You know I love UnityXSweetheart, but I am just now wondering about physical intimacy. My wondering consisted of-
1. Oh dang. Is this gonna be bestiality?
2. No, wait, Unity can do that blood-possession thing. Cool.
3. Was #1 speciest? It was, wasn’t it? God dammit.
If both participants are sentient, it’s not bestiality. What it is we do not have a term for yet. (Larry Niven used “Rishathra”, but that’s just between different primate-evolved species.)
That being said, I am not sure if Sweetheart, with her many, many neuroses is ready for a sexual relationship, and as for Unity, I’m worried she may continue to get sex and sapientvorism confused.
Animals are already sentient. You’re thinking (I hope) of sapience.
Sentience is being able to sense things – see, hear, smell, et cetera, to respond to the outside world. Sapience is being able to think or reason.
Although, to be fair, I think most of our common animals are probably both sentient AND sapient, we just don’t recognize or want to admit it, and we’ve set the bar for what qualifies as “sapient” at rather a vague point.
All of that said, however, in this specific context what matters is consent and the ability to grant it.
Yeah, it sometimes seems to me that the definition of “sapience” shifts in response to discoveries in animal behaviourology and breakthroughs in A.I. — if animals/machines can do something then it’s not that.
The Mirror Test- “Oh that is me in the mirror and not some unknown, evil creature I should fight/flee from” test is a pretty handy fuzzy line that is something of a threshold. There are creatures that usually fail it (non-mad science dogs, cats, young human babies) that clearly have SOME thoughts and opinions, even if there isn’t a super strong sense of self and meta cognition.
The mirror test has a lot of problems. I don’t think it’s a test of sapience so much as a test of whether you or your society and culture has dealt with mirrors before.
My biggest problem with it is that I don’t think it’s ever been applied to a non-baby human who has never encountered a mirror before. Most of us grow up surrounded by mirrors, and by other people who already understand mirrors and explain them to us. “That’s you, little baby! Yes it is! That’s you!”
Like, if you went to some isolated tribe of humans somewhere in the remote regions of the planet and left a standing mirror in the woods, would they act all that differently than gorillas, jaguars, chimpanzees, et cetera? Spooked, curious, possibly aggressive? Maybe poking it with spears, throwing rocks at it, shouting at it?
Having a developed language probably makes understanding mirrors a lot easier. The people around you can say, “Hey! That looks just like you!”, which is really helpful for piecing together what’s going on. A lone person who has never seen their reflection would have a much harder time.
What if you went to some Medieval peasant and held a hand mirror up to them? Maybe they live in a region with no standing water, and have never seen reflections.They’d be freaked out by your devil magic, and think you had some evil spirit locked inside the thing you are holding, which is compelled to mimic the motions of others. They wouldn’t understand it is a reflection of themselves. Are they not sapient? Or do they just not understand what is going on?
Yes, the mirror test, where you present a (NMS) dog with a flat shiny sheet with no smell at all and expect them to recognize themselves.
Another thing animal behaviorists do is test face recognition by showing animals pictures of human faces. As soon as you show sheep pictures of sheep faces, and wasps wasp faces, recognition rates go way up for some reason.
IIUC, the mirror test involves things like putting a spot of something on the subject’s face and seeing if the subject recognizes that it’s on their own face and tries to clean it off. Which, of course, runs into problems wrt species that DGAF or are less visually centered. I heard about a researcher trying to apply a similar test to dogs, by chemically altering (uh, having her grad students chemically alter) samples of dog pee and then seeing whether the dog whose pee it is goes, “Wait, that smells me, but somehow wrong.”
(I do not know enough about the experiment or about dog behaviour/psychology to know what the “that’s me but wrong” reaction is supposed to look like.)
BTW, I have heard multiple anecdotes about dolphins liking mirrors.
I never did the spot-on-face mirror test with my cat, Perrine, but she did come to understand some basic theory of what a mirror does. At first she kept trying to find a way into the room on the other side of the glass, but after a while she realized I was in both “rooms” and in corresponding places in each, and if I did something to catch her attention in the mirror she would turn and look at me or turn an ear in my direction, but if I made an interesting noise sometimes she’d just adjust her gaze in the mirror to make eye contact with me via the reflection. So whether she understood that her reflection was herself, she did understand that my reflection was me and I was actually on the same side of the mirror as she was.
