{"id":2037,"date":"2017-05-23T21:16:02","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T21:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2037"},"modified":"2017-05-23T21:19:43","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T21:19:43","slug":"so-what-did-i-think-of-extremis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2017\/05\/23\/so-what-did-i-think-of-extremis\/","title":{"rendered":"So… what did I think of Extremis?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>So, how did we fare in our simulated invasion of Earth?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>Oh, pretty well.<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>Did we learn all we needed to about how to subdue the Earth people and take their planet?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>Yup. Pretty much.<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>Good, good. And this \u201cDoctor\u201d, were we able to handle his interference?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>Oh yes. Well, I mean he was blind.<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>What?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>Yeah, we made him blind.<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>What? Why?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>Well, he\u2019d just been made blind when we started gathering data for the simulation, so we thought\u2026<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>But we want the Doctor at the absolute peak of his powers. What\u2019s the point in testing our invasion against a weakened version of the Doctor?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>Well, he wasn\u2019t all that weakened. He had these glasses with a sort of heads-up display.<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>Glasses with a what?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>A heads-up display. Showing him what he couldn\u2019t see with his eyes.<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>And what was he using to look at the heads-up display?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>Eh?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>If his eyes don\u2019t work, how does a heads-up display help- oh, look it doesn\u2019t matter. The point is, we\u2019ve ironed out all the kinks in our invasion plan now, right?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>Yeah, I think so. I mean, it was pretty easy once everyone started to commit suicide.<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>When they what?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>Well, once they found the book, the er, Extremis, which told them that they were in a simulation and how to test it, then they just started committing suicide.<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>How to test it?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>Yeah. Despite the fact that each subroutine controlling each of the billions of people in our simulation is fantastically unique and complicated, so much so that the simulations believe they are alive, we couldn\u2019t think of a single way of using that rich, complicated and unique data to find an arbitrary starting point for a random number generator, so when they-<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>Wait, stop, go back. You put a book in the simulation\u2026<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>Extremis, yeah\u2026<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>Telling the people in the simulation that it was just a simulation?<\/p>\n

Pause.<\/em><\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>We did make it very hard to translate.<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>But what was it doing there at all??<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>Sort of like an in-joke.<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>Acolyte, I\u2019m hugely disappointed. You were clearly the wrong person to put in charge of this simulation project. I should have realised something was up when I watched the Doctor execute the Master and take the body away for safekeeping \u2013 and not mention that he was doing this for the second time<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>I\u2019m sorry, sir. I failed you.<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>Never mind. We\u2019re in no hurry. We\u2019ll build a new simulation and do it properly this time. After all, what difference does it make if we invade this week, or next week, or next year?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>Ah\u2026 well\u2026<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: \u201c<\/strong>Ah well\u201d what?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>You know how you said we should make absolutely sure that the simulation was connected to the Earth Internet?<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>What? No, I said it was to be totally isolated from any other networks. It was to be totally air-gapped. Any other plan of action would be foolhardy to the point of self-defeating.<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 2: <\/strong>Oh\u2026<\/p>\n

Evil Monk 1: <\/strong>Why???<\/p>\n

And, scene\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Evil Monk 1: So, how did we fare in our simulated invasion of Earth? Evil Monk 2: Oh, pretty well. Evil Monk 1: Did we learn all we needed to about how to subdue the Earth people and take their planet? Evil Monk 2: Yup. Pretty much. Evil Monk 1: Good, good. And this \u201cDoctor\u201d, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[18,19],"class_list":["post-2037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-doctor-who","tag-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-wR","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2037"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2042,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037\/revisions\/2042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}