Y'all are the best. Really, you are. Thanks so much for your patience.

Even less the usual: I found an artist to do covers, thanks to you! I won't blab their name here without checking with them first, but they are AWESOME to work with and the covers they are producing are DOPE and very much make me nostalgic for the '90's.

Somewhat less the usual: I have nothing to do on Friday except work on Tobias, so I'm 33% confident Tobias will be posted by Sunday night and 85% confident it will be posted by Wednesday a week from now.

All right. The usual: sorry for sucking and having long hiatuses. Also the usual: comments and reviews and feedback REALLY makes a difference in my motivation, so please write some, either here or over at r/rational.

SHOUTOUT TO COUTEAUBLEU who is something like 99% responsible for this chapter existing and also something like 75% responsible for its content.

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I’m a soldier for the Yeerk invasion and I’m dying. Ask me an…

Author: ZombieAsInAlanis

Submitted: 2 days ago

Last answer: Just now

Alright, let’s do this. 10PM UTC+1 tonight.

First thing first, I’ve arranged for confirmation of my identity with u/limewarden (thanks, Animorphs, for the overall method). As you can see in this video , I own a laser gun, which I used to burn through various households objects in my flat, responded to some of limewarden’s prompts, showed realtime events on TV, etc.

As to why I’m doing this…shit. I’m still not sure I’m going to actually go through with it. But if they had the resources to hunt me down, they’d have the resources to save me, so idk. I have less than a week to live, so this is basically me checking off my personal bucket list.

Let’s talk a bit about me. My name is Starrat 731. I’m a part of the invasion force that was sent to take over the Earth a few months ago. My first exposure to a human host was in training on the mothership, and then they stationed me in Paris as a sleeper agent. I was rotating in and out of a host along with about ten other Yeerks for a while until they figured out the oatmeal thing (yeah, it’s legit) and now Alexandre Laurent is all mine (don’t feel sorry for him, he’s an asshole).

My job description was basically “gather information, don’t get noticed, don’t die.” Kind of a cushy job, really, until the Animorphs made their broadcast (serious question aside, is no one else disturbed by the fact that they survived a fucking meteor strike?). Now Paris and the banlieues are being quarantined, and the military is combing through the city, looking for, well, me.

I’m pretty sure I’ll die before they find me. Ten million is a lot of people to comb through, and it’s not like they have long-range Yeerk detectors. And I’m going to run out of oatmeal pretty soon.

In the meantime, though, I’m willing to answer questions. Nothing too strategically relevant, of course, and don’t try to figure out where I am. Oh, and I guess you can ask about Alexandre, too, if you want to know his perspective or whatever.

EDIT: fixed spelling mistakes. I’m good with English, but I get my sloppy typing habits from my host.

EDIT: alright, I’m receiving lots of threats and insults and stuff, so I’d like to make something clear: you’re wasting your time. You don’t know where I am, you can’t reach me, and you can’t hurt my feelings. The way this works is, I only answer questions I’m interested in. I’m not going to apologize or beg forgiveness from every single angry internet guy who sends me a rant. Yeah, we killed like a million of you, and we were trying to enslave you, and yeah, I get it, that’s awful and you’re angry. Move on and ask something we DON’T all already know.

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This thread is closed. You can’t ask new questions. You

can still comment on existing questions.

Sorted by: secret sauce ▼

Q4 – Friends in the pool?

SoccerJack asked:

Did you have friends in the Yeerk pool? Like were there a few other Yeerks you especially liked to talk to?

Do you have friends now? Either other Yeerks, or just regular people you like to talk to or hang out with?

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (2 days ago):

In the pool: no comment.

Now: I can’t answer in detail (identifying info) but yes to both. I avoid hanging out with other Controllers too much, for obvious security reasons (though we chat online a lot). But there are people both near where Alexandre lives and near where he works that I enjoy being around.

Also, I do a lot of sightseeing.

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Q17 – Humans vs Other speceis?

throwaway102934 asked:

Have you ever been in other species? Or in other people besides Alexandre?

If so: what's it like? Do they have different qualia? Like, if you've been in a species that has sonar, could you describe what that's like to a human? Or do colors seem different to different people? Anything like that?

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (2 days ago):

No and no. Remember, like 99.999% of the time, there’s not enough hosts to go around (hence my presence in your beautiful city).

Re: color: sort of. Imagine that colors are letters. You’re thinking something like, “When Ana sees a G, does Bernard see a Y?” And the answer there is no, just like when I take my glasses off I don’t suddenly think your hand has seven fingers on it. It still has five fingers, they’re just blurry. Ana and Bernard both see the same “letters,” except they see them in different “handwriting” (not counting color-blind people, blah blah).

