December Prompts

[symbolofstrength]

Who: Samuel Oak and OPEN
What: Open prompts for December
Where: Various
When: December
Content Warnings: Can't think of any, will add them if they come up.

Comments

[forwearemany]

"Affirmative." They consider this.

"Raihan suggested that their inability to communicate despite understanding was due to their nature as Pokemon." Legion, largely ignorant of Pokemon, had accepted that possibility.

"Another suggested that their ability to communicate would change with time." Perhaps the data will be useful.

As for Legion's methods, the Geth really isn't the best suited to teaching, so the Professor has the advantage there.

[symbolofstrength]

"I don't know if them being Pokemon has anything to do with it. Most Pokemon just lack the mouth parts necessary to speak and the dexterity to write. I knew a Meowth that could speak, so it's not completely impossible."

Though really if he thinks about it, it would be odd that there's no cases of Smeargle being taught to write in his world and now he's trying it here. Perhaps no one ever tried?

[forwearemany]

They headtilt. "Acknowledged. Our familiarity with Pokemon is limited."

In other words, they're pretty sure that the professor would have a better idea of what is and isn't possible than them. They're still learning.

"Query: define Meowth."

[symbolofstrength]

"Meowth? Ah... I drew a picture of it earlier, but I don't have it with me. Let me see if I can describe it." Some of the Smeargles perk up at that, seeming to silently discuss something with each other as Sam thinks.

"It's about this big," he gestures with his hands, "with four legs and a tail. It's covered in mostly cream-colored fur, with pointy ears and a gold coin on its head."

As he describes it, the Smeargles with the appropriate colors of paint make their way toward a blank spot of the void, and start drawing their interpretation of his description.

[forwearemany]

"Acknowledged." At first, they listen to his description, but their attention is soon diverted to the Smeargles and their work.

They walk over, and crouch down to examine the attempt at drawing what the professor has described.

"Some early organic writing systems were originally based around images of the associated concept." Perhaps an image based writing communication system would be easier for them to learn.

[symbolofstrength]

"True, but such systems have their own limitations. How do you draw something like 'happiness', 'four', or 'west'?" In other words, abstracts. He leans over to survey the Smeargles' work too; while he'd rather not have to play Pictionary to communicate with them, it's better than nothing.

[forwearemany]

They chatter to themselves. To them, the solutions to Oak's questions seem simple: there already exist iconic images indicating many abstract concepts.

Their headflaps ripple for a moment, before they reach out and dip their fingers in the still wet paint of the image, then draw next to it a smiley face, four dots, and a set of perpendicular lines with arrows at each end, circling the one that would typically indicate west on a compass.

[symbolofstrength]

He still believes that some things are too abstract to depict with pictures; and if a pictographic system exists for long enough anyway, it will evolve into a writing system on its own, like kanji. Phonetic systems come later, but they're much more efficient -- instead of having a character for every word, thousands to memorize, you just have one for every sound.

Glancing at Legion's pictures, he shakes his head. The smiley face works, yes, but... he gestures at the compass rose.

"That requires context and prior knowledge; someone that hasn't seen a compass rose before wouldn't understand it." Then gestures at the four dots. "That works for small numbers, true, but when you get into large ones...." You could just make symbols for the numbers 0-9 and make a base 10 system similar to Arabic numerals, he supposes.

Perhaps the examples he chose were too easy.

"But it's a start. As long as you're trying, you're progressing." He doesn't like shooting others' ideas down like this, so he'll make up for it with some encouragement.

[forwearemany]

Technically, Legion would agree, except they consider even more advanced forms of organic communication to be similarly inefficient. Despite this, organics have managed to build advanced societies and technologies and generally thrive: the Smeargles will do fine, they think.

"Your communication is similarly inefficient to us." Why spend hours telling someone what happened when you can just share the memory? Why deal with all these complicated methods of achieving understanding, of conveying emotions when you can link minds over networks and share perspectives directly?

"Perhaps instead of teaching them our methods of data exchange, we should put our efforts into learning theirs." Currently, the Smeargles use images, hence image based communication.

