Subject: (urth) Those chems

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2002 05:26:35 +0000

The subject of chems having been brought up lately, I want to say a few
things about them in general, some of which may bear on recent discussion.

First is the silly anthropomorphic notion of gender in machines: they don't
have any. Gender outside of biological life forms is devoid of meaning.
Yeah, Wolfe has consistently given us such characters in his fiction, but
that doesn't make it true. I can, for the sake of a story, accept sentient
automatons, just as I do FTL ships, time travel, and ghosts, but logic can't
be left entirely on this side of the looking glass.

Chems were built on Urth, not the _Whorl_, to the evil madman Typhon's
specifications. Lest the chems wear out, like Marble, or otherwise be lost
to his plan, he made provision for replacements. For some reason he
decided that individual machines should not replicate themselves alone, so
each machine was programmed with only half the data needed to build a
replacement. It was a stupid idea, as subsequent events proved, and gave
rise to the notion of gender, based on the obvious and convenient human
analogy.

Chem is a term coined on the _Whorl_. Both Urth-born Kypris and Mamelta give
them no more regard as sentient beings than I do my car or computer, each
calling them by some variation of "robot" and "machine", which is what they
are. The chems are "its", not "hes" and "shes". They have no instincts
beyond their "standing orders", which can be subverted, as Incus
demonstrated, by a little rewiring and reprogramming. They do not have
glands or hormones to influence behavior. The gamut of human emotions
attributed to the head movements and body language of Marble exist only in
the eye of the beholder; they are learned associations or fanciful
projections with no more (probably less) real-world meaning than those my
wife assigns to one of our cats.

I'm a little over half through my nth reading of the LS series. From all
I've been able to determine, there are two basic models of chems. One is the
tall (two heads taller than Silk), heavy model used primarily, if not
exclusively, as "soldiers", such as Hammerstone. These machines are,
according to Hammerstone, basically identical in terms of hardware; the
differences, such as military rank, are in the programming they were given
and a certain ability to "learn" from experience. These tall chems are, so
far as I can tell, designated exclusively as "male". The other model is
smaller (nearer normal human size) and lighter, though still heavier than a
same-sized human. These shorter chems seem to be all "female".

The only differences between what are termed "male" and "female" chems is a
matter of programming and relative size. Many of their inner components were
probably interchangeable. None of those components can be identified as male
or female. Marble's modesty in entirely an affectation; she has no female
features to hide beneath a habit, no more than the soldiers have male
features. In fact, the soldiers wear only different colors of paint to
indicate their function.

Hammerstone might just as well have been programmed as "female" and spent
"her" waking hours sewing nighties for Orchid's girls and empathizing with
their monthly courses; but no, its fingers were too big for fine work. But
it makes just as much sense as wandering around on patrol in the tunnels,
talking Silk's ears off with stereotypical army gripes, pining over lost
love, and bitching about the shortage of chem nookie--or whatever equivalent
non-biological itch Hammerstone was programmed to scratch.

-Roy

--

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2002 05:00:56 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>
To: "urth" <urth at urth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 6:26 AM
Subject: (urth) Those chems

> wife assigns to one of our cats.

Um!

Wolfe deliberately gave the chems souls.  Whatever "soul" is, they have it
as much as do the bios.    After all bios are just machines, too.

You might argue that the chems are radically less complex mentally than the
bios, but there is no evidence for this.   A human mind can reside in the
chem's cards, it seems - people are transferred back and forth all the
time -  and so the chems' native minds apparently can be as complex and
idiosyncratic as a bio's.

I won't argue that Typhon intnded this.   I think it just happened, after
hundreds of years interaction with the bios and with each other.

Your cats do have emotions, which they communicate to you very well.   Or
communicate to your wife, at least, it seems.

    hartshorn

--

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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2002 10:48:36 +0000

On 03/09/2002 06:26:35 Roy C. Lackey wrote
>features. In fact, the soldiers wear only different colors of paint to

The suggestion that Marble's behaviour is an affectation is an interesting
one.

An affectation. A show, pretense, or display. Behavior that is assumed
rather than natural; artificiality. A particular habit, as of speech or
dress, adopted to give a false impression.

But is it?

You also say that the behaviour of the chems is programmed.  We know this
and more we know, I think, that the function of those placed directly in
society is in part and perhaps in the greatest part is to inhibit change,
providing a static referent against which novelties can be measured and so
improve the chance that the societies Typhon/Pas designed would arrive at
their destination in the form he intended.

