2.2 KiB
Feeding the muse
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Author: u/grinnbearit *
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URL: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/10/12/five-planets-in-search-of-a-sci-fi-story/
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Score: 10
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Created: 2014-10-12T10:28:46
Post:
Comments:
u/somnicule [+7] (12 hours later)
An enterprising young Zyzzx Primean decides that lasting academic status is the primary problem, and starts an anonymous arXiv-like service for academics.
Meanwhile, business executives enroll in programs of progressively more and more severe verbal abuse, humiliation, and periodically performing at the lowest rungs of the company to stave off the loss of mental acuity
A Flowers for Algernon-esque subplot happens with a professor who is about to receive tenure.
Betting markets are distorted by the fact that those with the most wealth are the least capable of investing wisely, resulting in a high social mobility where the rich are functionally giving away their funds to younger generations. Investors use software in which they are continually unaware of how successful they actually are, applying rules like the Kelly criterion automatically based on their analysis. Rivals attempt to make each other successful in the short term, and then sabotage them by informing each other of their success.
A small nation implements an anonymous sort of democracy system, but since everyone thinks they're making important policy decisions those policies are just as bad as before, except with no low-status people to help correct those mistakes.
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (a day later)
Rivals attempt to make each other successful in the short term, and then sabotage them by informing each other of their success.
Beautiful. You made a lot more out of that than social satire.
u/Gurkenglas [+1] (5 days later)
That sounds like it should be about as legal in that world as going home to someone at night and injecting an Alzheimer's virus into their brain.
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est. (5 days later)
Yup, but since they have incompetent lawmakers, there ya go.