[ between the waking world and the dream sphere, there is exactly one person allowed to call her gary-chan. garion doesn't bother postponing her response; it comes nearly immediately, no facade of business or occupation alongside it. ]
[ ha. and this is why frill is allowed such privileges. ]
Who can say? Though it may recoil when struck, this might only be an instinctual response. Perhaps it is programmed. Or perhaps it simply knows that when struck, it should move to lessen it. The qualia of another noncommunicative being- no, even a being capable of communication- cannot be measured in such easy terms.
Allow me a question of my own, child. Do you think it would be better or worse if they felt the pain we do?
deffo. it takes commitment to hurt something! specially for teens who don't have decades of experience in coming up with justifications for doing a bunch of horrible stuff. swinging a sword at a monster in a videogame is easy because you know it won't feel any pain, and even though dreamers need to actually swing their swords to hunt torments, it's p much the same principle to them.
but if some paper got published that proved that all those freaky-deaky demon things that they've been hunting actually FEEL all the hurt that dreamers dish out? the union would do soooo much handwringing over the ~morality~ of it all, teens who take on dreamer work to goof off in a consequence-free game world would get so stressed over actually hurting so many "wild animals" that they drop out of the program...
it's hilarious thinking just thinking about it! nightmares rip the memories out of people and destroy lives, but because humans project their capacity for emotion on anything that lives and breathes, so many people would flash back to the time their pet got hurt or whatever and vomit into their toilets instead of actually fighting. more than that, if humans can imagine that their succulents have a favorite color, there's no way most of them could stamp out the doubt that those monsters can think, and they'd stop fighting.
the only people who'd be left are the ones with the willpower to kill dozens of those things knowing full well that the torments and nightmares are experiencing the agony of death too. like you and your groupies, for instance!
of course the calculations for all this complicated morality stuff would change a lot if someone got off causing pain and wrecking stuff lmao. imagine some sadist who liked to cut loose in the dream sphere learned that those "training dummies" actually FELT it. and worse, the sadist took too many online philosophy classes to just have fun with it? i'd really pity that person
this is pretty interesting to talk about, huh? hey, gary-chan, do you want to run some experiments? =)
[ wow. here she'd been having genuine fun reading frill's thoughts on the matter, and then she had to go and drop that little snipe. time to show the little shit she can dish just as much as she can take. ]
It would certainly have an entertaining impact on the Union and its adherents. That much is true. But consider also the dying throes of an organization trying desperately to cling to a monopoly on sanctioned violence. The workload itself would not dwindle, after all, and those who did not register as conscientious objectors would be sent in with those doubts fresh in their mind. What would inevitably ensue is a series of on-the-clock injuries, likely of those who are capable enough to have become proper allies were they given time to adjust. My "groupies" would similarly have to act quickly to cover a larger swathe of the city under a much more restrictive timespan, and given the ever-shrinking pool of capable people willing to fight, we would likely face a losing battle ourselves.
But this is only a hypothetical, and only an extension of your little "what if" - one where the knowledge is made public. The necessary solution, of course, becomes the suppression of any such knowledge. I would imagine that the Union proper would come to much the same conclusion, leading the spread of this information to happen through more illicit means - back-alley message boards, as an example. From there, one would only have to find the system administrators at hand and use the threat of physical coercion to maintain order.
And for the record, a sadist focusing only on their own pleasure without some greater goal in mind would have no place here - in the Dream Sphere Or in our organization.
i guess living in a society has SOME advantages. you definitely have a leg over me in debates about the effects of edgy hypotheticals on the world at large. a dreamer dystopia, huh... sounds like a light novel by some crystal-obsessed internet witch bitter that they never awakened tbh
and of course not! that's why i think you're interesting
everyone is a monster. that's the simple truth of it. humans like to pretend that monstrous, feral things are people because that lets them believe that they're human too. if you're unlucky enough to be born as a homo sapiens on planet earth, you're probably going to go down one of two paths: either dying full of pain and regret after a lifetime of starving yourself to starve the monster, or going out with a smile on your face as your belly bursts with all the sin you've shoveled in your mouth from indulging it
but you're different! you're the only person i've ever met who's surgically extracted that monstrous part of yourself and made a leash out of your own guts to tie it up and train it. you've fed it what it needs without spoiling it, gave it discipline, taught it when to bark, when to bite, and when to heel... like i said, it's interesting. more than that, it's admirable. you're probably the most "human" being that i've ever known because of it, gary-chan
[ ...the initial umbrage wasn't even intended, was it? garion rubs at the bridge of her nose, sighing before she types out a response. ]
I've done little to earn such flattery. What you've described is little more than the minimum that should be expected of any human. The failures of others to live in a manner suited to human society should be taken as exactly that: failures, and nothing more.
