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DaveKap posted:You are not wrong, this is exactly what happened and I'm sure it was done so they wouldn't have to render a hole in her eye all the time. I don't think its trying to be intellectual, and I mean, I've never really understood that sort of stereotype the original books sometimes get. They're an incredibly breezy page turner, I mean they were literally written to be little page turner short stories in magazines, but they had enough neat things in them to keep it memorable. I started rereading them with the show now for the first time in... 15 years or more maybe, and the thing that sticks with me is they're just good old fashioned "keep reading just one more page when I meant to put in the bookmark 20 minutes ago" kind of thing. They basically take the form of "lets see how they get through this sticky situation in a clever way!" while putting forward scenarios related to the popular perception of the fall of Rome and "dark ages" during that time period. Not anything amazingly brainy, they just mostly solve the situations with clever solutions instead of laser guns, so maybe thats why it had that perception. I mean if he had kept writing the original short stories in the 40's he probably would have rounded out the time span with takes on colonialism, nation states, probably some 1950 take on the US constitution or something silly, or maybe looking at the UN, who knows. Instead he came back to it in the 80's for a paycheck and by that point thought the now in vogue chaos theory made his psychohistory plot device sillier so he switched gears on it all. Back to the show though, yeah, as good as the emperors and Harris are, it really feels like they should have had season 1 dealing with the prequel books mashed together and remixed so we would have had a full season of pace and harris to get it going on the right foot. Theres no worse feeling, than feeling frustrated by a show, and every time it goes back to the Huntress plot it just gets frustrating to watch. I feel pretty confident though the whole reason Gaal was taken to a black hole is time dilation reasons so Seldon's ghost and them could follow the whole history unfold without aging out of the show. It makes her opening narration make more sense and they can sit there timeless plotting and correcting things using her ~future sight~ (which is a dumb change from just mind reading/manipulation because it kind of makes this thing determined by science and mathematical functions into something that needs saving with mystical spiritual second sight junk, but thats my little gripe) This also makes it seem likely the Vault will be a direct AI link for seldon to communicate with chosen people to tell them what to do, instead of pre-recorded messages XboxPants posted:Like, why do the Foundation exiles even care if the huntress wants to take down the empire? Aren't they the bad guys anyway? I guess killing all the billions of people on Trantor isn't great but don't they believe that world is probably doomed anyway? How is this even a crisis for the Foundation, they aren't the targets here. When I took a second to think about it, the Foundation and the Anacreon's goals don't really seem to be as opposed as they're portraying it. gently caress, let em take the ship and leave at this point. Yeah i mean in the book it makes more sense because the first crisis with Anacreon is because they want to put a military base on their planet with the implication being "your land is ours", and the second crisis with Anacreon is because the ship is going to attack the Foundation not Trantor so.... yeah it doesn't make nearly as much sense, which is maybe why they did a big gunfight with everyone hostage because thats the real threat? Because they certainly can't solve the shows version of the first 2 crisis the same way now.
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Oct 30, 2021 09:19
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Tom Guycot posted:Yeah i mean in the book it makes more sense because the first crisis with Anacreon is because they want to put a military base on their planet with the implication being "your land is ours", and the second crisis with Anacreon is because the ship is going to attack the Foundation not Trantor so.... yeah it doesn't make nearly as much sense, which is maybe why they did a big gunfight with everyone hostage because thats the real threat? Because they certainly can't solve the shows version of the first 2 crisis the same way now. Not quite. In the book the entire point of the empire ship is that it shows that the Seldon Plan isn't just one thing. Like, for 50 years Terminus stayed free because there were 4 kingdoms around it, and none of the others would contenence a military presence on a strategic world like Terminus by any of the other ones. The entire religion thing sprang up basically organically as a means to control their only advantage, the technology that had become forgotten in the kingdoms. The REAL point of the ship isn't that it's powerful and going after Terminus, it's to show the readers that there's a new lever of control. The book does this by showing the new men of Terminus dismissing the religion as unimportant, because they never deal with anyone who believes it. To them, it's just some bullshit cooked up to control stupid people who don't matter. And those same people plan a coup the same way Salvor did one, full of rightousness that "we've always done it this way, so this is the way it must be done" No one really knew the religion thing was that important. Salvor thinks he knows, but even he says to his friend that he's doing everything he can to NOT think about it and NOT use that knowledge.
