EP399: My Heart is a Quadratic Equation

[Windup]

Personally I think most hearts are quartic equations at the very least. That means four solutions that are most easily found using a trial and error method, rather than a formula.

You just went all meta on us there, didn't you?

[SonofSpermcube]

UGH!  Dating is so HARD!  Woe is me!  Leave me ALONE mom! 

[TheArchivist]

Why would she take a man who only redeeming quality (according to her) was his looks, put his brain into a robot and try to make a relationship work?  It makes no sense.  I invoke the "Chewbacca defense"!

Yeah, that didn't make any sense to me either. You don't put the dumb brain in the robot body, you put the computer in the handsome body. The former defeats the whole purpose. And I don't think that can be explained away by how difficult it is find good AI. Or if it is, the author should have said so.

It's only problematic if you misunderstand her motives. As Max e^{i pi} said, her intention is not to turn this utter jerk into a robot boyfriend - he's clearly beyond useless for that. And putting the computer in a handsome body assumes you can build an AI that's better than a human brain - which is too damn hard for a sensible (read lazy) mad scientist. But...
The things computers have enormous trouble with are the things even dumb jerks find easy. Look at the enormous effort required to produce something that can perform as well as Asimo, for instance, and compare his utterly remarkable running, throwing and catching skills to a typical college football player.
A computer-controlled human body would not be much use as a boyfriend. But a human-brain-cored AI running a robot body would be brilliant!

[matweller]

Why would she take a man who only redeeming quality (according to her) was his looks, put his brain into a robot and try to make a relationship work?  It makes no sense.  I invoke the "Chewbacca defense"!

Yeah, that didn't make any sense to me either. You don't put the dumb brain in the robot body, you put the computer in the handsome body. The former defeats the whole purpose. And I don't think that can be explained away by how difficult it is find good AI. Or if it is, the author should have said so.

It's only problematic if you misunderstand her motives. As Max e^{i pi} said, her intention is not to turn this utter jerk into a robot boyfriend - he's clearly beyond useless for that. And putting the computer in a handsome body assumes you can build an AI that's better than a human brain - which is too damn hard for a sensible (read lazy) mad scientist. But...
The things computers have enormous trouble with are the things even dumb jerks find easy. Look at the enormous effort required to produce something that can perform as well as Asimo, for instance, and compare his utterly remarkable running, throwing and catching skills to a typical college football player.
A computer-controlled human body would not be much use as a boyfriend. But a human-brain-cored AI running a robot body would be brilliant!

Agreed. Did she say she was making a boyfriend? I got the impression that she needed a donor brain for her robot and since this guy was useless for much else he could at least do that much. I think he assumed he was to be a captive boyfriend-bot but she just wanted spare parts.

[matweller]

III.  Chet.2
Chrysanthemum finished lighting the candles in the middle of the table. She sat and poured wine into two glasses. The white tablecloth looked immaculate against the backdrop of the exposed steel and stone that made up her laboratory.
“Everything looks lovely!” said Chet.2. “This is the nicest date I’ve ever been imprisoned on.”
“I could have just killed you, you know. I still might.”
“Lucky for me you have some kind of robot fetish.”
“If that were true, I could have just programmed one. At least then I could force it to give me some respect.”
Chet.2 looked genuinely puzzled, or at least a thoughtful looking light bulb blinked on top of his bulbous head.
“Why didn’t you then? You obviously could have.”
Chrysanthemum sighed.
“I don’t really want a robot. I want a partner. Someone with whom I can share things. Someone who can think. You’re the closest I’ve got.”
Chet.2 made a sound between gears grinding and a snort.
“Bullshit. You found me so irresistible, you wanted to keep me forever.”
Forgetting himself in his smugness, Chet.2 raised his wine glass to where his lips ought to have been and smashed it against his oversized, metal face. He was surprised, but he couldn’t be hurt.
Chrysanthemum watched the red wine stain the fresh white tablecloth.
This is it, she thought. Rock bottom. Zero Kelvin.

She was hoping for more of a companion, but I still feel like it was to be more of a path to finding the right one than for the cyborg to be the end result.

