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	Re: Another justification of Google's existence:
	Posted By: SiliconDream =PN=	Date: 12/13/01 1:43 p.m.
	In Response To: Re: Another justification of Google's existence: (Mark Levin) : My personal view of this was that Durandal's stability was due to Bernhard : Strauss. We hear from Tycho that there is "a way to delay the onset : of the second stage", and that Strauss was using this to control : Durandal. What if Strauss found a way to keep a Rampant AI sane during its : (finite period of) growth? To tie this into the thread, this could have : been via the application of Jjaro technology. Perhaps Strauss had to : restraint Durandal only during the dangerous phase of his Rampancy, and : when that was over he would be in possession of a far more powerful but : still sane AI. Durandal would have been nearing the end of his transition : when the Pfhor attacked, disrupting Strauss's control mechanism (possibly : via their EMP weapon) and releasing Durandal, who immediately reverted to : a fully Rampant and somewhat insane AI. And indeed, in the early parts of : M1 Durandal can be nearly as bad as Tycho in M2, witness his actions in : the introduction and The Rose. But the fact that most of his rampancy took : place under special circumstances allows him to eventually recover, : becoming the arrogant, sarcastic, yet rational and non-sadistic Durandal : we know for the rest of the series. Tycho was not afforded such : protection, and either went Rampant of his own accord or was driven to : Rampancy by the S'pht, trying to duplicate Durandal and not really knowing : what they were doing (human AIs seem to be the most advanced in the : universe, outside of the Jjaro), which resulted in an uncontrolled : rampancy and an insane AI. Taking Jones' post at face value, though, it seems that in the original Marathon storyline Durandal's successful completion was a "fluke;" whatever Strauss did to him, the S'pht did to Tycho as well (which is probably one reason Tycho knows after the fact what was done to Durandal). And the final Marathon screen indicates that Durandal himself wasn't intended to return to total sanity; he was still a "mad genius" 17 years later. As for M2 and MI...Tycho seems to me to be returning to stability himself, even he's not very nice when he's stable. (He does fall apart a bit at the end of MI, but knowledge of the impending end of the universe'll do that to you.) And he did start his Rampancy cycle long after Durandal did, so it'd make sense if Durandal reached some post-Rampancy stability first. Leela probably also stabilized post-Rampancy; if not, it's hard to see how she could live side-by-side with the Vylae in the long term as the M2 final screen suggests. Certainly this doesn't in any way disprove Strauss' contributing to Durandal's stability...but neither Tycho nor Durandal seemed to look back on Strauss as having any beneficial effect on Durandal. If "humans' only contribution to Durandal's existence was the chance discovery that made Rampancy possible", that makes it unlikely to my mind that the successful outcome of his Rampancy was also thanks to human intervention, via another "chance discovery" or otherwise. Also, we're told that Durandal concealed the progress of his Rampancy from Strauss. That said, it would certainly be an attractive explanation of "Jjarro were at Tau Ceti" if Strauss had recovered some Jjaro tech in the system, and used it when retriggering Durandal's rampancy. --SiliconDream

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Replies:

	Durandal and Thoth, revisited	SiliconDream =PN=	12/12/01 10:18 p.m.
	Another justification of Google's existence:	SiliconDream =PN=	12/12/01 10:27 p.m.
	Re: Another justification of Google's existence:	Hamish Sinclair	12/12/01 11:18 p.m.
	Re: Another justification of Google's existence:	Mark Levin	12/13/01 8:07 a.m.
	Re: Another justification of Google's existence:	SiliconDream =PN=	12/13/01 1:43 p.m.
	Chance discovery?	Darksbane	12/16/01 5:37 p.m.
	Re: Chance discovery?	SiliconDream =PN=	12/16/01 8:23 p.m.
	Re: Durandal and Thoth, revisited	Andrew Nagy	12/13/01 2:24 a.m.
	Re: Durandal and Thoth, revisited	SiliconDream =PN=	12/13/01 3:43 a.m.
	Re: Durandal and Thoth, revisited	[Tycho?]	12/13/01 10:45 a.m.
	Re: Durandal and Thoth, revisited	Ahruman	12/14/01 7:59 a.m.
	Re: Durandal and Thoth, revisited	SiliconDream =PN=	12/14/01 5:37 p.m.
	Re: Durandal and Thoth, revisited	Ahruman	12/15/01 9:41 a.m.
	Re: Durandal and Thoth, revisited	SiliconDream =PN=	12/15/01 3:30 p.m.

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