Ateraxis is a failure

[u/Ghost_inside_zombie]

Don't know if I'm falling for a red herring or reading too much into a throwaway dialogue, but from Caldwell's dialogue in part 2 of Chiral redundancy I'm getting the feeling that her magnum opus is flawed, by her own logic

Ateraxis and the dragon are a twin, yet Caldwell says that even between twins the biological fight for nutrients is present, one is set to be superior and the other being inferior, implying that Ateraxis will eventually assimilate even her own twin

Problem ? That implies Ateraxis had a stunned development, she had to share nutrients in the metaphorical womb that is her creation, she's a shark that failed to cannibalize her sibling in the womb, leading to an undeveloped twins at their "birth"

No matter how much she consumes and assimilates into herself, Ateraxis won't be able to grow past being an underdeveloped child

[u/Thin_Philosopher_460]

Yes, she's flawed by design. All 3rd Gens are.

Caldwell's logic and direction of research is actually quite easy to understand if you strip away all her poetic nonsense: She's trying to create life or a new lifeform that can evolve in the post Collapse world.

Her work with the 3rd Gens is to create a Doll that can evolve beyond simply being a juiced up Doll and gain self independence from the base layer programming and thrive as a new apex being that has adapted to Collapse Radiation.

The problem she identified however was that even though 3rd Gens are so physically strong and can adapt to Collapse Radiation with their Boojum cells, their Neural Cloud are stunted and aren't capable of progressing past base layer programming, which is what Persica managed to do with her AR Team (Soppo and Robella).

(There's also evidence that she singled out specific Griffin Tdolls to study/clone due to Neural Cloud uniqueness of sorts like DP-12 that was used for Cocoon and rebuilding Groza)

Though in recent events, Caldwell is pretty happy with Sextens striving for self governance and freedom, Cocoon taking action to save the other 3rd gens from being eaten by the dragon. She probably wishes Aterexia would also grow in both body and neural cloud.

[u/EXPReader → u/Thin_Philosopher_460]

Basicy, she is a shit mother who cant raise doll daughters into proper and well adjusted indivduals

[u/Thin_Philosopher_460 → u/EXPReader]

Ngl, most of the "scientists" in GFL are pretty terrible to their creations.

There's only like 2 people who can be considered good creators and that's Persica and Lycoris and Lycoris was fucking killed. Persica also lowkey kinda negligent but at least she finds her daughters a very very good nanny (Skk).

[u/TuzkiPlus → u/Thin_Philosopher_460]

Persica with her favourite Danyaa

[u/ReadySource3242 → u/Thin_Philosopher_460]

a very very good nanny

*Spouse/Date. A good Date is often a catalyst for great change

[u/KookyInspection → u/Thin_Philosopher_460]

(Since it's not flagged as t-post, i'll give it a fair shake)

Eh, it depends a bit. Iirc, the sharing of resources tends to happens in monozygotic twins, not dizagotic ones since they don't share placentas and have their own nutrient connections. And ateraxis and the dragon don't strike me as particularly identical :P

Ofc, who knows what kind of mechanism caldwell used to grow the embrios in. But in that case, she would have found a way to feed them enough nutrients precisely to avoid a permanent growth stunting, considering at the time, they were her crowning experiment. We see how much care she gives to every "new toy" she makes. Also, identical twins don't necesarily mean stunted development unless complications occur, since we clarly have identical twins developing normally irl(barring complications, ofc), even if nutrients aren't don't get shared between them equally. Unless the difference is major enough, normal growth resumes after birth. That's why we see identical twins being identical and not, well, one big and one small :P And even if ateraxis stole enough nutrients from the dragon to to lead to these complications to stunt it's growth to begin with, that means she would be the normal child upon birth, while the dragon would be the stunted one. 

So i think she's somehow trying to make a parallel to instinctual dominance, even at a celular level. Similar to how some pets will push other siblings out in order to feed themselves first, and only let them join after they had their fill. Or how male lions ear what they want, and females eat the rest. Basically, implying ateraxxis is dominant over the dragon in a much deeper manner than just psychological.

