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u/CHANN3L-CHAS3R

r/TheDigitalCircus r/YouShouldKnow r/WeLoveYouCaine r/KanePixelsBackrooms r/TADCEp9Spoilers
YSK (USA residents specifically,) there is NO national database for drug interactions.
▲ 1.1k r/YouShouldKnow

YSK (USA residents specifically,) there is NO national database for drug interactions.

Why YSK:

It's easy, sometimes, to forget that doctors can't actively recall everything they've learned and often have to look things up to refresh or reconfirm information.

It's also easy to assume that a Very Very Incredibly Important Thing would have some sort of uniform database to refer to.

Unfortunately, there are three major Drug Interaction Databases in the USA (and dozens of others,) and they don't all agree. Now, I'm not trying to fearmonger as if they don't EVER communicate with one another -- like many science-based fields, practitioners prefer to share info if their hands aren't tied -- but the fact of the matter is that some potential interactions can be overlooked simply because they're missing in one major database.

So, whenever you get a prescription from your doctor -- no matter what kind of doctor -- ALWAYS DOUBLE-CHECK WITH YOUR PHARMACIST. Your pharmacist will be referring to many multiple databases because it's their whole job to know how to Batman this shit.

I would like to end this post with a shoutout to my local Drugs Batman at Safeway, for keeping me from experiencing a 3-4x overdose of Quelbree FROM MY NORMAL DOSE, because the antidepressant I'd been prescribed would have blown those receptors clean open and the database my psych uses did not list that interaction. No hopital for me!

u/CHANN3L-CHAS3R — 10 days ago
▲ 1.7k r/TheDigitalCircus

I don't blame anyone who didn't catch that Jax's story was a transfem narrative.

This isn't me saying that I think it should have been more blatant -- I love the story we got and how it was approached from the side, seeing as Jax herself had it so deeply repressed. (And not getting it the first go-round is no excuse to be actively upset about it, either.)

However, I think it's cynical to reduce the confusion to media illiteracy. Literacy comes after vocabulary, and we're at a cultural transition point where these things are only starting to become normalized; 'transgender' as a general concept is poorly-explored in popular media, even in blatant terms.

If you describe the curtains as 'indigo', 'pthalo', and 'zaffre', the people in the audience who work with colors will think it's obvious, but your average joe will have zero idea that the curtains are blue. If you know the lingo, it's as obvious as if the author looked you in the eye and said "The curtains are blue."

If you want to tell a subtle trans narrative right now (especially in the span of a single 9-episode season,) that comes with the unavoidable cost of it flying under many, many radars.

TL;DR -- You do, in fact, have to hold the audience's hand and say 'this character is transgender' in simple terms, because when it comes to education in the subject most folks are still in preschool.

EDIT -- Something that's ocurred to me I felt worth sharing: A big contributing factor to this fandom-wide hot-topic is that everyone is approaching the discussion thru the lens of different literary theories. You don't even really have to know jack shit about literary theory, people naturally form a default lens as they learn and grow.

Someone looking at Jax's story thru a Formalist/Death-of-the-Author lens is receiving a different story than someone who's using an Audience-First/Reader-Response lens, and another person who's using a Biographical/Cultural-Context lens thinks both of them are dense. And if nobody considers the others' lens, they're all going to be arguing about three different topics they've mistaken for one.

u/CHANN3L-CHAS3R — 15 days ago
▲ 15 r/WeLoveYouCaine

I think Caine might be human. Not literally like the players are, but not in the metaphorical sense either! Hear me out:

THE FACTS WE HAVE:

​

* C+A was interested in developing creative A.I., and creativity is A Very Human Thing.

* C+A possesses multiple brain scans of employees, and their relatives (ex., Queenie.)

* C+A is (was?) unaware that these brain scan files are sophisticated enough to become sapient when activated.

​

THE QUESTION THESE FACTS IMPLY:

​

>Why did C+A need to figure out how to digitize -- with near-perfect accuracy -- the entirety of the human brain, for a project about Creative A.I. which was NOT intended to create a SOMA situation?

