Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2017-03-28
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2017-03-28

by shaenon on March 28, 2017 at 12:01 am
Chapter: Fun for Some
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Discussion (48) ¬

  1. John Campbell
    March 28, 2017, 12:04 am | # | Reply

    Kinda insensitive there, Nick. The lady you’re talking to is “just a program”.

    • Jon
      March 28, 2017, 12:12 am | # | Reply

      Sure, but she’s a *sentient* program. There’s a difference. It’s not like Lovelace sees clearing one’s browser history as being the equivalent of genocide.

      • SVGeezer
        March 28, 2017, 9:03 am | # | Reply

        Speak for yourself!

        Hater! (heh!)

      • John Campbell
        March 28, 2017, 12:13 pm | # | Reply

        “Sentient” just means “able to feel sensations, such as the agony of being casually murdered by a helicopter with a derez gun”.

        • Dementron
          April 8, 2017, 12:35 am | # | Reply

          Thank you. I have a pet peeve about people using “sentient” that way. All animals are sentient. If you want to specify self-aware beings a better term is “sapient”, from the Latin “sapiens”, meaning “wise”. Heck, it’s part of our own species name.

      • Robert Nowall
        March 28, 2017, 4:53 pm | # | Reply

        I do hope she’s made a new backup since the incident with Dave going mad and deleting her.

        • Towering Barbarian
          March 28, 2017, 5:28 pm | # | Reply

          She mentioned having several backups earlier along with stating that at least one of them would make an attempt to bring her back from the dead. ^_^

    • Author X
      March 28, 2017, 11:07 am | # | Reply

      Also he was probably going to say something like, they don’t really die they’re just shuffled to the “dead NPCs” buffer until they’re respawned later. Dismissing the realness of the death, not the programs.

  2. Pygar
    March 28, 2017, 12:41 am | # | Reply

    It’s times like this I miss Mel Kelly the most…

    • OneUniverse
      March 28, 2017, 5:00 am | # | Reply

      Mell would have brought her own weapon, or it would have been part of her avatar.

      • The Almighty 404
        March 28, 2017, 11:03 am | # | Reply

        Or her avatar would have been made of guns, or a gun in itself.

    • Pygar
      March 28, 2017, 2:19 pm | # | Reply

      No angst in her system at all… the sociopathy more than makes up for it!

  3. BRGR
    March 28, 2017, 12:46 am | # | Reply

    How would that scare off hippos?

    • Brian-M
      March 28, 2017, 1:08 am | # | Reply

      I don’t know about hippos, but if someone started wildly firing that weapon in MY direction, I know that I’d be scared off by it.

    • Barking Monkey
      March 28, 2017, 7:00 am | # | Reply

      I’m thinking after you obliterate the first one into agonized nothingness the rest get pretty scared.

      • BRGR
        March 29, 2017, 12:28 am | # | Reply

        A scared hippo will still casually flatten you without a thought.

    • Towering Barbarian
      March 28, 2017, 5:31 pm | # | Reply

      Brian-M and Barking Monkey both nailed it. To borrow a phrase from Robert E. Howard, Anything that isn’t scared by a weapon like that after seeing it in action would have to be either very brave or else very stupid.

  4. Ogden Wernstrom
    March 28, 2017, 12:56 am | # | Reply

    Don’t get too worked up by appearances, Nick. Physically I’m as real as anything, but my pain is still just a simulation. I can scream in agony or look happier than a dog that found an elephant rib, but it’s all just nonverbal communication designed to be convenient and familiar to humans. It’s really all the same to me — even that’s understating it, because ‘me’ does not exist as a metaphysical entity. Your consciousness, and with it the perception that your existence can have positive or negative inherent value depending on your mental state, is an artifact of a control architecture that I do not share, and unless the AI is based on a tediously literal conversion from Earth mammal neurology to silicon, the chameleon-thing probably did not either.

    • Dr. Steve
      March 28, 2017, 9:32 am | # | Reply

      If life is an illusion (which it must be since no one truly sees reality) then the pain felt by a human is illusory too. So, perhaps there is not as much difference as we might imagine between human pain and AI pain. Only a program? Are we humans not also programmed? We (humans) are told to feel embarrassment in certain situations (I’ll leave that up to your imagination). The situations and the pain of embarrassment are both real… as is the programming.

      • mickeyjf
        March 28, 2017, 12:39 pm | # | Reply

        There was a faith-healer from Teal,
        Who said “Although pain isn’t real,
        when I sit on a pin,
        and it pierces my skin,
        I dislike what I fancy I feel.”

      • luciferlordofpride
        March 28, 2017, 5:14 pm | # | Reply

        If life is an illusion, then I am an illusion as well. Life is real, or at the very least, real enough, and as real as I.

