Consequences of Racial Intuitive Mathematician and Eidetic / Photographic Memory?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

This wasn't exactly my idea. It's just that I keep hearing that progress is about R&D groups, not lone inventors, so this time I decided to roll with it instead of arguing. And now you consider me a traitor. Sigh. :)

Going back to Anthony's population sizes, one of the way that plays into this sort of thing is the necessity of a large group becasue you sort (or self-select) through that large group to find extremely rare natural ability combos.

Take the Manhattan Project as an extreme short duration/high intensity tech advancement project. It wwas a group project but it was a group of the most talented physicists and mathematicians of The US (and thanks to you know who) most of Europe.

Considering the populations of the time that makes a Manhattan Project principle scientist a 1 in 1,000,000 to 1 in 100,000 find. If you want to find enough Project scientists from a population that is less than hundreds of millions you need to make the type much more common among the general population.

A workable assumption is that raising the middle of the bell curve from (for example)10 to 12 moves the IQ14-16 types you need (anybody want to start an arguemnt about how high Richard Feynman's Gurps IQ was?) for top level projects from 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 10,000 or maybe even less.

There are multiple ways to get to the Skill-18+s you need but I'd rate an education system that routinely turned out such types as ^. <shrug> Maybe SuperSocialScience is what you want.

I wouldn't sweat the IQ bonus on Templates thing. It';s just a way of telling players that if their character's IQ is less than that he'll be considered kind of dim.

[downer]

While I wouldn't deny Genesis' contention that in less well organized ages individual cleverness brought about much progress, that is not the way I see IM/EM types helping technological advancement. Like Fred Brackin pointed out, these people are not clever. They are master organizers, but can do no better than humans at inventing stuff.
And, looking at human history, we can see that most progress was made when the societies it was made in were economically prosperous. If Newton had had to toil in the fields to keep from starving, he would be lost to science. The Sirkin could do a great deal to make prosperity obtain, giving the human populace (and their own) room to produce geniuses. I can't help but see them as facilitators of progress, rather than as motors of it.

As one example, I could imagine a low-TL situation where Sirkin behave like master craftsmen for their mental arts. They might accept work on commission and produce solutions tailored to individual circumstances, which would be not as suitable for other applications. The Sirkin mercantile consultant goes over the books for a Merchant Guild, reviews the economic history of the region, memorizes maps, and comes back a week later with some cryptic advice: "route your spice caravans through Bejimmey, instead of the coastal trade route, and forget Foressian grain - buy fruit there to sell in Emacia instead." Sure enough, three seasons later the merchants find that profits are up, they're loosing less to rot en route, and they don't have to hire as many guards for their inland caravans! Of course, this advice isn't general enough to help everyone (even if the merchant guild published the solution they paid good money for, which they won't). So there you go: artisan efficiency, on sale by commission. I'll leave other political, biological, environmental, and religious explanations as an exercise to the reader.

Escellent idea, fits low TLs nicely, but ultimately leads to the situation I outlined. Every major organisation will hire them at one time or another to optimize. Sure, they will have to hire them again when the situation changes, but if they make money out of heeding their advice, that should not be an issue. Now, the merchant's guild hires them to optimize their profit, the land-holders to optimize their produce output, the government to optimize their tax income, and so on. Whether they tell anyone what they did, doesn't matter at all. People will be healthy, well fed and rich, because that's what they hire the Sirkin for. And as long as Sirkin are available, these conditions won't change. Ergo, there will be more people and they will have more exchange - there simply is no other way (I can think of) to optimize the running of a society below TL 6 or so. Eventually, one organization or another (a guild, a noble house, a cult) will find that it has resources on hand and will expand. And as the economy expands, so will the population, unless Sirkin advice mysteriously attempts to curtail it, by recommending mass sterilization or contraceptives in the water or whatnot.

