Problems Aboard [12 Hivvem 4385; en route]

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Alzagonde lost no time in doing her research, at breakfast the next morning. She brought her bowl of fish stew and her chalice of kathia, and plopped herself down next to Feralan.

Alzagonde: “Young Rassimel! May I ask you a few questions?”

Feralan: “Are you being curious? Or would you say you’re more ‘inquisitive’?”

Alzagonde: “I’m trying to look out for your safety. What’s your name?”

Feralan: “I’m Feralan. What’s your name?”

Alzagonde: “I’m Alzagonde. I’m a senior student at Lord Caring University in Barency.”

Feralan: “Does that mean you’re trying to care for people, or that you care about people, or nearly something else?”

Alzagonde: “Lord Brandorff Caring was a great hero of Barency in the early days. But I do care about people, especially young people, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Feralan: “Well, you’re weeks too late on that.”

Alzagonde: “Oh, dear. What happened?”

Feralan: “I went to Jinteros to buy a watch, and the city guard killed us. That hurt.”

Alzagonde: “Jinteros? I don’t believe that your skyboat went anywhere near Jinteros. Besides, the city guard wouldn’t kill a child.”

Feralan: “No, it’s really true! The nendrai glued me back together with a spare Locador demon named hCevian. Then the wizards had to split us apart. That was hard. It hurt a lot.”

Alzagonde: “Well, I’m sure you’ve had some wonderful adventures, but I’m here to talk to you about something serious.”

Feralan: “They were horrible adventures! I think they came out OK in the end. I like hCevian.”

Alzagonde: “That’s very nice. What species are your parents?”

Feralan: “Rassimel, of course. Do you believe me?”

Alzagonde: “I believe that your parents are Rassimel. Do you know what most of the adults on Strayway are doing?”

Feralan: “Do you believe me about hCevian? I think they’re mostly doing chores now. Windigar is probably steering the ship. Sythyry is probably doing enchantment. Arfaen is making breakfast.”

Alzagonde: “I’m not here to talk about hCevian…”

Feralan: “Does that mean you don’t believe me?”

Alzagonde: “It means I’m not talking about that now.”

Feralan: “You’re not supposed to confuse me about emotional states! My psyche is very fragile and covered with scars from the spirisection! I’m trying to learn how to communicate with people again, but it’s hard and you’re making it harder by not cooperating!”

Alzagonde: “I just don’t want to talk about that now. I want to keep you safe.”

Feralan: “Safe from what? hCevian is pretty good protection from most things. He promised that if a city was ever fighting me again, he’d whisk me away farther than they can possibly reach.”

Alzagonde: “Please, this isn’t about your imaginary friend. This is about how to grow up to be a good adult.”

Feralan: “I know! I’m trying! It’s OK if you don’t believe me about hCevian, but you’ve got to tell me whether or not you do! I think you don’t or you wouldn’t have used the word ‘imaginary’! But I need you to say it!”

Alzagonde: “Fine, fine. I don’t really believe your story about hCevian, but I’m not too worried about it.”

Feralan: “But if you want to protect me you need to believe in him. He’s the one doing most of the protecting of me these days.”

Alzagonde: “Well, I just want you to grow up right, is the main thing.”

Feralan: [nearly in tears] “I’m trying! I’m learning everything I can about it anymore!”

Alzagonde: “Shh, shh, it’s nothing bad. I just don’t want you — or any child — to get beaten or scorned when you grow up.”

Feralan: “I don’t either, but I dunno how to stop it. I’m going to be very, very, very strange, what with my soulmate and all.”

Alzagonde: “Soulmate? Oh, great staring gods — have all the traff-folk here been telling you you have to pick the love of your life, at your age? And it has to be someone a different species? Listen to me, Feralan, this is important. It’s fine to be friends with someone of a different species, but you do not have to marry them or love them in an adult way. No matter what the people on Strayway say. I think they’ve been abusing you very badly, and I shall … figure out what action to take.”

Feralan: “No! It’s about hCevian! When they did the spirisection operation bits of his soul got stuck in mine, and bits of mine in his. So we’re soulmates.”

Alzagonde: “hCevian is imaginary!”

hCevian: “No — simply implausible.”

Alzagonde: A very loud shriek as the demon appeared on all sides of her at once.

Feralan: “Hi! This is Alzagonde. She wants to protect me.”

hCevian: “She has very poor reflexes, and does not react to much effect when she is startled. I don’t think she really holds a candle to Vaisessasilmin, who also wants to protect you.”

