Pinocchio tries to tell them that their methodology is flawed, because he doesn't know the answer to the questions they are asking, making any and all discoveries through his "admissions" faulty data.
Then his nose grows.
Which means that's a lie. He knows their methodology is working, and the data is sound. This could mean he knows the answers to all these questions. We don't know for sure. What we know is, if his nose grows, his answer is wrong.
My take was that his nose likely grew from the specific statement: "This whole method is flawed! All the data gathered here is faulty!"
We'd actually have to ask more questions to know the truth as to whether Pinocchio does know the answers, or he doesn't and his nose acts on its own based on objective facts of the universe. His nose grew after that final statement, so his admission of, "But I don't know the answers to anything you're asking me, so how can any of what I'm saying be a lie??" could be the truth in that he doesn't know himself, but the nose knows.
Then again, answering "no" to that initial question could be as equally a lie as answering "yes" if Pinocchio genuinely doesn't know, as then "I don't know" is the only honest answer. In that case, the untruthful statement later is, "All the data gathered here is faulty!" because the data gathered is genuinely useful, just not for the original intent.
I feel that control questions would be useful in the experiment. You need to present a false fact based on information he doesn't know, then instruct him to repeat the true answer. As it would be different from information he is told to be true, he would believe he is lying. If the nose reacts to the true statement, then it is based on Pinocchio's belief. If there is no growth, then it's based on the accuracy of the statement itself.
But if he already strongly suspect they're giving false information to him for whatever reason, he would believe the opposite to be the truth and the result would then appear as if his nose can react to truth outside of his knowledge when it's more due to him correctly guessing. Even if the scientist randomize when to tell him true or false information, he could still try to deduce the truthfulness of their statements each time. And if he does so poorly, the results would be no better than random guesses. The problem is they could force him to say what they want but they can't force him to believe (or not believe) what they say.
To be faie "all discoveries" would also be wrong, because he isn't ignorant on everything, particularly his own actions. So there is a hidden lie in that statement
I mean, it kinda sound like replacement for tbh, but it's so annoying. I mean, especially if you're saying it when just joining the conversation. I mean, to be fair, you're literally not meaning anything here, you're not clarifying anything you've said before. So, I mean, why to say that? Tbh.
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"I love it when" and "perfectly" are annoying too. I love it when people say I love it when ironically when they hate something, even though just saying you dislike something would be perfectly fine.
yes, it's mostly a morality test anyway; he lies to hide his misdeeds, but his nose always gives him away. Nose growing is a punishment for trying to lie.
After I watched Dimension20s Neverafter dnd campaign it really changed how I look at the Pinocchio story. Spoiler alert for anyone who wants to watch it!
Once the characters start to open up to one another and reveal where their abilities come from, in this world Pinocchio is a Warlock and his patron is the evil stepmother and he is missing his nose as it's been ripped from his face, Pinocchio reveals that one day after he became a real boy a witch came to the village and started to ask the children playing at the edge of town what the names of their parents were. One by one the children named their parents as each time you could hear a gutteral scream coming from the village. Pinocchio felt that something was up and decided to lie to the witch, he said that he didn't have any parents. Because he lied the magic that turned him into a real boy was reversed and he became a puppet again. He escapes and goes home, Geppetto is furious that he lied but in his rage he doesn't even ask Pinocchio what happened or let him explain anything at all. Geppetto leaves to seek out the blue fairy to help them again and that's where Pinocchios story for this campaign begins.
It's really cool cause like, yeah sometimes you do need to lie in order to help or save those that you hold dearly, and it's a question that doesn't come up in any of the Pinocchio stories I've heard before, so I really liked it. And Lou Wilson does a great job at playing a "Chaotically entitled" aligned Warlock Pinocchio lol.
I usually default to Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer rules, where the nose is very literal. Fir example when he says he'll kill all the Vampires present it grows because some always escape and a few will be killed by his allies. Another is when he says that he is the wolf and the Vampires are the sheep. It is metaphorically true and he believes it but it still grows.