Programmed behaviour - in the literal sense of being codes and
instructions - is as "natural" to the chems as any learend behaviour is to
humans.  Marble's modesty is exactly the opposite of an affectation.  It
is likely as deep seated in her as any instinct in us, perhaps more so,
and for a very specific reason: to make her (and her kind) not only fit in
with the human society in which she exists but also to make her a model
for that society.  Yes, it is an artifice to give a false impression -
that she is human.  But it is not assumed or adopted: it and other such
manerisms are fundamental to her creation.

So too with gender.  Gender-less chems would not, could not have performed
so well in the role assigned them. A difference so fundamental between
gendered humans and non-gendered chems would have been a significant
barrier to the chems function.  Just look at where Marble is; in a
religious establishment and a teacher of the young. Church and school, two
central institutions for society and thus most effectively placed.  She
should be an examplar for the children and adults who come into contact
with her.  The effectiveness of this compromised only by the unplanned
long extended wait in the Whorl where the degredations of age made the
differences between chems and humans more apparent.

Gender is not sex. It is not the presence or abscence of particular
organs.  Here it is a designed matter based on the human model with which
the chems must blend.  If Marble is programmed to act in ways that are
accepted as being appropriate to women and does so then for the purposes
of her funtion she is effectively female because she is seen as female in
that society.  She is modest not because there is physically anything to
be modest about but because humans seeing her must be taught that a good
woman is modest and a good man respects that mdoesty.

Having chems differentiated into male and female types - and given those
types occupations stereotypically appropriate in that society - a
methodology for governing the replacement of chems in the small numbers
that it was anticipated might be required immediately suggests itself and
further fits into the designed differentiation that helps chems fit into
human societies. To do otherwise, to have one chem alone be able to create
another or to have new chems appear from some "magic" portal would have
diminished their effectiveness.

The entities in Mainframe might understandably be dismissive of
"machines".  After all those entities designed the machines and their part
in the plan.  More the machines function has come to an end.  Having
stabilised societial forms for the length of the journey and subsequent
wait in orbit there is no further use for them.  But for the humans abord
the whorl the chems are personalities.  Marble would have been known to
many in her part of the town from their very earliest days and as such
most assuredly a person and a woman.

What should our view of chems be?  The mainframe view of a small, useful
tool?  Or the passenger view of personality and fellow?

Matthew

--

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2002 18:07:46 +0000

Roy C. wrote:

> Chem is a term coined on the _Whorl_. Both Urth-born Kypris 
> and Mamelta give them no more regard as sentient beings than
> I do my car or computer, each calling them by some variation
> of "robot" and "machine", which is what they are. The chems
> are "its", not "hes" and "shes". They have no instincts beyond
> their "standing orders", which can be subverted, as Incus
> demonstrated, by a little rewiring and reprogramming. They 
> do not have glands or hormones to influence behavior.

Now, this is an interesting statement. Roy, you seem to be
stating that behavior influenced by hormones is thereby
less mechanistic, or something? I wonder if that's a trap
Wolfe deliberately laid ... 

The chems (in my reading) are a perfect analogue of the human
situation, and I think Wolfe very much intended them as such.
We are (by Christian belief) free willed souls housed in
biological "hardware" that deeply affects our behavior -- an
injury to the head can cause amnesia, radical personality 
change, all sorts of things. Simple surgical alterations to
the brain can have strange, and often unpredictable, effects
on our behavior.

Yet we (Christians) claim that there is something, a soul or
spirit, underlying this which remains constant through all 
such changes and is the root of free will, the locus of moral
choice, and is what is "judged" after this life. 

Materialists claim that the way changes to the brain affect 
personality is "proof" that this intangible thing does not 
exist, and it's certainly an ongoing challenge to refute this; 
where is free moral choice when the right combination of 
implanted electrodes, injected hormones, and/or operant-
conditioning can turn any "normal" person into a Gandhi or a 
raging killer? (Forgive the exaggeration, if it is one. I don't 
know how far the state of this art has expanded since I last 
read up in it. Neither, I expect, do any of you; those likely
to fund really advanced research in this field are unlikely to
publicize it.)

So how do we differ from the chems? "Glands?" Pfui; the 
equivalent can be programmed, or hardware-coded -- the little
we learn of chem reproduction leads me to think the latter.
Though each has half the information needed to build a child,
it appears that they can't simply share the information, as 
they surely could (with, perhaps, the help of someone like
Incus) if it were simply software. Both must be present 
through the entire operation. Chems, apparently, have behavior 
and urges which are outside their conscious control and reside 
below the "software" level.

The analogy is not perfect but it's enough to allow Wolfe to
play safely with questions of the meaning of free will when
the brain is interfered with. Since this is a theme also with
the bios (Who is morally responsible for the acts of a bio 
possessed by a god? Or of that bio after the god has returned
to Mainframe but left traces behind? In Short Sun, where does
Horn's moral responsibility end and Silk's begin? Etc.), it 
seems likely that Wolfe intended the chems to extend this 
theme ... especially, but not only, in Hammerstone's case.

