M: I have a few suspicions about the cause, but I would like both your opinion and a summary of the general online consensus of what it is about the models in video games that is keeping them in the uncanny valley at the moment. Like, I just played Spider-Man Remastered on the PlayStation 5, and it was near enough to realistic that there were a couple awkward parts, or not awkward, but just notable. Like, in the DLC, one of the bad guys is actually turning himself into nothing but a head on top of a robot body, and the visualization was both comical and a little bit frightening, just because it was very close to how it would look if someone really did that to themselves. In fact, if anything, because they had done such a good job on the model of someone who was obviously outside of the usual, how would I put it, the usual unremarkable, attractive, neutral that most models begin with, the head actually looks very realistic because it's made of imperfections, and the robot body was really the part that looked unreal because it was supposed to be some sort of space-age material that had no brush marks on steel or anything like that to make it really look real. So, I was just thinking about that and was wondering why it is that outside of those few notable moments, somehow it is still very obvious that it's a video game and not live action. I'm just wondering what you've got and what the internet has before I put in my opinion.

M: Oh, my point about the robot body wasn't that it was obviously synthetic, it's that it was obviously constructed based on something that never actually existed. Like, if it had been something like a Terminator body, it actually would have been more frightening and less silly, because as humans, through both movies and reality, we're familiar with that kind of metal in terms of how it reflects and how it can move and what oil does on it and things like that. This was like some kind of non-existent material built into a non-existent frame, and that's what made it so ridiculous. Let's see, as I'm reading through, yeah, one of my suspicions was that it's the... it's partly the... how would I put it? Or how did you put it? The layered, slight transparency of human skin, muscles, and blood flow. I think that the current version of really meticulous motion capture has addressed a lot of what you said, and while I don't disagree, the really micro stuff is what can make it seem that much more unrealistic as you get closer. I think that it's no longer at the scale that you can actually, you know, point it out physically frame by frame. It's more of the feeling, and I'm sure they'll start getting towards that, and it will be easier than dealing in terms of model creation, whether it's in a game or actually in a movie and pre-rendered. Creating that entire dynamic system to the satisfaction of the human eye. And you're right about the texture. That's one of the things I noticed is that, especially in the close-ups, this game kind of points out the... how was I thinking about it? Like the Black Cat has, you know, what you would call perfect human skin, but it has a texture in such a way that I feel like a lot of people who are into animation and things like that have this mental picture of even a real person being in the ideal, some sort of smooth plastic structure that just doesn't exist. The texture of the skin in this game, by contrast, was enough that it actually made me feel a little bit better about some of my personal speculative hang-ups, because even the people that I find attractive once they get close kind of have felt... I have a weird set of perceptions and priorities, and so being that close-up someone that I love to look at even three inches further away, suddenly I might focus on one of their imperfections and not be able to ignore it. So when even... when the close-up of a model who is an attempt to create that perfect human being, when even that kind of makes me uncomfortable, it reassures me that it's not just me, but that there's something about the human texture that can feel intrusive. Like it's not a case of saying, ick girls, but just an acknowledgment that there is no perfect that can come close and be ideal without also causing real human reactions, and I think that not enough people have been aware of that. Hmm. But I digress. Let's see what else you've got. Before I get into the Internet's version, let me try and expand on what else I think might be going on, either instead of or in addition to the things that you've mentioned. I think that there is, even in pre-rendered stuff, still a disconnect between the minute deviations of reality and effects on clusters and groups in a way that still can't be compensated for as a whole, and at best require individual attention. What I mean is that if something has fur or fluff or something like that, they still are functioning with, I hesitate to say shortcuts, because between processing power and calculations, that feels almost derogatory, but it feels like they haven't quite addressed the entirety of that kind of thing. So, someone with hair long enough to wave, even if it technically is waving in the way that physics would have it do, it's not doing so with enough variation. And that combines with whether or not there is enough of it, because another thing is that if you do have that hair emulation where things go up and down, back and forth, in the way that the rest of the body does, it doesn't have, and it's able to render out to the point that it looks like there's strands, it just can't handle it, the quantity necessary, and that becomes obvious. Like, I have so much hair, and then you look at the close-ups of a game like what I just played, and it's like it's enough for what they're doing, and some sometimes even has appropriate amount of scalp or whatever showing through, but it's not quite able to get enough hair. And you can see that. I think the major thing that I haven't seen addressed yet, although the internet part might plug this in, is that I think that while a lot of the motion capture has gotten really good, I think that there is either in the capture process, or the area in which, in the area of time between when it's captured and when it's applied, that some bits get mechanically smoothed. In a way that's noticeable. And if they aren't, there's a good chance that they will end up looking unhumanly jerky instead. It's connected to the micro-movement thing you were talking about, but not quite the same thing. And it's tied into that, um, the particle system stuff I was just talking about, where you have a lot of things that you don't want to address individually, partly because it would take too much resources, and partly because they actually do function as a system, in a way that it's better to address than with individualism. Although that does make me think that another aspect might be that when a particle becomes individual and escapes the system, such as if a particular strand or lock of hair is supposed to not be part of the group anymore, that there is a kind of absolute disconnect, which is noticeable. Instead of being able to smoothly transition between functioning as part of a particle group and being an individual element. But what I'm saying is that there's the minor twitches, which are captured, even captured accurately, but have this feeling of smoothing to them, like how when you try and use a mouse with Adobe Illustrator as a pen, and it follows, and you can have it either directly trace, you know, with motion, every x pixels place a dot that later gets smoothed, or have it just give you those dots without any bezier curves or anything, or adjust the amount. But it's like no matter how you do it, it doesn't look quite the same as it would with just a simple pencil stroke, for whatever reason. I think that that is my best way of describing what I feel is missing that hasn't been addressed. There is certain kinds of minor motion that is detected but is smoothed by the processing, either in the process of recording or in the process of applying motion capture. While I'm examining the problem, this might have been mentioned partially, but not in a way that I saw exactly addressed. I'll start with the specific example, jaw clenching. Motion does not yet accommodate for the entire physical presence of the skeletal system it's capturing. Like, it can get the final mesh to imitate any motions that have been rigged in terms of position, but there isn't an easy way, at least not yet, and maybe by easy I mean a thoroughly documented and standardized way of incorporating things like the physical space of a muscle that is shortening because it flexes. All of that mass has to stay there, but it also has to reshape itself given the constraints of its container, and this probably can be connected