SCP-2040 / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-2040.
Awesome. SCPs with images made like that show, at least to me, the author's dedication and hard work and make me smile.
If I weren't planning on entering myself, I would upvote.
Hey buddy, pal, friend, chum, that's not how things work. It's entirely irrelevant if you're going to enter the contest or not, if you like it, you upvote it. Plenty of us have already entered the contest and that doesn't stop us from voting on other people's work. We trust the community to have enough integrity not to let that cloud their judgment.
Would it be alright to hold votes for articles that we like but don't want to have as 2000? I know we're showing a collective statement of liking when we as a community upvote one scip to the top, but if I, individually, do not want an article to be 2000, is that in… dickishness territory?
My current plan is to withhold upvotes (not downvotes), except for the one that I want to make it, until post-contest. If I catch a bunch of flak or staff comes down on me, I'll reevaluate and downvote everything to be fair to be a dick vote accordingly.
I thought the rules of the site said that we should only vote on the quality of an article, and not let other factors sway us. The community as a whole will judge the article's merit.
Your vote is just one drop in the bucket, and to me, saying you'll only vote on the /one/ *you* think should win seems kinda dickish and presumptuous.
It's a reflection of what I feel should be 2000. It's like if five guys were running for presidency. I'll support one.
E: What I'm asking is if we should be voting on what we want to be 2000, or if we're not supposed to change our voting for the contest.
I think it's most likely up to you as a person whether you want to upvote all of the ones you like, or just the one you want to be SCP-2000. There's no rule against not voting on articles if you don't feel like it.
I was asking myself the same question after I read the article I decided I want to win, but (for me) what it ultimately came down to is, a vote for an article is saying "I think this is good and should be on the site", same as always. To not upvote things that I think should be here feels like lying, and is (again, for me) gaming the system.
It gets a little fuzzy at this point, but, as I see it, the contest is between the authors, to see whose article gets the highest rating as determined by the normal voting process of the site, not an election where a vote for one article necessitates a vote against another.
Not voting for one because I don't want it to beat another is just a little too close to the rules definition of malicious voting for me to be comfortable with.
In the interests of full disclosure, though, it took me a while to come to that conclusion, and I still really wish I had a "SuperVote" I could give to my favorite entry that would count double for the purposes of the contest, you know?. =o/
I didn't particularly like this. It felt too generic and well-tread
Ok, I gotta say that you caught my eye by the special containment procedures's "primary message" thing. No wonder, when the article revolves around it, however, that's a way to make a good hook in my book (rhyme unintentional).
I sort of miss how big is the robot, though.
A thing that irked me a little was his unexplained invincible powers ( OTT AI, limitless power source), but nothing big. One has to wonder why, if he is so intelligent, why didn't he see through the plan of keeping him in loop about the primary message.
What made me upvote the most is the size, simplicity and clarity of this SCP. +1
SCP-2000 possess an incredibly complex AI that is almost indistinguishable from a human intelligence, and a seemingly limitless power-source that has not yet required any obvious refueling.
This was where I downvoted. The tone was floppy, and just overall it didn't grab me. It's a robot who makes all these claims and that's it. Not very imagination-grabbing.
I like its radical 'factual' statements and failure to deliver. Reads kind of like a (Buzz Lightyear-esque) robot that was designed to think it's capable of a lot more than it is. But the tone and ending deliver an implication of it being serious, and since it is anomalously powered, it might be.
If we assume it is being truthful about its origins..why can't it do all of that? It stated rather explicitly that our portion of the universe is incredibly weird. If their physical laws are much less strict than ours, they can make this thing and have it do whatever they want. I feel like that it just -sounds- silly to us. But that makes a lot of sense. It was built to talk to humans…by things that aren't human.
Edit: I am now officially deeming it HK-47's good-twin.
This reminds me vaguely of Vernon Vinge's "A Fire Upon The Deep", which is a good thing. I do agree that it could use some minor editing for tone, but overall I like it. +1
Giving bearhugs to the unsuspecting since 1872.
I got the impression of "A Fire Upon The Deep", except that instead of getting smarter/dumber by zone, the universe gets Pulpier/Hard SFish by zone.
The shift from pulp to hard was exactly how I described the setting when I suggested someone read it.
(account deleted)I'm getting a little tired of cobbled-together things that work anyway for reasons. That whole angle feels entirely unnecessary to the larger narrative of the mysterious entity beyond whatever zone that we're living in reaching out for mysterious reasons.
My take: Its construction doesn't work and it comes from a realm where physics do not bind things. I think it makes perfect sense; only a thing from an alternate dimension that is completely broken could work like a functional humanoid sci-fi robot while only looking like a functional humanoid sci-fi robot. And the reason it looks and acts like one is because it's a messenger and the sci-fi robot is a stereotypical "negotiator", ever since Maria was in Metropolis.
The other dimension people made a messenger who is familiar but constructed it in an alien way.
I really liked this one. To be honest, you had me at the photo, but then the description and containment procedures reenforced what the photograph led me to expect. And then the story kicked in! Not meant to have physical laws. Wow. That's a big one. And so central to how the SCPs work, too.