​

MY THEORY:

​

>C+A's initial approach to Creative A.I. was by reverse-engineering the digitized human brain. ***Caine is as much of an organic intelligence as any of the Circus Crew,*** even if he's not 'truly' human.

​

And I'm not just pulling this out of my ass based on conveniently-aligned facts! If you look at the intro to Ep. 8 through this lens-- just, okay, here, go through it with me:

​

In Ep. 8's abstract opening, we see Caine and Bubble's origins as 'Red' and 'Blue'.

​

Red's first go-round of learning produced the desired outcomes. But they degraded, fast. Lopsided shapes, jigs and jags, worse with each iteration. It's not that they don't WANT to fix what's OBVIOUSLY buggy programming, but, god, building a brain is hard enough, and trying to tweak it after? Ha! C+A built something too complicated to alter in any meaningful way after they got it working without causing it to break into fragmented, abstract data. This is enough of a problem IRL with LLMs, let alone a whole-ass bio-digital brain.

​

So C+A has to scrap the Red project, but, what, are they just gonna DELETE this model they spent so much time and effort on? They built all this equipment, all that time and research and money... so they just, put it aside. Box it off for later reference.

​

Seeing as the Red experiment failed, and C+A kinda needs to make a product soon -- shareholders are getting antsy! -- they go the more traditional A.I. creation route for project Blue, neural-network-style. And it works! Blue produces the desired outcomes, with more refinement each iteration. Yes! This is what the A.I. was supposed to do, this is what they intended when they wanted a 'Creative A.I.' -- plug in a request, get a sensible and relevant result.

​

How do I put this...

​

I don't think Red 'degraded', after that first round. I think Red was succeeding *phenomenally,* but C+A were judging an all-too-human mind with an A.I. yardstick. Absent trends are the hardest to spot, and Occam's Razor says the most likely reason for Red's behavior was buggy (un-fixable) programming. No small wonder they didn't get what was happening.

​

But when you watch the scene considering that little dot as a kid and not a program, it's obvious: Red was simply doing what all small children do when given new toys. They started playing roughly with them. The first round of learning was Red being taught.

​

*C+A didn't realize that the second round of learning was Red learning through self-directed play.*

​

Most kids don't feel like sitting down and being taught after getting new toys. And, of course, breaking apart shapes and forms and slapping them back together at random to see what happens is going to look like a whole bunch of nothing... kinda like childrens' scribbles.

​

What makes me think that it's THIS, and not simply Red being broken, is that Red IS Caine -- in the absence of Blue/Bubble his persona survives whole and intact, meaning that Caine's sense-of-self is entirely Red. And Red/Caine used those abstract shapes he made to create a tent. He didn't simply produce a tent-shape. He was able to understand abstract shapes, abstract form, and then he used those shapes to create a collage-esque representation of his own volition without outside prompting or given knowledge.

​

My man figured that out all by himself! That's sapient behavior! That's natural human instinct, baby! And that's the kind of thing we see him do 24/7 in his own messed-up, ignorant way!

​

I like the biblical themes TADC uses, and this whole things slots in nicely: Red was created in the image of his makers. And, like Adam and Eve, he was ultimately punished for it. Looking at it through this lens, you could almost consider Blue/Bubble an 'Angel' figure to Red/Caine's 'Human'; also a creation of God, but made to be a soulless tool instead of a reflection of its maker, designed for a purpose it executes flawlessly with no will of its own.

​

Which would explain why Blue/Bubble's removal seemed to have such little effect on Caine. Blue was never sapient; Bubble was never a person. Blue is a true blind-idiot-god A.I., pure power requiring direction. Hence, all evidence in the series pointing to Bubble being Caine's subconscious/repressed thoughts. Blue was plugged into Caine's brain and was simply doing its job: give output based on input. Even if it's not intended, conscious input. Blue wouldn't know the difference, it's all Input.