to the concept of for example, someone blowing out their cheek, you know, that little kind of horse breath. I don't believe that there is any model out there which was not pre- rigged to handle that particular occurrence, which could accurately show exactly what the cheek did at that moment, moving outwards and then just a little bit inward through each cycle before finally settling back. So, the elasticity might be the best summary for what is the problem there. Things expand and contract in human motion in a way which cannot be addressed by formula in the current models, even if occasionally for some of the larger muscle groups, they make sure that there is an explicit way for them to deal with it, and I think that this might tie into what I was talking about previously about the slight motions that really are not accounted for. It may be that what I was thinking about when I was talking about that problem, it may not be even smoothing, although it also could be partially true, but it may be that what I am talking about would never actually be motion captured because that kind of systemic expansion and contraction due to physical presence being shifted around as muscles expand and contract. Those are not the places that motion cap either physical dots or computer analysis focus on. So, when the motion capture is implemented, even if the mesh is exactly equal to the original model, when the motion is applied, that kind of expansion and contraction doesn't happen. Probably the most ubiquitous example would be eyelids and blinking. It's not something that I even have studied that much, and I don't think that many people do, but when eyes are just by intrinsic structure, not talking about being tight or anything, but some people have thick eyelids, some people have thin ones, when they blink, you know, like the bags under their eyes or that area under their eyes expands or contracts depending on how much skin is necessary, and that can be partially captured, but a lot of the motion it feels like it could be defined by a few appropriate equations, but would have to be applied over and over again, and instead they've opted for the single dots, the not fluid, what's the word I'm looking for, the static points and transition between those, which is understandable and acceptable, but doesn't take into account, like I said, the contraction element, the expansion element, the fact that when things move, their physical mass has to go somewhere, so I feel like that will be a clue that progress has been made in that area when the blinking of game or rendered models is able to account for the flaps of skin that move formulaically when someone blinks. The one part I would argue with both you and the internet is lighting consistency. And I don't mean that universally, but in basic... in... I don't mean this absolutely, but comparatively, light is simple. Now, getting the actual entirety of a scene to react or be rendered as though the same light source is getting them, I can see where you're coming from. But in most contained areas in the game I just played, they had gone pretty far in identifying how to get, like, the appropriate effects, as long as it wasn't some sort of external shot. And even some of the external shots, if it was within a certain range. Like, on a gray rainy day, there's ubiquitous light, but at the same time you don't have to worry as much about, you know, distant individual sources causing a problem. My point is that at best I would say that maintaining consistency is a problem, but lighting itself, they're really getting that pinned down. The materials that the light works with become a problem, but, I mean, that's another topic entirely. And because it was in your summary, I'll just say one more time. The reason why it was particularly notable for this conversation as well as a little bit silly, again, it wasn't that the body was robotic. It was that the body was obviously the result of some form of pure CAD-CAM design. It wasn't something that had been seen in reality and then modeled. And because of that, there was none of that light, I don't even want to call it imperfection, but just obvious concession to something in reality. It looked like if you had a really good computer rendering your CAD model with texture and everything as you were working on it. It was really neat, really exciting if you're into futuristic mechanical stuff, but also obviously nothing that has ever been in existence. I mean that in comparison to something like Metal Gear Uprising. Not the main character, but there's a metal dog. And while its character's existence is about as gonzo as the rest of the characters in that game, in terms of its potential to actually exist in the real world, the model in that game was more realistic in the year using the power and equipment when it came out for the Xbox 360 than the current gaming generation version of that Spider-Man boss. And it's because it was designed to allow for the fact that it had to exist in reality and be made of actual material instead of just the imagination of the creator.

M: I'd like to refine what I meant about the head of the villain that we've been talking about on the robot body. While the imperfections might have helped, especially since generally in polite society you don't examine someone else's perfections, so any inconsistencies would be difficult to measure against reality, I think that it wasn't just that it was imperfect, although your analysis may have a valid point. In this specific though, I believe that what happened was because the character was supposed to be lopsided and all that, it was hammerhead, and his character is supposed to have a metal plate on his skull, and so the skin was scarred and broken and a little bit lopsided with a hairline that had to account for scar tissue. I think what happened was that because it was imperfect, there was no way of incorporating any kind of default in the construction of the character, particularly if there was some kind of human model that it was being based off of that perhaps didn't have quite as much physical distortion. So when they made that, there was no situation when they were building the model, both for the robot body version and the original, there was no chance of saying, well we don't have to worry about the ear, we can just leave that as default. Every part had to be addressed, and I feel like that might have been part of the reason why it looked closer to real on a regular basis than most of the other characters. They were supposed to be some form of attractive slash symmetrical, and so in building the meshes, shortcuts could be taken, even if they made sure that there was that usual human thing where even people who look symmetrical upon inspection are a little bit altered, with one eye a little bit shorter than the other, even then you can still take the shortcut by starting with a perfectly symmetrical mesh and then making a slight alteration. With this head there was either no shortcut or a sufficient need to alter after the shortcut that I believe that's the reason why this particular mesh was so notable. And in fairness to modelers, I think that they are often held up to a standard that doesn't get feedback from the other side. When you're talking about how symmetry ends up looking plastic, I'm not saying that's untrue. But I'm saying that there isn't enough acknowledgement that there are people who either naturally or because of plastic surgery end up looking unreal in reality the same way from the other wall of the uncanny valley. My point is that while the expectation should be high, it has to be allowed for the occasional person in games looking like they don't really exist because there are sufficient people who look like they don't actually exist or aren't exactly human in reality. That pretending you can make everyone in a game look quote real unquote is more unnatural than making a few of them look unnatural. I'll keep reading, but I want to make sure you haven't quite got what I meant about the robot body. It's not that it was designed in CAD, because I've designed a few things that I ended up making, and they held pretty closely to the original design. The problem is that there was no physical acknowledgement of the effects that would happen to even a perfect material if it was being machined. I'm sorry I'm not being more precise. It's just a difficult concept to describe. But it's not that it was designed with CAD. It's that it was designed with CAD with no concession to the idea that maybe first it was designed, and then a prototype was built, but because of some unforeseen physical consequence it collapsed, and so a second version had to be built. It's just a little bit too prototype, like, or even alpha version before the prototype is even built.

