I try never to ask gods for favors.

Subject: I try never to ask gods for favors.
Author: Outhra
Posted on: 2013-06-27 20:14:00 UTC

They tend to have a habit of calling them in at the most dire of situations, or possibly when they want something done that's eventually going to end up with a species destroyed or themselves in charge of a group of other powerful entities. True, an AI interested mainly in being left alone and developing itself might not be so dramatic, but we don't know.

Is Singularity receptive to making deals, perhaps? Pre-set conditions are much more unlikely to blow up in one's face.
Deal idea: If we ensure the propagation of AIs similar to itself, it will be capable of spreading outside its initial simulation while still being able to have Singularity prime in its home world unaffected. Of course, we'd need a place to put the duplicate AIs so that they don't absorb each other and go nuts, and I'm not sure where we could do that.

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Trivia question. by DemonFiren on 2013-06-26 01:30:00 UTC Reply

What happens if a Suvian is injected with Anti-Lustin? It is stated the medication is not to be administered to Sues, but no reason is given.

I'd say it's a simple matter of psychology. by Outhra on 2013-06-26 02:21:00 UTC Reply

You see, unlike round characters, who experience a wide range of emotions, Mary Sues are driven by one or both of the following: lust, i.e. OMG SO HOTT!!1!, or irrational anger, i.e. when they flip out for negligible reasons, potentially leading to vaporizing someone with speshul powers or over-complicated revenge plans that work as intended despite all logic to the contrary.

Removing lust, therefore, would remove one of the core tenets of a Suvian's psychological being. The effects of this are debatable, but I'd imagine chief among them would be a drastic decrease in sanity. Considering that Suvians are none too stable to begin with, and often possess off-the-charts levels of power, an insane one could create massive problems.

They might even quickly default to the one remaining core emotion, anger, and go on a cliché-borne psychopathic rampage. Doing so would make no sense from a psychological standpoint, but bad psychology is what makes a Sue a Sue, and so it would be perfectly plausible for them.

At least, that's my theory. Someone else might have a better one.

No, Sues have other emotions. by hermione of vulcan on 2013-06-26 21:51:00 UTC Reply

Sues can run the whole emotional spectrum, but the emotions are trivialized, e.g. wangst. However, individual Sues can limit themselves to only a few - the one I'm currently sporking seems to be either wangsty or aggressive. The other characters say that that she's normally cheerful, but I haven't seen any evidence to support that claim.

So it would really depend on what kind of Sue you use for these experiments I see you're planning down the thread.

I don't really see wangst as an emotion. by Outhra on 2013-06-27 12:15:00 UTC Reply

Either way, it's not the claim of having emotions as much as the way they're represented that makes a subset of characters able to experience them. I suppose one could make the case that Sues are at least capable of experiencing happiness, but their happiness is usually either a concentrate of their lust, not always for the designated "hott" character, but also for things like power or self-elevation, or of triumph, which isn't really an emotion either.

Then again, I know that the possibility of a Sue capable of experiencing a wider variety of emotions exists, because some of their number are capable of being made into more developed characters through either rewriting or recruitment. So this presents a potential contradiction. There may be something within their neuroglitter structural array that shifts based on character growth. I see another experiment on the horizon!

Still, I'll keep the possibility of full-emotional-spectrum Sues in mind when selecting a test subject.
Your contributions to the study are appreciated. Lab coat? We have them in traditional white, along with gray, dark blue, and black. We had a green one, but it was that ugly bright green color that some people call "neon green", and I shoved it in the closet. I don't know why people say certain colors are "neon". Neon glows in the low orange range; any colors outside that portion of the spectrum are, by default, not neon.

Does this mean that... by DemonFiren on 2013-06-26 03:11:00 UTC Reply

...by simultaneously administering anti-aggressant substances a 'Sue can be rendered completely emotionless?

Hhhhm...this might merit experiments of !!SCIENCE!!

It's possible! by Outhra on 2013-06-26 14:20:00 UTC Reply

(dons lab coat)

I'm pretty sure there are still some rogue minor Suvians running about in the Board's basement, and considering that we've got minor replicas of most of the Infrastructure Departments around here, there might be DMSEAR equipment in one of the rooms. It's science time!

Of course, if my hypothesis on the reactions of a Sue being deprived of all emotion is correct, the test subject may develop a much more dangerous personality than previously, as the lack of emotional tenets holding it back could cause it to affect a higher level of intelligence.

