9/27/09 [PF #80] Reduce the robot!

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

So, how do you explain how beings who've sold their souls for power are able to stay high-functioning and not become hollows?

Who sold their soul? I don't think I recall anything in the comic or anything Amber's said that involved someone selling their soul, even to a Cubi, let alone to anyone else; did I miss something there?

[Tapewolf]

So, how do you explain how beings who've sold their souls for power are able to stay high-functioning and not become hollows?

I don't believe the DMFA universe allows for that.

As Abel once said, horcruxes can make great desk lamps if you suck out the soul when it's stuck in an emotional anguish feedback loop.

That together with Aary's knight-in-a-jar suggest that the soul remains conscious after it's been removed (assuming it isn't then metabolised).  I think the anguish and torment is the torment of being stuffed in a lamp for a few centuries (see Niven and Pournelle's adaptation of Inferno.)

Anyway, I'm tired.  Must sleep.  Enjoy the new comic.  If there are any problems they'll have to be fixed in the morning.

[ChaosMageX]

I thought those were from the human dimension, (which I'm assuming is without magic.) how did they manage to get them? I thought that those were strictly restricted to the living. I don't think a machine, even if it is completely self aware, would have one.

Ah, there we must differ.  I'm not assuming there's anything intrinsically  different in a human brain, and that any machine which is capable of supporting consciousness will develop a soul.

Hey, I just thought of something.  Wouldn't AIs developing souls cause a lot of controversy and legal trouble for the AI's designer?

I mean, creating new life was made illegal after The Dark Pegasus's mass necromancy, but do AIs, with or without souls, count as new life?

Either way, I bet there are probably legal loopholes out there that allow for necromancing a soul back into a corpse or into a new synthetic body, or creating advanced AIs in androids or their magical counterparts, golems.

[Tapewolf]

Hey, I just thought of something.  Wouldn't AIs developing souls cause a lot of controversy and legal trouble for the AI's designer?

I mean, creating new life was made illegal after The Dark Pegasus's mass necromancy, but do AIs, with or without souls, count as new life?

It's a bit of a murky issue.  What I will say is that the power structure is rather different - Amber has hinted that a couple of races will bow out in the coming DMFA upheaval, and I had a gut feeling that something like that might happen.
So, in this future, the Creature Council has been replaced with a similar entity known as the "Being Creature Commission" whose policies are not quite the same.

It's also possible that Jyrras and his mother would be able to overturn that decree, in which case I'm assuming that there's been some policy shift since and that it is no longer legal.

At the moment, the android project is 'under the radar', but that won't always be the case.