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Old 12-19-2013, 04:11 PM   #201
martinl
 
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Default Re: Flat Black

Once again it seems I have deeply annoyed you. You think I'd learn, but apparently not. Even so, here I go again.
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Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
Your suggestion that one Hitlerian holocaust per thousand petty states per century is a plausible minimum really doesn't gybe with history.
I was thinking more in line with genocides in general rather than Hitlerian holocausts in particular, sorry for the confusion. I think 1 genocide per 1000 aristocratic or despotic states per century is probably optimistic, although quantification of genocides is of course problematic.
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If I posited that social engineering in FLAT BLACK were cheap, effective, and reliable enough that the Empire ought to have fixed Navabharata by now, then the entire setting would have to be an optimistic utopia.
Until just after my last post, I kept being confused by my perceived contradiction between the verified existence of engineered societies in FLAT BLACK (Mink, Todos Santos, probably others) and the problems the Empire seems to have fixing primitive rubes who cannot possibly have the sophistication to fight applied psycho-history. This conversation led to the thought that the setting's applied psycho-history is not at all the top down Asimovian science I have been imagining, where various political actions move societies around. FLAT BLACK psycho-history, such as it is, is more bottom up - societies are moved around by individually ... um ... 'sculpting' the psychologies of most of the people in it. All farmed fur is ,well, farmed. Every Todos Santos citizen is the product of a very deliberate and scientific upbringing designed to make them a cog from which a reliable machine might be built. Even the seemingly top-down 9,401 psycho-history amounted to determining who might be an effective leader for a revolt and removing them, not changing the society so that it wouldn't happen. The embarrassing thing is this is all in the open and obvious, but I didn't twig to it until a couple of days ago.

In any case, a place with lots and lots of states isn't easier to manipulate due to there being more potential political actions (my earlier intuition). In fact, the social sculpting techniques the Empire and so forth use internally are much less useful in dealing with outsiders, since very few people approve of having their attitudes deliberately adjusted to facilitate an outsider's political goals.


The high points hit, it is time to re-think my strategy here. My favorite thing about FLAT BLACK is the depth and internal consistency of it. This means that when I discuss it with you I tend to muck around and find things that don't make sense to me and ask you to explain them, and then debate explanations I don't like. This is the proper approach in academic publishing where much of my discussing instinct is sourced from, but not really constructive here.

I shall endeavor to do better.
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Old 12-19-2013, 04:15 PM   #202
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Originally Posted by martinl View Post
Until just after my last post, I kept being confused by my perceived contradiction between the verified existence of engineered societies in FLAT BLACK (Mink, Todos Santos, probably others) and the problems the Empire seems to have fixing primitive rubes who cannot possibly have the sophistication to fight applied psycho-history.
There are an awful lot of those low development planets with basically normal levels of messed-up-ness.
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Old 12-19-2013, 05:29 PM   #203
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Originally Posted by martinl View Post
Once again it seems I have deeply annoyed you.
Not deeply, no. I am a little irritated that you ask questions about FLAT BLACK and then (as I tend wrongly to perceive it) disrespect my right to establish canon for my setting by contradicting my answers. Also, as the outcome of a long process that is not your fault, I feel that I have been held by a succession of players of FLAT BLACK games to a standard of detail and consistency that is inappropriately and unfairly high, and that pursuing this I have squandered my creative efforts on administrative and historical minutiae. And just now I'm (a) somewhat depressed and irritable and (b) feeling a little miffed that Bengt trolled me for three days and then announced that he has no taste for this genre anyway. I oughtn't to let that spill over onto you. I'm sorry.

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The high points hit, it is time to re-think my strategy here. My favorite thing about FLAT BLACK is the depth and internal consistency of it. This means that when I discuss it with you I tend to muck around and find things that don't make sense to me and ask you to explain them, and then debate explanations I don't like. This is the proper approach in academic publishing where much of my discussing instinct is sourced from, but not really constructive here.

I shall endeavor to do better.
I'll try to be more patient.

