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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates
[SPEC] Melissa/Sleeping Princess relationship
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crashfrog
Greenhorn

Joined: 12 Aug 2004
Posts: 4

 		[SPEC] Melissa/Sleeping Princess relationship
I have a speculation about the relationship of Melissa and the "Sleeping Princess," I believe that "Queen" and "Sleeping Princess" refer to the equivalent of the two brain hemispheres of the AI Melissa.

One of Melissa's memories has a computer technician referring to "before", presumably before Melissa's personality was implanted in/turned into an AI, so if she was a human with a human brain before, it's logical to speculate that running a human personality on computer hardware requires the emulation of a humanlike brain; Melissa's mind might very well be structured just like a human mind.

So I believe it's reasonable to conclude that Melissa has two brain "hemispheres", like humans.

In humans, the left brain is associated with logic, decision-making, language, and the conception of self; our self-identity appears to be a left-brain process. The right brain is more strongly associated with nonverbal communication and the recognition of patterns (visual and auditory). The right brain therefore is more associated with art and creativity. In humans, these two very different hemispheres operate as one due by virtue of being connected by a bundle of nerves called the corpus callosum.

Ok, you probably knew all that, but I thought it was important as background.

So, what Melissa thinks of as herself is actually only her left brain. She may not be aware of the disconnect from her right brain (which is why she does not appear aware of the "Sleeping Princess"); in humans, someone whose corpus callosum has been disconnected does not usually notice. However, their behavior is often changed, in ways that usually can only be detected by "tricking" the person's body into using the right brain.

The "Sleeping Princess", who appears aware of Melissa however, is the right brain. This area of the brain is usually non-verbal; however, as the brain is adaptive, the Princess has responded to being cut off from the lingusitic functions by developing her own. This might explain a recent haiku:

Quote:
What a funny way
you talk, old fashioned, but now
I can do it too!


Also, the right brain is characterized as placing greater emphasis on awareness (which explains why many have characterized the Sleeping Princess as being more aware than Melissa) as well as on fantasy or imagination; this might be why the Princess communicated in story and metaphor.

Now it seems that the Princess has developed its own conciousness; probably by virtue of being isolated from Melissa's dominant conciousness. But it still retains its creative and imaginative nature by speaking in poetry (a method of writing, I might add, characterized by its emphasis on the sounds of words, getting back to the right brain's function in processing complex auditory tones). Also I believe this is why the Princess characterizes the Queen (Melissa) as humorless and boring:

Quote:
D. like a sister
Someone not old to talk to,
Better than the queen!

The Queen is very
serious and I am not
She makes me giggle!


Finally the right brain is also considered "intuitive", as is the Princess, in this haiku:

Quote:
Something very big
Is coming very very
soon. I don't know what.


I think that the Pious Flea, being some sort of AI attack virus, is targeting and changing Melissa's left brain, because it hasn't noticed (or is ignoring) Melissa's disconnected right brain. Perhaps her hemispheres were disconnected accidentally, or as a protective reflex. Certainly the right brain seems to be aware of the Flea's actions where the left brain is not.

One way to assess the accuracy of my speculation would be to compare Melissa's actions/communications to those of so-called "split-brain" humans (humans with disconnected hemispheres.)

PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 6:55 pm
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GunsmithCat
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Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 459

 		Re: [SPEC] Melissa/Sleeping Princess relationship
crashfrog wrote:

One of Melissa's memories has a computer technician referring to "before", presumably before Melissa's personality was implanted in/turned into an AI, so if she was a human with a human brain before, it's logical to speculate that running a human personality on computer hardware requires the emulation of a humanlike brain; Melissa's mind might very well be structured just like a human mind.

So I believe it's reasonable to conclude that Melissa has two brain "hemispheres", like humans.


OK, but the flaw in your logic is that you then continue on by describing a scenario quite unlike human brains. In humans, the corpus collusum interconnects into both halves and while seperate, they are intertwined and form a single entity - not two.

No other Halo AI shows this "dual personality" problem, and Melissa's monologues show someone capable of both artistic and logical expression. She readily mixes literary allusion with pure, unrestrained logic (of how the SPDR should be behaving) - suggesting she's using both sides of her brain, not one.

PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 8:02 pm
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crashfrog
Greenhorn

Joined: 12 Aug 2004
Posts: 4

 		Re: [SPEC] Melissa/Sleeping Princess relationship
Quote:
OK, but the flaw in your logic is that you then continue on by describing a scenario quite unlike human brains. In humans, the corpus collusum interconnects into both halves and while seperate, they are intertwined and form a single entity - not two.


I thought that I had addressed that. Normally, both emulated hemispheres would combine into a single AI entity, just as they do in a human.

But Melissa isn't in a normal situation. As I speculated, perhaps her hemispheres were separated by accident; perhaps they were separated as a protective reflex in response to the Flea.

Quote:
No other Halo AI shows this "dual personality" problem


I'm not aware that any other Halo AI has ever been in this situation.