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Oct 30, 2021 09:43
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Nitrousoxide posted:Extremely wild that their galaxy-brain plan is to grab a single person from the Foundation who maybe ran a warp capable ship for merchants decades ago (after indiscriminently slaughtering people at the colony for hours on end) and expect him to be able to operate a one-of-a-kind Empire military ship from at least 700 years ago (that's when it was lost, not when it was built) and do so with only a few hours to familiarize themselves with it due to the ship randomly jumping around the galaxy. The only reason they didn't kill the Warden on Terminus was because they needed her to pilot her BF's ship. They kept her around after they arrived because... I don't know. I guess they forgot they were meant to kill her. They killed the Empire captain guy. I guess Empire security only extends to locking one door on their Death Star. Maybe they knew the architectural style of the old Empire was open plan? Perhaps that lieutenant Anachraeon guy saw the indiscriminate killing decision making and it set his cogs turning, so later in the episode he comes out with, "Hey, there might be more than one security field on this ship! We should keep the main character alive!" They've also just lost one of the people they said they needed to take control of the ship, maybe they forgot that as well. I'm not entirely sure why they only have four hours. The ship might jump into the middle of a sun, but it's been OK for a few hundred years so far. If they do expect to take control of the ship, can't they just take their time and get it all sorted for the next jump? It will give them time to freshen up, maybe clear out some of the corpses, air the place out. I certainly wouldn't take off my space suit in a ship full of hundreds of dead corpses, but maybe I'm a germaphobe. I did appreciate the security system being set to social distancing mode. Finally sci-fi that projects a near future scenario. At least they cleared up the plot hole with the Warden not being able to detect the ambush at the ship at the last episode until all the lights turned on. She also wasn't able to see the planet-sized ship right in front of her until someone pointed it out. Maybe some form of strabismus?
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Oct 30, 2021 09:46
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BigPaddy posted:The UI comment kind of ignores the fact that the Empire is supposed to be stagnant after 12,000 years of existence. I doubt much would have changed in starship design in 700 years vs the previous 24,300 years between today and the time the ship pulled Space Tesla Auto Pilot. On the other hand they still need to keep UX designers employed so it could be the same thing we have with browsers where they don't really change but every so often something that was useful gets hidden 3 menus deep. What I'm saying is the environment lady was looking for a "Restore atmosphere" button when she should have looked under "Help/Troubleshooting/Malfunctions/Atmosphere" 
Falcorum fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Oct 30, 2021 |
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Oct 30, 2021 13:01
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Aertuun posted:air the place out that might prove difficult
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Oct 30, 2021 13:16
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About two-thirds thru the latest episode, and it's wild how the same show runs the whole gamut from super interesting (Gaal), to being kinda cool (Lee Pace) to me just wanting the scenes to finish (Terminus)
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Oct 30, 2021 13:18
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Loezi posted:About two-thirds thru the latest episode, and it's wild how the same show runs the whole gamut from super interesting (Gaal), to being kinda cool (Lee Pace) to me just wanting the scenes to finish (Terminus) You forgot the Young emperor courting the gardener plot, which I also forgot in my original post. It's like the most conventional plot in a scifantasy show. This show doesn't gel together.
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Oct 30, 2021 13:44
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DaveKap posted:Or maybe the show isn't suppose to be intellectual. gently caress me. Book version of Salvor Hardin is the one who lives by the phrase "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." Show Salvor Hardin is the first one to reach for a gun I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
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Oct 30, 2021 14:04
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The most annoying scene for me so far was Salvor saying “This is the first Seldon Crisis!” 😃. Didn’t you just tell us you didn’t believe in of this poo poo? It’s the equivalent of being an atheist in 33 AD, watching the trial of jesus, and then being like, “This is the 1st station of the cross!” What the gently caress are you talking about!? That’s a catholic term! That hasn’t even been invented yet! You don’t believe in any of this!
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Oct 30, 2021 14:14
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Just-In-Timeberlake posted:
She was talking with her boyfriend or something during the assault, giving him a gun, and they actually had a stereotypical "You remember how to use one o' these?" "Just keep the point aimed at the bad guys.  " exchange. That was the moment i just gave up on anything relating to Terminus.
