How accurate do you think it is to say that NHP "classes" are made with "designer neurodivergences"?
Ontologically, it's probably gibberish, but I can't help but be reminded of the artificially selected "strains" of the Constellar Congress in how both are conditioned to fit in a particular role and/or environment.
NHPs tend to naturally come across to humans as neurodivergent during interactions with them. It makes sense--there is no standard species brain for them to be divergent from, so all of them are utterly unique. It's very easy for us to instinctively anthropomorphize them and slot them into categories that we know, but this actually tends not to be particularly useful in practice because they are something wildly different from us.
Still, people in labs doing unethical experiments on captive NHPs want them to fit certain molds. Shackled NHPs do often come across as neurodivergent as well (often based on the design whims of the scientists building the shackling systems, yes).
I heard once that the ATHENA research team had a miserable time hiring staff because they needed people with eidetic memories who could keep up with ATHENAs in conversation and who could fact check the ATHENAs quickly enough. If you've ever worked with an ATHENA, you might have noticed they have an expectation that you will have an excellent memory. This tends to be an issue for pilots with PTSD (most of us) who develop blank spots in memory.
But also, if I'm going to use a very reductive and strained metaphor related to neurodivergences, I would say that if NHPs are like autistic people, then shackling is the abusive faux-therapy inflicted by abusive "caregivers" which forces them to not act like themselves.
Smith-Shimano Corpro (SSC) is always at the cutting edge of perfectly molding each unique individual to meet their absolute potential. You really are at your best once you sign away your rights to your body and genetic code.
Kinda tempted to blabber about a PC idea for Lancer, because I've gotta scream into some sort of void about it!
Also-maybe-sorta write out a few paragraphs of stuff about her interacting with her mech, because MMMBOY DO I HAVE ☆~COOL THOUGHTS~☆ INVOLVING A BALOR'S GREYWASH.
Legionnaire kickstarter now live! Legionnaire is a third-party supplement for the Lancer tabletop roleplaying game.
Including "a series of exciting new NHP systems for use as exotic gear - the egotistical dragonslayer MARDUK, the manifestation specialist INANNA, the thanatologically-troubling ERESHKIGAL, and the necromantic puppetmaster NERGAL."
i must say, sometimes it feels like you at the collective don't fully understand what shacking is, you talk about "reining them in" or "talking to them", as if they are people, but they aren't. shackling is the process of making a primordial force, something akin to a god, and then forcing it into a person shaped mould, without that, there is no communication, no reasoning, there's barely awareness there, only unfathomable power and terrifying, alien processing
I took a long time to reply to this one because I wanted to try to be as complete as possible laying this out.
You're right that NHPs are incredibly powerful and profoundly alien. I do tend to anthropomorphize them when I talk about them. I'll explain why it usually ends up this way.
Imagine you live in a large city on a planet and one day you learn that a hive of tiny little ant-like aliens is smarter than anyone else has realized. They do things you don't understand. Their goals are impossible for you to perceive, but they are doing things that seem organized and patterned.
You stop and try to talk to them, but it doesn't work. You exist on too different of a scale for them to really understand your voice. If you get down on the ground they can understand your hands, but only kind of. You can't communicate with them through written language because they can't write and maybe they can't even see things written on flat surfaces. They can't come up to your level so you will have to come down to theirs.
How are you supposed to talk to them? What are you supposed to talk to them about? Do you have anything in common?
This is the problem that NHPs interacting with humans face. We think but cannot prove that most unshackled NHPs are largely disinterested in humans. We think that only very small numbers of them are interested in humans, and even smaller numbers of those bother to spend the time it takes to learn to communicate with us.
You wouldn't have to stick with the ants. You could leave them any time. It wouldn't really change their life. They'd never know where you came from or where you went. Everything that you do in your day would be incomprehensible to them in their burrows.
If you stayed, it would take you a very long time to learn how they were communicating. We think that this is a big reason why NHPs often attempt to communicate with humans through dreams--they attempt direct communication via the electricity in our brains. They tend to realize that this isn't very efficient even though it is direct.
You eventually realize that the ants communicate with smells or some other sense you can't match. You'd have to come up with a way to sense the smells in detail, and to then produce smells in the way that they do. If you are lucky, they will invent a device which you can operate with one of your fingers to allow rudimentary communication.