I'm really sorry, Molokh, but even if TLs don't move up more quickly, Sirkin optimizing stuff means more people and a smaller world. I see no way to avoid that.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Genesis

Yeah, no one's ever happy :). The truth is that modern science is all about R&D groups - we've industrialized it! But that's not the historical norm... Having Sirkin around might even make it harder to industrialize scientific discovery, if there's social pushback from the 'traditional' inventors.

As applied to the Justicariate, perhaps the size and number of R&D groups working on the same project can be reduced by Friend Computer picking the most appropriate people for each project.

Originally Posted by Genesis

Optional race-appropriate traits make perfect sense to me - I'd want a bunch of such examples for any race in a brand-new setting: they provide game-mechanical context for the prose you use to describe the roles the race's members play in your world. But, as you mention, I'd shy away from a racial IQ bonus, although I'm well aware there are GURPS templates that use it. It even makes sense for some beings - but they'd have to be very distinct from humans. My sense of the Sirkin from your other posts is that the differences are apparent, but not vast. Even +1 racial IQ would make a big difference in the way the Sirkin interact with humans. And, of course, it's flavorless and generic! Lame. You might even list high IQ as optional and race-appropriate. Anyone who chooses to play a Sirkin is probably going to buy IQ up anyway, right?

Not necessarily. I find the option of playing against the stereotype to be a Good Thing, as long as it doesn't actually plunge into the impossible (e.g. there's a joke about a colony of 'Khæn traitors' hiding somewhere).

Strictly speaking, there's not much preventing anyone from playing a Sirkin pilot, or mechanic, or soldier. At worst they will have to offset Oblivious, and 'waste' 10 points on EM and IM.

In fact, I plan to make Justicariate's soldiers few but nasty (scroll down to see ideas on J's army), due to being picked by Friend Computer and trained and modified from childhood.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by downer

[ . . . ]
I'm really sorry, Molokh, but even if TLs don't move up more quickly, Sirkin optimizing stuff means more people and a smaller world. I see no way to avoid that.

Well, progress as a way to improve quality of life while having limited resources might be a solution. As in, quality over quantity. Roughly speaking, making some stuff easier to produce, but still not giving the ability to produce more of it. Think of the mythology behind the mighty Lakota Katana - 'They had very little steel, so they learned to make the best of it, crafting swords which were as good as 20 of our swords, and kept their edge for generations!' (this is of course an exaggeration).

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Genesis

I'm surprised that a race that requires imitation of human social skills to breed would have any inborn social disads. Wouldn't they be heavily selected against? Sirkin who aren't socially adept enough with humans to have sex with them have a lower chance that their genes will be passed on - seems like a recipe for a whole race of playboys (and girls)! Of course, we've discussed this ad nauseum in a previous thread, so YMMV.

First, it is important to note that the -1 to use Social Skills is immediately offset by the +1 Reaction Modifier from Appearance. Plus I'll hopefully be able to pilfer other people's ideas from this thread if they make sense for. Plus the Sirkin, unlike humans, don't rely as much on stable relationships for reproduction, so consistently being socially adept is not as important.

But yeah, you can probably see this weird combination as my attempt to avoid a cliché.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Genesis

Well, physical appearance isn't the only way to be recognized... Demonstrating exceptional memory, for instance, might provoke a superstitious response in some cultures. Humans routinely discriminate against each other for entirely invisible differences, like religion or politics.

Another reason for a 'different but not bad' caste to be filled primarily by these people.

Originally Posted by Genesis

Yeah - like I said, you've got options. These things might vary quite a lot from culture to culture, and might change rapidly: Christians went from being lion food to members of the official religion pretty quick in ancient Rome. While Jews in Europe were widely despised under medieval Christian rule, in Spain under the Caliphate they lived pretty well all things considered.

I'm hoping to keep their lives quite tolerable up to TL6. At TL6, the most relevant thing is what happens to them in the Justicariate, and that is a rather controlled environment.

Originally Posted by Genesis

Racial neutrality is an interesting idea. Would such a tendency be truly in-born, or culturally traditional?