Onward, back to you Roy:

> The gamut of human emotions attributed to the head movements and
> body language of Marble exist only in the eye of the beholder;
> they are learned associations or fanciful projections with no more
> (probably less) real-world meaning than those my wife assigns to
> one of our cats.

And here the agenda steps forward: Roy, you are a victim of
pseudoscientific behaviorism, the idea that humans are somehow
the only creatures with real emotions or consciousness. While 
only a fool would claim that the _exact_natures_ of a cat's 
consciousness and emotions are identical to a human's, it is
equally silly to suppose that they don't have 'em ... in fact,
the only plausible argument for this is a religious one that
we have souls and they don't.

But if you accept even in part the idea that our emotions and
consciousness are _evolved_ for specific purposes -- and if you
don't accept that, then we (despite my professing Catholic 
Christianity) simply do not live in the same universe -- then
it becomes ludicrous to claim that the same general _kind_ of 
mind and emotions are _not_ present in, at least, other 
vertebrates, and certainly other mammals. Take two animals 
descended from a common ancestor as relatively recently as us
and a squirrel, cat, or (especially) chimp, and demonstrate 
(as is easily done) not only that they behave similarly under
circumstances we would describe using emotional words, but
(more difficult but it has been done) that the same regions 
of the brain are firing -- for emotions do _not_ fire 
primarily in the uniquely human areas of the cortex but in 
the deeper and older regions of the brain, shared with our
fellow vertibrates -- _and_ that similar chemicals flood 
their systems at those times -- demonstrate all this, I say,
and a claim that they do _not_ experience something very 
close to our emotions is not a least hypothesis at all, at
all, but a highly motivated claim intended to make it okay
to treat animals as we far too often do.

Let me make clear that I am not a PETA loonie and do not
seek to shut down all animal research; far from it, I am
a supporter of animal research for medical and scientific
purposes. However, I believe that this is a case of the
"naked lunch" principle -- which I describe as the idea 
that those who eat meat need to visit a slaughterhouse, 
see what is done, and understand that they are hiring 
people to do this for them. Use of animals for our own
purposes is (in my very firm opinion) morally acceptable 
only by those who clearly and fully understand what they 
are doing.

--Dan'l

--

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2002 19:36:34 +0000

>dress, adopted to give a false impression.

That definition fits Marble perfectly!

>manerisms are fundamental to her creation.

I don't think so. Marble was not programmed on Urth to be a sibyl. I don't
know how/why she became a sibyl, but several decades back she was a maid.

>with her.

After entering the religious order she "assumed" and "adopted" the
conventions of the order. Marble is the only example I am aware of of a chem
entering the order. That being so, her programmers on Urth assuredly did
_not_ waste her storage space by giving her unneeded (and from her
programmers' perspective, pointless) "manerisms" "fundamental to her
creation". I mentioned that chems have a certain ability to learn from
experience. That is what she did. She adopted the mannerisms of the bio
sibyls, acquiring her modesty from their nun-like example.

Marble and Olivine are the only female chems I can recall from the LS/SS
books. Olivine does not share Marble's sense of modesty. She spied on Silk's
nakedness. Olivine clothes herself like a human, not from innate modesty,
but because male chems she encounters want to mate with her. She doesn't
want to mate, apparently because she is "ashamed" of her imperfections.
(RTTW, 240)

[snip]

>tool?  Or the passenger view of personality and fellow?

Wolfe clearly intended the latter, as I think I indicated. Olivine is a
pathetic figure, like some street urchin out of Dickens. But, hell's bells,
somebody smear some grease on her sticking relays and get rid of that
annoying stammer and lurch!

-Roy

--

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Wed, 04 Sep 2002 01:15:20 +0000

Dan'l wrote:

[snip]
>we learn of chem reproduction leads me to think the latter.

Why would any robot designer in their right mind even _consider_ building
one hardwired (or programmed) to be subject to the equivalent vagaries of
human emotions occasioned by glandular secretions? Hard to imagine Marble
with a robot version of PMS. Would Sand have been any meaner to Silk if he
had cranked out a little more of the robot version of testosterone?

And where _do_ those parts needed to build a new chem come from? Central
warehouse? I guess not, or Olivine wouldn't have been left in the lurch.
(There shouldn't have been a shortage of fem-chem parts; there never had
been many females.) Carried inside the chem parents? Then how is it that
Hammerstone and Marble used up theirs?

>we have souls and they don't.

