Yurei Deco Episode 1 Discussion

alshu said:
@FANTAMELONSODA , dude, you forgot to tag me...kind of pointles if you wanted me to participate in the discussion.


No, it was due to the horrible rules they lived under.


I don't get it. Those guys were AIs, they literally lived in a virtual world.
And stop mentioning the slave part since I am not arguing about it at all...here we don't have that.


Not from the POV of the AIs (well, the most of them).


One of the key components of marxism is that every member of society should be doing something for it, they should be productive.
And here the problem with dystopian marxist societies - the rules who is being productive and who isn't are pretty messed up. And if you have forgotten, the AI version of Kaburagi - the MC of Deca-Dence was thrown at a horrible virtual prison of sorts for being unproductive (but actually not fitting the society all that well)...and the conditions there on conceptional level (the supposed reeducation with labor) weren't very different from what you could find in the real island of Gulag at certain historical period.
Also I am pretty sure when you write gulag without a capital letter it means an institution with similar functions...so are you playing dumb with your "But Gulag was a real place"?


Are you still talking about the humans in Deca-Dence? Wasn't I clear that I am talking about the AIs in that show...or you are skipping that on purpose?


Yeah actually you are right...there are no original ideas in sci-fi since the 70s...but some of the interpretations of those ideas also how those are used in Deca-Dence give me strong Yurei Deco vibes.


In the bigger scale of the things it isn't even a blip...but no doubt it was playing with some very interesting concepts, which the regular virtual reality anime will skip. For example on conceptual level your favorite Fractal was pretty standard and dull in comparison.

off-season said:
Looks like a Kaiba, walks like a Dennou Coil, quacks like a... ? I'll stay tuned.

FANTAMELONSODA said:

I replied but deleted the quote

FANTAMELONSODA said:
You keep derailing the topics

FANTAMELONSODA said:
don't even accept when you're wrong

FANTAMELONSODA said:
When I said there was no Marxist class consciousness, you said "What about that time when the MC was thrown at what is basically a virtual gulag?"

FANTAMELONSODA said:
then you are trying to justify that gulag is inherently Marxist, which is an uneducated claim

FANTAMELONSODA said:
equating class consciousness with something that is not even remotely related like the gulag is just a blatant category error

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Also there are no MARXIST societies in Deca-Dence,

FANTAMELONSODA said:
The robots don't live in a communist world, it's literally a corporation.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Those robots didn't

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Thus the use of the Marxist class consciousness is between the slave humans and the master robots.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Also your claim that they were an AI thus virtual is false and shows how desperate you are to qualify your arguments.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
the AI are operating with general intelligence which is as "real" as it can get (Turing Test-wise), the only difference is in the ontology of consciousness, but in this case it doesn't matter (in the context that physicalists treat consciousness as a non-entity).

FANTAMELONSODA said:
I am reiterating this because you keep moving the goalposts

FANTAMELONSODA said:
It is absurd.

alshu said:

Why not simply tag me with @ and my user name after it?


I said something about taking ideas from certain show and you pulled some stuff about avatarization, class consciousness, slaves ect, then ignored those different levels of social oppression in Deca-Dance I was talking about...so who is derailing here?


I am wrong from having a bit different impression about Deca-Dance from yours?


I did that because you derailed the conversation towards your favourite "humans were slave in Deca-Dance"...so I tried to turn back to what I was talking about - the social oppression of the AIs there.


As far as antiutopia systems pretend to be utopias it's even no topic with the episode of Yurei Deco.


It was you who pushed class consciousness into the conversion with zero relevancy...it was easier to push it out, not respond to it.


Yes there aren't...but there is that idea of productivity (which makes it kind of Marxist) and the MC went into sort of a gulag despite being very productive, because he was inconvenient to the system in other ways...


Actually they both have some similar traits, but do you know what wasn't like in a corporation? You can work for one or you don't, nobody would be care, die out of hunger if you will. But in a communist system if you don't contribute to society there is supposedly something wrong with you, thus you should be reformed.


Yeah, those being tortured with dangerous and pointless work (since sone AI with no personalities could be used for it) totally proves your point.