The mirror test (and its derivatives/equivalents for non-visually based organisms) tests sentience, not sapience. Sentience is knowledge of self vs. others from a third party perspective. Sapience is the capacity for reasoning or rational thought, with the minimum threshold usually placed at problem solving intelligence.
A lot of animals are sapient, and most of them are protected from being used as livestock or foodstock by law or cultural taboo. For some reason octopi aren’t, possibly because we have a hard time thinking of a mollusk as a sapient creature.
Man, I always get the two words confused when writing, although I do know what the difference is. Went to the trouble of writing “sapientivore” but misused sentient in the first sentence. At least I generated some interesting comments…
I like how Sweetheart’s eyes actually went blue during her BSOD. It reflects the lack of anything going through her neurons at this point. (Would she still be considered sapient if shock shuts down all higher order thought?)
Given the reference to Jason Donovan, I posit that you are about the same age as I am, Daibhid. (I knew it was a cover version only because my parents told me at the time.)
You know, Unity looks really good dressed up a bit. I think she would look good if she were dress up a bit around the office in future. Not necessarily a dress dressed up, but something like a blouse and slacks rather than a t-shirt and jeans.
Looks like we got another Roosevelt cousin.
You know I love UnityXSweetheart, but I am just now wondering about physical intimacy. My wondering consisted of-
1. Oh dang. Is this gonna be bestiality?
2. No, wait, Unity can do that blood-possession thing. Cool.
3. Was #1 speciest? It was, wasn’t it? God dammit.
If both participants are sentient, it’s not bestiality. What it is we do not have a term for yet. (Larry Niven used “Rishathra”, but that’s just between different primate-evolved species.)
That being said, I am not sure if Sweetheart, with her many, many neuroses is ready for a sexual relationship, and as for Unity, I’m worried she may continue to get sex and sapientvorism confused.
Animals are already sentient. You’re thinking (I hope) of sapience.
Sentience is being able to sense things – see, hear, smell, et cetera, to respond to the outside world. Sapience is being able to think or reason.
Although, to be fair, I think most of our common animals are probably both sentient AND sapient, we just don’t recognize or want to admit it, and we’ve set the bar for what qualifies as “sapient” at rather a vague point.
All of that said, however, in this specific context what matters is consent and the ability to grant it.
Yeah, it sometimes seems to me that the definition of “sapience” shifts in response to discoveries in animal behaviourology and breakthroughs in A.I. — if animals/machines can do something then it’s not that.
The Mirror Test- “Oh that is me in the mirror and not some unknown, evil creature I should fight/flee from” test is a pretty handy fuzzy line that is something of a threshold. There are creatures that usually fail it (non-mad science dogs, cats, young human babies) that clearly have SOME thoughts and opinions, even if there isn’t a super strong sense of self and meta cognition.
I love non-mad “science dogs”!
The mirror test has a lot of problems. I don’t think it’s a test of sapience so much as a test of whether you or your society and culture has dealt with mirrors before.
My biggest problem with it is that I don’t think it’s ever been applied to a non-baby human who has never encountered a mirror before. Most of us grow up surrounded by mirrors, and by other people who already understand mirrors and explain them to us. “That’s you, little baby! Yes it is! That’s you!”
Like, if you went to some isolated tribe of humans somewhere in the remote regions of the planet and left a standing mirror in the woods, would they act all that differently than gorillas, jaguars, chimpanzees, et cetera? Spooked, curious, possibly aggressive? Maybe poking it with spears, throwing rocks at it, shouting at it?
Having a developed language probably makes understanding mirrors a lot easier. The people around you can say, “Hey! That looks just like you!”, which is really helpful for piecing together what’s going on. A lone person who has never seen their reflection would have a much harder time.
What if you went to some Medieval peasant and held a hand mirror up to them? Maybe they live in a region with no standing water, and have never seen reflections.They’d be freaked out by your devil magic, and think you had some evil spirit locked inside the thing you are holding, which is compelled to mimic the motions of others. They wouldn’t understand it is a reflection of themselves. Are they not sapient? Or do they just not understand what is going on?
Yes, the mirror test, where you present a (NMS) dog with a flat shiny sheet with no smell at all and expect them to recognize themselves.
Another thing animal behaviorists do is test face recognition by showing animals pictures of human faces. As soon as you show sheep pictures of sheep faces, and wasps wasp faces, recognition rates go way up for some reason.
