[...Right. Myr's asking someone uninvolved in all of this for a crash course in these computers the instant he's got an opportunity.
As might be expected it takes him a little longer to reply to that one--time needed to parse through Linden's reply, to construct an adequate locus for it in the Circle tower in his memory (statue of a demon, leashed and slavering, eyes oddly empty) the instant he realizes parts of it are well beyond his current comprehension.
(Time to suppress his reflexive hackling at a shem trying to go over his head with something he doesn't, couldn't know from prior experience.)
Then, mildly:]
We can certainly debate whether it's ruder to answer not at all, or deliver one deliberately designed to be undigestible.
[Which is not a demurral, dammit, because he'll drag as much meaning out of Linden's explanation as he can when half the words in there are ones he's never encountered.]
If I understand what you've said correctly, Serah Tailor, the SQUIP's no more culpable for its own behavior than an animal--or the weather. So any of this talk of its intentions is a pathetic fallacy meant to make us all feel better, because it hasn't got any. Am I correct?
Further--if it's no more culpable than an animal--then any harm it causes someone who didn't and couldn't know how to behave safely around it at least in part is to be blamed on its handlers and its...trainers, for want of a better word. [Coders. It makes him think of ciphers and skulduggery, not...whatever it's supposed to signify in context.] Placing all onus for the injury on the unfortunate it attacked is grotesque and irresponsible--as is continuing to leave the creature in a state where it might attack others equally ignorant of what not to do in its presence.
If you know the SQUIP well enough to correct that ignorance in others, I'd advise publishing something on these watches to that effect to compliment, [and balance goes unsaid,] Rich's warning.
no subject
As might be expected it takes him a little longer to reply to that one--time needed to parse through Linden's reply, to construct an adequate locus for it in the Circle tower in his memory (statue of a demon, leashed and slavering, eyes oddly empty) the instant he realizes parts of it are well beyond his current comprehension.
(Time to suppress his reflexive hackling at a shem trying to go over his head with something he doesn't, couldn't know from prior experience.)
Then, mildly:]
We can certainly debate whether it's ruder to answer not at all, or deliver one deliberately designed to be undigestible.
[Which is not a demurral, dammit, because he'll drag as much meaning out of Linden's explanation as he can when half the words in there are ones he's never encountered.]
If I understand what you've said correctly, Serah Tailor, the SQUIP's no more culpable for its own behavior than an animal--or the weather. So any of this talk of its intentions is a pathetic fallacy meant to make us all feel better, because it hasn't got any. Am I correct?
Further--if it's no more culpable than an animal--then any harm it causes someone who didn't and couldn't know how to behave safely around it at least in part is to be blamed on its handlers and its...trainers, for want of a better word. [Coders. It makes him think of ciphers and skulduggery, not...whatever it's supposed to signify in context.] Placing all onus for the injury on the unfortunate it attacked is grotesque and irresponsible--as is continuing to leave the creature in a state where it might attack others equally ignorant of what not to do in its presence.
If you know the SQUIP well enough to correct that ignorance in others, I'd advise publishing something on these watches to that effect to compliment, [and balance goes unsaid,] Rich's warning.