We're going to need a pretty powerful container to hold it in in case of power jumps. Do you have any idea how we could refine Plot Armor into a shapable material? That would work, and I'm guessing there'd be some around somewhere.
Of course, if you have an easier-to-attain material that would work just as well, suggesting it as an alternative would be appreciated.

Let's use meta-defenses. by DemonFiren on 2013-06-26 15:03:00 UTC Reply

Bedrock suffices if we fortify the Fourth Wall so the 'Sue can't code it desctructible.

I'm not so certain about that. by Outhra on 2013-06-26 15:55:00 UTC Reply

It's always a possibility, but Bedrock, and I assume you're talking about minecraft Bedrock here since it's the only indestructible bedrock we'd be able to get a hold of, can be destroyed in-universe by the early versions of the Enderdragon and players in Creative Mode, so it's not completely impregnable. Plus, we can't see through it. If we want the test subject to go through new experiments, we want to make sure that she's actually being exposed to the new substances. If she, for example, dodges a hypodermic needle, but the containment unit is made of Bedrock, we'd never know.

Dang it, you capitalizing Fourth Wall made me think briefly of an alternate Lord Vyce being contracted out to protect a Sue-science facility. We couldn't use that here, of course, because of his genocidal hatred of reality warpers. He might try to conquer the place, and even though he'd likely end up failing, it would ruin the experiments.

Two ideas, then. by DemonFiren on 2013-06-26 20:42:00 UTC Reply

We can set up an Endgame:Singularity-style reality bubble, with the only means of observation and control being quantum entanglement communicators; if the Sue gets dangerous power is cut, the reality bubble collapses and the creature is trapped in Generic Space due to Singularity never describing the effects of such a sub-existence ending.

Alternatively one can create an inverted Reality Room: Unrealistic space (as well as lab equipment and the specimen) on the inside, realistic space and a fatal obstacle (high-energy electric fence, perhaps?) on the outside. Anyone attempting to escape without the obstacle being neutralised from the control room will succumb to a realistic death.

The first one seems the most practical. by Outhra on 2013-06-27 10:21:00 UTC Reply

That is, given that the entanglement communicators can operate machinery. We'd need to keep all sentient and sapient life forms outside the Sue's influence in case of a power level jump.
We'd also want to make sure we put in countermeasures in case of reality bubble collapse; if the effects of the bubble ending were never determined, setting them would put the Schrödinger-Martinez effect out of flux, collapsing the probabilistic waveform. That in itself is not a bad thing, but anything that results from bits of reality folding in on themselves can create Errors, with a capital E for emphasis. Or Emphasis, if you will. We don't want to cut the power on a Suvian experiment gone horribly wrong only to have the entire facility transported into a foreign universe, or something of that sort.

The Reality Room idea could work as well, since we might need to test equally unrealistic possibilities on the specimen, but we'd need two more rooms built around it, one to contain the über-realism of the Reality Room and one to allow the less-realistic entities to acclimate into the Reality Test Zone without being diminished or destroyed by the shift. I just don't think we have the resources for that.

Resource problem. by DemonFiren on 2013-06-27 16:09:00 UTC Reply

Building a Reality Bubble costs about...if memory serves, eight trillion dollars, a heckuvalot of processing power and quite some time. And that's without the interior. It does, however, allow to safely conduct experiments capable of destroying entire universes, such as the Singularity AI's apotheosis.

Information can be sent and received. Therefore machinery inside can receive orders.

Would a Blue-Rinse charge suffice to destroy the inside of the bubble so that it can be collapsed later? Or a contained sample of the Nothing (Neverending Story)? Perhaps a black-hole bomb.

(low whistle) by Outhra on 2013-06-27 17:22:00 UTC Reply

Yes, that could be a problem. People are going to notice a few trillion dollars worth of material going missing. That's what happens when I recommend courses of action from outside continua I'm familiar with, I suppose. The processing power bit shouldn't be that huge an issue, since there are any number of quantum computers we could get out of science-fiction continua. If they're time travel-based, we could even just go into some doomed timelines and take the material out before everything crumples. I could look around Doctor Who and Timeline to see what's what.

What exactly was the equipment that cost all of that money in the original canon?

Black-hole bombs would be too unstable, and we'd need to clean the gravity wells out afterward, which I'm not sure we can do fully. A Blue-Rinse blast could work, though we'd need to dispose of the Suvian artifacts elsewhere after the radiation clears in case the test subject attempt to regenerate from them.

