scrape_r_rational/data/cache/6efjo6.md

[D] Wednesday Worldbuilding Thread

Post:

Welcome to the Wednesday thread for worldbuilding discussions!

/r/rational is focussed on rational and rationalist fiction, so we don't usually allow discussion of scenarios or worldbuilding unless there's finished chapters involved (see the sidebar). It is pretty fun to cut loose with a likeminded community though, so this is our regular chance to:

• Plan out a new story
• Discuss how to escape a supervillian lair... or build a perfect prison
• Poke holes in a popular setting (without writing fanfic)
• Test your idea of how to rational-ify Alice in Wonderland

Or generally work through the problems of a fictional world.

^(Non-fiction should probably go in the Friday Off-topic thread, or Monday General Rationality)

Comments:

• u/alexanderwales:

  Q-type mental disorder is chiefly characterized by a complete replacement of all previous values. Instead, the infected will dedicate their will entirely toward killing as many people as possible. They will eat, but only because survival is instrumental toward killing. They will socialize, but have no compulsion to do so outside of its instrumental value in killing more people. They are not like you or I, where they might get distracted by other pursuits or bored of what they are doing, and they can be thought of as effectively having a limitless supply of willpower, all put toward their goal of killing as many people as possible.
  
  Now, I like this idea, but the problem is that if I were Q-type, my actions would actually look pretty uninteresting to an outside observer; I would become a model citizen, put my head down, and study/schmooze like mad until I worked my way into a career where I could have an extraordinarily high impact, like disease research, asteroid mining, or nuclear testing/control/safety. That's horrific in the abstract sense but it's not very visceral and it's not a terribly good springboard for the type of story I would want to tell.
  
  I'm not sure what the best hack is to my Q-type definition though. Ideally the effect leads competence porn serial killers who put great effort into not getting caught and who don't care about gathering trophies, taking credit, or selecting particular targets (and in fact will shun any consistent MO, because that would make them easier to catch). Ideally it's something that can be summed up in a pithy line of dialogue and not "the causal distance between the killer and victim is less than thirty minutes from action to effect", which does not flow off the tongue.
  
  Secondarily, I'm not a hundred percent sure what the MO would actually look like, if a serial killer was attempting to kill as many people as possible before their own capture/death. Pick targets that are unlikely to be missed, move around a lot, cover your tracks ... I'm not sure that I can model it that well, so any help would be appreciated.
  

  • u/Noumero:

    >Q-type mental disorder is chiefly characterized by a complete replacement of all previous values. Instead, the infected will dedicate their will entirely toward killing as many people as possible
    
    I think the problem with such value-hijacking things is that it's assumed anyone infected by those would become a perfect actor. They won't.
    
    Social interactions are full of unconscious cues, microexpressions and body language subtleties that won't be present in such a being. They would seem unsettling to ordinary people, firmly occupying Uncanny Valley.
    
    Moreover, we draw from our own desires and emotions when interacting with other human beings, use them to empathize, understand, and indeed *model* people. Having a deviant mind would lead to flawed intuitive models of others. Sociopaths already have a hard time dealing with it, and they merely lack empathy; what that implies about a being completely devoid of emotional makeup, but having neither an increased intelligece to create better models, nor a special acting ability to make up for it (pun honestly not intended)?
    
    I'm reasonably confident they would seem autistic to the outside world, idiot-savant types, excelling in whatever field they choose to pursue but notorioulsy bad with people. They would probably occassionally slip into modeling others as bloodlusted as well, perhaps even doing so *out loud*. I'm doubtful of their ability to fool anyone for extended periods of time.
    
    >Secondarily, I'm not a hundred percent sure what the MO would actually look like, if a serial killer was attempting to kill as many people as possible before their own capture/death
    
    Mass poisonings? Move between cities a lot, contaminating food/water supplies whenever you go?
    

