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ProfessorTomoe

Story Wednesday August 16th, 2017

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10 minutes ago, Tuscahoma said:

Perhaps one of the reasons Pandora has not reset is because of Blaike's influence on her.  Perhaps she fears if she resets she will lose that influence; she would lose touch with her empathy and humanity.

Pretty much, yeah.  Blaike meant too much to her, Adrian meant too much to her to reset and lose the connection.

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4 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

I think "trickster" primarily.  In that mode she wasn't "bad" per se....   But humor, especially practical joke sort of humor is hard to pull off without some cruelty.  Which in turn often requires some indifference to the object of the prank.

I'd like to credit Blaike with putting Pandora in touch with her empathy.

I don't think she has any. She always needs to remember Blaike and think about what he would do, she doesn't feel it herself.

2 hours ago, Tuscahoma said:

So now you have me imagining the existence of an Immortal who has meticulously passed along nested, linked, indexed and fulltext searchable Memory Palace of ALL his/her previous incarnations.  This Immortal also has a love of technology and has created an artifact that will exist across incarnations and is able to store an Immortals memories as a backup in case of a botched reset.

Alternatively, he ALWAYS resets improperly due to the artifact, but doesn't really care because he can remember using the artifact.

2 hours ago, Tuscahoma said:
20 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Anyway, yes ; while she seem to reach conclusion that attempt to do reset might be better than not, I definitely don't see her doing it so fast. I would also expect that she would WARN at least Sarah and probably also Adrian about that.

I wonder if she will warn anyone about her reset or the nature of it.  Part of me thinks, Yes, obviously so, but another wonders if maybe she wouldn't or wouldn't let anyone know that she is attempting something new, so that they wouldn't worry about her or try to talk her out of it.   Hmmm....

She DOES have the option of saying something and disappearing before they start talking her out of it.

But yes, that's why I said "probably Adrian". I think she would tell Sarah because she likes her and because Sarah is unlikely to object, but she MIGHT avoid telling Adrian or tell him in way which won't allow him to reply because she would be afraid what the reply would be.

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10 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I don't think she has any. She always needs to remember Blaike and think about what he would do, she doesn't feel it herself.

I don't think she'd be having the conversation with herself that she is having if she didn't feel empathy.  But I think it is new to her.

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2 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:
2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I don't think she has any. She always needs to remember Blaike and think about what he would do, she doesn't feel it herself.

I don't think she'd be having the conversation with herself that she is having if she didn't feel empathy.  But I think it is new to her.

I don't think it's really new to her either, just that she had buried it for a while, empathy would have made her reset when she turned 200, but she pushed it aside because she was afraid of the idea of "total abandonment of self".

It's kind of ironic really, because what Pandora ended up becoming over the years was not the same person that spent 16 years of her life with Blaike. That Pandora has just recently returned to the foreground.

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9 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I don't think it's really new to her either, just that she had buried it for a while, empathy would have made her reset when she turned 200, but she pushed it aside because she was afraid of the idea of "total abandonment of self".

It's kind of ironic really, because what Pandora ended up becoming over the years was not the same person that spent 16 years of her life with Blaike. That Pandora has just recently returned to the foreground.

I look at it not as an abandonment of self but as an abandonment of Blaike's memory and Adrian as his legacy.  Pandora's focus is outward.  This is the first time she's been introspective, probably in hundreds of years.

if I were to speculate, I'd think that Pandora was hurt so deeply by losing Blaike that she threw herself into everything but actually mourning him, becoming fiercely interested in and protective of 'family".  She wants to focus on anything but herself.  She's trying desperately to hold onto what was left of her life with Blaike because letting it go would be more than she could bear.   And gradually becoming older and less balanced, bored and trapped.

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1 minute ago, Vorlonagent said:

I look at it not as an abandonment of self but as an abandonment of Blaike's memory and Adrian as his legacy.  Pandora's focus is outward.  This is the first time she's been introspective, probably in hundreds of years.

if I were to speculate, I'd think that Pandora was hurt so deeply by losing Blaike that she threw herself into everything but actually mourning him, becoming fiercely interested in and protective of 'family".  She wants to focus on anything but herself.  She's trying desperately to hold onto what was left of her life with Blaike because letting it go would be more than she could bear.   And gradually becoming older and less balanced, bored and trapped.

First time in hundreds of years, certainly, not the first time in her lifetime though. She was being introspective at 150 years old when she was considering an early reset, but found nothing of those 150 years to be worth passing on to her next life. Meeting Blaike made her realize there was so much she could do.

