4.0 KiB
[RT, HSF] Programmer at Large, CH2: What's your name?
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Author: u/DRMacIver *
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URL: http://www.drmaciver.com/2017/01/programmer-at-large-whats-your-name/
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Score: 21
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Created: 2017-01-13T18:48:07
Post:
Comments:
u/Gurkenglas [+5] (an hour later)
This was why the price of food was up – speculation on the slightly reduced resources if the vote went ahead.
Why would the price of the food which might be dumped because of its reduced quality go up?
It looks like these Nomic mechanics are applying evolutionary pressure to the ship's population to become more popular - but I wonder how that translates into a bureaucratic requirement for everyone to not be antisocial? The who-gets-voted-off is a zero-sum game, after all, and I would expect the bureaucracy to instead try to push for people to not invest ressources into increasing their own chances at continued employment at the expense of everyone else, that might instead have been contributed to the ship's common good.
Perhaps the protagonist fights against akrasia, and imposed the social points system on himself so he'd be forced to interact with people in every short term, so he wouldn't be voted off the ship in the long term?
u/DRMacIver [+4] (an hour later)
Why would the price of the food which might be dumped because of its reduced quality go up?
Because the quantity of food available is more or less fixed.
Edit: Actually on reflection you might be right. The cost of food futures should be going up, but that doesn't necessarily translate to the cost of current food going up. Let me think about this more before I change anything though.
Edit 2: I decided the way I had the economics of food working in this setting didn't make sense and have edited those bits. Thanks.
RE the questions about voting off: It should be noted that that fear is very much to be viewed through the lens of Arthur's social anxiety. Arthur is not in fact in any danger of getting voted off the ship - people tend not to get voted off unless they're actively useless, but having friends certainly helps if you find yourself in that situation.
u/Gurkenglas [+2] (3 hours later)
The contaminated and uncontaminated food should be worth different amounts. The bad taste lowers the price of the former, and some of that total value, if people can buy uncontaminated food instead, will go to the latter. The vote discusses whether to set the value of the contaminated food to 0. This does not make today's contaminated food more expensive.
u/DRMacIver [+1] (14 hours later)
Yeah, I agree.
The thing I decided that didn't make sense though is fine grained resource pricing while interstellar. It's not actually a good model of the constraints, and a better one is somewhere closer to "We have N available spaces for people to be awake, so we'll auction them off".
u/None [+3] (a day later)
An awkward person named Arthur drifting through interstellar space, having all sorts of adventures while in a more-or-less constant state of mild social discomfort?
My only question is, did they remember their towel?
u/DRMacIver [+2] (a day later)
They use air jets to dry off on the ship (towels are terribly resource inefficient)
Also the correct pronoun for Arthur (and all other crew members) is they.
u/MaddoScientisto [+2] (17 hours later)
That was interesting, can't wait to read more
u/DRMacIver [+4] (17 hours later)
Thanks! Glad you liked it.
The plan is to release a new chapter most weeks (currently tentatively pencilled in for Fridays, but I'll experiment a bit and find out what day works best)
ETA: *cough* and of course if you really can't wait to read more, the first draft of the next chapter is available to patreon supporters. ;-)