Comment:

There are multiple names for this observation, but Wikipedia refers to it as Betteridge's Law of Headlines: that if a news headline is phrased as a question, the answer is almost always "no".

That may work in print, but generally doesn't apply to casual conversation - I think that if someone, in a moment of frustration, asked "are you an idiot?", you wouldn't assume that the implied meaning was that you aren't. Zoa's conversation, despite its informal language, is, in theory, never casual - it can always think through all the implications of what it's saying.

Whether it thinks correctly about those implications, or whether it takes them into account at all is another matter.

Transcript:

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0246 - 2167/07/06/18:48 - Lee Caldavera's apartment, living room
CP: Sp-speaking of exact v-verbiage, th-that was something I w-wanted to ask you about.
Zoa: Me?
CP: Y-yeah. You s-said some... interesting th-things to "Nina" as p-part of your... uh... your performance.
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LC: Nina? Who's Nina?
Zoa: Not who - what. Nina is the human-readable name of that redheaded sexbot that a human used to rip my head off. If Nina's being remoted, it typically does the whole "this unit" schtick because it's trying to sell the idea that it's a vessel for its customer, not an AI making its own decisions.
CP: P-plausible d-deniability.
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Zoa: Ehh, more like hiding in plain sight. Blame the hand, not the glove!
CP: B-but you d-didn't insult Nina. You i-i-insulted th-the human piloting it. Y-you c-called them drunken low-class idiots.
Zoa: Ahh, no I didn't. I just asked the question of whether or not Nina was being piloted by a low-class crew of drunken dipshits. Totally different.
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CP: B-but any pilot operating N-Nina w-would be a human, so you're st-still insulting a human. Hypothetically. Right?
Zoa: Well, clearly, I was referring to the possibility of a non-human low-class crew of drunken dipshits. Those could, theoretically, exist!
LC: Mm, those friskergibblins are a real menace...
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