    • u/DaystarEld:

      This is my reaction too. A Q-Type does not, by my read, immediately become a Moriarty-level Criminal Master Mind. Their VALUES shift, but not their intelligence, skills, impulse control, etc. If they gain only one goal, and that goal is killing as many people as possible, then the less intelligent/patient/skilled ones will get in their car and drive through a crowded sidewalk, while the opposite will try to work their way into a nuclear power plant and coordinate a series of critical system failures.
      
      Unless you do mean that they gain willpower and insight and acting skills and so on, /u/alexanderwales? It's fine if they are able to commit ALL of their willpower to that goal without getting distracted by vices or boredom or whatever, but that's different from gaining an inhuman focus for maximizing the goal, in my view.  Like, if the average person's goals all got deleted except for "eat cookies," they would not become super rich so they could eat a limitless amount of cookies. They would operate within their means to maximize cookie eating at the expense of all else, but if they HAVE no means, like they don't have a job or savings or can't think of a plan to get more money, they might just start stealing cookies.
      

      • u/Noumero:

        > not their intelligence, skills, impulse control, etc. If they gain only one goal, and that goal is killing as many people as possible, then the less intelligent/patient/skilled ones will get in their car and drive through a crowded sidewalk, while the opposite will try to work their way into a nuclear power plant and coordinate a series of critical system failures
        
        No, the way I understood it, their impulse control gets rewritten by "kill as many people as possible", as does their impatience and their emotions.
        
        That won't be enough to avoid *mistakes*, though. They won't become perfectly rational. Less methodical and critical ones would reach to some cached "how would I kill all these people" thought, and decide that the best way to do it is by driving a car through a crowded sidewalk — *not* because they're impatient, but because they would honestly think it's the best way. Ones previously less inclined to take whatever they do seriously won't take their new goal seriously as well, would go about it incompetently. More methodical ones would go for the long-game.
        
        Since they're used to put themselves into other people's place to predict them, they would try to continue doing that. Only later would they realize it's not working properly anymore, try to readjust. Maybe their old mental models of close friends are still workable, maybe not; their ability to socialize would be severly impaired in any case.
        
        "Infinite willpower" would let them put indefinite amounts of time into working on fixing their disabilities, learning to act, — *if* they think of it, that is. But they would still occasionally make mistakes, it would still be hard for them to model large groups of people, or get complicated social interactions right, simply because they no longer have software for that.
        
        Their mistakes won't always be internal, either, they would occasionally try to make small talk about how they want to kill everyone — they're not used to live surrounded by enemies, after all, they may forget about their orthogonal values, get distracted.
        
        Living would be *really* complicated for them.
        

      • u/alexanderwales:

        I mostly agree, except impulse control is the one benefit that they get, mostly because all other values get stripped from them and there's no time preference to "kill people" except for that imposed by uncertainty (i.e. if I don't kill anyone this week, then maybe I'll randomly die of a stroke and not *ever* get to kill anyone). Everything else *should* flow from that, assuming that they think of it (which not all of them will). They don't gain acting skills, but *if* they've decided that getting captured is a risk, they will try their best to not get captured, and part of a likely strategy for that is learning how to lie.
        
        How powerful "infinite willpower" is probably depends on what you believe about willpower in general. I generally think that it's very powerful and consider a lot of rationalist techniques to be ways of circumventing the need to expend willpower, or to reorder time preference, or otherwise hack values.
        
        (I am naturally less interested in those people who would be stupid about it; there's plenty of true crime stories out there about killers who were sloppy and irrational about it. For the purposes of the story this idea is currently embedded within, they're all probably drawn from the equivalent of SEAL teams, which means a certain level of intelligence and skills would be built-in. Not sure that I'm going to leave this idea in that story though.)
        

        • u/DaystarEld:

          > I am naturally less interested in those people who would be stupid about it
          
          Makes sense, I was thinking that depending on how the story is set up, the world might know about the Q-Types in the first place because of these less-effective ones, and mistakenly believe that it just turns people into near-mindless killing machines until the first "sleeper" Q-Type sets homemade bombs off all over the city or poisons its water supply.
          