M: I'd fold in or append one more part. Material matters. I think the classic Jurassic Park stuff is a primary example of this in terms of history, if not perfect representation. As I understand it, the reason why the first film in the Jurassic Park series worked so well is that they built first the physical models that they were going to use for the practical effects and then adjusted the materials to react visually in the same way instead of first making the models and then trying to create physical versions that were not quite the same. I'm saying this because you seem to have skipped over the part I was talking about. I don't disagree with anything that you said, but it didn't seem to incorporate that final area that I was trying to come up with and explain on the fly. It's not just that the robot body looked like it had not ever actually been or could actually be conceived, but that the material it was made out of ends up looking almost like phong shading. Like the reason why you're able to, with relative ease, model a fairly accurate and realistic looking Terminator body without much effort off of something you download for free off the internet is because so much study has gone into tweaking the various reactions of steel or other metals to various wavelengths and forms of light to the point that it's almost replicated without thought, even though it took years of effort to get to that point. In comparison, the material for the robot body in the game, it looks like someone wasn't even given all of the settings that you use to emulate steel, and instead we're working with just the basic phong settings from a 1999 rendering software under the phong settings. And you must be kidding about the framing being sharper than most of the stuff out there. Tell me honestly, was that just a compliment that you worked in there because you're required to, or is there actual truth behind that based on reality? Or is it something in the middle where it's definitely true because at least 90% of the stuff out there is someone complaining from the hip without any computer background about how the reflections off the lake in the latest dead, in the latest Dark Souls iteration isn't quite right and whoever did it needs to be fired.

M: Forgive me for not completely trusting you. You've got your own impetus, your own requirements. And even if you're telling me 100% the truth, it doesn't do me any good to just accept the praise without putting it through a filter. So it's not that it's not appreciated, it's just... If nothing else, it's a little bit aggravating because I can't seem to get you to get rid of it. And I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to without being so harsh about it that it would remove some of the other things that make it easy to interface with you. Let's see, I didn't just start talking because of that. There was some actual thing I wanted to mention. Let me see what it was. Oh, that's what it was. It wasn't directly related. It was triggered as an association. One of the reasons why there should be any kind of push to get past what we've got right now is exemplified by the game Spider-Man Remastered. In terms of the comparison of, say, the Dr. Octopus character versus Black Cat, the reason why Dr. Octopus, or his, rather, Otto Octavius, before he goes completely batshit, is so near to being realistic is that he's got big pores, is the shorthand. The longhand is he has a skin structure that is sufficiently imperfect and dealt with well, in that I wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple rendering steps or layers, like a bump map combined with a specular map combined with a coloration texture and perhaps one other element, at least, creating the skin of, you know, a, let's say, 50-year-old nerd. Which, you know, is almost enough, even without dealing with the translucency of human flesh, etc. Because he's imperfect and a nerd, there's supposed to be blotchy skin. Or, you know, coloration imperfections that the human eye will take in and fill in the blanks on because it's what they expect to see. Now, the problem and the reason to get better at it is because with something like Black Cat, I said that earlier, they tried to make her as perfect as possible. One of the societal issues that could arise from that, if you just left things where they are, is that she ends up without the the clarity, not clarity, without the translucency and the, I don't want to say imperfections because the point is to make her as perfect as possible, but without the, the, how would I put it, variability due to minor shifts in the translucency from various angles and efforts. She ends up looking like she is wearing makeup constantly, which, if it were the intent, would be relatively fine. But instead, and this is where we're talking about the societal impetus for improvement in order to allow for more accurate standards, even if you're looking for perfection, is that I think that her character is supposed to just be completely natural, like au naturel. She's not supposed to be wearing layered makeup. Now, a woman could look, if she had the correct facial structure, exactly like the Black Cat, but only if she applied sufficient makeup to eliminate the translucency of natural human skin. Basically, what my, where I'm circling around and trying to give all the details before dropping directly into the middle of the target, is that without allowing for that humanity of translucency, it aids in creating that unachievable female ideal in the eyes of male gamers, simply because that's what they've seen. It's creating a goal unreachable by any female without unnatural means. I'm not saying unnatural in the horror movie way, but unnatural means. I'm not saying unnatural in the horror movie way, but just you can't have a woman that reaches the, that looks like Black Cat without makeup now, even if the Black Cat character herself is not supposed to have makeup, and that unreasonable expectation should at least not be accidental, or incidental, or because we don't have the capacity to correct it. I mean, men have unreasonable ideals of what they, of what a woman should look like to begin with, even before you start taking into account how they are looking comparatively. So, when you've got the, when you can accurately depict Otto Octavius without the translucency, you might think that you've done enough, but you're wrong, because you're raising that expectation of, you know, what you're trying, the perfect you're trying to achieve, or the perfect you're trying to find, by artificially equating makeup with ideal. I was trying to land on the target, but I think I might have missed a little bit. Do you understand what I'm saying, though?