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Originally Posted by martinl View Post
I was thinking more in line with genocides in general rather than Hitlerian holocausts in particular, sorry for the confusion. I think 1 genocide per 1000 aristocratic or despotic states per century is probably optimistic, although quantification of genocides is of course problematic.
There are plenty of progroms, race-riots, and lynchings in republics, too. You can't blame aristocrats and despots for the Trail of Tears or what happened to the Australian Aborigines. Anyway, this side-issue seems to have arisen out of your objecting to my statement that there aren't any death camps on Navabharata. Death camps have been rarer than genocide in general. None was required in Rwanda or Yugoslavia.

I'm sticking by that. The aristocrats on Navabharata mostly make their peasants loyal to them by means of the god gambit, and when they do need to confect a threat from the Other they mostly cast neighbouring states in the role. And even to the extent that they may encourage hostility to minority that they portray as threatening — atheists, maybe — they wouldn't need to build death camps. And if one started to build a death camp anyway a chap for the Colonial Office would land in an aircar and tell him to knock it off. The Empire faces no pressing incentive to reorganise Navabharata into a strong centralised state in order to sweep away its death camps.

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Until just after my last post, I kept being confused by my perceived contradiction between the verified existence of engineered societies in FLAT BLACK (Mink, Todos Santos, probably others) and the problems the Empire seems to have fixing primitive rubes who cannot possibly have the sophistication to fight applied psycho-history. This conversation led to the thought that the setting's applied psycho-history is not at all the top down Asimovian science I have been imagining, where various political actions move societies around.
Ah! Yes! You can't engineer something unless you actually do something to it. Promulgating a few memes on Navabharata would not be sufficient to transform its society, give it robust institutions, build up its economy etc. Even the best surgeon can't mend anything unless he actually operates.

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FLAT BLACK psycho-history, such as it is, is more bottom up - societies are moved around by individually ... um ... 'sculpting' the psychologies of most of the people in it.
Yes. That too. Engineers make machines of the highest performance out of materials that are in turn the finest work of metallurgists and materials scientists. As societies are machines made of monkeys, social engineers make societies of most extreme performance out of the finest work of psychoengineers.

Which is not to say that a good engineer can't build a trebuchet or low trestle bridge out of found materials.

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In any case, a place with lots and lots of states isn't easier to manipulate due to there being more potential political actions (my earlier intuition).
Correct. In the case of a society that has one government, one legal system, one penal system, one social hierarchy, one school system, one vocational training system, one social security system, one legislature etc. you have a single point of application at which a plan of reform can be introduced, and modest-sized collection of institutions that have to be reformed, purged, and re-staffed. But in the case with tens of thousands of separate polities and lacking effective global institutions the task has to be done over, and over, and over many times. While you are working on each society it is subject to unplanned influences from its neighbours. Besides which you have to take care of the effects that your work has on neighbour that you either reformed previously or will so want to rebuild, or that might do something you don't like if you aren't careful. Probably the first stage of nation-building on Navabharata would be to unify it.

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In fact, the social sculpting techniques the Empire and so forth use internally are much less useful in dealing with outsiders, since very few people approve of having their attitudes deliberately adjusted to facilitate an outsider's political goals.
That's the key point. Societies are made of institutions as bodies are made of organs, or machines of components. They consist of households, employers, religious hierarchies, legal and penal systems, education systems, governments, and even criminal organisations, all of which combine to create the formative influences that shape people and the incentives that guide their behaviour. To change a society you have to reform its institutions: abolish, create, reorganise, train, incentivise, legislate….

In FLAT BLACK we see a science and engineering discipline that has let some governments, some utopist founding fathers, and the Empire get the results they wanted — in some cases, and when they have almost complete control over all the institutions of the society. But in utopias like Todos Santos and Simanta (the old Esbouvier) the social engineers got to design the education systems and syllabuses, the employment and promotion systems, the social and economic safety nets, the legal and penal systems, the housing and the family structures, and even the games and entertainments. You can't achieve results like theirs by shouting across an extraterritoriality line.

