18 KiB
Simverse VII (final)
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Author: u/krakonfour *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2cmk22/simverse_vii_final/
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Score: 16
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Created: 2014-08-04T21:24:04
Post:
Hi!
To those who stuck with me from the beginning, thank you! This is the last part of the Simverse setting.
In this post, I'll detail the effect on human civilization that the discovery of the nature of the universe had.
Most evident are the religious effects.
A large fraction of humanity in the 21s century believe that there is/are diety(ies) that created the universe, then populated it with humans. These humans have to behave in a certain 'correct' way, and doing so will reward them during their lives, during an afterlife/further lives or both. The keyword here is 'purpose'. Humans are supposed to do something in addition to just finding food and building shelter.
With the discovery that the universe is simulated, and probably breaking down due to neglect, this interpretation of humanity's existence simply goes 'kaput' in the 22nd century.
Well, at least for the majority of people. A significant fraction humanity becomes Atheist, basing their beliefs on the prevalent theories that followed the discovery.
These atheists are divided into three factions. The first are the Realists, who believe that humanity must strive to exploit the simulation to achieve full control of reality. The second are the Naturals, basically an atheistic religion. They believe that humanity has a 'natural' moral code programmed into them, and they must explicit this code and follow it as a code of conduct. The third are Simulators. The are similar to Realists, except they believe humanity can escape the simulation and reach the 'Real' outside of it. They also believe humans hold no value as entities, and believe that modifying human consciousness through hacks can force the simulator to eject them into the 'Real'. They are proponents of human experimentation.
Separate from these is the short-lived violent anarchist uprising, who equate 'no purpose' to 'no rules' or 'no consequences'. They attempted to establish a hedonistic society that actively attacked governments and figures of authority, but they were quickly forced underground.
On the other hand, we have those who stuck to theistic religions, adapting them to accommodate the discovery. For most, the actual nature of the universe changed little to the fact that a god(s) existed and created the universe, then delivered a code of conduct to humanity. However, newer religions such as the Unitarian Universalism and Baha'i Faith gain members while traditional monotheistic faiths lose members.
All of these religions suffer great theological debates that strain their unity, especially between those that preach stricter following of religious laws and those that demand a revised interpretation.
The second effects are social and demographic. With humanity able to colonize solar systems at the speed of light, there is no more need to follow the strict resource rationing that follows the 21st century. The end of the 21st century is marked by the Oil Crisis, in which the Arab Gulf and American oil reserves dry up. The energy-intensive farming methods required to feed a 9-10 billion population renders the problem more pressing. With the USA no longer considered a superpower, it fails to impose its policy on nuclear proliferation, and fission power generation quickly supersedes fossil-based energy.
The requirement for hacking to take place far away from Earth is a great boost for the space industry. Solid nuclear thermal drives (10-20km/s exhaust velocity, but easily varied to provide more thrust) provide the lifting power to put the necessary installations in space. They are followed by gaseous core nuclear drives (35-60km/s exhaust velocity) that are better suited to interplanetary travel. Once a kinetic transfer travel system (KITTS) is set up, the majority of intra-solar system spaceships do away with an internal drive.
The KITTS us a two step system. The first accelerates microsatellites equipped with thrusters to speeds of over 100km/s by dropping them over the Sun and swapping them repeatedly to a higher orbit. Once they reach the desired speed, they are released in front of the target spacecraft. Another microsatellite is accelerated and swapped into an opposite direction behind the target. The target spacecraft is a magnetic ring. The two microsatellites are timed to meet just behind the magnetic ring. They vaporize each other into ionized plasma. This plasma pushes the magnetic ring, providing thrust.
Anyways, this economic boom allows for a period of prosperity. Socially, without any restrictions on resources and space, populations are encouraged to grow. A new generation, growing in opulence and eyes turned towards the stars, is the first to leave the planet to inhabit the rest of the universe.
It should be noted that it takes a decade between discovery of each group of habitable planets. Most colonization efforts are strictly orbital: a government sets up installations in a new, uninhabitable solar system, then moves onto the new profitable spot.
The people that move off Earth are very different from me and you. The discovery (I think I should capitalize it from now on) freed up limitations on genetic engineering, cybernetic enhancements and other body modifications. The biggest differences are, however, mental. They do not feel lonely. They do not grow 'bored', do not suffer from depression or mood swings. At times, they are indistinguishable from robots. Their life spans are extended, with people reaching 120 to 130 easily. To some extent, you can consider them 'apathetic', but it is mostly a consequence of extreme patience.