I fully agree that Pandora hasn't properly mourned Blaike's death, I think it'd be hard for anyone to mourn a loss like that. Her being an Immortal might give her more options for how to deal with it, but emotionally, I don't think she's any different than Humans.

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14 minutes ago, Scotty said:

I fully agree that Pandora hasn't properly mourned Blaike's death, I think it'd be hard for anyone to mourn a loss like that. Her being an Immortal might give her more options for how to deal with it, but emotionally, I don't think she's any different than Humans.

I think she has a harder time than most humans.  Being aloof and just out to have fun for 150 years means she hasn't dealt much with pain or loss.  There's a certain amount of pain and loss that's unavoidable to humans.

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3 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

There's a certain amount of pain and loss that's unavoidable to humans.

There's a certain amount of pain and loss that is needed to make you human. You need to experience your own pain to develop real empathy toward the pain of others.

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3 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

There's a certain amount of pain and loss that is needed to make you human. You need to experience your own pain to develop real empathy toward the pain of others.

I am not... quite certain this is how it works. At the very least that is oversimplifying it. Admittedly pain is a potent motivator, teacher and protector but it is possible to get too much of it. Mental traumas may result if it comes in the form of abuse, particularly systematic abuse. One of these is sociopathy which is noted specifically for its complete lack of empathy with others.

That being said, there is something to it. For many people it becomes easier to empathise with a particular sort of pain once it has been placed in a perspective where they can understand it. Humans have different methods of doing so. To mention the three main ones there is experiencing the pain yourself, directly observing others experience that pain and through study learning the nature of that pain and how it acts on those who suffer from it.

Of course, the very simplest way of shutting down that empathy is to convince a person that the ones experiencing the pain are not actually people. Once this has been accomplished, it is amazing with just how much stoicism people may endure pain and wrongs not done to themselves.

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7 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

There's a certain amount of pain and loss that is needed to make you human

 

3 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

but it is possible to get too much of it.

That about seems to sum it up.

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20 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:
On 8/16/2017 at 11:13 PM, Drasvin said:

Well her basic nature would have been the same. Extrapolating from what we know of her, her basic nature seems to be an emotionally driven, but good-hearted trickster.

I think "trickster" primarily.  In that mode she wasn't "bad" per se....   But humor, especially practical joke sort of humor is hard to pull off without some cruelty.  Which in turn often requires some indifference to the object of the prank.

I'd like to credit Blaike with putting Pandora in touch with her empathy.  Maybe Pandora's experience with Blaike was enough to bring about a change to basic nature.  I expect we'll find out eventually.

Even before she really got to know Blaike and learn the lessons he had to give, She had enough empathy for challenge to turn into concern. And she even helped to save his life once he encountered the giant magic lion bear. Her empathy may have grown after getting to know Blaike, but she had some before hand.

While practical jokes might require a degree of cruelty to pull off, a good-hearted trickster will try to prevent the cruelty from going to far and exceeding the good that comes from the humor. They might not always succeed in that though.

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Pranks don't have to be cruel.  Look up MIT hacks (their term for pranking) and you can see some pretty awesome examples.  It's a part of the school's code of honor as well as a point of pride, and students will go to great trouble, for example, to not only make sure that a building isn't damaged when they turn its dome into R2D2's head or the One Ring, but also to leave detailed instructions on how to safely dismantle the hack once there's been adequate time to appreciate it.  They believe that a prank where no one is hurt is a much better prank, and they strive to be the best at it!

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22 hours ago, Scotty said:
22 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

I look at it not as an abandonment of self but as an abandonment of Blaike's memory and Adrian as his legacy.  Pandora's focus is outward.  This is the first time she's been introspective, probably in hundreds of years.

if I were to speculate, I'd think that Pandora was hurt so deeply by losing Blaike that she threw herself into everything but actually mourning him, becoming fiercely interested in and protective of 'family".  She wants to focus on anything but herself.  She's trying desperately to hold onto what was left of her life with Blaike because letting it go would be more than she could bear.   And gradually becoming older and less balanced, bored and trapped.

First time in hundreds of years, certainly, not the first time in her lifetime though. She was being introspective at 150 years old when she was considering an early reset, but found nothing of those 150 years to be worth passing on to her next life. Meeting Blaike made her realize there was so much she could do.

I fully agree that Pandora hasn't properly mourned Blaike's death, I think it'd be hard for anyone to mourn a loss like that. Her being an Immortal might give her more options for how to deal with it, but emotionally, I don't think she's any different than Humans.

She's definitely different than Humans - but she's trying hard to NOT be.

