Grrl Power #1011 – Occupations and hazards
One might be tempted to think that working in entertainment, the two less mature Scovilles would have no excuse to not know what Ma Scoville’s job is, but just because she works in the entertainment industry, it doesn’t mean she’s working on Star Trek or the latest novel-turned-streaming-service-series-with-lots-of-violence-and-boobs. She does do that stuff some of the time, but I imagine she works for a firm that is contracted to a studio or two, and they have jobs like “Hey one of our sitcoms came up with a funny product the slobby husband’s unrealistically hot wife is going to try and sell, can you check on this list of funny names against actual registered trademarks” and other fairly routine busy work. On top of that, there’s probably a fair amount of non-disclosure stuff she has to deal with as to not spoil stuff about unaired shows.
This page is primarily to illustrate that mom has a serious adult-person office job, dad has an as-often-as-not work from home creative job, and guess who primarily raised the daughter, as if it wasn’t entirely obvious.
Okay, the funny thing about this page (to me) is that in the panels leading up to the hairpinsplosion, on this page and the prior one, I put some time into showing the bobby pins slowly losing the battle with Sydney’s hair, then almost entirely covered all that up when I added the orbs in. The orbs are usually the last thing I add to the pages, and even after 900+ pages post orb-reveal, I keep forgetting about them when doing layouts. That why when someone is standing just behind Sydney or over her shoulder, the orbs are sometimes spaced out weird or their orbit is tilted weirdly.
I ran out of time while doing this page, because I was drawing it over Xmas break. In the background of the Krognar poster, I wanted to add Krog standing on the hood of a police car, hacking into the roof as it explodes through a billboard with something like “Re-Elect Bob von Corruptman” on the front, really make it look like some action movie poster from the 80’s, but oh well. The idea of the movie in my head (yeah, I know, this has nothing to do with the comic, but this is the sort of stuff I think about while drawing) is a reverse Isekai. Barbarian comes to the present but instead of being overwhelmed by airplanes and light switches and whatever, he just goes out and kicks a bunch of ass and reminds all the bored soccer moms what a real man is like, and all the schlubby dad-bods get all up in arms about it at first but then start to come around and are like “Well I guess I could stand up to my jerk co-worker and maybe do some pushups.” I’m not sure how well a movie with the moral of “be an aggressive Alpha bro” would do these days, but presumably Laura is mentioning some job he got a while ago.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update: Getting Proofed!
Proofing’s kind of on hold until I get the vote incentive out.
December’s vote incentive guest stars Lana of Spying with Lana. January’s is a little delayed because of the holidays, but will likely be up with the next Monday comic.
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The orbs dodged…. Are they sentient?
Not that can be proved in-comic, but we’ve been wondering ever since the airb flew to her hand in the pool. Sydney has demonstrated conscious and subconscious control of them though, so it’s still tough to say.
Well, “sentient” is a very low bar. It just means that that something is capable of sensing its environment and having a subjective experience. Ants are sentient.
Despite the low bar, I don’t think they are sentient myself. I think the orbs aren’t even truly separate from Sydney’s body. Note that when they have a specific distance they can be before pulling on Sydney or pulling on the orbs is pulling on the other too. Sydney can also move them with her own mind. Think of them as the tangible ends of intangible limbs. I figure if there is a physical connection, it’s through a fourth dimension (not THE fourth, just A fourth dimension… much like a 1 dimensional being living on the length dimension, you can see 2 more dimensions than it can, each of those are *A* second dimension to the dot. Is it depth? Is it height? Which of those is “the third” to you? Neither)
So yeah I’m implying that Sydney has, unbeknownst even to her, limbs on her body that extend out in the fourth dimension and curve back around to insert the orbs into her 3 dimensional world. If so, they’re likely technological limbs, rather than biological, of course, making her into a sort of Doc Ock meets a Beholder, with multi-dimensional technology based Beholder eye stalks, with just the eyes being visible as some kind of creepily floating things… but they’re not creepy because they’re just orbs and there’s nothing threatening about orbs… unless you know what they can do…
If I’m right, it also means that it’s possible that Sydney could control the orbs without touching them. I have a suspicion that the point she put into the center where there were only 2 points before allows her to use a third, but she doesn’t know that because she already tried to use more than 2 orbs at the same time previously and it hasn’t occurred to her that she might have upgraded the number she can use simultaneously yet. Not that she could because she hasn’t figured out how to use them mentally outside of moving them around.
It’s also entirely possible that the “buttons” she uses on the orbs are just there because they manifest them for her primate brain that views the orbs as tools rather than appendages, and so it can’t conceive of the truth. I speak of her brain separately because there are unconscious parts of the brain, and I refer to those parts.
“Well, “sentient” is a very low bar. It just means that that something is capable of sensing its environment and having a subjective experience. Ants are sentient.”
They ‘could’ be sentient. It’s not like anyone’s arguing they’re sapient. It wouldnt be the first time that happened in comics after all. The Lantern Rings are all sentient also, even though they’re not sapient. So are mother boxes and father boxes. So is Skeets (Booster Gold’s computer buddy). Pretty sure so is VERONICA and the non-human version of JARVIS from Iron Man.
Oh yeah and also Doc Ock’s mechanical arms also have AI sentience, at least in the movie.
Is there a reason to think that Skeets isn’t sapient? He’s at least simulating it.
That’s as much evidence we have for Trump or Biden.
Because Skeets once corrected someone about that very thing. :) Probably because most people would look at Skeets’ dialog and think ‘that’s a person, not just a robot.’ It stood out because most of the time, writers (and most other people) do not understand that there’s a difference between sentience and sapience. :)
I’ll try to find the comic where he said that. It’s either a Booster Gold comic or a JLA comic. I have no idea about the JLU cartoon version of Skeets, although he’s quite endearing.
Skeets is a standardized 25th century BX9 security robot from the Space Museum. Skeets could probably pass the Turing test but wouldn’t handle the Chinese Room Problem. Sort of like the AI named T.O.M. in the video game ‘The Turing Test.’ He’s a simulation of sapience possibly, due to being a future-tech robot, not actual sapience, like certain other robots in comics, like the Vision (from Marvel), Ultron (maybe?, also from Marvel, definitely seemed sapient in Avengers 2), Red Tornado (DC Comics, all the Red Tornado robots in the comics were sapient, but not the one from the Supergirl TV show), GLaDoS (from Portal, who is actually an uploaded human mind – Cave Johnson’s assistant, Caroline), Amazo (in the JLU cartoon only, not most versions of Amazo, which are usually sentient but never sapient), and Wall-E and possibly EVA (from Wall-E).
Trump and Biden, love ’em or hate ’em, are both sapient beings. Whether you think Trump’s a jerk/idiot or not, or think Biden has dementia/Alzheimers or not, they’re both sapient. Anyone who says otherwise is letting their subjective political beliefs or political tribalism get in the way of their scientific objectivity. Human beings are sapient beings. It’s literally in our name. Homo Sapiens. :)
Robots, on the other hand, you need to be able to prove it first. Because human beings tend to anthropomorphize stuff very often and you’d be thinking all sorts of different things are sapient that are not even sentient.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBqhIVyfsRg
You don’t start with the assumption that a robot or computer is sapient just because they’re able to simulate responses that a human being might have. :) The people at Boston Dynamics would be seen as slavers and abusers then, what with how they treat the robots during training.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VgxAnZKM14
We’d all be crying about the last message played by Mars Rover ‘Opportunity’ (“Oppy”)- “My battery is low and it’s getting dark.” (which wasnt actually what it said but dang that story tugs at people’s heartstrings).
You start with the assumption that they are not, then would try to prove that they are (usually by disproving all arguments against them not being sapient, scientific method style).
Let’s be realistic here, Trump’s the one that has Dementia. I wouldn’t rule out Biden having Alzheimer’s though, he is pretty old.
Also, that being said, “Sapient” is also defined as “wise, or attempting to appear wise.” As is said, there’s very much a different between Knowledge, and wisdom, so there IS an Argument to be made for Trump being non-sapient under that definition (a fair amount of humanity, really).
The definition you’re following is “in reference to the human species.” i.e. a “sapient” robot having humanlike intelligence, emotions, and awareness.
So it really depends on context and which definition of Sapience you’re using.
“Let’s be realistic here, Trump’s the one that has Dementia. I wouldn’t rule out Biden having Alzheimer’s though, he is pretty old.”
I’m not getting into politics because I’m not wanting to deal with political tribalism from either side for something that has NOTHING to do with politics, but Trump does not have dementia, much as you may dislike him as a person. I’m not using the word ‘dementia’ as an insult. I’m using it in a coldly scientific definition. Dementia is an actual chronic and persistent mental disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease and injury, marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning on an objective scale. Which does not describe Trump (plus could and has been tested, in which he passed the test given – we can’t say for certain with Biden because he refused to take that test). And both Biden and Trump are sapient. Because both of them are human beings. IE, homo sapiens.
It’s not a dig at either of them of ‘hur hur, Trump/Biden’s not sapient because he’s not wise.’
“Also, that being said, “Sapient” is also defined as “wise, or attempting to appear wise.” As is said, there’s very much a different between Knowledge, and wisdom, so there IS an Argument to be made for Trump being non-sapient under that definition (a fair amount of humanity, really).”
Sapient doesn’t actually mean wise, in the scientific sense. It just comes from the latin for ‘to be wise.’ It’s not very scientific to use ‘wise’ as a scientific definition, because ‘wise’ is a very subjective term. You can say Trump is not wise, because you think he’s an idiot. Someone else will say Biden’s not wise because they think he’s an idiot. This isn’t scientific – it’s a personal like or dislike statement. So instead, use a scientific definition of sapience.
The main definition of sapience is ‘possessing self-awareness and higher level metacognition.’ Metacognition is ‘an awareness and understanding of ones own thought process.’ And yes, both Trump and Biden and pretty much every other human on the planet has a basic awareness of their own thought processes. Even people who can not articulate it have an awareness of it. That’s a basic element of sapience. Another basic element of sapience is an understanding that the future exists and an awareness of own’s own mortality, even when that mortality is not threatened in the presence.
