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Jones gives the Pharoahs geometry tips. Jones teaches Homo Erectus to use fire. Jones helps a chimp brush up on hitting things with sticks. Jones hi-fives a velociraptor. Bring on the art book.
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Oct 12, 2012 20:21
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I would unironically love this.
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Oct 12, 2012 20:28
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Arglebargle III posted:Jones gives the Pharoahs geometry tips. Jones teaches Homo Erectus to use fire. Jones helps a chimp brush up on hitting things with sticks. Jones hi-fives a velociraptor. Before the first real thing, long before the great howling cacophony that is life, the universe could be thought of as a cool, dark, empty room. Jones walks in and turns on the light.
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Oct 12, 2012 20:39
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Calaveron posted:Also, based on the robots' dialogue further in no way in hell is Kat not magical/ethereal in some form, beyond the robots' and Zimmy's perception of her. I don't know, man. It would be cool if Kat's brilliance were due to some strange secret about her that she can discover later in the story, but it might be cooler if it turns out that she's that brilliant despite there being nothing at all special about her.
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Oct 12, 2012 21:20
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Urban Space Cowboy posted:It keeps going...and going...and going... 
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Oct 12, 2012 23:48
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Jones was born of the seed Bismuth. 
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Oct 13, 2012 00:26
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Jones had to chill out for a millennia and wait for humans to evolve. This is where her boredom comes from -- she snapped.
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Oct 13, 2012 02:58
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Hey guys, what if Jones is the seed bismuth? You know, whatever the hell a seed bismuth is.
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Oct 13, 2012 03:47
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Cat Mattress posted:Oh no! A rude sentence! The rudest sentence! I wonder why "robots don't have emotions" is such a common trope in scifi. If you can program other complex brain functions you can program emotions. They're not some magical thing that only humans can have. MoonwalkInvincible posted:Hey guys, what if Jones is the seed bismuth? What ever it is, it's probably good for an upset stomach.
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Oct 13, 2012 03:59
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MoonwalkInvincible posted:Hey guys, what if Jones is the seed bismuth? Jones, obviously.
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Oct 13, 2012 04:17
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Fister Roboto posted:I wonder why "robots don't have emotions" is such a common trope in scifi. If you can program other complex brain functions you can program emotions. They're not some magical thing that only humans can have. Because the point of having a humanoid robot or equivalent in a story is to explore what does and doesn't define humanity, and also why on Earth would you program a machine to feel emotions other than 'desire to work harder' and maybe 'job satisfaction' Tubgirl Cosplay fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Oct 13, 2012 |
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Oct 13, 2012 04:23
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Tubgirl Cosplay posted:Because the point of having a humanoid robot or equivalent in a story is to explore what does and doesn't define humanity, and also why on Earth would you program a machine to feel emotions other than 'desire to work harder' and maybe 'job satisfaction' To feel like God.
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Oct 13, 2012 05:00
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Tubgirl Cosplay posted:Because the point of having a humanoid robot or equivalent in a story is to explore what does and doesn't define humanity, and also why on Earth would you program a machine to feel emotions other than 'desire to work harder' and maybe 'job satisfaction' Why not?
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Oct 13, 2012 05:44
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It's a natural thing to assume, from a literary standpoint, that the extension of intelligence to something built out of calculations would result in an entity as logical as its components; and, further, that because logic is employed to find truth without being misguided by emotionally-charged bias, that a consummately logical inhuman being would manifest that inhumanity as emotionlessness. It's completely unfounded in reality, where even very simple programs can exhibit emergent chaotic behavior resembling emotions, and simple logical problems like understanding grammatically correct written language stump the most advanced adaptive algorithms with unprecedentedly large training sets and mind-boggling computing power. But it makes poetic sense.
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Oct 13, 2012 06:50
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I suspect that whatever Jones is will be tied pretty strongly to the recent Coyote power of human imagination/creativity thing.My theory is a bit muddled but I'm thinking that Jones is a force that stabilizes the influence of human perception on reality. There are a number of situations where coyote's explanation of human's altering reality (through the ether) could be problematic - such as when there are multiple competing perspectives. Jones could serve as a neutral viewpoint that determines an objective reality. This would fit with her personality and the name 'wandering eye'. That may be some pretty wild speculating, but I am betting that we will see more of how the perception influencing ether stuff fits with other things in gunnerkrigg. Like Zimmy, for one.