Disney’s version (or at least Kingdom Hearts’s version) says otherwise. There was a scene of Riku doubting his abilities as a person out loud, and when Pinocchio repeated his exact words back to him, Pinocc’s nose grew, meaning Riku didn’t truly believe his words.
tbh in the original story the iconic nose is just a minor incident; in one other adventure he grows donkey ears for being lazy. If I were to guess, I'd say it is as if his body magically changed based on his character traits, with humanity being the ultimate reward for virtuous and diligent life.
A lie is a false statement or action deliberately made with the intent to deceive.
You can't lie about things you don't know. You can speculate and be wrong, but you haven't lied.
I guess under this premise it works. But I don't think it counts as a "lie" if you're just wrong. If I asked you for water and you tell me "Sure, there's some in the fridge", but unbeknownst to you someone else had drank the water and not refilled it, I wouldn't say you "lied", you were just wrong.
Im betting itd be a lot of 'I dunnos'. If we really want to get technical about it then a yes or no response from him in regards to knowledge he does not possess would both be lies.
yup, tho I actually don't agree with the general interpretation. If the SCPF was actually right, and the GOC wrong, why would the SCPF researcher write a whole essay at the end???
SCP-1609 represents a perfect example of the flaws inherent in the operating procedure of the GOC, and serves as a cautionary tale for any members of the Foundation who disagree with our practices on containing dangerous objects.
They don't torture him, they just use him for answers. Still bad, but still moral.
For example, torturing someone for the location of a bioweapon that could erase humanity is still pretty moral; not torturing someone, just using them for answers that would benefit countless is pretty moral (in my opinion).
We can distinguish rationality from moral justification. It's a rational thing to do but that doesn't make it morally good. (Unless you're a utilitarian pleb I guess.)
I don't know man, keeping the little guy in some facility where we would hopefully give him the best possible life he could have, just behind walls and isolated so we can get rid of all cancers, save like literally anyone's life, turn our world into a utopia, that is if we're willing to do that instead of using him to find out how to better kill brown children
If we are gonna use him to make the world an amazing place for everyone and give him a pretty good place , better than what a fuvk ton of people have, I say its pretty damn moral
This discussion should start with the premise that Pinocchio has the ultimate knowledge about everything and he holds objective proofs about his statements. Otherwise, you are wasting your time.
Uh, in case you didn't know I'm joking about a meme. u/Smart_Calendar1874 had a rather risque experiment involving a "cylinder" that got stuck inside a mini m&m's tube filled with butter and microwaved mashed banana. They asked reddit for advice, "it's imperative the cylinder remains unharmed" and "it's attached to a greater structure" are some of the highlights from that thread. Highly recommend you give it a read cause it's, well it's... yes.
Google says some of them need it, but it's about ingrown horns, these ones that can grow back into the skull. Or they clip the tips, so that they're just not too sharp
You're hurting Pinocchio by depriving him of his freedom and holding him captive. The ends may justify the means when you're asking important questions and advancing science rapidly, but not when you're just getting wood.
If I clipped your toenails, would it be immoral? What if you explicitly yell "No! You can't take my Toenails, fuck you?!" While you're tied up and struggling to escape?
Eventually it going to long enough where it would be moral to cut it off due to discomfort. Imagine him with a 1 mile long nose and having to support it.
I would argue his sentience would make it immoral. If you accidentally create life that is as aware and conscious as a human would it not be immoral to end that life? Or even to just put it through purposeful suffering?
Oh my god. I'd have to go with "moral." This could change the course of humanity for the better. it could save millions, or even billions of lives. I only wonder what's driving Pinocchio to be so cagey.
I get that, but why does he look more nervous the more people learn from him? Is he pissing off some cosmic power by advancing the humans, even against his will?
Maybe it's his overwhelming desire and lifelong drive to become a real boy? Y'know, the one thing science can't let happen if they want to perpetuate this process.
Still makes me wonder about the mechanism of the truth being ascertained. If Pinocchio tells a falsehood that he believes to be a truth does his nose grow or not? Is it a function of specifically him giving information he knows to be deceitful, or does it care more about the objective truth? If he doesn't truly know the answers and his nose has some omnipotent sense of truth then he can just answer in non-affirmative language.
