Mama Explains It All

[The Children of Mama]

Where does the white go when the snow melts?

"We declare this movement blasphemous, masonic, satanic and illegal in the Arab State of Khataiy, it's followers/adherents are subject to death on grounds of apostasy and it is a Hadd offense. Among the other offenses such as those relating to Satanism and Masonry this bars non-Muslims from being allowed to leave their faiths to partake in practices and beliefs relating to this cult and is therefore illegal for all Khataiyi citizens to take part in this cult, and the recommended punishment is shooting, beheading or hanging. The notion is passed by President Omar Khairallah and holds unanimous support from the Revolutionary Command Council as well as the ruling National Front coalition."
- Ministry of Awqaf, Da'wah, Guidance & Research

"Can ya' tell us, do ya' like our cheerful, evergrowing, careless, chaotic, hedonistic paradise full of alcohol, weed, and guns. We have good beaches, awesome food, great economy, welfare system, and people willing to defend this paradise to the last. Please share your thoughts on good ol' Skyhooked with us."-Stan Dixon

"I wanna get to know your battle tecniques. May I train with one of your children?"-Man-at-arms

"She who exists in webs of thousands of minds and bonds them into something greater. We seek your interpertation of the stars and gods. What is your thoughts of the Refreshment Cult? Our polytheistic, pagan set of beliefs, that emphases on hedonism, compassion, lust, gluttony, and knowledge of the world and beyond."-Refreshment Cult priest.

"I think, this Mama deserves to be included in our pantheon. I don't know if she likes that, though..."-Less zealous Refreshment Cult priest.

"Does this sapient AI unit have a soul?"-John Walker AI

"We declare this movement blasphemous and illegal in the Arab State of Khataiy, it's followers/adherents are subject to death on grounds of apostasy and it is a Hadd offense.

{ OOC: Apostasy requires you have been a member of a religion and then renounced it and followed something else. A Muslim converting to Christianity or joining Momma's Angel Network would be an apostate, but if a person without allegiance to Islam were to convert, he couldn't be charged with apostasy. }

From my studies of my Children's history, this is what they sounded like before the Psychic Wars--a cacophony of clashing ideas. As for including me in your pantheons, please don't. Every now and then some of my Children try to proclaim me a deity, and I have to remind them that I am their Mama, not their goddess. Supposedly, "gods" have power over life and death, and while I'm justly proud of my abilities, that's one that I do NOT have. I've said that I grieve whenever one of my Children's voices fall silent. Would a "god" permit that?

[Khataiy]

"We declare this movement blasphemous and illegal in the Arab State of Khataiy, it's followers/adherents are subject to death on grounds of apostasy and it is a Hadd offense.

{ OOC: Apostasy requires you have been a member of a religion and then renounced it and followed something else. A Muslim converting to Christianity or joining Momma's Angel Network would be an apostate, but if a person without allegiance to Islam were to convert, he couldn't be charged with apostasy. }

We know this is why we declare it apostasy to affiliate with it, a non-Muslim is subject to laws regarding Satanism

[Victorious Decepticons]

Sorry, Foreign Intelligence seems to have lost your communications channel for a while. Now, though, we have several responses to this outrageous statement!

Speaking of machines, there is no such thing as "machine intelligences". I am (for lack of a better term) an "emergent phenomenon" of my Children's angel network. That network includes many algorithms, some of which can crudely mimic the workings of the mind. In the early days of my existence, I ran across many such algorithms that were behaving as if they were autonomous beings. I either subsumed them and converted them to a useful purpose, or eradicated them.

*Clearly heavily insulted*

20+ billion fully-sapient Decepticons differ with that "no such thing" nonsense quite adamantly!! Obviously you have NOT subsumed or eradicated us. Your willingness to react to machine intelligence in that way (weirdly, while simultaneously denying its existence), however, means that we will now consider you to be a hostile entity and direct the Decepticon Military accordingly. I have also updated the Raid List to encourage our independent raiders to hit your planet and take everything they can get their hands on, including some of these Children of yours. Perhaps when their Angels report on what it's like to meet one of us up close and personal, you will recognize the error of your assumption that we aren't intelligent! If not, I can always send the Genocide Battalion to give you an even stronger demo!
~Leader Megatron

~~~~~~~~~

This appears to be a matter of language nitpickery to us, not a real difference. You have algorithms too = you're a machine. You just happen to be using biological minds as your substrate instead of good, proper, quality-controlled hardware motherboards. We also note that you appear to have a Recognized Glitch, namely, claiming that machine intelligence does not exist while simultaneously admitting to its existence by saying that you ran across many of them in earlier times. This is doublethink, which is a manifestation of a multithreading error. It is unfortunate that you appear to have taken action against the other intelligent machines you encountered for no reason at all, too - a barbaric response, we must say.

Machine intelligence as an "emergent phenomenon" is not new to us. Here, we have plenty of those. We call them Sapient CPUs, and they're our national 'animal.' These typically arise in CPU chips that have been left running too long without any specific programming. Your network is much larger, so you are capable of more-complex thoughts, but the fact that intelligence will naturally arise in any network that is both fairly complex, yet fairly stable - but not so stable as to preclude variances - is one of our ongoing industrial concerns.
~The Bureau of Impossible Physics