It’s a lot like when you go to Carrefour and you see a whole bunch of TVs next to each other, and some of them are slightly off from the rest. That’s it. You’re running the same basic software on the same basic hardware. Same sensations for everyone.

Re: different qualia: I honestly couldn’t describe it in a way that would make sense to you. Most species have most of a core set of senses and emotions (sight, hearing, fear, anger, etc), but they all feel them on wildly different scales, and they all have different secondary senses. Humans have a really good sense of depth, and extremely sharp awareness of their environment, whereas other species have ridiculously fine senses of smell and taste, or amazing balance and proprioception, or the ability to map heat and air currents around them in three dimensions, and perceive how they’re going to evolve.

Honestly, humans beat most hosts, but I wouldn’t mind flight or telepathy.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, since people ask: the stuff about other species is second-hand. Turns out Yeerks talk to one another! Funny, right?

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Q2 – Politics?

Cannibal_Capybara asked:

Starrat, what is your take on the recent French election? Is it meaningfully different from Alexandre’s?

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (2 days ago):

I thought the debates were fascinating. You can learn a lot about a culture by knowing who its politicians are, what ideologies they represent in truth, what messages they put forward instead of that, and in general what they think counts as a strong argument.

I didn’t care much for the results, myself. I’m the cultural equivalent of a guy who shows up at a football match between two teams he doesn’t know. I like to watch, but I don’t really care about the outcome.

Alexandre likes to feel smug about being above politics. He didn’t pay attention to the debates, especially after he realized we weren’t going to vote.

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Q1 – Langue et transfert

Beaker305 asked:

Monsieur "Starrat", votre anglais est très bon, mais j'ai une petite question logistique: vous semblez parler l'anglais comme langue maternelle, mais vous prétendez utiliser uniquement les connaissances d'Alexander Laurent. On peut supposer que votre français est encore mieux. En mettant de côté la nature exclusivement répréhensible de votre espèce, je suis curieux de savoir comment accéder aux souvenirs et aux expériences d'Alexander si rapidement. De plus, je suis curieux de savoir si vous conservez les souvenirs et les expériences lorsque vous changez d'hôte. Je ne m'intéresse pas à moi même, mais serait-il possible pour vous de donner aux compétences d'anglais d'Alexander directement à une autre personne?

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (2 days ago):

Regarding skill transfer: that sounds like tactically valuable information to me, so no comment.

Alexandre’s mother tongue is French, and he reads and writes English a lot better than he speaks it (which is to say, not so well that his neighbors look down on him for it).

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Q4.LF – wait, as equals?

Odysseum asked:

>But there are people both near where Alexandre lives and near where he works that I enjoy being around.



Waiwaiwait—like, you enjoy interacting with them as equals? Or you get some sort of raw sensory pleasure because e.g. they’re cute or they smell good?

Regardless, that’s really creepy. I guess I was still thinking of the invasion as something far away, something the Americans have to deal with. But if you’ve got sleeper cells in France, you probably have them in Germany, Japan, Russia, Brazil … *shudders*

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (2 days ago):

Re: the invasion: well, there’s like a handful of sleeper agents, and 7+ billion humans. You’re probably safe (for now).

Re: friends: more the former, although the latter’s definitely in there a little bit. “Equals” isn’t exactly the right term, since I’m obviously lying to them about extremely important things, but… I don’t know, I respect them as interesting people?

EDIT: Look, I can see the thread below confused and upset a lot of people, so I’m going to start over and try to sum it up in simple terms. tl;dr nihilist moral relativism, maybe?

You ever had a friend who you knew for years and years until you found out they did something super fucked up, once? And then you suddenly called into question everything you knew about them and their character?

Why?

Like, all the data you already had was still one hundred percent relevant to how they would be and act around you. It’s not like they’re suddenly going to start raping babies in front of you or shouting “nigger” at the dinner table or whatever. If they’re ashamed of it, they already were ashamed of it, they dealt with it a long time ago, and they’re not going back. If they’re not ashamed of it, they already were not ashamed of it, they’ve clearly decided not to act that way around you, and there’s no reason for any of that to change unless you force the issue.

It’s don’t-ask-don’t-tell. It’s live-and-let-fucking-live. It’s not like there’s not some coherent thing that’s a person, to the point where what they did ten years ago matters at all. Or, like, for some people, maybe, what they did ten years ago matters, but that’s because they make a deliberate choice that it will matter, and they keep making that choice over and over again, the same way.

But that’s all it is. A tendency to make the same choices the same way. And some people, the way they make choices, I like it. I like the stuff they do that’s predictable, and I keep coming back for more of the same, or I like the way they surprise me and prove that my stereotype of them isn’t accurate yet.

