unforum

[thebruce]

[Phaedra]

Hey krystyn --

I emailed Sean to see if what we were reading in the Melissa/SP story was something that he intended to put there, or if it was just meaning that we were bringing to the text. Er, story. (Some times I fall into those lit-major patterns.)

I have prefaced all my emails to the PMs with reassurance that I would not turn around and post their responses on the forum (others may feel differently, but personally I feel that only in-game emails should be fair game for the forum).

However, I'm going to paraphrase part of the response here because I think that you, being part of the conversation, deserve to know and because it seems general enough (and it's purely story-related) that I can't see any reason why it would be private.

(<happy sigh> I send an email off to an award-winning author, then leave work, go to my chiropractor, go home, eat dinner, and boot up my computer. And am I totally pathetic in that I got all giddy when I found a return email waiting for me in my inbox? I was expecting to wait a few days. <happier sigh>)

He basically said that yes, both consciously and unconsciously, it was part of the "deep structure of the narrative," but that there was a twist in that it was cross-gendered: Jan and Melissa go through the "masculine initiations of violence" rather than the feminine ones of sex.

I've got a few nits I'd kind of like to pick regarding the idea that the masculine-authored literary/historical conception that sex is as central to the feminine psyche as men apparently like to think should be accepted as it is rather than

(BWAHAHA! Watching Daily Show...)

Where was I...oh, yes. Don't just *accept* it! But, I am not an award-winning author, and clearly his acceptance of this theory does not prevent him from/even may improve his ability to write good stories, even/especially female centered ones. So, I'll shut up.

Anyway, for what it's worth, there it is. Yes, it was intentional, so we probably should have discussed it when we thought of it.

[DreamOfTheRood]

I'm finding that the whole idea of strict guidelines regarding male and female roles within literature is really beginning to break down, especially in genres like fantasy and sci-fi. For instance, in China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station," main character Isaac Gremnebulin doesn't really get violent at all, but he does get busy.
Of course, I'm writing this screenplay where the main character, Raime O'Shea, is a Shaolin warrior who fights the undead. As is stands, there is no romantic subplot in the movie. I was never consciously trying to buck literary trends, but the example works.

[Tarrsk]

Very interesting discussion... hopefully, when I have some time tomorrow I'll be able to post my thoughts. In the meantime, though, does anyone have a link to the DVD-ripped audio torrent? I have the DVD itself downloaded but would like the higher-quality audio to burn to CD form.

Thanks!

[cheebers]

First off, sorry to start a fight and then not be here to back up my arguments for several days. I was thinking about it a lot, but was unaviodably detained. Thanks to thebruce. Here is several days worth of arguing.

[thebruce]

[krystyn]

I dunno. I get all the mechanics you're describing, but I am still not getting from anyone the end result: does her essence preclude her from having value??

People in 2552 had the utmost respect for (and even fear of) Melissa. She commanded and led; she counseled and protected. She loved and hated. The humans of her own time period treated her as a being, of whatever stripe. Her own brother was able to accept her, in spite of the monster she felt she had become. How cool is that?

[Kali]

In the thread where this came up before, I'd promissed to explain why there's good evidence to suggest that human thought processes are in fact, binary. I didn't follow through on my promise at the time because, well, there were puzzles to solve and axons to enhottenate. When I get home to my books tonight, I'll try to compose a quick explanation of what evidence there is to support this hypothesis.

[cheebers]

[Buzzkill247]

[thebruce]

[cheebers]

[krystyn]

I guess I've always been slightly horrified that when it came down to dealing with "Melissa vs. Dana/Aunt Margaret," that people were focusing so strongly on this very issue. Instead of looking for nuances (which some of us did - Melissa was actually eventually receptive to using Dana to help her, instead of just trying to seek revenge against her), there was this alarming stopgap reasoning.

It's stuff like that that is worrying to me, in the grand scheme of things. Making assumptions of someone's or something's inherent value based upon a couple of factors you don't even know the limitations of seems a bit capricious, especially with such a complex set of events. Melissa happened to hold the fate of the universe in her hand, but because she was an A.I., that gave many of you cause to simply align with Dana and her Aunt, because they were human.

Does that not give anyone pause, here? In the context of this universe, and seeing how important and integrated A.I.s will be in the game's version of 2552, I found it problematic.

[ROBOGriff]

I'm chiming in a little late, but here are my thoughts:


Life: Plain and simple, if it bleeds it's alive. Melissa dosn't bleed.

Okay, maybe that's a drastic oversimplification but it's not worth deep debate. As stated before, you can (theoretically) recreate an AI but not a human.

As for the value of a life vs AI, this becomes a much more complicated debate, but still fairly simple. In military conflicts, the end result may be worth the sacrifice of human lives in exchange for positioning. Keeping that thought, an AI would be much more valueable than humans in a future conflict due to the way AI's can penetrate enemy networks. If you read my feelings on Melissa vs Dana, it should be clear that I was very much on Dana's side. But that is due to the rules of engaement that our civilization agreed to. But if the overall context was a pure military conflict or even a galatic struggle (such as the setting of the Haloverse) then Dana would be toast.

[Clayfoot]

We're trying to decide whether The HALO AI's are

a) alive
b) sentient beings

We haven't dealt with a real AI (Melissa/Durga/etc), just a living, sentient being that pretends to be the AI (Kristen Rutherford). Based on the evidence we have, Melissa/Durga would pass any test we have for living sentience, because we're testing against a real person, and because the facts we have on the AI are provided by the writers (Bungie and Stewart), who seem to want us to treat the AI's as beings.

It seems to me that we can treat the AI's as really tough, indentured servants. They think, but they don't eat; i.e., they can't starve, drown, or die in the way we normally think. They need intellectual stimulation and exploration, but they are not free to leave. They are capable of indepent thought and action, but constrained by their terms of loyalty and of servitude. We might compare the AI's to the servants in the wealthy households of ancient Rome, who were encouraged to worship their owners as minor gods.

On the question of value or worth of an AI's life, I'd like to interject this notion of durability. Aunt Margaret and Dana aren't tough; one step in front of the bus, and they're toast. Because of the way the AI's "live", they are hard to destroy utterly. We could "resurrect" the AI from many disasters from pieces or a "frozen" memory backup. In this respect, we might think of an AI like bacteria or (dare I say it?) a bee colony: able to act as a single entity, but hard to wipe out the consituent parts completely. Or, if the AI really were a human, we could imagine the AI having a limitless supply of frozen clones, each one waiting to be reanimated with the AI's current memories and knowledge. If you could transfer your current memories to a new body every time you died, how fearless would you be? If we think of the AI as being nearly immortal, then it's easier to side with the mortal human. If we think of the AI as being mortal, vulnerable, and essentially trapped, then we might side with the AI over the human (who can at least try to "get away").

Of course, I could be wrong.