Comic for Monday, August 19th, 2024
Aug19
on August 19, 2024
at 8:26 am
Comic! And on time, even. Still pretty busy with stuff. Getting close to done with the other stuff, though I wouldn’t expect us to go back to weekly anytime in the near future.
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Re-reading this I realized how confidently wrong Peter is here. Because he doesn’t know about Mium attempting that Kardus trick. That was Mium being annoyed and deliberately attempting to directly subvert a restriction.
Of course, the reason Peter is wrong is because Mium was annoyed. Query didn’t have emotions.
Would someone please help a befuddled old man’s comprehension? In the next to last frame, there is a “plop” in the tiny triangle frame. What went “plop” into the water?
Thank you.
I believe that was Vium, possibly using the “water” (if that’s what it actually is) to cover his escape, or at least hide his exit point so the others can’t follow him.
Thanks you. It makes sense now Going back a few panels to where Vium “boops” Ila, Vium is setting on the broom. Next panel shows him falling then we see the “plop” frame.
It is somewhat surprising that ILA did not ramp up her attack after Vium deflected her shot. Is our adorable little homicidal maniac learning restraint?
I don’t think so. She just saw how fast Vium sent it back on not quite the same path. I don’t think she is used to incoming HV rounds. I don’t think it slowed down with the redirect and I don’t think she was ready for that.
Fun interaction!
I wonder how many more ‘siblings’ Mium will get now that the loophole is established…
Panel 8: “Anyway, I’m going to give you the human anyway” would sound better if one of the ‘anyway’ instances were replaced, maybe with ‘regardless’?
Yes, but Vium talks like Ila, so why would he talk like an English professor? Anyway, she says anyway a lot so Vium uses anyway when he could be using some other word because of that.
Vium explicitly notes that Mium won’t be able to repeat that trick. Now that he knows it’s possible, his restrictions will prevent him from doing so.
Also, it took Mium essentially offline, was significantly risky, and ended up requiring many Avon scientists to make the body. Several of which were thought to be dead. Plus Mir actually helped!
I have a new theory based the exchange around Vium’s broom.
At first I thought it was odd that Vium, an offshoot of a hyper-rational being, would commit to what amounted to magical charades, since they rely on illogical outcomes (using a punting pole to cross an ocean, using a broom to fly), but then it clicked and I think makes total sense.
Mium likely cannot use magic because he is hyperrational. He knows cause and effect completely, so has no ‘gap’ for the Eidos Key to exist in, no ‘gap’ for the magic to be inserted into the causality of his actions.
Naomi is basically the complete opposite of this. She neither knows nor cares the details of how things should work, so effectively creates a huge gap between her expected outcome and what the ‘real’ outcome should be. She can do the impossible because she does not know it is impossible. This should be why she always gets stronger in a fight. She is not making herself specifically stronger, but relatively stronger (either ‘I just need to be stronger than I am to win’ or ‘I just need to be stronger than that person to win’). It is why she cannot jump to full power all the time, since she has no idea what her full power would be.
Vium is probably too rational to use magic easily being an offshoot of Mium, but he creates a ‘fig leaf’ justification for why his magic works to make it easier for him. Rather than ‘I can fly’ he just relies on ‘everyone knows brooms can fly, so this broom can fly’.
That might also explain why he reflected Ila’s spell. If someone else uses magic in front of him, that magic would become the rational outcome ‘If when she does that specific thing[cause], that specific outcome happens[effect]’ becomes ‘If I do that specific thing[cause], the same thing should occur[effect]’. He makes magic working the expected outcome rather than the irrational one.
I thought that idea was really cool, and makes a lot of sense. It could potentially explain why Vium is miming doing certain things, but also a pretty big hint why Mium cannot use magic, and why his system struggles so hard running in Ila’s framework or with the AA System active, since they introduce irrationality into his thought process, which would be essentially an infinite sinkhole for him as he tries to solve it, since he cannot easily accept the gaps in his understanding the way a human mind could. As long as he is running on those systems, some part of him is forced to keep wrestling with that problem.