And that’s all there is to it. I like what I like, and I don’t like what I don’t like, and I pursue the former and avoid the latter. And I don’t try to talk myself into not liking what I like, or liking what I don’t.

Some of you are all twisted up about me being a hypocrite for enslaving Alexandre but having respect for Hélène and Jean-Luc. But the problem isn’t that I’m hypocritical so much as you think I’m supposed to be consistent according to human principles.

It’s like you haven’t figured out that I’m a parasite. Like you don’t really get it, like you think I should be a parasite with social primate morality or something. My choices are 1) live in the cold and the dark forever or 2) ride along inside somebody’s brain. (And the choice of brain is relevant. When I’m in a stupid brain, I’m stupid. When I’m in a smart brain, I’m smart.)

So no, I’m not going to go live in a cow brain or something like that, any more than you’re going to, I don’t know, give up all of your nutrition and clean water to starving people in Africa until you’re so emaciated and malnourished that your IQ drops to 60. And the same is true for all of the other “solutions” that whomstdve was proposing. Sure, I could give Alexandre control part of the time. But I don’t see you all carrying quadriplegics around on your back, letting them use you to pick up stuff or whatever.

The problem is, you’re looking for some kind of totally consistent set of rules for determining right and wrong, as if it’s a law of physics. You’re overlooking the fact that you have a suuuuuper biased and limited perspective. It makes sense for monkeys, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense for everyone. Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s gonna die. Sure, in a perfect universe, I could have a body that was all my own (without losing half my processing power), just like in a perfect universe, you’d all eat synthetic burgers and nobody would ever step on a bug or a flower.

But in the meantime, the only difference is, you’re feeling guilty about those burgers, and I’m just…not. And on a certain level, that makes sense to me. I don’t have anything to prove, I’m not trying to cast down your beliefs to prop up mine. Your values are perfectly valid and consistent. They’re just not mine.

I will say this much: it’s not looking so good for me, but Yeerks on the whole are doing a hell of a lot better than you, and we’re doing it without killing each other all the time.

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Q28 – Humans are humans too

ControlGroup9 asked:

Ok, /a, is this legit? Could anyone have faked that video? Does anyone know limewarden in person, and is that person known and trustworthy to someone else?

EDIT: I’m told limewarden is a well-known moderator. Alright then. (sorry, I created an account for this, I don’t know the community)

Even assuming "Starrat" is an actual alien, this could still be another one of Esplin's publicity stunts, so keep your guard up, as we will likely have no immediate way of verifying whether or not this guy is lying.

Supposing that this is the genuine act of one yeerk, I am perhaps more disturbed than I was before. Starrat talks about his (her, its?) life not like a parasitic drone but like an individual with hopes and dreams. Seriously, alien slugs have "bucket lists?" But if you, Starrat, are truly capable of feeling pleasure and pain, excitement and fear, joy and wonder ... can you yeerks not recognize the horror in your denial of the same to the humans whose bodies you so mercilessly steal for yourselves?

Humans do have dreams and bucket lists too, Starrat. I don't know any formerly infested people myself, but I've heard the stories from the Washington group, stories of the horror, the horror at being trapped in your own mind, unable to move of your own volition, unable to scratch the itch of your own desires, deprived utterly of the freedom even to keep your imagination to yourself. Can you imagine what it's like to be controlled in that way? How can you not see the moral atrocity of your invasion?

Wait, of course you see it. You can read the pain directly from the mind of your host, yet somehow you continue occupying his body. The moral thing for you to do is crawl out of his head and die right now.

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (1 day ago):

Re: the bucket list thing: not exactly as you imagine it. My…let’s call it my purpose, is to learn and amass new experiences. That’s as close as I can get to describing my deepest drive. This seemed like the last opportunity I’d have to do so, so I figured I’d go for it, and make it count. I didn’t mean a literal list of “things I dreamed I’d do before I died,” though I am going to try skydiving if I get the chance.

Re: pleasure and pain: I think you’re confused. Feeling someone else’s pain and feeling empathy for that pain aren’t the same thing.

For starters, I think you’re way overestimating the horror part of the enslavement experience. It’s not like our hosts are in constant physical pain. We can control some of our hosts’ feelings, both with direct brain “contact” and with a healthy diet, sports, etc. The horror you heard about was probably accurately reported, true, but it was at its fullest when the humans were in cages or just before and just after infestation. While we’re actually in the brain, it’s more of a muted, quiet, existential horror, and we can both ignore it most of the time. Right now, Alexandre knows I’m about to die, so most of what he’s experiencing is awkwardness with some hope and a bit of boredom.