Vae: “And she has a candle for me?” (Her earmuffs protect her from most prime words, but of course she can hear hCevian.) Vae was in the shape of a withered and wattled Khtsoyis hag, for reasons best known to herself but probably due to some misguided attempt to punish herself for, well, it could be nearly anything she’s done.)

Alzagonde: [recovering pretty fast, considering] “I’m not trying to be his bodyguard. I’m trying to protect him from a moral quagmire that it’s all too easy for him to fall into.”

Vae: “The candles do I love!”

hCevian: “Which one?”

Alzagonde: “The dread and stenchy bog of transaffection that yawns beneath his feet, wide and tempting in this ship of fools!”

Vae: “And what sort of candle is it?”

Alzagonde: “Excuse me, beldam. I have no candle for you.”

hCevian: “I do not believe that Feralan has yet formed a clear image of what sort of prime he will love. Speaking as someone who was attached to his mind and soul for a long while recently.”

Vae: “The candle from you, that is what I desire and demand!”

Alzagonde: “You’ll get nothing from me, step-grandmother!”

Vae: [becoming a twelve-clawed monster] “The candle — give it to me!”

Alzagonde quite sensibly attempted to flee. hCevian blocked her, giggling. Vae hissed and threatened and demanded. Feralan teleported to a pantry, got a candle, teleported back, slipped it to Alzagonde, and told her to give it to Vae. Vae wriggled in involuntary and much-despised delight. Feralan teleported her to a parlor, and followed himself.

Feralan: “I think you need a bodyguard, Miss Alzagonde. Not me.”

Comments

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

So, out of curiosity, how would you enumerate her faults as shown from this posting?

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Her primary fault, from a research point of view, is that she's doing it all with an agenda. Anything which does not support that agenda is likely to be ignored. Also, because of that agenda, she's going about it in a way that taints experimental neutrality - people are likely to either go along with her "moral" persuasion, or see her as a git and pay her even less attention than normal.

In short, she's a sanctimonious jerk.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Not to dispute your final conclusion -- which I heartily agree with -- but she is not doing research into facts; she is doing research into methods. She does not care much, say, why people are traff, or how a young boy grows up to be traff, or any such question -- not for its own sake. She cares about how to keep youngsters from growing up to be traff. I can't imagine how to do such research neutrally: the very goal is biased.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Well she is testing various treatments, yes?

The 'controlled' way of doing that would be to get a large number of 'at risk' people, as similar to one another as possible, separate them into (categorical) groups, and try a wide variety of 'treatments' on them, keeping at least one of the groups untreated (to act as a control), and then compare, over time, how each of the treatments works. And the treatments should, in *general*, be based on the theory and understanding of the mind, development, and the causes and factors that go into someprime being traff.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Are such experiments practicable on your world? I do not know how to do such an experiment with people here!

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Well... sociologically? For this sort of example? Not reaallyyyy...

Note Bloofox's (hopefully parody) response, as well as shurhalan's statement: "Sociological experiments, especially those with long-term duration and/or effects, are notoriously impossible, or at best unethical, to do in a controlled environment. It would involve lengthy imprisonment at best, and goes downhill from there."

Buuuut, there are creative ways around that sort of thing! Lots of stuff involved figuring out the CAUSES of whatever concept you are trying to study, and paying for people to take part in your study as volunteers, and doing your best to understand what might be the cause, and understand a theory of how the mind works, and so on and so forth.

Also, for getting people to take part as a research subject for short term, less invasive sorts of things, sometimes it's made a requirement of students to participate in so many research studies associated with the university, in order to graduate!

I'm sure other folk have some more responses to this. Why don't you ask in a post about what *would* be a more appropriate and less invasive way, to get some ideas for this person to try and figure out therapies to prevent transaffection, so she can actually be allowed to do something on your ship?

[redbird]

In our world, it is sometimes practicable, especially if the young people's parents or guardians agree that the risk is worth avoiding. For example, people test different methods that (they hope) will encourage students to complete their studies, or convince people to wait until they are fully adult to become parents, or avoid certain risky behavior.

Once in a while, similar things are tried with adult volunteers. For example, there are people who overindulge in intoxicants. Some of those people agree that this is a problem, and want help stopping. It then becomes possible to test two or more things that might help: for example, medicine A versus medicine B, or whether a medicine works better than other techniques. (In that specific case, the data are not encouraging: it isn't so much that they can't show that A is better than B, it's that none of the choices works all that well.)

[alex-muridae.livejournal.com]

Precisely right. When it comes to science, there must be no "point of view". The facts and data stand, providing observational or experimental evidence, and analysis must be carried out without tilting the scale. While multiple interpretations are possible, depending on the data and its clarity, science is an evolving meritocracy; the best explanations are those that survive, and we approach fact & truth if not reach them.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

There are several words used in this statement which reveal a bias on their own.