“Argument to be made for Trump being non-sapient under that definition (a fair amount of humanity, really).”
Again, everything you said about Trump could be said about Biden as well by someone who does not like him. It doesn’t make it scientifically accurate though. I’m trying to not use sapience in some flowery language sort of way, because it’s REALLY hard to be scientifically accurate then, and really easy to allow personal biases based on likes or dislikes get involved. Hence why I don’t use ‘wisdom’ as a definition for sapience, just because the word is derived from ‘to be wise’ in Latin.
“The definition you’re following is “in reference to the human species.” i.e. a “sapient” robot having humanlike intelligence, emotions, and awareness.”
Yes, sort of. I am using that definition because that’s how the word is literally defined if we’re going to use it with any accuracy. Mainly because human beings are the first animals that were known to exhibit sapience on a high level, barring massive brain trauma or during infancy and the first few years of life. Other animals which may exhibit sapience usually only do on a lower level, even when they’re adults. At least in a way that we can discern scientifically. We might be completely wrong, admittedly. But the reason the definition I use is ‘in reference to the human species’ is because humans are the best example of sapience on the planet.
And no I’m not saying that out of hubris. Human beings rah rah we’re number 1 and all that. Any alien capable of communicating with us would have demonstrated it was also sapient, regardless of how human it appeared or how different from human it was.
( That being said, human beings rah rah we’re number 1:) )
It’s just the reason why I’m using a definition of sapience as being a creature being capable of doing what the only other creature we know for a fact is sapient can do thought process-wise. ie, us. If another creature can do something that approaches that level of higher thought, it’s decent evidence that it’s relying more on sapience than on instinct or basic survival senses.
“threatened in the presence”
I hate spell check. “Threatened in the present”
“threatened in the present” – if Schrodinger had gift-wrapped his thought experiment
Also, Trump is clearly a narcissist if anything. Both he and Biden are willing to lie through their teeth for political favor, though… and they’re both very old, white, men… how on Earth they were the primary political party’s candidates… just……..
All politicians are narcissists’ to some degree. Only a narcissist would think, “I’m the best person to have political power.”
Pretty sure most politicians are going to have some narcissism. Most billionaires too, just by the fact that they managed to become a billionaire. Same for anyone who loves being on camera.
I don’t really see them being white as something worthy of accusation though. Obama was a huge narcissist as well. If you want a President who had humility you probably won’t find one in the 20th century. Even looking for one who wasn’t a bit of a narcissist in the 18th and 19th centuries would be tough.
I agree with Daria, obviously. :)
As for why either of them were the primary political party’s candidates, again I really don’t want to get into a big political thing because it has nothing to do with the comic. I was going to write a long thing about why each person was nominated, then realized that WOULD lead to a big political thing that I don’t want to read or write about on a webcomic about superheroes (plus be pretty hypocritical of me) so I’ll just include the TL;DR of it. Trump was nominated because Republicans were annoyed about what happened with Romney so wanted someone who wasn’t milquetoast and had massive name recognition. Biden was nominated because nominating a self-described socialist worried the DNC and Biden was polling better than the other democratic candidates.
Did you really mean to say that the mortality is threatened? I mean:
If my mortality was threatened, I might risk it.
If the likelihood of my continued existence, by and large, a.k.a. my life, was threatened, I might not.
(Sorry. I had to. For science :P)
I mean life being threatened. I don’t mean your mortality will cease and you will instead be immortal, ya wiseguy you.
*shakes fist*
I like you. Rational and polite.
Thanks, I try. :) Not a fan of flame wars and one of the main things I like about the comic (aside from the great storyline and artwork and original power concepts for some of the characters) is the forum tends to be full of a lot of interesting people.
And also some people who make puns, so it keeps the ninja hit squads employed.
The implication that “interesting” and “make puns” are mutually exclusive is completely punreasonable. Just give us a chance, we’ll groan on you eventually. Hopefully before Pander files for our ex-pun-ction.
I refuse to pander to fora poopers. I insist on my right to have punreasonable hilarity in conversations with my pears!
Anothis, you will now see me not being polite as I unleash hordes of ninja to the homes of brichins and gorblimey for their crimes against humor.
“As is said, there’s very much a different between Knowledge, and wisdom, so there IS an Argument to be made for Trump being non-sapient under that definition …”
I was about to pick you up on that, but you saved yourself. Personally, I fail to see much sapience in any pollies in any nation. Naked greed, yes, they’ve been brought up on Gordon’s mantra since time immemorial.
Again, sapience isnt actually wisdom. Its just derived from the latin “to be wise.” Wisdom is flowery language. Sapience is self awareness and higher level metacognition. Saying ‘wisdom’ is just a setup yo try to pwn others in a pithy and way meant to insult instead of accurately describe. :)
“Sapience is self awareness and higher level metacognition.”
Sounds a lot like my dogs… And a cockatoo my Aunt had.
I could definitely see arguments about dogs being some sort of low level of sapience. :)
Don’t know about cockatoos (I’ve heard they’re extremely smart birds), although that’s mainly because I haven’t looked anything up about that, but I know grey parrots have been argued to have some level of sapience as well. Mainly because of one grey parrot in particular named Alex, who was the subject of an animal psychology experiment at Brandeis University (unfortunately he died in 2007).
It was a sulphur-crested cockatoo, and had learned my Aunt’s voice to perfection. When my aunt and cousin were at home — and ONLY when at home — it would call him “Joe, come here now!” two or three times a day, and would visibly shake with something that looked like laughter. It had other sentences… The bird was not caged, it would never enter anything that even vaguely resembled a cage, and the family was not willing to shoot it. It lived about 40 years with the family, and it was already mature when it rocked on in. Just decided to make itself at home.
Very cool (and hilarious).
Not sure if mimicry necessarily means sapience, although Alex the Grey Parrot was theorized to be sapient because he not only could mimic a human voice, but also seemed to be able to use that mimicry to respond to others and ask for things he wanted more than just ‘food’ (since food alone
could have just been a pavlovian response).
So who knows? It’s possible. Being able to communicate in a human-recognizable spoken language or sign language does go a long way to proving sapience, since otherwise we have to rely on being able to somehow know what’s going on in the creature’s mind. And we’re not telepathic, more’s the pity.
It’s also why scientists admit that chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans exhibit some level of sapience, not just sentience, in animal psychology studies. :)
Eh, sapience also means self awareness. Not even the Gorillas have sapience, and plenty of humans don’t actually have sapience, but just mimic the humans that do.
With animals, we test with a mirror test. Without complex language, they can’t tell eachother that, “Hey, that reflection is you.” which means we can test out their capacity for figuring out Theory of Mind using that mirror. However, if someone ‘spoils the trick’ to a fellow human, that human “knows” that their reflection is themselves, but that doesn’t mean they have the self-awareness that makes it so they’re sapient (or aware that they’re actually part of the world they observe) on an instinctive level.
One example of a lack of sapience in humans is psychopathy. Psychopaths are incapable of relating their internal experiences to the experiences of those around them; that’s what makes them psychopaths, and it is a distinctive non-sapient trait.
Further, psychopaths are more common among serial killers and the rich end of society than anywhere else (they’re more likely to have a parasitical relationship with their community instead of symbiotic, so it’s a result of them leeching more than their fair share whenever they can get away with it.)
As such, there’s actually validity to claiming Trump and Biden might neither be sapient. As it stands, they’re both rich, which means a 10% chance at least on that count alone. So the question is… does either one of them seem narcissistic with a strong tendency to put themselves first in front of everyone else?
Is a strong tendency enough? If someone considers life like a race and weighs their own forthcoming as higher than that of anybody else and/or sees everybody else as competition and thus, in fact, lacks altruistic traits, at least behavior-wise, would they qualify as a psychopath?
Just curious.
I think Harmony might be confusing sapience with empathy with how he’s comparing it to sociopaths and mimicking others to ‘pass’ as normal in that respect.
For any… successful… polly, narcissism is a necessary attribute.
So, basically, anyone who is doing better than me is a non-sapient psychopathic narcissist?
“Not even the Gorillas have sapience,”
A lot of more recent animal psychology experiments have actually suggested that gorillas DO have sapience. They’re one of the few non-human creatures that scientists tend to think do. Probably because of long-term experiments with gorillas like Koko, who not only learned over 2000 words of spoken English, but was able to respond to roughly that of a 3 year old human’s intelligence level, where she UNDERSTOOD those words, including some words that were abstract representations.
“and plenty of humans don’t actually have sapience, but just mimic the humans that do.”
I would not say ‘plenty of humans don’t have sapience.’ I think you might be confusing ‘sapience’ with ’empathy.’ Some sociopaths do not have empathy but are able to mimic others who do to trick people into thinking they have empathy. ie, high functioning sociopaths.
Almost all humans have sapience, barring massive brain trauma, brain defects, or other situation which prevents higher level consciousness. Even a psychopath or a sociopath is sapient except in the most extreme cases, most people would argue. In fact, some sociopaths are HIGHLY self-aware. They just have a limited ability to feel empathy or remorse, or sometimes are unable to feel empathy or remorse at all. That’s not the same as not being self-aware, on at least a very basic level. ie, having the ability to focus on yourself and how your actions, thoughts, or emotions (of one is not a sociopath) do or don’t align with your internal standards.
Btw, not only did Koko the gorilla teach sign language to another gorilla, Michael… she also taught him UNIQUE signs which she had not learned from the handlers. The ability to use high level language, and not JUST mimic or copy it, then teach that language to others consistently, is a very good indication of sapience.
