New Reality Seeds

[maximara]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Well, these people don't see peaceful coexistence as on option. The timing on the wars may be negotiable, but deep down you know its you or them, and you should only play nice long enough for them to turn their back so you can stab it.

Again the issue is you don't know who is watching. Isaac Arthur points out the flaw in the logic with this line of thinking in some of his Fermi Paradox videos.

In the omniverse things are even more problematic because how do you know there aren't an infinite number of realities out there? Or worst if the infinity is bigger then you think it is.

Taking out a reality takes time which sets a hard limit on how fast you can destroy/neutralize other realities.

It gets even worse if the Schrodinger cat aspect of Many Worlds Theory applies as your very efforts on that other reality causes its to split - a version where you interfered/destroyed/neutralized and one where you didn't

[YankeeGamer]

Wells 7 has some potential. When economies start to come back, the Middle East oil will be available for any that want it--perhaps they don't want to accept anything from the USA, or the USA doesn't want to sell to them for whatever reason.
Regarding oil--with inexpensive fusion power, oil can be made easily if the desire is there. Oil made from carbon dioxide and water is carbon neutral, as the carbon dioxide emitted was originally taken from the air.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by YankeeGamer

Wells 7 has some potential. When economies start to come back, the Middle East oil will be available for any that want it--perhaps they don't want to accept anything from the USA, or the USA doesn't want to sell to them for whatever reason.
Regarding oil--with inexpensive fusion power, oil can be made easily if the desire is there. Oil made from carbon dioxide and water is carbon neutral, as the carbon dioxide emitted was originally taken from the air.

True enough, and petroleum has many uses other than fuel. Still this world might not go back to oil. Once you have an all electric infrastructure bringing back oil would be a serious hurtle. Also, as the refineries shut down and skilled workers aren't replaced that hurtle gets bigger. Example: the Bauhaus movement killed off industrial stonecraving. Many people including many architects would like stonecraving back, but the remaining stonecravers are too few and far between.

Still, the illusion that Middle Eastern oil was the road to quick riches could easily snare NPCs and PCs alike. Once snared the fact they're all chasing a mirage wouldn't be apparent.

[Astromancer]

Wells-7

North America During the long war Churchill, remembering the short union with France, pushed a union between the USA and Canada. Truman agreed, but only if the Canadians agreed. Confused, but respecting Churchill, and assuming there was an important reason for it all, they agreed.

No one knows why Churchill thought it was vital but the union worked. Every vice-president from 1948 to the present has been Canadian except Goldwater's. All the major party candidates for the presidency are Canadian in the 1980 race. With a French Canadian Social Democrat in the clear lead. Homeliners looking at the combined US-Canada on Wells-7 describe it as a best of both. Still, major research is still going into how this all happened as few scholars of the two nations think it makes any sense.

The economy is slowly healing and the inflation unleashed by Goldwater ending all price and wage controls at once has subsided. Society is beginning to rapidly upgrade the technology of everyday life, there is a housing boom on, the first since the 1920s in this America. After decades of wartime austerity and a twelve year depression right after the war, brilliant colors and extravagant looks are in. Both men and women wear bright lively colors, there are no separate men's and women's colors or fabrics. The general movement towards informality of dress that happened in Homeline's 1960s hasn't happened here yet. But there are signs of a trend that way.

During the long WWII American society became more egalitarian. Women and non-Whites have full equal rights and the Jim Crow South is gone. There are signs that there will be an attempt to use something like the Southern strategy, but as wartime solidarity and sacrifice were evoked to end Jim Crow, while there is still resentment in the White South, it is far weaker. Wartime attitudes seem to have erased the 1950s period of "Moral Re-Armament." The sexual revolution has happened more slowly and less dramatically. Gay rights are starting to be a thing and are meeting little or no resistance.

Schools in this America have a national curriculum and are state and federal funded. Quebec and other areas like Native American Reservations have special variances arranged for their needs. Property taxes are almost never used for school systems. These changes in were made in response to wartime conditions. There is a uniform fairly high quality to teaching throughout the nation.

Medical services are fully socialized and that is in no way controversial.

Trains dominate interstate transit. The highway system is underdeveloped and very much like the 1940s. Meanwhile, trolley cars, subways, tramlines, etc. are very much the norm. Interurban Trolley systems are all over large sections of the nation and are getting massive investment.

Radio and films still dominate mass media, TV is unlikely to catch on until the economy seriously improves. When it does, it will start out in color and stereo, also the system will resemble the BBC with taxes on TVs and their use paying for broadcasts. Print media including newspapers and comic books are lively and vital.

The Caribbean The British colonies in the Caribbean are all now attached to the USA. Puerto Rico, Belize, Jamaica, and the Bahamas, are all now US states.

The Biggest change is the fact that the Vatican, after fleeing Italy in 1950, and a year in Dublin, is now headquartered in Havana Cuba. As this means that the Papal court is now placed between it's greatest numbers of Followers (Latin America) and most of its stable wealth (North America) this looks likely to last.

Due to careful politicking and the fact the Popes are more popular than Batista, Cuba is becoming more and more a papal state. American gangsters have pretty much migrated to Mexico. The Havana nightclub scene remains lively. And both American influence and the need to challenge the Cuban elites have led to Papal support of Cuban Labor and Union activists.

Just about everything Caribbean is a hot fad in the states. Calypso is everywhere, Caribbean restaurants are everywhere and have some of the wild fanciful qualities of 1950's Tiki Bars but with a great tendency to live entertainment. Note: Tiki Bars are also big in the states, but the food is more actually Asian than vaguely Asian-like.