  • u/arenavanera:

    Some potential hacks:
    
    * Add a personal experience component.  "A Q-type wants to watch as many people die by their own hand as possible".  (You could fudge the meaning of "watch" a bit.)
    
    * Make it serial: "A Q-type has a target, and wants to kill that target more than anything.  Once that target is dead, they want to select a new target more than anything.  They can't change targets."
    
    * Make each kill less important.  Maybe the worst thing in the world for a Q-type is if they fail to kill *anybody at all*.  So they value 10 kills way less than 1 kill, 100 kills way less than 10 kills, etc.
    
    I think the third hack is my favorite.  You would probably end up with Q-types who are hyper-competent leaders in their plausibly-world-ending fields, and then in their free time they murder people.  (Also, these murders could increase in scale as the story goes on.  Once the Q-type has killed 10 people, it sets its eyes on 100, then 1000, etc. etc., all while pursuing its dream of releasing a genetically-engineered superbug that ends all life on earth.  It's a free dramatic arc, and an excuse to have prominent and well-respected experts murder people at night.  You could also maybe have a side story where the government secretly tolerates known Q-types because they're so productive in their fields, and only kills them off when their nighttime escapades get out of hand.  There's a lot of fun meat on that bone.)
    

  • u/PM_ME_EXOTIC_FROGS:

    Serial killing is ineffective if you want to maximize death. Instead of killing individuals, consider spreading lethal disease or poison working at fast food. Or contaminating a glove with something really nasty and going around turning doorknobs. Contaminate frequently used bathrooms: almost none even have cameras! If the Q-type is careful and meticulous, there's very little chance of them getting caught.
    
    Maybe good places to go for killing people are third world countries, in the hopes that law enforcement is more ineffective there, medical care is worse, people are more vulnerable to disease, vaccinations aren't as widespread.
    
    Intelligent people can research and synthesize diseases to operate on a larger scale.
    
    Even if you're not very smart, well, you have limitless willpower, and that counts for a lot lot lot, so hitting the books is a good plan, learning about rationality and planning skills, and putting off murder until you're clever enough to evade getting caught.
    
    People who believe abortion is murder can work on that.
    
    The natural Schelling point would be starting either war advocacy or extremist environmentalist blogs and Q-types can find each other that way, share ideas, and work together. If Q-types are well-known, the natural Schelling point is anti-Q-type blogs. Since they have limitless willpower, they're much more likely to think about where the point is for five minutes and come to that conclusion.
    
    Once a community is formed, a standard FAQ and things will likely be created: "So you're one of us: here's a catalog of the best ways you can kill people without getting caught" and "here's how to do encryption and op. security" and "kik me if you have any questions, newbies, I'd be happy to help ;)"
    
    This would be a really cool setting to explore online, just because of how surreally creepy it could be and how fun internet settings are when done well. Maybe competition with confirmed kill counts.
    
    This would be an interesting way for an apocalypse to happen. (Albeit really edgy.)
    
    It's interesting that Q-types have infinite willpower and seemingly negligibly low time preference (behaving as a model citizen until reaching a good opportunity), but they don't just wait for humans to, like, die on their own.
    
    If Q-types value killing people and not *extinction*, they might want to help create more humans. That could be through fighting against abortion, working to create a superintelligence that will maximize humans, under the premise that they will all inevitably die through entropy.
    
    I'm imagining the universe tiled with constantly dying and reincarnating humans.
    

    • u/eniteris:

      Just commenting to say the online community bit sound like a brilliant idea, mostly due to how similar it seems to already-present online communities.
      
      And also less face-to-face, which makes me think of Deathnote.
      

    • u/PeridexisErrant:

      > they don't just wait for humans to, like, die on their own
      
      Maybe they're all competing for the big one: permanent sabotage of transhumanism research.  Imagine the credit for a hundred billion people dying of avoidable old age...
      

