nick and the others aren’t there to take away the crown, but to bugfix the integration.
It’s easy to say “no personality-variant of Nick would ever agree to something like that!” but we’re potentially talking about the ability to reshape the minds of an entire generation. If you could subtly and slowly eliminate racism, sexism, and maybe a little of the completely unfair human bias against gestalt intelligences, wouldn’t you? Could you live with yourself if you didn’t? What a great metaphor for the potential of media and the temptations of commercialization which enable it. Gosh, I like this comic strip maybe a little bit too much.
“If you could subtly and slowly eliminate racism, sexism, and maybe a little of the completely unfair human bias against gestalt intelligences, wouldn’t you?”
Not if it meant destroying free will. We are literally talking about mind control here.
Yeah, I would rather have evil remain in the world and fight it with ideas than to destroy free will.
Also, one of the most important freedoms is the freedom to be wrong. If the only way to spread your ideas is mind-control, then you should consider whether you might be the one who is wrong.
All the capabilities of that crown: influencing consumers, editing perception, and expecially making movies not stink, are things that I think would really piss off Nick. So probably Aimee too. Maybe she figures she’s stuck there to make sure the hat doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Ideally she and Nick will find a way to get rid of it, or use it in more positive ways. At least so they can have good Whimsey movies again.
I don’t understand why Aimee’s being given a copy of this code when she was created to play this game means that this is the ONLY COPY of the code — hence her wanting to remain in the game and to scare others away.
Woah. More power than is possible even for an AI.
Love (or as close an aproximation as the baron gets) is a powerful force
Yup, looks like Baron’s got it bad.
It’s a little weird that Baron likes the video game liking qualities more when the avatar is female. It’s a lot weird that he’s a robot who is attracted to humans, or anything really. He’s like, Equus sapiens robotis attracted to a Homo sapiens digitalis or something?
Maybe one of the thesis of this whole thing is that sentience has the hots for sentience.
Sentience having the hots for sentience is pretty much the entire plot of about half the original “Star Trek” episodes. Must have been something in Shatner’s contract.
Oh, there’s a more disturbing aspect, as noted previously, the Baron is a unicorn! Of course, after any consummation — well, talk about “love-’em-and-leave’em”!
Notice you have avoided the Baron = Shatner (Skin Horse version) take.
Or is that already an old meme I’ve missed?
The power of love is a curious force,
Makes you want to be a better robot horse,
Gives your nobility a bit of a shove,
Not Wimsey’s mindwarp, it’s the power of love.
Don’t need money, don’t need fame,
Don’t need VR code messing with your brain,
It’s strong and it’s sudden, it’ll take your breath,
And your life it could changeth.
That’s the power of love.
if he is doing that on his own then its even more terrifying.
Too true! 🙂
Immediately thought of this comic with Aimee’s sentence in the last panel.
http://skin-horse.com/comic/seized-his/
Wow, Nick. Just wow.
That quote might not work quite as well when everyone in the room probably knows it’s from a movie…
Oh, that might be it. Aimee isn’t simply there to test the influence code, she’s there to become a part of it. Whimsy knows this is so powerful it could prematurely start a war (look what happened to her father!), so she needs a subroutine to censor the use of this outstandingly effective but potentially problematic tool. It’s used to thinking of people as parts of a well-designed whole, and who better to understand the nuance of cognitive editing than a personality profile trained to despise having her head messed with? The need for a gender flip isn’t immediately obvious, but it’s possibly simply because Whimsy finds it amusing. Nick and the others aren’t there to take away the crown, but to bugfix the integration.
It’s easy to say “no personality-variant of Nick would ever agree to something like that!” but we’re potentially talking about the ability to reshape the minds of an entire generation. If you could subtly and slowly eliminate racism, sexism, and maybe a little of the completely unfair human bias against gestalt intelligences, wouldn’t you? Could you live with yourself if you didn’t? What a great metaphor for the potential of media and the temptations of commercialization which enable it. Gosh, I like this comic strip maybe a little bit too much.
Seems to me it’s no worse than packaging brotherly love in a spray can.
Philios is the very basis for the creation of Armies.
If facing danger together didn’t make men love each other like brothers, then no Army in the world would last past the first battlefield.
Everything can be weaponized, and thus everything powerful needs to be monitored.
Jonathan Fisher
it’s quite possible that the genderflip was because Whimsy is used to having Princesses.
I can also think of a lot of harmful attitudes I’d love to see eliminated.
“If you could subtly and slowly eliminate racism, sexism, and maybe a little of the completely unfair human bias against gestalt intelligences, wouldn’t you?”
Not if it meant destroying free will. We are literally talking about mind control here.
Yeah, I would rather have evil remain in the world and fight it with ideas than to destroy free will.
Also, one of the most important freedoms is the freedom to be wrong. If the only way to spread your ideas is mind-control, then you should consider whether you might be the one who is wrong.
If it can make movies not stink, could it do something about the odor in Aimee’s lair?
It can only alter the perception of stankiness, not the reality, like the way that some people can’t smell asparagus pee.
All the capabilities of that crown: influencing consumers, editing perception, and expecially making movies not stink, are things that I think would really piss off Nick. So probably Aimee too. Maybe she figures she’s stuck there to make sure the hat doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Ideally she and Nick will find a way to get rid of it, or use it in more positive ways. At least so they can have good Whimsey movies again.
Nick has his particular kind of integrity no matter the form or gender.
I don’t understand why Aimee’s being given a copy of this code when she was created to play this game means that this is the ONLY COPY of the code — hence her wanting to remain in the game and to scare others away.
Kind of a smooth line from Baron ngl.