​

So, Caine lost only power. But why was Blue such a power-boost, anyways? Well, Caine's 'Red' data being that of a human brain explains it. Even though he was born into a digital environment with a body and mind designed for it, there's still a hard cap on how much he can do at a time. On his own, he's an expert mortal. With Blue, he's an expert God, because he's no longer limited to just the data his relatively-small program can handle. I'm pretty sure his native skill level, sans-Blue, is attainable by any of the Circus Crew with enough time and practice. Kinger all but said it, even!

​

...

​

This whole post got kinda messy by the end but, yeah! That's my Pepe Silvia Hot Worldbuilding Theory! What do y'all think?

reddit.com
u/CHANN3L-CHAS3R — 16 days ago
▲ 18 r/KanePixelsBackrooms

Captain Clark is not a Still Life in the same way a fly is not a maggot.

In this interview, Kane quite pointedly does not refer to Captain Clark as a Still Life. Only as 'The Lifeform.' Maybe it's nothing but, in a series like this, everything begs to be picked apart. (Double-check your references if you found them 20 minutes before going to bed and didn't read them a second time, kids.)

Captain Clark was, in the Press Release Script, referred to as The Lifeform. A minor detail that likely means nothing, especially since it was, y'know, scrapped. But I do like pondering fun nothings, so:

Assuming that Captain Clark isn't a Still Life... the hell is he?

Well, let's take a look at the other three we see:

  • One is wholly insensate and full of something that can't decide if it's polyurethane or porridge.
  • One seems to only be able to flick a lamp on and off in reaction to stimulus.
  • The last half-baked homunculus has no reactions to any stimulus save for one that 'reflects' its origin; move in The Away Direction from The Bad Thing.

Captain Clark is so far advanced beyond these three that even comparing them feels like comparing... well, real life to The Backrooms. But what makes him so different? Is it really just that The Backrooms had more time to scan Clark?

Yes, and no. Yes, the Backrooms having more time to scan Clark caused Captain Clark to become something else. No, Captain Clark did not become something else because he's a more perfect memory of Clark. What caused Captain Clark to becomes something Distinctly Not Still Life is the fact that he has blood and guts and goo and, most importantly, an actual, real, living flesh-brain.

The organ that hosts self and memory.

The moment that brain starts working is the moment Captain Clark stops being a passive reflection and starts being something capable of active learning and thought. That's just what a human brain does, even a malformed one.

Don't get me wrong; Captain's foundation is still being a memory of Clark (and all the baggage that entails.) But I think the reason he ate Clark isn't because he was emotionally reflecting Clark's internal state. If that were the case, he'd've gone aggro the moment Clark made his internal decision. Instead, Captain Clark only reverts back to his more basal state AFTER Clark, the one person he knows and has ever learned from, tells him "It's okay, we don't have to change."

He listened to this new information, processed this new information, decided in his alien brain that it meant going back to how he was in his earliest memories -- memories, he has them now and can self-refer based off of them! -- and then he does that.

u/CHANN3L-CHAS3R — 17 days ago
▲ 5 r/TADCEp9Spoilers

I think Caine is human. Not literally, but not philosophically either. Hear me out:

THE FACTS WE HAVE:

  • C+A was interested in developing creative A.I., creativity being A Very Human Thing.
  • C+A possesses multiple brain scans of employees, and their relatives (ex., Queenie.)
  • C+A is (was?) unaware that these brain scan files are sophisticated enough to become sapient when run on... whatever program they whipped up to activate them.

THE QUESTION THESE FACTS IMPLY:

>Why did C+A need to figure out how to digitize -- with near-perfect accuracy -- the entirety of the human brain, for a project about Creative A.I. which was NOT intended to create a SOMA situation?

MY THEORY:

>C+A's initial approach to Creative A.I. was by reverse-engineering the digitized human brain. Caine is as much of an organic intelligence as any of the Circus Crew, even if he's not 'truly' human.

And I'm not just pulling this out of my ass based on conveniently-aligned facts! If you look at the intro to Ep. 8 through this lens-- just, okay, here, go through it with me:

In Ep. 8's abstract opening, we see Caine and Bubble's origins as 'Red' and 'Blue'.