Ultron would be sapient in the comics because his core operating system is actually copied from the brain patterns of a human being (Hank Pym) from Pym’s first attempts at artificial intelligence and going the M5 route. It’s why he has his insane Daddy issues (although given Pym created him he’d really be Ultron’s ‘mother’) and keeps pulling stunts like trying to turn Janet Van Dyne into his robotic wife Jocasta (also sapient since she’s got a partial copy of Janet’s brain patterns), Mockingbird being used to create Alchema and even using the brain patterns of his ‘family’ (Wonder Man, Pym, Janet, Grim Reaper and I think a couple others) to create an entire civilization of androids that received random blendings of the various brain patterns to give them individuality.
Meanwhile Red Tornado’s sapience comes from that air elemental that inhabits his shell.
“Ultron would be sapient in the comics because his core operating system is actually copied from the brain patterns of a human being (Hank Pym) from Pym’s first attempts at artificial intelligence and going the M5 route”
Sounds consistent. I’m convinced. :)
“Meanwhile Red Tornado’s sapience comes from that air elemental that inhabits his shell.”
Again, I’m convinced. Great explanation and comic book-based arguments. :) Apparently in DC, elementals are sapient, so therefore Red Tornado’s ‘siblings’ (Red Torpedo, Red Inferno, and Red Volcano) are also sentient for the same reasons, I’m guessing.
“Human beings are sapient beings. It’s literally in our name. Homo Sapiens. :)
Robots, on the other hand, you need to be able to prove it first.” – Pander
Isn’t that just circular reasoning, with a bit of casually species-ist double standards thrown in for good measure? {Insert whatever a ‘winking Devil’s Advocate’ emoji would look like}
But the Devil’s Advocate does have a point.
On the one hand, that position implicitly argues that the bar for ‘sapience’ should be however low it needs to be in order to bump every single Human over it, essentially on grounds of common etymology and Carl Linnaeus’s arbitrary choice. There weren’t even any other species in the genus homo to differentiate sapiens from, as far as mid-1700s science knew, he just needed a word to put in that level of his species organisational chart.
On the other hand, that position requires any non-Human to clear a bar that’s barely defined at all beyond some vague ‘know it when we see it’. And if past record is any guide, any time that something does manage to pass the existing bar (if the tester made the mistake of actually deciding where it would be, rather than leaving it usefully vague), some new trial will suddenly be declared also crucial, often cherry-picked so that they fail and don’t have to be recognised as ‘fully sapient’.
If we’re being at all intellectually honest, we have a choice. Either the bar for sapience/Personhood is low enough that all Humans automatically qualify, in which case a whole lot of others already do as well – including both biology and software. Or it’s high enough to let us continue feeling comfortably unique, in which case not all of us are actually justified in that feeling (and any speculation on what proportion that may be is an irrelevant tangent, compared to establishing that it is not necessarily zero). Or we just double down on the deliberate discrimination, and abandon all pretense that entry to the ‘recognised sapient Peoples club’ is based on anything other than our own prejudice.
“So yeah I’m implying that Sydney has, unbeknownst even to her, limbs on her body that extend out in the fourth dimension and curve back around to insert the orbs into her 3 dimensional world.”
This could be true as well. When Krona looked at the orbs while activated for an upgrade, she saw that there was a LOT more to the Orbs than what Sydney and everyone else could see. Basically a tie into the core mechanics of the universe. Which could mean that it then tied back into Sydney in some way.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-506-square-root-access/
(panel 5) – (also Comic #508 on panel 2)
Which is might be what the Squidwards were picking up in their scan later on, which only showed anything once Sydney was actively using one of the orbs (although a second orb orbiting her was showing information as well, even without Sydney touching it).
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-641-well-thats-probably-not-good/
(panel 8)
Plus it seems odd that the Squidwards only found Sydney again once her skill tree came up, even though she was hiding.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-660-armored-on-the-inside/
I would have thought since they can’t be scanned, they’re not really“there” (not in the traditional sense anyway), that they must be some type of projection, but figured it couldn’t be a psychic projection, because Gwen would have probably noticed that
Something more like a space-time projection might work… it could take much of the functionality out of her view (though quite possibly visible within Krona’s) – just a slim projection of the “UI” as a sphere with literally nothing ACTUALLY in the 3D space “surrounded” by the orb material we see. In our dimensional space they’re literally just empty balls with perhaps the slightest trace of electronics to detect when and where they are touched. All the active components are in some other space-time context that is literally touching ours, but simultaneously unable to get in the way of the aesthetic UI.
Need a button? Just project the button into the space just outside of the sphere as a sliver of material. The ability to project from 4D space into 3D space makes physical UIs for 3D beings a snap. As easy as our capacitive displays are for two dimensional UIs, but probably more advanced in various ways.
It does make me wonder if Dabbler has ANY ability to access a 4th spatial dimension, and just didn’t try to look at them that way for whatever reason, or if that’s fairly unique to Nth level tech
I think they are. They really should be to be from having that advanced Tech to do what they do.
They probably have AI that’s designed to link symbiotically with the user. Not sure if the designers ever expected a being of human level to bond to them.
which begs the question of the minds of such beings, one consciousness with subconscious, some surreal mix, multi-mine like a hyper advanced distributed intelligence but not like conjoined twins but a shared but separate mind (like Harem), or something that uses avatars that work as different types of minds but ultimately are one being.
In fiction I’d probably just say ‘they’re sentient if the creator of that fiction says they’re sentient.’ :) Same for sapience, although it doesn’t seem like the orbs are sapient. They might not even be sentient, since we’ve seen that they ‘go to sleep’ when Sydney goes to sleep. ie, they don’t have any sort of mind of their own, possibly. They stop orbitting. They stop glowing.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-293-zonked/
Even though they’re most likely still ‘tethered’ to her, even when she’s asleep or they’re asleep, because when they were in the tube she wore and were ‘asleep’ when she hadn’t touched them for a while, she was still unable to move away from them beyond a certain distance and vice versa.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-85-wild-imaginings-hopefully/
And based on the scans by the Squidward Scout, there seems to be some tie or linkage between Sydney’s brain and the orbs, which argues against them having their own mind (unless they’re maybe parasitic or something and need someone else’s brain input before they can have their own sentience or sapience).
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-641-well-thats-probably-not-good/
Oh one other thing. They DON’T all go to sleep if two of them are still being held by her, like they were after Sydney got back from Alar/Alari Prime and was sleeping with the shield and life support orbs taped to her hands. But that might also be because Sydney literally did NOT fall asleep that much that night, and when Peggy came into her room, she was already awake but REALLY REALLY TIRED.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-747-physical-training-snooze-dont/
(so maybe for the orbs to turn off for the night, Sydney might need to enter the last level of REM sleep, not just ‘sleep’ in general)
I think if it’s tied to her level of sleep, and if we’re assuming she did get some kind of sleep, just not deep or good sleep, I would argue that it isn’t REM but rather stage 4 deep sleep that she definitely didn’t get that night. REM is basically a totally different system, that you can enter from any of the 4 stages of sleep (we just *usually* enter from stage 4), meanwhile the 4 stages of sleep sort of cycle throughout the night, and you need to enter stage 1 first. If you have ever entered a dream state while only “half asleep” then you skipped straight from stage 1 sleep to REM. REM is technically a totally separate state of consciousness, whereas IIRC the 4 stages of sleep aren’t sufficiently different from one another to constitute being considered a fully separate sate of consciousness, just an evolution of the same state.
Another interesting myth is that dreams *only* happen in REM state, while *most* dreams happen in REM, there are also dreams that happen in stage 4 on occasion, but there is a difference to the emotional quality they can have (I forget what specifically the difference is, however), but most of the time when we wake up from a dream it is from REM because it is simply easier for the brain to wake up from REM than stage 4, and generally speaking we don’t remember dreams that we don’t wake up from, thus it isn’t the case that there are people who “don’t dream”, but rather there are people who probably largely by chance just don’t often wake up while dreaming, and thus have no recollection of dreaming. Generally speaking it can be assumed that if you enter REM you are dreaming, but it can’t be assumed that you are dreaming if you are in REM (since stage 4 dreams *are* a thing, just not a thing to be taken as a given the way REM dreams are).
Cool info. A lot of that reminds me of that show, Day 5. :)
I was pondering more the minds of the beings that made the orbs more so than the orbs themselves with my statement.
Ah, okay. :)
Do you mean ‘sapient’?
I think they’re talking about sentience instead of sapient. Because it’s unclear if the orbs are even sentient. There hasn’t really been ANYTHING to suggest sapience, while there’ve been some hints at possible sentience. :)
Pander,
The orbs sentience is something that’s been cleared long ago. It wouldn’t be able to create an active see through shield if this wasn’t the case.
Her fly orb can detect where she is in the universe and create an aether gate without harming the user shows this as well.
Lastly, the mere fact that when Sydney was trapped by Concreta an emergency aethergram asked if she needed assistance and went to get help from Cora was the last straw. That couldn’t be done without sentience.
Sapience is a different story.
“The orbs sentience is something that’s been cleared long ago. It wouldn’t be able to create an active see through shield if this wasn’t the case.”
I’m confused about what you’re saying here, and can’t really respond to it until I understand what’s being stated. Please explain.
“Her fly orb can detect where she is in the universe and create an aether gate without harming the user shows this as well.”
A GPS can tell the driver where they are, but a GPS is not sentient. And while we can’t create wormholes, I’m not sure how creation of safe wormholes indicates sentience, rather than having pre-mapped safety protocols for creating wormholes. The Stargates in Stargate SG-1, the Mass Effect Gates, and the Hyperspace gates in Babylon 5 are not sentient though, if I’m going to compare it to other fictional technology.
“Lastly, the mere fact that when Sydney was trapped by Concreta an emergency aethergram asked if she needed assistance and went to get help from Cora was the last straw. ”
That was using her auto-fab glasses which have a communicator in them to send messages, not the orbs, which were trapped at the time when Concretia had captured her. So it has nothing to do with the orbs. Also it wasn’t an aethergram. Unless you’re acting like Sydney fake-talking to the orb was real. It wasn’t. It was her trying to stall for time for someone to come rescue her.