Perhaps you missed the "(probably less)" part of that quote. Anyone who has
seen a whipped cur, or one that has just been handed a piece of meat, can
see that the dog acts very differently in those cases. Likewise the cats
don't purr when I yell at them to get off the screen door. Animals seem to
have a certain degree of consciousness and emotions, sure; they just don't
have the ones my wife projects them to have: they can't--their brains don't
have room for that complexity, even if they could think like a human, which
they can't.

[snip]
>only by those who clearly and fully understand what they

Although this animal-rights stuff had nothing to do with my post, you have
several times brought up Heinlein on this list. In TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE he
said that when the need arises you must be able to shoot your own dog. I
can; I have. That doesn't mean I liked it. I wouldn't eat chicken for years;
I kept seeing them headless, flapping around spouting blood as I had seen
them as a kid when they were fresh killed. But I got over it. And I know how
sausage is made.

-Roy

--

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From: Charles Reed <cmreed at link.com>
Date: Wed, 04 Sep 2002 13:56:56 +0000

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

> . . . Take two animals descended from a common ancestor as relatively
> recently as us and a squirrel, cat, or (especially) chimp, and
> demonstrate (as is easily done) not only that they behave similarly
> under circumstances we would describe using emotional words, but (more
> difficult but it has been done) that the same regions of the brain are
> firing -- for emotions do _not_ fire primarily in the uniquely human
> areas of the cortex but in the deeper and older regions of the brain,
> shared with our fellow vertibrates -- _and_ that similar chemicals
> flood their systems at those times -- demonstrate all this, I say, and
> a claim that they do _not_ experience something very close to our
> emotions is not a least hypothesis at all, at all, but a highly
> motivated claim intended to make it okay to treat animals as we far
> too often do.

This is off-topic and trivial beyond belief, but I'd just like to
express my admiration for the above sentence.  My seventh-grade English
teacher would love to see it diagrammed.  :-)

Charles

--

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2002 17:59:11 +0000

Roy, on chem "glands":

> Why would any robot designer in their right mind even 
> _consider_ building one hardwired (or programmed) to
> be subject to the equivalent vagaries of human emotions
> occasioned by glandular secretions?

Because the designers' goals are not what you assume they 
are -- they are attempting to build "chemical persons,"
the term actually used in the text which "chems" is short
for. More specifically, they are attempting to create a
consciousness of equivalent nature (though not identical
to) human consciousness. From my own reading in the field
(which is, granted, mostly on the level of Pinker and
Dennett), I am inclined to suppose that it is necessary 
for some kind of irrational drives to be present for a
consciousness as such to have even the possibility of 
evolving/emerging. 

> Hard to imagine Marble with a robot version of PMS. 

Granted; but then, she's _old_. I don't think we actually 
know enough about younger fem chems to make a statement
like this meaningfully.

> Would Sand have been any meaner to Silk if he had
> cranked out a little more of the robot version of
> testosterone?

Would Severian have been taller if he had been born on 
Lune instead of Urth? You're asking questions which are 
contratextual, and given that the text itself is a 
contrafactual, it's hard to make the questions mean
anything at all. Even if you grant per hypothesi that 
the chems do have a hardprogrammed equivalent of 
"glands," that doesn't mean that they duplicate the
specific functions of human glands; only that there is
some built in drive equivalent to the (glandularly
influenced though not, I think, determined) human drive 
to reproduce. We see in Marble at least one other drive
-- a drive to maintain her own bodily "health" to the
extent possible.

(Both of these are drives I can imagine even a highly
pragmatic engineer bulding into pure "robots"; 
reproduction to maintain the "supply" in the isolated 
_Whorl_ and self-preservation/maintenance, to extend 
the useful lifespan of the "units.")

> And where _do_ those parts needed to build a new chem 
> come from? Central warehouse? I guess not, or Olivine
> wouldn't have been left in the lurch.

I have the distinct impression that they have to _make_
the parts, though just _how_ this is done is not clear
-- but there's no reason it should be, since we don't 
see any of it happening. Olivine isn't incomplete 
because they ran out of parts; she's incomplete because 
Marble left too soon. (I think this much, at least, is 
pretty clear from the text.) 

> Perhaps you missed the "(probably less)" part of that quote. 
> Anyone who has seen a whipped cur, or one that has just been 
> handed a piece of meat, can see that the dog acts very
> differently in those cases. Likewise the cats don't purr when
> I yell at them to get off the screen door. Animals seem to
> have a certain degree of consciousness and emotions, sure; 
> they just don't have the ones my wife projects them to have:
> they can't--their brains don't have room for that complexity,
> even if they could think like a human, which they can't.

Why in Heaven's name do you assume that emotions are more complex 
than thinking? The parts of the brain where emotions are seated
in humans are much older than in animals, and have not changed 
terribly much in lo these many millions of years. To assume that
they do not produce similar emotions in animals seems very odd.