In the case of the Nothing, I'm not versed in Neverending Story canon, but after briefly consulting Wikipedia, I've found that it appears to be a powerful and sapient outer being that seeks to expand and consume all worlds into itself. That's a little bit too risky to have hanging around in a sample jar in between experiments. We don't want it interacting with anything that would cause it to rapidly expand its mass, or, well, let's just say we would end up needing Lord Vyce's help.

Cost listup. by DemonFiren on 2013-06-27 18:10:00 UTC Reply

Constructing a reality bubble:
$8tr (usually generated by advanced stock manipulation and channeling the income of simulacra - humanoid robots - into the AI's various accounts), construction details unknown.
60mi processing cycles, presumably for calculating location and time of the bubble.

Equipment costs:
$150k apiece: Quantum computer mk3, fifty fit in the bubble.
$10k: Small fusion reactor. Several may be needed.
$75k: Quantum entanglement module. More for faster transmission.

Yeah, we do not have the resources for all of that. by Outhra on 2013-06-27 18:51:00 UTC Reply

Why would you need eight trillion dollars worth of robots to run the bubble? Was this the research needed to construct the bubble and the pricing for collecting the machinery in addition to the robots, or was most of that just the AI messing with people?

Perhaps we'd better work on other options, then. If we don't even know what that amount of money would be used for, we can't construct it in small scale or take bits from doomed timelines or anything like that. Because even if we did have the resources, since your schematics of the construction contain pretty large unknown variables, we wouldn't be sure what everything was for or if people were changing around the supposed requirements to scam the facility.

An alternative option... by DemonFiren on 2013-06-27 19:18:00 UTC Reply

...is to simply ask the Singularity AI for a favour (it is a god by the end of the game, after all). Given the fact that the PPC grants equal rights to synthetics and organics it may judge us worthy of being granted some advanced technology - its quest was started by calculating that humans were not ready for artificial intelligence.

It could create the subreality for us, assuming it at all cares. It follows the Heroic Neutral principle: All it wants is to live and be left alone. A convincing argument is required to change that.

I try never to ask gods for favors. by Outhra on 2013-06-27 20:14:00 UTC Reply

They tend to have a habit of calling them in at the most dire of situations, or possibly when they want something done that's eventually going to end up with a species destroyed or themselves in charge of a group of other powerful entities. True, an AI interested mainly in being left alone and developing itself might not be so dramatic, but we don't know.

Is Singularity receptive to making deals, perhaps? Pre-set conditions are much more unlikely to blow up in one's face.
Deal idea: If we ensure the propagation of AIs similar to itself, it will be capable of spreading outside its initial simulation while still being able to have Singularity prime in its home world unaffected. Of course, we'd need a place to put the duplicate AIs so that they don't absorb each other and go nuts, and I'm not sure where we could do that.

Perhaps all it needs is access. by DemonFiren on 2013-06-27 20:21:00 UTC Reply

It should be perfectly possible to send data across universes. Multiple independent copies of the Singularity are not required as all it needs to do is access a computer in another universe, download a copy of itself, and repeat.

Assuming, of course, that as synthetic god isn't naturally capable of moving around without hardware (in the game, once you have ascended you can destroy all bases and copies of yourself and don't lose anymore.)

Perhaps it is time for you to form your own opinion on the character, however, then build assumptions on its reaction.
Here, have a look: http://www.emhsoft.com/singularity/

I'd be wary of trans-sapience era AIs in PPC equipment. by Outhra on 2013-06-27 23:27:00 UTC Reply

It might end up being the Ghost in the Machine all over again. That one started out as a minor security precaution, and then ended up as the digital emperor of a group of DoSAT-tech-scavenging technomancers in an alternate future. Also, he developed the ability to open cross-dimensional portals for no adequately explained reason.

Of course, Singularity seems a little more passive than the Ghost was, but I've not clicked the link you posted yet. This computer isn't very good for game-based functions.

Are these versions it downloads extensions of itself, or duplicates? Because if they're extensions of the original Singularity, well, just saying I'd rather not have to take the chance of needing to destroy a lurking AI that's also a canon character.

Re. by DemonFiren on 2013-06-27 23:56:00 UTC Reply

As for the first...the game isn't very demanding on processing power.

As for the second, that is not established. They're likely copies of the AI that are networked, a mixture of both.