  • u/MagicWeasel:

    To depart  from all these abstract comments, here's some concrete examples:
    
    - Hyatt regency walkway collapse killed a lot of people as the result of a very simple engineering error that was initiated by the contractor. So have Q types working in construction roles and sabotaging the job in small but serious ways: I assume they're patient so they can wait 5-10 years for the collapse to happen.
    
    - Basically look at any bridge or building collapse and someone screwed up to make it possible (e.g. a bridge collapsed in the 1800s because they just built it twice the size not realising that the weight scaled up by a cube but the strength only scaled up by a square) - Q-type's goal is to *be that guy*. With modern technology and standards either do it in the third world (engineers without borders is a thing: the old adage goes a doctor can kill one person at a time and an engineer can kill thousands), or be one of the construction workers.
    
    - Another thing: landfill collapses in places like India and Brazil can kill thousands of people and are easily preventable which means easily causeable. Design a bad landfill located somewhere dangerous and then wait a few decades for it to collapse.
    
    Small-scale, some murderers who got away with shit: 
    
    - probably the murderer who comes closest to the Q-Type modality is Israel Keyes, who killed an unknown number of people (some think he was all talk and only killed 3 since he died by suicide and didn't confess to any more than that; others think it could be dozens based on his boasting). He did things like hiding "murder kits" consisting of weapons, cash, duct tape, etc around the US and then coming back years later to use them in murders. One of his documented murders consisted of him flying into one city, hiring a car, and driving a long, long distance to a completely different city to murder a couple, and then driving all the way back. Definitely a guy to research.
    
    - The Original Night Stalker is known by many names and committed a great deal of rapes and eventually murders in California in the 70s, and they were only linked together in the 90s when DNA was able to link them. He did things like sneaking into peoples' houses and stashing equipment to commit murders with, cutting phone lines, etc. As a rapist he targeted attractive women and their husbands, so that's not ideal Q-Type, but he did all sorts of sadistic stuff like phoning victims up 20 years later even though they'd moved house (again, probably not a Q Type trait, but still pretty creepy)
    
    - Long Island Serial Killer is a currently "active" SK who is murdering prostitutes, has been for a long time, and seems to get away with it.
    
    True crime's an interest of mine, and I work as a civil engineer, so hopefully some of these examples will spark something in you.
    

    • u/alexanderwales:

      I'm a fan of true crime as well (though mostly just the extreme cases). Mostly I find it a little shocking how far the most successful serial killers got without having terribly stable brains. Ted Bundy got away with it for a long time and was only caught because he got really, really brazen. I think that would be a lot harder in our current era of ubiquitous surveillance, but still doable. A lot of psychopathy comes with a lack of impulse control, so the Q-type disorder would turn that on its head.
      
      Engineers or contractors intentionally setting up disasters-in-waiting is a neat story idea, but different from the directions that I'd naturally want to go it. And I would also probably want to change the story so that they were doing it for a noble or at least morally ambiguous reason, like because they were trying to sabotage a violent regime or something.
      

  • u/Frommerman:

    If Q-types knew who each other were and were willing to cooperate on projects, the obvious path to maximum death is for them to get placed at every link in the chain which causes global thermonuclear warfare. Infinite willpower means that they would be incredibly likely to succeed, especially if they can get all of their non-Q-type rivals killed in plausible accidents by other Q-types.
    
    You could change the definition by saying the Q-type maximizes the number of people who they personally see die. This slightly increases the risk of capture (which is actually a good thing for worldbuilding, as it means it is *possible* for normals to break into the conspiracy), but also gives them far more available avenues. They could be battlefield commanders who send their own men on suicidal charges or nurses at understaffed hospices. They could undetectably trigger industrial accidents, cause open-pit mines to flood, bomb large sporting events, or even work for the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders.
    
    Now that I think of it, they could hack hospital security systems to view death from afar as well. There's lots of options if Q-types don't have to personally cause the deaths.
    