And I never cared for this, since so far it's not seen in Yurei Deco...


O RLY?


Sounds like "bla-bla-bla" to me.
They are AIs, they can communicate via some sort of network where the virtual part happens, but also they can exist separately. Also they can have copies.
For example in the prison they interacted with it through some sort of virtual representation, not how the real maintenance place looked like.


So I started talking first about avatarization, Marxism, class consciousness and slaves?


Do you say that to everyone who disagrees with you?

Dickegrobe said:
I'm a bit undecided about that currency thing being perceived as "social credit" in this discussion here. I'd say that - for now (e.i. episode 1) - it's just plain currency. Also, the setting seems more like a corporate-driven dystopia to me - I mean isn't that "love" crap literally about buying shit?

FANTAMELONSODA said:

First, you said Yurei Deco borrowed ideas from Deca-Dence without explaining which ideas

FANTAMELONSODA said:
so I explained the main ideas in Deca-Dence that you might be referring to

FANTAMELONSODA said:
making it third-rate schlock

FANTAMELONSODA said:
dismiss Deca-Dence's value and possibility as a source of inspiration to a Japan Purple Ribbon winner (Masaaki Yuasa).

FANTAMELONSODA said:
The alien robots could've represented the capitalist class in real life, and humans the proletariat

FANTAMELONSODA said:
But then you adamantly tried to qualify Deca-Dence as some Marxist work

FANTAMELONSODA said:
when it is quite clear you are unfamiliar with Marxism

FANTAMELONSODA said:
erroneously calling a literal capitalist corporation as Marxist

FANTAMELONSODA said:
But conceptually, as it was written by Marxist critic of otaku culture Hiroki Azuma

FANTAMELONSODA said:
it was extremely interesting: post-scarcity postmodern world where virtual goods take the place of real ones.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Virtuality is a postmodern concept where symbols lose their referents, and yet the symbols are treated as the referent.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
AI is not a symbol referring to something else, it is literally the thing itself.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Artificial is NOT equal to virtual.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Sci-Fi dystopias with cyborgs are NOT virtual dystopias

FANTAMELONSODA said:
because cyborgs are not virtual

FANTAMELONSODA said:
If you are so confident with your authority over the equivalence of artificial and virtual you can publish your work at arXiv or you can start by editing the wikipedia page.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
In Deca-Dence, there literally is no virtual reality, just remote avatars.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
That is not what virtual reality is.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
If a surgeon is using a remote avatar to do a heart transplant, everything happening there is not virtual, the transplant is actual.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
In Deca-Dence, the Ranker system is not the mandatory economic/social currency for all robots, unlike the Love currency in Yurei Deco.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
punished in the very real robot gulag--not virtual as you claim it to be.

alshu said:


And from my point of view it is you misinterpreting Deca-Dance also having no idea how communist corporations work (unsurprisingly very similar to the capitalist ones).

FANTAMELONSODA said:

COMMUNIST CORPORATIONS. LMFAO..

FANTAMELONSODA said:
First you equate robots with virtuality.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Then you equate a MEGACORPORATION with COMMUNISM lmfao.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
The great robot sci-fi authors such as Asimov didn't write their works

FANTAMELONSODA said:
treat AI as virtual--these works attempt to render the robot-human dichotomy as nonsense (in a mostly functionalist, and sometimes also physicalist sense).

FANTAMELONSODA said:
In Deca-Dence, they are embodied agents with a physical--not virtual--body.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Even their avatars are not virtual, they are physical.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
In Deca-Dence, Solid Quake is a literal MEGACORPORATION governed by authoritarian rule, and is not communist.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
The robots don't own the means of production, it's just one entity.

alshu said:

Big corporations owned by the government were a thing in the Eastern Block, still are in China for example...are even growing bigger.
Chances are the device you are using to read this was made by such.


Those robots were totally communicating via virtual reality, no matter how narrow minded you are using said sci-fi terms.


Yeah, repeat that one more time, still industry and economy, even in their communist versions need big structures like that.


Yep, internet and virtual reality wasn't a thing back in the Golden Age of sci-fi. Authors begun exploring such ideas later in the New Wave era...but still not a smaller scale.


