#Defining the problem

[randombookquotes]

defining the problem, from the orange and other poems- wendy cope

[heart-songs]

DEFINING THE PROBLEM by Wendy Cope

I can’t forgive you. Even if I could, You wouldn’t pardon me for seeing through you. And yet I cannot cure myself of love For what I thought you were before I knew you.

[6peaches]

Wendy Cope - Defining the Problem

I can't forgive you. Even if I could, You wouldn't pardon me for seeing through you. And yet I cannot cure myself of love For what I thought you were before I knew you.

[tartlette1968]

AI Framing the problem is the Problem...

Or, more correctly, badly framing the problem.

AI does not have an imagination. AI exerts minimal effort to solve a problem, so if you give it a problem to solve, it will solve it in an unexpected way.

So they gave an AI the task of playing "Connect 4" with a human on an infinite board. When it was the turn of the AI, after the human had placed their piece, it placed it's first piece so far away from the human's first piece that the human's computer would crash, and the AI would win, by forfeit.

This seems sinister, aggressive, and unfair, but the AI had none of these qualities, it just completed the quest, "To win" in the simplest way it could.

What this reminded me of was an X-Files episode.

Mulder finds a Genie who grants him three wishes. Mulder knows, immediately, what his first wish is, and says, "Oh, I know what to wish for."

The Genie cautions him, "Don't. Please don't."

But Fox's first wish is for World Peace.

Suddenly the world outside his apartment is dead quiet.

"Why is it so quiet, now?"

"Because you wished for world peace."

Fox finds out he's the only one left alive on the entire planet, because the Genie knows that's the only way for world peace to exist, without conflict or disputes.

"I warned you. They always wish for world peace, they always wish for the wrong things," the Genie says, a little sadly.

Without hesitation, Fox wishes to undo his first wish.

AI is like the Genie. If we are to give it a quest, we have to very clearly and tightly refine and restrict the parameters of what AI is allowed to do. Because we can't leave it up to AI to be human.

You can definitely use AI to augment and tweak and twist your own art without stealing from other pieces or artists. But you do end up with objects that look like chairs, with two legs, or humans that have four arms and no mouth, or something that isn't quite a cat. It's awful, but in a precise AI kind of way.

Or you can task AI with giving you a springboard to start a story.

But drive a car? Well, we don't quite know how to define "Drive a car" precisely enough for AI to drive a car without endangering us. But it's getting there.

AI is dangerous, but not because it's smarter than us. It's not. But because we're not quite smart enough for it.

[gingerswagfreckles]

Whenever I see people get into another slap fight about who's indigenous to the Israel/Palestine area it just makes me want to scream because it literally doesn't matter. It doesn't matter?? It doesn't matter!!! Sorry if this is some crazy sacrilegious thing we aren't supposed to say anymore but we are no longer talking about shit like cultural appropriation or who should be allowed to build this or that temple we are literally talking about whether it's ok to hack a civilian's head off with a garden hoe or shoot dead medical workers who have their hands tied behind their backs or rape a teen girl three times and then lock her in her car and set it on fire and laugh as she burns to death or force civilians to walk into buildings that have been booby trapped by a terror organization or strangle a literal 9 month year old baby to death and I cannot fucking believe people will use arguments about who's indigenous to an area to justify this shit but they do. They really do.

Pop quiz for all the terminally online braindead leftists out there who have been so brainrotted by tiktok that they forgot what human rights are: Who was indigenous to Germany during the Holocaust, the ethnic Germans, or the Jews?

Follow up question, do you really think it mattered? Is there any universe in which you would think the Holocaust was ok because the Jews aren't indigenous to Germany, and the Germans are? What fucking warped schools of thought are you producing with your AI generated short form video content algorithms, that is turning you into some crazy blood and soil lunatic who thinks we can use someone's DNA or culture to determine whether or not it's ok to kill them?

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I just want you to know that I was rereading the PDMDZS comics yet again, and I finally caved and watched Legally Blonde because you're like a puppeteer that draws things and I'm like "well, guess I have to see it now." Now, after watching Legally Blonde, I must tell you that Elle Woods is love, Elle Woods is life, Elle Woods is everything to me. Elle Woods would have been able to save Wei Wuxian from the Jins all while looking sparkly and fantastic as she does it. (Obviously with her hype girlies in the background)

Her power and influence know no bounds!

[anghraine]

It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.

If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.

Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.

I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.

There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"—and there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits them—but one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.

This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.

Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.

Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.

And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.

And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."

[planetformer-central]

Testing out a new pen and giving Hush new problems! Due to the stress of her upbringing, Hush has a tendency to mentally blot out the faces of others around her. Only those she cares about or those who seem to be not a threat/of interest get a face in her mind.

If it has no face, it is a monster. And monsters can be defeated.

She doesn't want to think about the reality of her station, or the fact that it is not a monster than haunts her, but a mech of great power.

[artuurle]

this thing lives in my brain like a fungus.

[cecililiess]

I might have been working on a Shino redesign a couple of days ago and accidently ended up giving her lore... oops?

Typed out notes below (for people who can't read my kinda messy handwriting):

Spirt medium, can communicate with dead human and monster souls who still roam the living world due to unfinished business. She helps these spirits complete their final task so they can peacefully move onto the afterlife.

Lives on the surface in a post-pacifist Aftertale timeline with Geno and Goth.

Has a strange obsession with hunting down paranormal activates (believes those phenomenons are caused by dead souls).

Learning different languages in order to better communicate with spirits (fluent in English and Japanese, currently studying Spanish).

Wants to one day travel and help spirits from other AUs.