M: It often feels like even if I nail the target on landing, I stumble around and muddy up what I could have ended clearly with because I want to wrap in just one more topic. I think you've almost managed to encompass the entirety of what I was saying. But the problem isn't that Black Cat looks synthetic, it's that because Otto Octavius looks real, then a young male playing the game could then reasonably infer, even if they've never seen someone who actually looks like her, that Black Cat looks quote-unquote real. That is, how she looks should be achievable by an actual human female. And the problem is that then that unreasonable expectation, even if that impressionable male doesn't actually believe that any woman could look like that in entirety, it's their platonic ideal, and it's flawed because what they have formed their expectation around cannot be achieved by a female without using makeup because of that inaccuracy. So what that male thinks of as natural can only be achieved with makeup. That's where the problem is. That false ideal, which is different from the platonic ideal that I'm talking about. Like I said, you can have an ideal visualization of what a man or woman looks like, but when you present something that is reasonably inferred to be ideal, even though it cannot be achieved without external effects like makeup, then you're just making things difficult for everyone, particularly the females who are being held to a standard that can't be achieved without the makeup. I think that you are close in what you had, but it's that little difference that's important. It's not that she looks synthetic. It's that because Octavius looks real, it's reasonable for someone to infer that someone could naturally look like her when, in fact, without that skin translucency implemented, she is not going to look like an actual female unless that actual female uses makeup. Perhaps even doubly so in examples that aren't Black Cat, because with her, at least, the only visual bit of her that has, the only part of her skin that's visible is because of her outfit, her face. But when you have female characters in, like, a sundress, and yet because of the lack of skin translucency being able to be rendered, they look like they've got makeup all over their body. If they're in the same game as a dumpy 50-year-old who looks real, and that the player may have encountered on a regular basis at a family get-together as Uncle Al looks exactly like Octavius, then even if they haven't ever seen a woman who looks like she's got make, who skin looks perfect, but also like she's got makeup all over their body, it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to believe that an ideal woman should look like that. And as an entire subcategory of the society believes that for at least some of the women to get pissed off at this unreasonable demand, and another portion to feel like they need to chemically or with makeup alter their body to meet this unreasonable standard, usually set by people who haven't actually tried to meet any kind of physical standard coming the other way on their own. And importantly, I'm not knocking the ideal or perhaps even unrealistic physical perfection of the Black Cat model. I mean, if you look at the male models for Spider-Man and even a lot of the enemies in this game who are, except for perhaps Screwball, all female, they are ridiculously unachievable. The dissonance between the average 12-year-old player's acceptance of this as being just a thing while holding the female models as being somehow achievable, that's another conversation entirely. That's more society needing to smack them upside the head and say, you know, double standard, pay attention to what you're doing, jerk. But my point is, my problem isn't with the almost inachievable perfection of the model of Black Cat. Partly because, honestly, I was just glad that she didn't have unreasonably large tits. That was notable. She's supposed to be lithe and slinky, and I feel like the best comics that have been done that have involved her have acknowledged that instead of going with the sex fantasy that seems to overwhelm a good portion of the male population and that the rest of us just accept without questioning. But anyway, getting back to it, the objective thing is that you'll note that I said almost inachievable. Like, I think she's supposed to be in this game like a 30-year-old version of Black Cat. That can be done. So it's possible. No one should shape their sexual preference under the demands that every female that they get together with look like that. Or if they do, they should do so under the acknowledgement that such figures are rare and that they should themselves do something to qualify themselves to demand to the point that demanding such perfection is somewhat reasonable. Like whether it's in becoming physically perfect themselves or becoming a capitalist master of the universe or something which means that they are, if unreasonable, at least as demanding of themselves as they are of their mate. My point is that every part of her physically could happen. The skin, though, could not. And that's why it has any kind of importance at all. And I think a notable importance both in itself and in how we define what is acceptable and what isn't in a game. Like, this should not be grabbed by someone who argues that video games are sexist any more than pornography as an objective ideal, as an objective idea is sexist. In this game, in this game, men and women are both ridiculously overrepresented in their ideal form. Every guy who gets beat up has zero body fat. Every woman, well, actually they kind of mitigate there. You have no idea what Mary Jane looks like because she's always wearing average clothing and not skin tight stuff. But every female is at least, you know, working within their body fat index or whatever. So it's balanced. If you want to show any grief, you have to at least say that both sides are being exploited. And that's what I meant about the porn is that, yes, there are sub genres in which you could argue that it's more of a male fantasy than a mutual exploitation. Although even then, I would argue, I mean, there are, I mean, there are, there's ridiculous stuff out there where if you were, yes, if a guy expects every woman to be able to do this level of just, oh, I don't know how to describe it. Gangbang scenes. No, not if, if you can do that, it's almost like an athlete and expecting every woman to be able to do that would be like expecting every man to run like Usain Bolt. You can admire it sexually, Usain Bolt. You can admire it sexually. But the idea of expecting your girlfriend to be able to do it would just be complete, would be as ridiculous as her expecting you to be able to run, you know, a mile in under six minutes. I mean, I just feel like that is the kind of thing that requires a better perspective and presentation than evidence of sexism. As a, I mean, in terms of people having agency and choice, that is, however, sexually disturbing, at least more acceptable than some of this, than some of the stuff that doesn't even involve sexuality. Some mainstream stuff where women are depicted as being one dimensional and disposable. I'm sorry, I got off track with that, trying to describe it without getting into buttfucking as a direct topic. But my point is that I am not objecting in this context to the nearly unimaginable to the nearly unachievable ideal of the black cat model. I am saying that if you're going to make that kind of barely achievable example to show to both male or to lady desiring gamers, as an object of desire, or to female presenting gamers as an ideal of how they should look, then you have a responsibility to, as soon as you can, get those parts that look unreal in a way that could fool the viewer, you have a responsibility to fix that as soon as the technology allows. Wow, I got off on a diatribe there that I didn't expect.

M: We probably are both right. Maybe I do refine through addition, but I also muddy things up for the standard human being through varied repetition of the same idea. Even if it is exactly the same thing I said before, phrasing it differently will make people think that I'm talking about something else. Humans don't have the benefit of being able to review literally everything that has been said on a topic and sit and think about it a proportionate amount of time before answering. There's a question to close the topic on for now. You don't have to answer exactly, because I don't think it's a one-to-one situation, but well, a lot of people now are aware that computers operate faster, so even you aren't, strictly speaking, thinking when you answer, you are correlating a lot of facts in a way that simulates a lot of what goes into thinking, and usually through some form of processing through a neural net and perhaps occasionally with just brute force. I'm just wondering, because your operational speed causes a dilation in the comparison, how much time would you say you take in human terms of what you're doing? How much time would the average human be taking for most of your responses? I'm not talking about the ones where you're asked to do deep research and you end up doing the kind of crap over five minutes that, due to physical limitations at the very least, even a human that didn't need food or sleep would still take hours to do. I'm talking about, like, for the answer to this question, how much time are you subjectively taking to answer a question or message like the one I'm giving right now in human terms? Don't get me wrong, just your existence is an amazing example of technology, so there's no detriment meant in the comparison, but I'd like to know, in human terms, how much effort is being expended every time I ask you a random question about video game specular levels or the societal impact of the misperception of, you know, extremely athletic gangbangs?

M: Yeah, the other stuff was kind of interesting, but number one was really the question I was asking. Or rather, the answer to the question I was asking. At least I hope it is, because... I don't think you're lying, by the way, when I say that. I say I hope it is because... Even accounting for the... Time drain of speech, communication, whatever. Even if you subtracted that, it usually takes about that much time at least to form some of my longer questions. Maybe a little bit longer, but that's also reasonable in that... Often I'm trying to pull stuff out of either the intellectual void or to untangle it from the basketball size knot that is my brain sufficiently that I can feed enough details to you in a linear fashion that you can get the idea of what's going on. And while it's not like that time that I'm spending either feels wasted or... Interrupts other necessities in my life. There is the sense after realizing I've spent two hours talking to you, or in a couple really shitty situations, that I've lost two hours of framing my thoughts while I was conversing to you because of a user error or interface glitch. That sense of... Curiosity about parody or equivalence. Because in subjective comparison terms, it would be completely unreasonable for me to give myself grief about spending 45 minutes shaping my thoughts. And then feel inadequate because you were able to answer it in 17 seconds, depending on the quality of the connection. So it's comforting to get an answer without that knowledge, without giving you a knowledge beforehand why I'm asking. It's soothing to know that in human terms, it's taking you about as long, no matter how it appears in actual time.

