EP370: The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds, v. 2.1

[Fenrix]

I think we can generally agree that one or two sentences near the beginning to better establish the frame of the narrator would provide a significant improvement (at least to those of us who overthink the craftsmanship of the stories).

[Kaa]

I think we can generally agree that one or two sentences near the beginning to better establish the frame of the narrator would provide a significant improvement (at least to those of us who overthink the craftsmanship of the stories).

This whole discussion reminds me of this scene in A Boy Named Charlie Brown:

Lucy Van Pelt: Aren't the clouds beautiful? They look like big balls of cotton. I could just lie here all day and watch them drift by. If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud's formations. What do you think you see, Linus?

Linus Van Pelt: Well, those clouds up there look to me look like the map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean. [points up] That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor. And that group of clouds over there... [points] ...gives me the impression of the Stoning of Stephen. I can see the Apostle Paul standing there to one side.

Lucy Van Pelt: Uh huh. That's very good. What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?

Charlie Brown: Well... I was going to say I saw a duckie and a horsie, but I changed my mind.

I feel a bit like Charlie Brown because I just kinda enjoyed the story, but now I'm not sure anymore.

[chemistryguy]

I feel a bit like Charlie Brown because I just kinda enjoyed the story, but now I'm not sure anymore.

We've logick-ed it to death.   Mwah ha ha ha!

[Unblinking]

I think we can generally agree that one or two sentences near the beginning to better establish the frame of the narrator would provide a significant improvement (at least to those of us who overthink the craftsmanship of the stories).

Yeah, I'd agree with that.

I feel a bit like Charlie Brown because I just kinda enjoyed the story, but now I'm not sure anymore.

Aw, don't let us sway you against it.  I enjoying examining stories in too much detail, but that doesn't mean that anyone has to read it.    And I still like it in general (if it's a bit too long)

[Gamercow]

I thought that the story was enjoyable enough, not going over any new ground, but visiting the old ground well.  I don't think it is going to stick around in my head for a long time, but it was a lot better than what I was expecting after reading the blurb. 

That said, I found the forum comments to be more interesting than the story itself.  We've got a great community. 

[Unblinking]

I thought that the story was enjoyable enough, not going over any new ground, but visiting the old ground well.  I don't think it is going to stick around in my head for a long time, but it was a lot better than what I was expecting after reading the blurb. 

That said, I found the forum comments to be more interesting than the story itself.  We've got a great community. 

Seconded!

[Myrealana]

I enjoyed this story. I loved the reading, and I really got into Rosie's viewpoint.

It took an extremely uncomfortable, but all too-real family situation and turned it into something almost whimsical. I was amused at how quickly I would sublimate my own discomfort at the family's situation into Rosie's dry observation. I didn't want to laugh, but laugh I did.

a robot that's part Siri, part Roomba, part baby bottle. 

That sums up Rosie perfectly.

[Myrealana]

I think we can generally agree that one or two sentences near the beginning to better establish the frame of the narrator would provide a significant improvement (at least to those of us who overthink the craftsmanship of the stories).

I agree. It took me a few beats too long to get into the swing of it. Once I did, though, I was thoroughly entertained.

[hardware]

I liked this - pretty dark and funny stuff. Like others, I assumed that the robot was not human-made, and was a little surprised that this was never explored. While I agree that the knowledge level was a bit inconsistent and more in tune with what the author needed than what you might expect, it didn't take me out of the story, I generally give funny/satiric Sci-Fi a little more slack when it comes to rigor.

[Rachel Udin]

Yeah, late to the party.

While the core idea of the story, I actually liked, the internal problems with the story kinda bugged me all the way through.

I could at first buy the alien hypothesis--she was made by Aliens. But then it really bugged me because of the way she was programmed. She was specifically programmed to a segment of human culture--the mostly American one. (Things like child care, etc and her "notes" were mostly American.) I would think Aliens studying another culture would have programmed her to observe several cultures and be able to adjust. There was nothing in the story to say she was programmed by aliens. (And by version 2.1, I would think they'd get that people around the world are very different, especially since it leveraged anthropology as a reference. And since I'm majoring in it... it irked me even more.)

Then I thought maybe humans programmed her, but there were problems there too. The "fur" and other references seemed out of place for something programmed by humans.

Programmers, while jokingly are socially inept, aren't *this* inept and have a reputation also for a "better than you" uber narcissism when it comes to programs. (Which I am NOT saying is true, since I'm poking fun at my own kind...) So I can't believe they'd release such a program like this. Especially with UI and UX people around.

Then I thought she could be an alien with a robot exterior... until they did the face plate thing. That threw that out as well. This, however, would make the most sense, because you could feed the big generalizations that all humans are like this. (Humans do it all the time, I wouldn't put it past other intelligent species.) But the story purposefully threw it out.

The problem here is that the interior logic didn't make sense. And nothing in the story seems to justify one over the other. (Which is world building issues.)

All three hypotheses down the drain, and my brain grinding all three possibilities for the course of the story, I missed a lot of the other cues of the story. Which makes me dissatisfied. I think the story should hint or at least present and show the internal logic (as well as know about programming, if talking about programming. Know anthro, if talking about Anthro...)

Core story didn't bug me so much though. Lack of fact checking did...

[childoftyranny]

I'm not sure I enjoyed this story, I certainly enjoyed the conversation about it. Right from the beginning I was under the impression that either everyone had one of these robots or that it was somehow forced upon them. From this approach you imagine something needing to made in such numbers and cheaply enough....that it might not be the best product ever. Though, earlier comments made me wonder if perhaps one of the problem is that people expect this robot to be emotional caretakers and not just t focus on physical care, hence the producing of food and cleaning clothes but not having pretty much any information about emotions and social mores. That ties into the question if the robot helper is supposed to fix all the problems, or to just help out around the house like a roomba, which makes the programming by far worse because it seems to suggest the robot is more all-around but the family doesn't appear to think so.

As opposed to other stories I'm finding this one changes quite radically based upon how you approach, where it can change stories, how things are wrong in this story swing around a lot when you change your assumptions.