Ultimately You Have To Be Willing To Relinquish The Spoils Of The In-group If It's Demanding Moral Bankruptcy

(◡‿◡✿)

(ʘ‿ʘ✿) “what you say ‘bout me”

(ʘ‿ʘ)ノ✿ “hold my flower”

You think “oh it would be useful to learn how to identify my thrifted yarn and clothing” and before you know it you’ve been recruited by fiber witches giving out their spells willy nilly, again

Gurathin is not only wrong, his argument is fundamentally irrational

Gurathin's argument in ASR:

We need to immobilize this SecUnit stat, because it's going to kill us.

I know it's going to kill us because its logs show that it's rogue. If there is no way to control it, then it is dangerous to us.

It is controlled by the Company to sabotage us. "The missing hazard report, the missing map sections. The SecUnit must be part of that." If it wasn't, that would be a coincidence, which is unbelievable.

This SecUnit has gone rogue and killed people in its charge before. It may do so again.

PresAux's counterargument:

It may be rogue, but that doesn't logically mean it will kill us. "The fact that the Unit has been acting to preserve our lives, to take care of us, while it was a free agent, gives us even more reason to trust it." (Volescu)

Someone may be sabotaging us, but that doesn't logically mean it's the Company or our SecUnit. "There were only three SecUnits for DeltFall in their specs, but there were five units in their habitat. Someone is sabotaging us, but I don’t think our SecUnit is part of it." (Ratthi)

If the SecUnit was trying to sabotage us, then why would it tell us about the combat module sabotage and shoot itself? (Bharadwaj, Overse)

The SecUnit believes it went rogue as a result of malfunction, and that hacking its governor module would prevent a repeat occurrence. Confirmation of its sincerity comes from the same logs that Gurathin accessed for his arguments. (Volescu)

Gurathin's counter-counterargument:

Well it gave itself an edgy nickname

26/01/2025 Jean-Luc Picard @SpaceDadSupport Incoming Transmission…

When you catch yourself people-pleasing, take a quiet, introspective moment to consider why you're doing that. What childhood trauma is playing out in your mind to make you worry that some random person now may not approve of you? See it, recognise it, take the helm from it.

Truly funny that for so many people, The Murderbot Diaries has become their version of Sanctuary Moon… used in all the same ways too

Hen: It's been brought to my attention that I offended some of you. I'm truly sorry, I meant to offend all of you.

POV: your boyfriend just got back from a week long trip from outer space so you have to shut him up before he can make a corny joke

A lot of stories about learning magic hide the cost of magic: they tell a story that you can have magic through your own individual efforts, i.e. that magic comes by studying hard, learning something, and you just have it! You get this magic, and it’s yours.

Our own society encourages us to pretend that magic is free in similar ways. “I worked hard, I got paid, and I bought this iPhone. It’s magic! And it’s mine!” But we know, we all know deep down, that much of the actual costs are being paid by other people somewhere else, or will be paid by you in the future and in your children’s future.

Magic isn’t free. Whenever there is real magic, someone pays for it. And trying to claw apart the story to get to that truth, to expose and show that truth on a visceral level, is part of what I’m trying to do.

— Author Spotlight: Naomi Novik