Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > Transhuman Space

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 05-26-2018, 06:02 PM   #21
Flyndaran
Untagged
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
Default Re: THS 2120!

There's simply too much variation in human psychology and (sub)cultural mentalities for memetics to ever get significantly more effective than skilled propaganda/advertising is now... realistically.
But THS and sci fi in general loves to exaggerate science for story and the coolness factor.
__________________
Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check.
Flyndaran is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-27-2018, 12:37 AM   #22
vicky_molokh
GURPS FAQ Keeper
 
vicky_molokh's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
Default Re: THS 2120!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
I thought you were making sideways allusions to the US Presidential system and particularly the last cycle but that seems to be not the case.

As things stand at the current time in the Real World advertising, propaganda and electioneering are not part of any science at all. Creation of an actual Science that worked in these areas would have unimaginable results. Perhaps similar to a TL4 practitioner of humoral Esoteric Medicine looking at TL8 scientific medicine.

Creation of functional and scientific social sciences is something that probably ought to be possible in theory but hasn't happened yet and i have no idea how to model it for rpg purposes.
I'm making allusions to many elections, including USA's where usually 50%+ people become willing to back only one or two candidates after the conclusion of propaganda campaigns. Though if we're talking about the DJT/HRC election, I do find it to be a symbolic 'see who has the last laugh' case whenever people talk about how advertising through memes turned out to be so much more effective than anybody predicted / than classical advertising; this in contrast to earlier claims that the word 'meme' is now restricted to silly pictures [and|that] will never have an effect on society.

As to how to model its effects in RPGs, I'd say as propaganda but with increased efficiency at high TL.
__________________
Vicky 'Molokh', GURPS FAQ and uFAQ Keeper
vicky_molokh is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-27-2018, 12:44 AM   #23
vicky_molokh
GURPS FAQ Keeper
 
vicky_molokh's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
Default Re: THS 2120!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
There's simply too much variation in human psychology and (sub)cultural mentalities for memetics to ever get significantly more effective than skilled propaganda/advertising is now... realistically.
But THS and sci fi in general loves to exaggerate science for story and the coolness factor.
Revolutionary breakthroughs are really hard to predict until they happen, and sometimes even to see after they happen. The digital revolution caught most future-predictors off-guard. Germ Theory of Disease was treated as a silly fringe theory for centuries. Memetics is described as a sudden breakthrough that only became available after the onset of SAIs and their insights into how minds work (and, implicitly, what is shared by minds that are otherwise so different as human and AI or various humans amongst themselves).

If it doesn't break any fundamental laws, it's a stretch to call a revolutionary breakthrough realistic specifically because revolutionary breakthroughs / black swan events / etc. involve discovering things which seemed impossible to those who haven't been exposed to them.
__________________
Vicky 'Molokh', GURPS FAQ and uFAQ Keeper
vicky_molokh is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-27-2018, 01:09 AM   #24
Flyndaran
Untagged
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
Default Re: THS 2120!

I'm not talking about discovering a novel way to cut DNA. This is making propaganda literal mind control. THS could "probably" design bioroids specifically to be mind controlled.
But I find it silly to think it's at all possible to design single methods/campaigns that would do that for large groups of such disparate people as exist today let alone in THS.

For example, it's simply impossible to say anything that would make you or I believe certain things we know are wrong. Exactly what those few things are doesn't matter, only that they exist. Most people likely have such issues.
__________________
Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check.
Flyndaran is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-27-2018, 05:51 AM   #25
vicky_molokh
GURPS FAQ Keeper
 
vicky_molokh's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
Default Re: THS 2120!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
I'm not talking about discovering a novel way to cut DNA. This is making propaganda literal mind control. THS could "probably" design bioroids specifically to be mind controlled.
But I find it silly to think it's at all possible to design single methods/campaigns that would do that for large groups of such disparate people as exist today let alone in THS.

For example, it's simply impossible to say anything that would make you or I believe certain things we know are wrong. Exactly what those few things are doesn't matter, only that they exist. Most people likely have such issues.
Propaganda is mind control almost by definition, it's just not as flashy or brute force as alien telepaths from DC or the like.

And memetics doesn't even do anything that we don't already know to be possible. Take a look at Abrahamicism (Christianity and Islam, though to a lesser extent also Baha'i and Judaism) as perhaps the most famous example - a memeplex that was made at a time where there wasn't even TL6 propaganda, that boasts not only high chances of converting people to adherents, but also at turning them into propagandists, and that spread across continents despite low-TL communications, keeps spreading.