[chemistryguy]

III.  Chet.2
Chrysanthemum finished lighting the candles in the middle of the table. She sat and poured wine into two glasses. The white tablecloth looked immaculate against the backdrop of the exposed steel and stone that made up her laboratory.
“Everything looks lovely!” said Chet.2. “This is the nicest date I’ve ever been imprisoned on.”
“I could have just killed you, you know. I still might.”
“Lucky for me you have some kind of robot fetish.”
“If that were true, I could have just programmed one. At least then I could force it to give me some respect.”
Chet.2 looked genuinely puzzled, or at least a thoughtful looking light bulb blinked on top of his bulbous head.
“Why didn’t you then? You obviously could have.”
Chrysanthemum sighed.
“I don’t really want a robot. I want a partner. Someone with whom I can share things. Someone who can think. You’re the closest I’ve got.”
Chet.2 made a sound between gears grinding and a snort.
“Bullshit. You found me so irresistible, you wanted to keep me forever.”
Forgetting himself in his smugness, Chet.2 raised his wine glass to where his lips ought to have been and smashed it against his oversized, metal face. He was surprised, but he couldn’t be hurt.
Chrysanthemum watched the red wine stain the fresh white tablecloth.
This is it, she thought. Rock bottom. Zero Kelvin.

She was hoping for more of a companion, but I still feel like it was to be more of a path to finding the right one than for the cyborg to be the end result.

It still begs the question why she'd chose a total ass to begin with.  I can buy Max's explanation, he certainly was expendable, but she couldn't possible expect even a halfway decent companion.  G.I.G.O.

[TheArchivist]

She was hoping for more of a companion, but I still feel like it was to be more of a path to finding the right one than for the cyborg to be the end result.

Which agrees with my earlier stated reason for not wanting to end at "Your lair or mine" - the path MUST lead past that point to end with a companion.

It still begs the question why she'd chose a total ass to begin with.  I can buy Max's explanation, he certainly was expendable, but she couldn't possible expect even a halfway decent companion.  G.I.G.O.

Indeed, and whether she was thinking that at the end of the Chet1 date or not, she realised it quite clearly at "This is it. Rock bottom. Zero Kelvin."
We aren't told what happens between these two dates (apart from a phone call with her mum!) so I choose to speculate as follows:
- At the end of Chet1, HE asks "your place or mine". She thinks "what a loser - no brain whatever - only any good for my robot proj... hang on..." and says "let's go to mine"
- Between that and the phone call she's surgically removed his brain and implanted in the robot. No question of romance here, it's just science.
- After the phone call, where her mum is convinced "brought him here" means for sex, despite all the explanation to the contrary, she is just sufficiently depressed to think "well, heck, maybe a robot boyfriend might work"

[matweller]

In my imagination, he's a bridge between the world in which she is comfortable and the one she wants to better understand. He wasn't meant to be be the end, he just needed to be more meat than the all-metal version she could already make, and for that, even a mediocre brain was a positive step--maybe even a preferable one if preordained failure pushed her to try harder for her goal.

[Rachel Udin]

Does not pass Bechdel test.

Women's lives have more depth than talking about men they date and talking only about other men. Just saying.

The story itself is cute, but I didn't really find any meat in it. It was more like a fluffy bit, with dating attached, rather than anything with real thought or depth.

I guess it's good for kicking back, but I tend to like stories with a little more depth of character and plot.

[Feegle]

Why on earth is her heart like a quadratic equation? Is the title just invoking a mathematical word to seem cute. I mean Quadratic equations are kind of interesting, in that they can have two solutions (which can be identical or imaginary), but this story was a traditional 'there is one true soul mate' trope - if anything, her heart was a linear equation.

This.  It's almost certainly the math teacher in me, but I was nerdily excited by the title to see how the metaphor would play out, and then... wha?  I have to say I wasn't wholly listening to the story, because at least half of my brain was dedicated to the task of figuring out how, exactly, her heart was a quadratic equation.

On reflection, the best I could come up with was that Chet was the vertex of a concave-up parabola - rock bottom - but that implies that Albert is only one on an upswing, and the next potential partner she meets would be better.  That's depressing.

Alternatively, Albert could be the vertex of a concave-down parabola - which suggests that all that follows will be worse, and she's at the pinnacle of her love arc at the end of the story - it's all f`(x)<0 from here.  That's even more depressing.