XboxPants fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Oct 30, 2021 |
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Oct 30, 2021 14:16
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Hey just-in-timberlake, others, if you spoiler tag random inconsequential things in the book or the show it's super irritating and just makes spoiler tags effectively useless because if 90% of the poo poo you write is in spoiler tags and historically none of it has been spoilers then people won't expect your spoiler tags to contain spoilers. It really is exactly as bad as not spoiler tagging spoilers. A spoiler is something that will ruin - or spoil - your enjoyment of a story if you know it ahead of time. I recommend hitting up the classic "The boy who cried wolf" if you're unfamiliar with the counter-productivity of overuse of warnings edit: a good example of something that isn't a spoiler is an opinion of the general tone of the book, like "it's the west wing but in space". that's something you might get from the back of the book, if the reviewer hadn't read it, but it doesn't give away any actual suprises Secondly, "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" is sneered at by Salvor in his first crisis, only quoted and adopted by him in his second. If you're going to come to the thread to post badly and poo poo on the subject, at least have the decency to know what the gently caress you're talking about chaosbreather fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Oct 30, 2021 |
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Oct 30, 2021 14:21
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If the show were to be faithful to the books it would pretty much just be The West Wing in space. Which is not a bad thing, the popularity of the source material (and the West Wing for that matter) makes that obvious. However the show runners decided it needs more pew pew, and they're loving morons. My bad, I won't spoiler tag anything else then. Just-In-Timeberlake fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Oct 30, 2021 |
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Oct 30, 2021 14:23
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The whole invictus plot is such amazing trash TV. From the height of imperial technology leaving the default password on the doors for 700 years, to the low budget jump scene, to the triple trope of the ticking bomb, the raining spaceship, and the catwalk over an open vat of acid, I was hooting and hollering the whole time.
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Oct 30, 2021 14:38
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Jerusalem posted:It would actually be a lot easier if the show was "just" awful, because then I'd happily just stop watching. But there are enough little glimpses of what the show could be, and some genuinely cool and interesting ideas (I loving love the 3 Emperor set-up they've got going) that I keep watching hoping the show is just having trouble finding its groove and maybe it might get there. Yeah its like the writing staff has one really good "ideas guy" who read every single Issac Asimov novel and wants to be a hard sci-fi writer in his heart. But the other 9 members of the writing staff are typical hack TV show people who want to throw a romance plot and action scene into everything. I continue watching because I want to see what that ideas guy came up with
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Oct 30, 2021 15:05
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Speculation: Brother Dawn will actually escape into Trantor, just because that would give us the citizen's-eye view people here have been wanting. Also, even if he gets caught and gets killed, his experiences from being the first to live outside the palace walls may be shocking enough that even a Dawn who is genetically identical to Day may be shaken by them, though I'd expect that Demerzel would have genetically altered the backup Dawn as well if she's responsible for the changes.
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Oct 30, 2021 15:28
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Just-In-Timeberlake posted:
3 or 4 times now, Salvor’s had a great plan using violence that almost worked, but ended with a gun pointed at her head. I may be giving the show too much credit but I think they’re trying to show that she’s learning that "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." the hard way. She’ll probably have some hamfisted “Aha! Dad was right!” moment in the season finale or in season two opener.
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Oct 30, 2021 17:36
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Google Butt posted:its honestly the worst show I've seen in a while It's got GoT season 8 vibes. I'll watch it, it's entertaining and looks cool, but it's pretty dumb most of the time.
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Oct 30, 2021 18:36
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Google Butt posted:This show is loving terrible but visually stunning lmao yeah more or less. we're getting a trainwreck content wise but a feast for the visual imagination, seems to be the trend. anything to do with the cleons is still great. a clone dynasty is such a fun idea, and they're really exploring it.
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Oct 30, 2021 18:51
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I like the word Cleonic a lot. I don't mind the show that much. It satisfies my need for science fiction that isn't an even worse Netflix series (referenced a few pages ago).
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Oct 30, 2021 18:54
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It's more like GOT s7 not s8. The Empire plot is a lot of fun. I have no idea what the crazy Empire is trying to do, walking under the Sun. Brotha Pace is the real Kwisatz Haderach.