That being said, even if the orbs had been used to send a message to Cora (which they weren’t) that would not be sentience. Radios, Walkie Talkies, and telephones are not sentient and the Playstation VR are not sentient either – merely being able to use something to communicate with someone else to ask for help is not an indication of sentience, especially when done at the command of the device’s user.
There are really only two requirements for sentience. Cognition and the ability to sense surroundings. You can have a philosophical debate over what that means but it boils down to that. With that said, lets move to why the aforementioned examples.
The shield orb: The shield orb has been shown that it can filter out harmful photonic stimulus to the user or others organisms inside the shield. This alone is subjective a sense and dependent on the physiology of the user. A human albino is different from Sydney, which is different from Maxima, which is different from that thing that ate gamma radiation. The orbs would have to not only learn what is necessary for the user (cognition), but also sense what the user can handle and filter out the rest (sense it’s surroundings).
Furthermore, the mere fact that the shield turned red to alarm Sydney of danger further shows this as well. Color is subjective not only each and every species but also to the user specifically. Not everyone sees colors the same way, so the orbs would have to learn the users preferences and compensate for said subjective nature.
Fly orb: I’m going to go into more further detail with this balls capabilities as you are correct that the ability alone to sense it’s location isn’t enough. The aether gate comes with features that shows two things. That it’s capable of storing information of past experiences, and that it’s able to sense it’s location and what’s safe for the user. It does this by logging past locations where prior gates were created, and creating a new point for the aether gate to safely connect to.
To do this not only does the orbs need to take into account the expansion of the universe, but the hazards of aether gate travel. The position of the entrance and exit gate have to be subjective for the safety of those involved. This is especially true of the air space around The Fracture (a place Sydney jumped to more than once). The orb would have to have made a gate close enough to it that Sydney could reasonably get down to the surface, and in such a way as to NOT be in the way of the space, air, or land traffic. That’s some significant calculations and processing that GPS can’t and won’t do. Air traffic controllers have a hard time doing this in real time let alone something that lacks cognition like a computer.
AI emergency assistant: The AI was shown to exist in comic 905. In there Sydney makes an educated guess that it’s an “Anthropomorphization of the orb A.I. Assistant”. Since it appears that the A.I. was talking with Sydney through her mind, we can deduce that the A.I. would have informed Sydney what it was, and therefore we can safely say that it’s not from the glasses but the orbs. As such your argument that it’s not fails spectacularly.
Furthermore, it’s not the action of sending messages that shows sentience, but the interaction with the user that does. The fact that it’s not done that in other situations where the orbs couldn’t be accessed shows learning capabilities. Granted this could be from something Sydney unlocked, but it doesn’t change said fact. The fact that it knew Cora or Dabbler could see it shows it’s aware enough to differentiate between different sapient creatures and know their specific characteristics and abilities. This alone is something that not all sapient let alone sentient creatures can do. It’s also something that Sydney had no knowledge of too.
“There are really only two requirements for sentience. Cognition and the ability to sense surroundings. You can have a philosophical debate over what that means but it boils down to that. ”
Like I said, and Tokumei said as a response to the OP),sentience does not have as high a bar as sapience. :)
“The shield orb has been shown that it can filter out harmful photonic stimulus to the user or others organisms”
This is not an indication of sentience. Just like my Transitions sunglasses are not sentient. Neither are my reading glasses just because they have blue-light filters so I don’t get a headache from staring at screens all day.
“Furthermore, the mere fact that the shield turned red to alarm Sydney of danger further shows this as well.”
This is not an indication of sentience. A fire alarm is not sentient. Nor is a carbon monoxide alarm. Nor is a motion sensor or pressure sensor programmed to go off after a certain limit near equipment failure.
“To do this not only does the orbs need to take into account the expansion of the universe, but the hazards of aether gate travel.”
Pre-programmed safety protocols are not an indication of sentience. The Stargate in SG-1 is not sentient. Not to mention both Sydney’s orb’s aetherium causeway safeties (according to Altus) and the Stargate safeties (according to Samantha Carter) are able to be overridden.
“AI emergency assistant: The AI was shown to exist in comic 905. In there Sydney makes an educated guess that it’s an “Anthropomorphization of the orb A.I. Assistant”. Since it appears that the A.I. was talking with Sydney through her mind, we can deduce that the A.I. would have informed Sydney what it was, and therefore we can safely say that it’s not from the glasses but the orbs. As such your argument that it’s not fails spectacularly.”
LITERALLY NO. There is no AI emergency assistant. This was Sydney trying to STALL FOR TIME. Nothing was ‘shown to exist.’ You had Sydney first trying to distract them, them just stalled for time for Cora to get to her since she had sent a distress message with her pre-fab communication glasses, which you later see that Cora receives the message on in comic 908, last panel. (ping!)
DaveB even implied in his blurb that this scenario is one of the scenarios that Sydney even thought of. “She’s thought about what she’d do in a situation like this and is being weirdly convincing about it.”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-908-bombast-industrial-complex/
(past panel)
Cora was not alerted to Sydney by an AI assistant, Cora was alerted BY THE GLASSES.
“Furthermore, it’s not the action of sending messages that shows sentience, but the interaction with the user that does.”
My phone is not sentient.
“The fact that it’s not done that in other situations where the orbs couldn’t be accessed shows learning capabilities.”
No messages were sent with the orb. Cora received a message from the GLASSES. Which we already know can receive and send messages. She’s used it to get messages from Frix as well, from lightyears away.
“Granted this could be from something Sydney unlocked, but it doesn’t change said fact.”
There was nothing unlocked, and there is no ‘said fact’ about this.
“The fact that it knew Cora or Dabbler could see it shows it’s aware enough to differentiate between different sapient creatures and know their specific characteristics and abilities.”
Cora did not see any AI of the orbs. She received a message from the glasses. That’s what the ‘ping!’ in comic 908 was. DaveB literally stated it. Plus you can SEE IT REFLECTED IN HER EYES IN THE LAST PANEL.
Quote from DaveB in Comic #908:
“Ok, so that last panel, hopefully you can tell what’s happening there, but it’s a little small. I should have zoomed in more on Cora’s eyes. Basically she’d getting an alert. I think a lot of you have guessed the source at this point.”
“This is not an indication of sentience. Just like my Transitions sunglasses are not sentient. Neither are my reading glasses just because they have blue-light filters so I don’t get a headache from staring at screens all day.”
Transitions don’t filter out sunlight based on who or what wears them. That goes beyond the capabilities of non sentient programing. This is because of how subjective it is. It shows both capabilities in decision making and sensing it’s surroundings. Your argument ignores this which is why you’re missing the point.
“This is not an indication of sentience. A fire alarm is not sentient. Nor is a carbon monoxide alarm. Nor is a motion sensor or pressure sensor programmed to go off after a certain limit near equipment failure.”
A fire alarm that makes decisions based on the preferences of the spices or persons it’s alarming does. The fact that it chose to go red is the key. Again COLOR IS SUBJECTIVE. Red doesn’t indicate bad stuff for everything and everyone. It ONLY indicates bad stuff for us, because we choose to make it so. Again you miss the point.
“Pre-programmed safety protocols are not an indication of sentience. The Stargate in SG-1 is not sentient. Not to mention both Sydney’s orb’s aetherium causeway safeties (according to Altus) and the Stargate safeties (according to Samantha Carter) are able to be overridden.”
Again you missed the point, as I wasn’t talking about those safety protocols. Instead of cherry picking my words perhaps you should read what I wrote in context to the rest of the paragraph.
“LITERALLY NO. There is no AI emergency assistant. This was Sydney trying to STALL FOR TIME. Nothing was ‘shown to exist.’ You had Sydney first trying to distract them, them just stalled for time for Cora to get to her since she had sent a distress message with her pre-fab communication glasses, which you later see that Cora receives the message on in comic 908, last panel. (ping!)”
I’ll concede that point. It would appear that Dave fooled me into believing that said A.I. existed.
“My phone is not sentient.”
If your phone shows that IT (not the user) can alter it or change how it responds based on who uses it, then yes it is. For that change shows consciousness. It shows choice. It shows decision making based on the sensed surroundings. Thereby it shows sentience.
“Transitions don’t filter out sunlight based on who or what wears them.”
My Transitions sunglasses won’t work for anyone who does not have my particular prescription. Anyone else will feel very uncomfortable wearing it.
The glasses are not sentient. For that matter, my phone is not sentient despite it having a fingerprint lock on it, where only I can use my phone.
“It shows both capabilities in decision making and sensing it’s surroundings.”
It doesn’t. I am concerned that you don’t understand what the word ‘decision’ means. A decision is a conclusion or resolution reached after consideration (consideration being defined as ‘careful thought’). There has been nothing to show that the orbs employ any sort of thought whatsoever, it’s based on Sydney’s thoughts instead. COULD the orbs have thought? Yes. Has there been ANYTHING to show they do? No. You’re making an assumption based on nothing. Actually more likely based on being tricked by the ‘AI interface’ trick that Sydney used to stall for time, but now that you know that’s not true, I’m not sure why you’re still assuming the orbs ‘think.’
“That goes beyond the capabilities of non sentient programing”
Bio-filters, retinal scans, and fingerprint locks are not sentient. And do not go beyond the capabilities of non-sentient programming.
“A fire alarm that makes decisions based on the preferences of the spices or persons it’s alarming does”
A Fire alarm does not ‘make decisions.’ It reacts entirely based on a pre-programmed series of functions involving a photoelectric sensor and a light source. As smoke enters the chamber and crosses the path of the light beam, light is scattered by the smoke particles, aiming it toward the sensor, which in turn triggers the alarm. This is not a ‘decision.’ There’s no thought involved.
“The fact that it chose to go red is the key. Again COLOR IS SUBJECTIVE. Red doesn’t indicate bad stuff for everything and everyone. It ONLY indicates bad stuff for us, because we choose to make it so. Again you miss the point.”