Second, I’m guessing you’re one of those people who thinks of morality as an absolute thing. Like, if you feel pain, you realize that pain is bad and no-one should have to feel it. That’s not really how it works (source: member of a spacefaring race that’s interacted with the majority of intelligent species on this side of the galaxy).

The only reason you believe that ethics are a thing that exists is because your species evolved to have strong social mechanisms, and empathy was a shortcut for reducing computational overhead. So when you see someone suffer, you feel bad, especially if you feel like you’re similar to them. (Most advance species have high empathy, btw, that’s not uniquely a human thing.)

The thing is, most species feel empathy in a different way. The obvious metaphor is “humans kill cows,” but that doesn’t work all that well as a metaphor because the social dynamics are pretty different (though I guess the invasion force at Ventura was kind of leaning toward being “vegans,” sort of, not really).

Anyway, the way we see humans is closer to the way you see your computers or your cars, or maybe your pets. Except not really, because you have a ton of movies about computers and animals that start demanding and deserving rights and dignity and stuff. My point is, you’re not “people,” you’re resources. I know all about human psychology research on dehumanization, I understand a little bit about iterated prisoners’ dilemmas. And given the current situation (thanks again, Animorphs), maybe we’d have been better off if we pretended to respect your agency and tried approaching you as if you were our equals, and tried to create some sort of voluntary infestation program. There are plenty of benefits, and I can guarantee there are millions of humans who would be thrilled to have what Alexandre is shitting on.

But now we’re getting into tactical considerations, not ethical ones. Long story short, I have nothing to gain and everything to lose by letting my host go right now. So…sorry not sorry?

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Q115 – Will you kill Alexandre?

i_saw_mal_kissing_beatrix_kiddo asked:

Are you going to kill Alexandre?

And, um, I realize you’re an alien and you don’t care about us the same way we care about each other and you have no reason to listen to me, but, please please please don’t kill him? Maybe an individual life doesn’t matter to you, but they really really matter to us. We don’t know that guy, but we don’t want him to die. If you can find any reason, any little voice within yourself that tells you to let him live, any way that you can get what you want without murdering him on your way out…please listen to it?

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (1 day ago):

I haven’t decided. Standard procedure is yes, and also I don’t like him very much. But there are reasons not to, sure.

EDIT: Copying this up from subthread.

It’s mostly existential dread.

You know that clawing fear that humans have around being forgotten? The desperate sense that nothing matters unless there’s some sort of legacy that can be carried on? The frantic desire to live on through your kids, or make some kind of impact on history?

Well, Yeerks have that, too. Even stronger than humans, I’d say…we might not have the same set of social dynamics that you guys evolved, but in a certain sense we’re 10x more prosocial than you are.

Normally, my death...well, okay, occasionally there are accidents and predators and natural disasters and things, but those are pretty rare. To the extent that Yeerks die of old age, we almost always die surrounded by friends and family, with a sort of…passing of the torch, or speaking for the dead, or something like that. There’s no homeless Yeerks dying in back alleys from an OD. We always have a chance to say our last words. We always have a chance to pass on what we thought was most important. Our most treasured memories, our most valuable lessons, the things that made us most uniquely ourselves. There are social structures in place to preserve them in a meaningful way.

So the situation I’m in right now, it’s sort of analogous to you, dying, off in a cave somewhere, such that your friends and family will never know what happened, and *also* everything you ever accomplished with your life will be quietly undone and erased from history. It’s not really like that, but that’s the emotional flavor to it.

That’s part of why I’m doing this AMA, actually. It’s like…leaving a diary behind? Or writing a goodbye letter to your family. Not as good as actually seeing them, but better than nothing. Better than oblivion.

And if Alexandre Laurent lives, then, well, even as much as he hates me, he’s not going to forget me. Some bit of me gets to survive a little longer, inside his head. Maybe just a few years or decades, if he just goes off and dies like you humans tend to. Or maybe forever, if he gets recaptured and reinfested and some bit of me gets transferred back to the rest of my people through his memories. You’re going to be mad at me for hoping that happens, but…whatever.

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Q67 – What do you think of Esplin?

StrongerThànYou asked:

I’ll be a little more blunt and direct than I normally would in a situation like this, since you’re being so candid (thanks for that).

Esplin/Visser made some claims about the astropolitical situation, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to corroborate or elaborate. I’m particularly interested in your take on what the hell we’re caught in the middle of, even if it’s just really broad strokes like “well, first they shot Franz Ferdinand and then everybody took sides.” Right now, literally all we have is Andalites = bad news, Yeerks = mostly bad news but feeling kind of sorry about it.

If that cuts too close to “strategically relevant,” then I’d just like to hear more about the memory preservation culture you mentioned to MattTheRat . Are there artifacts involved? Are there particular lessons or experiences that are sort of mythic or monolithic in your culture, like Lafayette or Napoleon or the parables of Jesus? Is this stuff related at all to how Yeerks are educated?