All these characteristics help with long, solitary excursions to outer space.
The taboos of society change, as well. Modifying your state of mind through alcohol or drugs is seen as a very bad thing to do. Short relationships are not seen as detrimental, but leaving your partner without doing something 'constructive' is seen as a very bad thing. Children are considered contributions to society, and there aren't so much 'orphanages' as 'community centers' that take care of the supernumerary offspring. Children are often grown outside of the body.
Another change is in education. Every single person who has left the surface of the planet is educated to an equivalent of an undergraduate degree at the minimum. There are no space bartenders or space garbage collectors. Everyone knows something and has a skill to use. It is simply mindboggling to them that someone can live without knowing a useful skill.
The communities that settle off-world are never big. There is no point in concentrating settlements when the rest of the universe is a space elevator ride and a swap away. The vast majority of settlements are 100-500 person units living in the furthest Lagrange point from the system's star. It is more profitable to have several small communities, and a large amount of duplication sectors, than one densely inhabited population center with closely monitored sectors.
Another major change in society is the presence of social enterprises. They are profit seeking companies where the employees are a community of people that live together their whole lives. It can be called a form of 'microcommunism'. It is not very popular on Earth, where seeking individual profit is still the best course of action, but in a solar system hundreds of lightyears away, it is better to organize the community into working together. Think of your colleague as your neighbor, spouse or sibling. The company's funds are also your savings, and any loan you ask for becomes a commercial investment instead of a consumption loan.
This is especially important when you have to pay for the air you breathe. Unlike on Earth, where you can pack your belongings and walk away with your family, you need money to leave the planet, money to travel and money to stay alive, so it makes sense to have it this way.
Governments become major economic actors, and the largest lenders for new social enterprises wishing to move to another solar system. This is in their interest, since they cannot buy solar systems and sell their duplication sectors without humans being involved every step of the way. This adds up very quickly, and countries like China where family planning and 'sacrificing for your country' are considered normal.
The majority of the social enterprises mentioned above exist solely because of government loans that allow them to set up and start making money. They very often have a government agenda on top of their regular activities.
Moving onto the economical side:
I mentioned in Simverse VI that this is a semi-post scarcity situation for humanity. They practically have as many resources as they want, and the bottleneck factor becomes the industrial transformation of these resources.
Transforming the resources into usable products requires very little labor. It is nearly entirely handled by machines. The result is vast industrial complexes constructed in space, where materials and products are swapped in and out to destinations far and near.
I mentioned before that everyone is educated to some degree. You might have noticed that over the course of human history, humanity's prevalent job was first to gather, then hunt, then grow or manufacture in a workshop. In the 22nd century, we have a situation equal to a global Silicon Valley. The money is in innovation and creation.
With mining replaced by duplication, processing handled by machines and design handled by computers, there is nothing left to do except research and innovation.
The lowliest jobs are spacewatchers and matrons. A spacewatcher is someone paid to just sit in a Lagrange point, in a spaceship, stabilizing the local sectors for travel, doubling as a traffic officer and having navigation/piloting roles. A matron in the 22nd century sense is someone who provides the human touch necessary for the development of lab-grown babies. Babysitters, really.
The most prestigious jobs include spacestation architects, lead simulation researchers, solar system bidders and prototypers. A prototyper is someone who converts the designs from the R&D department into a physical model. It is valued more than today because the prototyper's role also includes financial and mechanical considerations, since he or she modifies the final design to ease mass production of the product. For example, removing features that require a costly investment in new production line machines. You'll notice doctors are not on the list.
What's left?
Money. With several communities leaving our solar system for years and returning with a huge amount of precious metals, currencies have to be stabilized and indexed on values unaffected by resource costs. Capitals loaned to social enterprises usually take years to return. Furthermore, a community loaning a sum and returning years later shouldn't be forced into poverty (and back on the ground) by changing rates.
This has caused governments to lock away their currencies from financial markets. This means the value of a dollar, for example, is locked for a decade. Trade is still done with alternate values, such as services and time bonds. You cannot, however, mount a company using solely such bonds for reasons that include reducing market volatility and making piracy unprofitable.
Market volatility is a major concern when dealing with capitals in the hands of extremely fast computers. In the 21st century, we are at risk of billions of dollars being gained or lost in a few seconds when one computers starts playing Tic-tac-toe and blindly follows its profit-seeking algorithms into making millions of decisions per second. In the 22nd century, that event is a certainty unless market regulations stop this type of behavior.