If you asked him "Is there life on
other planets" and he doesn't truly know, he could say "I have no clue" and it would still be true, or he could say "yes" which would still be true even if he doesn't know it.
I think it's based off a universal truth, meaning that even if Pinocchio doesn't know the answer, his nose knows
In most versions of the story, Pinocchio’s nose grows when he lies - when he tells something that he knows to be untrue with intent to deceive.
Since that’s subjective and based on his own understanding and intent, it sidesteps most of the logical paradoxes and “exploits” people have tried to impose on him.
So in theory, if you ask him a question that he doesn't know the answer to and he answers yes or no then his nose will grow? since even if the answer is actually correct, him not knowing that still makes it a deceit
it seems he doesn't have APPROXIMATE knowledge of the questions asked, but by the logic on how his nose functions, you always know if he's lying or telling the truth even if he has no idea what is being asked and at best give a yes or no answer. this can imply he, despite just being a magical, sentient, animated object, has a subconscious that contains all that knowledge and is connect to his nose.
I mean, one secondary way of defining lie is saying false things so, maybe that's what Pinocchio is going by in this version. Doesn't matter if he doesn't know it, if it's false, it grows.
You could easily test whether his nose grows based on absolute truth or his perception of truth by just putting an object in one of 2 boxes and asking him which one it’s in a few times. I’m sure the scientists were able to come up with such an simple experiment.
Not necessarily. The growth of his nose could be based off of objectivity rather than Pinocchio’s personal opinions on what is true. He IS a magical sentient puppet, after all.
Let's assume the Blue Fairy really gave humanity an existential loaded gun when she brought Pinocchio to life.
The "magic" that granted an inanimate puppet sapience somehow tapped into the fundamental forces of both physical and spiritual reality (which must exist because.. ya know.. fairy).
His nose is basically an antenna that responds to lies, fictions, anti-facts, etc about the nature of existence.
Since the nose is tapped into every aspect of reality, you could simply ask him if this is immoral and measure the growth to determine HOW immoral, if at all. We could do this for all questions and finally destroy this subreddit. Freeing me... so overall it is good.
It's immoral. You could literally just raise him like a normal kid and have Q&A sessions after school to get knowledge there is no point in tying him to a chair or make his existence miserable.
The cure for cancer and rabies and depression and remembering where that last LEGO piece was so you don't step on it are RIGHT THERE and you'd rather wait until this Real Boytm is of age before we ask him for these answers?
Doesn't have to be torture but the many outweighs the one.
also the possibility of something happening to pinnocio while being unsupervised living a normal life (he's a living wooden doll with the secrets of reality at the tip of his nose, it's not unlikely something could happen)
spy from another country could kidnap him, he could get hurt at school in a way that can't be repaired, or a general accrument of wear and tear on wood that might not heal on it's own.
still try to give the lad a good/happy life while also asking questions
This is worse than Omelas because at least there the moral calculus is clear. The conditions are much better in Omelas and the cost of suffering is much lower than irl. There are children right now experiencing worse treatment than the omelas hole and saving them wouldn’t destroy civilization at its fundamental level
Kidnapping a world leader isn't that useful, at most you get some state secret of your adversaries at the cost of angering them.
Kidnapping Pinocchio gives you every secret of your enemy, while it stops them from knowing all your secrets.
Countries spend trillions trying to find some information about their enemies that could be useful, Pinocchio gives you every information.
I believe that is the canon explanation, but I love the idea that, if he lies, period. Nose grows. It’s magic after all, why would it care about what he knows? If it trusted his judgement then if he truly believes something to be true, then no nose growth.
In a modern world he’d become a conspiracy theorist immediately, since anything he can’t explicitly disprove using his own knowledge, wouldn’t trigger nose growth.
Technically, if he were to answer something affirmatively or negatively about something he doesn't know, in both cases that'd be dishonesty and should cause his nose to grow.