Ultimately, the takeaway from my ramblings is that it's almost better if the title is just invoking a fancy math word that most people only vaguely understand.  And that's a let-down for me.

[Max e^{i pi}]

Why on earth is her heart like a quadratic equation? Is the title just invoking a mathematical word to seem cute. I mean Quadratic equations are kind of interesting, in that they can have two solutions (which can be identical or imaginary), but this story was a traditional 'there is one true soul mate' trope - if anything, her heart was a linear equation.

Ultimately, the takeaway from my ramblings is that it's almost better if the title is just invoking a fancy math word that most people only vaguely understand.  And that's a let-down for me.

Allow me to stretch the metaphor for you, perhaps to the point of breaking, but it just might work.
Her heart, like a quadratic equation, is continuous in its defined area. It started beating at the beginning of her life, and will stop at its end.
Her heart, like a quadratic equation, at first glance is a very complex and convoluted mess of terms. But with the right tools and proper rules, order can be brought to (seeming) chaos and a solution will present itself.
Her heart, like a quadratic equation, has at least one solution, either complex or not. But if the solution is complex, there is at least one real part of the solution.
Her heart, like a quadratic equation, behaves differently under certain circumstances. Integrate it into something else and it is unrecognizable from its first form. Derive something else from it and one can at a glance see the heart (or quadratic equation) as the source and the influence it has on the new derivation.
The heart, like quadratic equations, has stumped and stymied some of the best minds in the history of humankind. It causes poets to wax lyrical, compels artists into frenzied bouts of creativity and sparks some pretty weird internet discussions.

[JDoug]

Feegle - I'm also a maths teacher.

Her heart is not continuous - it stops at the end of her life. I suppose you could say it's a quadratic equation with two limits, t=0 and t= death, but the same would be true with a large number of equations, linear, cubic, exponential etc.
Her heart could be solved, but hopefully is more complex that a quadratic. They have three terms and can be solved in under five minutes by a moderately skilled mathematician. I do agree with Rachel - the character was overly simplistic (although it was a short story).
Her heart has at least one solution, so that means the function is at least linear. But it could be more. And like Feegle, I was kind of hoping for some metaphor here - e.g her heart has a solution and it's imaginary. That still a valid solution - it's just the 'real world' (her mum) won't accept it.
Her heart behaves differently under certain circumstances. - again, so do most functions. Indeed, e^x is defined (and exciting) because it does not vary when integrated or differentiated. So perhaps a good name for the Notebook would be e to the power of x. However I doubt it would sell as well....
Her heart probably has stumped some of the best minds in human history. Quadratic Equations have also stumped many great minds, but only those of non-mathematicians who had it forced upon them in their teenage years. Mathematically, Quadratic equations are relatively simple.

Pedantic arguments about maths = Good chat on a first date. Right?

[Max e^{i pi}]

Before I begin I would like to say that I personally know many mathematicians. Several of my friends and two family members all have advanced degrees in math. As people they are all (of course) different, but I love them all anyway, because they are my friends and family and because they just happen to be great people. I have the utmost respect for people who choose a field that deals in the pure and theoretical forms of human advancement, and doubly that for people who are teachers. (Teachers deserve a lot of respect). I have nothing against the field of mathematics or the people who work in it.
Having said that...

First: Doug, I specifically said that the heart was continuous in its defined area. Please read carefully before getting pedantic.

Second: one trait that I have noticed among mathematicians is the straightforward literal-mindness. That is not a bad thing. It's a human trait, lots of people are like that, and in the field of mathematics it's very useful. But it also lends itself to missing the joke, taking some things too literally or just overall not getting the point.

The truth of the matter is this (as I see it): there are many quotes that begin "my heart is...":

• My heart is wax to be moulded as she pleases, but enduring as marble to retain.  - Miguel de Cervantes, The Little Gypsy.
• My heart is like a singing bird - Christina G. Rossetti, A Birthday.
• My heart, the bird of the wilderness, has found its sky in your eyes. - Rabindranath Tagore, Gardener, 31.
• My Heart Is a Holy Place - Patricia Van Ness
• My heart is a ladle of sweet water brimming over.  - Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
• My heart is a void, dead, and this makes me sad. - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs
• My heart is a gypsy - continuously searching for a home, - Jenna Jameson

And so on and so forth.
The author simply took something that people would recognize and understand and that sounded good.
"My heart is an exponential function on the xy plane" or "My heart when plotted has a tangent that is greater than zero therefore my heart is a concave up parabola and things are getting better" just don't have the same ring to it, you know what I mean?