They look to the closest Smeargle."How would you draw joy?"

[symbolofstrength]

Wrong answer. Samuel's gentle, friendly face shifts into a downright scowl as he darts his eyes at Legion in annoyed disbelief. Don't be ableist, Legion. At least he's not asking the impossible of the Smeargles, who have already proven they can link symbols and sounds.

"And what more efficient communication do you suggest I use?" His tone is stern. Go ahead, Legion; what else can he use?

[forwearemany]

Wow professor. Have you not considered that that wasn't a criticism, but an attempt to illustrate perspective? The Smeargles' methods might appear inefficient to him, but his communication is also inefficient to others.

"You misunderstand: we were not suggesting you change your method of communication, merely that perceived inefficiency is unlikely to be as limiting as it initially seems." Their tone is as even and neutral as ever.

[symbolofstrength]

The analogy doesn't work because he's just not asking the Smeargles to do anything they're incapable of, but working with them and their current abilities. He's honestly interested in helping them improve and enrich themselves, but dangling the impossible in front of someone's face as the 'ideal' way to do things is just cruel.

"I didn't say anything about efficiency. You did." So who's the one really 'misunderstanding' here? He tries to be a gentle teacher, he really does, but when someone does something he can't abide, like insulting someone's capabilities, he has to put his foot down and go into lecture mode.

"So, what more efficient communication could I use?" Answer the question, Legion. They're not going to get anywhere with this lesson until you do.

[forwearemany]

"You pointed out flaws in using images to communicate. We were attempting to illustrate that speech and writing have similar flaws to the Geth, who primarily communicated over networks."

Legion isn't sure whether it is easy or possible for the Smeargles to learn more abstract and symbol based languages. They've seen them struggle with writing outside of copying the words of others--this image of the 'meowth' is the most coherent thing they've seen them do of their own volition.

They also never said the Geth way of doing things was ideal to anyone but the Geth, hence qualifying their mention of inefficiencies with 'to us'. Networked communication, at least the way Geth do it, is unpleasant for organics without a filter or proxy. It also limits individuality, a quality which Legion has discovered holds many advantages, even if they don't want to say so.

They headtilt. "We did not intend to cause offense." Which is like, the worst thing to say here, but they're not really understanding why Sam thinks this is insulting, or that they want him to change when they were just trying to make an, admittedly imperfect analogy.

[symbolofstrength]

"Speech and writing are the best a human can do." Well, that and a little bit of empathy, but nevermind that; it's not well-understood anyway. "We're not capable of this 'network', whatever it is."

His tone is still no-nonsense, but he's still hoping he can teach Legion something rather than just be mean. If Legion were a child, Sam would be gentler and more patient, but as far as he knows Legion is an adult and should know better.

"You can see why it's insulting and disrespectful to call someone's best capabilities 'inefficient' or anything else undesirable, don't you?" With air quotes around 'inefficient', as it's not the word he would choose here. "It doesn't accomplish anything, other than possibly making someone feel bad." One example would be telling someone with a broken leg that they're slowing down the group; it might be objectively true, but what's the point of saying so?

They're just going to have to disagree on the capabilities of the Smeargles; he's been able to teach them to associate symbols with sounds, so together with their ability to understand spoken language he's sure it's only a matter of time before they can read and write. At any rate, they're not going to know for sure unless they try, and the Smeargles seem willing to try too (at least while he keeps the mushroom coming, anyway).

[forwearemany]

They chatter. "We apologize. We were not intending to insinuate that your communication is inferior, merely that it may appear so from different perspectives." Which still sounds insulting as fuck, but Legion is trying to say that what is ideal isn't absolute, and what seems disadvantageous from one perspective may not be from another. "Such judgements are subjective: Oraganics outperformed us in numerous areas."

The Geth have empathy, but they approach the process in a radically different manner from ... basically everyone else.

Legion would absolutely point out a person with a broken leg was slowing the group down if they felt it was somehow relevant. (What is tact and can they eat it?)