Piracy is when sectors that take months to years before become available for a duplication again are 'stolen'. Simply put, you send off your pirate on a high speed run around a solar system, swapping into selected sectors along the route. These sector's value drops instantly. Then, you try and buy these sectors at a much lower price.
This becomes much less profitable if governments control currency, and can investigate sudden changes in a company's value before allowing money to be exchanged, thus 'validating' the earnings.
Before I end this, I have one last thing to describe:
Explosive mining.
Remember the KITTS? The microsatellites can be replaced by asteroids. When they collide, the different elements are separated into an ionized plasma. 'Ionized' is the key word here. When you apply an electromagnetic field to this plasma, the charged ions will react to it and deviate their trajectory. Heavier elements are harder to deviate than lighter elements.
Inside a bird-cage style sphere, where the bars are magnets, kilogram-scale asteroids can be pulverized. From the expanding plasma, the heavier elements are pushed back until the accumulate in the center and can be carried away. The lighter elements escape.
I hope you enjoyed Simverse.
I'll be putting up a post soon that indexes all the worldbuilding project posts I have submitted so far. I have two more projects waiting to be started.
Comments:
u/Empiricist_or_not [+3] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (a day later)
I agree with /u/VorpalAuroch that I see a lot of politic/utopia wish fulfillment here, but to couch it in more useful criticism you seem to have invalidating economies of scale based on a hack that large organizations would find a way to utilize, and seem to have entirely forgotten Hanlon's razor, unless this is the ultimate end state at the end of the stories. If you want your story in this idealized state, and for people to not use those labels/criticisms, then I'd say spend a lot pages in your intro or several history chapters to show, and not tell, why this happened with more fidelity in the expliation to each event that seems like the obvious moral outcome to you. I'll be glad to read this and see if I pop a credibility button, but this end state seems to assume far too much sanity in humanity. I'd recommend reading some Heinlein, to learn a more pragmatic/cynical view.
u/autowikibot [+1] (a day later)
#####
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#### Hanlon's razor:
Hanlon's razor is an eponymous adage that allows the [elimination of unlikely explanations for a phenomenon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_(philosophy)). It reads:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
This particular form is attributed to a Robert J. Hanlon. However, earlier utterances that convey the same basic idea are known.
^Interesting: ^Razor ^(philosophy) ^| ^Finagle's ^law ^| ^Index ^of ^logic ^articles ^| ^Good ^faith
^Parent ^commenter ^can [^toggle ^NSFW](http://www.np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot NSFW toggle&message=%2Btoggle-nsfw+cji18mp) ^or [^delete](http://www.np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot Deletion&message=%2Bdelete+cji18mp)^. ^Will ^also ^delete ^on ^comment ^score ^of ^-1 ^or ^less. ^| ^(FAQs) ^| ^Mods ^| ^Magic ^Words
u/VorpalAuroch [+0] Life before Death (5 hours later)
This looks more like wish fulfillment than rational wordlbuilding.
u/krakonfour [-3] (11 hours later)
I'm sure you're the new generation of 'tl;dr': 'Too long, I read 2 sentences and made a sarcastic comment', which can be abbreviated to 'IAmShit'.
u/VorpalAuroch [+1] Life before Death (21 hours later)
I read most of it, and skimmed all of it. It doesn't really hold together.
u/krakonfour [+0] (21 hours later)
Oh please, enlighten me. Which parts don't 'hold together'?
u/VorpalAuroch [+1] Life before Death (23 hours later)
Most of it; everything starting from 'taboos' onward. None of the changes other than the religious ones follow from the events described; they're randomly utopian without clear reasons for why they would happen.
u/krakonfour [+1] (a day later)
It would take many more pages to explain the advances in biotechnology and man/machine interfaces, and the orientation of technology away from 'hard' applications like travel and energy production to 'softer' applications like medicine, communication and data technology...
None of that is rational worldbuilding, so I just outlined the consequences.
u/VorpalAuroch [+1] Life before Death (a day later)
Without the justification, the rest of it isn't "rational worldbuilding" either.
u/krakonfour [+0] (a day later)
The rest are consequences of internal rules to the universe.
u/VorpalAuroch [+1] Life before Death (a day later)
Maybe, but without showing your work they look like haphazard pseudo-utopianism. Better on the weirdtopia/utopia axis than most, but still not believable.
u/krakonfour [+1] (a day later)
I was referring to the Simverse I-VI posts. The Simverse VII, where I deal nearly entirely with how humans have reacted to the Discovery is difficult to treat rationally.