You know, on my second read through I'm starting to think - and I mean this with all the love in my heart - that Murderbot might be a little bit of a dumbass
Head empty no thoughts just Sanctuary Moon
In its defense, it does mention at some point that SecUnits aren't given much in the way of education beyond what is needed to be a murderbot, and I doubt that education includes things like what an anagram is.
That is absolutely true, and that's a detail that I love! Because it isn't Murderbot's fault that the company gave it inadequate information, and its very clear that they did not prioritize their SecUnits education (or safety or personhood or a lot of things really) Despite that, Murderbot really is incredibly resourceful, creative, and intelligent, despite what it insists to the contrary. It went "Oh god a combatbot we're all going to die!" and then 3 seconds later it was dead due to Murderbot's expert analysis and planning, and we see it do that a lot!
But then we have these other instances, where it misses a few things, but the thing is, it's doing it on purpose. If we look, we find that in several instances - the anagram one, for instance - the initial realization with PSELR that it doesn't remember the right word and can only think of anagram happens way before it casually calls ART's name an anagram. There is a significant passage of time. And in the instance of the forensic sweep - which I didn't include in my post but it was already really long - there's a quote where it comes up a second time (after a significant delay) and Murderbot goes 'ah, so they do work that way!' indicating it, again, didn't bother looking real ones up. As we know, Murderbot has constant feed access that it cheerfully abuses at every waking moment. it oftentimes gathers analyzes, and utilizes, and even repackages vital information in seconds, when it would have taken a human hours (or longer) to do the exact same thing! Because Murderbot really is intelligent, and frankly, has a lot of processing power.
Even though there was a lot going on in both books, Murderbot did have more than enough time to download a dictionary (especially with it's processing power, and I honestly bet Perihelion has one on board, let's be real), but look at what it says! It says "whatever", and it means it. It knows it can be vague and incorrect (it feels safe enough to get something wrong) and Ratthi and Amena will still be able to understand it. All of this to say, now that Murderbot isn't under the thumb of the company, it absolutely has access to all kinds of education modules that could cover all of this, including a basic dictionary that would be infinitely less complex to download and integrate into it's own systems for reference than a bunch of other things we've seen it do. We've seen it scan soap operas for the right response to emotional moments, a dictionary would be nothing. But it doesn't do that! It shoves aside the education modules and snatches every single soap opera it can get it's data-equivalent-of-hands-on. Education modules? Murderbot says. I don't have room for that, this new serial has 68 seasons and they're still making more. I hope this doesn't come off as ranting at you (you're definitely not the only one rightfully pointing out that it's education modules were shit), I'm actually just buzzing with energy thinking about Murderbot, and you're right that it was deprived of a lot of opportunities. But I love the details that go into it not knowing everything, because it says a lot about Murderbot's personality, and its newfound freedom of choice, and it also demonstrates intelligence versus wisdom. Murderbot is very intelligent, but not always wise, and it has the freedom to exercise that lack of wisdom (that dumbassery, if you will) just like any other being with free will does! Just like I do! Would my life be a lot easier if I stopped and figured out who was holding my student loans? Probably! Am I, instead, reading the Silmarillion? Yes! Yes I am. I'm a dumbass, and so I look at Murderbot and I see a fellow dumbass, and it makes me really happy. Murderbot can choose what it wants to learn now, and what it wants to learn is every single plotline on Days of Our Lives
