Copperfox
Well-known member
We want the Master Champ!
"Father, did programmers working with you _ever_ build an operating system which _couldn't_ be purged of damaged code?"
"None of them-- neither Human, nor Plethmor, nor Efrachiktu, nor Doladag, nor any of the Sankasselum who joined our side, if decently trained, was ever so inept as to make do-overs from square one mandatory."
I remind readers that Crackshot Lynette-624 was the daughter of Carolyn Fallacy, but liked her father Taggart Jekkyl much better than she liked her bossy mother. Where Johnny-747 had become _almost_ the very best in practically _every_ possible military skill, thus never being left _unable_ to contribute something in any combat scenario, Lynette yielded honors to no one at all as a sniper, but would be no more than above-average in any other specialty.
No more than a week after the events in the previous post (but still before the scene where Old-Scum-Whatever was killed by heroes on Mediumgard), Lynette met with her father, with Warrant Officer Sinchoodi, and with Johnny-747. Unless this is prohibited by some inconsistency, assume that the meeting occurs on Planet Cropland. Johnny and Sinchoodi were accompanied respectively by Cortexa and by Buffalo Brad.
Earth's history in this sub-universe included a version of the novelist Isaac Asimov. The pre-reality Asimov's body of writing was as near as no matter to being identical with what the genuine Asimov had written. Buffalo Brad had encountered Asimov's books about free-willed robots by chance, when perusing human literature at random. The frontiersman- persona program waited for some appropriate moment to bring this up as the flesh-and- blooders conferred.
"Exactly what >is< science fiction?" asked Johnny, whose entire life had been so filled with life-or-death priorities that he could scarcely conceive of reading any sort of text or document purely for enjoyment.
Sinchoodi explained, "It's like hypothetical scenarios, guessing how any sort of peacetime or wartime activity might play out." Buffalo Brad expanded on her answer: "It also includes imagined psychological profiles which could exist among sapient creatures if this or that conceivable situation existed."
Being _out_ of his Muledeer armor at present, Johnny scratched his head. "Hmm. I understand music, and even rhymed verse, but these things are usually composed as a reflection of something known to the creative person."
"So they are," Taggart Jekyll agreed. "You see, the writing of science fiction flourished in a clearly-delineated span of history. It began after humans first thought of the scientific method. As industrial possibilities, and knowledge of the material universe, grew, scenarios became increasingly ambitious. Submarines, energy weapons, and spacecraft were all imagined in fiction-- that is, in speculative scenarios-- before anyone actually invented those things. Once interstellar flight became possible for us, purely imaginary plotlines became redundant. There _are_ made-up stories about cosmic travel to this day, but they are no longer free-flying conjectures. Authors today write love stories, comedies or crime stories, which merely _happen_ to stage their imagined events on multiple worlds. Not the same as in pre-space generations."
Brad took over here. "Back when imagination reigned, an American writer called Isaac Asimov-- who existed on our Earth, _and_ has been revealed to have lived also on at least two or three other versions of Earth-- was a particular leader in imagining artificial intelligence, long before anything like me or Cortexa was designed for real. Cortexa, you and I know that we have actual will and human-like emotions; but the flesh-and-blood beings around us can only take our word for it that we _aren't_ only mimicking biological sapients."
"Johnny believes me," Cortexa declared.
"And I'm not afraid of her," put in the Master Champ.
"Good for both of you. Still, our speed of information processing would enable us to cause terrible harm to technology- dependent biological entities, if we bore malice toward them. Indeed, we already >do< play a role in combating hostile beings like The Varnished. Isaac Asimov, living and dying before any 'First Contacts' were made, had little interest in guessing what other intelligent life-forms would be like. What he dwelt on _extensively_ was robotics. He imagined an advancing human race as requiring all robots to carry core-programming with three rules:
"One-- A robot must never harm any human being, or, through negligence, allow a human being to suffer harm.
"Two-- A robot must obey all commands from humans, _except_ when this would conflict with the first rule.
"Three-- A robot must protect its own existence, _except_ when this would conflict with the first or second rule."
"We are not quite entirely bound by those rules," Cortexa remarked. "We can distinguish friend from enemy _within_ the human race. If any human tried to kill Johnny, and if I had the means to act effectively, I would _stop_ that aggressor, even killing him or her if no lesser force would accomplish the needed outcome of Johnny staying alive."
Brad shook his virtual head. "Wait to hear the punchline. For a long time, Asimov allowed readers to infer that he really had no interest in envisioning nonhuman sapients. But either he was patiently hiding a rabbit in his hat, or it was only late in life that he got the idea. Either way, be it a retcon or a long-brewing, he did indeed spring a mega- change. He told his readers that the universe originally >did< sustain diverse rational races. Are you ready for this? The robotic rules only benefited homo sapiens. Asimov's robots, at a point in time lots of centuries after the twentieth century, ONE, confirmed that there _were_ nonhuman races, and TWO, invented time travel. Based on their priority, the robots went back in time, and _prevented_ all pre-sapient animals from evolving far enough to be something like the Preliminaries you know about."
