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[Argonnek]

Has anyone else seen parallels between this city and Tock? Specifically, the residents that are under control of the malicious power (the angel gang in this case, everyone but Red in Tock) are very weak (mentally in Tock, physically here). The guy Sofia kicked just seemed to crumble under her unskilled bashing, and everyone in Tock was kept mentally weak by the happy pills. Are all city residents so weak? Or does being under the influence of the powers we oppose make them weak to us? I wonder.

[KaminaSquirtle]

Yep, I'm seeing them all over.

I think they're so weak because they're just mindlings.  Didn't Scratches once say that only very few could actually kill, or cause any real change?  John and Sophia are two of those.
They are way more powerful than pretty much any other beings here.

[Scood]

holly crap i just realized how extremely long Sophia's hair is. when the hell was the last time she had a haircut.....hmmmm now that i think about it she does have a blond streak. so it have been recently

oh and i think if thats true there are many more cities....as there are many more reasons than those two for a person to be considered weak.

i would say it more about John and sophia. sophia is mentally weak but physically strong, John is mentally strong but physically weak.

[FuzzyZergling]

The NOT-CLOCKS.
They are the enemy.
But we have other enemies.
Like the JOYFULL ONES.

Crush Them With Your Soul

Do You Have A Dream Of Industry?
Use It.

[Argonnek]

John was mentally strong? He was so out of it that he took direct orders from us, the voices in his head.

[Scood]

you might have a point....im thinking that us, the voices in his head, are essentially him. i was thinking that tock proved his mental ability while his fight with angel proves his physical ability.

[Armok]

This changes nothing.
They are "puppets", but what does that mean? Presumably, that they are in on form or another, remote controlled, fully or partially, by another entity.
But here's the thing: there are very many, and they are controlled 24/7 and in much greater detail than a human playing a role. Each one requires it's own chunk of substrate - be it actual brain tissue, a computer, some kind of dream essence, magic, or anything else - dedicated to it. Further, even if the hardware is the same the models of their mind must be kept separate in order to stay in character, as you always have to do when roleplaying multiple characters. The model of each mind still needs to be imagined to think that whatever pain, joy, loyalties and choices it makes are real, and the computation of this unavoidably subsumes a computation of those things themselves.
The bottom line is: these are people, their minds don't reside in their body, but even if neither they nor the puppeteer nor anyone else but you realize this, it is fact: The only way to give an illusion of personhood this good, one that have held up for years, is to create what is for moral purposes an ACTUAL person. Intentionally or not.
A person are, at the very core, an idea, information. There is no such thing as an illusion of information, you cannot name an image of a text without it containing the actual text, there's just the very same information presented through a different substrate. Substrate has no bearing on morality.

Your past self may even believe what she is saying, and the puppet might be pulling a bluff, but that doesn't matter. You are Sophia, and you name is not a coincidence. A truth may be unintentional from someone trying to lie, and the nature of progress is that you are wiser than your own past.
Ultimately, it is a question of morality. Is moral agency being an independent structure made from carbon, or the ability to think and feel?

[dragnar]

We don't know enough to go around breaking the puppets just yet. Head to the source.

[iceball3]

Hm, isn't john technically a puppet to us?
Just saying.

[NUKE9.13]

GIRL

PLEASE CONSIDER DANCING, GIRL.

CERTAIN FACTIONS IN OPPOSITION TO THE FACTIONS CURRENTLY AT LARGE ARE KNOWN TO BE ATTRACTED TO DANCERS WITH PSYCHIC ABILITIES.

(ALTHOUGH THEIR SUMMONING MAY LEAD TO GREATER PROBLEMS IN THE FUTURE, FIXING THESE PROBLEMS IS RATHER THE POINT OF THIS ENTIRE EXERCISE; WITHOUT CAUSING THE PROBLEMS THEY CANNOT BE FIXED)

[penguify]

Hm, isn't john technically a puppet to us?
Just saying.