[ rest in peace to them, but garion's different. ]
Permit me to say this much, though. Many may be monsters, but far fewer are capable of turning that cruelty towards the future. Rather than being the most human, perhaps it would be easier to say that I am simply a human suited to the world I was born into.
I suspect such a description might appeal to you as well, Frill.
[ It takes some time for Frill to respond to Garion's message. When she finally receives a response, it's oddly measured, with none of the usual pep or bitterness that characterizes Frill. ]
[ and for a good three minutes, it's the only thing written between them. but soon enough, another message comes through: ]
The waking world is one of state, soldiers and surveillance, Frill. It is only the untamed frontier of the world, the Dream Sphere, in which a single individual's might can truly be brought to bear upon the world. So, then, when the boundaries of civilization are drawn around it - when a claim is made upon the untamed wilderness - how can one person hope to contest it?
The answer is simple. If the state is what holds a monopoly on violence, then the state itself is what must be brought to bear. In my own distance from humanity, I am a human suited to this task we have been forced into; after all, I am capable of holding the arbiter's scales. Every Dreamer I have brought to my side is an envoy; they are capable of enforcing the will of the land. And you, Frill, are the eyes that behold both worlds in their naked ugliness.
You understand, don't you? After all, not every human can look unshaken upon the truth of the world, whether waking or dreaming.
when you get down to it, i don't really understand the point of philosophy, or at least these big questions that a lot of people are obsessed with. like, you could make the argument that in order for a human being to interpret the phrasebook in a way that makes it possible, the book would have to have some level of consciousness in order to filter and intuit that person's needs in order for it to not take an infinite amount of time to learn those rules. that book is, technically speaking, more conscious in that conversation than the human, and the human is really the book's utility, not the other way around
that's obviously not salient to what's really being asked, but the debates i've heard about basically about the same kind of minutiae. stuff to distract yourself with, prove you're thinking about morality or thought or whatever so you can pretend that you're not letting your monster run rampant
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no subject
no subject
Of course, though I promise no answer.
no subject
no subject
Who can say? Though it may recoil when struck, this might only be an instinctual response.
Perhaps it is programmed. Or perhaps it simply knows that when struck, it should move to lessen it.
The qualia of another noncommunicative being-
no, even a being capable of communication-
cannot be measured in such easy terms.
Allow me a question of my own, child.
Do you think it would be better or worse if they felt the pain we do?
1/2
but if some paper got published that proved that all those freaky-deaky demon things that they've been hunting actually FEEL all the hurt that dreamers dish out? the union would do soooo much handwringing over the ~morality~ of it all, teens who take on dreamer work to goof off in a consequence-free game world would get so stressed over actually hurting so many "wild animals" that they drop out of the program...
it's hilarious thinking just thinking about it! nightmares rip the memories out of people and destroy lives, but because humans project their capacity for emotion on anything that lives and breathes, so many people would flash back to the time their pet got hurt or whatever and vomit into their toilets instead of actually fighting. more than that, if humans can imagine that their succulents have a favorite color, there's no way most of them could stamp out the doubt that those monsters can think, and they'd stop fighting.
the only people who'd be left are the ones with the willpower to kill dozens of those things knowing full well that the torments and nightmares are experiencing the agony of death too. like you and your groupies, for instance!
of course the calculations for all this complicated morality stuff would change a lot if someone got off causing pain and wrecking stuff lmao. imagine some sadist who liked to cut loose in the dream sphere learned that those "training dummies" actually FELT it. and worse, the sadist took too many online philosophy classes to just have fun with it? i'd really pity that person
this is pretty interesting to talk about, huh? hey, gary-chan, do you want to run some experiments? =)
2/2
teehee~ jk, jk! (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.)
