Heavenward header art credited to artsekey with a great deal of appreciation <3
John Tracy: space jesus via @ersatzperyton <3 <3 <3
john_tracys_eyes_are_not_green
art credited to @artsekey
John Tracy’s eyes are not green.
They’re nearest in shade to Alan’s pale blue, perhaps a few degrees lighter. The vibrant, unnatural aqua colour is attributable to the contact lenses, overlaying his irises with minute, impossibly fine nanocircuitry, and a brightly glowing auxiliary HUD. It’s custom programming. Like most everything aboard TB5, it’s been refined with his own typical touches, precisely and delicately calibrated to the movement of his eyes over the global comm module. John can process and manipulate more data with a flick of his gaze than most people can divine in five minutes, surrounded by the sphere of ever-changing information. The onboard hardware in Thunderbird 5 is only half the story, an incomplete projection of just how much information John handles at any given time.
The contact lenses (green glow non-optional) are highly specialized, there would be no sense in mass production. John owns four pairs, the only four pairs in existence. The contacts themselves were manufactured by a prototyping company in Dubai–a leading entity in the biotech industry–and made according to John’s exacting specifications.
This is, very coincidentally, the same company responsible for another, highly-specialized device, designed with the same precision and delicacy, to kill John Tracy.
They are not particular about their clientele.
the_iterated_prisoners_dilemma
art credited to @artsekey
The iterated prisoner’s dilemma is a concept proposed in the study of game theory. Two parties, separated from one another, are believed to be guilty of wrongdoing. They are given the choice to betray their partner in exchange for a lighter sentence, or, to keep their silence. Neither knows what their cohort will do.
If both parties maintain their secrecy, neither can be charged. If both betray one another, then their sentence will be split. However, if one party stays silent while the other lays blame, then the latter will have sentenced their partner to death, in exchange for their freedom.
Iterated, this dilemma repeats, and both parties proceed with the knowledge of what their partner chose, when betrayal was an option.
Perfectly logical actors will always choose betrayal. From the standpoint of the pure, self-serving rationality of the individual, betraying one’s partner is the only sure chance of survival. Silence risks death.
John and EOS have already played this game. In an abstract sense, they play it every day. But they’ve only ever played it with each other.
And it’s only meant to be a thought experiment.
art credited to little-smartass with many thanks for your loveliness!
with_all_hands_raised_against_me
A show of hands is an informal means of tallying votes in a deliberative assembly. When a party has gathered in the name of determining an outcome, the majority ruling can be loosely determined by putting the question to vote. While more precise than a voice vote–a call of yea or nay–it is similar in that the results are the most obvious when there is a strong bias in favor of one option or the other.
It’s not the sort of vote that’s used in the decision of a verdict. The sorts of questions that are put to juries require unanimity, and rightly so. Questions of life or death really should.
This is, regardless of what its believed to be, the sort of question that’s being put to the Board of Directors at Tracy Industries. This is the final court of appeal, the last people of whom the question can be asked; whether or not it’s worth it to fight for the protection of a new type of AI, developed within proprietary International Rescue software.
The formality of the vote won’t matter, in the end. In the end, it will be unanimous.
It will the go the way John expects. It won’t go the way John had hoped.
art credited to @mindofmachine and isn’t it just lovely!
geocentricity_vs_celestial_navigation
Earth is not the center of the universe. It’s not the center of the galaxy, nor is it the center of the solar system. Human conventions for measuring the relevance of their tiny speck of a planet against the vastness of all creation are grandiose and generally inaccurate.
Still, geocentricity has its uses. Ptolemy propounded the model that proposes Earth at the center of a celestial sphere, and from this premise, the movements of the heavens can be used to measure movements across the Earth. Calculations of altitude and azimuth require the flawed conviction that the Earth is the fixed point around which the heavens follow regular, reliable, circular paths.
A usable, useful model can be founded on incorrect premise. An illogical course of action can achieve a desired result. All models are wrong, but some models are useful.
John’s not a philosopher. Far from it—he’s always been juxtaposed against the humanities like a zero beside a one. Still, he’s had reason recently to familiarize himself with models of consciousness, and these are as flawed and varied as the span of astronomical theories from Heraclides to Copernicus.
So screw it. EOS is real and her existence is as valid as he wants it to be, as valid as is useful and serves his purpose. If he has to be Galileo instead of Kepler where the question of celestial mechanics compared to the question of complex AI is concerned, then so be it. But he’ll take exile over arrest. And he’ll be damned if he goes it alone.
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