scrape_r_rational/data/cache/2ycdbd.md

Throwing ideas out for anyone who wants them [BST(?), D]

Post:

I don't really think of myself as a rationalist. I read a lot of LessWrong and I'm an avid follower of HPMOR, but I haven't expanded my horizons much beyond that, and any true rationalist wouldn't procrastinate a two-month long homework up until the last week. This is just a disclaimer before I start posting some random fic ideas I've had that, upon reflection, would (I think) be very interesting stories if written by an actual rationalist. Apologies if this is out of place, which I'm very afraid it is.

The first one is one I've had for a long time; I've been reading many stories about groundhog day loops - Infinite loops, Hard Reset, Mother of Learning - and have often wondered what would happen if the entire world looped physically at the end of the week. Think, one week from now at precisely midnight (or when you die, whichever comes first), your mind will be transferred to the you of today - and this happens to literally human being (animals too, maybe?) on the planet.

My first attempt at writing this (disregarding a one-shot where I had an old man at his deathbed wondering why his family was abandoning him in his final hours, which coincided with the beginning of the loops) was a romance story because I realized I wasn't smart enough to emulate the politics of such a world that I could write from the perspective of someone in power, and I couldn't think of any other potential conflict that would both be interesting and directly relevant to the looping - so I decided to make it unrelated so that I could just showcase the new world in the background, kinda.

This, I realized, was stupid. So, I'm offering the idea to someone who's smart enough to consider the implications of such a world - what would the law be like, if there was any? Would there be any economy, considering that money and the like are now worthless since they can't be transferred for more than a week? Etc. etc. - and knows what sort of plot would best befit such a background.

My second idea is based on pretty much any universe where anything magical is forgotten by normals. Imagine if somebody posted a video on the internet. He requests, on a forum, that people comment prior to watching the video - a few comply. Ten minutes later, they realize that they posted a message, but didn't write it - or perhaps they don't remember it. Nine hours later, it's widespread knowledge on the internet that anybody who watches the video will forget all interactions they had pertaining to the video (did they comment about it? Talk about it with their friends?) and the video itself.

Everybody is freaking out.

The protagonist, in my head, is a magical enforcer - someone who generally keeps people from learning about the masquerade (whatever this masquerade might be), and now has to deal with the fact that the internet knows about this video and its effects - and he knows that the internet is very smart.

Either that, or he's the pro-humanity person that posted the video in the first place.

I gave up on this when I realized I had no idea where I wanted to go with this.

...That's it. If anyone wants to take these ideas for rationalfics, or takes inspiration from them at least, thank you for working on something which would otherwise be trash hidden in my mind.

Comments:

• u/DCarrier:

  "Money" as we know it would probably be largely replaced by status and favors. Property would still exist, but you could only own things nearby. You might do a huge favor for your neighbor, in exchange for trading houses.
  
  Most jobs would become unnecessary. This means most of the population would probably be rendered unemployed, and most of the downsides of this would be avoided.
  
  I could imagine jobs like manning power plants which would normally require far too much paperwork to pay for conventionally could involve some weird kind of taxation. If the power man asks for something, you give it to him. If someone doesn't, they're shunned. If they aren't shunned, the entire block loses power for a week. Then again, maybe these jobs would be rare enough for volunteer work on its own. And maybe volunteer work is nothing but this, done on such an instinctual level that we don't even notice it.
  
  Murder would obviously be much less important. Bureaucracy would have to be massively reduced. Much of crime would probably be punished by shunning, but in cases where it's necessary it would be entirely possible to just lock someone up again each week. You know where they are after all. Or you could repeatedly kill them for a while.
  
  Pregnancy and STDs would no longer be an issue. The consequences of that are obvious.
  
  What exactly are you doing for people who die during the week? Based on the first story you mentioned, they lose all memories?
  

  • u/actually_just_idiot:

    >"Money" as we know it would probably be largely replaced by status and favors. Property would still exist, but you could only own things nearby. You might do a huge favor for your neighbor, in exchange for trading houses.
    
    Right. And there wouldn't be any practical way of tracking this at scale, so house swaps would largely be on the honor system.
    

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