1/2
It would certainly have an entertaining impact on the Union and its adherents. That much is true. But consider also the dying throes of an organization trying desperately to cling to a monopoly on sanctioned violence. The workload itself would not dwindle, after all, and those who did not register as conscientious objectors would be sent in with those doubts fresh in their mind. What would inevitably ensue is a series of on-the-clock injuries, likely of those who are capable enough to have become proper allies were they given time to adjust. My "groupies" would similarly have to act quickly to cover a larger swathe of the city under a much more restrictive timespan, and given the ever-shrinking pool of capable people willing to fight, we would likely face a losing battle ourselves.
But this is only a hypothetical, and only an extension of your little "what if" - one where the knowledge is made public. The necessary solution, of course, becomes the suppression of any such knowledge. I would imagine that the Union proper would come to much the same conclusion, leading the spread of this information to happen through more illicit means - back-alley message boards, as an example. From there, one would only have to find the system administrators at hand and use the threat of physical coercion to maintain order.
2/2
no subject
and of course not! that's why i think you're interesting
everyone is a monster. that's the simple truth of it. humans like to pretend that monstrous, feral things are people because that lets them believe that they're human too. if you're unlucky enough to be born as a homo sapiens on planet earth, you're probably going to go down one of two paths: either dying full of pain and regret after a lifetime of starving yourself to starve the monster, or going out with a smile on your face as your belly bursts with all the sin you've shoveled in your mouth from indulging it
but you're different! you're the only person i've ever met who's surgically extracted that monstrous part of yourself and made a leash out of your own guts to tie it up and train it. you've fed it what it needs without spoiling it, gave it discipline, taught it when to bark, when to bite, and when to heel... like i said, it's interesting. more than that, it's admirable. you're probably the most "human" being that i've ever known because of it, gary-chan
no subject
I've done little to earn such flattery. What you've described is little more than the minimum that should be expected of any human. The failures of others to live in a manner suited to human society should be taken as exactly that: failures, and nothing more.
[ rest in peace to them, but garion's different. ]
Permit me to say this much, though. Many may be monsters, but far fewer are capable of turning that cruelty towards the future. Rather than being the most human, perhaps it would be easier to say that I am simply a human suited to the world I was born into.
I suspect such a description might appeal to you as well, Frill.
no subject
what makes you say that?
no subject
[ and for a good three minutes, it's the only thing written between them. but soon enough, another message comes through: ]
The waking world is one of state, soldiers and surveillance, Frill. It is only the untamed frontier of the world, the Dream Sphere, in which a single individual's might can truly be brought to bear upon the world. So, then, when the boundaries of civilization are drawn around it - when a claim is made upon the untamed wilderness - how can one person hope to contest it?
The answer is simple. If the state is what holds a monopoly on violence, then the state itself is what must be brought to bear. In my own distance from humanity, I am a human suited to this task we have been forced into; after all, I am capable of holding the arbiter's scales. Every Dreamer I have brought to my side is an envoy; they are capable of enforcing the will of the land. And you, Frill, are the eyes that behold both worlds in their naked ugliness.
You understand, don't you? After all, not every human can look unshaken upon the truth of the world, whether waking or dreaming.
no subject
but not enough. there's a pretty key assumption that you're making that's just that, an assumption
can you spot it?
no subject
I. the assumption that you would consider yourself human;
II. the assumption that a "human being" is in and of themselves a human.
Are you familiar with the concept of a p-zombie, Frill?
Or perhaps a Chinese room?
no subject
oh
EXTENSIVELY
you would not believe the stupid debates i've overheard about those ideas
no subject
Are they stupid because the ones arguing hold no stake?
Or are they stupid for assuming a fundamental truth to humanity to begin with?
no subject
when you get down to it, i don't really understand the point of philosophy, or at least these big questions that a lot of people are obsessed with. like, you could make the argument that in order for a human being to interpret the phrasebook in a way that makes it possible, the book would have to have some level of consciousness in order to filter and intuit that person's needs in order for it to not take an infinite amount of time to learn those rules. that book is, technically speaking, more conscious in that conversation than the human, and the human is really the book's utility, not the other way around
that's obviously not salient to what's really being asked, but the debates i've heard about basically about the same kind of minutiae. stuff to distract yourself with, prove you're thinking about morality or thought or whatever so you can pretend that you're not letting your monster run rampant