Annotated 31-20
Original edition of this strip did not have Carol in the tags for whatever reason, which prompted some weird speculation that HR was taking someone else into his confidence. Was there a Carol 1.0? Did she discover too many morals at the wrong moment, leading HR to eliminate her and groom some new ingenue? Interesting thought, but there wasn’t time for that in his timeline as I see it, nor would that have suited his transformation.
I mean, to be clear, he’s already got blueprints to put people in tubes, and he has to be aware that they probably wouldn’t aid his purpose willingly. He’s already taking steps down a dark path. But it’s important that he be charming and likable here, because his ability to charm Carol is the entire point. This is how he enlisted her: this is the story she told Shanna about four chapters back. He just wouldn’t be able to do that, in my view, if he didn’t believe he was forming a real emotional connection here. How true that belief is has already been explored elsewhere.
TIL that you’re not supposed to fold up schematic documents like that as if they’re scrolls. But I doubt Carol, an MBA with a minor in philosophy, knows that, and HR’s probably already convinced himself he’s above that kind of rule. These schematics kind of are his magical scrolls, after all.
I remember being stopped by the way that top view of the immersion tube was ALMOST placed perfectly to be an eye within the shadow of HR’s head in the final panel, and wondering if it was supposed to be
It DOES look like an eye, doesn’t it! I guess it’s just one of those remarkable coincidences that can occur when drawing complex images. Some of the lines and shapes take other forms not originally intended. It just turned out that way. Pretty neat, huh!
Wait, that wasn’t an eye?
*checks*
Ohhhh
OK, just for laffs since we all understand why he’s saying it, but let’s put HR’s claim to the test:
1) There’s an old Vsauce video about the Egocentric Predicament : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L45Q1_psDqk just so we’re on the same page
2) Now propose an experiment to find out something outside of that.
… err, I mean “outside our phaneron”, of course.
Another one, about qualia : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evQsOFQju08
I’m not sure why you’d immediately assume HR is claiming to be able to observe outside his own phaneron. If someone uses a geiger counter to detect unseen radiation, are they claiming to be operating outside their own phaneron? No, of course not. The geiger counter and the radiation it detects could potentially be a part of the Matrix along with everything else, and the geiger counter operator can reasonably make no claims to the contrary. However, within whatever reality or simulation their own mind is operating, the “geiger counter” converts unobservable information (radioactive particles and waves) into observable information (audible clicks, a visible moving needle). From the point of view of the geiger counter operator, the total information to them is increased, though still subject to the same egocentric limitations.
Likewise, I think what HR is proposing is using the immersion tube experiment as a sort of “magickal geiger counter”. He isn’t claiming that he can somehow directly observe something outside his own senses, but he is suggesting that he can use these machines to (theoretically) convert unobservable information into observable information.
Because of the parable of the cave.
It’s thematically more about “brains in a vat” than about “what if there is light we can’t see?”.
Specifically, it is about reality being secretly SO WEIRD that normal people would rather kill you than accept it. A bit of “shy light” isn’t quite enough for that.
Also because, well, we all go around thinking we’re seeing reality.
It’s plain nuts to actually go around thinking “I am seeing the inside of my mind, interpreting light-related phenomena that are intercepted by what I suppose are eyes”
But that doesn’t mean the latter isn’t more correct.
You aren’t supposed to roll them like that?
We used to roll them and put them in a tube in an architectural design class I had in High School.
Then again it was HS so it was probably not up to proper standard and… some time ago, y’know.
Anyways, what ARE they supposed to do with them, then? I doubt it’s folding them over!
Apparently you’re supposed to fold them in a very specific way.
This is information that I learned five minutes ago, after twenty years of rolling drawings up and dropping them in a wide filing cabinet drawer.
I can’t imagine any sort of plans, or even art, having creases all over it not making the creator twitch…
Then again, I am no professional at any of those.
Thanks for the info!
I seem to recall this information in some of my classes. I think the preference is to store things, as permitted by space, flat before rolled before (properly) folded. “Proper” folding requires things to be on standard-size paper, which I think precludes many older US blueprints.
If the paper in HR’s hands is a modern standard, it would have to be A0. I daresay it looks a bit larger as A0 is about 3ft by 4ft; B0 is a possibility, though it’s not common to use non-A series papers for technical drawings.
What Christopher said.
I still have a bunch of those lying around here…
The reason they’re folded that way: You can store a bunch of A1 or A0 drawings in an A4 binder, the info box stays visible when folded, and you can unfold each one without removing them from the binder, such that they’re right side up.
There are several ways to achieve that, of course, but if they’re all folded the same way, nobody needs to puzzle over which way to unfold it, which minimizes accidents.
…before the drawings were finished, though, I stored and transported them rolled-up, too, same as unused paper. Drawing on paper with creases is not fun.
These days, nobody draws them by hand, of course. Except at uni. I bet they’re still making them do A0 construction sketches, to scale, on paper, for three years.
Blueprints and maps should always be rolled, never folded. The creases can cause scale measurements to be off.
I concur. I’m not an architect, but my IT job has required working from blueprints, which have always been rolled. FWIW, those buildings have all been built in the last 30 years.
I’m not sure I understand why this is not a “real” emotional connection. Is that a shorthand I haven’t heard used? Do some emotions not count? Is HR not actually feeling emotion as he describes some of his plans and ambitions?
If it is manipulation, it doesn’t count as a “real connection”.
Real connections are two-way.
This is a faked output engendering a real response.
Although the real response is also born out of an internal NEED, rather than what the faker outputs.
“I mean, to be clear, he’s already got blueprints to put people in tubes, and he has to be aware that they probably wouldn’t aid his purpose willingly. ”
Erm, am I misremembering something? I though at the start of sepia world we established that HR was trying to get the five out, he just starting going all god-complex after he was repeatedly rebuffed by them? How were the five unwilling subjects in the beginning? How are they unwilling subjects currently?
Like, HR has murdered other people and engaged in cover-ups in sepia world, but I haven’t really noticed him taking unethical actions directly towards his test subjects in particular at this point? Eventually he tried to kill them in Arkerra when he knew they were vegetables IRL I guess? But my impression was that their inability to come back to sepia world is an accident.
Godhood was always HR’s end goal. He originally planned to send the Five in and then pull them out, yes, but that was a stepping stone to his goal. Had everything gone the way he wanted, the Five would’ve been unharmed and unaware they were anything more than game testers until HR used the data from their journey to achieve his true aims.
So, “getting them out” meant killing them, except killing them didn’t actually work as expected on the Arkerra side?
…it’s corpses in the tubes all along?
Well, my point above was that the five game-testers wouldn’t be willing to help HR achieve the kind of godhood that threatens universes. Not that they would believe that was an achievable goal without a lot more evidence than he’d ever give them!
We established late in the game that the Five didn’t have any brain activity by the time we first saw HR and Carol. HR may have believed he could restore them to proper life, just as he felt he could fix all the problems of the world as soon as he assumed ultimate power. But in any choice between his power and the welfare of others, power always came first.
Something about this reminds me of the chemical concept of affinity.
It can be visualized as spoons in the dishwasher.
The spoons have great affinity for each other, so often you’ll find two spoons have stuck so close to each other that there’s a bit of schmutz in between.
So just doing fan theory here, perhaps they picked their candidates a bit too well, and they just had too great affinity for the experience they were immersed in?
If not, there would be no element of choice in the one-way immersion. It would be something done to them, literally over their dead bodies.
I think it’d be kinda neat if they just … felt so at home in their supposedly-digital new skins that the memory of their cave-life from before just fell away.