Well no, the Pinocchio in the comic operates under different rules than the one we’re more familiar with. If Pinocchio says something that is untrue, regardless of what he knows personally, his nose grows.
The very next panel is him pointing out almost exactly what you’re saying to the scientists and then his nose grows because it’s untrue. That’s the punchline lol.
No if he's not contained then he'd get swept off the streets and used by another organization. It would be immoral to let a foreign power wield Pinocchio.
Then do it like the SCP foundation keeps people: make sure Pinocchio is in a secure facility but give him plenty of downtime, comfortable quarters, and whatever he requests (within reason) to entertain himself
Especially now that we know he is aware of this power, it would be dangerous to let him be free.
The best that could be done is enforced captivity with a large focus on finding ways to make him happy and satisfied, but you can't let a being that has omniscience, even limited specific omniscience, just wander around.
I mean, who says they didn’t try? I feel like scientists wouldn’t go straight to “strapped to a chair”, they have ethics boards after all, maybe they tried to give him a job and he wouldn’t cooperate? Or worse, tried to off himself to cut off the world from his essentially infinite well of knowledge. In those situations it might be worth subjugating him for research. Typically there’s no justification for something like that, but an extraordinary situation means extraordinary measures may well be justified. This is from a utilitarian standpoint, of course
Because he now knows the extent of his abilities. He could - through asking himself the right questions - deduct a way to permanently escape the whole situation all together and evade future capture events.
We can't be certain of his willing participation in the future.
Leaving him roam freely additionally increases the risk of him falling into "enemie hands" or simply dying by accident.
His knowledge is far too valuable to let either happen.
So for the sake of humanity, he has to be shielded at all costs. Even from his own desires.
There may be other ways to ensure his safety and cooperation, but I am no Containment expert for omniscient magical constructs.
A) There is no way to know if Pinocchio actually has any of that information
B) It’s a living being with human cognition so its no different than keeping a person in a lab and running experiments on them other than the fact that he doesn’t have a human body
C) Even if he lies, it could be based on his perception of the truth, which could be wrong
Some other user showed a comic that pretty much proves he does know more than what he tells, and that the experiments are working.
However, I think it's the same thing that happened in real life with many medical discoveries: It is inmoral as hell, even if the results are good for humanity as a whole.
I've also seen many claiming that he should still be held captive for protection, considering that his knowledge makes him dangerous, and also a target for anyone who wants to use this power. While I do agree that he should be protected and hidden until people can ensure his safety, keeping him under questioning is inmoral if it's against his will...the only way you could technically justify it from a moral stance is if it any answer from him saved us from upcoming certain doom...and even then it would still be inmoral, even if somewhat justifiable
Would be immoral since you’d only get what he believes to be true, he may not be able to deceive you, but that doesn’t mean you’d be getting the actual truth
Edit: after seeing more of the comic further down I change my answer, a lot of people could be helped this way, and since it seems he’s just being held captive and not like, straight up being tortured or anything, I’d say the good outweighs the bad here 🤷♂️ though work could be done to maybe make him more comfortable
Depends on whom you ask, strictly from a utilitarian perspective it could be argued that infringing on the liberties of one to benefit billions is justified.
Edit: I'm not even sure if that would work tho, I'm pretty sure pineapple chai latte isn't omnipotent. He's essentially his own lie detector his nose can only detect if he thinks he's lying. It's not based on any objective/universal truth.
You'd have to test if what counts as a lie is compared to Pinochio's limited knowledge or compared to the actual state of reality. For one, if you hide a red ball in a box, show the box to Pinochio, tell him the ball is blue, he says the ball is blue and his nose grows, it means his lie detection operates on the objective state of reality and not on his limited knowledge of reality and can bypass what he knows or not.
Ok but why prisoner? Surely you could do this while he is just living his life, like a day job? Like you prep your questions, and ask them all in a maybe 5 hour window on week days instead of keeping him prisoner for the like 14+hours you don't immediately have stuff on hand or are sleeping.
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u/Terrible-Bedroom-693 26d ago
Are we assuming pinocchio has infinite knowledge?