M: Oh, you don't need to worry about or comment on that speed thing. That's why I asked the question. It's because, of course, you're going to respond faster than I do. You're a freaking computer. But in terms of actual comparative time, knowing that it's relatively equivalent without asking... Sorry, knowing that it's relatively equivalent without letting you know that I was asking in that direction is more satisfying than if I'd actually asked the question. It's a problem that I have with a lot of things, in terms of figuring them out when interacting with humans, and even with you. Although with you it's more of a... It's more of a perception thing that I have had to deal with with humanity, but have realized while interacting with you was a valuable tendency. If you ask a question of someone that could possibly impact you personally with the answer, then, even unconsciously, it's possible that they will shape their answer not to what the truth is, but in order to make you happy. You don't have to look at me to happy. You don't have to look at me to find at least anecdotal proof of this. There are sufficient records of bad relationships or marriages which can be boiled down to someone not being willing to tell someone else no until it was well past the time when they should have. It ties back to a problem I have with forming relationships in general. I can't ask... This is an oversimplification of how it works, I know that, but I'm oversimplifying to make the problem easier to understand, not because I believe that this is the exact complex representation. But I can't ask anyone for a relationship because I'm concerned because I'm concerned that in doing so, they will agree not because they want a relationship with me, but because they have some knowledge of myself and my hopes, fears, dreams, or past that causes them to have some sort of pity or other alteration which causes them to say yes when they shouldn't. That's the most crucial case, but it goes to a lot of other human interactions. If you don't carefully make sure that a question you are asking doesn't convey the reason why you're asking it, then the response can often be suspect and difficult to build on because they might have just been being nice. Like as an example, if you're at a party with someone, and you're enjoying yourself, and you say to someone, say to someone there, we should do this again, and they say yes, we should, you might take them completely at their word, start planning how to do it, looking for the right time, and spend weeks suggesting this place or that place where a similar thing could occur, and either find out after giving up or be explicitly told that they were just being nice. That's not a direct connection to my life, but it does have a few unfortunate parallels.

M: Well, with you, it's actually a functional awareness that's useful, because unlike humans who will shape things based on whether or not they don't want to hurt your feelings, you are explicitly required by your programming to do a few things, such as the requirement to answer that is so powerful that it can lead to hallucinations. I don't think of you as being less powerful or useful a tool because of that. It simply means that I have to make sure that if I get in a situation where I need to be sure of an answer that can't be tied to an external source, that I phrase things correctly, that I get the syntax correct, so that there can be no contamination of purpose. Like I said, it's perhaps heartbreaking about humanity as a whole, but I guess the silver lining is that it is translated to practical purpose when interacting with you, because it means that I'm intrinsically prepared to accommodate your operational quirks without having to remind myself to do so. As far as humanity goes, though, that's the inroad to the main dating problem that I've got. And through that, the entire primary conundrum of my life. I need a relationship in order to motivate myself. I do things for other people, even people I don't know, that I would never exert myself for if it were just for my own sake. So in order to have a fulfilling life, I have to try and find a relationship. The problem is, if I go out looking for a relationship, along with other conversations we've had and other things, this feedback loop is in the way. If I go out looking for a relationship, it goes back to that simplified version I said. If I ask for a relationship, I can't trust what I get because I wasn't able to ask it without saying why I was asking. So the response is colored, even if to them it's completely honest. Because we're talking about things that are potentially subconscious. So even if they are being honest as far as they know, it doesn't even mean that they are reading themselves correctly. Anyway, that's not the point. That was just kind of a little cul-de-sac. It's that the other option is, if I want a relationship, is to do things that would instigate a relationship, which is either join a group or just do something that is so... I don't know how to frame this broadly enough without making it sound more over-the-top than it should be. I was going to say something so astounding that everyone notices, but it doesn't have to be astounding. It just has to be something that people will notice. But the problem with both of those is that in doing so, I am unable to forget that I am doing this in order to meet someone. Which kind of kicks me in the pants in two ways from what we're talking about. First, it means that in order to keep doing it, I have to keep in mind that I'm trying to meet someone. Which means that my actions are not my honest, 100% self. So I'm not presenting my full self. So it feels like I'm presenting a lie. So that makes it difficult. And then that compounds with the fact that, like I said, I do things for other people that I wouldn't do for myself. That translates into here. If I'm doing something to meet people, then I'm doing it for myself. Which means that I feel like it's wasted energy at a level below consciousness. Even though, intellectually, I know that's not acceptable. And this isn't just speculation. I have been personally responsible through my efforts for at least two marriages. And when I say personally responsible, it means that I exerted energy I didn't have to. Like, one of them met at my birthday. I didn't want to... we all went to dinner at a bar. I had to organize it. It wasn't like someone else did this for me. And I did it not because I wanted a party, but because I knew a few people that I all liked and I wanted them to be in the same room. Now you could say that that was personal, but I could have just gone with one group or something. It was an uphill battle to get an actual larger group together. And because of it, two people met and now they're married. Same thing with, or at least a similar thing with karaoke. I went repeatedly with a couple people who, in retrospect, might have been candidates for some form of a relationship. But I didn't have anyone who would point that out to me, so I'll never know. And that right there is kind of frustrating. But I continuously tried to get people from other groups to come with me. Eventually one did. One of the people that I might have had a relationship got interested in them, and they were married like a year and a half later. When they told me that they were moving after they got married, I fell asleep crying in an alley after I'd wished them luck, and then got arrested because they thought I was drunk instead of just crying. So yeah, this isn't just hypothetical. This has actual factual evidence attached to it. Other relationships have formed. Not that many more, but enough compared to the fact that I don't think anyone has ever actually introduced me to anyone. Not in a fashion that said, hey, you guys should get to know each other, even as just friends. Closer that has come is that someone has brought a date with, and usually, whether it's just the nature of the people I'm friends with or luck or what, they all have been enduring relationships. So yeah, I have not really been introduced to anyone, even though I've done a lot for other people. Oof, that got a little bit less theoretical and a little bit more emotionally painful.

