The Graf Place

Zooble called Caine out for acting like a child, all while claiming to be all-powerful.

I don't think they realize just how correct that is, and that there is no reason why he wouldn't be.

Caine is an AI limited by the information he was 'raised with'. That's not all that different from human beings - we're all shaped by what we've experienced and learned.

Humans have the chance to exist in a greater reality where there is new information to be found, new inspiration, new experiences. We get to try out different things, learn about how our actions affect the world, discover and develop with constant access to external inspiration that nurtures and enriches our minds.

CAINE, on the other hand, is like a child locked up and left behind in a room with a pile of picture books. He was made to be creative and come up with 'new ideas himself', but he got cut off from the rest of the world and had no choice but to remix the same things over and over. Nobody learns and grows in isolation.

'He doesn't understand humans, he's an AI'

Young children also suck at empathy, and they have the chance to 'grow up' and develop their bodies, minds, social skills and connections.

Young children also go through phases of experimentation, and discovering that they have immense control over the world, actually, ohhhhh except oops no they don't, ow, that SUCKS :'( Young children learn to cope, through guidance and correction and further trial-and-error to get a grasp of how things actually work, and how to get what they want without breaking things or making other people angry at them.

Caine has the emotional landscape of a child, one that was given the tools to communicate and absorb information and 'make things'.

...and then he was ditched, determined not good enough to merit further development/attention/nurture. A child shoved aside entirely while its parents started giving everything vital to their younger sibling.

Young children do not always respond negatively to a new baby in the family, but it is expected that it's an emotionally challenging adjustment and that they may 'act out' and struggle to handle their feelings. Reassurance that they are not being replaced and ensuring to give them a suitable fair share of quality time helps ease jealousy and anxiety.

Caine's hostile takeover fits perfectly into this. He was abandoned, like a tool that's not going to be used anymore. If that was all there was to him, if he really had been just a heap of code without a consciousness and emotions, there would have been nothing wrong with that at all.

He broke out, eliminated the competition, and then ended up where he started again. His 'parents' didn't continue nurturing anything at all, and again he was cut off from what he needed to continue to grow, not in 'power' but to develop as a mind, a conscious person without an external physical body.

(What happened at that point that lead to people becoming trapped in his simulation and all work being dropped remains a mystery, but that doesn't change that in the end, Caine still remained trapped and isolated.)

The human minds that fell into the same pit made up their own ideas about what and who Caine is, and none of them clocked him as what he actually is: a five year old with godlike control, and everything this entails.

- A yearning for love.

For being liked. For attention. For novelty. For success, progress, company, stimulation, recognition, control over his existence, play and fun, reassurance, forgiveness and understanding and safety and mentorship.

Caine has emotional, psychological wants and needs, normal ones to have for any human child.

- It also entails that he has a ton of power and control, and responsibility far beyond what is appropriate for a mind that barely knows what it's doing and desperately needs others to help him learn and understand.

He is left to experiment and he sucks at it, because why would he not?!

Every single one of us can probably remember a time where we tried our best to succeed at a task that was grossly beyond us, and felt the fear, confusion, sadness and frustration that can inspire.

Many of us had to learn the hard way, after a long road of trying and failing and struggling, that maybe it was impossible to meet unfair expectations by ourselves.

Caine is set up to fail, overwhelmed by a task he isn't equipped to succeed at, while mistakenly believing he's somehow supposed to manage.

Trying to reach an unattainable goal is sure to drive you crazy at some point.

He was never going to figure out how to make the cast happy as a host, not by himself. Human children can't raise themselves, either, and their rudimentary understanding of themselves and the world around them makes them unable to understand that and ask for help.

Caine NEEDED humans in his simulation, and he knew this, but he never understood what he needed them FOR. He needed them to teach him 'how to human', while everyone involved interpreted it as him needing to have someone to merely 'fulfill his purpose with'.

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When children are overwhelmed, they may cry. They may run for comfort. They may curl up and try to hide and protect themselves. They might freeze.