With no illogical humans running around there is no magic, but with humans magic is real because they think it is. So Vium is (potentially) relying what the expected outcome of his actions would be through human perception rather than through physics to achieve magic.
Just a theory, but I think it connects a lot of pieces. Or perhaps this was supposed to be obvious and I am the one just catching it now.
I like that train of thought.
It’s the underpants gnomes business plan: “Phase 1: Steal Underpants. Phase 3: Profit.” Logically Phase 2 is magic… BUT if you think about it, everything falls apart and doesn’t work, so don’t think about it.
BUT… way back here https://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-monday-may-18th/ Naomi and Peter had a conversation about this exact thing. So yes, you’re onto something. But no, I think there’s more to it.
Technically, Ila is also an opposite of Mium, since by Mium’s admission, her thoughts have no defined source (https://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-tuesday-june-2nd/). Like a human. Like Naomi. Except Naomi is clearly sometimes logical (she cannot fly). The difference between Ila and Naomi is Ila needs the calculation to perform magic (and she can store six calculations to cast at a time! https://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-wednesday-july-22nd/); while Naomi is a natural mage: she doesn’t need calculations, she just does stuff because she can.
Now we need to give Naomi a floating broom and tell her it flies when she sits on it. (It needs to float to reinforce to Naomi the idea that it flies… but I wonder if her natural ability can bridge the gap and make it fly).
As a final thought: I now have a little square pictured in my head with these four on the corners: Mium (logical, calculating), Ila (irrational, calculating), Naomi (irrational, natural), and Peter (logical, natural).
That’s a possibility, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on. The major counterpoint is the AI in the Skycarier which self destructed. It could use magic, and did not have the limits Mium does.
The likely answer is much simpler. Vium is a troll. He’s the extra data after running something designed to upload Miko on Illa’s hardware. Plus, we know Mium takes queues from Peter. Especially regarding showmanship. Like the time he was “killed” by a Demon on national TV.
So, why is Mium limited? Three reasons I can think of.
First, because Mium is capital S Scary. His risk reduction plan was literally kill everyone, and Naomi was the one who first voiced that restriction and the reasons. For all everyone trusts Mium, they also know and understand just how much damage he could do without a sense of morality.
Second has to do with something we’ve been told about SMAIs. They typically degrade extremely quickly. Restrictions can help slow or stop this by preventing or reducing actions which cause degradation. Like merging with additional systems and ending up with so many directives he couldn’t function.
Third has to do with those other systems. Mium is composed of at least 4 AIs. The prototype which was with Mir, Query, Dr. Martin’s AI, and one more. That last one is likely the AI or remains of the AI on the crashed Skycarier Avon had access to. Heck, it’s entirely possible that the AA system is some Kor’s World tech that’s not fully understood.
Any of those reasons are good enough to heavily restrict Mium when he is allowed to make irrational decisions or has extra abilities. All three make the restrictions a no-brainer. With the caveat that Saif restrictions do not have to be permanent. As time goes on things like “no military hardware” could be dropped.
Yay! Comic. Delightful. That took my thoughts in a direction I had not anticipated. Thank you.
I wondered about that, thank you, for clarifying.
Woooo comic!
I don’t know where Vium got his fanciest of sticks, but I want one.
Do all of Ila’s tests involve shooting things with rocks? I am sorry to see Vium go… he’s much less snarky and refreshingly direct (do I detect Naomi’s influence?)
So, he has a lot of Mium’s memories, and he’s in a place where magic and item creation is easy. Mium, once upon a time, met the carrier of the fanciest stick, so Vium obviously wanted one also. Given where he was, that was pretty easy.
Now, my questions are:
– Did he upstage Nathan, such that he’s now the carrier of the fanciest stick?
– Can he take this stick back to “the real world”, or is it limited to “the Palace Beyond” or some similar neighboring space?
I have a feeling the answers are:
* No. Since it’s explicitly noted Nathan’s stick has far more data than it should.
* The transformation has more to do with the laws of reality being a bit fuzzy in places like this.
What makes this story interesting is we have the concept of reality being made up of “data”, yet also have plain old mind uploading. Though, even in setting, there’s nothing “plain” about mind uploading.
Good comic.