05-26-2018, 06:02 PM | #21 |
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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.
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05-27-2018, 12:37 AM | #22 | |
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: THS 2120!
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As to how to model its effects in RPGs, I'd say as propaganda but with increased efficiency at high TL. |
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05-27-2018, 12:44 AM | #23 | |
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: THS 2120!
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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. |
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05-27-2018, 01:09 AM | #24 |
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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.
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05-27-2018, 05:51 AM | #25 | |
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Re: THS 2120!
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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. |
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05-27-2018, 08:14 AM | #26 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: THS 2120!
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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"..
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05-31-2018, 10:27 PM | #27 | |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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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.
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06-01-2018, 04:18 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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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.
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06-01-2018, 12:31 PM | #29 |
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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.
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06-01-2018, 05:24 PM | #30 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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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.
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