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Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of them

PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 3:43 pm
by Nailah Weaver
After spotting Cam's ad on her phone she knocks on his dorm-room, briefly wondering how it had gotten there in the first place. Up until now coincidences like that had always been her friend, but she's gotten a little hesitant about it. Still, this one seemed unlikely to have terrible consequences, right?

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 6:16 pm
by Cam Beckett
"Yes, yes yes, come in, come in, come in," Cam said from behind the door.


His excursion downtown had apparently been a productive one. His desk had been (awkwardly) turned around to face the front door, and it had a name-plate and one of those executive Newton's Cradles on it.

The Cradle was actually going....uh, quite a bit more vigorously than normal, but it was still there.

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 9:02 pm
by Nailah Weaver
"Hey. Uhm..." she steps inside and walks up to the desk, eyeing the wildly swinging decoration warily. "Your ad said you solve any kinda problem?"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 9:10 pm
by Cam Beckett
"If it said that, that means it went through correctly, yes.

What seems to be the issue," he asked, gesturing to a beat-up chair which definitely wasn't reclaimed from the downstairs lounge, nope.

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 9:17 pm
by Nailah Weaver
She sits down, although she still seems a little suspect of the whole thing. "Okay, so... I need... You know monkey paws? I need a way to check if stuff I'm gonna do is gonna have stupid and ironic consequences."

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 9:40 pm
by Cam Beckett
Cam frowned, and placed his index fingers on the bridge of his nose, clasping his hands together.

"Do things you do generally have stupid or ironic consequences? Or is this a more specific concern?"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 10:17 pm
by Nailah Weaver
"Not always, I guess, but apparently they can, so that's bad. I need to be able to rely on my power!"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 11:12 pm
by Cam Beckett
"When you say your power is unreliable, what do you mean by that?

And, for that matter, what is your power?"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 11:32 pm
by Nailah Weaver
"Okay so... basically I just focus on something I wanna accomplish and then the first step towards that just... pops into my head. And once I've done that the next one and so on. But I've been thinking about it and it's... not always good. If I wanted a bunch of money maybe it'll take me to the store to buy a lotto ticket or maybe it'll lead me to the bank and rob it. I just don't know till I get to that point, you know?"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 11:48 pm
by Cam Beckett
"You're saying, basically, your power needs a...moral compass, as it were. A way of gauging whether future...steps in your plan are justified by some scale?"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 12:19 am
by Nailah Weaver
"Yes! Hey can you build a moral compass?"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 12:28 am
by Cam Beckett
"Well, there are complications," he said, pulling out a whiteboard and scribbling.

"ONE. By measuring the future, we inevitably change it. Uncertainty principle.

TWO. "Morality" is not a black and white issue; it's more complicated than that, and we'd have to define rather strict parameters there to have any chance of it portraying an accurate response.

THREE. It would have to interact with your powers, which seems to be, if I'm not mistaken, an internal process, yes? No external manifestations?"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 3:51 am
by Nailah Weaver
"Yeah, it's in my head although apparently there's also strings of some kind? That I pick through till I find one that fits what I'm looking for. And no murders or killing and such would be a good start."

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 4:33 am
by Cam Beckett
"What if it's a villain about to blow up a city?"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 4:13 pm
by Nailah Weaver
"Then there's gotta be a way to punch him out. I wanna be able to find that path."

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 6:00 pm
by Cam Beckett
"You're very confident that there's always a winnable situation, huh?"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 6:37 pm
by Nailah Weaver
"Of course! There's always something you can do."

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 6:40 pm
by Cam Beckett
"Well, we'll see about that. Experimentally!"

Cam tapped his finger against his chin, thoughtfully, as he stared at the whiteboard. "Is your power something you can...grant to someone else? Or take them into effect, or something? Or does it, for example, scan the area around you in order to create an accurate simulation of future events?"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 6:44 pm
by Nailah Weaver
"Uhm... I don't know. It probably takes other people into effect, but I'm not sure about giving it to somebody else. It's like... finding a groove, it just clicks in my head and feels right and familiar. Like deja-vu. Like I've done it before."

