Annotated Chapter 2 Page 13
Master’s Edition Kickstarter tier spotlight:
Hardcover BICP Omnibus: No frills, just the Master’s Edition boxset in hardcover. Heavier! Sturdier! Same exclusive mini-print and basic digital rewards as the softcover version.
The discounted Early Bird Hardcover tier moved more slowly than the softcovers…but it also sold out before I got it into a Tier Spotlight. (Join the BICP mailing list to get advance notice for this kind of thing.)
“Reuseable canvas grocery bags” representation.
There was some Reddit post, can’t for the life of me find it now, about a guy who wanted to be validated that “my girlfriend [wife?? really hope she wasn’t his wife] should give me clearer directions if she wants me to do grocery shopping, right?” And it turned out the “unclear” parts were things like “she said she needed 12 oz chocolate chips for this cookie recipe, but the store only sold them in 10 oz bags, o woe is me how can I solve this unsolvable dilemma?”
Not a reference, this page was written years before that post was made, just a fun coincidence. And Bianca isn’t expecting Patrick to pull a “maybe if I pretend to need hand-feeding elaborate instructions because I have have no common sense, my gf will decide it’s less of a headache to do everything herself than to expect any contribution from me.”
She’s just worried he’ll get stuck in “overly literal AI and/or magically-bound servant can only follow exact directions, not make its own judgment calls” rules.
Bianca: You know what everything in the recipe is?
Patrick: Yes, Master.
Bianca: And you know that if it says “sixteen ounces” and the thing comes in 14-ounce containers, you have to buy two? You won’t take two ounces from another–
Patrick: No, Master.
Bianca: I don’t want you to feel forced to carry out the letter of an order when that’s not what I meant.
Patrick: I know how shopping works, Master.
Bianca: Oh, good. Don’t rush. But get back in time for dinner. If you can! No pressure!
. . . Good luck . . .
(CHOKE)
Fooling around on JournalPress
Bianca: (sniff sniff)
Sparrow: Bee? You better be in there, because the door was unlocked. . . . Bee?
Well … she’s technically right. Doesn’t seem the beings have their own judgments. Luckily, their programming is good enough to handle basic stuff like this.
As someone on the autism spectrum, I can relate to that poor guy. To be clear, I don’t have that exact problem. I *can* work that one out on my own. But it’s not nearly as easy for me as it seems to be for most people.
Just to be clear, all of the individual steps in the resolution of that issue are trivial, except for the bit where I string them together in the face of having been told to do a thing, because it isn’t quite the thing I was told, and I keep jumping back to that part as I work it out.
One of the things that helps me resolve it on my own is that it’s my money I’m spending. Even back when I was still living with my parents, I at least *had* money I could use to rectify stuff if it turned out I wasn’t supposed to buy extra. If I didn’t have that… I’d like to think I wouldn’t be miserable enough to post something like the thing you read, but I don’t really know.