Using fancy words which make no sense when added together to demonstrate mock my idea what is going on in Deca-Dance is fun but doesn't convince me.


But they also use virtual reality.


Both their human-like bodies (avatars) and actual robot bodies are physical...still they control their avatars via virtual reality and perceive the actual world with their actual bodies trough augmented reality (well most of the time).


- As previously mentioned the existence of megacoporations is compatible with a communist type of economy.
- Authoritarian rule totally possible with a communist type of government too.
- I think (and this was my point from the get go) we see some traits in their society which point at a communist type of society.


Communism doesn't work like that. In theory everybody owns part of everything but the government (the system or whatever) is managing it for them all. It provides you with some basic stuff (free education, free healthcare) but than it's up to you to become more skillful and useful to it, thus rise in the ranks. The higher your rank is, the more personal resources you will get...
And megacoporations totally can exist in such system, not to mention you need them in order to use a simple everyday object like a smartphone. A complex conglomerate of different companies working in several types of industries (heavy and light) is needed only to produce it...even bigger conglomerate to build and maintain the cell towers...even bigger for a worldwide computer network...ect.

FANTAMELONSODA said:

You are making your own definitions of already established terms.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Virtual reality is defined as COMPLETE simulation, which substitutes "real reality".

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Virtual reality is DISTINCT from augmented

FANTAMELONSODA said:
These are no-nonsense, fancy words.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
These are complicated topics that need nuance that you refuse to comprehend

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Equating AI with virtual reality is so mind-numbingly laughable

FANTAMELONSODA said:
but I still left you with vectors of justifying the "virtuality" of AI by mentioning functionalism and physicalism (which are not fancy words, these literally mean what they say: function, and physicality).

FANTAMELONSODA said:
There are NO corporations in Marx's Communism.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
In the Soviet Union, they had enterprises

FANTAMELONSODA said:
but they are NOT a Communist country

FANTAMELONSODA said:
you don't get to blur these definitions just because you want so badly to qualify your wrong opinions

FANTAMELONSODA said:
MEGACORPORATION that is owned by one entity.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
In the single episode that we have of Yurei Deco, we see a completely Virtual World running parallel to the real world

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Now where in Deca-Dence did they explicate this?

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Your only vector is qualifying Deca-Dence as "Virtual Reality" because "Robots are Virtual"

alshu said:

Or you are using those inappropriately.


Yep, they are using that too, but interact with the real world too...is this inconceivable?


Yes, and augmented reality is layering virtual reality over real reality...so you need virtual reality in the first place.


In your previous post you used some fancy words like robot-human dichotomy in a sentence which didn't make sense to me...thus I complained about.
So when you use such terminology better apply it to say something not just to flash out your glossary.


Naaah, you weren't going that deep with said sentence.


I never did that. Virtual reality is more of a media...maybe you need some AIs to run it, but I didn't go in that direction.
What I talked is about AIs living in it and interacting with it, but also having some relations with the real world too. Is that unthinkable?


Lorem Ipsum it is.


But you have industry in that concept...thus you must have industrial corporations.


Same difference.


The Eastern Block wasn't too, but those are the only IRL examples closest to a communist type of economy...and those were/are pretty close to their western counterparts. The main difference being centralized management from the government which is kind of slow to react to changing economical circumstances or can hinder for purely political reasons.


Or you are using those definitions in very limited and twisted ways.


And that entity can be the government or some sort of international organization.


We have that in Deca-Dance too.


We see switching between full virtual reality, to augmented reality to reality. From human and robot perspective.


Yey for always misquote and misinterpret me!
What part of they are robots who use virtual rea...you know what, I don't care anymore. You are obviously trashposting at this point.
There are other shows which use a mix of AIs, cyborgs, robots, mechs, virtual reality, augmented reality and this on multiple layers...titles like Ghost In The Shell and Psycho Pass for example.
As motioned the relations I see between Deca-Dance and Yurei Deco are more on the level how some of those are played with.
If you don't see such connections you can only disagree, You also can disagree with my ways of using sci-fi, political and economical jargon. Tho you are not convince me tho change them.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
because this is extremely funny to me

FANTAMELONSODA said:
just because you can't accept you're wrong

FANTAMELONSODA said:
"Communist Corporations" "same difference" LOL so Communism and Capitalism are the same in your head too? LMFAO.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
You aren't even giving ACTUAL EXAMPLES of virtual reality in Deca-Dence.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Deca-Dence is NOT a Virtual World.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
The robot world is NOT a Virtual World.

