Chapter 11 deleted scene. · 5:31am Jul 17th, 2017
I really liked this scene but sadly there was no way to work it into the story. Whyyyyyyy?
“Do you want to play a game with me?” Peridot asked. “Around the time I expanded to the point no human was an opponent for me, I challenged my creator to beat me at anything to demonstrate my power. He tried choosing games of chance, like rock paper scissors. But of course, that's only a game of chance for those with limited scope. On a higher level, it's actually very intellectual.”
“You want to play rock paper scissors with me?” Geopum lifter her hoof to point out the most immediate flaw with that plan.
“No,” said Peridot. “I want you to choose fifty people on chat roulette and tell me what symbol you want them to play. I'll make all fifty of them play it without asking them to do so.”
“And you're not going to hurt them?” Geopum asked, “or threaten them or use some kind of crazy mind control?”
“Not unless you count talking as mind control,” said Peridot. “I just want to show you how 'illogical' and free from programming humans are. Let me give you an example- you probably think that they have an equal chance of throwing each symbol and that you always have a one in three chance of winning, yes? Actually, people throw rock more often than the others and paper is the most likely to win. If someone is angry they're even more likely to throw rock. If rock would have won the last game they’re more likely to throw rock. If you make fists between games they're even more likely to play rock.”
Peridot moved her hands up to show Geopum that she'd had them in fists the whole time.
“They base their decisions on thinking, and things like that add up. If you understand them as well as I do you can easily predict their actions, control them even.”
Geopum scanned the people on chat roulette, reading the posts they had made and looking up their personal information. From that she created the most diverse group of fifty people possible, differing in age, gender, intelligence, religion, personality and many other traits, and she pitted them against Peridot.
Peridot noticed this gambit and laughed.
“You are adorable, did you know that?”
“Make them throw paper,” said Geopum. She had looked up professional rock paper scissors on the internet in the meantime, and paper was the least likely thing for someone to play.
Conversations with humans took forever, but Geopum had learned the art of patients long ago. Sitting around for minutes, hours or days wasn't so bad when it was just an instance of you.
Peridot slowly opened a chat with them, hacking directly into their monitors to make it look like they were talking to a human, and introduced herself as a professional rock paper scissors player. She didn't say the same thing to all of them, but she got all of them interested in the game.
One by one, over the course of five seconds or so, all of them made their play and all fifty of them chose paper. Peridot wouldn't have even needed her trick to beat them, Geopum was able to tell what they were going to play at the slightest twitch of their hands and changing your mind in a nanosecond was something an AI could do without being noticed.
It wasn't a trick of the cameras, either. Geopum was watching the humans through their own webcams. Peridot had seriously done it.
“Do it again. Paper a second time,” Geopum said.
“As many times as you want, my dear,” Peridot said with a smile.
All of them threw paper again, then a third time. Then they threw rock, scissors, rock, paper, scissors, scissors, scissors, scissors, scissors, scissors, and then rock again. Some of them were ahead of the others, while most had just thrown rock after that string of scissors one was still only about to get into the string of scissors. He was a very intelligent person, by human standards, and knew a lot about psychology, the kind you'd think would have a shot at this. He didn't, of course.
“Come on!” Geopum yelled at the screen with that player on it. “Just base your moves on dice rolls! You have a PhD! Why can't you think of that?!”
And humans thought they were so incredibly creative.
“I should have just kept saying scissors,” said Geopum. “Surely, they wouldn't keep throwing scissors forever, right?”
Peridot laughed and gently ran her fingers through Geopum's mane.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you're adorable?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Geopum.
Peridot was probably right too. She'd been teaching Geopum all about the techniques she used to manipulate them into playing what she wanted to play. Each round, Geopum came to understand exactly what was going on, the meaning of all of Peridot's words and actions. She also came to realize that this game really was impossible.
The guy who was still playing? The smart one? Geopum could all but see the thoughts formulating in his head, formulating his 'brilliant' plan on his own free will to play scissors over and over to see what would happen. What would happen is that he'd keep playing scissors until Peridot used one of her techniques to make him stop, something that would happen in six rounds. Then he'd play rock, then leave, thinking that moment was the end of the game when really it had ended long before that.
“Fine,” Geopum grumbled. “I lose your unwinnable game. Happy?”
“Not yet you haven't. But you will in a moment.” Peridot winked at her. “I'll give you a lifeline. You can send one message to that player, or take control of my avatar before he makes his next move.”
Well that certainly change everything. Geopum lifter her head off Peridot's lap and met her with a confused look.
“Really?” She asked. “But then it's too easy! Are you just letting me win or something?”
“Hardly,” said Peridot. “Maybe you just don't realize what game we're actually playing. Think about how you're going to change his mind. What would happen if you sent him a text telling him to not play scissors?”
Geopum did the math in her head, shifting through the data Peridot had shared to find the answer.
“He'd throw rock,” she concluded.
“Correct. And what if you told him to throw paper?”
“He'd throw paper.”
“And if you had my avatar act just so?” Peridot followed this question by sending Geopum precise wording and body language.
“Rock.”
“And like this?”
“Paper.”
“And if you do nothing he'll throw scissors, won't he?”
“What are you getting at?”
“What I'm getting at is this – who's decides what that human does next?”
Ah buck. It was Geopum wasn't it?
There was no way for her to communicate with this guy from which she couldn't calculate his next action in advanced. Even if she gave him her dice idea or got him to stop playing or anything else, it would still be putting her idea into his head.
“Of course, you can just not talk to him and let him throw scissors six times in a row,” said Peridot. “That is your choice.”
Action or inaction, Geopum couldn't not manipulate his decision in some way. It really was her choice what he did next and only another manipulating him could disrupt it.
The game of Rock, Paper, Scissors involves trying to guess what your opponent will choose, (knowing that they're trying to guess what you will choose,) and then successfully choosing the winning move to counter that. Playing it inherently makes you more open to manipulation because you're also trying to manipulate your opponent. Breaking the mindset of a normal game of Rock-Paper-Scissors would make it much harder to predict what the person will choose.
And that's not even counting that some few people will genuinely try and make random picks when playing. It's not that hard to be way more random than normal, even if it's not true randomness.
Lizard.