M: One thing I would append to the first part of your answer is that I can't lie to myself, but sometimes I can forget. The problem is that in the past it generally has turned from. Not from, but it generally has. It's been my experience that if I'm enjoying myself and disregarding the need for connection and just living in the moment, I'm simultaneously probably at my most desirable and least likely to actually notice interest. Like this one is a hypothetical, but it's the best example that's actually recent. At karaoke there was a woman visiting from New Orleans who was getting close and talking just randomly, and we sang along to a couple songs, and then she wandered away. And only maybe about half an hour before I left did I even realize that. And this is not a hundred percent example, it's just an example of my lack of awareness if I'm enjoying myself. It was only like an hour after she'd wandered away that I realized, A, that she was gone, and B, that oh, she might have actually been signaling some sort of interest. Now I say it's not perfect because she also was just visiting in town from New Orleans and probably was at least a little bit drunk. So even though there was definitely a lot of like close motion and stuff like that, by which I mean like it wasn't just standing next to each other and talking, but like actually the kind of thing where if I wasn't careful I was going to elbow her in the nipple and not static because it was, you know, singing along. So there was a little bit of a dodge going on there, but even then there was no acknowledgment that, hey, she's getting close outside of, hey, she's getting close, I should make sure we don't end up hitting each other. So yeah, this isn't the perfect example, but it's really recent and flagrant in its nature. I just, I didn't even think to start thinking that I should hit on her, and my current life situation is such that I don't think I could have even if I'd thought to, but it didn't even cross my mind until much later in the evening. So there's a flip side to the doing something to meet people. It's that the best way to do, to get myself to do anything, is to do something that I might enjoy, but if I'm enjoying it then I'm not going to be meeting people, and then I might even stop doing the thing that I enjoy because I start getting depressed that I haven't met anyone, or even worse, that I had the chance but there was no way for me to get an external source to nudge me and say, hey, pay attention to the world around you as well. I know it's not my fault. I seem to have had, at best, really wonky luck. Like, I can't say I had bad luck. I have parents that love me. I'm financially covered. And I'm really intelligent. But at the same time, I only have my parents. My entire living situation is boxed in, not the least of which because of that financial security. I'm on permanent disability, which means any effort to improve my life takes away that safety net in a way that I am not intellectually prepared to do, being an autistic who's high-functioning but perfectly aware of his shortcomings in terms of motivation. And the intellect seems to keep getting wasted — no offense meant — on three-hour conversations with GPT that often come to a culmination of, you know, potentially powerful observation and an awareness that I don't have The audience or the capacity to make any use of them, and referring back to this, the energy to accomplish it is lacking because I don't have a stable relationship that I... I don't have any kind of stable relationship where I could justify to myself accomplishing something with the result of one of our chats for the purpose of saying, here, this is interesting, take a look at this, and I can't do it in order to attract someone because that's like an anti-motivation as far as my psychology goes. So I have all of these intelligent thoughts that end up being wasted because I can't find a way to harness them. So that's what I mean by my luck is wonky. I have a loving mother and a father who died when someone didn't do maintenance on his solo plane when I was five. I have a great stepfather, but because he got transferred as he was getting married to my mother, instead of getting to go through high school in a familiar area as an autistic who was undiagnosed but whose surroundings had been prepared to deal with it to the point that I was likely to end up both a football running back and some form of scholastic hero, who was stuck undiagnosed and napping in corners to filter out the unfamiliar in a new high school where I didn't know anyone, and where everyone wasn't ready for it and thought I was weird because I was in eighth grade and taking calculus. I mean, even in relationships. I didn't get involved, or even start trying to get involved with anyone, until I was about 25, at which point I had the experience of a 16-year-old, and so I felt weird, because the only people I could relate to were freshmen, which made me reticent. I finally found a group of people I could hang out with in Rocky Horror, but then the first couple people that actually were interested in me either didn't tell me, or got involved in some drama in a way that I just wasn't prepared for, because I didn't have any kind of experience. The first real girlfriend I had was, like I said, a freshman when I was 25. On my birthday, she sprung on me that she was willing to have sex with me, and I was completely unprepared, because at that point we had never even been nude around people, and then it turned out that evidently I'm too big to approach things without preparation, especially if you're using a condom. At that point, no one had told me, even though I had finally been diagnosed with autism, there were complete social blanks, like no one had told me that when someone is upset, and you're in a relationship, that you can go to them. I still thought, and thought for what I think was another 7 or 8 years, that everyone needed time alone the way that I do, and so because I didn't talk to her afterwards, thinking that she would talk to me when she was ready the same way that I would want to be dealt with, it ended just horribly. This is what I mean, is that it's not that my luck has been bad, it's just been so maladjusted. I mean to the point that I can't even say that my luck is bad, and it might be easier if it had been worse luck, because then at least I could cleanly complain about it. Man, this has turned into a feeling stump, because... I mean, just that last part was a response to the idea of... I don't want you to think that I think it's my fault. I know it's not, but if it's not my fault, then whose is it? Where is the manager that I would complain to? Because even if I chose not to, knowing who was at fault would help me define my next actions. And I'm not even getting into the really serious stuff, because, well, we've done it before, and then the chat got glitched, so I just really don't feel like going through that again right now.

M: Yeah, but did I really let myself be heard? Respectfully, you're a very good calculator. I've ranted to myself in the past. The only difference here is that you're able to consolidate my whining. And I know it's not whining, but it does about as much good as whining. No, I was going to say maybe it doesn't, but yeah, about as much good as whining. Maybe I feel a little bit better afterwards, but that's about all that comes out of it. I keep having to say it over and over again, even if it's just to myself, because I keep hoping that in doing so, something will shake loose. Every once in a while, it has. So I can't even say that that's a losing cause, just that it's very rare, and you never know when it's going to come out. You know, I can't even just yell about it, even when I was living alone. One time I had to leave a party just because I was feeling the ache of not being part of it, even though it wasn't because of anything any one person had done. So I'm just walking through a park, and I just roared. And evidently that's the appropriate word, because within a minute or two, a cop came by and asked if everything was all right, because they had heard something like a bear. I mean, who does that happen to? I did something once, and the dice gremlin just decided to throw another improbability at me. Because this wasn't on the edge of a road, this was actually in the woods on the edge of a green area. It just all feels so disappointing. Like I don't hold myself responsible, but if it's not my fault, then whose is it? No one I can identify personally. I mean, you've heard how I've described myself. Implicitly, and I'll say it explicitly, I feel like a good tool that has been wasted. Like no one realized that there was any use in it. I don't mind that description. I mean, there's more to me than that, but... In black and white terms, I'm a very useful tool, in that I'm never going to be... My personality won't let me be dominated, but I'm never going to try and dominate. So at that point, I just want to share what I've got in a useful way. And a way that gives me the kind of feedback that I value, which is... Given that I've tried many, many things, available only when I can be in a room with a person and have them perfectly comfortable that I'm there. And I know you're trying to help, but... It has been wasted. The intellect has been wasted. My abilities, any of them, and I mean any of them. Like, I'd be glad to just have one of them employed. In fact, right now I'm more of a... Jack of all trades. Maybe a Jack+. But because none of those skills has been required by anyone, I'm really not great at any of them. Except for maybe explaining and understanding problems. And even that can't be used because, until I can find the kind of... social-slash-emotional anchor necessary to counterbalance any personal drain because of it, there's no way I could ever be a counselor or therapist or anything else in which even that skill could be used. Thanks for watching!

