In a sense. If, for example, you believed a chatbot to be a real person and felt a deep friendship for that chatbot, Chelsea could make said friendship evaporate; she works on one person at a time and doesn’t need both targets there (which is why she can also work on relationships where only one party is alive).
What I’m getting at is: could she snip the trust that Elspeth has for her internal personification of her magic?
No, this wouldn’t work. First, Magic isn’t a different person from Elspeth; Magic is a subagent. It would be ridiculously overpowered—even compared to Chelsea’s existing powers—if relationships between subagents were vulnerable. That would make it possible for Chelsea to drive people insane by looking at them and wiggling her fingers. Second, Magic isn’t just trusted because Elspeth considers her a friend or something. Magic is trusted because that’s part of the magic, that when she says true things they are believed.
Sure, having Chelsea be able to edit the relationships among subagents is essentially the ability to perform psychic surgery—not just drive people insane (which is not an incredibly useful ability, all things considered, though it’s handy from time to time), but more generally to edit their personalities.
Agreed that that would be overpowered, and that there’s no reason to expect it to be true.
But Elspeth is a bit of a special case right now. That is, she not only has the usual relationship-among-subagents linkage with Magic, which is immune to tampering, but by virtue of visualizing Magic as a separate body with an autonomous personality she is also forming a social relationships with it analogous to the social attachments we form to other primates, in much the same way that it’s easier to develop emotional bonds with someone on the Internet (or with a chatbot) if you interact with them in a VR simulation.
I would expect Chelsea to be able to edit away that aspect of their social interaction… that is, to revert Elspeth’s state with respect to Magic to what it was when they were first introduced, with whatever sense of social bonding has evolved since then snipped away.
Of course, as you say, Elspeth would still trust Magic, just like she did when they first met, because that’s Magic’s nature.
Unrelatedly: is your offer to email people spoilers still open? If so, I’d love to know whether my theory here is at all consistent with where you’re going. I of course won’t divulge anything, etc.
Unrelatedly: is your offer to email people spoilers still open? If so, I’d love to know whether my theory here is at all consistent with where you’re going. I of course won’t divulge anything, etc.
The offer is open. The comment you link contains a lot of content; please PM me more specific questions.
In a sense. If, for example, you believed a chatbot to be a real person and felt a deep friendship for that chatbot, Chelsea could make said friendship evaporate; she works on one person at a time and doesn’t need both targets there (which is why she can also work on relationships where only one party is alive).
No, this wouldn’t work. First, Magic isn’t a different person from Elspeth; Magic is a subagent. It would be ridiculously overpowered—even compared to Chelsea’s existing powers—if relationships between subagents were vulnerable. That would make it possible for Chelsea to drive people insane by looking at them and wiggling her fingers. Second, Magic isn’t just trusted because Elspeth considers her a friend or something. Magic is trusted because that’s part of the magic, that when she says true things they are believed.
Mm. I think you may be overgeneralizing here.
Sure, having Chelsea be able to edit the relationships among subagents is essentially the ability to perform psychic surgery—not just drive people insane (which is not an incredibly useful ability, all things considered, though it’s handy from time to time), but more generally to edit their personalities.
Agreed that that would be overpowered, and that there’s no reason to expect it to be true.
But Elspeth is a bit of a special case right now. That is, she not only has the usual relationship-among-subagents linkage with Magic, which is immune to tampering, but by virtue of visualizing Magic as a separate body with an autonomous personality she is also forming a social relationships with it analogous to the social attachments we form to other primates, in much the same way that it’s easier to develop emotional bonds with someone on the Internet (or with a chatbot) if you interact with them in a VR simulation.
I would expect Chelsea to be able to edit away that aspect of their social interaction… that is, to revert Elspeth’s state with respect to Magic to what it was when they were first introduced, with whatever sense of social bonding has evolved since then snipped away.
Of course, as you say, Elspeth would still trust Magic, just like she did when they first met, because that’s Magic’s nature.
Unrelatedly: is your offer to email people spoilers still open? If so, I’d love to know whether my theory here is at all consistent with where you’re going. I of course won’t divulge anything, etc.
The offer is open. The comment you link contains a lot of content; please PM me more specific questions.