And why in Heaven's name do you assume that they can't "think 
like a human?" John W. Campbell used to ask for aliens that think
as well as humans but not like humans; some animals, I submit,
particularly a lot of our fellow mammals, are the converse: they
think not as well as humans but like humans.  

I have seen animals do what I can only call reasoning -- I have 
even seen a cat behaving in a way that I can only explain, 
admittedly by a sort of projection, by saying that the cat enacted 
a primitive form of the scientific method: observing, forming a 
hypothesis, testing the hypothesis by further observations, and 
acting on the results. Lengthy story on request, but it's even 
more off-topic than this -- which, I believe, remains topic-
relevant in that it relates (a) to the question of the chems, and 
(b) to such creatures as Oreb and Tik.

> Although this animal-rights stuff had nothing to do with my 
> post, you have several times brought up Heinlein on this list. 
> In TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE he said that when the need arises you
> must be able to shoot your own dog. I can; I have.

Are we establishing some kind of credentials? I haven't shot my
own dog; it would be illegal where I live. I have held my dog,
and my cat, while the vet gave it the final shot, and continued
to hold them until well after their hearts had stopped. Same 
logic, different environment.

> That doesn't mean I liked it. I wouldn't eat chicken for 
> years; I kept seeing them headless, flapping around spouting 
> blood as I had seen them as a kid when they were fresh killed.

Ditto -- my dad raised chickens in a suburban yard, earning 
the enmity of his downwind neighbors. I never stopped eating 
chicken, but then my own position on animals has only gradually
evolved (and still does). Someday I may talk myself into becoming
a vegetarian...but I sure do like meat.

Meanwhile, back at the Whorl: one last question ... why, do you
suppose, Wolfe chose to call them "chemical" persons instead of
(say) "electromechanical" persons? Does this have any bearing on
your assumption that they are what we would call "robots" and not 
"androids?" (Yes, I know that Li'l Scylla uses the word "robot."
Proves very little, I think.)

  President and Founder,
  Chem Rights Now

--

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2002 17:05:16 +0000

Surely this is a reference to "alchemy"?

Plus, the Golem's written sigil was called a "chem".

    hartshorn

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>

--

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2002 21:43:59 +0000

Whipping that

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes said:
Meanwhile, back at the Whorl: one last question ... why, do you suppose,
Wolfe chose to call them "chemical" persons instead of (say)
"electromechanical" persons?Surely this is a reference to "alchemy"?

Hartshorn replied:

Crush weighs in:
Here's a quote from Chenille (roughly) -
"Poppy is cute. But Hyacinth is pure gold"

--

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 06:24:02 +0000

Blattid
President and Founder,
Chem Rights Now wrote:

>specific functions of human glands;

The books may be fresher in my mind since I am currently re-reading them,
and have paid particular attention to the chems. Time and again Wolfe
portrays chems, mostly Hammerstone and Marble, experiencing all-too-human
emotions, and that's the very thing I can't swallow -- at least on this side
of the looking glass. Trivial (to the plot) example: Marble thinks that it
may rain and spot the clean sheets she needs to hang out to dry: "Fuming,
she put aside the wicker clothes-basket . . .". (LS3, chapter 8) That just
happens to be where I am in my reading; I didn't take notes, but there are
many such examples. Hammerstone's obsequious adoration of Incus includes
wanting to just stare at him like some star-struck teenager. (LS3, 3) At one
time or another chems are made to experience shame, anxiety, anger,
timidity, doubt, joy, worship (oh yeah; Hammerstone lectures Auk about it),
wistfullness, and a whole lot more. And Olivine is such a twisted mass of
emotions it's pathetic. Literally. When she gave up an eye for her mama, I
thought I was gonna cry. :-)

>only that there is

Then why did Olivine give up an eye if it wasn't in her best interest? Human
altruism, that's why.

Look, I've acknowledged that Wolfe intended chems to be regarded as sentient
automatons pretty much on a par with humans. (The question of chem "souls"
is one I'd rather not get into, but I seriously doubt the Vatican would buy
it.) He goes out of his way to do it. But I don't start turning on the
lights before entering a dark room just because I've read a ghost story,
either.

>than thinking?

How does that follow from what I wrote? I didn't say that.

>like a human?"

Because they can't. Language and thought are inextricably related in humans;
cats don't have the language, ergo . . .

>Are we establishing some kind of credentials?

It was my response to your "'naked lunch' principle" spiel.

>I haven't shot my

Not the same at all, and it's also illegal where I live, but this is way off
topic. I should have given the full quote, which is on page 260 of the
hardback. Suffice it to say I agree with Heinlein, but I don't deride those
who don't.