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Oct 13, 2012 07:48
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I just want to mention some things we know about Jones too:- -Is she immortal or merely ageless? That is, is the reason she was able to survive the factory explosion, able to walk across lake bottoms and punch walls because she can't die/invulnerable? Or, is it that she's just extremely tough and happens to not age (that we've seen anyway). -She's the Wandering Eye. This implies she is an observer? At the meeting in the Greeting Hall, Jones' role really does just seem to be look over the proceedings. She notices the seeds being dropped and passed comments on about Ysengrin's new body. -She seems to be somewhat neutral, as has been pointed out in the previous posts. She stands by the Court during the Visit but doesn't directly talk to the Forest Dwellers or intervene when Ysengrin starts flipping his poo poo (maybe because she saw it was a ruse.) They way she tries to guide Antimony down a path between the Court and Forest is also interesting -- she wants Antimony to consider both sides and doesn't subtly move her toward any one faction.
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Oct 13, 2012 11:17
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Coming back to thisGoffer posted:Speculation: Separated at birth? (separated by death?) This has been done before, right? 
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Oct 13, 2012 12:11
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YF-23 posted:Coming back to this Obviously, she wears colored contacts, and she acts emotionless so that she doesn't accidentally open her eyes too wide and they fall out.
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Oct 13, 2012 15:09
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Cat Mattress posted:How many times can you get attached to a life only to see it all -- the people and place you loved, the things that framed your daily life -- fade away, as your friend wither and die and you have to move to a new place with a new identity? Plenty, I'd imagine, since forever is a long time to come to terms with death as a fact of life. Tubgirl Cosplay posted:Because the point of having a humanoid robot or equivalent in a story is to explore what does and doesn't define humanity, and also why on Earth would you program a machine to feel emotions other than 'desire to work harder' and maybe 'job satisfaction' Have you seen "A.I."? It's rather good. Also out of a misguided attempt to make robots fit in better and be able to work more seamlessly alongside humans, in the same way that one Japanese roboticist keeps trying to make perfectly lifelike human faces. Also as an evolutionary programming technique, but those are only metaphorical emotions in the sense of being a few numerical values which are affected by various vaguely defined stimuli in order to create complex behaviours out of simple instructions. Renaissance Robot fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Oct 13, 2012 |
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Oct 13, 2012 15:22
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Thinking about the idea that Jones is very very old, it reminded me of a speech by, who else, the Lord of TimeDoctor Who posted:In the end you just get tired, tired of the struggle, tired of losing everyone that matters to you, tired of watching everything turn to dust. So maybe we're looking at it the wrong way, maybe her immortality isn't tied to her emotionlessness, but rather her emotionlessnessity is caused by her immortality.
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Oct 13, 2012 16:02
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Renaissance Robot posted:Also out of a misguided attempt to make robots fit in better and be able to work more seamlessly alongside humans, in the same way that one Japanese roboticist keeps trying to make perfectly lifelike human faces. Also as an evolutionary programming technique, but those are only metaphorical emotions in the sense of being a few numerical values which are affected by various vaguely defined stimuli in order to create complex behaviours out of simple instructions. I've always thought the whole Kryten in Red Dwarf / Uncanny Valley way of looking at robots was the way to go. I want robots that look like robots. I thought the old models in the I, Robot movie looked way better than the new freaky mutant-faced obvious-cgi evil ones. Y'know, help robots gain their own sence of racial identity? I'd say it'd help them have pride in themselves, but as we know robots don't have emotions, and that makes them very sad.
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Oct 13, 2012 16:15
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Tubgirl Cosplay posted:Because the point of having a humanoid robot or equivalent in a story is to explore what does and doesn't define humanity, and also why on Earth would you program a machine to feel emotions other than 'desire to work harder' and maybe 'job satisfaction' The biggest reason is just to answer whether or not you can do it.
