Freefall

There's probably also an element of "don't admit you're domesticated".

Those are all good points... still, none of those explanations speaks all that highly of the elder Mr. Thurmadd. But, of course, that might be the point.

Mr. Ishiguro is not entirely off the hook◊ for what Kormada did.

In fairness, it looks like Ishiguro is fairly accepting that some culpability is going to land on his head, and that he needs to take his share of the punishment.

Still, in fairness, given that he was duped for much of his role in the process, he'll probably get off with some amount of community service.

Duped by a person that he knew was grossly incompetent, yet put in a position where he was able to suborn the system. There's absolutely responsibility on Ishiguro's head, here.

Not actually related◊

And no one in the family is likely to come to his desire.

Mr.s Kornada (nee Ishiguro) sounds like she would have gotten along great with Dorothy Parker.

#2970◊. I'll be honest: first impressions of Ishiguro did not make me inclined to think he'd be this reasonable or this pragmatic.

Another example of trying to trigger an upward ethics spiral. (Like Flo discussed with Dvorak at the robot meeting, way back when...)

@4308 I had the same negative of Ishiguro at first, too. I guess, in fairness, he had just gotten back from an absurd amount of business travel with what was apparently very little downtime, and he had to deal with a crisis immediately. That is not conducive to good first impressions at all. Now, with the crisis under control, having had the chance to rest a bit, and obviously having a meal to recharge, he's in a better state.

The dark side of the robot revolution has an accordion.

I have a counterpoint to that notion.

To misappropriate a meme from the Highlander community, there should be only one.

The Highlander fandom has that stance because we have empirical evidence that they are right about that for their franchise.

That said, take a look at my handle, and you may be able to guess why I think empirical evidence suggests that philosophy does not apply in this instance.

I recall an exchange from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the carton TV series:

Donatello: Gee, every accordion in the city must be here in this pawn shop.

Raphael: As a music lover, I'm grateful.

Lederhosen and an accordion cover a multitude of sins

Also, Ridiculous Future Sequelisation.

Also note that the robots take human culture very seriously. Which may or may not work to their advantage.

One thing I've wondered from seeing jokes along these lines in the past - just how much of a grasp do robots have on when parts of human entertainment are pure fiction and what parts are realistic if not factual? Given how young they are, particularly given that even the eldest underwent neural pruning fairly recently, I could see that as being a particular blind spot that may need to be addressed.

2017-May-29 strip

CRISPR-CAS9 for reference.

I totally get this strip. And I feel more sympathetic to Mr. Ishiguro. And then I find myself wondering if he made his choice for the purpose of influencing public reaction...

I'm of two minds about it. I'd like to see him turn out to be something other than a stereotypical greedy businessman. But then I remember that he's the Chief Financial Officer of Ecosystems Unlimited. Pessimism and cynicism rear their ugly heads...

Part of me feels that he's a non-sociopathic human being who considers the feelings of others and the greater good for his actions. But he also wholeheartedly believes that that corporation is a person too, one with millions (or billions) of lives at stake, and so he consider that in his decisions.

From what we've seen previously, he's still quite greedy, but also substantially more competent and pragmatic than Kornada is (not that that's a particularly high bar ...), and understands things like "don't destroy the entire economy in order to enrich yourself, that'll get you lynched. Providing useful goods and services for a large, happy customer base is much more profitable". Almost the ideal of capitalism, really - personal greed harnessed to public benefit by suitable incentives.

And as previously demonstrated, he also displays a very significant amount of loyalty to those he considers family, which for him includes Clippy.

Edit: example of business competence: Ishiguro is aware of the risk of employee burnout from overwork, and wishes to prevent it (if only because that'll keep the business running more smoothly than having Raibert burn out at an unpredictable time in the future, forcing a frantic search for a replacement).

Example of greed: Attempted to monetize the juror's video stream by inserting advertisements (and got shot down by the mayor), and is pleased by the prospect of free robots as future customers.

Further: Ooh, this sequence is nicely illustrative, and Raibert's commentary is hilarious.

edited 28th May '17 10:32:17 PM by Shinziril

Basically I would sum him up as a pragmatically villainous, increasingly Affably Evil Anti-Villain who, for now, comes across as non-villainous because his interests coincide with the good guys. And Clippy is his Morality Pet.

Hey, at least this is way better than when Winston pondered adopting a few hundred thousand young robots.

Establishing that robots, through orders, could give orders to humans...