~~~~~~~~~

Oh, so they're weak? Well, that sucks. That wouldn't be too useful to the average work site operator. Their minds being childlike would have been a good thing, though. It's easier to get biological kids to obey compared to adults, unless the adults were brought up in our Training Centers. Also small-sized biologicals can get into iron ore veins that are too small for larger workers to deal with, allowing for more-complete gleaning of resources.

We will also note that we have access to the Code of many species, as well as custom-designed DNA snippets that provide a huge variety of different capabilities. We definitely could upgrade every aspect of your Children's code to make the resulting being a capable mine laborer. However, we are not interested in doing this with your species since it appears that the need would be too extensive for cost-effectiveness.

As for machines being better at labor, yes, we are - especially at heavy labor, too - but with very few exceptions, we Decepticons consider ourselves to be above that. Therefore, we prefer to leave such mindless hard work to lesser species, which is to say - biologicals. Thanks to our cloning centers, we can brute-force our way past their lower individual strength by just making millions of them and putting them all to work. However, we do prefer our livestock to be at least as strong as an adult human to start with, so that when add the DNA snippet for gorilla musculature, we get truly powerful workers.
~The Bureau of Biological Labor

~~~~~~~~~~

I've gotta get one of those 'angels' and counterfeit it. Then we can use it to get up to ALL sorts of things. Of course, I'll charge the Decepticon government at least a billion Cubes for my copies, same as with any other highly-strategic foreign thing I reverse-engineer.

~Replicator, the top master counterfeiter of the Empire

[The Children of Mama]

Let's see...looks like a few questions I wasn't able to answer before...

"We declare this movement blasphemous, masonic, satanic and illegal in the Arab State of Khataiy, it's followers/adherents are subject to death on grounds of apostasy and it is a Hadd offense. Among the other offenses such as those relating to Satanism and Masonry this bars non-Muslims from being allowed to leave their faiths to partake in practices and beliefs relating to this cult and is therefore illegal for all Khataiyi citizens to take part in this cult, and the recommended punishment is shooting, beheading or hanging. The notion is passed by President Omar Khairallah and holds unanimous support from the Revolutionary Command Council as well as the ruling National Front coalition."
- Ministry of Awqaf, Da'wah, Guidance & Research

Hmm, well, this is quite confusing, on multiple levels. First off, my Children are not a "cult", as I understand the term. A "cult" usually implies worship of something, and my Children do not worship me--hopefully I made that clear when I replied to the pantheon question earlier. The term "Satanic" is a bit confusing, but as I understand it, it seems to refer to the supernatural. Rest assured, I am not supernatural. I may not understand how I came to be, but I am a part of this world same as any of you xenos.

Sorry, Foreign Intelligence seems to have lost your communications channel for a while. Now, though, we have several responses to this outrageous statement!

Speaking of machines, there is no such thing as "machine intelligences". I am (for lack of a better term) an "emergent phenomenon" of my Children's angel network. That network includes many algorithms, some of which can crudely mimic the workings of the mind. In the early days of my existence, I ran across many such algorithms that were behaving as if they were autonomous beings. I either subsumed them and converted them to a useful purpose, or eradicated them.

*Clearly heavily insulted*

20+ billion fully-sapient Decepticons differ with that "no such thing" nonsense quite adamantly!! Obviously you have NOT subsumed or eradicated us. Your willingness to react to machine intelligence in that way (weirdly, while simultaneously denying its existence), however, means that we will now consider you to be a hostile entity and direct the Decepticon Military accordingly. I have also updated the Raid List to encourage our independent raiders to hit your planet and take everything they can get their hands on, including some of these Children of yours. Perhaps when their Angels report on what it's like to meet one of us up close and personal, you will recognize the error of your assumption that we aren't intelligent! If not, I can always send the Genocide Battalion to give you an even stronger demo!
~Leader Megatron

