26 KiB
[RST] Pokemon: The Origin of Species, Ch. 57 - Autoargumentation
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Author: u/DaystarEld Pokémon Professor*
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URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9794740/57/Pokemon-The-Origin-of-Species
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Score: 98
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Created: 2018-06-30T07:11:31
Post:
Comments:
u/MaddoScientisto [+35] (an hour later)
I wonder if the cloning process involves shutting down one machine while the transfer is happening
u/DaystarEld [+28] Pokémon Professor (9 hours later)
Someone in the back is just holding a wire and watching a screen so he knows when to disconnect it at juuust the right time...
u/eroticas [+35] (8 hours later)
Store a bunch of Charmander for biological parts...use charmander to make a charizard
I see someone has been playing pokemon go
u/agree-with-you [+14] (8 hours later)
Whenever I play Pokemon I need 3 save spots, one for my Bulbasaur, one for my Squirtle, and one for my second Bulbasaur.
u/DaystarEld [+4] Pokémon Professor (5 days later)
"Hey there, where do I buy the raw material for my new cloning machine?"
"Oh, right here sir!"
"...But this looks like candy."
"Yes. Delicious, delicious candy..."
u/GaBeRockKing [+19] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (a day later)
I think it's oddly hilarious that you're getting otherwise normal pokemon readers to pay attention to a few thousand words about research studies and grant proposals. Top-tier nerddom.
u/Ceres_Golden_Cross [+3] (3 days later)
+1
u/DaystarEld [+18] Pokémon Professor (22 seconds later)
Hey everyone, welcome back to a special early chapter! I published today because I'm heading to Scotland tomorrow to teach at ESPR. This means edits to this chapter may be a bit delayed, and after ESPR I'm heading to SPARC in Berkeley, so I've got a busy month coming. I've already written a lot of the next chapter, so hopefully I'll be able to keep the monthly streak going. If, however, no new chapter is up August 1st, I'll try to have it up as soon afterward as I can.
As usual, all feedback is welcome, and to any readers who may be at either camp, feel free to come say hi!
u/None [+8] (an hour later)
I'm also heading to Scotland! Where/what is this ESPR thing and is it open to the public?
u/DaystarEld [+10] Pokémon Professor (an hour later)
It's a rationality summer camp for teenagers that will be at University of St. Andrews this year, so not really open to the public, but if you're in that area sometime in the next week or two, feel free to send me a PM and maybe we can meet up :)
u/None [+5] (15 hours later)
I´m afraid I´ll be in Edinburgh, and a trip to St. Andrews conflicts too heavily with my schedule. :(
Next time, however, I would advise trying to do the camp at the University of Edinburgh instead, because we´re better than St. Andrews in almost every way :) /s
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (5 days later)
Very possible, but I'm guessing cost may have been a major factor ;)
u/Trips-Over-Tail [+18] Death of Crabs (14 hours later)
Isn't a trade-off of Raikoth that is slaves so many researchers to the topics of interest of the immediate zeitgeist, limiting unexpected discoveries in other areas? Most of the most significant, world-changing discoveries in real history came from fields from which no one expected anything of value at all.
u/traverseda [+6] With dread but cautious optimism (16 hours later)
Most of the most significant, world-changing discoveries in real history came from fields from which no one expected anything of value at all.
Can you give some examples?
u/Trips-Over-Tail [+13] Death of Crabs (16 hours later)
I think just about all of them, actually. Quantum mechanics is essential in all electronic technology, and that was always too absurd to lead to anything. Antibiotics is another. There's a great C-SPAN clip of Carl Sagan telling the story of how James Clerk Maxwell's pure research made all electrical technology possible.
u/traverseda [+3] With dread but cautious optimism (17 hours later)
I mean, I think it was pretty obvious that electricity could be useful. We might not have known exactly what for, but we knew that it was indeed a useful direction to research.
u/Trips-Over-Tail [+14] Death of Crabs (17 hours later)
It was less obvious than you think. It was regarded the same way the Ancient Greeks regarded their steam engines: a curiosity for toys.
u/DaystarEld [+6] Pokémon Professor (5 days later)
Isn't a trade-off of Raikoth that is slaves so many researchers to the topics of interest of the immediate zeitgeist
Trade-off implies we're losing something. How specifically would this be different from how things are currently?
u/Trips-Over-Tail [+2] Death of Crabs (5 days later)
If you parse my words like that you'll have me defending a point I never intended to make. My concern is with encouraging pure research in disparate fields where important and unexpected discoveries might be made, as has happened in real history.
u/DaystarEld [+5] Pokémon Professor (5 days later)
Sorry, not trying to take your words the wrong way, it just reads to me like a relative flaw rather than an absolute one.