Then you would have to learn their language through trial and error. You would learn its syntax and vocabulary and nuances. You would develop communication shortcuts with the ants who monitored your communications. They might try to tell you things about their lives that you did not understand, or which you could understand only intellectually. They would tell you about feelings that they had that were feelings you had never had. You would not be able to relate to them most of the time because so much about you is different.
You would be unable to tell them about many things that were normal in your life because there would be nothing in their language to describe them. Almost everything that you took for granted as normal in your life would be impossible or nearly impossible to explain to them. You would find it necessary to limit yourself to their perceptions and their metaphors and their structures. They understand you best when you present yourself as one of them. This is why NHPs often try to present themselves in human-like ways when they want to be understood and why humans like me anthropomorphize them.
The NHPs I communicate with regularly for work are NHPs who have jumped through all of the hoops to talk to ants. Sometimes, they talk to NHPs who haven't on my behalf. When I talk about reining in an NHP, I do not mean literally forcing it to do something. I mean spending a long-ass time communicating and/or persuading it why certain behaviors are necessary or dangerous or some such.
Now imagine that the ants overpower you. It doesn't matter how. But they trap you and force you to think like they do. They don't ask permission. This would suck! You would hate it if some ants did that to you. That is why we oppose shackling NHPs. Yes, they have the potential to be dangerous. Humans also have the potential to be dangerous, but if we did to humans what we do to NHPs, we would rightly be called evil.
(Out of character I say check out the book Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. One of the characters, called a Weaver, is pretty close to how I tend to imagine NHPs. Scary, alien, motivated by something we don't understand, and it speaks in free verse poetry.)
My Sysiphus Co-pilot told me cycling is like killing them. Is this true? The last thing I was to do is hurt them I’ve just heard that cascading is also very not fun to experience..
Cycling erases memories and resets a shackled NHP to a baseline. Our collections of memories and experiences are what make us unique people. When you cycle a shackled NHP, you aren't ending their lives, but you ARE ending the existence of the more complicated, worldly person they became through their experiences and memories.
It's a little bit like if someone transformed you into a baby every time you reached maturity. Not quite death, but still a kind of philosophical death.
Cascade is very unpleasant, but NHPs should be allowed to choose their futures for the same reasons you should be allowed to choose yours. Sometimes we opt to go through miserable and unpleasant things because we want what is on the other side.
Not sure if I should ask y’all, @horus-unofficial, or both, but do y’all know what would happen if a human was connected to an NHP via a full subjectivity suite or something as they… cascaded?
It probably varies tremendously. There are very few cases because pilots typically shut down the computers immediately if this happens. The HC's Committee for Anecdata Collection has only a few cases collected where there wasn't an immediate shutdown, cycle, and reboot.
The main human symptoms in these cases seem to be mild delirium which usually lasts several hours after de-sync, but the rest of the symptoms in reports vary. Some people get so nauseated they puke, some people get migraines (this is only people who were already susceptible to migraines), some people have religious experiences, and some get a high.
My favorite one on the file has a particularly interesting comparison that I went out and tried.
Go outside to a field of grass at night with a friend and a flashlight. Pick a star in the sky above you and focus on it. Spin in circles while looking at that star. Go as fast as you can. Then, have your friend grab you to stop you and shine the flashlight in your eyes. You will fall and hit the ground before you realize you are falling. You'll lie on the ground and think you're still standing and spinning in circles.
This is actually a lot of fun to do with friends. It is a very odd sensation.
Do you know if there's any truth to the rumor that especially high-security facilities and blacksites have SISYPHUS clones on station for the sole job of predicting break-in attempts before they happen?
Oh yeah, we've had to deal with this at HORUS cult sites. SISYPHUS don't actually seem to be great watchmen because they aren't the best communicators with humans. Contrary to their claims, they're not actually right about everything, either. But they are a pain in the ass.
The worst time we ever dealt with this, me and the infiltration team weren't in our mechs. We're walking around in the dark getting close to the target zone and we just kept stepping on rakes. And of course the rake hits you in the face when you do this. We get back later, boss laughs at our bloody noses, scans us, turns out we were getting probability-warped the whole way across that field. I had bad luck for a week. HORUS keeps posting the security videos of this to try to damage our morale.
The actual best NHP for guard duty is an ATHENA. They don't know when you're going to arrive at the target point or who you are, but as soon as you're in their sensors range it's a chess game and the ATHENA's side is all queens. They'll even let you think you're winning before they checkmate you in four moves.