FANTAMELONSODA said:
you don't even have the slightest clue what "virtual" means

FANTAMELONSODA said:
Not all cyborg/AI shows have a virtuality theme

alshu said:

You are easy to please I guess.


But I am not.


I was talking about the common taints which are somehow inevitable from industrial point of view...but of course you will twist the things as if I said they are one and the some...
Wow, entertainment!


Why should I? We are not doing a deep analysis, just talking about "Why X cartoon reminds me if Y cartoon". Not to mention if you want the episodes and the time codes I should rewatch it again or something...not in the mood for that.


Not the whole show...there are instances of charters on it who diving in such.


It is real and also it has virtual world in it, which the robots use to live in. They occasionality dive in or out. Sometimes communicate via, in or out of it.


Not by your twisted definition.


This one has.

alshu said:



Why should I? We are not doing a deep analysis, just talking about "Why X cartoon reminds me if Y cartoon". Not to mention if you want the episodes and the time codes I should rewatch it again or something...not in the mood for that.

FANTAMELONSODA said:



Also to help you with your elementary English vocabulary I'm going to link the definitions so you can learn something:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichotomy#Usage_and_examples
Human Robot Dichotomy therefore is a conceptual division between humans and sentient machines that implies different ethical treatments, much like the Gender Binary. Most cyborg sci-fi questions this dichotomy, and Ghost in the Shell goes so far as to refer to an emergent "consciousness" called Ghosts in machines.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/
Physicalism means EVERYTHING, even concepts and consciousness, can be explained physically, in the form of matter or energy and the physical relationship between them. Physicalism can both be used FOR and AGAINST the human robot dichotomy. For FOR, a robot brain that is physically equivalent to the human brain are equal, OR the more controversial FOR is that human consciousness is an illusion, therefore it is wrong to assume robots don't "experience" the same illusory consciousness, even if they're made purely of code. AGAINST is just negation of FOR with robots not having the exact physical model of human consciousness not being considered conscious.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/functionalism/
Functionalism is used in theories of mind where the physical state of the object is not relevant, only its behavior (function) in relation to others in the environment. Machine State Functionalism goes so far as to propose a computational model of mind that subsumes human, animal, and machine cognition. In this view, there is no human-machine dichotomy, and both are computational "animals".

Physicalism and functionalism are two of the MOST important concepts when thinking about AI and the human-machine dichotomy. These are important because YOU treat Robot interaction as virtual when they are simply communicating electronically as opposed to robots MEDIATING their communications with NON-PHYSICAL symbols. When a robot talks to another robot through a webcam, that is NOT necessarily virtual reality unless they manipulate their images on screen. When a robot uses a remote physical avatar to interact with humans, that is not virtual reality. There is no mediation between what they see in Deca-Dence, they are literally seeing the reality of human deaths and gadoll destruction. To help you visualize this, instead of treating the robots in Deca-Dence as robots, treat them as humans. The story then becomes: a previously enslaved class of humans (Robots) rises against their masters (Humans) and forms a CAPITALIST MEGACORPORATION that buys the rights to the ex-master humans to be treated as slaves in a theme park (where does Marx condone the existence of slaves again?). These ex-slave humans (robots) live their lives under authoritarian rule as the CAPITALIST MEGACORPORATION is owned and governed by one entity. These ex-slave humans use remote-avatars to interact with DECA-DENCE. It is clearer to see the dichotomy dissolve with this simple cognitive trick. The communications between these ex-slave humans aren't the same kind of mediated communications in Yurei Deco.

FANTAMELONSODA said:

Also lmao at "COMMUNIST ROBOT CORPORATION THAT HAS A LITERAL SLAVE PROLETARIAT HUMAN CLASS"