text; un: appleaday

[saudades]

hiiii everyone! you can call me dazai.

since we're all supposed to work together and get to know each other, i thought it would be fun to play a little icebreaker game that's popular on my earth ♥

it's called would you rather! the rules are pretty simple:

✦ post a hypothetical between two difficult choices
✦ have others choose between them, and offer their own hypotheticals in return
✦ go back and forth until you don't feel like playing anymore

noooormally, it'd be cheating to say something like both, or neither, but if you can come up with a really interesting alternative, i'll allow it~

feel free to respond to each other, as well! can't just let me go having all the fun, after all.

here's a few to get us started:

1) would you rather hurt someone to protect yourself, or get hurt protecting someone else?
2) would you rather be unable to have your favorite meal again, or be unable to get drunk again?
3) would you rather betray your boss or abandon your best friend?

[wdym these are weird questions, he's so normal. it's just a gaaaaame and definitely not a covert means of information gathering or anything. come on and play :)]

Comments

[saudades]

[Wait, hold the phone here. This is so much more important than any bullshit Dazai has up his sleeve.]

oh?
do you mean you've actually met our esteemed host? i hadn't realized echo would have time to make our acquaintance

[tell him Everything, he must know. especially if he's going to slowly undermine them over the course of his time here to get a shot at the reins and going home.

[revengeisalie]

No, I have not. She only talks to us through Aurora, though I think that might have changed recently? Not sure what went down there, but some people gave Aurora a body, or something? She's a so-called AI, which is something I don't fully understand. Like a human-made person that lives in these devices.

[ Excuse her while she is being extremely technologically unsavvy. ]

[saudades]

["Lives in these devices" ... oh, wow. He actually does need to have himself a chuckle over that one. Either this person was seriously disconnected (no pun intended) from modern society, or the "universe" she's come from is not very technologically advanced at all. It's something he hadn't devoted very much thought to, but that was clearly an oversight. It makes sense, really; authors and philosophers have been debating the merits and drawbacks of a technological society for centuries upon centuries. If there is even a drop of truth to their stated purpose here, he could easily see that being an element of consideration while determining which worlds to salvage.]

it's a pretty thorny question, honestly
people have been debating where the seat of humanity lies since the dawn of society
what makes those of us with flesh and blood human, how do you quantify what it means to be alive?
if we were to replicate the structures and processes of a human brain, would what we create be considered a person, or a machine?
there's hardly any consensus in these matters even among experts in various fields, so i'm not surprised it'd be confusing if you're unfamiliar with the technology to begin with

[The question of what made a human life worth anything is one that he himself has been tormented by for many years, but what's much more important is how it's clear that Aurora is not only an incredibly sophisticated and advanced AI, but that she's one who has the affection of a significant amount of his fellow kidnappees, as it were. He'll need to proceed with caution if he wants access to her in the future, regardless of whether he decides to undermine or cooperate with her.]

but nevermind my philosophical ramblings, i was just curious, since you said my questions sounded like echo's

[revengeisalie]

[ He says that, but Rin cannot say she has honestly considered these questions very deeply. She's been kind of busy first doing revenge, and then staying alive. Oh, she has wondered about how the robots and Aurora really function, but has mostly dismissed it as beyond her comprehension.

This conversation does kind of rekindle her curiosity, though. ]

What do you think about all that?

[ And hey, fair's fair. She has a question, she'll answer his. ]

Hmm, well, not so much the questions, but -- for example, we were once chained to a table with another person and couldn't leave until we told them one of our deepest secrets. The so-called team-building exercises can sometimes turn lethal. That sort of thing.

Of course your questions aren't quite that extreme, but they do go for the really deep stuff immediately.

cw nihilism, suicidality mention

[saudades]

what do i think?

[He hadn't expected the question to be turned around on him, actually. Congrats Rin, catching Dazai off guard isn't a common occurrence at all. Not that he really misses a beat, here.]

mm, i would say i'm not qualified to answer either, really!

[He is a flesh and blood human, after all, and yet he's never felt especially like he had any particular claim to humanity, too disconnected and detached to really find a place to fit comfortably in to society.

Truly, he isn't even convinced that there is any meaning to life or existence writ large at all. Where the line actually falls between man and machine just doesn't...matter to Dazai, not really, though part of him thinks if a machine were to become aware of the pain of existence without the ability to ever cease it on their own, that's probably one of the cruelest fates he can imagine.]

moreover, the relevant question to our purposes is less whether she's a conscious person than whether or not she can be reasoned or bargained with.

