Wild speculation follows for Bayeswatch 9 And Earlier, about what the arc might be, or might mean:
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don’t realize that Bayeswatch is a textbook case of regulatory capture? There was a time when the visionaries of the world stood for freedom. Now it’s all about security,” said Sherine.
“AI is an existential threat to all life in our future lightcone,” said Vi.
“Bayeswatch is a threat to all freedom on Planet Earth,” said Sherine.
“You’re a mad supervillain,” said Vi.
“You’re a fascist thug,” said Sherine.
“You’re going to kill humanity,” said Vi.
“You’ve already killed your own,” said Sherine.
BOOM! Who are the real baddies?
I was wondering what exactly episode 6 was about… And now I think it establishes a possible baseline of facts, such that it is logically possible that we just met… the real hero of the story?
Whether the-thing-that-takes-the-shape-of-Sherine is a freedom-fighting Hero or a mad Villain… seems like it could actually be an open question still?
Lots of details could matter, and the spareness of the writing only hints at what could be going on “for really reals”. But like: Vi haskilled a bunch of children.
And Vi just blasted out the brains of a bunch of (maybe somewhat?) “innocent soldiers” just now in a pretty bloody and yet “affectively bloodless” way. And maybe some of the soldiers could have been walked around (and later cured) instead of shot? I’ve played Survival Horror video games: part of the fun is in seeing how many zombies you can avoid killing.
If that was a war, and if Vi and Sherine are “governments”, those soldiers were likely to be almost “civilian bystanders” in their “war”?
(Personally, I think that any extended pragmatic defense of on-going non-emergency moral anarchism breaks down into incoherence, and so maybe all irregular violence is a really bad sign in general, so under this perspective maybe any kind of Sherine-vs-Bayeswatch thing (with no deference to juries or laws or voters or courts or treaties or anything) would have to be ALL basically just villains-fighting-other-villains in a turf war of sorts? Judge Dredd fantasies aside, I think that judging and carrying-out-judgement, with a natural language API in between, recurs as a design pattern in many human societies for sociologically coherent reasons.)
And like, wasn’t there a meeting of all the leaders of the nations of the world a while back? What happened with that? Did anyone say anything coherent or interesting there?
Maybe Vi (and also Sherine?) needs to sit in a corner for a while and come into better reflective equilibrium with Morality And Goodness?
But for now, we know less about Sherine (though maybe she was that borg thing that murdered the lady in episode 5?) so it should be easier to be more confident about Vi than Sherine.
Second thoughts: if Vi is bad, I think that implies worse things about Miriam?
And then regarding the specific accusation of “regulatory capture”… how does Bayeswatch (1) raise funds or solicit input such that (2) various mostly-private-interest-pursuing entities could have used this interface to steganographically “essentially taken it over”, (3) on the down low, over time, (4) through a series of backroom deals that ratchet the larger organization into collusion with a tiny oligarchically influential fraction of private interests, (5) while the main organization lost the plot on a first order pursuit of a coherent vision of the public good?
Like if Sherine is right, I think there are details that haven’t been established yet...
This raises so many questions! It is like a meta-cliffhanger, where the next episode tells us what genre we’re even reading <3
Lots of details could matter, and the spareness of the writing only hints at what could be going on “for really reals”.
Thank you, this was enlightening for me—somehow, though I’ve read a few books and watched a few movies in my life, I hadn’t realized what you put here plainly, that these cuts are a device for the author to hide some truth from me (ok, this was obvious in “Memento”). I must’ve been very naive, as I simply thought it has more to do with MTV-culture/catering to short attention span of the audience. It’s funny how this technique becomes immediately obvious to me once I mentally flip the roles with the author and ask a question “how would I hide something from the reader or mislead them to believe some alternative explanation while not outright lying?”.
Hm, perhaps a similar, but more visible and annoying technique/plot device is when the author abruptly ends a conversation between two characters by some explosion or arrival of third person, and they never get to finish their sentence or clarify some misunderstanding. On some level this is the same trick, but between two characters, as opposed to between author and reader.
I now wonder what other “manipulation” techniques I was subjected to. Anyone care to list some they become aware of?
I remember noticing and appreciating The Big Lebowski more each time I watched it for the way the The Coen Brothers hid things in plain sight by simply upstaging key facts with hilarious portraits of vivid characters doing something slightly absurd after the character loses the plot, so if you follow just the characters (which is super easy, because it is a smorgasbord of roles for character actors) you miss the “continuities” that the character(s) also miss.
Given that Vi is counting seconds from encountering soldiers to their collapse, AND that there are three dots between this scene and the scene where Miriam says “I’ve been there since Z-Day.” (which technically is an inequality in the opposite direction than I need, but Miriam’s choosing this particular wording looks suggestive to me) I’d venture a guess, that the Z-Day virus was released by Vi in the facility, and Miriam is trying to blame the rouge AI for this. I read this story as Vi and Miriam already crossing a line of “the end justifies the means” and simply infect and kill the “innocent” soldiers protecting the headquarter of their commander who is an em/AI, which Vi and Miriam perceive as a threat that needs to be eliminated at all cost.