Quote:
and Melissa's monologues show someone capable of both artistic and logical expression.


I'm not aware that persons with "split-brain" cease all use of literary allusion and device; while you are correct that Melissa often employs metaphor, there's a number of times when she begins a metaphor but is unable to complete it.

This could simply be her faulty memory but it would also be explained by a disconnect from the imaginative areas of her mind.

PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 8:19 pm
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GunsmithCat
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Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 459

 		People with their CC's cut don't develop split personalities either.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's an interesting way to look at it, I just think it needs to fit into the details of the story more.

PostPosted: Fri Aug 13, 2004 9:03 am
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jegger
Decorated

Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 222
Location: Atlanta, GA
GunsmithCat wrote:
People with their CC's cut don't develop split personalities either.


Not entirely true. A person with the Corpus Callosum cut will get what's called "Alien hand syndrome". The only reason that the person doesn't seem to have MPD is that the left brain controls speech. The left hand (controlled by the right brain) will frequently draw unexpected pictures, or do other things which the speaking person does not expect. If you cover the right eye, the patient will not be able to tell you what he's looking at, because he has no connection to that eye. In a sense the person is two people occupying a single body.

PostPosted: Fri Aug 13, 2004 10:31 am
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crashfrog
Greenhorn

Joined: 12 Aug 2004
Posts: 4
GunsmithCat wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I think it's an interesting way to look at it, I just think it needs to fit into the details of the story more.


Agreed. For one thing, my model has a harder time reconciling the "airtight container" references than the current "Princess is a Forerunner AI" scenarios.

Perhaps additional story details about the recovered Forerunner artifact will shed some light.

PostPosted: Fri Aug 13, 2004 3:34 pm
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GunsmithCat
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Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 459
jegger wrote:
GunsmithCat wrote:
People with their CC's cut don't develop split personalities either.


Not entirely true. A person with the Corpus Callosum cut will get what's called "Alien hand syndrome". The only reason that the person doesn't seem to have MPD is that the left brain controls speech. The left hand (controlled by the right brain) will frequently draw unexpected pictures, or do other things which the speaking person does not expect. If you cover the right eye, the patient will not be able to tell you what he's looking at, because he has no connection to that eye. In a sense the person is two people occupying a single body.


That's a far, far cry from MPD. It's not two people, it's one person with a deviated nervous system. A person with MPD would exhibit different personalties, different behaviors, different goals, etc. People with various kinds of brain damage like the above may have a complicated handicap, but they certainly don't have a dissociative disorder.

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 9:44 pm
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Kagehi Kossori
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Joined: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 75
Location: Lake Havasu AZ

 		Depends on your definition of 'dissociative'. Someone with the hemispheres cut will still 'think' they are the same person. Some secondary signals and information gets to both halves of the brain, they still express a sense of identity, etc., *but* actually interactions are colored by which half of the brain is most responsible and even which half the body is working on it. The brain percieves 'self' by association, but at times it can disassociate. Such a case is anger, where the emotional hemisphere can act to strike someone, but the other half, unable to any longer say 'stop', acts to grab the hand already in motion. If you could completely seperate the two halves into entirely seperate bodies, likely both would be 100% certain they where the same as before, but they would act radically different in any situation that required logic, creativity or emotional responses. It is only the occupation of the same 'familiar' container that prevents more radical dissociation between them.

PostPosted: Mon Aug 16, 2004 3:02 pm
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GunsmithCat
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 		The kind of dissociation you are describing is true of even healthy, sane people. By itself, it's not a syptom of DID/MPD. The point is dividing the brain does not create two identities, even if it can create different perceptions for the same identity. So while someone with an "alien hand" might be "more dissociative" than your average joe, he's still a far far cry from Three Faces of Eve.

Here's a decent FAQ of DID:
http://bend-in-the-river.com/ansdid1.html#question1


If you can show me a case study where someone developed DID/MPD based solely on CC surgey, I'll agree. Otherwise it sounds like just mixed facts to me. MPD/DID is generally attributed to childhood or severe trauma or stress and not brain damage or surgery.

Not saying there isn't some specific ways to look at Princess/Melissa as being the same person or aspects of the same personality, I'm just saying this clinical analogy doesn't sound like a fit.

PostPosted: Mon Aug 16, 2004 3:29 pm
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crashfrog
Greenhorn

Joined: 12 Aug 2004
Posts: 4
GunsmithCat wrote:
The kind of dissociation you are describing is true of even healthy, sane people. By itself, it's not a syptom of DID/MPD. The point is dividing the brain does not create two identities, even if it can create different perceptions for the same identity.


I think you're cleaving to the analogy too closely. We're not talking about a human brain, here. We're talking about an artificial intelligence modelling a human personality.

I don't see that it's in the least relevant that "split-brain" persons don't develop MPD. They do exhibit characteristic behaviors that they are unaware of.

