The main takeaway is that they had one shot to put all of the collected data and all of the suffering from those on board to good use, Siri was 'broken' to the Captain and needed to fix him to ensure the data's survival as a message to Earth. You reject unpalatable truths, and if you can’t reject them outright you trivialize them. He couldn't persuade passionately in a debate or discussion with the people of Earth, whom Sarasti/Captain described as climate change/holocaust deniers, because: He was so narrow minded after all the years of shaping his skills and after the trauma of the whole trip to Rorschach, he could not have effectively explained what he saw to anyone. Siri would have gotten the whole point wrong had he gone back the way he was. Eventually it concludes there is no darkness, that light is everywhere.” Every wall, every piece of furniture it points at is brightly lit. But everywhere it turns it sees brightness. Since it lives in a room without doors, or windows, or any other source of light, it thinks this will be easy.

“A laser is assigned to find the darkness. A 'vampire folktale' about a laser (in retrospect this sounds like an AI folktale). The answers I see a lot are extrapolating from context and assumptions and are pretty much on point, but the whole reasoning is explained via an awesome analogy for Siri by Sarasti/Captain during their last chat before being attacked by Rorschach for the final time. Just wanted to discuss something real quick that I saw a lot when I searched for this book on this sub: why Sarasti/Captain attacked Siri. Can't wait to re-read it! I should mention it's recommended on this sub a lot because it's damn good, I too was almost annoyed with how often it's recommended. Kept me guessing, had me re-reading passages just to make sure I understood everything, and had me physically tensing up with the uncertainty of everything (the 'I'm dead' scene cannot be topped, I think). I just finished this intense book and I loved it.

Blindsight by Peter Watts