1) You’re making an assumption that it ‘chose’ to go red. It could just be programmed to turn red.
2) Red could also symbolize ‘bad’ for the creators of the orbs.
3) The orbs could be programmed to analyze the brain patterns of its user, and choose whatever color the user would recognize as ‘bad.’ That’s not ‘thinking.’ You’re anthropomorphizing technology without a rational basis to assume how the orbs work.
4) If the orbs are tied to Sydney’s brain (which they do seem to be since she can mentally control them), it is reasonable to assume the warning signals the orbs use would also be tied to Sydney’s brain patterns.
“Again you missed the point, as I wasn’t talking about those safety protocols. Instead of cherry picking my words perhaps you should read what I wrote in context to the rest of the paragraph.”
I’m not cherry picking your words. I’m literally responding to almost every single sentence you’re writing, sentence by sentence. That’s the opposite of cherry picking. It’s why my posts tend to be so long.
“If your phone shows that IT (not the user) can alter it or change how it responds based on who uses it, then yes it is.”
I’m assuming you mean ‘algorithm’ instead of IT (which just means ‘the use of any computers, storage, networking, and other physical devices, infrastructure, and processes to create, process, store, secure, and exchange all forms of electronic data.). Otherwise your sentence does not make sense, since using the phone itself -is- IT.
So lets read your sentence again. “If your phone shows that algorithm (not the user) can alter it or change how it responds based on who uses it, then yes it is [sentient].”
No. You’re incorrect. An algorithm does not have to be dependent on the user actively changing something for the algorithm to do something different. It does not make an algorithm sentient. For example, if you google ‘recipes for baking cakes’ the search algorithm will find many different web pages, which show different recipes for baking cakes. You did not tell the phone exactly which websites to go to though. It chooses which ones come up on your search based on a pre-existing algorithm. The search engine is not sentient though. It’s not making decisions based on careful thoughts, just a pre-existing algorithm that was already in place.
The functionality of a search engine is not sentience.
Nor is the programmed function a washing machine takes in laundering your clothes after you just turn a dial making the washing machine sentient.
“For that change shows consciousness.”
No it doesn’t. It shows a pre-existing algorithm doing what it was programmed to do in a particular set of processes. There is no thought involved. There is no consciousness involved.
“It shows choice.”
No. Take this simple program in BASIC for example (forgive me if my BASIC is rusty):
10 Input “Pick a number?”;n
20 If n<10 then print "You suck";end
30 Print "You rule."
Lets assume for the moment that I did this simple program correctly (even though I probably messed it up since I haven't programmed in basic since I was 8).
This is not the computer making a choice of whether to say 'You suck' or 'You rule' based on the number picked. Even though you have no idea in advance what it will say without looking at the program. It's not making a choice to say 'You suck' or 'You rule.' It's just following a program. An algorithm. The program has no will of its own.
But Pander, you benevolent barrister of brilliant brainpower, I did not say 'inputting a number' – I said 'it makes decisions based on SENSED surroundings.'
Fine. I have an air purifier in my house which only starts working at a higher level once it detects orders and particulates in the air, rather than always being on. It gets its information from sensors that detect air impurities in the surrounding area. Then a program decides how high a level the air purifier should change to, until those air particulates are down to a level at which the air is clean again.
The air purifier is not showing sentience. It's working in accordance with a pre-made program.
It. Does. Not. Think.
Pander,
Thanks for reminding me how low a bar is for sentience. If you’re merely requiring thought in the process of decision making, or consciousness. Then any form of machine that processes and stored information thinks. If it can interact with the world through this thought process by sensing it’s surroundings, it can then be identified as something that has sentience.
In other words, you’ve just shown that by your definition your phone is sentient. It thinks, as it records and retrieves information (memory) that it uses to discern if the image it takes of your thumb via the touch pad (sensor) matches what is needed to unlock it.
Yes, it’s programed to do that. That’s irrelevant and doesn’t imply it doesn’t think. Just as you’re preprogramed to eat, sleep, and breathe by the DNA from your parents. All programing is is a logical step by step process which is used to make decisions. Ergo, even your simple little program shows thought.
As for the orbs showing thought. Clearly it has shown that it stores information in, what you called it, pre programed parameters; the stored locations of prior aether gates; oh and the skill tree coming up independently of Sydney’s actions. Independence is irrelevant to showing sentience mind you. It’s a step towards showing sapience though.
As for your argument against subjective color.
1) I’m not making any assumptions nor anthropomorphizing here. As explained programed to do something doesn’t imply decisions aren’t made by it, but actually the opposite. So if the orbs were programed to do so, it means that it decided to output red based on said programing.
2) Yes. It could have been that way for the makers. However, that implies that their species sees light in the same way as humans, and that their society evolved such that red was bad. Both of which are statistically improbable to a point where Occam’s razor applies.
3) Once again, being programed to do something requires thinking (storing and retrieval of information). Being able to choose here implies well beyond mere sentience, because it has to learn how a human brain functions and stores information before it can start to learn the users subjective preferences. Basically the scenario where the orbs analyze Sydney’s brain and chooses its functions based on that is the trivial case of my point.
4) If this is the case the orbs would be required to learn human physiology and the intricacies of Sydney’s neural network. This means that the orbs learn from what it can sense, which requires thinking and decision making based on what’s sensed. Which shows once again sentience.
Ergo, your argument against proves may case for sentience.
As for the cherry picking issue. Here is what I wrote:
“To do this not only does the orbs need to take into account the expansion of the universe, but the hazards of aether gate travel. The position of the entrance and exit gate have to be subjective for the safety of those involved. This is especially true of the air space around The Fracture (a place Sydney jumped to more than once). The orb would have to have made a gate close enough to it that Sydney could reasonably get down to the surface, and in such a way as to NOT be in the way of the space, air, or land traffic. That’s some significant calculations and processing that GPS can’t and won’t do. Air traffic controllers have a hard time doing this in real time let alone something that lacks cognition like a computer.”
Here’s what you wrote:
“…This is not an indication of sentience. A fire alarm is not sentient. Nor is a carbon monoxide alarm. Nor is a motion sensor or pressure sensor programmed to go off after a certain limit near equipment failure.
‘To do this not only does the orbs need to take into account the expansion of the universe, but the hazards of aether gate travel.’
Pre-programmed safety protocols are not an indication of sentience. The Stargate in SG-1 is not sentient. Not to mention both Sydney’s orb’s aetherium causeway safeties (according to Altus) and the Stargate safeties (according to Samantha Carter) are able to be overridden.
‘AI emergency assistant: The AI was shown to exist in comic 905. In there Sydney makes an educated guess that it’s an ‘Anthropomorphization of the orb A.I. Assistant’. Since it appears that the A.I. was talking with Sydney through her mind, we can deduce that the A.I. would have informed Sydney what it was, and therefore we can safely say that it’s not from the glasses but the orbs. As such your argument that it’s not fails spectacularly.’
LITERALLY NO. There is no AI emergency assistant…”
You DID NOT look at each and every sentence of that paragraph. You only looked at the first sentence of the paragraph, and ignored the rest of the paragraph that goes into detail about said hazards. By doing so you picked a sentence to quote and took what was written out of context. Thereby giving the assumption that the hazards I was talking about were preprogramed safety protocols mentioned in the comic strip. They were not. That by it’s definition is cherrypicking.
First off, it’s really difficult to respond to you when you make 3 separate posts after the thread has gotten this long.
“Thanks for reminding me how low a bar is for sentience. If you’re merely requiring thought in the process of decision making, or consciousness. Then any form of machine that processes and stored information thinks.”
No. Computers do not think. This is something very basic you need to understand or anything else I say will fall on deaf ears. A computer does not not reason. It only processes based on whatever knowledge it has been programmed with, including algorithms. Human, and even most animal brains, do not do work that way. A computer is a digial approximating of the illusion of thought. But it is NOT thought. Your phone doesn’t think. Your computer doesn’t think. Your Alexa Echo or Google Sonos does not think. Your TV does not think, even if it’s a ‘smart’ TV. None of your appliances actually engage in rational thought or judgment of their own accord, nor are they capable of doing so. There will ALWAYS be an outside programmer who sets it into motion with an algorith, a program, some sort of inputting of instructions upon which the computer is dependent and cannot alter without MORE outside inputting of additional instructions.
And since computers do not think, computers are not sentient. Consider it this way humans engage in analog processes. Computers engage in digital processes. Humans can comprehend the idea of 1/3rd at a total amount. Computers cannot. They will do 0.3333333 ad infinitum and never reach an end, so instead it has to be programmed to approximate and ignore the final 0.0(infinitum)1. The reason that computer programmers have difficulty getting AI systems and computers to perfectly detect spoken and written language is becaus words often have meanings based on context and the appearance of the letters and words. This is something humans NATURALLY are able to pick up on, as are some lower level animals able to naturally pick up on (tone, inflection, subtlety, sarcasm). There’s a reason that Google and Youtube have to still rely on human operators no matter how advanced the algorithms become, despite investing billions into research.
This might eventually not be the case, but currently it is.
“If it can interact with the world through this thought process by sensing it’s surroundings, it can then be identified as something that has sentience.”
Your initial premise is flawed. Computers do not think. They do not have a ‘thought process.’ They have a pre-set program or algorithm for instructions on how to do whatever it happens to be programmed to do, and it is usually limited to that programming without additional input later by a programmer or user.
No thought = no sentience. I’m not sure how I can make this simpler to explain to you, but if you don’t realize this, then no offense intended, but there’s no real point in continuing this back-and-forth because we’re operating from completely different views of reality.
“In other words, you’ve just shown that by your definition your phone is sentient.”
I did not.
“It thinks,”
My phone does not think. No one’s phone thinks.
“as it records and retrieves information (memory) that it uses to discern if the image it takes of your thumb via the touch pad (sensor) matches what is needed to unlock it.”