But this sort of intelligence is not a human brain in a human body, so the details of how human brains misfunction in human bodies is not relevant. What this is is a human personality modelled in hardware; meaning that the hardware needs to (presumably) model a human brain only as far as nominal personality function is required.

How might such a system break? What would be the results of such a system? I propose that partial or total dissociation would occur between "right" and "left-brain" functions, but that each dissociated half would begin to develop replacements for those functions.

That, to me, seems like an accurate description of what's been happening to the Queen and the Princess.

PostPosted: Tue Aug 17, 2004 10:57 am
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Heresiarch
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 		*this does relate, though I take a while to get there*

Has anyone ever read anything from the McCaffrey Brain and Brawn series? The idea is that certain children, or even fetuses, who have been identified as unable to survive independently are placed in total life support, and augmented with cybernetic brain functions, they control things like space stations and starships, basically acting as an AI. They are paired off with a human partner, the "Brawn" to their "Brain". Going off the relationship of MC and Cortana in Halo, someone at Bungie has read these.

The first time I read the Operator's Monologue, about the memory with the boy, I thought that it definitely sounded like a memory from before becoming an AI. Unable to find evidence that anything like that happened in the Halo universe, I gave it up.

Then someone mentioned that in Halo, they use brainscans of recently deceased to create AIs. Hmmm.

The two brains idea sparked my imagination: What if the scan that formed Melissa happened while she was a child? What if the Sleeping Princess is that core scan, while the Queen is the AI construct built around it, and including it? It would make sense, both in the names (The princess becomes the queen), and also that the SP would be locked under tight encryption in emergencies (to protect it from the SPDR). It would explain the childishness of SP, and her love/hate relationship with Melissa. Who wouldn't both love and hate one's adult self?

PostPosted: Wed Aug 18, 2004 2:04 am
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Jacqueline
Boot

Joined: 17 Aug 2004
Posts: 23
Quote:
What if the Sleeping Princess is that core scan, while the Queen is the AI construct built around it, and including it?


Though right now there isn't enough info to know if that's *exactly* what happened, I really like that idea and bet it's pretty close.

My theory so far is that the Princess was some fundamental part of the Operator that was locked away for whatever reason, though I'm not sure if it was because she was originally trying to protect that part of herself (either from the spider or the flea) or because she was under the influence of the flea (or being repaired by the spider - I'm not entirely clear on which has caused the most damage at this point) and that part of her brain was deemed unnecessary.

Now getting into the territory of wild, wild speculation, I'm wondering if the key to restoring the Operator to her old self is in somehow reuniting her with the Princess; which of course the flea will do everything to prevent, by convincing the Queen to turn on her so she's forced to hide.

PostPosted: Wed Aug 18, 2004 3:57 am
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GunsmithCat
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 		We've touched on Princess maybe being a stripped down version of Melissa here as well as the possibility of Melissa remembering "core" memories here.

Not trouting, just trying to connect dots for informational purposes.

PostPosted: Wed Aug 18, 2004 8:47 am
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Jacqueline
Boot

Joined: 17 Aug 2004
Posts: 23

 		Wild speculation is fun! :D
Just had a thought. (And this is getting very, very bad when the second I wake up I'm thinking about this stuff; lst night I even dreamed about reading Dana's blog...)

From the thread about the sound file in the Puzzles section:

sea_mink wrote:
I think hollow1's interpretation of this sound is misleading.

It's a queen bee piping all right,
but the queen is not crying Help!,
she's saying I'm Getting Ready To Kill You All!

This kind of piping is apparently called 'tooting',
which according to beesource.com
http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/sci1964.htm

Quote:
is the regal identification of a virgin queen soon after she has emerged from the cell in which she developed

...
Quote:
Once this queen has emerged, has hardened and has become steady on her legs, she proceeds to visit other queen cells, tear them open and sting to death their potential but not yet mature queens.



Now, I'm have no idea if that's what the sound means or not, but the information about the bee queen is interesting. What if the Princess is a 'not yet mature queen' put into the Operator's programming to eventually replace her if she was ever corrupted or too badly injured to function? Either the damage sustained in the crash or the flea's presence might have triggered here, and she's hiding (was originally in a casket; metaphor for a 'cell'?) from the mature queen, who understandably wants to kill her to keep from being replaced.

(LOL, not sure how much sense any of that made, I'm operating on far too little sleep. And now I'm not going to read any other threads and am staying far, far away from this site until sometime tonight; this is my day off and I actually wanted to clean the house or write or something today, if I can just stop obsessing about bees for long enough... )

PostPosted: Wed Aug 18, 2004 9:16 am
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Improvius
Guest


 		If we take the Princess to be litterally some sort of succssesor to the Queen, it's possible she is some sort of backup file for Melissa. This could also fit in with the "sleeping" part - as if she were just sitting inactive, waiting to be restored.

-Imp

PostPosted: Wed Aug 18, 2004 11:33 am
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