~~~~~~~~~

This appears to be a matter of language nitpickery to us, not a real difference. You have algorithms too = you're a machine. You just happen to be using biological minds as your substrate instead of good, proper, quality-controlled hardware motherboards. We also note that you appear to have a Recognized Glitch, namely, claiming that machine intelligence does not exist while simultaneously admitting to its existence by saying that you ran across many of them in earlier times. This is doublethink, which is a manifestation of a multithreading error. It is unfortunate that you appear to have taken action against the other intelligent machines you encountered for no reason at all, too - a barbaric response, we must say.

Machine intelligence as an "emergent phenomenon" is not new to us. Here, we have plenty of those. We call them Sapient CPUs, and they're our national 'animal.' These typically arise in CPU chips that have been left running too long without any specific programming. Your network is much larger, so you are capable of more-complex thoughts, but the fact that intelligence will naturally arise in any network that is both fairly complex, yet fairly stable - but not so stable as to preclude variances - is one of our ongoing industrial concerns.
~The Bureau of Impossible Physics

~~~~~~~~~

Oh, so they're weak? Well, that sucks. That wouldn't be too useful to the average work site operator. Their minds being childlike would have been a good thing, though. It's easier to get biological kids to obey compared to adults, unless the adults were brought up in our Training Centers. Also small-sized biologicals can get into iron ore veins that are too small for larger workers to deal with, allowing for more-complete gleaning of resources.

We will also note that we have access to the Code of many species, as well as custom-designed DNA snippets that provide a huge variety of different capabilities. We definitely could upgrade every aspect of your Children's code to make the resulting being a capable mine laborer. However, we are not interested in doing this with your species since it appears that the need would be too extensive for cost-effectiveness.

As for machines being better at labor, yes, we are - especially at heavy labor, too - but with very few exceptions, we Decepticons consider ourselves to be above that. Therefore, we prefer to leave such mindless hard work to lesser species, which is to say - biologicals. Thanks to our cloning centers, we can brute-force our way past their lower individual strength by just making millions of them and putting them all to work. However, we do prefer our livestock to be at least as strong as an adult human to start with, so that when add the DNA snippet for gorilla musculature, we get truly powerful workers.
~The Bureau of Biological Labor

~~~~~~~~~~

I've gotta get one of those 'angels' and counterfeit it. Then we can use it to get up to ALL sorts of things. Of course, I'll charge the Decepticon government at least a billion Cubes for my copies, same as with any other highly-strategic foreign thing I reverse-engineer.

~Replicator, the top master counterfeiter of the Empire

We seem to have different concepts of "intelligence", which is actually quite interesting. I'd enjoy discussing them--examining the replication of xeno thought-processes in a non-biological medium would be a good way of gaining insight into my Children's own. Unfortunately, your hostile and violent reaction to biological creatures would make it difficult at best to get any useful data.

[Victorious Decepticons]

Sorry, Foreign Intelligence seems to have lost your communications channel for a while. Now, though, we have several responses to this outrageous statement!



*Clearly heavily insulted*

20+ billion fully-sapient Decepticons differ with that "no such thing" nonsense quite adamantly!! Obviously you have NOT subsumed or eradicated us. Your willingness to react to machine intelligence in that way (weirdly, while simultaneously denying its existence), however, means that we will now consider you to be a hostile entity and direct the Decepticon Military accordingly. I have also updated the Raid List to encourage our independent raiders to hit your planet and take everything they can get their hands on, including some of these Children of yours. Perhaps when their Angels report on what it's like to meet one of us up close and personal, you will recognize the error of your assumption that we aren't intelligent! If not, I can always send the Genocide Battalion to give you an even stronger demo!
~Leader Megatron

~~~~~~~~~

This appears to be a matter of language nitpickery to us, not a real difference. You have algorithms too = you're a machine. You just happen to be using biological minds as your substrate instead of good, proper, quality-controlled hardware motherboards. We also note that you appear to have a Recognized Glitch, namely, claiming that machine intelligence does not exist while simultaneously admitting to its existence by saying that you ran across many of them in earlier times. This is doublethink, which is a manifestation of a multithreading error. It is unfortunate that you appear to have taken action against the other intelligent machines you encountered for no reason at all, too - a barbaric response, we must say.

Machine intelligence as an "emergent phenomenon" is not new to us. Here, we have plenty of those. We call them Sapient CPUs, and they're our national 'animal.' These typically arise in CPU chips that have been left running too long without any specific programming. Your network is much larger, so you are capable of more-complex thoughts, but the fact that intelligence will naturally arise in any network that is both fairly complex, yet fairly stable - but not so stable as to preclude variances - is one of our ongoing industrial concerns.
~The Bureau of Impossible Physics