And obviously, what’s your opinion of the Visser? What do you think of his actions in Ventura? On a similar note, what is your opinion of the “Animorphs” and their actions thus far?

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (1 day ago):

Andalites are…complicated. They’re bad for Yeerks because they’re trying to kill us all, or at least lock us up on one planet that’s perpetually stuck in the stone age. They’re bad for Earth because they’re increasingly ready to use overwhelming force to achieve that goal.

Colonies have myths and stories that date back milleniae. So when one is destroyed in one moment…it hurts. I have Yeerk “words” for it. I have English words for it too: genocide, atrocity, crime against humanity, you get the idea. So yeah, I’m pissed that the Visser killed an entire colony to cover up his mistakes. It also made things obviously worse re: interspecies relations, so it’s not remotely close to “worth” it.

And you know, I really shouldn’t be saying this. But on another level, I don’t want to not say it. The Visser did what he did. I don’t want to let it slide. I don’t want it to be forgotten because it’s unconvenient or awkward.

Re: Animorphs: I guess I’m mainly puzzled. They’re teenagers. How the hell did they blow up our main pool, and how did they survive a goddamn meteor strike? This picture does not make sense; something isn’t adding up; there has to be more to this story. Is this Harry Potter, and this Marco kid is the Chosen One or something?

Anyway. Scale matters, Ventura was worse than the broadcast. But they murdered one of my people on live TV just to make a point. How do you feel about the human groups that do that sort of thing?

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Q295 – Alexandre connard

MrsRomgoc asked:

Why do you consider Alexandre an asshole? (Projection?)

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (13 hours ago):

I’ll be honest—bitching about the infestation situation doesn’t get you very many points. Like, at some point you gotta have some stoicism about it, and figure out how to live with it. You can’t just mope around forever.

On a more human level: he’s not particularly nice to his coworkers, he acts like every romantic rejection is the woman’s fault, he doesn’t keep his promises, and he litters. Like, literally litters, in the way that you usually only see assholes do in movies specifically so that you’ll know that they’re assholes.

I kept almost everything else the same when I moved in, but that had to stop.

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Q11 – Favorite food?

FourchetteRouge asked:

Nothing strategically relevant, eh? What’s your favorite Earth food? (besides braaaains!)

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (2 days ago):

Brains aren’t my food, they’re more like my favorite bean bag chairs!

Ralph’s brand maple oatmeal. It has this subtle flavor of not dying a slowl and painful death. I just love it for some reason.

(Actually, it tastes like cardboard and sugar; there are good American cereals; oatmeal ain’t one of them.)

Real answer is probably just croissants. There’s something beautiful about a thing that’s crafted with so much love and effort, just for us to consume.

(Subtle metaphor! But seriously viennoiseries are the best.)

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Q192 – Quantum physics and qualia

i_shall_throwaway asked:

how the fuck do you unify quantum physics with general relativity to produce a quantum theory of gravity that doesn’t have infinities everywhere

how the fuck do you make wormholes and phasers and communicate faster-than-light

as long as im asking an alien to solve longstanding dilemmas in science, it occurs to me that if anyone knows the answers to the hard problem of consciousness its the aliens with universal brain adapters. any insight you shed would be appreciated.

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (23 hours ago):

You’re not going to be happy.

No idea. No idea. It’s complicated.

The “hard problem” doesn’t really seem to matter all that much to me? It’s basically navel-gazing, unless you’re trying to decide whether a complicated automaton deserves rights, in which case it’s obviously going to get rights whether it’s conscious or not because you humans are manipulatable as fuck and if the robot makes enough sad sounds you’re going to start empathizing with it even if it’s provably unconscious. You people keep pet rocks, for goodness sake.

As for whether it’s generally plausible that X or Y process is conscious, once it reaches a certain level of complexity…I don’t know. Until a few years ago, my species hadn’t even entered the bronze age. We’re piloting technology we could never create ourselves (and before you get all butthurt remember that you have no fucking clue how your computer works). I can at least say that consciousness is definitely not a black-or-white binary thing; it’s absolutely a gradient.

Also, fun fact: your own brains are a lot more Yeerk-like than you think. What it feels like, from the inside, is something like shepherding a whole bunch of kindergarteners around. You’ve got, I don’t know, modules or sub-organs or clusters of whatever, and they’re all more-or-less autonomous, and they’re all engaged in this up-and-down sort of communication that involves a whole lot of bullying and coercion. There’s a lot of processing that goes on distributed throughout the body, enough to be called conscious at least in a weak sense, and it’s pretty ruthlessly ruled by the brain. You don’t notice, because you only identify with and consciously perceive the brain’s top-down perspective, and when it disagrees with the body it makes its own reality. Like, your brain thinks your hand ought to be here, and your hand gets sensory data from the environment and is all “No, I’m actually over there,” and your brain (or your spinal cord, really) goes WTF, move, and the hand moves.