That is not thought. That is a programed set of instructions set into motion from an outside user. The outside user thought. The phone does not. The phone is a tool. The user is the thinker.
Again, we are at an impasse if you don’t understand that computers are not capable of actual independent thought on their own accord, no matter how much the computer’s programming is going to try to simulate the illusion via processing information given to it.
To use science fiction again…
The U.S.S. Enterprise does not think. It is not capable of an independent thought process.
Lt. Data CAN think. That’s what makes his positronic brain so special and revolutionary in the Star Trek universe.
“Yes, it’s programed to do that. That’s irrelevant and doesn’t imply it doesn’t think.”
It’s not irrelevant, and it outright means the phone does not think.
“Just as you’re preprogramed to eat, sleep, and breathe by the DNA from your parents. ”
*rubs temples* You are not programmed to eat, sleep, and breathe. It’s necessary in order for you to live. You can choose to stop eating. Then you starve to death. You can try to stop sleeping. Your body will start to shut down. The longest anyone has ever gone without sleep has been 264 hours (11 days) under a carefully monitored experiment. After 17 hours, your body starts to have adverse effects. There is also a sleep disorder called fatal familial insomnia. As the name suggests… you can’t fall asleep… .and it will result in you dying. You can prevent a person, or yourself, from breathing. The result will be death after approximately 6 minutes on average, although permanent brain damage can occur after 4 minutes without oxygen. After 4 minutes, the lack of oxygen causes apoptosis, in which the cells in your body start dying, and die completely in about 6 minutes as I referenced above.
So no. You are not ‘programmed’ to eat, breathe, and sleep. If a computer does not run it’s program, it does not die. It does not become broken even. It’s just not being used. If a human, or other higher level animal, does not get the necessary amount of food, sleep, and oxygen or other gases necessary for survival, it dies.
When you say things like you are programmed by your parents DNA, no. That is flowery language actually. Your parents are not inputting information into your DNA in the same way that a programmer inputs an algorithm into a computer or electronic item’s programming. You do not need to ‘think’ to breathe, you HAVE to breathe. Even though you can think to hold your breath, eventually you will either pass out, at which point you will start breathing again, or you will die. You do not need to ‘think’ for your body to require food. Either you will not eat, and your body will function less effectively, until you wither away (with your body basically eating at itself in the process) and die, or you will succumb to having to eat. If you don’t think about food, you will still eventually get hungry. Period. You don’t need to ‘think’ in order to sleep. Your body will eventually just force you to have to sleep out of biological necessity. If something causes you to literally be unable to sleep for an excessive period of time, or you try to avoid sleeping for an excessive period of time, health problems will occur, then death. So either you will eventually pass out and will be asleep, or you will die. No thought required to NEED sleep to live.
“As for the orbs showing thought. Clearly it has shown that it stores information in, ”
Simply storing information is not thought. Again, flawed premise, making all your later premises incorrect. No thought, even at its most basic level= no sentience, even at its most basic level.
“Independence is irrelevant to showing sentience mind you.”
Incorrect. This might sound like circular reasoning, but only because it’s VERY basic. It has to be your own thought, for it to be your thought. It can’t be someone else putting the thought into you. Then you’re not thinking. It’s like Descartes said, “I think therefore I am.”
“I’m not making any assumptions nor anthropomorphizing here. ”
You are DEFINITELY making assumptions and anthropomorphizing, even as part of your basic premise of what ‘thinking’ means. That incorrect initial assumption is making everything else you’re deriving from it incorrect as well.
“As explained programed to do something doesn’t imply decisions aren’t made by it,”
That literally IS what it implies. That is what it MEANS. Being programmed to do something means it is not making the decision. The person who did the program made the set of decisions to be executed at a later time, dependent on certain circumstances happening first.
” So if the orbs were programed to do so, it means that it decided to output red based on said programing.”
See the sentences above.
“Yes. It could have been that way for the makers. However, that implies that their species sees light in the same way as humans,”
No it doesn’t. It implies that the orbs are able to see Sydney’s brain patterns, and Sydney’s brain patterns recognize red as ‘bad’ and recognizes how Sydney, as a human, sees light. If anything, we’ve seen that Sydney does NOT see the full extent of the orb, which Krona WAS able to see.
“and that their society evolved such that red was bad.”
See above for the same answer to this part of your sentence.
“Both of which are statistically improbable to a point where Occam’s razor applies.”
1) That’s not what Occam’s razor means. Occam’s razor means, other things being equal, explanations that posit fewer entities, or fewer kinds of entities, are to be preferred to explanations that posit more. In layman’s terms, Occam’s razor states that you seek the most economical solution – that you should not make any more assumptions that you absolutely need. IE, the simplest answer is most likely the correct one.
This isnt very practical in any case, since the orbs are so complicated that Occam’s razor isnt going to easily apply to it. Occam’s Razor is good for making rapid decisions and establishing truths without empirical evidence. Here, we have quite a bit of evidence already. Occam’s razor does NOT mean ignoring the evidence that we already have. Plus any guesses made are going to require quite a few assumptions, although my assumptions at least are based on what we’ve actually seen in the comic, while your assumptions about how the orbs function are not based on what we’ve seen in the comic or by DaveB’s own blurbs.
2) You’re again ignoring how I described the orbs relationship to Sydney. They are tied to her mental processes, which implies, with very little need to make assumptions (so this part DOES satisfy Occam’s razor btw) that it’s programming is influenced by the Sydney’s brain and her mental input. Her brain lets her control how they move around, which one comes to her hand, what to do once she has the orb in her hand, which functions to use on the orb, and presumably how she would recognize different warnings of the orbs (probably from the central ring of pips, which Sydney mentioned just before she made the Aetherium Causeway after upgrading the orbs).
“Once again, being programed to do something requires thinking”
Once again, no. See what I’ve written many times above. I’d just be repeating myself at this point.
“Being able to choose here implies well beyond mere sentience”
There’s no choice involved here. Whoever made the orbs programmed it do certain functions based on a preconceived set of variables. THAT IS NOT THE ORBS MAKING A CHOICE.
“because it has to learn how a human brain functions and stores information before it can start to learn the users subjective preferences.”
For crying out loud, when you get a catscan of your brain, the catscan is not thinking. It’s just recording the information, then either a medical technician or doctor interprets it, or (in a more advanced scenario, a database inputted BY medical technicians or doctors or other programmers is used to get the answer which meshes up with the most variables. This. Is. Not. A. Catscan. Thinking. This is the medical technician/doctor thinking. Or this is the people who put information into the database and the person who programmed the algorithm to match up the most likely scenario doing the thinking.
“If this is the case the orbs would be required to learn human physiology and the intricacies of Sydney’s neural network. ”
Why do you state your assumptions as fact when you have nothing in the comic to back them up as fact? If anything, the comic suggests the exact opposite. Remember the second press conference, with Dabber explaining why the humanoid form is so widespread among sapient life in the universe? The humanoid body is extremely practical. So if anything, you should be making the assumption that human physiology would be relatively common to have programmed into the orb’s knowledge database or set of user directions. Because humanoid physiology is SO COMMON and PRACTICAL. Not to mention a medical scanner is not sentient. The Tricorder in Star Trek, for example, is not sentient. Neither is a catscan, as I’ve mentioned previously. Neither is a thermometer when it’s able to tell your temperature, even if it’s a smart thermometer that’s tied to WebMD to give possible causes for your fever or something like that. IT. IS. NOT. THINKING. OR. LEARNING. It’s using a set of instructions or algorithm that’s already been programmed into it by its creator or user.
“This means that the orbs learn from what it can sense, which requires thinking and decision making based on what’s sensed.”
No it does not. Again, see above.
“You DID NOT look at each and every sentence of that paragraph.”
I used a LOT of your sentences. I’m not cherry picking. I’m literally doing the opposite of cherry picking. I do the opposite of cherry picking for almost everyone, in fact, which is why my posts tend to be so insanely long. But you just keep saying the same thing over and over, and I have to just keep repeating my answer over and over because you keep coming at this from a very false premise.
When I said ‘there is no AI emergency assistant’ I am not ‘cherry picking’ one part of your post. I’m explaining why your initial premise is false, which makes everything else you said incorrect as well. There is no AI emergency assistant, and therefore everything else you said that is dependent on there BEING an AI emergency assistant is therefore false as well. Why on Earth, after showing that your initial premise is incorrect, WHICH YOU AGREE NOW IS INCORRECT ABOUT THE AI EMERGENCY ASSISTANT BEING A LIE TOLD BY SYDNEY TO STALL FOR TIME, would you think I’d start disputing each and every part of the rest of that sentence, which would just be me continually repeating ‘there is no AI emergency assistant’ to dispute each and every sentence you wrote.
Look at THIS post even. Most this post is AGAIN based on you having a faulty premise – that you think computers think and make choices independent of programmer inputted algorithms. They do not. Therefore almost everything else you said, all of which is based on this initial, incorrect premise, is also wrong.
And I could have just responded to all three of your posts with a small paragraph saying that and explaining why computers do not think, and do not make choices of their own, which I did. But since I don’t want you accusing me of more ‘cherry picking’ I’ve instead had to repeat the same argument sooo many times, making this incredibly long.
So I’ll just put it in a TL;DR.
TL;DR. Computers and phones and whatnot do not think. They do not make choices independent of a programmer’s algorithm or instructions, or a user’s input, or both. No thinking = no sentience. Everything else you said is dependent on your initial premise, which is wrong.
The definition of thinking.
https://dictionary.apa.org/thinking
Note the only two criteria of thinking is that it’s covert, and that it’s symbolic. Storing, retrieving, and manipulating data in 1’s and 0’s is both covert, and symbolic. That is you can’t tell a computer is doing this unless it tells you that it is, and those 1’s and 0’s are entirely symbolic in nature as it’s code and turning complete.
