[spoilers] Alignment in the early 1500s

tlb wrote:Leaving aside why you suspect AI, why do you call an "insightful" question spam?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Because the post is the first from a newly created account and contains a link to a website, but is obscured by setting the text colour to white. Hover over the line below the text and you'll see a link.

Previously, I'd seen just a repeat of some post question to pretend to be a real member. This one appears to be just an AI summary, reusing words from my post, where I said:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Duncan knows about some unethical practices, but that's all. We don't get any conclusive evidence that the Alignment was malignant, so we can't get any that Duncan would know about it either.

Thank you. I did not see the link and you did not mention it earlier. I wondered, because I could imagine a newbie trying to work into a discussion by using one of the new PC agents to come up with a better question. The most recent spam that I reported on this forum, directly asked whether I wanted to meet women and suggested a site to help.

I reread Uncompromising and Mission of Honor. One of them indicates that the Harrington line became lost because they relocated. And because nobody in the family exhibited a weakness that they could exploit.

That actually dovetails with one of my previous posts. A line has to be weak to be influenced. A line that is wholly successful would not be amenable to some idiot asking them to become a terrorist. For that reason alone, a lot of lines should be lost. Certainly any line that has relocated to the MBS and living wealthy healthy and meaningful lives.

But it does beg the question of who in the Harrington line was/is a contact. It might be a security risk to let that person live.

penny wrote:I reread Uncompromising and Mission of Honor. One of them indicates that the Harrington line became lost because they relocated. And because nobody in the family exhibited a weakness that they could exploit.

The explanation in the new book pretty much the opposite: Richard Harrington was too strong-willed to be convinced of the Alignment's ends-justify-the-means approach. So he was never read in, because his reaction would have been predictably catastrophic.

But it does beg the question of who in the Harrington line was/is a contact. It might be a security risk to let that person live.

Did you read the book? That's answered in the prologue.

Since this is a "[spoilers]" thread, I'm going to answer it: it was Duncan Harrington. Who, by the end of the book, was still on Manticore and had been inducted into the Great Treecat Conspiracy. Given that the MAlign appears not to have known about the treecats' capabilities, it stands to reason that Duncan never reported it. So either he is going to die - possibly being eliminated as a security precaution as you suggest - or he is going to disavow the MAlign.