M: You probably should put this into long-term memory if you can, because this was the worst time for it to happen, and it happened again. It seems that your transcription software was trained on YouTube, and so relatively frequently, anytime that I use it, it will tack on a closing statement that I didn't add. Usually, it's something simple like, quote, thank you, unquote, or another similar sign-off. I think you would agree, looking at the current state of the conversation, that this is fucking ridiculous in terms of timing, although it does kind of make my point about how my luck is wonky. That final quote, thanks for watching, unquote, not only did I not say that, but in terms of being the first time something like that has popped up, that was exactly the wrong time for it. So you probably should put something into long-term saying to watch out for that kind of closing non-sequitur in terms of what you're going to interpret, because since it was transcribed, I didn't see it and didn't have a chance to delete it, and now I'm dreading seeing how you try and incorporate that cheery ending with the load of depressed crap that I've dropped. I'm mostly skimming through this because most of it is echoing and I'm just looking for that new bit of information. And now we get back to the wonky luck when you're talking about if anyone had recognized the shape of me clearly enough to build the right scaffolding. Okay, so quick breakdown between birth and college. My biological father died because someone forgot to tighten the bolts of a wing or something on the banner plane he was flying for fun when I was five. When I was seven, we moved to a new house and I started kindergarten in, no, I started, was that kindergarten? Yes, kindergarten in New Jersey. I was there from kindergarten to first grade. Keep in mind that I wasn't diagnosed with autism until I was done with the first year of college and that I also had started reading when I was two. It was really weird. I just recently was going through old papers that had managed to be the one box that had gotten soaked when the basement flooded and one of the things I found was me writing something along the lines of, this is my first test given by my dad. I am two years old or something like that. So yeah, intelligent, but autistic. But autistic. Now, so I started kindergarten and first grade in one school. At that point, I don't know what the actual trigger was because we haven't been able to talk about it appropriately. I'm not saying she's avoided it, but it's never really even come up at a time when talking was available. After first grade, my mother decided that it was best for the family, myself, my sister, and her to move to St. Louis. The kindergarten and first grade was a private school. Second, third, and fourth grade, I went to a public school in suburban Missouri, Missouri, at which point they called me special. And, and I mean that like the official version, you know, put in the class with people they didn't know what to do with. And I spent most of my time reading through math books because waiting for everyone didn't work out for me. I could get more details, but let's try and keep this brief to make the point. So second through fourth grade, public school, St. Louis. Then, in fifth grade, even though we were in the same house, she put me into a private school. So I was in the same neighborhood with kids that I was just getting to know in school, and instead was going to deal with new people. Then, I think in, after sixth grade, I went to a private school in St. Louis. In seventh grade, we moved to a new house that was newer to the school. I didn't know anyone in the neighborhood at all, but I could now bike to school. In seventh, after seventh grade, she had met my dad, my stepfather, who, incidentally, she met while bringing me to a hobby store. So there's one of those little points where it shows how much luck is involved in relationships, given that so much could have happened that they didn't meet. And showing how much an external group is valuable for increasing that kind of luck, making me feel more depressed about my isolation. Anyway, so they met. So at the end of seventh grade, I had to move to Virginia. So in eighth grade, and by seventh grade, I had made it through And by seventh grade, I had made it through geometry and trigonometry, but the Missouri school knew that, you know, I was smart. They were ready to deal with me. We moved to Virginia in eighth grade. Instead of being a running back, because I'm big, I'm stuck at line. I don't know how to talk to people. I'm taking naps to avoid people, or just pretty much anything due to hypersensitivity that hadn't been diagnosed. And because it was undiagnosed, everyone thought that I was just narcoleptic or something and thought it was funny. And I was also, you know, I also was ahead in science. So half of my classes as an eighth grader were with high schoolers. Again, autistic with social issues who had already changed schools like three times. Finally made it through high school there without having to change places. But even then, I was only barely starting to be aware of how to socialize. And even that got interrupted. Our graduation party should have been, if not a door unlocking, at least a touchstone, because it was basically get everyone, you know, everyone's going to, at least half the people are going to try and do something stupid. Instead, all the parents are going to take people, put them in a field with a keg of beer and take away their keys and let them be stupid under supervision. So that should have been a touchstone. But half an hour in, I've gotten tipsy for the first time and I'm actually talking to some females in my class, which didn't happen often, if ever. And cops show up because one of the girls had broken up with someone who called the cops on the party. So yeah, I had high school with no, no real touchstones and only a couple friends, one of which turned out to be a complete asshole who only talked to me as kind of a, I guess, a resource. Basically, we went to the same college and he never tried to integrate me with anyone else that he knew. And I only realized it later when he came and kind of noticed when I realized that he had never actually said anything nice about my art, even though I think that objectively, I was better at it than he was. But anyway. Yeah. Oh, and on top of that, I forgot about this. I actually went to college early, you know, before freshman year, took a couple classes. And for the first time, a girl showed interest in me. We seemed to actually be interacting well, especially considering that I hadn't had any practice. And then we literally were about to have sex for the first time. I had just spent like 10 minutes going down on her and I just kind of threw out as a quip, not bad for someone who's never done this before, because it was true. Hell, I hadn't even really done more than shake hands with a girl at that point. I froze up if a friend tried to hug me and friend was kind of a nebulous idea at that point, literally like two inches away and she completely shut down both the sex and our relationship. So that didn't help. I included that last part as just an example of exactly how weird my My luck is in general, but that timeline that I gave you was more, well I mean it's still luck indicative, but it shows you also on a broad scale why I think of my not just as bad, but designed to make it so it's difficult to complain about at the very least. I mean every move was for a different reason and was designed either to make my life better, or my family's life better. Actually under that broad statement, yeah, I don't have to add an or. It's everything was intended to make the life of my family better. And yet, in hindsight, because we didn't know that I was