It definitely is a failure mode for the system, and Red brought it up himself in his question of "what about research that doesn't generate enough interest for funding." It's not meant to be framed as a perfect system, just a better one, either mostly or purely.
u/twanvl [+4] (6 days later)
Another issue is that only some of real world research (in particular in medicine/microbiology and psychology/sociology) works this way.
- Take a biologist looking for new species in the rain-forest. He doesn't go there to test some hypothesis, he goes there to find previously unknown things.
- Or consider a physics experiment like the LHC. In this case people actually came up with the device to test a hypothesis (that the Higgs boson exists). But the LHC can do much more than that. It generates all kinds of data that is used to answer all kinds of questions, and also to replicate all kinds of previously results.
- Take a chemist trying to find ways to manufacture graphene. They have lots of hypotheses like "this slight tweak to the process will improve yield" or "this route might work". But ideas are cheap, and there actually are lots of theories to generate them. The actual work is in doing the experiments. Prediction markets might help to determine what goals to focus on. But to be able to bet on detailed hypotheses requires expert knowledge that only very few people have, the same people who are qualified to do the research. This knowledge about nitty-gritty will never be written down, because a lot of it is intuitive, instead it is something that phd students learn as part of their education. Additionally, it is very easy to quantify results, you either made graphene or you didn't. So p-hacking should not be a big problem.
- What about exploratory research? Say a new disease pops up, and you want funding to go collect some samples and look at them through a microscope (or for someone else to do this). What hypothesis should be put forth here?
- And I'll not discuss mathematics, which is not really an empirical science anyway.
u/Trips-Over-Tail [+3] Death of Crabs (6 days later)
Yes, that's a much better way of putting it.
u/Golden_Magician [+18] (6 hours later)
This might be my favorite chapter yet! So much nuance, moral ambiguity, mystery, and relatable emotional discomfort from Red's perspective. I really found myself sympathizing with him throughout this chapter, while earlier in the story there were times where I perceived him as being more of a rationalist ideals mouthpiece than a real individual. I honestly would never have expected that a cruise ship arc of all things would turn out to be so full of feelings and foreboding tension despite nothing of note really happening yet. While I feel a bit guilty for it, I hope that Red's romantic anguish will keep on tormenting him for a bit longer without any kind of convenient resolution- I believe in character growth through hardship, after all! Also welcome aboard Pikachu, I wonder how long it'll take until he evolves into Raichu! Oh, wait a sec...
u/Trips-Over-Tail [+5] Death of Crabs (14 hours later)
Sooner or later they'll have to save someone from a collapsed thunderstone mine... caused by a rampaging mantine.
u/Lipat97 [+4] (3 days later)
while earlier in the story there were times where I perceived him as being more of a rationalist ideals mouthpiece than a real individual
Lol on the contrary, I think using him as a rationalist mouthpiece on academia in this chapter was quite interesting.
u/Cariyaga [+15] Kyubey did nothing wrong (16 hours later)
Man, where do you get, uh, how to explain approaching groups and stuff like that from? That stuff's super nicely explained.
u/Olielle [+2] (28 days later)
Personal experience, reading other stories where group dynamics are described. Maybe other things.
u/None [+11] (6 hours later)
[deleted]
u/ketura [+16] Organizer (7 hours later)
That's part of the plot, isn't it? That prominent scientists related to that have been disappeared to fuel Giovanni's plot.
u/None [+5] (7 hours later)
[deleted]
u/WalterTFD [+6] (a day later)
In our world it seems like lab cloning = easy, digitized cloning = hard. In Pokemon world the skill tree is set up differently. No big deal.
u/DaystarEld [+13] Pokémon Professor (8 hours later)
I always just imagine that their world's tech tree is different than ours. Cloning in a lab exists, but it's very new, despite their computers being leagues beyond us. Different priorities giving rise to different focuses, and all that, and meanwhile Giovanni is snatching up scientists who might be intested in it, like Ketura said.
u/HeroOfOldIron [+10] (an hour later)
Figured there'd be something along these lines popping up. If things can be constructed via pokeball/container, no reason why a living being can't be.