  • u/vakusdrake:

    Well for one thing it seems likely they would put significant effort into infecting other since that may effectively double the number of people they could kill (or increase it exponentially if the new infected also infects others). 
    
    Anyway I agree that if there were relatively few infected they wouldn't actually do serial killing instead messing things up on  far larger scale which will probably indirectly kill thousands, however even if there was a larger number they would likely deliberately lay low so as to not draw attention to their existence and will likely coordinate to the degree that will be safe and if caught commit suicide. Mass death could be done by starting wars, or starting and maintaining cold wars on the chance they might be able to kill billions, developing bioweapons, etc.                   
    Still it's not going to be flashy and unless the hero's get very lucky they will probably be successful in wiping out most if not all of humanity without anyone even knowing of their existence.
    

  • u/Kinoite:

    What if you weakened Q-type a bit.
    
    Instead of being 100% dedicated to killing, they're reversed altruists.  Over time, the Q-types put more and more weight on their anti-altruism goal.
    
    You can still have a handful of competence-porn serial killers in the same what that the real world could have a handful of competence-porn EA people.  Those people would be terrifying legends, but rare.
    
    The bulk of the Q-types would approach hurting people in the same messy, not-quite-optimal way that a community-minded person might go about helping.
    
    Their emotions would have the same availability-bias and scope-insensitivity problems that the rest of us have, just towards reversed emotions.
    
    To get specifics, I'd go down the list of non-EA charities and ask, "How is this project generating Warm Fuzzies?"  Then reverse that payoff for your Q-Types.
    

  • u/CCC_037:

    Figure out how to clone people. Sabotage contraception of any and all kinds. Donate large sums of money to curing childhood diseases. Obtain control over some media outlet (newspaper, TV station, whatever) and put significant effort into spreading the idea that large families are better.
    
    ...the enhanced population will give you *dramatically* more victims.
    
    --------------
    
    Of course, that's only going to help if 'maximal eventual number of victims' is the target of the disorder. You might get a better story if the target is 'maximal number of victims seen to die right in front of the killer' - that is, if the disorder forces the killer to make each kill *personal*, instead of a mere statistic.
    

  • u/Gurkenglas:

    Move into a country with all the other Q-types and breed sacrifices.
    

• u/trekie140:

  Because my imagination is nothing if not overly ambitious, I have decided my [kitchen sink superhero setting](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/6d2pfy/d_wednesday_worldbuilding_thread/dhzlbgd) would be incomplete without ripping-off Dragon Ball. Clearly, I have gone mad and lost all sense of good judgement, so in an effort to preserve my well-being I have decided not to suffer from my insanity but rather to enjoy every minute of it!
  
  The premier superhero league in the world is The Ideal, originally established as a parent organization to the various teams and social clubs of good samaritans before being declared a nation in its own right by an international treaty. Heroes have dual citizenship and their secret bases are legally considered embassies, though there's still a bureaucracy to hold them accountable.
  
  However, China didn't want local heroes to be outside the control of its government and couldn't make it's own metahumans without violating the same international treaty, so they hired an expy of Bulma to find people with powers and manipulate them into protecting the state from magic and villains without joining The Ideal.
  
  Definitely-not-Bulma is the highly independent daughter of definitely-not-Doctor Doom who made this deal because she wanted to study magic in China without interference...and because she wasn't very emotionally intelligent due to her upbringing and couldn't make any friends. Even in this version she still originally wanted to conjure a romantic partner.
  
  She ended up convincing the Chinese government to not crack down on the secret societies of magic users in the country by using her wealth to become a major political figure in them who discouraged criminal activity. The rowdy metahumans also tended to get beaten up in the underground tournaments she sponsored.
  
  I don't imagine keeping the state happy would be hard, she just had to point the demigods who trusted her in the direction of supervillains and mystical artifacts that needed protecting. However, I don't think there's a way to rationalize them resurrecting people the villains killed without The Ideal demanding that power be used for a more global benefit.
  

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