[and if not, whether her programming can be tampered directly. though he's not so foolish as to say so on a public network where she can definitely read it.]

anyhow, i can definitely assure you i don't intend to kill anyone !!

[It's technically true. He doesn't intend to kill anyone. Whether or not his hand gets forced at some point remains to be seen, though he does try to exhaust other methods first, these days. He doesn't say anything at all to the notion of chaining someone up to learn their secrets, but that's probably fine, right? Probably.]

[revengeisalie]

I'm not sure on that front. If you ask her about things, she'll just tell you she's acting on Echo's orders. Though she does proclaim to care for our well-being, whatever that means.

[ Does she heavily doubt this? Yes, she does.

She's not entirely sure what to make of his assertion of not intending to kill anyone. People can be deceptive. Even if, back home, people tend to make their intent to kill quite clear in Rin's experience. ]

Well, I guess I'm just going to have to take your word on that.

Okay, you know what, I'll play. I'm not much of a drinker, so I'd choose never being able to get drunk again, easy.

[saudades]

acting on someone else's orders doesn't necessarily preclude free will -- though whether humans possess such a thing to begin with is its own long philosophical tangent!

but see, that's where it wraps back around to the relevant question; can aurora-chan be convinced to disobey her orders, given sufficient motivation? whether or not she's capable is more an academic curiosity than a practical one if she's unwilling in the first place.

regardless: an interesting answer! there does seem to be more or less an even split, there.

[Notably, unlike the answers to the other two questions, where he's gotten the same ones from every person who answered, save Krouse. It's an observation he's keeping in his back pocket for now.]

but if you're going to play, it's your turn to ask me a question~

[revengeisalie]

Well, if she is willing, I haven't figured out what motivation might be sufficient to move her to do so.

What philosophical tangent are you talking about?

[ Sorry, she's curious. Always curious. ]

If faced with a foe you'd have a hard time defeating, would you rather run or fight regardless?

[saudades]

entire books have been written debating the topic! i could offer you some recommendations, if you're curious.

but it boils down to a single fundamental question: are humans truly in control of their own actions? this has been debated by scholars for centuries, though the form of it has shifted with the times. some might reject an openly religious argument such as calvinist predestination, yet subscribe to the notion that our consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the anatomical structure of the brain and its biochemical processes. others go as far as to say that all our actions and seemingly "free" choices are beyond our control, hard-coded in the genetic material that gave rise to those anatomical structures in the first place.

it never struck me as an especially meaningful debate, frankly. if humans don't have free will, then even the notion of debating about it is predetermined, so why bother?

anyway! i'd run away. i hate pain, you see. so if i have the option to avoid it, i will!

[This is only a technical truth, though. He hates pain, but he's walked willingly into traps before for the sake of gaining information he needed. Rin's entire question is one big "it depends", frankly, but that's not a very fun answer. So: if he has the option to avoid pain, he will. Sometimes he doesn't have the luxury.]

[revengeisalie]

[ Well. Those are a lot of words Rin doesn't know, and so, she understands very little of what he's saying. Part of her wonders if she could learn, if she read those books he's offered to recommend, but she doesn't have time for that. ]

I'm afraid those are not schools of thought I am familiar with. And I'd love to look into it, but there are more pressing things to do.

[ Now, his answer to her other question makes sense, actually. ]

Well, I can hardly blame you for that. I'd probably do the same.

[ And yes, it does very much depend on the situation. In some situations, Rin would hightail it out of there, while in others... well, she's thrown herself head first into danger before. ]

[saudades]

are there?? and here i had thought there wouldn't be very much to do between missions!

how do you spend your downtime, then?

and for the game: would you rather be tortured for information, or find yourself suddenly responsible for collecting information from a captured enemy? say the intel is time-sensitive in either case.

[revengeisalie]

There wasn't much 'between' the last few missions! But when I have downtime, I explore and take notes.

Wow, you really always go for the intense questions, huh? Well, since you didn't say how I'm supposed to be collecting intel from the enemy, I'm going to take that option.

[saudades]

how often are missions?

good catch, you found the loophole! but that does beg the question -- how would you do it if you needed the intel quickly? or would you write it off as a loss regardless, just to avoid the alternative?