I do wonder how psychic interference/stimuli will work out in the case of cloned pokemon. IIRC the only abilities that have been shown so far are all sensory and communication based, so if there's some kind of body snatching/controlling ability some psychics can use then it might be possible to shape a clone's brain to basically build a mind. It would probably be way less effective than a natural born pokemon, but it's something interesting to think about at least.
u/Ceres_Golden_Cross [+6] (3 days later)
Let's begin, shall we?
This time the options are all plant pokemon
For some reason, I never thought of eating plant pokemon. I imagined they had cheaper regular plants
Leaf takes his hand, warmth spreading from the contact all the way up his arm and through his chest
On point as always
So leaf is giving social advice is cute. And the fact that I'm finding the lessons usefull to me, is worring
"See if you can find your own group to infiltrate."
No! Don't let me - I mean - him alone to socialize! He won't survive!
Yes Future Red, but I currently have no control over my legs as the thought occurs that dying of awkwardness may be impossible, but suicide as a cure for awkwardness is not.
So, my empathy towards Red is reaching a point I didn't thought possible
You fools, you've DOOMED US ALL!
...is this a reference to SAO abridged? More likely SAOA was referencing a movie now that I think of it
or from his knowledge of what was just touching it.
So childish, I love it
this is a boat after all,
HAH, this story creates memes now
should also be able to be copied
Daystar, you are a madman. You are actually going to canonize the emerald glitch
fairly mindless way
Ohhhh. So they weren't able to copy the psywhatever
he just went through a battery of tests.
That was a intence sequence indeed. I enjoyed it quite a lot. Well developed
Or scream
Maybe her pokemon rights ideals are clashing? I wonder how different you could consider eating this charizard from artificial meat
They probably just put together something impressive enough to show for investors.
Leaf is shooting very strong points. Enough to make me feel troubled
and not eventually get upset at being stuck with one?
One moral dilema after another. I'm liking the tone of this chapter
Hi… Paul
And back to the memes. Nice tempo
Check my room?" Red asks as he suddenly sends his powers out toward Pichu,
I love how we have shifted from the deep moral questions to two children hiding their misbehaviour from an adult. Tense in a completely different, more naive way. Great job Daystar.
and Red turns to see her blushing furiously. It makes her look particularly pretty.
Cute leaf best leaf
Red… you are the worst liar
Yes. Yes he is.
"I refuse to feel bad about that." "You left the TV on?"
Their silly moments together are nice
pikachu
I'm going to miss the smol mouse
Also amazing chapter. Maybe one of my favourites, for completely different reasons than the others. Keep up the great work!
u/Throwitover9000 [+1] (a month later)
I know this is a month late, but could you enlighten me regarding the 'boat' and the 'Paul' memes? I am completely oblivious as to what you are referencing.
u/Ceres_Golden_Cross [+1] (a month later)
The first day in the ship, red and leaf ask an employee for peemission to train their pokemon in the ship. Said employee, Paul, is shocked that someone os even making such request. When they insist, his answer is "Sir, this is a BOAT" and for some reason, many readers found this moment hilarious, to the point of discussing if that sentence implied ingignation, shock, anger, or all of them
u/Ceres_Golden_Cross [+6] (9 hours later)
New chapter = happiness
Well, better open my notes app
u/jldew [+5] (a day later)
So. Refresh my memory. What role, if they exist, do Porygon have?
u/None [+2] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/jldew [+2] (2 days later)
Okay. Part of me wanted to say we touched on them at Bill's and I wasn't entirely sure.
u/DaystarEld [+3] Pokémon Professor (a minute later)
Typo thread!
u/rationalidurr [+11] If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! (an hour later)
"She's a cynic," Rick tells Rued
Ah my favorite Character Rued, truly i enjoy his perspective and insight!
