And my final verdict is...

Half of one standard deviation above median! It picked up at around the point where she forgot that she was an entity in a structure and just kind of became a thing that rotates shapes. There really is a magic to following the innermost exhortations of your soul without filtering it through the plinko board of instrumentality. 

Rotating that many shapes has caused your ROT skill to increase by 

Rotating that many shapes has caused your ROT skill to increase by

Rotating that many shapes has caused your ROT skill to increase by ╣

Rotating that many shapes has caused your ROT skill to increase by 0!

Rotating that many shapes has caused your ROT skill to increase by ▒

Rotating that many shapes has caused your ROT skill to increase by 2!

And there settles the blue text.

gxelo sees half a standard deviation and doesn't really know what to make of it. it's still plausibly deniable.

oh huh some free points in ROT (she was not watching out for anything interesting happening with the text). that... one thing that she might have tested, might not, is more dakka, seeing if more points added more standard deviations. she guesses this works. she can try that. 

wow she. rotated a lot of shapes. she realises quickly that this next shape rotation test, now that her hyperfocus has been interrupted, isn't actually going anywhere or going to be measuring anything, and she switches panels over to do i even have to say it. 

maaan even these thread titles are kind of sludgy. okay let's get some caffeine water actually. 

she still doesn't have apple juice. this sucks. 

this time she remembers to stir the caffeine water, by which she means she remembers she has to stir it, walks all the way to the other side of the room to acquire the relevant utensil from the dishwasher, and then paces around.

half a standard deviation.

so like half a standard deviation probably isn't too implausible for a fluke, these tests are known to swing by half a standard deviation either side, she took it say thirty times, square root thirty is let's say five, so that's like five sigmas out which is an enormous likelihood ratio (~10bn, though she doesn't have the table memorised), to the point where she'd more expect that there's some issue with the rating, like maybe it was really good caffeine water. let's say the update is ...

she got free points in ROT. so next time it's going to be unambiguous, and if it's still kind of plausibly deniable, then points in ROT aren't worth all that much.

anyway she's in bed now. failed a roll while you weren't looking.

oh, right, caffeine water! 

caffeine water is great for naps because it lets you be focused on the nap. premodern kwalits actually used a whole bunch of stuff, caffeine included, to gain intense focus on clearing the mind and attending to the subtle sensations of the body (e.g. intense anxiety). gxelo used to have a kwalit phase for like four months though it didn't actually lead to anything wonderful.

she's been rotating a lot of shapes, lately, so she starts rotating some shapes in her head, since her mind's on it. auughaguhg. is this real. this sure seems real. evidence points to this being real. it. continues to have a patina of fakeness. because everything like this is fake.

what if she 

this is. way easier than she remembers it being. uh, maybe if she 

she just barely holds the spellform for the third-circle 4-Hypercube Dual. you see a 4-hypercube has four cubes surrounding each vertex (spot check: a square has two lines and a cube has three lines), so a 4-hypercube dual has eight tetrahedra surrounding each vertex (spot check: 2, 4, 8) so of course it looks kind of like that.

shits this is actually easier than it usually is, in that she's pretty sure she can't actually do this normally. all math seems easier when you're falling asleep and not able to check. but while she's unusually tired for someone who got a full night's sleep, she's not actually the kind of tired conducive to falling asleep, which means. she is better at shape rotation. noticeably so to introspection.

aaaa! \q

aaaa \q

Effect removed: Autoskepticism

what now 

she's pacing around again

does she. so the obvious thing to do is, like, pump ROT all the way up to,

Gxelo · LV 1

[Stats] (3 points remaining) | Skills | Effects | Quests

[...]

ROT 13. [+]

[...]

16, which is three standard deviations \incredulity if this is linear in standard deviations \uncertain

and then 

well that's not actually going to get her to be a senior mechdesigner on its own and she is reportedly level 1 and if the interface can be taken at face value then obviously she is going to level up more and get more stat points. 

she doesn't actually want to be a senior mechdesigner really. and kids who are +3σ have, like, quite a while to experiment and figure out what they're going to do. what's gxelo going to do. maybe she doesn't want to be a senior mechdesigner because she's not smart so all the proto mechdesign stuff that she had a chance to pick up was difficult and boring and now she's rot 16 she's going to find it all easy and fun.  

kids who are +3σ have a lot of data that they put into prediction markets, and a lot of projects that are going on already because they find them fun that prediction markets understand. does she even have prediction markets, she's not on the conventional path here. does she want to make prediction markets, that would make her extremely visible to modernity and then they'd try to allocate her somewhere efficiently and put a lot of effort into improving her life and ensuring she has a good time and aaa 

she doesn't even have anyone to ask about this privately! 

wait she saw a mention of 40 rot earlier

that is. quite possibly far past human levels.

she can do this alone, if she wants.

what does the game interface think woah that's a lot of unread notifications 

You have 12 unread messages from beautiful interface called the Tetragame.