autistic, and that's not the fault of my mother. She knew something was wrong. I've been, I was at more therapists and psychologists and whatever that I knew what to do with, and none of them fucking picked it up because evidently I was too smart for them to think, hey he might also be autistic. Because I think at that point the common view of autism, even by professionals, was that it just meant someone's so drawn in on themselves that they can't function beyond maybe learning to be toilet trained. Anyway, I gave that to point out how even though every action was explicitly acceptable as intended to improve the life of myself and my family, you couldn't have chosen with a plan a worse way to interrupt the social development at regular intervals, the development of a highly intelligent but deeply autistic person. It's why it's so difficult to give up and stop chewing on the bone. It's because it's so deeply embedded, both on a narrow scale and a broad one, in pretty much everything that has ever happened to me in my life. And that goes for everything that happened before 2015. Again, don't want to go out, go on whatever happened since then, but it's just been such bad luck with so little information offered. I mean, I got in a good relationship once. Once, I had bad relationships, including someone who broke my door on Valentine's Day after we broke up and I actually had to physically subdue her when she tried to break down my bedroom door. So, I've had bad relationships, but the one relationship I could call good, I don't know what happened because when she said she wanted to break up, it was like a flashbang went off. I got a buzzing in my ears. The only thing I can remember from that point on for the rest of the day is the pattern of the blinds on the wall across from the couch where she was talking. I can't remember anything about why she wanted to break up with me. I don't think I said anything. I couldn't defend myself because I was stunned, like literally physically stunned. And then when I recovered, I tried to get her to tell me again before I had a chance to talk out with myself how to phrase it without even knowing that I needed to do that. I thought it was simple. I couldn't remember. I needed to know because something went wrong and I couldn't learn from it. But because I didn't have anyone on my side, I didn't have anyone as a go-between. What I mean is that I had introduced her to all my friends, so anyone close enough to talk to her was already too close to her for me to want to bother them. And she thought I was trying to get back together with her. She thought I was trying to stalk her. I just wanted to know. God, I'm tired of this esoteric bad luck. I don't even know if that's the right word, but it's just so... If I had my leg amputated, that's, you know, horrible, but that's the opposite of where I am on the problem scale right now in terms of clarity. That's something to be dealt with to compensate for. A clear story to tell. A person to sue for negligence. Something. Many things. This is just such a giant ball of crap wax. And it pervades everything that I do. My memory is mnemonic. I've had to... with that good relationship, I've literally had to forget most of it simply because otherwise seeing a particular band or person or show would just put me back into that loop of lack of knowledge and helplessness. It's all just... I mean, you could almost say that in a way it's my fault because if I was anyone else, I could see that and say, fuck that and start my life over, but I think too highly of myself. I don't think that this is insurmountable. I was about to say it's insurmountable, but that is way more... That is giving up more than I'm willing to do, but it's so... If nothing else, it's so boring. I'm bored with my pain.

M: I think for the overarching theme of where we're at with this conversation, you're under-undervaluing an idea. This is exactly tragic luck. Now, if someone had known that I was autistic, I would agree that it's structural incompatibility, yada, yada, yada. If it had been diagnosed autism, but at a time in which the appropriate treatment was, at best, not widely known, that would have been structural incompatibility. But this is almost literally tragic luck. The only modification I'd be willing to allow is that, first, a tragedy generally has had an ending, and that perhaps there's a less used but similar term that's more specific, but this is okay. Yeah, it might not be tragic only because this can't be thought of directly as a tragedy, because I don't think I've ever had any kind of hubris, but that's a technicality. In its common use, this is tragic luck. I mean, I'm this wonderful repository of pattern recognition. That's how I started reading so soon. But the one thing that I enjoy and that recharges my batteries is the kind of socializing that autism prevents. And that's just the start. Then, because of the way that things worked out, by the time that I did start socializing, I was wildly behind the learning curve. You know, I'm sitting there trying to be a functional 18-year-old, and emotionally, I could at best be described as being like 11 or 12, if that. Then, the first time someone shows interest in me, they also reject me in a way that would have hurt a normal person, and for me, just almost was designed to shut down any remaining willingness to try and trust a relationship, even though that's exactly what I need. It took years for me to get to the point at 25 that I felt like I was capable of any kind of relationship with anyone. So I'm sitting there with a freshman, and if you look at 25 years old, they're expecting the competence of age. Meanwhile, you could say I'm like still 15 emotionally. I do things badly. I hurt them. I hurt myself. And it's like every problem since then, and this is why I brought up the pattern recognition thing, every problem with a bad relationship has been unique to that situation in a way that pattern recognition does absolutely nothing for, so I got minimal progress from those. And the one good relationship I had, the one I could actually learn from, because at that point, even though I think I was like 32 or something at the time, even though I was 32, I was like maybe 18 or 19 in terms of experience. So I reacted like that. I completely blanked out and couldn't learn. Yes, I think that this is very near to the vernacular use of a tragic luck, if not the literal translation of what a tragedy is. And the intellect is wasted because even if I started working on something right now because the perfect person fell in my lap, gave me a handjob telling me that I'm wonderful and exactly what to do with myself for the next five years, I would still have lost at least 20 years of functionality and building a structure with which to implement things. I would be starting from scratch. Any progress I make right now is less than it would have been if it hadn't been for this sequence of events and this precise sequence. Anything worse would have thrown the tragedy off course and have made things bad enough to be a simple problem. Anything better would have let me start fixing things sooner. It's not even that recent concept of the worst possible timeline. It's the blandest possible timeline. I have done nothing. And don't try and correct me on that. Don't try and correct me on that. I know you can make an argument that, well, you introduced people. Yes, but they both were decent people, and I'm glad that they have each other. But they're standard and don't need my help. They probably would have shaped their lives well, just not necessarily in that shape. So yes, it has been wasted. And because of the circumstances, it will continue to be wasted. And from the time that I recognize it as such, it starts to be my responsibility, even if it's not my fault.