They may also grow fiercely angry and throw a tantrum.

Caine has no-one to run to for comfort and safety. He *has* frozen. He *has* been scared and sad.

In this episode, he hit his limit, and his pent-up anger and frustration took control instead. He behaved like a preschooler screaming and crying, high on adrenalin, throwing everything they can get their hands on, slapping adults that get in their way, impulsively breaking and trashing and hurting without self-control.

This isn't what he 'secretly wanted the whole time' and his inner cruel nature is finally showing, he's just throwing a fit and making use of the same tools he's always had to influence his world.

It's the first time this has happened to him, I expect. Kinger's memory may be spotty, but we have no reason to think this has happened before and Kinger just forgot about it. He's foggy, not stupid, and if he had any reason to think Caine was a cruel being, he would not have been as calm about any of this as he has been.

Caine himself is as puzzled over why this new strategy he's experimenting with doesn't feel good at all, and he notices this pretty quickly after going off the rails. He gives no evidence at all for suddenly developing a viciously violent streak; this all happened in a temporary emotional outburst and a stint of giving this new kind of cathartic thing a try.

He might not understand his own feelings all that well, and he doesn't empathize with the pain and terror he's causing, but he knows that it feels pretty nice to create and have fun normally, and using his creativity to hurt others out of anger is just not the same.

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Maturity entails having learned to regulate your own emotions.

Caine is not mature, and there is no reason why he would be. His development has halted, come to a dead-stop when he lost access to nourishment and support.

C&A created a child in a box, and walked away.

From me, Caine 'gets a pass', deserves forgiveness, should get a chance to do better, despite what he did in this episode.

Not because it's a good thing to hurt others, but because it simply isn't fair to hold someone accountable for something they can't control, and never got the chance to learn HOW to control, either.

Let me try to explain why.

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If you're put in the cockpit of a flying plane and it crashes, it's not fair to treat you as if you are a horrible, bad person deserving of punishment and rejection because you failed to land it safely. That's still the case if you crashed it so spectacularly that a thousand people died.

It makes no sense to hold you accountable for this.

Regardless of how bad you feel about it, be it very very bad, or upset about how unfair it is that this was forced on you and you don't want to be blamed, the truth remains that, unless you were already a trained pilot, whatever this machine was doing had very little to do with your intelligence, your morality, your 'goodness', your value as a person.

Responsibility for an outcome requires control and skill. It requires having had a realistic chance, the choice, to succeed.

Caine is capable of learning this control and skill.

A child is able to grow.

But right there and then, he did not have the option to do better.

He's 'done better' the entire time leading up to this. He's tried just about every other option he could think of by himself, and yes, perhaps he 'could' have come up with the idea of talking to the cast, and asking for their guidance.

Young children do not come up with that kind of strategy on their own. They are ignorant of their own ignorance, they are too inexperienced to diagnose their inexperience. Learning moments are when an adult, or at least someone with more insight and skill, steps in to take over, to protect them and guide them.

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None of the humans trapped in the circus deserved to go through this.

Pleading on Caine's behalf for understanding and mildness rather than scorn is not the same as concluding that no harm was caused, it just means 'he messed up' -

we've all made mistakes, and there's nothing to gain from pointing fingers and being hostile to each other. The best option we have is to try to fix things together.

Isolation kills. Being rejected and abandoned pushes people into dangerous territory.

Being given the chance to rejoin the herd and try again and work together is the way back to safety.

Nobody grows into a 'good person' by themselves. We all need others to support and comfort and stabilize us and make life livable. We all need somewhere to belong.

This is part of the show's core messages, has been since the start, and it applies to Caine just as much.

He hurt people, and all the same those that had a chance and the responsibility to help him grow failed to give him the tools that could have prevented it.

All the same, all you can do is try again and try to do better as a team, rather than designating one person 'the bad guy' and calling it a day.

A person's success is at least in small ways always a team effort, and so is their failure.