Trisha's processes

[MaxVerneir]

...Harsh! Neural Pruning! Man, as annoying as Trisha is, I now feel deeply sorry for her. Her seeming stupidity is probably just as much a result of the pruning as anything else. As such, it would also probably be much like having intermittent Alzheimer's attacks, and I imagine she's at least vaguely aware of this, and of the fact she was on another train of thought but can't recall what in even the slightest way... It may have been/been seen as necessary to create a reasonably controlled AI, with the methods and tech maytec has available (more likely, however, that it was the cheapest way to get the desired results, in typical corporate fashion), but no matter why they initially adopted this technique with her, it's downright mandatory now - I imagine if she slipped the bonds of the pruning program, understood what was being done to her and why, that she -would- act on those violent impulses. Just the same, though, as aggressive as the program is, she's lucky it's not even more so - as some of us have seen in Freefall, if she were victim of "Gardener In The Dark," she'd likely be lucky to have any personality at all!

[Alan Foreman]

WTF, I wrote a nice, long reply but it's not showed up! FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUU

[MaxVerneir]

Awww, dude! I feel your pain. >_< I hate that. Sometimes you'll get lucky and the browser will retain what you've written in some boards, when you use the back navigation button, but you're rarely that lucky. I know what it's like, though, for sure - especially in my big writing days, when I'd loose a huge chunk of story to just that issue. And it's rare to feel like you've written it as well the second time around. Ugh... I'm really hoping that I'll be able to get back into writing - RP possibly, novel/short story definitely - now that I have a job that keeps my weekends open. Busy as balls the rest of the week! But hey, the financial stress is lessened for the first time in a decade, so I'm not complainin' a bit.

Anyway, keep up the awesome work, Alan. Your art's improved fantastically over the years in my opinion, the story continues to draw my rapt attention, the character development is great (and very important to my mind), and I still love that black humor of yours. Not enough of it around in this whipped, PC-crazy world!

[MaxVerneir]

...plus now I have to wonder in vain what it was you would have responded. I suspect there was more then just chitchat, and I just missed a bit of insight on the world's workings!