The twist at the end was a minor one compared to some I've read lately, but that's not enough of a flaw to drive me away. +1 and godspeed to you!
Incidentally, if it were up to me, I would give this response:
- WARNING: The ideas expressed and implied in this Response were conceived by inhabitants of the Restricted Zone. Various physical laws may be described or alluded to. If you have any reason to suppose that hearing this response could make your problem worse, stop listening to this Response until such time as the listener can be upgraded to the extent necessary to protect them from exposure to the Restricted Zone. We will soon list a series of random statements of no importance, to give you time to instruct the Messenger to pause this Response. Messenger and listener are advised that the statement "List of Meaningless Random Statements Ends" is not part of this list:
List of Meaningless Random Statements Begins.
- roughly five minutes of sentences of no importance.
List of Meaningless Random Statements Ends.
This Response is tentative, and is dependent upon several factors which the Messenger refuses to divulge. Any help we could provide depends absolutely upon our understanding of all factors involved. Thus, it is essential that the Sender provide us with a more complete understanding of all factors informing the context of the Message as soon as possible. An incomplete, confusing, or dishonest context could cause our assistance to have the opposite of the intended effect. Our tentative response follows:
- Presupposing that the nature of the Restricted Zone is in some way dangerous to life outside the Restricted Zone
- AND presupposing that the boundaries of the Restricted Zone are in some way expanding or encroaching upon the rest of the Universe
- AND presupposing that life outside the Restricted Zone is not capable of utilizing the lack of physical laws outside the Restricted Zone to retreat from the restricted zone indefinitely
- AND presupposing that all life outside the Restricted Zone is not willing or not able to be upgraded in a manner similar to the Messenger, so as to allow such life to exist safely within the Restricted Zone,
- THEN life within the Restricted Zone is willing to assist life outside the Restricted Zone to the extent that it is able, provided such assistance does not threaten or adversely affect the existence or welfare of life native to the Restricted Zone. We have many ideas on how life inside and outside of the Restricted Zone could coexist peacefully. However, before we dare attempt to implement any solution, we require the following information. Please note that some questions may appear surprising; it is to be assumed that such questions are intended for verification purposes or clarification of minor points:*list of questions the SCP Foundation would like to see answered.
Please note that although this list of questions is exhaustive to the best of our ability, it is only the first round of questions. Your responses may result in an immediate solution to your problem, or they may simply cause us to ask subsequent rounds of questions. We thank you for your patience, and look forward to your prompt cooperation in this matter. This concludes the verbal portion of our Response.
If I'm reading the situation right, the problem is that humans define physical laws, start to believe that they're true, and then they become true. This only REALLY became a problem when we theorized that some really complex, high-level math problems could only be solved by assuming that we live in an expanding universe.
The solution, in that case, would be for Foundation personnel to devise a new theory which explains away the math that led to the previous theory and any observations verifying that theory. They can invent whole new branches of math or underlying assumptions if they need to. All we need to do is propose a model which states that the universe is definitely a constant size, even though it might appear to be expanding to observers inside of it.
Then Foundation arranges for some scientist to publish this theory, Foundation plants within the scientific community do everything they can to throw their weight behind it, (come on, we must have some, look at how many scientists and spies we employ,) and since the most convincing theories are predictive in nature, we make some testable but ultimately harmless predication and fake a bunch of experiments verifying it. Foundation plants publish experimental results indicating that the effects predicted by the new theory can be replicated in the lab. Maybe we even fake some test results in the labs of third parties using SCP objects or whatever. If my hunch is right (and I realize that's a big If,) then at some point we won't need to fake it anymore. That's how we'll know we've succeeded.
From outside the Restricted Zone, it will appear as if the constantly expanding bubble of our reality that's expanding no faster than the speed of light and overwriting theirs suddenly stops expanding and remains stable.
If an army of tinfoil robots start pouring into our universe, intent on finishing the job, we simply do the same thing again with a new theory stating that the universe is actually infinitely large, and only appears to be stable to observers performing the previous experiment. A bit harsh, perhaps, but at that point it was either them or us.
If the Messenger's claims can be substantiated, then it is of course within the charter of the Foundation to safely Contain the Restricted Zone as soon as possible.
I like… Nothing to add, except to second Captain Cain's suggestion.
:)
First of all, quite nearly everything about this post is incredible.
Secondly, though, I have a question: is there any basis for the assumption that we are the ones causing the laws to become true? The impression I got from the article is that our lawful and expanding universe is, y'know, expanding, and is beginning to become a problem to the surrounding non-lawful plane of existence. I didn't see anything that points to us being the cause of that process, and the mention of other civilizations like our own makes that assumption a complicated one; are the only laws that matter the ones that humans create? If so, why? And why would the messenger visit other civilizations before this one if this is the one that's causing the problem?
I'd love to hear the author's take on this, unless this aspect is meant to be ambiguous.
The fact that the Robot's backstory keeps changing, to me, implied that the previous life forms it encountered were outside the Resrticted Zone. With no physical laws to constrain them, everything about them can and does change at any moment, including their history.
/forum/t-731169/scp-2040#post-
page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
