I have been in the Murderbot diaries hole for approximately two seconds (actually it‘s been 15 days but you know what I mean) anyway that one post about ART and Iris and Murderbot being all about the same age with the theories on SecUnit life expectancy had me thinking, because you know the differences between it and pretty much all other constructs and machine intelligences are so pronounced without much explanation. And obviously the doylist explanation is that it is the protagonist, and in-universe there‘s the relevancy of media for MBs thought process and cognition history and the generally vastly differing cognition levels of bots. But honestly my interpretation at this point, especially compared to Three and how it handles its freedom, is that Murderbot might simply be older than most other SecUnits (not a surprise considering the stories it doesn‘t tell of past contracts).
The main reason for this interpretation is that I find it remarkable that Three turns to nonfiction in an attempt to understand the world, and navigating everything else seems to be a secondary priority it will probably adress after it completes its circumstance orientation program. But Murderbot hints at so many past experiences in different circumstances and is able to extrapolate so much knowledge from that alone that it makes me think either Three has had way more succesfull and recent memory wipes, or it has to have a way shorter deployment history.