That's a result of a single self-proclaimed prophet making a memeplex purely by intuition (like shipbuilders made galley hulls purely by intuition before the discovery of hydrodynamics), and look how big a chain reaction it started. Sure, call it mind control. But it's mind control that we know is possible with way lower-TL knowledge and tools; surely after a radical paradigm shift in the field of sociology, teams of people who actually know what they're doing and how the mind works may plausibly have comparable chances of success.
__________________
Vicky 'Molokh', GURPS FAQ and uFAQ Keeper
vicky_molokh is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-27-2018, 08:14 AM   #26
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: THS 2120!

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
I'm making allusions to many elections, including USA's where usually 50%+ people become willing to back only one or two candidates after the conclusion of propaganda campaigns. Though if we're talking about the DJT/HRC election, I do find it to be a symbolic 'see who has the last laugh' case whenever people talk about how advertising through memes turned out to be so much more effective than anybody predicted / than classical advertising; this in contrast to earlier claims that the word 'meme' is now restricted to silly pictures [and|that] will never have an effect on society.
I believe you're reversing cause and effect. One side stumbled over the meme that the _electoral_ majority wanted to buy while the other side was trying to sell the dogs a brand of dog food the found distasteful and it was just no go.

At best proto-memetics is observational. It is able to determine what the target audience wants and then finds a strategy for _somebody_ who can convince the audience that's what he's selling. Somebody who wasn't in the right starting position is just stuck.

In the US this is demonstrated cycle after cycle where first primary candidates and then general election candidates spend metric butt-tons of money to no effect.

TS Memetics has to work the other way. It has to be top down where a user decides what he wants the audience to buy and then convinces them to buy what he wants to sell regardless of _their_ starting position.

This is what I and probably other don't believe will ever work and tend to refer to as "Voodoo Mind Control"..
__________________
Fred Brackin
Fred Brackin is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-31-2018, 10:27 PM   #27
DocRailgun
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Default Re: THS 2120!

Not so much memes generated at the time or even in the electoral cycle but the culmination of thirty years of concerted character assassination by the right-wing media, so much that the younger otherwise liberal and progressive voters on the left knew nothing about one of the candidates except that she was a conniving, greedy evil woman whose husband was the antichrist.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
I'm making allusions to many elections, including USA's where usually 50%+ people become willing to back only one or two candidates after the conclusion of propaganda campaigns. Though if we're talking about the DJT/HRC election, I do find it to be a symbolic 'see who has the last laugh' case whenever people talk about how advertising through memes turned out to be so much more effective than anybody predicted / than classical advertising; this in contrast to earlier claims that the word 'meme' is now restricted to silly pictures [and|that] will never have an effect on society.

As to how to model its effects in RPGs, I'd say as propaganda but with increased efficiency at high TL.
DocRailgun is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-01-2018, 04:18 AM   #28
Astromancer
 
Astromancer's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
Default Re: THS 2120!

Memetics in the THS setting used knowledge of human brain structure that we don't even have the tools to learn about in the present day. Much like present day cardiology uses a knowledge of human biochemistry, neurophyisiology, and cellular physiology, which the Elizabethans lacked the tool to learn about. Thus it is an unusually plausible from of superscience which might not be superscience.
__________________
Per Ardua Per Astra!


Ancora Imparo
Astromancer is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-01-2018, 12:31 PM   #29
Flyndaran
Untagged
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
Default Re: THS 2120!

You tend to be more "optimistic" with what's possible than many posters here.
I'm not saying it's impossible to Svengali nearly any individual with sufficient data.
But I am saying it's not possible to to do so to large groups of unrelated people with single memes, no matter the data or tech level.

But propaganda of frightening efficacy doesn't have to do that. Affecting significant minorities of a nation, state, or even city block could have dire and therefore adventuring possibilities.
__________________
Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check.
Flyndaran is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-01-2018, 05:24 PM   #30
Astromancer
 
Astromancer's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
Default Re: THS 2120!

Do remember I used the term "an unusually plausible form of superscience" not a ringing endorsement of memetics. Do remember that there have been charismatic leaders who could successfully cross cultural boundaries. I offer the example of FDR. So the idea that a "sufficiently advanced brain science" (which we all know can't be distinguished from magic) could function as THS memetics does isn't that much of a stretch.

However you slice it we are starting a new sort of exploration of the nature of the brain and its functions. Society will be transformed by such knowledge.
__________________
Per Ardua Per Astra!


Ancora Imparo
Astromancer is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 06:09 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.