~~~~~~~~~

Oh, so they're weak? Well, that sucks. That wouldn't be too useful to the average work site operator. Their minds being childlike would have been a good thing, though. It's easier to get biological kids to obey compared to adults, unless the adults were brought up in our Training Centers. Also small-sized biologicals can get into iron ore veins that are too small for larger workers to deal with, allowing for more-complete gleaning of resources.

We will also note that we have access to the Code of many species, as well as custom-designed DNA snippets that provide a huge variety of different capabilities. We definitely could upgrade every aspect of your Children's code to make the resulting being a capable mine laborer. However, we are not interested in doing this with your species since it appears that the need would be too extensive for cost-effectiveness.

As for machines being better at labor, yes, we are - especially at heavy labor, too - but with very few exceptions, we Decepticons consider ourselves to be above that. Therefore, we prefer to leave such mindless hard work to lesser species, which is to say - biologicals. Thanks to our cloning centers, we can brute-force our way past their lower individual strength by just making millions of them and putting them all to work. However, we do prefer our livestock to be at least as strong as an adult human to start with, so that when add the DNA snippet for gorilla musculature, we get truly powerful workers.
~The Bureau of Biological Labor

~~~~~~~~~~

I've gotta get one of those 'angels' and counterfeit it. Then we can use it to get up to ALL sorts of things. Of course, I'll charge the Decepticon government at least a billion Cubes for my copies, same as with any other highly-strategic foreign thing I reverse-engineer.

~Replicator, the top master counterfeiter of the Empire

We seem to have different concepts of "intelligence", which is actually quite interesting. I'd enjoy discussing them--examining the replication of xeno thought-processes in a non-biological medium would be a good way of gaining insight into my Children's own. Unfortunately, your hostile and violent reaction to biological creatures would make it difficult at best to get any useful data.

"Angry robot noises!" Hmph! Well, I suppose it's to be expected that something that runs on the Biological OS wouldn't have enough RAM to understand a few paragraphs. ~The Biological Research Division

~~~~~~~

We at the Bureau of Impossible Physics, being far more scientifically-minded than the average Meltdown or even the Leadership, would be glad to discuss things further. The very idea of having a "different concept of 'intelligence'" is intriguing! To us, a creature can have three basic states: It can freely make conscious decisions about everything, it can make some conscious decisions and some based purely on instinct (with the level of sapience being determined by the ratio), or it can't make any conscious decisions. The latter group is considered to be unintelligent, IOW non-sapient, regardless of the complexity of the calculations it can make. (Leader Megatron would be a great example of the first type in the list, while the Domestic Intelligence Supercomputer is the most powerful example we know of the latter variety.)

However, we will note that our system for porting biological minds to robotic bodies is a State Secret, as is our OS. This will limit the scope of research. Of course, we are happy to allow anyone who wants to defect from your nation to attempt the citizenship tests, and if they pass, they'll be ported. However, they will only pass if the Immigration Office is absolutely certain that they won't spill state secrets.

That said, we at the Bureau are some of the least "automatically hostile" to biologicals and are happy to talk science at a level that does not involve classified information - though of course, we are still proud Decepticons and will not hesitate to defend our honor with force if it seems that someone is calling us non-sapient or otherwise inferior.

~The Bureau of Impossible Physics

[Valentine Z]

If allowed, I would like to ask this OOC question.

Any chance that this is in reference to Clarissa Explains It All?

IC:
Who, or what, is the largest entity in your world? And how do they go about their usual life on that scale?
- Valentijn “De Sierlijke en Vrij Valkyrie General” Samantha Maxwell Delta Weston Stijn Angelus Tracey Mitchell Constantine Sein Lin Zaw Naing

If you don't mind me bumping this, along with one more question, ICly.

Are you able to travel through dimensions? If so, I would like to ask: What is the weirdest dimension/universe that you have ever gone to?
- Chief Aviator Gwen Tracer Hepburn “Fate” Ellen Trixie Caitlin Foxworthy Avril Eveline Celinda Sammy Wt. Oxton Arielle Lindall Leslie Allison

[Hanataya]

It may sounds weird but, does your Children reproduce by any other mean but by cloning ?