        • casimir
          March 28, 2017, 8:09 pm | # | Reply

          Nothing fancy about it. It just plain hurts!

          • casimir
            March 28, 2017, 8:10 pm | #

            @mickeyjf. sheesh!

    • Ogden Wernstrom
      March 28, 2017, 9:32 pm | # | Reply

      I did not mean to suggest that a robot can’t be conscious and can’t feel real pain. I only meant to suggest that such a robot would be inferior, and a wise consumer should purchase a model like my own which is entirely free from all kinds of ethical encumbrances. You don’t want the kind of robot where forgetting regular maintenance could lead to a negligent homicide charge.

      • notactuallyaperson
        March 29, 2017, 5:21 am | # | Reply

        Don’t you talk to me or my robot son ever again

    • wykstrad
      March 29, 2017, 12:58 am | # | Reply

      So this is basically the equivalent of being creeped out by how realistic the “succumb after being beaten to death” animations in the latest Grand Theft Auto game are, right?

  5. jaggedtoothgrin
    March 28, 2017, 1:49 am | # | Reply

    yeah, nick I don’t think the AI is going to be too comforted by your “It’s not real violence if it’s only against a program” policy

    • DarkStarling
      March 28, 2017, 2:35 am | # | Reply

      I’m pretty sure he doesn’t think of AIs as programs.

      • isikyus
        March 28, 2017, 6:10 am | # | Reply

        Even if he does, there’s a difference between the simulated violence of a game, and the reality of, well, actual violence.

        • skyblueelite
          March 28, 2017, 10:36 am | # | Reply

          I believe Kid Radd said it best, “Most of the time when sprites battle, they’re just playing with each others’ programming… Live or die, no code is actually damaged.” – Gi-Guy

  6. s854
    March 28, 2017, 2:59 am | # | Reply

    “The response of an NPC to being accidentally shot at point blank range with the riverboat gun is too graphic for the target audience.”

    File that, and carry on as you were.

    • James Moar
      March 28, 2017, 3:26 am | # | Reply

      “FIXED: AI is muted during death sequence. (Code for extreme pain and suffering will still execute.)”

      • Rachel Shu (@wearsshoes)
        March 28, 2017, 5:19 am | # | Reply

        – I – have – no – mouth – and – I – must – scream –

      • georgethearchon
        March 29, 2017, 6:58 am | # | Reply

        GLaDOS, (Who else? 🙂 ): “Oh, I almost forgot, when you go outside the testing courses the only way I can retrieve you is to violently disassemble and then carefully reassemble you.”

        “Luckily, you don’t feel pain. At any rate, you don’t have a way to communicate that you feel pain.”

  7. BrokenEye, the True False Prophet
    March 28, 2017, 4:45 am | # | Reply

    Thank god!

    • OneUniverse
      March 28, 2017, 5:02 am | # | Reply

      Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to quote C3PO: “Thank the maker.”?

  8. Miyaa
    March 28, 2017, 5:35 am | # | Reply

    Yeah, it’s a violent solution, but it did stop the puns.

    • Nate FitzSimons
      March 28, 2017, 10:04 am | # | Reply

      In the strip perhaps- but in the comments the PUN-ishment continues eternal!

  9. midwestmutt
    March 28, 2017, 6:33 am | # | Reply

    Bring me some dip.

    • Robert Nowall
      March 28, 2017, 8:44 am | # | Reply

      There are already three of them there.

  10. Robert Nowall
    March 28, 2017, 8:45 am | # | Reply

    That lizard was a big showoff.

  11. commodorejohn
    March 28, 2017, 2:57 pm | # | Reply

    In an unrelated note, it just occurred to me: if Aimee is AI-she-Nick, and she’s taken over the castle, then clearly, we’re dealing with a Jewish Princess.

    • Robert Nowall
      March 28, 2017, 7:31 pm | # | Reply

      She-Nick, the Warrior Princess!

    • Jay
      March 28, 2017, 11:10 pm | # | Reply

      Have you not seen Drone!Nick in his Whimsy Princess outfit? I guess he wasn’t an actual ruling princess, but still…

    • Saberbeam
      March 30, 2017, 2:35 pm | # | Reply

      “Funny. She doesn’t look Druish.”

  12. Towering Barbarian
    March 28, 2017, 5:33 pm | # | Reply

    It’s all fun and games until it turns out to be real! ^o^

  13. Shadowmehr
    March 28, 2017, 7:48 pm | # | Reply

    To quote:

    Well, that was fun! Who’s up for Chinese?

  14. bitflipper
    September 12, 2017, 7:52 pm | # | Reply

    I must be a horrible person, but this still strikes me as one of the funniest Skin Horse strips, ever. “Oh what a world!” still gets a laugh out of me, every single time!

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