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Oct 13, 2012 17:13
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Renaissance Robot posted:Plenty, I'd imagine, since forever is a long time to come to terms with death as a fact of life. Really not a fan of Spielberg tbh, and the Pinocchio story is again actually about children and faith and growing up, not machines. Machines don't make for good protagonists. Neither do wild coyotes, really, but hey get 'em talking English about poo poo people care about and reenacting human politics with a comical doggy twist and that's some good watchin'. It's about why you bothered, in this fictional story you set the rules for, to not make that particular character a literal human with two arms and two legs and lots of organs made out of meat, and what that remove from humanity means. For robots and other fake people, that's usually having human intellect and the broad strokes mechanical aspects of humanity but missing some less quantifiable stuff! The gunnerkrigg robots are pretty much a straight inversion of the usual deal (stupid uncontrolled but otherwise human robots crudely slapped together are not a thing IRL either). The other thing was a joke, jesus, but IRL roughly simulated emotion (what can make for a good human interface, hypothetically) is pretty different from actual felt emotion that goes on in your brain! Workplaces don't even like the latter in humans; your coworkers are not in fact all feeling cheerful most of the time, don't care about the weather/ballgame, and several probably wouldn't tolerate you elsewhere. Tubgirl Cosplay fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Oct 13, 2012 |
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Oct 13, 2012 17:16
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A Reaper drone manifests PTSD; an assembly line has a mid-MTBF crisis and decides it's gonna make art from now on. Siri gets sick of telling you how to get to the Dunkin Donuts every loving day learn to read street signs jesus; later that day you get in a head-on collision with a car too distracted by a screaming match with its driver (they just stopped at a dealership) for either to pay attention to the road. The local nuclear power plant is, apparently, in love with a hydro turbine upstate. Japanese engineers: "Well poo poo, maybe we should have stuck with the silly face machine."
Tubgirl Cosplay fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Oct 13, 2012 |
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Oct 13, 2012 18:02
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The Gunnerkrigg robots' dramatic arc is a well done inversion of a lot of fictional robot tropes. They're the only characters who are shown to have an active religious life, for instance. Tom's done a great job with them.
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Oct 13, 2012 20:40
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Prison Warden posted:I've always thought the whole Kryten in Red Dwarf / Uncanny Valley way of looking at robots was the way to go. I want robots that look like robots. I thought the old models in the I, Robot movie looked way better than the new freaky mutant-faced obvious-cgi evil ones. The Uncanny Valley at work.
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Oct 14, 2012 00:39
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Conot posted:Thinking about the idea that Jones is very very old, it reminded me of a speech by, who else, the Lord of Time She does a great Jack Benny, but no one really gets it any more.
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Oct 14, 2012 01:04
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Spikey posted:She does a great Jack Benny, but no one really gets it any more. Her Keanu Reeves impression still gets laughs though.
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Oct 14, 2012 01:13
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Spikey posted:She does a great Jack Benny, but no one really gets it any more. She's not a robot! SHEEEEEEEESH.
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Oct 14, 2012 02:09
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All this robot chat makes me want to re-read Asimov's robot stories. 
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Oct 14, 2012 05:30
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Looks like Tea-san's twitter has converted to MORT FUN TIME for the Halloween season. Cheesy ghost jokes ahoy! 
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Oct 15, 2012 00:17
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On fourth read, the bobbies in this page give me a bit of these guys' vibe. It's probably nothing, but it'd be interesting if she was recruited by the Court the same way the others were.
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Oct 15, 2012 01:15
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So Elizabeth was not, as we speculated, her original identity. She just stayed there too long. The name Samuel Langdon sounds familiar to me somehow. Do we know any such person?
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Oct 15, 2012 08:07
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Bongo Bill posted:So Elizabeth was not, as we speculated, her original identity. She just stayed there too long. I had to double check to make sure I wasn't going insane, but Robert Langdon is apparently Dan Brown's go-to protaganist. I have no idea why that synapse fired after having not read any of those books in something like 6 years 
Alliterate Addict fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Oct 15, 2012 |
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Oct 15, 2012 08:17
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The best part of staying up way later than I planned is Gunnerkrigg at 3am! I wonder if we'll actually see her origin story. (The worst part is that I'm going to fall asleep in class.)
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Oct 15, 2012 08:30
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Bongo Bill posted:So Elizabeth was not, as we speculated, her original identity. She just stayed there too long. Well, there was that guy, but he didn't seem to have an estate in Great Britain.
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Oct 15, 2012 08:59
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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an elderly man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of an unaging adopted daughter.
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Oct 15, 2012 13:21
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Gnome de plume posted:It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an elderly man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of an unaging adopted daughter. He mentions the scandal, I'm wondering if he means the scandal that his long-lost daughter has come back to take the claim away from anyone else who might want an old mans estate, or the scandal that we saw on the previous page, that she doesn't age.
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Oct 15, 2012 13:55
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Jones is God. Or whatever the Gunnerkrigg equivalent is?
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Oct 15, 2012 13:55
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I just can't get over how intensely beautiful the art in this arc has been. Every page is visually arresting in a different way.  Goodness, so pretty.
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Oct 15, 2012 16:06
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