Thus computers think. Your assumption that they don’t doesn’t hold water.
thinking
n. cognitive behavior in which ideas, images, mental representations, or other hypothetical elements of thought are experienced or manipulated. In this sense, thinking includes imagining, remembering, problem solving, daydreaming, free association, concept formation, and many other processes. Thinking may be said to have two defining characteristics: (a) It is covert—that is, it is not directly observable but must be inferred from actions or self-reports; and (b) it is symbolic—that is, it seems to involve operations on mental symbols or representations, the nature of which remains obscure and controversial (see symbolic process).
How do you read this, then say computers think?
“thinking includes imagining, remembering, problem solving, daydreaming, free association, concept formation, and many other processes.”
Computers do not imagine.
Computers do not daydream.
Computers do not free associate.
Computers do not have concept formation.
“Thinking may be said to have two defining characteristics: (a) It is covert—that is, it is not directly observable but must be inferred from actions or self-reports; ”
Computer processes are not covert. Code is very much observable. Especially because a human does the coding. You know, the one actually doing the thinking.
” (b) it is symbolic—that is, it seems to involve operations on mental symbols or representations”
Computers do not create mental symbols or representations. They are all programmed into the computer by a human.
Also, 1 and 0 are only symbolic for US, not for the computer. For the computer, it’s all about if a switch is on or off. 1 and 0 are for HUMANS to be able to identify on and off as a representation via a binary system for language.
“Thus computers think. Your assumption that they don’t doesn’t hold water.”
I’m pretty sure at this point you’re just trolling me with this insistence. In which place, good job. You caused me to waste a lot of time on an obvious trolling attempt. :) Applause. :)
Pander,
You cherrypicked yet again.
Bees don’t daydream
Bees don’t imagine
Bees don’t free associate
Bees don’t have concept formation.
However, bees are sentient. Your above requirements are for sapience NOT sentience.
What computers can do is:
Store ideas and images
Recall ideas and images
Manipulate ideas and images
That’s the basis of thinking by definition. Oh and you’re mistaken about a few things Computers can also:
Can use Logic to infer reasoning
Can imagine
I’ll elaborate.
The use of logic is inherent in how computers work. It’s literally in their programing. Do I need to say any more?
Let’s use an example to show this case. Let’s try doing something that a calculator is notorious for. Graphing on a cartesian plane. Here’s a website you can use: https://www.desmos.com/calculator.
Let’s try to graph y=sin^2(x^2+25/(x-5))+cos^2(x/2)-tan(PI/x). Kudos to you if you can do this by hand. But I doubt you can without the help of a computer.
A computer can take that function and generate an image that’s not seen in nature. It wasn’t sensed by the computer. You sure as hell didn’t sense it until I told you to try. Essentially that graph exists purely in the realm of the imagination, and it was generated by the computer. Not you; the computer. If you used Desmos it would be the computer’s that house Desmos’s server and processers. While I and possibly you told the computer to generate said graph, I and possibly you didn’t produce it. We didn’t imagine it. The computer did. Just like if I told you to imagine a cube spinning. I’m not the one who imagined it. You were.
The code in a computer can only be observed when the computer outputs said code in a language you understand. Even if a human inputted said code into the computer, they can’t see where it is, or which step in the code the cpu is processing at a given time.
110001001110101100011100110011000100001001110101
By all means try and have your computer tell you what that means. The fact that those 1’s and 0’s represent something other than just a string of 1’s and 0’s, shows it’s more than just 1’s and 0’s to the computer. For instance A sequence of 1’s and 0’s can subject another sequence of 1’s and 0’s to change based on what the initial sequence of 1’s and 0’s are interpreted to mean by the CPU. This makes it symbolic by it’s very nature. Some sequences of 1’s and 0’s tell parts of the CPU to output things. Other sequences tell the CPU to accept a sequence and record it. There’s even ones that compare sequences to others and see the similarity.
I digress, it’s one of the reasons why Computers can logic so well, because what they do is based on pure symbolic language. It’s literally in their programing.
I’m not trolling you. Just proving my point based on a logical understanding. I’ve done that, and you’ve still refused to accept said argument. While Computers think differently then how we think, it doesn’t mean they don’t think. They just don’t think like we think.
They could simply have some good safety in their programming.
After all if a pin hit a orb they could bounce back and hit Sidney and at that speed it would really hurt, or worse. The safest thing to do for the orbs if an object come with great velocity from in to out is to dodge them to avoid damage to their … pilot? Bearer? well, any way you want to call whoever own them. I wonder if something went to hit Sidney if the orbs would move to block it.
Regarding Sydney’s hairstyle. The super-tight bun is no longer the only acceptable dress hairstyle for women in the military. It started with allowing ethnic hair styles because of traction alopecia from the bun and expensive relaxing treatments for that kind of hair to even be able to do the bun. These days, braids and ponytails are also acceptable. Note this is the Army, which has some of the strictest rules regarding military hairstyles, and they’re now allowing ponytails in all uniforms. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/05/06/army-allows-female-soldiers-wear-long-ponytails-all-uniforms.html
The reason I mention this is that Sydney apparently doesn’t have any issue with ponytails, as per page 29, Spice Grrl.
I like your thought on center points controlling simultaneous access to quantities of orbs. Here’s hoping you are 100% accurate, and that Sydney figures this out sooner than later.
Huh, I thought at least the long pony tail wouldn’t be allowed as a catching/tugging hazard.
So, I’m not a female, and don’t know the regulation that well, but the relaxed standard is for low snagging risk situations, like office work, regular day-to-day operations, range days etc. Individuals can be ordered to put their hair up in a bun before high snag risk operations, like mechanical work or certain field ops.
Pony tails for men too?
My youngest brother was ‘prenticed as a heavy duty fitter, and watched as another chippy had his scalp ripped mostly off after failing to secure his long hair in the mandatory fishnet… There was much more than blood mopped off the floor that day, but I’m told the hairnets were VERY rigorously worn ALL the time after that.
Safety rules are written in blood and all that. Sometimes it has do be demonstrated why following them is mandatory. Hopefully it will not have to be demonstrated again.
It doesn’t even take a nasty accident to prompt a haircut. I zipped my long hair off after I rolled over it with a creeper one too many times. It worked out for the best as I later worked on a psychiatric unit where one of the long term patients had a thing for anyone with long hair.
Lol that Death Dealer/Conan mashup.
I’d watch it.
Looks like Frazetta’s Death Dealer.
I interpreted that panel as being exactly that.
Well, you can only contain the monster for so long. The bangs demand food!
Maxima’s expression there is ‘that… hurt????’ haha
“Wait… I felt that. …I felt that??? How?!”
Because she can still enjoy the sensation of touch (that’s why she won’t wear a thong, because of the sensation of it creeping up where it don’t belong)
Les is completely impervious to pain or injuries, and yet… he still knows when something hits him
According to Leonard French at YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/ljfrench009/videos, copyright attorneys spend most of their time suing/threatening people/companies for violating copyright, or defending people/companies who are being sued or threatened for violating copyright. Both of which involve figuring out if something is copyrightable and whether it is fair use or not.
If that video didn’t include researching copyrights prior to publication, suing and etc, then it’s missing at least half the job. (Although that part is probably often done by paras and temp project attorneys.)
But the paras and temps are very much working under instruction.
Question – where did most of Maxima’s hair go?
At first, I assumed it goes under the hat in some sort of bun, or is in a ponytail/bun at the back of her head or something.
But after looking at panels 1 and 5, there’s no bun. And Maxima’s hair, I’m assuming, is too invulnerable to be cut, and she has shoulder length hair normally. Did she make a visit to the Barber-ian or something? Or alternatively, did DaveB just forget to add a hair-bun?
I also did a little ‘deep dive’ into the recent past comics and yeah, apparently somehow Maxima’s hair is indeed shorter right now, without the extra hair being in a pony tail or bun.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1009-does-sydney-have-accident-insurance/
(panel 1)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1008-yarr-har-fiddle-dee-dee/
(panel 1 and 12)
I’ve been assuming it’s a tucked bun so it’s out of the way for her cap, e.g. all the length pulled in a flattened bun which is hidden underneath a smooth outer layer. The pages you linked show a distinct conehead pointiness going on that’s consistent with such a ‘do.
That’s what I thought too but it’s not a tucked bun. Arianna has a tucked bun (admittedly with chopsticks in it for added effect) and it’s quite different than how Maxima’s hair looks. There’s nowhere shown where the hair would be ‘tucked in’ unlike in Sydney’s hairdo, where you could see where it was tucked in and held in place by a zillion bobby pins struggling to maintain it.
Apparently I was describing a French twist, which can have some external clips or twists, or just be rounded into a smooth conehead like Max has so exhibited far today.
I dunno. Maybe. It doesnt really look like a french twist to me, especially with the length of Maxima’s hair and how simple things like scrunchies do not seem to always be enough for her hair (remember when she used a rebar after the Vehemence fight?). Arianna’s hair looks like that though.
Then again I haven’t gotten a look at the BACK of Maxima’s head in the last few pages, just the side and front.
Wow, I totally missed that. Nice catch, and it is very cool.
I don’t know that she *needed* rebar, I suspect it was simply that she didn’t have a scrunch and the rebar was handy.
I hadn’t ever caught that Max was using rebar for a hair tie either, a nice subtle detail to slip in.
We actually see her in a previous page bend the rebar to tie back her hair, whether that’s because that was the only thing that would work or simply the only thing available has never been determined (personally going for the second option)
Okay, went back looking for that page, and… was sure we saw Maxi twisting the rebar or at least have DaveB mention it but can’t find either
DaveB did mention that she did it but we dont actually see her do it.
That’s the same haircut that was on the Max muppet way back when, so she probably has a way of greasing it to look like that.
No it isn’t. The Max muppet had a ponytail. You can see that quite clearly in panels 1 and 6 when her head is turned.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-437-i-hope-dabbler-gave-odds/
If you look at panel 8, Maxi and Ari have a similar hairdid (just minus the chopsticks or Superman-curl for Maxi)
I guess maybe. It just doesnt really look like she has anything allowing her hair to be like that while Arianna does (ie, the chopsticks). And I doubt bobby pins would work, considering how she’s needed stuff like a rebar in the past. Although maybe they make some sort of titanium adamantium bobby pins that can do that for her hair.