(This gets especially nuts with things like vision, where your brain predicts that the guy in front of you is pulling out a gun, and your eyes are like “no, it’s a wallet.” If the prediction is strong enough, it can straight-up drown out the “no, it’s a wallet” signal such that you really actually see a gun. Like, you will remember a gun, and if somebody was playing back an image constructed from your memory, they’d see a blurry gun-wallet hybrid, even though there were no gun-photons and only wallet-photons.)

I’m sitting on top of all of this, as it’s going on, and I can sort of squint at and sample what’s happening, and if I need the signals to change I just…overwhelm the existing ones. It takes a while to get the hang of it, and really I rely on Alexandre’s brain to do something like 95% of the work, but Alexandre was also relying on his brain to do 95% of the work. Alexandre is like a thin layer on top of a bunch of control systems, that are themselves on top of a bunch of control systems, that are on top of a bunch of control systems, and to the extent that he’s conscious, they’re conscious a little. Like, they can cause him to take actions, cause him to feel emotions, seize direct control over his body, that sort of thing.

Ugh. I’m not explaining this well, and it’s a tangent anyway. I’m going to stop there.

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Q811 – what Alexandre wants?

NanoSadistToxicology asked:

I have a question for Alexandre, actually. What does he want to have happen to you? What does he want for himself?

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (22 hours ago):

Alexandre here (believe it or not). Sorry, I’m not very creative. At various times, I’ve wanted to see Starratt chopped up, burned, served à la Bourguignonne alongside escargot, covered in salt, etc. etc.

Probably the cleverest I’ve come up with is just burying him in a giant vat of oatmeal, so he’d never die but also never get out, and just be stuck blind and immobile forever.

I’ve also had (quite ridiculous) fantasies of seizing control of my body and shooting through my head with the laser gun, exceeeeept this is actually biologically impossible, so buggers.

More serious: I have not really thought about it in “plan” terms. I want to be free again. Then I’ll make my own decisions. I’ll get to feel what I want in my own body, on my own terms. I’ll get to have dreams and fantasies and stupid ideas without someone watching all the time, waiting to pick them apart. I want Starrat to suffer, but more than that, I just want this to be over. We will see what happens after.

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Q31 – What is “Good”?

SwastikasButNotTheRacistOnes asked:

What does "good" look like to you? Your answer can take the form of defining good or laudable acts, describing a good society, or expressing what makes another person or individual good. How does that conception of good square with that of your hosts and how do feel about your hosts conception of good? As a corollary feel free to answer the same questions for "bad".

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (19 hours ago):

*Sigh.* This again. I guess it depends on what “good” you mean? Like, when someone says “wow, this is a really good fruitcake!” it’s a valid english sentence, but it’s obviously not the same good you’re talking about. There’s the level of “what gets me my dessert” and then you have “what keeps my parents happy with me” and then “what do my peers approve of” and then “what do I approve of when I am alone in the dark” and then eventually (some of you) get to the level of “what should I approve of such that it both convinces others to approve of it to and also that, if it works, the outcome will be one we all still approve of.”

Mostly ethical thinking is a process of internalizing social norms and outside pressures into your own thinking. It often boils down to “treat others as you would have them treat you” but the details can vary from culture to culture.

So the Yeerk conception of “ethics” and “good” would be pretty similar to yours on some points (though pools are a cultural entity MUCH stronger than most tribes). Killing is bad, stealing is bad, things that spark never-ending spirals of escalation are bad, etc. The main difference is probably in circle-of-concern…human culture taken at a glance seems to have this trend of an ever-expanding circle-of-concern, with you guys outgrouping fewer and fewer things and consistently seeing (or imagining) benefits from it. That’s less true of Yeerk society. Our ingroup-outgroup boundaries are a lot softer and more porous and more like a gradient than yours, but also we’re a lot less likely to “see ourselves” in completely different species.

Regarding your underlying question “How do you feel about being a monster to your host and the fact that your host thinks you’re a monster”…I’m mostly okay with it? It’s not like my species evolved in a multi-cultural environment where we had to learn to cooperate with and respect different ways of thinking and being. We take what we need, and that’s about as far as it goes.