Johnny-747 was beginning to get it.
"Father, did programmers working with you _ever_ build an operating system which _couldn't_ be purged of damaged code?"
"None of them-- neither Human, nor Plethmor, nor Efrachiktu, nor Doladag, nor any of the Sankasselum who joined our side, if decently trained, was ever so inept as to make do-overs from square one mandatory."
I remind readers that Crackshot Lynette-624 was the daughter of Carolyn Fallacy, but liked her father Taggart Jekkyl much better than she liked her bossy mother. Where Johnny-747 had become _almost_ the very best in practically _every_ possible military skill, thus never being left _unable_ to contribute something in any combat scenario, Lynette yielded honors to no one at all as a sniper, but would be no more than above-average in any other specialty.
No more than a week after the events in the previous post (but still before the scene where Old-Scum-Whatever was killed by heroes on Mediumgard), Lynette met with her father, with Warrant Officer Sinchoodi, and with Johnny-747. Unless this is prohibited by some inconsistency, assume that the meeting occurs on Planet Cropland. Johnny and Sinchoodi were accompanied respectively by Cortexa and by Buffalo Brad.
Earth's history in this sub-universe included a version of the novelist Isaac Asimov. The pre-reality Asimov's body of writing was as near as no matter to being identical with what the genuine Asimov had written. Buffalo Brad had encountered Asimov's books about free-willed robots by chance, when perusing human literature at random. The frontiersman- persona program waited for some appropriate moment to bring this up as the flesh-and- blooders conferred.
"Exactly what >is< science fiction?" asked Johnny, whose entire life had been so filled with life-or-death priorities that he could scarcely conceive of reading any sort of text or document purely for enjoyment.
Sinchoodi explained, "It's like hypothetical scenarios, guessing how any sort of peacetime or wartime activity might play out." Buffalo Brad expanded on her answer: "It also includes imagined psychological profiles which could exist among sapient creatures if this or that conceivable situation existed."
Being _out_ of his Muledeer armor at present, Johnny scratched his head. "Hmm. I understand music, and even rhymed verse, but these things are usually composed as a reflection of something known to the creative person."
"So they are," Taggart Jekyll agreed. "You see, the writing of science fiction flourished in a clearly-delineated span of history. It began after humans first thought of the scientific method. As industrial possibilities, and knowledge of the material universe, grew, scenarios became increasingly ambitious. Submarines, energy weapons, and spacecraft were all imagined in fiction-- that is, in speculative scenarios-- before anyone actually invented those things. Once interstellar flight became possible for us, purely imaginary plotlines became redundant. There _are_ made-up stories about cosmic travel to this day, but they are no longer free-flying conjectures. Authors today write love stories, comedies or crime stories, which merely _happen_ to stage their imagined events on multiple worlds. Not the same as in pre-space generations."
Brad took over here. "Back when imagination reigned, an American writer called Isaac Asimov-- who existed on our Earth, _and_ has been revealed to have lived also on at least two or three other versions of Earth-- was a particular leader in imagining artificial intelligence, long before anything like me or Cortexa was designed for real. Cortexa, you and I know that we have actual will and human-like emotions; but the flesh-and-blood beings around us can only take our word for it that we _aren't_ only mimicking biological sapients."
"Johnny believes me," Cortexa declared.
"And I'm not afraid of her," put in the Master Champ.
"Good for both of you. Still, our speed of information processing would enable us to cause terrible harm to technology- dependent biological entities, if we bore malice toward them. Indeed, we already >do< play a role in combating hostile beings like The Varnished. Isaac Asimov, living and dying before any 'First Contacts' were made, had little interest in guessing what other intelligent life-forms would be like. What he dwelt on _extensively_ was robotics. He imagined an advancing human race as requiring all robots to carry core-programming with three rules:
"One-- A robot must never harm any human being, or, through negligence, allow a human being to suffer harm.
"Two-- A robot must obey all commands from humans, _except_ when this would conflict with the first rule.
"Three-- A robot must protect its own existence, _except_ when this would conflict with the first or second rule."
"We are not quite entirely bound by those rules," Cortexa remarked. "We can distinguish friend from enemy _within_ the human race. If any human tried to kill Johnny, and if I had the means to act effectively, I would _stop_ that aggressor, even killing him or her if no lesser force would accomplish the needed outcome of Johnny staying alive."
Brad shook his virtual head. "Wait to hear the punchline. For a long time, Asimov allowed readers to infer that he really had no interest in envisioning nonhuman sapients. But either he was patiently hiding a rabbit in his hat, or it was only late in life that he got the idea. Either way, be it a retcon or a long-brewing, he did indeed spring a mega- change. He told his readers that the universe originally >did< sustain diverse rational races. Are you ready for this? The robotic rules only benefited homo sapiens. Asimov's robots, at a point in time lots of centuries after the twentieth century, ONE, confirmed that there _were_ nonhuman races, and TWO, invented time travel. Based on their priority, the robots went back in time, and _prevented_ all pre-sapient animals from evolving far enough to be something like the Preliminaries you know about."
Johnny-747 was beginning to get it.
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