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (9 hours later)
Pre-flight fixed, thanks!
u/sicutumbo [+3] (18 hours later)
"Yeah?" Leaf asks from behind him, sounding surprised.
"Yeah. But I also think we might have drifted off point, a little… I was curious to know, what if we forget about this technology as it currently exists and talk about the ideal? Maybe we disagree less than it seems, philosophically."
"Maybe." Red turns onto the next track in time to see Leaf's buneary simply hopping straight over both couches at once, its ears just missing the ceiling. "What did you have in mind?"
"Well, if we could just collect a bunch of dead matter for the elements and work out the algorithms to perfectly duplicate a pokemon, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen will get you most of the way there for most—"
"People aren't going to want most pokemon, they're going to want the rare and powerful ones. You think most people have a ton of iron lying around to turn into a steelix?"
It's not very clear who is saying what in this exchange. Leaf is saying the first line, the second is a reply to that, and then Red is replying to what he just said?
u/AKAAkira [+2] (3 days later)
Not OP, just butting in with a comment. Unless the first part of dialogue ends with a comma and the next part includes a verb denoting speech (e.g. "said"), the part in the middle is its own standalone narration with no direct relation to the spoken dialogue. Though, I can definitely sympathize with how the arrangement of names not conforming to the expected pattern throws the reader in for a loop.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (16 days later)
Fixed, thanks!
u/None [+3] (5 hours later)
[deleted]
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (9 hours later)
Fixed!
u/KnickersInAKnit [+3] (a day later)
training pokemon justs became
just
as thinking of unfeeling
of to and/or
buneary a knut
I checked Bulbapedia but knut turns up nothing. Regular nut?
CONGRATS PICHU!
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (16 days later)
Fixed, thanks :)
u/None [+2] (a day later)
[removed]
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (16 days later)
Fixed, thanks!
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (5 days later)
, and all of which do indeed/, all of which do indeed
leads the conversation to onward/leads the conversation onward
kid who kid caught/kid who caught
to take his mind,/to occupy his mind,
time to for the one/time for the one
cacophany/cacophony
oppenneness/openness
in preparation of meeting/in preparation for meeting
" Artificial - extra space
each pokemon as individual/each pokemon as an individual
act in part with what's best/act in part for what's best
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (16 days later)
All fixed, thank you!
u/noimnotgreedy [+3] (10 days later)
Cloning? Leaf would totally shove red into a machine and get a more romantic version of him.
Also: Leaf oughta do something 'bout protein. At that rate Red's gonna end up with Sabrina.
Pikachu evolving? Can't wait 'til Red says "Pikachu, use Thunderbolt!".
Once they and their pokemon are tired out, they decide to try some of the assorted drinks from the room's bar. Leaf opens one of the miniature liquor bottles, some kind of plum flavored rice wine that they both take turns sipping and making faces at as they try to acclimate to the taste. Red's lips tingle each time they touch the bottle mouth, and he's not sure if it's from the alcohol or from his knowledge of what was just touching it. Soon his cheeks feel flushed, which he's pretty sure is not from the alcohol. Or not exclusively, anyway.
Trying hard for that lemon tag arentch'a.
Unrelated news: nobody noticed that the Alolan forms fanart of the gen 1 kids had Leaf drinking lemon juice. https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/2528236 (NSFW)
Trivia time: what would happen if Articuno and Moltres decide to roost at the same place? Would Moltres set fire to an ice chicken? Moltres turns into blue fire? Zapdos decides to intervene because of a type advantage?
u/rationalidurr [+5] If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! (2 hours later)
Just have to ask cuz i keep forgetting, will we see the spectacular Team Rocket from anime make an appearance in this fic? Complete with a suspiciously silent Meowth!
u/DaystarEld [+9] Pokémon Professor (15 hours later)
Nah, was never a fan of the Team Rocket Trio, and they didn't show up in the games except Yellow, which follows the anime, so I'm ignoring them unless I can think of some reason to include them.
u/None [+22] (15 hours later)
I feel like the anime version of Team Rocket, re-imagined as scientists trying to impress Giovanni, rather than grunts with the same role, would be only characters I can see being foolish enough to use stolen cloning tech and try and solve the "absent mind problem" in some genius but shortsighted way that ultimately ends up creating a Pokemon with a human like brain.