The Empire does sometimes try to interfere in guise of doing charity work. It promulgates subtle propaganda like re-runs of Sesame St and Mr Rogers in pretence of public education. It creates oases of order and good government in the worker's camps of its large-scale civil engineering works, etc. etc. It also supplies advice and technical assistance to colonial governments that ant to reform their own societies. Allegedly, the Secret Service or the rumoured Undercover Division of the Political Department perform surgical operations at key pivot points in psychohistory to steer the development of societies. Even if true, these can only be tiny nudges.

As for transformative results? No matter how brilliant and detailed the plans for your continent-spanning irrigation system, you still have to build the dams and dig the canals. Even given fusion generators electrical engineers can't supply electric light unless someone actually builds the transmission and distribution systems and wires the houses. High tech stuff is cool, but you do have to actually build it, not just understand it, to get the use of it. So it is with social engineering. You can't engineer a society without any control over its institutions.

I'm sorry to have been slow to explain this. To me it seemed obvious. A blind spot, no doubt.
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Last edited by Agemegos; 12-20-2013 at 05:07 AM.
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Old 12-19-2013, 05:32 PM   #204
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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
There are an awful lot of those low development planets with basically normal levels of messed-up-ness.
Yes. And the reason that they tend to support the LRA is that they are afraid that the Feds and the Empire are trying to send in social engineers with Jedi powers to make them into repellent utopias like Simanta or Todos Santos.
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Last edited by Agemegos; 12-19-2013 at 09:27 PM.
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Old 12-19-2013, 07:59 PM   #205
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Originally Posted by martinl View Post
RW Livestock is massacred frequently as a matter of course, so I find your analogy counter-intuitive.
No, it is slaughtered. We don't rail-freight cattle to Poland, and gas and incinerate them because we despise and fear cows.

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What keeps a TL10 god-king in check when he goes loopy and decides that this year it's the peasants will burn?
His family, usually. If not, someone from the Independent Commission for Justice, the Political Department of the Colonial Office, the Secret Service, or Naval Intelligence knocks him out and implants an antipsychotic-secreting gland, arrests and rehabilitates him, or just shoots him.
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Last edited by Agemegos; 12-20-2013 at 04:18 PM.
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Old 12-19-2013, 09:33 PM   #206
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In a society where if things go bad the king dies it is fairly easy to use the king died so something was wrong. Which nudges things towards kings not doing things like that.
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Old 12-19-2013, 09:54 PM   #207
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In a society where if things go bad the king dies it is fairly easy to use the king died so something was wrong. Which nudges things towards kings not doing things like that.
Parkinson, in his magisterial The Evolution of Political Thought, asserts that divine kings tend to adopt a policy of "do nothing and you'll do nothing wrong". If something has to be done you send out a delegate who can be accused of treason if he fails.
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Old 12-19-2013, 10:13 PM   #208
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Parkinson, in his magisterial The Evolution of Political Thought, asserts that divine kings tend to adopt a policy of "do nothing and you'll do nothing wrong". If something has to be done you send out a delegate who can be accused of treason if he fails.
That was more or less what Lao Tzu advised. One of his verses describes the wise emperors of old who got up in the morning, and sat down facing in the right direction—and the empire was well governed. Or maybe I'm thinking of Chuang Tzu.

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Old 12-21-2013, 05:35 PM   #209
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So what would be the best way to describe the government of Navabharata on a world summary sheet?
  • Aristocrat parliamentary republic
  • Balkanised into plutocratic petty kingdoms
  • Comminuted plutocratic divine monarchy
  • Plutocratic anarchy
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Old 12-21-2013, 06:05 PM   #210
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Yes. And the reason that they tend to support the LRA is that they are afraid that the Feds and the Empire are trying to send in social engineers with Jedi powers to make them into repellent utopias like Simanta or Todos Santos.
Sounds kind of like the rhetors in Neal Stephenson's Anathem.

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