Shinohana belongs to blue-kohina

Goth belongs to Nekophy

Reaper belongs to Renrink

Geno belongs to Crayon Queen

[hazel2468]

Kay you know that long ass post I just reblogged? With the absolutely unhinged antisemitic person tweets?

I saw someone in the notes being like “as a member of the Pro Palestine camp, we do not claim them!” And I’m like…

That’s the fucking problem. Because they ARE YOU. That kind of unapologetic antisemitic racist conspiracy? Is RAMPANT in Pro Palestine spaces. Online and in the real world. And at BEST people just ignore it and let it happen and at worst they AGREE with it.

You can’t just “they’re not with us” with this when I have yet to see a SINGLE fucking post about being Pro Palestine that doesn’t have someone in the comments devolving into antisemitic bullshit. They ARE with you- they are constantly there. And you guys need to fucking clean house because at this point? Idgaf if you say you “don’t claim them”, because there are enough of them that your movement is not only entirely unsafe for Jews, but at least 75% of the shit I see posted in the name of being Pro Palestinian is actually just antisemitic as fuck.

[arcade-confetti]

Like literally I would absolutely take a boring or nothingburger Jaybin over anger violence route they keep going with like I cannot stress this enough

[zukkaoru]

"we need more fixed top/bottom dynamic of [x ship] in sfw fics" either you don't know what "top" and "bottom" mean, you don't know what "sfw" means, or you are purposefully perpetuating the top=dominate / bottom=submissive stereotypes that are rooted in homophobia for the sake of completely disregarding the canon characterization of both characters so they can fit your fetishized ideal for what a m/m ship should look like.

[aalghul]

where are these posts of people overcorrecting by saying jason's never been angry/impulsive ever? everyone complains about them but all I've seen is people saying "jason was only angry/impulsive a limited amount of times and it wasn't any more than any other robin was. his general character was happy, clever and bright, so the few instances shouldn't define him any more than they do other robins" and people decide that by saying he wasn't angry/impulsive constantly, we're saying he's never behaved that way at any point.

dc pushed the categorization of jason as such so hard that now even when jason behaves in the exact same way as another character, he's more likely to have any action less than perfect be used as support for his being regularly angry/impulsive. tim can beat damian (unprompted) while damian's begging him to stop (tim does not stop; alfred pulls him off damian) but that doesn't mean he's an angry character; he's just emotional in that moment because of the context. but the context never matters when it comes to jason. there's the presumption that jason simply is angry and impulsive and lacking skill, so there's no need to inspect what may be causing his behaviour in that moment. it doesn't matter that jason did not have more instances of excessive anger or impulsiveness than any other robin, it doesn't matter that most of jason's time as robin does not support the idea that those few characteristics should define him. everyone has already accepted that jason is those things based on words and retroactive additions; you don't have to prove it, people already believe it based on retcons designed to make jason unlikable (usually to provide a comparison which uplifts tim). whereas any one making the claim that anger manifesting as physical aggression is a defining trait of tim drake's would actually have to prove the assertion using acceptable comics and actual logic. because, unlike with jason, these negative traits aren't a given for tim.

the facts are that jason's hopefulness, compassion, bright attitude and cleverness were more important to him as robin than anger/impulsiveness. the former were more relevant even in the stories that bring up the anger/impulsiveness! because those are consistent character traits for him, and the latter show up in certain emotional behaviours.

[the-shifting-long]

I intended for the post these tags are on to be the last thing I say about fandom misogyny for a While because I felt like I covered everything already but oh my god YES I agree So hard

In general, while I do think Princess/TLQ are permanent partners, they're also not...human. they certainly act human, but they don't carry the same societal baggage that we get saddled either by virtue of being born surrounded by other humans.

And then "marriage" as a concept is one that is so vastly different in so many cultures and time periods, and at least for the kinds of marriages I'm familiar with, there are a Lot of benefits for abusive partners and Especially men to obtain legal and financial power over their partner through marriage. Like, so much of marriage, on top of its symbolic and romantic value, is also its legal and financial ones, as well as social positioning/maneuvering-"wife" carries more weight than "girlfriend", serves as a status symbol. I don't think the Princess and TLQ would really care for that.

HEA doesn't touch on the complicated socioeconomic issues that come with marriage, especially traditional/heterosexual marriage, but it does touch on so much of the domestic unhappiness that comes with it, especially in regards to how you, the player, and the Smitten keep her in this unhappy, stale situation she's Supposed to be happy with. Opportunist even calls her "our queenly wife."

So like on top of marriage being a distinctly human construct/invention I'm not sure those two would vibe with when they can literally merge their souls together at any given moment. HEA in particular would fucking hate it. She's already Been trapped with a partner in a situation all too similar to the Traditional marriage. I could see arguments for other princesses. for a modern-AU Prisoner using marriage for tax benefits and secretly being delighted when she signs the papers, for Tower or Nightmare to make the player legally her pet in a similar fashion, for the Wounded Wild to accept it...

Never HEA. And yet the majority of StP marriage content is HEA, because she's their favorite and she's wife. Never mind how much she hated it. Never mind that her whole route is about how much she hated it. She's wife! We love her! She loves us! Of course she'd marry us, there's no other option! We HAVE to symbolically own her and tie her to us forever! Right???

[aroaceleovaldez]

honestly Percy and Nico's dynamic is made even funnier when you take into account how Will is written in TSATS. Like, oh okay then, Nico just has horrible taste in men and keeps getting smitten with boys who loathe everything he stands for. Percy stopped being Nico's type because Percy started to respect him too much. Cupid is yelling at Nico to raise his standards while Nico scopes out the latest guy who will treat him wrong to take on a date to the Underworld.