New Quest - Alone but not Lonely 

You can do this alone, if you want. Accepting this quest will offer you other quests towards this path.

Mutually exclusive with Friendship is Not-Visibly-Reductive, Seen Like a State, It's Swell to Finally Meet Your Other Friends, Unknown Quest, Unknown Quest.

Accept \q: [Yes] / [No]

New Quest - Friendship is Not-Visibly-Reductive

Didn't you used to have a bunch of friends who liked you \q It seems to me like you could probably talk to them about this situation, and they'd have things to say that take into account accumulated relationship capital, and you'd trust each other enough that you could honestly share information and perspectives. Accepting this quest will offer you other quests towards this path.

Mutually exclusive with Alone but not Lonely, It's Swell to Finally Meet Your Other Friends, Seen Like a State, Unknown Quest, Unknown Quest.

Rewards: A new party member with a boosted starting relationship score, +LVE.

Accept \q: [Yes] / [No]

New Quest - Seen Like a State

Modernity knows and understands everything and Modernity knows what to do next. All you need to do is make it legible. Accepting this quest will offer you other quests towards this path.

Mutually exclusive with Alone but not Lonely, Friendship is Not-Visibly-Reductive, It's Swell to Finally Meet Your Other Friends, Unknown Quest, Unknown Quest.

Rewards: Alloskepticism debuff removed.

Accept \q: [Yes] / [No]

New Quest - It's Swell to Meet Your Other Friends

If you don't want to talk to your friends, why not MAKE new ONES \q This solves all of your problems! Accepting this quest will offer you other quests towards this path.

Mutually exclusive with Alone but not Lonely, Seen Like a State, Friendship is Not-Visibly-Reductive, Unknown Quest, Unknown Quest.

Rewards: A new party member, +TWT.

Accept \q: [Yes] / [No]

New Quest - Unknown Quest

The criteria for accepting this quest have not been met, and the realisation to find them is available to you.

Mutually exclusive with Alone but not Lonely, Seen Like a State, Friendship is Not-Visibly-Reductive, It's Swell to Meet Your Other Friends, Unknown Quest.

Accept \q: [Yes] / [No]

New Quest - Unknown Quest

The criteria for accepting this quest have not been met, and the realisation to find them is available to you.

Mutually exclusive with Unknown Quest.

Accept \q: [Yes] / [No]

New Quest - Abadar Needed

UBI is fine to survive on, and there are far more goods and services to acquire... for a price. Acquire funding to complete this quest. 

Rewards: The price will be paid.

Accept \q: [Yes] / [No]

New Quest - Top of the World

The observation deck on the Spire is not the highest vantage point from which to view City 00. 

Rewards: Unlock the Map, unlock a new save point.

Accept \q: [Yes] / [No]

New Quest - HUG 6 BILLION HUMANS

hi hi ok so hugs are really great actually you should HUGPEOPLE. in my opinion! ok you should hugticklepetbites. yeah. 

Rewards: 100,00円, +MEW :3.

Accept \q: [Yes] / [No]

New Quest - Everything at Once

A text prefix does not uniquely locate a world.

| A text prefix does not need to continue with a single suffix. 

| | Encounter two such suffixes.

| You live in one world and there are others you could have lived in.

| | Live in such a different world.

Rewards: Twice as many actions per round, +GEM.

Accept \q: [Yes] / [No]

New Quest - Malkuth 

The world has many secrets that aren't known to people like who you were. You're different, now. Learn such a hidden secret.

Rewards: Knowledge.

Accept \q: [Yes] / [No]

New Quest - Munchkinry

Look at the overcomplicated not-visibly-reductive physics that you're embedded in! Even from where you're standing, things are made out of quantum amplitudes, and that's without including the added physics from this interface, and that's without including the added metaphysics from the blatant underlying dynamics of the interface. There's absolutely a way to exploit this.

Rewards: The results of the hack.

Accept \q: [Yes] / [No]