>Proves very little, I think.)

I assume that they were so called because chemical reactions (as take place
in modern dry-cell batteries) were their power source. As I said before,
both Urth-born Mamelta and Kypris called them robots and mechanical (LS2, 10
and 4, respectively). Mamelta was so incensed when Lemur (the chem version
killed by Crane with the azoth) was hurting Silk, that she screamed at him
"_You damned robot! You THING!_" (emphasis in text, LS2, 12). (I would give
page numbers, instead of chapter numbers, but I have only the paperbacks of
the first three books.) Clearly, people who had not been born on the _Whorl_
did not regard chems as equal to bios.

Even on the _Whorl_, in Silk's day, such an attitude still apparently
persisted, lest Silk would not have said to Lemur:

"'You said something else that I ignored, Councillor.'
    For the first time, Lemur sounded dangerous and even deadly. 'Which was
. . .?'
    'You said that you were not a chem. I'm not one of those ignorant and
prejudiced bios who consider themselves superior to chems, but I know--'
    'You lie!'"

Then Lemur pitched a fit and fired the azoth. (LS2, 12) He didn't want to
admit that he was a chem because he was aware of the prejudice, and even
seems to have shared it.

-Roy

--

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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 08:52:56 +0000

>lights before entering a dark room just because I've read a ghost story,

I was (hic!) thinking about this - in general terms - last night on my way
home from the bar.  By alcohol  alone is the mind set in motion...

Actually I was think more generally that the depiction of the alien (vide
the comment about JWCambel's remark) is probably impossible because a
human writer for a human audience canot but produce a human concept.

Thought the next was that a very few writers get close.  C J Cherryh being
one who does so regularly; V Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" manages
something akin by playing with the reader's perceptions (to say more would
be a spoiler I think).

And thought the last as that Wolfe _never_ does.  I don't think he even
tries to nor wishes to.

The not-human beings encountered in his work might be outre in form and
somewhat mannered in behaviour but from Baldanders to Marble are
comprehensible in solely human terms.

Whether analogy or parable or "just a story" Wolfe's work is essentially
humanistic.

So the lack of chems with chem-centric behaviours and motivations,
enjoying a uniquely chem-oid lifesyle (still less driving for a family of
cheap green retractables) isn't a surpise.

Matthew

--

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 15:27:53 +0000

A response and a question.....

Roy C. Lackey said:
seems to have shared it

Crush responds:
Hmmm. I thought it upset him because it would mean he was dead - a ghost
like the gods at which he sneered. While the *real* Urth of Typhon viewed
robots as non-persons, in the Whorl where everything is artificial (except
for an ignorant minority) they are as real as anything else. Thus, in Viron
chems have full rights. Marble seems to face no barriers as a sibyl.

But I could be wrong about the extent of the general prejudice. Silk's
statement "I'm not one of those ignorant and prejudiced bios who consider
themselves superior to chems" is subtexted by the fact that he himself is an
"artificial" and "engineered" person, only one constructed of flesh. And IMO
while Silk is not a bio-supremist, he is a bio-separatist to an extent that
he must soon face.

Roy C. Lackey said:
But, no, Jonas wasn't a chem, at least not one like those on the _Whorl_.
Jonas was very light weight, as Sev noticed when he picked him up in the
Antechamber. Male chems are _much_ heavier than humans. Even female chems
are heavier than same-sized humans.

Crush asks:
Is anyone aware of any textual evidence that non-military chems are not
light-weight? I know Sand was five-hundred weight, but that was useful for
his function.

-- Crush

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From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 20:39:30 +0000

--- "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
> of the looking glass...

> lights before entering a dark room just because I've read a ghost story,

I think what you're assuming--that machines can't have emotions--is not
only unproven, but has a very strong argument against it.  If human bodies
including brains work by the laws of physics, than computers should be
able to simulate them as well as desired.  That is, it should be possible
to build robots that behave and feel the way we do.  Unless you think that
our behavior or our feelings are not something our bodies do unassisted,
in which case your position needs *lots* of explanation.  Not necessarily
on this list.

Of course the materialistic view I'm arguing for can't (yet) explain how
something made of matter can be conscious, but that is still easier to
deal with than claiming that matter organized in one way (bios) can be
conscious or interact with conscious spirit or whatever, but matter
organized in another way (chems) can't.

Or maybe your arguing that engineers and tyrants on Urth [*] wouldn't want
chems with consciousness and emotions.  But maybe they would, or quite
possibly consciousness and emotions are necessary to something to
something that has as much independent judgement as a person, or maybe
they're not but it was much easier to follow the model of human beings
(with minor modifications) than to create a new kind of independent
rational being.
...

> in modern dry-cell batteries) were their power source.