What I, and probably you, call "Science" is actually a technique for modeling objective reality by a method of successive approximation, with formal and (in theory) repeatable tests to validate the approximation, identifying both where it succeeds and where it fails to model. In practice, since it is done by people, it involves consensus reached by established political means and can be, and has been, contaminated by both internal and external agencies acting on that consensus.

Even when there is no obvious contamination of the model by the observer or the context, it is extremely difficult to measure something without affecting some aspect of it, and that is true of observation (where the observer affects the data in recording it) and of experiment (where the framing of the experiment can change the results) such that the assertion that there "must be no point of view" is at best begging the archetype.

Since it is a goal to minimally contaminate conclusions, a neutral position is the best that can be achieved; we are not bodiless intellects without interest (and such beings should they exist would be unlikely to engage in scientific inquiry in any case.)
One can easily attempt to hold a neutral position while analyzing data, and sometimes will succeed in drawing conclusions that are not contradictory to the non-subjective embedding reality, but in most cases they're merely a collective approximation.

The concept of 'evolving meritocracy' as applied to scientific inquiry, is innately prejudicial and should be expunged from use as, 'at best loaded' due to its presumption that there is an objective merit that will be revealed by any evolutionary process.

Further it's extremely unlikely that evolutionary processes, which do not in any case favor any particular outcome that is not a result of the conditions in which the subjects of those processes are embedded, are in fact being applied to the selection of criteria by which any given explanation, theory, or interpretation is given a greater or lesser acceptance. Rather it is the deliberate construction of the political process by which theories and the supporting data are assessed, that impels one or another to greater acceptance. It's precisely that process which is the weakest link: little things like 'short term profit for persons performing research' and 'governmental directions based on considerations that are not innately part of the politics of science' that have been and will continue to dominate the execution of that political process. At the micro level, scientific inquiry is closest to pure, at the integration level, there is a great deal of impurity.

[alex-muridae.livejournal.com]

I must admit, I wasn't expecting such a thought-provoking response. I don't think my initial point quite got across, but that's probably my fault. This is what I get for waxing poetic and waning technical for a moment...

I will agree that your definition of science is certainly valid; I must point out that it was not my intent to say that science is uncontaminated, so much as it should be. To return to poetry for a moment, "ones beliefs and views don't change reality, only color it".

Further, my comment about "no point of view" perhaps could have been better summed up by suggesting a neutral one - on that we agree. None the less, I was trying to suggest that the attempt should be to maintain as much subjectivity as possible, and recognize where bias or error can be generated; this was all I meant.

As to the use of the term evolving, I am (surprisingly) using the original definition: Developing gradually, esp. from a simple to a complex form. I did not mean to imply natural selection or biological evolutionary processes. Ironically the way your final paragraph goes over the very topic brings up the merits of the other sense; after all, do you think human behavior is unevolving? Social evolution is quite the interesting topic, and certainly a factor, if not an explanation, of what you refer to as political process.

I defend my use of the term overall: while there can be contamination, setbacks, bias, deception, and all the other nastiness that can affect a human consensus, the successive approximation you refer to assures that in the long run we are able to better explain and better quantify...well, whatever it is we're studying. Everything, I suppose. Hehe, I'm tempted to point out that natural selection could be invoked as well. After all, while biological evolution has no goal or predefined endpoint, the system is the same: what works stays; what doesn't is removed. And yes, that's an oversimplification, but poetically it's the fittest theory that survives.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

Having seen a very small sample of the academia and of the ratiocination of the persons in charge of defense of larger cities when confronted by unsettling beings, I am of the entirely prejudicial opinion that scientific method as we both seem to understand it, does not exist in any widespread form in the World Tree.

Whereas I share the view of one Ms. Agatha Heterodyne, that any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science, yet I am also suspicious that more personality traits than the Gormoror self-geas and the sloppy tentacular criminality apparent to the Khyotsis are due to the imposition of traits by the entities that made them.

In any case much of the frothing about in my reply is due to an allergic reaction to the word "meritocracy" which any person who has worked for Intel in the past has very good reason to view askance as an innately suspect word.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the fact that the laws of nature are people -- and, in certain cases, not people of the best character -- may account for the scarcity of the scientific method. The objective and observable universe upon which it implicitly relies is simply not the one we live in.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

That does introduce a rather daunting barricade to the scientific method, but since extradimensional and extrauniversal movement and activity seem to be not only possible but alarmingly easy, I suspect there is an underlying metaphysics which could be similarly analyzed, if only to discover whether or not it's also supported by the will of some person.