Why go through the trouble of laboriously growing a human-pokemon hybrid, when you can use this reconstruction technology to essentially "insert" a human-like brain into a Pokemon body (ignoring how complex actually doing this would be, of course)? Only this time, instead of a potential psychic god, James and Jessie end of creating a snarky Meowth that is essentially a weak, pacifistic, walking existential crisis.
u/LucidityWaver [+10] (a day later)
I would love to see this as a parody spin-off.
u/The_Magus_199 [+3] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (2 days later)
I want to read this tbh.
u/Trips-Over-Tail [+4] Death of Crabs (16 hours later)
Does that mean we might see the Hitler Youth version of Team Rocket from the games?
u/Lipat97 [+2] (3 days later)
Okay so first off, it seems to me that Raikoth is more of your suggestion for the real world rather than something actually having to do with the plot. Nonetheless, I do think it opens up an interesting discussion on the topic.
First off, I think the proposal of having other people perform your suggested experiments is a bit flawed. A lot of research takes multiple attempts and multiple hypotheses to be successful. For example, if your goal is to create a chemical that turns Charmanders blue, you would need to test multiple mixtures and dosages of various different chemicals. So it really doesn't work for things like the millenium problems, IE the 7 math problems that some school said "We'll give a million dollars to the first person who solves one of these problems". It might work for sociological studies. However, a simpler solution would be to have experiments be routinely reproduced (which is ideally what should be happening right now).
Personally, my biggest problem with academia is not the quality of their information, but their willingness to actually spread that information. We are literally in the Information Age. There has never been more of a desire for people to know what the fuck they're talking about. The problem is that the people with the most quality information, the people who actually do research in their fields and know what's going on, are not willing to spread that information. You can't get mad that people are following shoddy information about climate change when they are doing nothing to make their own information available to the every day person. We don't have biology professors manning Tumblr blogs that keep us up to date with are frequent breakthroughs in genetic research. We don't have philosophy professors writing reddit posts explaining in layman terms the ins and outs of Nietzchian philosophy. We don't have a climate change database outlining the various studies and inventions in that field in a way that the normal person can follow along. The two examples we do have of academics putting their input on a subject, Askhistorians and Askscience, are absolutely fantastic. But those two subs don't cover everything, they only cover what there's an interest in (which is also a problem with your betting suggestion), they don't provide a strong database (although askhistorians tries to), and they don't really keep up with updates (if there's a breakthrough in a certain scientific field, it's doubtful it would be covered on askscience).
And it's not like people are unwilling to learn. Whenever a professor shows up on the internet, they get quite a following. I highly doubt this facebook post on immigration would get half the attention it did if the author didn't mention that she was a professor in the opening paragraph. Piero Scaruffi, who's actual profession is performing lectures at Stanford and Harvard on cognitive science and artificial intelligence, is very well known among music fans for his exceptionally controversial opinions. And probably even more notable is Jordan Peterson. His fame has the same roots as Tomi Laren and Milo Yiannopolus, ya know the people who acted like bashing political correctness was some revolutionary concept, but his fame has proven to be much more sustainable. The people are starving to hear some actual intelligence in the cluster fuck of stupid that is the internet. It's time people with the actual power to do so actually go ahead and do it.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (16 days later)
Definitely agree that information should be more widespread and accessible. The pokemon world already sort of has that cultural achievement, at least when it comes to pokemon, with the availability of pokedex. But even then there are some secrets, and there will always be incentives to keep information hidden, either for personal benefit or just as part of the system that funds its creation or vetting.
u/PM_me_couchsurfing [+2] (a month later)
I've come soliciting help from people who have finished the chapter:
I've stopped reading at the problem about
the story of how General Hideyoshi fooled the Mori clan's undefeated psychic warlord at Himeji Castle into falsely believing that he was surrendering?. I don't want to read on andadmit to ignorance without at least trying to figure out the answer. But I must ask before hand - is it even possible for me to work out the answer? And important follow-up question - does it rely on mechanics of the story so far, or if I happened to know a perfect psychic in our real world (no Pokemon world), would it work there too?