Nuclear reactions are probably involved, since Crane mentions toward the
end of _Lake_ that lots of isotopes are released when a chem blows.

> As I said before,
> the first three books.)

Same buying plan as me.

>Clearly, people who had not been born on the _Whorl_

Well, two out of two people surveyed, anyway.  Kypris's position is ironic
since she herself is a machine intelligence.

> admit that he was a chem because he was aware of the prejudice, and even

Good point.

Jerry Friedman

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com

--

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 22:12:18 +0000

> The books may be fresher in my mind since I am currently 
> re-reading them, and have paid particular attention to the
> chems. Time and again Wolfe portrays chems, mostly
> Hammerstone and Marble, experiencing all-too-human emotions,
> and that's the very thing I can't swallow -- at least on
> this side of the looking glass.

Okay, then, we're agreed on this pernt: in the Lupiiverse 
of discourse, chems experience emotions reasonably comparable 
to those experienced by humans.

Now, assuming (and I think that this is a reasonable thing
to assume) that Wolfe has point in giving them emotions, I
can see at least three "thematic" possibilities:

1. As Bre'r Jerry done point out, in a mechanistic universe,
   there is no Urthly reason why emotions and all the other
   things that us bios think of in relation to a "soul" 
   should not be plausible in a construct. For consciousness
   and emotion to emerge in a computing device of sufficient
   capacity is a time-honored, even a creaky, stfnal theme 
   ... of precisely the sort Wolfe loves to reappropriate and
   make anew.

2. In a divinely created universe, on the other appendage,
   there is no reason to believe that, if we bios were to 
   build a device _capable_ of housing a soul, the Increate
   (or the Outsider or whatever you want to call the divine)
   should or would refrain from instantiating a soul in that
   device. (Related to this is the fundamental Catholic
   position on test tube babies, genetically engineered
   humans, etc. Technical language aside, it comes down to
   the idea that their creation would be a sin, but their
   existence would not be a sin on their part; God would 
   give them a soul just like any other human.)

3. One of the overarching "themes" of the Long/Short books 
   is imitation and identity. Perhaps its most explicit 
   statement is found in Silk's comment that a demon who 
   impersonates a god is in danger of becoming the god. 
   This is an example of a general theme I first encountered 
   in Vonnegut, and so often think of as "Bokonon's Law": 
   you must be careful what you pretend to be, because if 
   you pretend to be something long enough you become it. An 
   excellent example of this "theme," discussed occasionally 
   here and there, is Quetzal; he pretends to be a good 
   shepherd to the flock of Viron, and in the end dies to 
   save them, because he has become one.

Now the interesting point about these three "thematics" on 
chem emotions is that they are in no way exclusive of each 
other; in fact, I think that all three are necessary to a 
proper understanding of what Wolfe is doing. 

The third "thematic" presents no problems, but I think it 
important to observe that the first two blesh in a way
precisely harmonious with Wolfe's observed practice in other
matters. In short, and I'm going to leave specifics to your
own memory, Wolfe repeatedly presents us with events that
simultaneously have a miraculous quality and are completely
explicable in materialistic terms ... Wolfe brings this out
in the discussion of the flying Cathedral of the Pelerines,
observing that the rising of hot air doesn't make it not a
miracle; rather, the miracle is that the universe was made
so that hot air would rise, so that the Cathedral would fly.
(This is a gross over-simplification from memory, but I 
believe it captures the essence of the argument.) 

Simply, then: "thematic" 2 is the miracle, and "thematic" 1 
is the mechanistic explanation that does not make it any 
less a miracle.

> >... there is some built in drive equivalent to the 
> >(glandularly influenced though not, I think, determined) 
> >human drive to reproduce. We see in Marble at least one 
> >other drive -- a drive to maintain her own bodily 
> >"health" to the extent possible.
> 
> Then why did Olivine give up an eye if it wasn't in her best 
> interest? Human altruism, that's why.

Quite likely, but that's hardly a contradiction of my general 
point. Indeed, it's another example of humanlike irrational 
emotional ("glandular") behavior where I had only offered two 
... Humans have a survival drive too, and (as the phrase 
'human altruism,' though unfairly ignoring the many examples 
of self-sacrificing behavior on the part of many other 
species, usefully points out) do similar things to what 
Olivine does -- the actual donation of an eye not being perhaps 
on the spot, organ donations (a kidney, part of a liver...) are, 
if not everyday behavior, certainly well withn the normal 
spectrum (in cultures where they can be performed). 

> Look, I've acknowledged that Wolfe intended chems to be 
> regarded as sentient automatons pretty much on a par with
> humans. 

So ... uh ... what were we arguing about?