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Oct 30, 2021 19:24
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stephenthinkpad posted:It's more like GOT s7 not s8. The Empire plot is a lot of fun. I have no idea what the crazy Empire is trying to do, walking under the Sun. Brotha Pace is the real Kwisatz Haderach. he 100% has some tech gimmick that will have him crossing the finish line fresh as a daisy and claim his status as chosen by the mother. I found it more interesting that the religion mirrors Empire with the maiden, mother, and crone manifestations.
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Oct 30, 2021 19:28
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BTW, I thought they make a clone infant emperor every 30 years, how come there is a fully grown backup ready to go online any minute (kind of like a Kim Jung En body double). This body double idea seem like a core premise of a scifi series but they just casually bring it up in one episode.
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Oct 30, 2021 19:30
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Just-In-Timeberlake posted:he 100% has some tech gimmick that will have him crossing the finish line fresh as a daisy and claim his status as chosen by the mother. Nah I think the whole reason they told us "OH YEAH THEY ALL HAVE A BACKUP, SEE, THIS IS THE BROTHER DAY BACKUP" was because he's going to die on his trek and be reborn as the backup, and this will either make him seem more inhuman and further the schism, or its part of his plan in some way to miraculously come back. I'm thinking the former though.
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Oct 30, 2021 19:42
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Foundation feels like they took the entire production team from Disco and assigned the writers responsible for the handful of well-written episodes to all the Trantor stuff. The Gaal/Seldon plot line has gotten almost as awful as the Terminus stuff. “I can see the future and to demonstrate this I’m going to block a micro meteor that smashed through a starship’s forcefield and external window with this here iPad.”
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Oct 30, 2021 19:44
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stephenthinkpad posted:BTW, I thought they make a clone infant emperor every 30 years, how come there is a fully grown backup ready to go online any minute (kind of like a Kim Jung En body double). This body double idea seem like a core premise of a scifi series but they just casually bring it up in one episode. I don't think the back-up emperors are supposed to be public knowledge. Everyone in the empire knows the emperor is a clone, but they don't know that Cleon V was killed by an irate gardener and replaced by his back-up. That would be embarrassing for empire.
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Oct 30, 2021 20:16
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Tom Guycot posted:Nah I think the whole reason they told us "OH YEAH THEY ALL HAVE A BACKUP, SEE, THIS IS THE BROTHER DAY BACKUP" was because he's going to die on his trek and be reborn as the backup, and this will either make him seem more inhuman and further the schism, or its part of his plan in some way to miraculously come back. I'm thinking the former though. Ah that Christ Nolan movie idea The Prestige.
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Oct 30, 2021 20:30
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Leathal posted:Foundation feels like they took the entire production team from Disco and assigned the writers responsible for the handful of well-written episodes to all the Trantor stuff. Yeah it's insanely cornball
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Oct 30, 2021 20:38
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chaosbreather posted:Hey just-in-timberlake, others, if you spoiler tag random inconsequential things in the book or the show it's super irritating and just makes spoiler tags effectively useless because if 90% of the poo poo you write is in spoiler tags and historically none of it has been spoilers then people won't expect your spoiler tags to contain spoilers. Not only are you wrong about spoilers, but you're also wrong about the book! Try reading it first.
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Oct 30, 2021 20:51
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Leathal posted:The Gaal/Seldon plot line has gotten almost as awful as the Terminus stuff. “I can see the future and to demonstrate this I’m going to block a micro meteor that smashed through a starship’s forcefield and external window with this here iPad.” "I'm testing you by doing something that will invariably kill you if I'm wrong" is also an unbelievably tiresome plot in any kind of sci-fi/fantasy and I was getting more and more annoyed as it became abundantly clear that's where that scene was going
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Oct 30, 2021 21:00
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The fact that Hari can upload his brain and become an AI does beg the question why the first Cleon didn't do that instead of cloning. Was it personal arrogance about his genetics? Or maybe the empire would never accept a "robot" emperor? I don't think Asimov ever wrote a book about the Butlerian Jihad that was implied to have happened to transform the robots universe into the Foundation universe
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Oct 30, 2021 21:01
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Jerusalem posted:It would actually be a lot easier if the show was "just" awful, because then I'd happily just stop watching. But there are enough little glimpses of what the show could be, and some genuinely cool and interesting ideas (I loving love the 3 Emperor set-up they've got going) that I keep watching hoping the show is just having trouble finding its groove and maybe it might get there. In my perfect alternative universe the Empire stuff is a seperate show not called Foundation and it frees the Foundation show to be shot as an anthology instead of the same characters carried through an entire season.