So maybe G and Brichins are right and maybe it IS a french twist.
superman hair cutting perhaps. either she can lower the defense field enough that her hair can be cut by superhuman strength and enforced blades, or she can bounce a thin finger beam off something to cut it.
Yeah, that’s the only thing I am thinking it could be, barring DaveB just making a mistake. Which is possible as well I guess. Because in the PAST when Maxima’s worn her hair that way, there was always a bun.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-315-the-eyes-have-it/
(see panels 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 10)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-314-contrition-condition/
(see panel 5)
But it was alluded to that Maxima’s hair COULD be cut … maybe… by the Barberian who ‘has superstrength and diamond edged shears.’ He said he could ‘probably’ cut her hair if she was to let him.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-372-conquest-rodeo/
(panel 1)
Yeah, I’m calling “Barberian’s shears worked as advertised”.
That would definitely be the most consistent possibility. :)
Doh i thought of one other possibility, although it seems like an odd thing for ARCHON to do.
They do have access to camouflage technology, like what they used during the bank robbery. Which changes how the hair looks.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-36-roll-for-initiative/
It would have been IMPOSSIBLE to cut Achilles’ hair to make him look like he shaved his head.
So another possibility is Maxima is wearing something to change the look of her hair like that. It seems a lot more plausible that she just visited the Barberian though, since this seems like a LOT of work and expense just to have short hair for a graduation.
Why would Maxi use camouflage on her hair within Archon? o_O
She wouldn’t. And I know it’s an EXTREMELY unlikely scenario. I’m just giving all possible scenarios that would work. :)
Admittedly, the ‘french twist with titanium bobby pins even if the artwork still looks a little off compared to Arianna’s french twist’ seems a lot more plausible, or the barberian haircut.
I’m just giving every conceivable possibility that Archon could do. If the choker was able to alter the look of the hair I would have mentioned that as well, but it only alters hues :).
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but the hairpin shoots out of it like a bullet!
When Dave’s describing what that movie would be about, isn’t that basically the plot of Hercules in New York? I mean, it has all those other things too with technology.
That movie would do fine, as long as they either took it too seriously or didn’t. (it’s halfway that kills such things.)
As soon as they started trying to ban it, it would get an audience. At least renting it at home to throw popcorn.
Probably need to have his hot and shy and easily embarrassed teen son get Iakesi’d with him, to pick up the other two quadrants.
Or… said person not be son, but be the one who summoned him… yep. it would work.
Ah, yeah, sort of “Last Action Hero” style.
WOOT! That hair just seemed wrong and I was hoping it’d go away for a few pages now. :D
If the hairpin burning through the clipboard is canon and not just a non-canon sight gag then Sidney may have another superpower; that feeds into one of the theories about her orbs that they are a projection of her power manifesting in a way she can comprehend *nerdy gamer skill tree*, but deep down she is really some reality warper.
potentially with the most dangerous of all superpowers both for how OP it can be and for how unpredictable it can be,
the unstoppable, undefeatable (so much so even goofy characters can overpower seasoned warriors),
Toon Force.
I revise this, the orbs can still be Nth tech she found, but revealed themselves and were drawn to her because she has a power that registers close enough to the nature of the beings that made the orbs. quantum field manipulation (reality warping, ect..)
via a mild form of toon force.
Sidney could be a new kind of super, and while there is the whole *physical beauty* factor we know for a fact this isn’t Barbie doll cookie cutter given differences between individuals like Anvil and Harem or Vehemence and the smaller much skinnier guys at the brawl.
Sidney could fall under some cute definition (or lower class power have less exaggerated physical features, which kind of does go with what we’ve seen so far, the more powerful men and women have had the larger more extreme bodies, so maybe a low enough power class falls under cute or less abnormal traits like no body hair.
You know, considering that’s her parents, you’d think they’d be expecting the hairpin thing.
She’s probably never had to wear hairpins before, or at least not as long as this
Max was rubbing her hear…those pins were under so much tension that max felt it when one hit her
The fact that Max is rubbing her head and that Momma Scoville’s clip board has scorching around the hole similar to when a bullet goes through something is indicative that that would’ve been lethal to anyone without reinforced defenses.
Assuming Max keeps some of her armor mode active at all times and goint by the size of of the hole. This tells me that those pins were operating at speed of an average small handgun and also some idea of what level lf base defense Max keeps for her to not be hurt be still feel it.
Also why small arms calibur? A stronger handgun would’ve exploded the clipboard at that range I feel.
Sydney should figure out how to weaponkze that if she’s ever solo and gets captured and disabled from the Orbs again. Nothing like having a head mounted aoe claymore attack to surprise your enemies with.
Can you imagine if she was wearing a headful of bobby pins when she was captured by Concretia and her slavemaster?
I’m thinking about Faye Valentine in Binary Two-step, with her new railgun… And the damage it did to the mainframe. With a bobby pin.
That hairsplosion was violent enough I wouldn’t be surprised if getting hit in the forehead hurt Max more then an actual bullet would have.
All these comments about Maxi actually getting hurt by the bobby, you are all forgetting one very important fact in your desire to elevate Junior to Ultimate God(dess) Level: just because Maxi has goldenite skin she still has the touch sensation ie she can still tell when she touches something or if something touches her
So of course she felt the bobby hit (in the same way you would feel when a fly hits you), but she wouldn’t be hurt by it anymore than you would from the fly
Agreed, Max was just startled and is instinctively feeling the spot of unexpected contact. Or possibly checking that her hairdo wasn’t ruffled by the high-speed projectile.
Yeah, was just thinking that: checking to make sure her ‘do is still a ‘did and not a ‘done (took long enough to get it looking purty as it is :P )
The Claymore? You mean, like the huge two-handed sword?
Or, like the anti-personnel mine? Yeah, probably that one.
“a billboard with something like “Re-Elect Bob von Corruptman” on the front, really make it look like some action movie poster from the 80’s, but oh well”
Surprise twist in the movie. Bob von Corruptman is actually a very honest politician, unlike his political rival, John J. Paragonvirtue, who is the secret big bad of the movie.
It’d be nice if political signs actually stated the candidates’ true values.
A politician’s value is highly dependent on the specific debate in question. It’ll take a lot more to outbid a point of personal principle than it would to tip the balance of apathy. And the Party leadership can work in far more ‘currencies’ than cash.
that actually would be a very 1980s thing to do.
I use as precedence an episode of Thundercats in which the Thundercats were tricked by the bad alien *which had the glowy white robed look* into thinking it was good and another alien was evil, the other alien looking like a typical ugly monster enemy of the week. But *what a twist* the scorpion demon was the good guy and washes his entire outfit in bleach was the bad guy.
“We’re going to need bigger pins.”
Actually, everyone dodged, except Maxima, who is supposed to have the Ultra-fast reflexes, and she was the only one to be hit(except for the clip board)! The Orbs might actually be Sapient, not sentient… :D
Maxi may have ultra-fast reflexes, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be caught unawares
Maxima’s kryptonite is the “rule of funny”.
Not a big deal, unless they meet a prankster-themed supervillain.
And her also rubbing her forehead meant she felt that hit.
beware her bangs, they are lethal
And on a hairpin trigger.
Yay! Been waiting literally over a month for this to happen (see my commentary on Dec. 2nd for verification). Was expecting her hat to go zipping off, but this has LOTS more comedy. =D
I really like that Dave dropped a Chekov’s gun reference in the middle of the hairpin anticipation. XD
All the debate on the orbs ‘dodging’ the hairpins and the reasons why. Personally, I just think they moved outward because her hair did. Note they’re not orbiting as close in the last panel as in the first now that her hair has fluffed out.
So THAT’S where the “bangs” went!
I like that maxima rubbing her forehead meant she FELT that.
Of course she felt it, she still has the sense of touch
Copyright clearance is an incredibly specific job that requires quite a bit of skills. Even other copyright lawyers won’t step on the toes of a specialist. I had to ask about some copyright clearance…
Sydney has a “hairpin” trigger.
Pander are you really Sydney’s mum?
*jaw dangling around feet*
(Sorry I have been abnormally quiet of late all, but I have been back at work & my fatigue levels have been through the roof. A month in hospital, a month off sick & then having to burn up my annual leave let my fitness level crash to rock bottom. Throw in heart medication which give me fatigue as a side effect, any time I do any physical activity & an extremely physically active job, with 12+ hour shifts & it will be a while before I will be able to do much more than work, crash, work, crash …)
Oh and HAPPY NEW YEAR! (Sorry about delay, I was working over Xmas & New Year)
Oh, I am so sad to hear that. How’s your human taking it?
My walker is currently at Hogwarts and won’t be back for a month or so.
Fatigue is no big deal, I’m (literally) working through it. It just turns more of my off time into recovery time, but as my fitness returns that will improve.
I like how Max immediately asks Laura’s profession – no one really wants to read legal documents.
probably mentioned already, but Max’s rank insignia are playing peek-a-boo……regardless of what colour they are
I’m one of the long hair ones. I swear there are two distinctive reactions to post military life those that keep doing a military style hair cut and then those of us that let our hair go wild.
All Sydney Nutter needs now is fifty pounds of gunpowder and she could blow the hell out of any group of witch burners.
So, I actually have a Conan comic where he goes through a portal to modern day (well, probably more like circa ~1980s anyway) NY City. He swords a taxi thinking that it is a dragon, and it has (of course, because this is a comic and I defy reality to equal this even remotely) an attractive, young, female driver. And despite their very brief time together (pretty sure it was a day or two, tops) and the lack of a common language, my man Conan manages to leave her in the family way when he goes back through the convenient portal that opens up for him to get home.
So yeah, you’ve got the plot down almost exactly.
Looks like the one that hit Max almost stung.