And finally: let P be the group of people that are alive at this time. Let T be the group of all the time that exists in the universe. Let pl(p,t) be any function that pleases person p (p is in P) at time t (t is in T).
For all p in P there exists some t in T such that pl(p,t).
There exists some p in P such that pl(p,t) for all t in T.
But there is no pl() such that pl(p,t) for all p in P and for all t in T.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"You can please all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot please all the people all the time."

[TheArchivist]

And finally: let P be the group of people that are alive at this time. Let T be the group of all the time that exists in the universe. Let pl(p,t) be any function that pleases person p (p is in P) at time t (t is in T).

And to be honest, let S be the group of EP subscribers and M be a major subset, and let n be a subset of T containing all values from d, the date of release, to an arbitrary point some weeks later, then I would contend that  pl(M,n)  is a sufficient condition

[Unblinking]

And if my date suddenly blurted out "I have an atomic death-ray!!" or whatever, I wouldn't ask for the check. I'd be intrigued. I'd ask questions. Even if the person was clearly crazy, I'd keep on plumbing to see just how deep the crazy went. Maybe even ask for a demonstration. Yeah, sure, I might up in pieces in a freezer, but the odds of that are still pretty low.

But he wasn't asking for the check to run away.  At first I thought that was the meaning too, but we know she took her home with him.  Granted, he presumably was aiming for her bed rather than her operating table.  Or maybe he was asking for the check to run away and she didn't allow it.

[Unblinking]

I didn't really care for this story.  It seems like mad scientist point of views are a bit too common a story type these days, and this didn't go anywhere that made me put that aside. 

I agree that the title made me wonder exactly how the simile would be carried out, and was disappointed that it was apparently just a foil for "mathematical-type-phrase here". 

The things computers have enormous trouble with are the things even dumb jerks find easy.

This is very true!  I work in the field of computer vision, which has spent decades making incremental improvements toward doing something that an infant human can do, let alone a shallow adult.  Chet might be stupid, but he could give a correct answer to the question "What do you see?" even if his intellectual skills are lacking.

That being said, if you're going to make a robot companion, I don't know why you'd pick a handsome jerk, when his handsomeness clearly wouldn't translate into the robot body and the jerkness would.

His opening line "so, what do you do" is fairly pathetic even before we realise it's relatively late in the date.

"What do you do?" is an annoying question if it gets asked more than once, like it was later on, especially when he conflates "secretary" with "scientist".  But I don't think it's a bad question if asked one time on a first date. 

I thought she was impatient and rude at the beginning, before the story made it clear that he was being vapid and annoying.  If you're on a first date with someone you've never met before you don't know them well enough to do much more than "small talk" so what exactly does she expect from him?  If she wants to date a scientist and talk about sciency things, then she shouldn't have even been on a date with this guy to begin with--wouldn't that be obvious from a pre-screening kind of perspective?

Maybe that's just my social awkwardness talking, but to me it seems like a very reasonable "gateway" question that opens up the potential for many other questions.  Especially for a person who identifies with their career in some way.  If I tell you I'm a software engineer it gives you more insight into what kind of person I am than any other single sentence answer to a simple question does.  And it gives the other person the opportunity to talk about themselves, to help break the ice.

So what's so pathetic about that question?  I ask this in all seriousness.  I can't say that I am unhappy that I never spent much time on the dating scene, because I would undoubtedly trip over all kinds of things like this that make no intuitive sense to me.

[Windup]

So what's so pathetic about that question?  I ask this in all seriousness.  I can't say that I am unhappy that I never spent much time on the dating scene, because I would undoubtedly trip over all kinds of things like this that make no intuitive sense to me.

