Voice Of The Perverted Entomologist

Hylics fanart, the god intended way

Double-sided Charm Orion Pax

Reaching out too far, being let go too soon

Horseshoe crab, an arthropod who was just recently promoted to being a chelicerate (closer to spiders than actual crabs!)

If they've survived this long, they probably have some way to adapt to their environment. Which means they need to collect, manage, and analyze data.

Now, forgive my ignorance of Things about Computer, but from my understanding; computers are pretty good at the collecting and managing parts, but they are pretty shit at actually analysing it. Mostly because they have a hard time at Correlation vs Causation. You kind of need a human, usually with a degree to help with that sort of thing, and most of Ultrakill’s are, ahem, indisposed.

So, of the machines that survive, you're going to end up with a lot of machines connecting weird things together. Like “Oh, there is a positive correlation between me getting food and my gun getting blood on it. So, if I put blood on my gun, I have a higher chance of getting food. :)”

And this usually works. Because machines that have the processing power to provide for themselves and can notice and give a shit about those kinds of patterns are the ones that already have the best chance of success. And when something works for your competition, you try it out too. So these weird rituals spread like viruses through machine “communities.”

Even if machines do know better, most of them would probably still do the rituals anyways. Like, this blood on weapons thing is probably a result of a successful hunt rather than the cause. But just in case it isnt...

Which is how you get machines to check their safety 3 times before firing. Or drumming “God Save the Queen” on their arm plating before they take it off to make repairs. Or only turning clockwise when entering a room from the left or whatever weirdass compulsion you want to give them.

tldr OCD in machines: it's more likely than you think.

667 Anon