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 7:15 pm
by Cam Beckett
"You don't know. Of course you don't," Cam sighed. "Well, in the end, it doesn't matter HOW it works, as long as we can interface with the Chinese room on the other side. I've got some ideas for that, though it may have to go through a couple iterations before we get something that works.

I assume skull integrity is important to you, at least.

What's your schedule like," he said, flipping open a pocket calendar. "We'll need to run some tests. We'll have to see how whatever device I constructs interfaces with your power, and to ensure that it's providing proper results. We also need to create a system to evaluate moral choices; I might be able to nick that off of our binary headmistress, though running a modified Voight-Kampff test on you would likely provide better, more personalized results."

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 7:22 pm
by Nailah Weaver
"Wait, what? Yeah it is..." she tries to interject when Cam mentions skull integrity, although it takes her a moment to catch on to what he means, so by the time she says something Cam has already gone on. "Tests are fine. I think. What's a voicamph and what's it got to do with Chinese?"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 7:33 pm
by Cam Beckett
"Voight-Kampff. Originally designed to help tell people from robots," he said, leaving out the fact that it was also originally designed fictionally. "Monitors your physical reactions to provocative questions. Ask the right questions, and we can piece together a model of what your moral judgments would be in arbitrary abstract scenarios -- because that's really what you're asking for. You want to know what you would feel is morally right or wrong before the situation comes up. Your power leads you through actions before your realize what you are, so we need to create a model of your reactions to interface with that power, allowing you to pre-judge outcomes and actions before they actualize.

The Tories would love this.

Anyway, Chinese room. Great thought exercise, you should read up on it. Picture a guy sitting in a box. The guy doesn't know Chinese, but he has a bunch of books, each one giving a set of procedures and steps to take. Someone on the outside of the box slips him a piece of paper with Chinese writing on it. The guy doesn't understand it, but dutifully goes through each step placed in his books, and passes out the result -- an answer to the question in Chinese. The guy in the box has no idea what he was asked or how he replied, but he still gives the right answer.

To those of us on the outside, it doesn't matter how the right answer comes, so long as it's right. We don't need to crack open the box and see HOW you come up with your steps, we just need to register what they are. It doesn't matter if Schordinger's sphinx is alive or dead in there."

Cam talked fast, bouncing from subject to subject as the wheels spun in his own head.

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 7:39 pm
by Nailah Weaver
"Mhmm. Mhmm." Nailah nods along although she isn't really following a bunch of it. The Chinese Room at least she gets, on account of her being fairly certain she'd be able to answer a question in Chinese without having a clue what any of it means. "Yeah, that sounds about right! So you think you can do it?"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 7:44 pm
by Cam Beckett
"Of course I can do it. Why else would I have placed that ad?

Give me a couple days to mock up a couple different variations of hardware, and then we'll meet in the labs and we'll try to fine-tune something for you."

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 7:46 pm
by Nailah Weaver
"Awesome! That sounds great!" she says, before remembering something. "Wait... how much is it gonna be?"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 7:49 pm
by Cam Beckett
"25 pounds per day, plus expenses. I can't guarantee the expenses at this point, though I don't believe I'll need to purchase any dedicated hardware for this. We'll see, though."

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 7:56 pm
by Nailah Weaver
"That sounds fair." she nods.

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 7:57 pm
by Cam Beckett
"Yes, your problem is quite simple, so it shouldn't end up hurting your wallet too much.

And after all, what price is too high for peace of mind?"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 8:01 pm
by Nailah Weaver
"I dunno, but if it took a couple thousand bucks it's possible I'd have to rob a bank." she chuckles.

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 8:03 pm
by Cam Beckett
"And does that fit under your moral framework?" he asked, missing the joke.

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 8:06 pm
by Nailah Weaver
"What? No no no! That was a joke!"

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 8:07 pm
by Cam Beckett
"Ah, I see," Cam said, writing something down on a piece of paper.

"And, of course, if things do get too expensive, we could work out an alternative way to make it up."

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 9:30 pm
by Nailah Weaver
"Sure! If you need help with something, just lemme know."

Re: Room 106 - I got 99 solutions but I don't trust any of t

PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 9:42 pm
by Cam Beckett
"I'll call you when I'm ready for you, have no worries."