I was surprised that was considered a "pathetic question" as well.  With people you don't know well, "What do you do?" leaves open a wide range of possibilities, and doesn't make a bunch of assumptions the person may or may not fill.  The other person can respond with something about their job (if they have one) but it allows them to mention a hobby, stay-at-home parent role, student, retirement or whatever.  As an opener, it assumes the burden of starting the conversation, but hands control back to the other party as to where it goes next. 

[TheArchivist]

But he wasn't asking for the check to run away.  At first I thought that was the meaning too, but we know she took her home with him. 

I think you're conflating two different dates. She took Chet home, not Brian.

[TheArchivist]

So what's so pathetic about that question?  I ask this in all seriousness.  I can't say that I am unhappy that I never spent much time on the dating scene, because I would undoubtedly trip over all kinds of things like this that make no intuitive sense to me.

I was surprised that was considered a "pathetic question" as well.  With people you don't know well, "What do you do?" leaves open a wide range of possibilities, and doesn't make a bunch of assumptions the person may or may not fill. 

Well, yes, when you first meet someone it's a perfectly sensible question. But they're on a date, at dinner, and far enough in for Brian to yell "check please". He should have asked that question looooooong before this. That was my point - not that it's inherently a bad question but that it's pathetic in context. Admittedly I confused my point something rotten by saying "even before we realise it's relatively late" when what I meant was either "given that it's relatively late" or "even before we realise how late", and without noting that I hadn't even contemplated the possibility of it being a blind date and thus assumed they had at least met and conversed some days before.

[Unblinking]

But he wasn't asking for the check to run away.  At first I thought that was the meaning too, but we know she took her home with him. 

I think you're conflating two different dates. She took Chet home, not Brian.

Ooohhhhh.  Yes, you're right.  I'm not sure I realized that they were not the same person.  Bad listening on my part.

Well, yes, when you first meet someone it's a perfectly sensible question. But they're on a date, at dinner, and far enough in for Brian to yell "check please". He should have asked that question looooooong before this. That was my point - not that it's inherently a bad question but that it's pathetic in context. Admittedly I confused my point something rotten by saying "even before we realise it's relatively late" when what I meant was either "given that it's relatively late" or "even before we realise how late", and without noting that I hadn't even contemplated the possibility of it being a blind date and thus assumed they had at least met and conversed some days before.

Ah!  Okay.  Yes, I totally agree with that.  I think what threw me was the "even before we realise it's relatively late".  Yes, that late in the dinner, it's a terrible question.  Thanks for clarifying.  I am often clueless about social etiquettes and niceties and so was wondering if there was something I'd somehow never understood. 

[matweller]

It didn't matter at all in my mind. The whole scene was set up to show that while she felt compelled to date for whatever reason, she held a general contempt for nearly everybody else, so it wouldn't have mattered what he said. She was already disengaged and doodling. [We can assume later that] Brian's not even a viable candidate for cyborg testing, so she just wants to bail. It happens with everybody on a smaller scale. Once you realize there isn't an  attraction, the rest of your time together is just going through the motions.

[Unblinking]

It didn't matter at all in my mind. The whole scene was set up to show that while she felt compelled to date for whatever reason, she held a general contempt for nearly everybody else, so it wouldn't have mattered what he said. She was already disengaged and doodling. [We can assume later that] Brian's not even a viable candidate for cyborg testing, so she just wants to bail. It happens with everybody on a smaller scale. Once you realize there isn't an  attraction, the rest of your time together is just going through the motions.

Indeed.  I was more trying to understand why TheArchivist thought it was a bad date question.  There are some  details of expectations of everyday interactions that I don't understand until someone explains them to me in detail, and I was more interested to try to understand for my own future interactions, than to use that as a criticism of the story.

[Fenrix]

Fun story. Thanks for producing this one.

"The world is a mess and I just need to rule it."

[Max e^{i pi}]

And speaking of death rays...

[Devoted135]

Really interesting discussion to read in this thread.

Like others, I'm fairly tired of the mad scientist thing, and all of the cookie cutter characters didn't help things along for me. Like someone said upthread, doesn't she have a full life outside of this quest for a boyfriend? Is her whole existence really centered on this one pursuit? Also, there are plenty of ways to make a guy annoying without resorting to the blatant chauvinism that her date exhibited. For example, he could talk straight past her, or disagree with everything she says, or just nod/smile and not engage her at the level she desires.