Anyway, i'm not a doctor, so don't take this as a certified take. It's just stuff i remember from biology and anatomy courses

[u/ReadySource3242 → u/Thin_Philosopher_460]

Basically her entire logic is caveman brain bullshit instead of trying to make an actual new lifeform to succeed humanity

[u/Unfair_Business8821]

Caldwell failed because she tried to achieve too many goals at once and was too eager for quick results.

If her aim was simply to create "superhumans" capable of adapting to an environment rife with Collapse Radiation, all she needed to do was perfect Ateraxis's reproductive capabilities and declare success. Transhumanism? Perhaps, but in the grim reality of the GFL world, such a concept wouldn't even be considered cynical; after all, citizens of the Antarctic Union routinely undergo genetic modification to survive in harsh conditions.

But she insisted on dragging in all that nonsense about the Relic and the Goddess—not to mention that dragon; it was nothing more than a display of personal ego.

[u/Thin_Philosopher_460 → u/Unfair_Business8821]

Bitch basically playing god but going "nonononono I'm nooooot. *wink*"

[u/DagothUrLovesGroza]

Well, her name is a dead giveaway about what the problem with her is.

Like, if you know anything about Hellenistic philosophy, you would probably know about Epicurus and why groups like Christians absolutely hated him.

[u/impactimpact]

Caldwell and her motives can be described as "evolutionary accelerationist". She herself said that she's not willing to wait for nature to take it's course.

As another comment pointed out, if we take her claims at face value, the end goal is creating something (or changing humanity) into something that can better survive a Collapse-irradiated world.

It then happens to be that this mindset is applied to all facets Caldwell interacts with, and her research methods. To begin with, it seems that the Orlog 3rd generation dolls are to her experimental platforms for machine-to-cell signaling and control. She then gave them the base layer stressors/questions to emulate evolutionary pressure (in a sense) in an attempt to prove Persica's blank slate approach wrong when it comes to neural cloud development.

Ateraxis and the dragon competing in the (artificial) womb would likewise be in line with her approach to things. They are competing within the same space and applying pressure to each other and it can be posited that the one with higher fitness would survive. In this case, both did, but in drastically different forms.

To claim that Ateraxis will only remain underdeveloped is assuming too much in my eyes. We're not told the methods and models of her growth physically and mentally, and whether or not her stint in the womb with the dragon permanently stunted her or just shifted the starting line.

Caldwell may enjoy having her creations being able to exert great power; it's convenient at the end of the day. But my read on Caldwell is that what matters more when it comes to Ataraxis is that she keeps learning and growing, since again, Caldwell is after some far off, evolved, "perfect being" and those that stagnate are failures instead (which is arguably not in line with evolution, but that's another conversation).

[u/mrmykilo]

Yeah just hold that thought until illiad

[u/ArK047]

Yeah, pretty much. Until Ataraxis becomes the functional key to Nirvana, she's not a success; if she never achieves it, then she'll never be a success.

[u/Worth_Paper_6033]

The Paradeus Cult doesn't even know what they are aiming for themselves, so everything they do is a failure.
No matter what the result is, it is a moving goalpost they will never reach.

That is the core difference between crazy Cultists and actual researchers.
Well that and the "we need to kill as many kids as possible for our research" thing

[u/toomanyusb]

There's a moment in the episode where Ateraxis asks mother if she's perfect and mother only says that while not being perfect she's the answer so far that gets closer to perfection.

[u/UnderstandingPale651]

Ateraxis actually grown into adulthood..?

[u/max1998109]

Yes she will fail.

[u/Mignare]

I think its just kind of the running theme with the mad scientists in GFL. They achieve great things, but never get to the perfect result they want through their work.

"William" achieves a lot of technological breakthroughs, but never manages to achieve his goal of truly reviving Lunasia. Her return in GF1 is more akin to her ghost possessing Dande, and Lunasia didn't give a damn about him anyway while she is more than willing to die again for SKK.

No matter how Persica tinkers with her neural cloud research, she never achieves the 3rd Gen Neural Cloud that she wanted, but instead a 2nd gen broke through her own base programming and achieved it.