Agriculture and food processing are growing in importance throughout the West Indies.

More Later.

[adm]

I can see Canadian Vice Presidents as some sort of unity compromise, give the difference in population between the US and Canada, Canadian Presidents seem unlikely, has there been a boost to Canada's population but not a corresponding US increase? Or is there other strangeness?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by maximara

Again the issue is you don't know who is watching. Isaac Arthur points out the flaw in the logic with this line of thinking in some of his Fermi Paradox videos.

He brings it up more with omnicidal robots than he does with the Fermi paradox. And the robot has a bigger "Whose Watching" problem than most.

He also talks about how a fermi paradox solution has to apply to all possible civilizations, which this one won't, and about how the most efficient way to implement the "Kill everyone else" solution is to set up extensive dumb resource harvesting on other worlds. He actually doesn't mind the idea applying to a civilization, just applying it to all civilizations or claiming that such a civilization can both kill everyone and hide at the same time.

Space also makes the "Who is Watching" problem harder, because of the enormous sitelines involved. And in Infinite worlds, the question of "Where is everybody" becomes "Why do we seem to be first?". You have much worse sitelines in Infinite worlds: you have to actually visit them. And the fact that you haven't been brutally colonized is evidence that you are indeed, first.

In the omniverse things are even more problematic because how do you know there aren't an infinite number of realities out there? Or worst if the infinity is bigger then you think it is.

Taking out a reality takes time which sets a hard limit on how fast you can destroy/neutralize other realities.

Either you're the biggest, or someone bigger is coming and you're doomed anyway when they get there... unless you grow big and strong enough in the mean time.

It gets even worse if the Schrodinger cat aspect of Many Worlds Theory applies as your very efforts on that other reality causes its to split - a version where you interfered/destroyed/neutralized and one where you didn't

Infinite worlds doesn't seem to work that way. There may be versions where it does, but by default if those worlds exist you won't see them for decades at least. You maximize your chances by ensuring you are the most powerful civilization possible, and when you do run into the corrupted shadow of yourself... may the best civilization win. You certainly aren't going to win that conflict by going soft now.

-------------------------------------------------

I don't believe the world-view is perfectly logical, but I also don't believe its necessary to be perfectly logical. Most world-views aren't. The "Us or Them" mentality has a good amount of historical precedence. Our current society works very hard to crush that view (and I can't say I mind) but its a historically common view.

The key to making this viewpoint work is the assumption that everyone else works this way too, even if they don't admit it to themselves. Once you believe that, you get paranoid and the destruction starts naturally.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by adm

I can see Canadian Vice Presidents as some sort of unity compromise, give the difference in population between the US and Canada, Canadian Presidents seem unlikely, has there been a boost to Canada's population but not a corresponding US increase? Or is there other strangeness?

Nah. The Canadians just out competed their American rivals. That would have to happen from time to time.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Nah. The Canadians just out competed their American rivals. That would have to happen from time to time.

Lots of presidential races involve candidates from rather small states after all. Or not states. The major party candidates in 2000 were born in Connecticut and the District of Columbia respectively, the 2008 candidates in Hawaii and the Panama Canal Zone. The three largest states are California, Texas and Florida, which have provided respectively 1, 2 and 0 presidents. The smallest state to provide a president is Vermont (number 49 of 50) which has had two. Even when political issues in the US are regional, they're divided over multi-state regions.

[adm]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Nah. The Canadians just out competed their American rivals. That would have to happen from time to time.

My apologies, somehow I missed the "1980 election" part of your post, and thought it said all major parties since the Union.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Space also makes the "Who is Watching" problem harder, because of the enormous sitelines involved. And in Infinite worlds, the question of "Where is everybody" becomes "Why do we seem to be first?". You have much worse sitelines in Infinite worlds: you have to actually visit them. And the fact that you haven't been brutally colonized is evidence that you are indeed, first.

Actually that is not correct. In the current continuity (more on that in a moment) Centrum (not Homeline) was first beating Homeline by 70 years (ie when Homeline was in its 1920s.)

Furthermore there there is Wonderland were the remains of a parachronic craft 450-million-years-old have been found (Operation Recount). So around the Devonian of both Homeline and Centrum there was a parachronic civilization traveling the Quantums.

One of the theories regarding the Gotha worlds is "a civilization on one of the Gotha parallels once invented parachronics, and unwittingly created a mutant disease pool across the worlds" (IW 128)

So Homeline is not so arrogant to think they the first and if the builders of the Wonderland craft were the first then the question becomes "What happened to them?" And if they aren't then what happened to any that predated them?

Originally Posted by ericthered

Either you're the biggest, or someone bigger is coming and you're doomed anyway when they get there... unless you grow big and strong enough in the mean time.

Again the problem is scale. With an infinite number of realities out there you can't look just to that reality's Earth but at other planets.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Infinite worlds doesn't seem to work that way. There may be versions where it does, but by default if those worlds exist you won't see them for decades at least.

The problem is that when GURPS went from 3e to 4e they created continuity issues that definitively show that the Homeline and Centrum of Time Travel are not the Homeline and Centrum in Infinite Worlds. Centrum-Beta is the smoking gun as it were as it went from current 1910 in Time Travel to 1895 in Infinite Worlds.

So there is something beyond what Infinity or Centrum know about how quantum work that doesn't eliminate a Many World Theory view of things. It might be like someone of our universe trying to describe a 4D hypercube (and boy does it do some weird stuff in 3D space)