15 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Of course, the very simplest way of shutting down that empathy is to convince a person that the ones experiencing the pain are not actually people. Once this has been accomplished, it is amazing with just how much stoicism people may endure pain and wrongs not done to themselves.

It's also amazing how easy it is.

But it's necessary. Anyone actually empathizing with all the pain in the world would get crazy extremely fast.

9 hours ago, Drasvin said:

Even before she really got to know Blaike and learn the lessons he had to give, She had enough empathy for challenge to turn into concern. And she even helped to save his life once he encountered the giant magic lion bear. Her empathy may have grown after getting to know Blaike, but she had some before hand.

I would argue that this empathy was STILL caused by Blaike, despite her not really knowing him yet.

It's likely she didn't interacted that long with any of her previous victims. Also, her victims were likely reacting predictably, which made them less "people" to Pandora.

34 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Pranks don't have to be cruel.  Look up MIT hacks (their term for pranking) and you can see some pretty awesome examples.  It's a part of the school's code of honor as well as a point of pride, and students will go to great trouble, for example, to not only make sure that a building isn't damaged when they turn its dome into R2D2's head or the One Ring, but also to leave detailed instructions on how to safely dismantle the hack once there's been adequate time to appreciate it.  They believe that a prank where no one is hurt is a much better prank, and they strive to be the best at it!

But note that it's much HARDER to make prank this way.

(Also, note some other MIT hacks: RSA, Apollo Guidance Computer, Radar, Lisp, GNU and - the best prank of all - Emacs.)

 

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2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Also, note some other MIT hacks: RSA, Apollo Guidance Computer, Radar, Lisp, GNU and - the best prank of all - Emacs.

That's a funny way to spell vim

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21 hours ago, mlooney said:
23 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Also, note some other MIT hacks: RSA, Apollo Guidance Computer, Radar, Lisp, GNU and - the best prank of all - Emacs.

That's a funny way to spell vim

Vim was written in Netherlands. Vi was written on University of California, Berkeley.

Also, note that I said Emacs was the best PRANK. Not the best editor. In fact, I was trying to suggest that calling Emacs editor was the prank.

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On 8/20/2017 at 2:25 AM, hkmaly said:

Vim was written in Netherlands. Vi was written on University of California, Berkeley.

Also, note that I said Emacs was the best PRANK. Not the best editor. In fact, I was trying to suggest that calling Emacs editor was the prank.

Yea, Emacs is way to simple and limited to be effective. There's only a little more than 10,000 commands, but fortunately it supports macros and some limited scripting so it's possible to use it for some limited editing...:laugh:

 

Seriously, it's has a learning curve steeper than most programming languages. Personally I feel you shouldn't spend more time learning to use the editor than programming...

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2 minutes ago, Cpt. Obvious said:

Yea, Emacs is way to simple and limited to be effective. There's only a little more than 10,000 commands, but fortunately it supports macros and some limited scripting so it's possible to use it for some limited editing...:laugh:

 

Seriously, it's has a learning curve steeper than most programming languages. Personally I feel you shouldn't spend more time learning to use the editor than programming...

EMacs is a fine computer operating system.  It just needs a good editor.

 

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On 8/20/2017 at 2:25 AM, hkmaly said:

In fact, I was trying to suggest that calling Emacs editor was the prank.

6 hours ago, mlooney said:

EMacs is a fine computer operating system.  It just needs a good editor.

Yes.

6 hours ago, Cpt. Obvious said:

Seriously, it's has a learning curve steeper than most programming languages. Personally I feel you shouldn't spend more time learning to use the editor than programming...

The programming language you need to learn to use Emacs is called ELisp.

16914999852_995b77a811_z.jpg

 

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12 hours ago, hkmaly said:

The programming language you need to learn to use Emacs is called ELisp.

Oh, joy, Yet another variation on Lisp. Beloved of set theory geeks, Lisp is a higher-level computer language that has the dubious distinction of being harder to master than writing assembly code. I suffered through the summer of 1995 at UC Berkeley being tortured by another Lips variation, Sceme--on computers using Gnu. I haven't touched any Lisp clone since. Oh, once you pass that introductory course, you never use scheme again at UC Berkeley; all the other Computer Science courses use C++.

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3 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

Oh, once you pass that introductory course, you never use scheme again at UC Berkeley; all the other Computer Science courses use C++.

 

Ah.  A thin the herd class.  Data structures was mine back in 88.

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1 hour ago, Drasvin said:

I know it says the learning curve of popular MMOs, but I wonder how Dwarf Fortress matches up.

As far as I can remember, the curve is fairly gentle upwards, but then goes worse than EVE's after the first cat death.

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