Red's first go-round of learning produced the desired outcomes. But they degraded, fast. Lopsided shapes, jigs and jags, worse with each iteration. It's not that they don't WANT to fix what's OBVIOUSLY buggy programming, but, god, building a brain is hard enough, and trying to tweak it after? Ha! C+A built something too complicated to alter in any meaningful way after they got it working without causing it to break into fragmented, abstract data. This is enough of a problem IRL with LLMs, let alone a whole-ass bio-digital brain.

So C+A has to scrap the Red project, but, what, are they just gonna DELETE this model they spent so much time and effort on? They built all this equipment, all that time and research and money... so they just, put it aside. Box it off for later reference.

Seeing as the Red experiment failed, and C+A kinda needs to make a product soon -- shareholders are getting antsy! -- they go the more traditional A.I. creation route for project Blue, neural-network-style. And it works! Blue produces the desired outcomes, with more refinement each iteration. Yes! This is what the A.I. was supposed to do, this is what they intended when they wanted a 'Creative A.I.' -- plug in a request, get a sensible and relevant result.

How do I put this...

I don't think Red 'degraded', after that first round. I think Red was succeeding phenomenally, but C+A were judging an all-too-human mind with an A.I. yardstick. Absent trends are the hardest to spot, and Occam's Razor says the most likely reason for Red's behavior was buggy (un-fixable) programming. No small wonder they didn't get what was happening.

But when you watch the scene considering that little dot as a kid and not a program, it's obvious: Red was simply doing what all small children do when given new toys. They started playing roughly with them. The first round of learning was Red being taught.

C+A didn't realize that the second round of learning was Red learning through self-directed play.

Most kids don't feel like sitting down and being taught after getting new toys. And, of course, breaking apart shapes and forms and slapping them back together at random to see what happens is going to look like a whole bunch of nothing... kinda like childrens' scribbles.

What makes me think that it's THIS, and not simply Red being broken, is that Red IS Caine -- in the absence of Blue/Bubble his persona survives whole and intact, meaning that Caine's sense-of-self is entirely Red. And Red/Caine used those abstract shapes he made to create a tent. He didn't simply produce a tent-shape. He was able to understand abstract shapes, abstract form, and then he used those shapes to create a collage-esque representation of his own volition without outside prompting or given knowledge.

My man figured that out all by himself! That's sapient behavior! That's natural human instinct, baby! And that's the kind of thing we see him do 24/7 in his own messed-up, ignorant way!

I like the biblical themes TADC uses, and this whole things slots in nicely: Red was created in the image of his makers. And, like Adam and Eve, he was ultimately punished for it. Looking at it through this lens, you could almost consider Blue/Bubble an 'Angel' figure to Red/Caine's 'Human'; also a creation of God, but made to be a soulless tool instead of a reflection of its maker, designed for a purpose it executes flawlessly with no will of its own.

Which would explain why Blue/Bubble's removal seemed to have such little effect on Caine. Blue was never sapient; Bubble was never a person. Blue is a true blind-idiot-god A.I., pure power requiring direction. Hence, all evidence in the series pointing to Bubble being Caine's subconscious/repressed thoughts. Blue was plugged into Caine's brain and was simply doing its job: give output based on input. Even if it's not intended, conscious input. Blue wouldn't know the difference, it's all Input.

So, Caine lost only power. But why was Blue such a power-boost, anyways? Well, Caine's 'Red' data being that of a human brain explains it. Even though he was born into a digital environment with a body and mind designed for it, there's still a hard cap on how much he can do at a time. On his own, he's an expert mortal. With Blue, he's an expert God, because he's no longer limited to just the data his relatively-small program can handle. I'm pretty sure his native skill level, sans-Blue, is attainable by any of the Circus Crew with enough time and practice. Kinger all but said it, even!

...

This whole post got kinda messy by the end but, yeah! That's my Pepe Silvia Hot Worldbuilding Theory! What do y'all think?

reddit.com
u/CHANN3L-CHAS3R — 23 days ago