[p.s.: I’ve wrote above comment before I’ve realized that I somehow missed to read 8th episode, and now, after ridding 8th episode, I think Vi and Miriam are cleaning up the mess they’ve created themselves—the rouge AI they fight in 9th episode is the one they’ve released, it just took over the command of the army by pretending to be their real commander]
I read it as: unleash the z-day AI which we already know how to counter, but which will attract the attention of the new AI, allowing us to the the neutrino beacon to locate the new AI.
Wild speculation follows for Bayeswatch 9 And Earlier, about what the arc might be, or might mean:
BOOM! Who are the real baddies?
I was wondering what exactly episode 6 was about… And now I think it establishes a possible baseline of facts, such that it is logically possible that we just met… the real hero of the story?
Whether the-thing-that-takes-the-shape-of-Sherine is a freedom-fighting Hero or a mad Villain… seems like it could actually be an open question still?
Lots of details could matter, and the spareness of the writing only hints at what could be going on “for really reals”. But like: Vi has killed a bunch of children.
And Vi just blasted out the brains of a bunch of (maybe somewhat?) “innocent soldiers” just now in a pretty bloody and yet “affectively bloodless” way. And maybe some of the soldiers could have been walked around (and later cured) instead of shot? I’ve played Survival Horror video games: part of the fun is in seeing how many zombies you can avoid killing.
If that was a war, and if Vi and Sherine are “governments”, those soldiers were likely to be almost “civilian bystanders” in their “war”?
(Personally, I think that any extended pragmatic defense of on-going non-emergency moral anarchism breaks down into incoherence, and so maybe all irregular violence is a really bad sign in general, so under this perspective maybe any kind of Sherine-vs-Bayeswatch thing (with no deference to juries or laws or voters or courts or treaties or anything) would have to be ALL basically just villains-fighting-other-villains in a turf war of sorts? Judge Dredd fantasies aside, I think that judging and carrying-out-judgement, with a natural language API in between, recurs as a design pattern in many human societies for sociologically coherent reasons.)
And like, wasn’t there a meeting of all the leaders of the nations of the world a while back? What happened with that? Did anyone say anything coherent or interesting there?
Maybe Vi (and also Sherine?) needs to sit in a corner for a while and come into better reflective equilibrium with Morality And Goodness?
But for now, we know less about Sherine (though maybe she was that borg thing that murdered the lady in episode 5?) so it should be easier to be more confident about Vi than Sherine.
Second thoughts: if Vi is bad, I think that implies worse things about Miriam?
And then regarding the specific accusation of “regulatory capture”… how does Bayeswatch (1) raise funds or solicit input such that (2) various mostly-private-interest-pursuing entities could have used this interface to steganographically “essentially taken it over”, (3) on the down low, over time, (4) through a series of backroom deals that ratchet the larger organization into collusion with a tiny oligarchically influential fraction of private interests, (5) while the main organization lost the plot on a first order pursuit of a coherent vision of the public good?
Like if Sherine is right, I think there are details that haven’t been established yet...
This raises so many questions! It is like a meta-cliffhanger, where the next episode tells us what genre we’re even reading <3
I really appreciate your exegesis of these.
Your verbal appreciation is likewise appreciated, at least by me. I hesitated to publish.
Thank you, this was enlightening for me—somehow, though I’ve read a few books and watched a few movies in my life, I hadn’t realized what you put here plainly, that these cuts are a device for the author to hide some truth from me (ok, this was obvious in “Memento”). I must’ve been very naive, as I simply thought it has more to do with MTV-culture/catering to short attention span of the audience. It’s funny how this technique becomes immediately obvious to me once I mentally flip the roles with the author and ask a question “how would I hide something from the reader or mislead them to believe some alternative explanation while not outright lying?”.
Hm, perhaps a similar, but more visible and annoying technique/plot device is when the author abruptly ends a conversation between two characters by some explosion or arrival of third person, and they never get to finish their sentence or clarify some misunderstanding. On some level this is the same trick, but between two characters, as opposed to between author and reader.
I now wonder what other “manipulation” techniques I was subjected to. Anyone care to list some they become aware of?
I remember noticing and appreciating The Big Lebowski more each time I watched it for the way the The Coen Brothers hid things in plain sight by simply upstaging key facts with hilarious portraits of vivid characters doing something slightly absurd after the character loses the plot, so if you follow just the characters (which is super easy, because it is a smorgasbord of roles for character actors) you miss the “continuities” that the character(s) also miss.
Given that Vi is counting seconds from encountering soldiers to their collapse, AND that there are three dots between this scene and the scene where Miriam says “I’ve been there since Z-Day.” (which technically is an inequality in the opposite direction than I need, but Miriam’s choosing this particular wording looks suggestive to me) I’d venture a guess, that the Z-Day virus was released by Vi in the facility, and Miriam is trying to blame the rouge AI for this. I read this story as Vi and Miriam already crossing a line of “the end justifies the means” and simply infect and kill the “innocent” soldiers protecting the headquarter of their commander who is an em/AI, which Vi and Miriam perceive as a threat that needs to be eliminated at all cost.
[p.s.: I’ve wrote above comment before I’ve realized that I somehow missed to read 8th episode, and now, after ridding 8th episode, I think Vi and Miriam are cleaning up the mess they’ve created themselves—the rouge AI they fight in 9th episode is the one they’ve released, it just took over the command of the army by pretending to be their real commander]
I read it as: unleash the z-day AI which we already know how to counter, but which will attract the attention of the new AI, allowing us to the the neutrino beacon to locate the new AI.