I guess, all else being equal, I’d somewhat look down on a Yeerk who spent an inordinate amount of time psychically tormenting their host, but that has less to do with “but it’s wrong” and more to do with a) it’s going to have corrosive physiological effects on the host body, b) it’s boring after a while and novelty is close to a terminal goal, and c) it’s somewhat distasteful in the same way a man masturbating in the street is distasteful. There are just better things to do.

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Q31.LF – it IS absolute

ControlGroup9 asked:

>I'm guessing you think of morality as an absolute thing.

It is. It is the set of logical consequences of a certain collection of axioms, including an axiom about empathy. Empathy is what makes morality morality, and not just some sort of rational egoism. The mere fact that you evolved to not recognize this, or that I evolved to recognize it, does not motivate me to change my own position. The only moral response to a species which does not recognize morality is hostility.

>So, sorry not sorry.

Look at you, being an apologist for slavery using flippant idioms from your host's own enslaved intelligence.

Fine, you don't want to die? I get it. So go to a zoo and infest a monkey, if you absolutely must have a host. Hell, go to a hospital and pilot the body of a coma patient. I'll wait. Maybe if you yeerks can show that kind of commitment to minimizing enslavement, we can talk about peace. Maybe.

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (11 hours ago):

That sounds like a cool insult, honestly. "Your mother infested a monkey!" I mean, I could, but a monkey body is a serious downgrade from a human body, and also I would probably die because most monkeys don't sit on caches of maple oatmeal.

>The only moral response to a species which does not recognize morality is hostility.

I'd argue that it's a practical response, not an ethical one, but yeah, I hear you. We had a shot at enslaving the entire planet and reaping the benefits (a huge war machine, relative safety from extinction) and we blew it, and now we're in an awkward position.

Rational egoism + benefits of hindsight tells me we'd have been better off if we'd approached the planet openly, and tried to build a Yeerk-human society based on consensus and cooperation, but I don't delude myself in thinking there's any higher value in ethics than "rational egoism" mixed with a heavy does of "being afraid of revenge" and capitalism. I wish we’d done it that way because it would’ve been more likely to work, not because I give a shit, and I suspect if you dig deep enough, you’ll find the same is true from your end, too.

I’m not saying you should let go of your ethics or forgive us. I’d be happy if you did, but I don’t expect it. But the only power your ethics have over me is the power of the harm you can do to me. Which, given our particular circumstances, happens to be zero. So I’m afraid I go on not giving a shit.

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Q19.F – Slug lives matter

brainsalacarte asked:

>crawl out of his head and die right now

Has literally any living thing ever just laid down and died because it realized there was a moral problem with some aspect of its existence? Has that kind of abstract, disembodied Thou Shalt ever mattered to anyone? Like, what were you even hoping to accomplish there, other than virtue signaling?

Plainly, the only way to solve this problem is to take the third option and find some way for the Yeerks to exist as symbiotes rather than parasites or aggressors. I mean, COME ON, PEOPLE. WE SOLVED THIS ONE, LIKE, FIVE MINUTES AFTER THE VISSER’S BROADCAST.

I mean, shit. Can you imagine being a sapient individual with emotions and hopes and dreams and you’re a slug? A fucking slug? Barely able to move around?

(I do realize this isn’t a question, I just wanted you to see this)

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (4 hours ago):

You’re right and wrong at the same time. The problem isn’t so much being a slug. Being a Yeerk without host…I think it’s pretty close to what humans with total locked-in syndrome feel.

Like, you’re in Plato’s cave with 100 people, and every so often, they unchain one guy who gets to go outside and interact with the world, maybe bring back (metaphorical) food or (metaphorical) fire. For most of you, your only interactions with the outside world are talking with the people who got to go out of the cave. Maybe you spend a lot of time speculating, or preparing questions or instructions and trying to persuade people to agree to them.

Except they’re not reliable. You ask the last “scout” a question ike “Hey, what color were the trees?” and he answers “I didn’t look” or “I don’t remember.” So you make sure to ask the next guy to look at the trees, but other people also have lots of questions, and the scout has only three days to look, and also he’s spent all of his life building up a list of things he’s curious about, if he ever got the chance…

Then you get to be the next guy out of the cave. You can see everything. You can do everything. You have hundreds of questions to answer, hundreds of things to try, including your own. You can interact with the world, and you have a purpose…until three days are up, and then it’s back into the cave.

So yeah. Infestation is awesome. For me.

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Q1222 - Joke

ColonelOneill23 asked:

Can you tell us a Joke, like you would to another Yeerk? Or just something that you personally find funny.

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (2 hours ago):

Yeerks don’t have a sense of humor except when they infest a creature with a sense of humor.

Um. C'est un mec qui entre dans un café et plouf. Hé hé hé.

(For those who don’t get the joke, it’s like the French equivalent of “A man walked into a bar and said ‘ow.’”)