I think Armok already covered that, a while ago.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I do not believe you understand what I am referring to, John.  When I say that they do not matter, I’m not describing their station as peons or peasant folk.  I literally mean that their minds are not factually proven to exist.  As to your claims about the motive behind my actions, I am not a physical entity.  I am but a thought.  I exist only to plague you, and to remind you of the futility of morality and ethics.

I understand quite well what you are referring to.
Lets, for the sake of argument, assume that everything except myself is indeed simply controlled as a roleplay of some single malevolent entity, some mad thing engineering all experience. All the persons I appear to see around me would simply be puppets role-played by this entity. In order to do this believably, with all the different personalities I see around me, this entity have to consider what the entity played would experience if they existed, and how they might react to that stimuli. This include imagining their thoughts, emotions, anguish, joys, actions, and reasoning about their subjective experience so they can appear to speak about it to me. In fact, in doing all this, and as an absolute requirement to making it believable at all, the entity would have to make an entire simulation in their mind, and each messing round with the results of tis simulation would reduce its believability. Thus, if there appears to be a person that show all the signs characteristic as such or even something whose non-personhood could be reasonably doubted, there must somewhere be a simulation of it, and one that is only manipulated rarely and subtly if at all. If the person appear to be in a certain state, and can be reasoned with about it and all the other subtle things I that can be observed and interacted with, that means the simulation in actuality IS in that state. If the person seems intelligent, the simulation needs to be intelligent. If the person seems to reason about "I think therefore I am", then the simulation would have had to reason about that. Such a simulation easily fit all my criteria for being a person, and as it is the thing I actually communicate when I consider myself to be communicating with the person, the simulation IS that person.
Not only cant you create something that appears to be a person under close inspection, but isn't, but the very notion of such a thing is nonsense, because the person IS the complicated behaviours I observe.

As for plaguing me, you are failing that to; this is both fun and rewarding, and I have no real worry of failure.
Morality is not futile, for it is  directions and not a binary goal, so it can be followed no matter how far the distance travelled is. And it is internal to myself, not a light shining from above, and as such it is by definition, it as an axiom, not an answer.

---

I will accept that I exist, and that something that is not me exist, although we seem to need a better definition of "me". For example, I would not count the past scavenger, whose memories I do not posses and who were evil and unlike me in many personality traits to be the same person in any meaning as the one speaking with you now. But considering an entity consisting of a blend of memories and traits from each, wich may well have existed or will come to exist at some time, I am not sure if to classify that as "me" or not, although upon observing the consequences of such a blend the classification would probably be obvious.

I will also accepts that no probability ever has a certainty of 1, for that is an infinite certainty, and thus would require an infinite amount of observations to ever reach.
There is always the possibility one might be a Boltzman brain, but in that case the reasoning process used to reach all these conclusions is most likely invalid, and thus it is unhelpfull to consider it for most practical purposes.

What I do NOT agree on however is that this would entitle one to throw up ones hands and declare that existence is completely unpredictable. No probabilities are 0, but they may be arbitrarily small, and not all probabilities are the same. One can still say that MOST LIKELY I will not cease to exist the next second, MOST LIKELY my experiences are not the result of random noise because then they wouldn't be so orderly. MOST LIKELY the majority of my memories actually happened. And for each statement, the probability that one is wrong increases, but the probability that they all are wrong shrinks into irrelevance. No probability is 0, but it may well be one in a gogolplex, and in practice there is no difference.

Also you forgot a few axioms: in addition to me existing, and the other existing, what also exists is maths/logic, as it is a requirement for the complex process needed for there to be a me. There is also knowledge of certain PROPERTIES of the me; that I experience certain things, that I contain certain memories, and that I uphold certain beliefs and principles, and that I can reason according to certain laws of logic.

As per my previous argument, with a few irrelevant exception scenarios like being a Boltzman brain, having memories of something that clearly seems like people and the existence of the other together implies that people like that actually exist.