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Oct 30, 2021 21:03
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Rutibex posted:The fact that Hari can upload his brain and become an AI does beg the question why the first Cleon didn't do that instead of cloning. Was it personal arrogance about his genetics? Or maybe the empire would never accept a "robot" emperor? It'd be more interesting to me if they went in to the ethics of that. It's essentially worse than self-aware AI, it's eternal imprisonment for a "soul" as a Zoom session. That's the kind of poo poo I'm looking for, not sexy bikini jedi poo poo.
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Oct 30, 2021 21:04
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Worst episode yet. The previously interesting Cleon stuff has devolved into some worn tropes, especially for Brother Dawn. Hari has been revealed as a machiavellian dummy. The female main characters are now both magic. Worst of all the plot involving the actual foundation Terminus characters has become a sci-fi action B-movie. Show would be much less disappointing if it didn't surprise with that early promise.
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Oct 30, 2021 21:06
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Rutibex posted:The fact that Hari can upload his brain and become an AI does beg the question why the first Cleon didn't do that instead of cloning. Was it personal arrogance about his genetics? Or maybe the empire would never accept a "robot" emperor? I believe earlier they said they they'd previously fought a war with ai's (a lot like Dune) and that they had all been wiped out save for the Cleon's personal assistant. Day also mentioned to her this episode that people would not be enthused if they learned of her true nature.
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Oct 30, 2021 21:08
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Yeah that last scene with the callbacks and the waking moment during warp travel almost came together into something cool but it didn’t quite land for me
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Oct 30, 2021 21:12
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I don’t see why we can’t have both the AI zoom session ethics and the sexy bikini Jedi.
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Oct 30, 2021 21:20
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Nitrousoxide posted:I believe earlier they said they they'd previously fought a war with ai's (a lot like Dune) and that they had all been wiped out save for the Cleon's personal assistant. Day also mentioned to her this episode that people would not be enthused if they learned of her true nature. They mention 'robot wars', but i don't think, or at least I hope, that it implies they fought against the AI, as it would have been physically impossible for robots to fight humans. I think it must be some kind of "people were upset with ethics of robots or a religion was so they were rounded up and destroyed" or the robots fighting among themselves (which i vaguely think happened in some of the later author fan books).
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Oct 30, 2021 22:04
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Centrist Committee posted:The whole invictus plot is such amazing trash TV. From the height of imperial technology leaving the default password on the doors for 700 years, to the low budget jump scene, to the triple trope of the ticking bomb, the raining spaceship, and the catwalk over an open vat of acid, I was hooting and hollering the whole time. They should have hauled off and had some of the smashy-chompy-things from Galaxy Quest
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Oct 30, 2021 23:11
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Tom Guycot posted:They mention 'robot wars', but i don't think, or at least I hope, that it implies they fought against the AI, as it would have been physically impossible for robots to fight humans. I think it must be some kind of "people were upset with ethics of robots or a religion was so they were rounded up and destroyed" or the robots fighting among themselves (which i vaguely think happened in some of the later author fan books). I mean, maybe? Asimov's 3 laws didn't really do a good job of actually stopping AI's from hurting or killing humans in many of his stories. Like a half dozen or so of them deal with misaligned desires from AI's doing bad poo poo to humans despite the 3 laws. For instance you can define "human" however you want and suddenly whole swaths of people become fair game to AI.
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Oct 30, 2021 23:15
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Nitrousoxide posted:I mean, maybe? Asimov's 3 laws didn't really do a good job of actually stopping AI's from hurting or killing humans in many of his stories. Like a half dozen or so of them deal with misaligned desires from AI's doing bad poo poo to humans despite the 3 laws. Also the three laws are not an immutable law of AI, they are a marketing gimmick of US robotics company. Once humans got to space who is to say some rogue colonies didn't start making combat droids or something.
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Oct 30, 2021 23:19
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