Point taken, but anyone who lives where there’s sometimes standing water should be able to pass the test. Except Narcissus.
IIUC, the mirror test involves things like putting a spot of something on the subject’s face and seeing if the subject recognizes that it’s on their own face and tries to clean it off. Which, of course, runs into problems wrt species that DGAF or are less visually centered. I heard about a researcher trying to apply a similar test to dogs, by chemically altering (uh, having her grad students chemically alter) samples of dog pee and then seeing whether the dog whose pee it is goes, “Wait, that smells me, but somehow wrong.”
(I do not know enough about the experiment or about dog behaviour/psychology to know what the “that’s me but wrong” reaction is supposed to look like.)
BTW, I have heard multiple anecdotes about dolphins liking mirrors.
I never did the spot-on-face mirror test with my cat, Perrine, but she did come to understand some basic theory of what a mirror does. At first she kept trying to find a way into the room on the other side of the glass, but after a while she realized I was in both “rooms” and in corresponding places in each, and if I did something to catch her attention in the mirror she would turn and look at me or turn an ear in my direction, but if I made an interesting noise sometimes she’d just adjust her gaze in the mirror to make eye contact with me via the reflection. So whether she understood that her reflection was herself, she did understand that my reflection was me and I was actually on the same side of the mirror as she was.
The mirror test (and its derivatives/equivalents for non-visually based organisms) tests sentience, not sapience. Sentience is knowledge of self vs. others from a third party perspective. Sapience is the capacity for reasoning or rational thought, with the minimum threshold usually placed at problem solving intelligence.
A lot of animals are sapient, and most of them are protected from being used as livestock or foodstock by law or cultural taboo. For some reason octopi aren’t, possibly because we have a hard time thinking of a mollusk as a sapient creature.
Man, I always get the two words confused when writing, although I do know what the difference is. Went to the trouble of writing “sapientivore” but misused sentient in the first sentence. At least I generated some interesting comments…
All I know is, when you look into an elephant’s eye someone is looking back at you. I wouldn’t say that about most other animal species.
You’d think a kiss for a dress was a bargain, but director Sweetheart got more than she bargained for.
Magnificent! Well played.
Full size poster of the third panel when?
Was all of this arc really just buildup for that third panel? Because I totally wouldn’t mind if it was.
“SWAK” from the third panel– “Sealed With A Kiss”!!! Nice touch! <3
Unity didn’t pay it back, she paid it forward.
UNITY used SWAK♥! It’s super effective! SWEETHEART is now confused!
I like how Sweetheart’s eyes actually went blue during her BSOD. It reflects the lack of anything going through her neurons at this point. (Would she still be considered sapient if shock shuts down all higher order thought?)
I think she broke her boss.
She is torn between liking it and mentally going over the workplace fraternization and sexual harassment policies and paperwork on loop.
smooches!
Tune: Sealed With A Kiss, Jason Donovan
Though you disapprove of my outfit,
Sweetheart, I promise you this,
I didn’t pay a dime from the office expenses,
I paid with a kiss.
The creepy guy doesn’t charge money,
Such gaucheness he’d just dismiss,
Tip pays him in kind, with double the dresses,
I paid with a kiss.
You question how I bought it,
Skin Horse must be reimbursed.
I gave you what it cost me,
But now your brain must have burst!
I’m going to campaign for the beast-men,
Not to do so would be remiss,
In a Sally Milgrim that was worn by Eleanor,
And bought with a kiss.
Very nicely done! Double points!
Perfect!
I only know it from Brian Hyland.
Given the reference to Jason Donovan, I posit that you are about the same age as I am, Daibhid. (I knew it was a cover version only because my parents told me at the time.)
I think Sweetheart just magically acquired color vision.
“Sealed with a kiss” amuses me since Unity is a notary public.
I have to wonder if this was actually part of some complicated plot to get Sweetheart out of the way for a bit by frying her brain.
You know, Unity looks really good dressed up a bit. I think she would look good if she were dress up a bit around the office in future. Not necessarily a dress dressed up, but something like a blouse and slacks rather than a t-shirt and jeans.
This is a Gawain and the Green Knight reference, right?
Ah Unity, perfect implement of destruction, has broken yet another mind.
Of course this one she isn’t having with steak sauce.