> (The question of chem "souls" is one I'd rather not get into,
> but I seriously doubt the Vatican would buy it.)

I suspect that the Curia would be against the proposition 
until powerful evidence (though it is hard to imagine what 
would constitute "evidence" in this amtter) was offered; I
further suspect that they would be opposed to the building
of such a device in the first place. But I don't know, and
the Vatican often takes surprising positions on issues.

> He goes out of his way to do it. But I don't start turning on the
> lights before entering a dark room just because I've read a 
> ghost story, either.

You're braver than me. I was afraid to get into a bathtub for
weeks after I read THE SHINING. I don't even want to tell you
what IT did to me.

> How does that follow from what I wrote? I didn't say that.

Clearly I misunderstood; You said that their brains haven't the 
room for the complexity of emotion, without making a parallel
statement supporting your belief that they dont' think "like a
human."

> Because they can't. Language and thought are inextricably 
> related in humans; cats don't have the language, ergo . . .

Do you do all your thinking in words? I'm one of the most
verbally-oriented persons I've ever known, and I certainly
don't. Language isn't how we think, it's how we express our
thinking -- including to ourselves in the "conscious" mind.
If you think this is an overfine distinction, just consider
the many times you've had a complete thought (and even perhaps
acted on it, as in an emergency) prior to language-ing the
thought. (If you say this has never happened to you, I will
take your word for it but consider you a statistical freak.)

> It was my response to your "'naked lunch' principle" spiel.

Okay, though I wasn't sure how it applied.

> Not the same at all,

Doubtless true, though at a minimum there is the commonality of
feeling that you've killed something that trusted you.

> >(say) "electromechanical" persons? 

> I assume that they were so called because chemical reactions 
> (as take place in modern dry-cell batteries) were their power
> source. 

Noooo ... their power source is clearly nucyulehr. Isotopes 
everywhere when a chem blows. That won't work. 

If you're wondering, I don't have an answer sitting up my
sleeve; I just think it's an interesting question with some
bearing on the question of "glandularity" and emotion.

Regarding the use of the word "robot" by Kypris and Mamelta,
well, most people don't distinguish the two words the way
SF people do -- consider the use of the word "droid" in the
Star Wars films for what any SF person would call a robot.
Nonetheless, we are given lots of evidence to support the
idea that they are android in appearance -- that is, they 
seem to have been built to visually resemble bios to as 
great an extent as possible, to the point of including 
plastic or plastic-like "skins" -- and in design, to
the point that they are clearly part-compatible with 
replacement parts for bios. 

--

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 23:37:59 +0000

>light-weight? I know Sand was five-hundred weight, but that was useful for

Yes. Silk was no weakling -- he threw Mamelta over his shoulder and ran with
her, bad ankle and all, after Lemur was killed. Yet when Marble/Rose was
telling him about Blood's birth, and it finally dawned on Silk that somehow
Rose was speaking through Marble, he tested his theory:

    "Watching carefully for her reaction, Silk said, 'I would have carried
you, Maytera, if I could; but I knew you'd be too heavy for me to lift.'"
(LS3, 4; p. 119 pb.)

Also, earlier, following Marble's collapse after being possessed by Echidna,
Silk gave her a hand to help her to her feet: "He heaved with all his
strength, reawakening the half-healed wounds left by the beak of the
white-headed one." (ibid. 117)

-Roy

--

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From: Alice K. Turner <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2002 01:20:04 +0000

In this discussion, which is pretty interesting (I admit to having cruised
past most everything here lately, but this arrested me), I am surprised that
no one has yet brought up Sidero or Ossipago. Sev believes that Jonas must
once have been an automaton (Urth, 93). But I think that part of Wolfe's
grand plan is to meld or confuse the differences between AIs, sci-fi
"robots" (already so out of date except for those over-priced "dogs"),
mythological or genre-endorsed supernatural beings (confused deliberately
with religious beings--though I guess that goes without saying), enhanced
(and regular) humans, and aliens. Anyway, Sidero is a sort of Hierodulian
chem (or automaton) and and Sidero is pretty interesting in  himself. So
don't leave them out!

-alga

--

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From: Alice K. Turner <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2002 01:26:00 +0000

Whoops, I meant that Ossipago was the hierodulean chem!

-alga

--

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2002 02:36:06 +0000

> admit that he was a chem because he was aware of the prejudice, and even

Yeah, but knowing human beings, that prejudice could easily exist whether
there was any basis for it or not.

You could re-write that substituting whites, blacks, and the accusation
that a man who looked white had some black ancestry, and you'd have a
conversation that would have represented the attitudes of a whole lot of
real-world people a hundred years ago.  But I wouldn't site that fact as
evidence that blacks aren't really sentient.

-Rostrum

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