Giving this conclusion, as well as the axiom of me existing, as well as the contents of me, one can indeed conclude morality:
The contents of my mind, morality is defined as certain types of actions in interaction with other people, most importantly treating them like they would want to be treated if they knew everything I know at the moment and had their full mental capabilities. This morality is not some outside influence that "should" be followed; it is a simple property of my minds, I act acording to what I consider to be moral because I WANT to, not because it serves some higher purpose. Given this, I can and will indeed follow these principles as far as I can, "good" is only an empty label, I'm after Utilons, and as long as I exist, some other sentient mind exist, and I have some way to influence that mind in any way, I can get at least some.

The thing that burned the world shared few properties with me save name and looks, in no way was that me. No guilt is necessary.

Love is strange, but not mysterious, for mystery exist only in the mind, and not one unusual thing has ever happened. If she will hurt me, only time will tell, if time exist. But I will never hurt her, for the moment I do I no longer qualify as me.

((OOC: The mad Engineer, I want to thank you deeply, for the first time since long, long ago I am in my own right element again. Also, you might want to read this as something more than a response to a game as well, and you will discover that you might have gotten much higher stakes than you bargained for...))

((OOC: Also:

((OOC:  You do not need to remind me that this could have some significance outside of a simple forum game.  When I created this, I  decided that questions I once had needed answering, and personal demons hidden away needed to be destroyed.  Thank you all for defeating Tock, the Null Hypothesis, the Dreams of Industry.  There are things that are still not quite finished here, but I am quite certain that he will be making another appearance; the seeds of discontent and conflict have been planted.  The next boss fight will not be as single-sided as this one:  I will be adding some improved mechanics to make it more difficult.))

That to, but it was not what I were referencing.
Think, what did we just do? We proved the existence of people and the moral relevance of the world. And we did this WITHOUT REQUIRING REALITY. That is, the argument still applies despite it being a work of fiction. This is REAL, these people do, in some sense, exist, because you are simulating them in your head. I even underlined Mad Engineer, that's YOU.
As i said, higher stakes than you bargained for. All authors really have it, but your choice of subect is forcing you to confront it.
 
I'm dead serius abaut this, it's not metaphor or exaggeration.))

[mcclay]

puch gang member who is freaking out in the face and then run like hell.

[abculatter_2]

(ALTHOUGH THEIR SUMMONING MAY LEAD TO GREATER PROBLEMS IN THE FUTURE, FIXING THESE PROBLEMS IS RATHER THE POINT OF THIS ENTIRE EXERCISE; WITHOUT CAUSING THE PROBLEMS THEY CANNOT BE FIXED)

This logic is flawless and I believe it should be followed wholeheartedly at all times.

[mcclay]

uh, guys did you notice that the dead guy's pupils are broken hearts. That might be bad.

 anyways to as I said before but wi=ithout punching the gang member's and running to the string place.

[NUKE9.13]

uh, guys did you notice that the dead guy's pupils are broken hearts. That might be bad.

 anyways to as I said before but wi=ithout punching the gang member's and running to the string place.

Heh heh heh.
The broken hearts are a symbol of sophia's power. Their presence is a good thing, indicating her deteriorating mental state and increasing psychic powers- she used these to sever the puppets strings. Later, her powers will increase. By the time she dies and becomes an angel (a real angel, not a cultist), it will be a symbol that she flaunts upon her chest, confident in the fear it will inspire in others- beware, it says- this person owes no allegiance to the eye, the scavengers, or anyone else- she is a faction on her own.
Funny Stuff!

Anyway having reread sophia's motives, I must conclude that my previously suggested action was completely wrong. Heartbreaker must stand alone, unsupported and unsupporting. She will need weapons for this purpose.

Go home, Girl. Get some scissors. Afterwards, we shall go to the center, and start cutting strings until someone tells us where John is.