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Q44 – What would your friends think?

TheCheeseIsMadeOfMoon asked:

You mentioned having human friends, that you respected.

Have you considered “coming out to them”? How do you think they’ll react?

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (2 days ago):

I did not consider that.

That…I don’t know what they’d say. I mean, there’s also the problem that they’ve never really met me, just me pretending to be Alexandre. Maybe the ones who knew him before and after have a sense of who I am, and…I honestly don’t know how much their opinion would affect me.

We’ve talked about the invasion for, but…eh. Food for thoughts.

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Q1904 – how much is alexandre

burnit92 asked:

fuck you

also how much of your philosophy is your own and how much of it is borrowed from alexander

also fuck you

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (2 hours ago):

The game theory and sociology bits are mostly from Alexandre and my other hosts. The philosophy is mine.

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Q9 – We all knew it was coming

RiggetyRi-UUUUUURRRPPP-ickRolled asked:

Would you rather control one horse-sized duck or one hundred duck-sized horses?

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (2 days ago):

Neither. Opposable thumbs, man. Best thing since endoskeletons.

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Q16.L – Repair our species’ relationships

ControlGroup9 asked:

>I wish we’d done it that way because it would’ve been more likely to work, not because I give a shit.

Openly admitting that you would totally enslave and exploit us if it were at all practical is not a great way to repair relations with a species that actually does think there is a higher value in ethics (or really any species for that matter). So tell me: if you could modify your biology so that you weren't dependent on another (intelligent) species to accomplish anything, would you do it? Or if you could modify your values so that you actually do value ethics/empathy intrinsically, would you do it, even if only for the purpose of fostering strategic cooperation with humans?

ZombieAsInAlanis answered (49 minutes ago):

I can't speak for my entire species, but personally speaking, my answers are “no” and “maybe.”

(but you’re absolutely on to something)

A full debate on this would include a bunch of information I'm not ready to share, but speaking in broad strokes...intrinsic values aren't really that important to humans. Values and social standards come from arrangements of convenience, and the standards change to follow the practical interests, not the other way around. They matter even less to Yeerks; where human societies change their outlook over the course of decades (eg regarding homosexuality), Yeerk societies change over the course of months (hence the Aftran force in Ventura having Second Thoughts ).

If (and it's a big if) diplomatic relationships open, our outlook will matter on a personal and societal level, not on a grand strategy level. I'd argue that outlook doesn't really matter in realpolitik. Most human countries act like impulsive narcissists if we interpret them as coherent entities anyway.

The way it will work is, sooner or later, one of two things will happen:

Open war will start, until one side is incapable or unwilling to fight any longer (most metropolises will be smoking craters at that point; we have the high ground )

) A country or two will start a program for Yeerk integration. There aren't many of us, so given a 0.1% "integration" rate, a population of 1,000,000 or more would be enough. All the Yeerks in the system could fit within Paris/NY/London (assuming we don't blow them up next; again, not speaking for high command, but I do want to point out it's on the table).

Let's assume everything goes well (it won't, the Visser's a jerk). There will be riots demanding we be all killed or sent off planet somehow, political movements and external pressure by other countries to stop the program. Let's assume they all blow over.

As this point, we'd basically have to hand ourselves over for the infestation program to proceed. No-one would accept it otherwise. We'd have so sign treaties, surrender our fleet and our military secrets to whatever country welcomes us, and put ourselves at their mercy.

At this point, integration becomes less about grand strategy and more about personal relationships. This is uncharted territory, because Yeerks have zero experience with consensual relationships so far. Like, imagine you come from a culture where all men/women you date are slaves. No, really. Take a minute and actually imagine it. That's the socially accepted norm for relationships: a master and a slave. That’s all you know. That’s all you’ve ever known. Nobody’s ever known anything else; there are no conscientious objectors who are ahead of their time and ringing the warning bell. The slave has absolutely no say in how the relationship works, what the master does, whether or when they have sex, when they spend time together, what they talk about, etc. Imagine those relationships are all you know... and then you date a millennial, who thinks relationships should be between equals.

No matter how well-intentioned you are, you're going to make blunders. You’re going to have knee-jerk anger when you’re disobeyed, you’re going to demand unreasonable things, etc. (this should be familiar to domestic abuse survivors)

That's why I'm saying values don't matter that much. Integration will be about Yeerks and humans co-inventing the rules of cohabitation, and learning to respect them. Eventually they will form habits which will become rules which will become an ethics code, and they'll all agree that people like me were awful and they're very sorry about us (and about Ventura, I guess).

And yeah, I guess I could pay more lip service to their future beliefs, help my species' diplomatic relations...but fuck that. I was never much for hypocrisy.

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