Cultural, I think. Though not being as heavily into politics as humans probably also pushes in that direction.

Originally Posted by Genesis

No doubt. Can Sirkin inherit the holdings of their host family? Can Sirkin choose their own heirs? Perhaps an older Sirkin can name a younger one as heir, regardless of actual realationship... Or something like that. Likely to be important in any society where Sirkin are independent people, and not just attached to a human family.

I think inheritance laws can be dodged by transferring ownership while the old person is alive, so I'm not sure it is all that important anyway.

Originally Posted by Genesis

I don't think I understand your point - I was trying to say that while many things can be hidden from a mundane king, a Sirkin will have certain advantages stemming from easy intimacy with details that escape most people in positions of broad authority.

I mean that it merely prevents hiding of stuff that is already known to the king - not useful for finding new stuff.

Originally Posted by Genesis

I wouldn't, no - but I might allow Sirkin to buy levels of Strategy unavailable to others, or allow IM/EM to substitute for a handful of assistants in some situations where they might be helpful.

Substitution for assistants is certainly one of the desirable things.

Originally Posted by Genesis

Well, at a certain TL you'll need some serious explanations as to why that's the case, right? If history is any guide, it's hard to stop people traveling wherever they can get to...

Well, the Nariyása would have no luck trying to trade or expand towards the Khæn - those fellas are just too disturbed by the regular backstabbing between Nariyása leaders, and pretty powerful in terms of military too (and most importantly, totally unified!). On the other side, there are the Wejít, who are living in a more hospitable region, and are also more humanistic from pretty early in their history. I'm not sure how to prevent all-encompassing osmosis, migrations and assimilation in that direction.

Well, I'm not totally opposed to interconnections, just don't want to see everybody unite. I'm hoping to separate the cultures in such a way to produce (by TL9ish) roughly the following groups:

• Khæn (no problem here - their culture is very strong).
• Justicariate and its culture (not much problem here either).
• Traditionalist and 'backwards' Nariyása states.
• Ruthless corporate states in the Nariyása, de-facto inheritors of the more stable authoritarian regimes/mini-empires of the recent past.
• Moderate corporate states/enterprise states on the borderlands of Nariyása flatlands, willing to integrate into the 'civilized international community' (below).
• Enterprise states in Wejít lands.
• Democratic states in Wejít lands.

I'm totally okay with the Sirkin being mistreated in the 'backwards' Nariyása states after TL6. But I'm not sure how common they will be in the more civilized cultures/states, and how they should/would be treated. I certainly don't want them to be too common there.

Originally Posted by Genesis

Well, the calculus is certainly a game-changer in terms of the engineering that can be done. Someone suggested that science has never been held up by lack of mathematics, which is clearly false. People who just don't have to worry about arithmetic and who flawlessly remember complex equations do incredibly important scientific work - look at what Feynman did, largely on the strength of his fabulous memory and facility with math!

What exactly are you referring to regarding Feynman?

[downer]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Well, progress as a way to improve quality of life while having limited resources might be a solution. As in, quality over quantity. Roughly speaking, making some stuff easier to produce, but still not giving the ability to produce more of it. Think of the mythology behind the mighty Lakota Katana - 'They had very little steel, so they learned to make the best of it, crafting swords which were as good as 20 of our swords, and kept their edge for generations!' (this is of course an exaggeration).

Sure, if there is no real economic basis for expansion, then this works out. Lack of mineral resources and/or arable soil would certainly force people to adopt interesting strategies to get along, and this is a field where the Sirkin might come into their own, calculating the most cost-effective strategies for any project, making the most of resources. The question then is, what other effects this might have on TLs. For example, your culture might skip certain technologies, because they aren't really feasible, with the Sirkin-supported populace coming up with other strategies to achieve the same thing. Like skipping coal power (due to lack of large coal reserves) and going directly for wind or water power, or skipping the bronze age and so on.