Reboot THS

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

TL divisions aren't obvious in hindsight either, because TLs aren't really how technology works.

OK, yeah. It's something that will only become official in hindsight.

[DAT]

So it seems the only partial consensus is to push out the time (closer to 2200) and increase the Space presence and/or amount of transhumanism. Increasing the time I guess gets rid of the chance of people alive today being alive them, but does make it possible for more Transhumans (larger fraction of population has gene-fixes and simple upgrades, more extensive upgrades, more parahumans, etc.).

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by DAT

How would you “Reboot” THS to update it for the unexpected technology changes in the last 17+ years since it was first published?

Would you redo the Mar “greening”, for being too optimistic?

That's a hard question, because on a meta level it connects to other issues. Yeah, the greening of Mars by 2100, given the technosocial assumptions of the original setting, isn't just 'optimistic', it's utopian/daydreamy. But at the same time, if you use a more realistic time scale, suddenly the 'space' part of THS is a lot less viable. The setting sort of needs a greenish Mars, or something to take its place.

You can change that by changing background assumptions, but that has other knock-on effects.

If the Martian exiles didn’t go to the belt, would you see it or out system habitats come into being later, or at all?

What other things would you consider changing?

Would you change the big powers?

How does your vision of 2100 look different than David Pulver’s vision in the original THS settings?

Part of the problem is that transhumanism itself is full of contradictory, incompatible visions of the future, and THS tries to incorporate them all and the kitchen sink, too. It didn't quite make sense when it started. For ex, the oft-cited example of the coexistence of SAI, ghosts, and a massive bioroid industry. Another and bigger (and inescapably necessary) one is the xoxing ban. That makes no sense on any level, but it's necessary from a story POV to keep 5000 copies of everybody from being in circulation.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Part of the problem is that transhumanism itself is full of contradictory, incompatible visions of the future, and THS tries to incorporate them all and the kitchen sink, too. It didn't quite make sense when it started. For ex, the oft-cited example of the coexistence of SAI, ghosts, and a massive bioroid industry. Another and bigger (and inescapably necessary) one is the xoxing ban. That makes no sense on any level, but it's necessary from a story POV to keep 5000 copies of everybody from being in circulation.

So, basically we need to decide which branches of transhumanism are most viable for the story we want to tell (or the game a specific GM wants to run),or reboot it as a single 'example' setting that focuses on one branch and does not include anything that really contradicts it.

Going for biological transhumanism, for example, doesn't absolutely mean that SAIs and ghosts must be impossible, but is made easier if they are, and making xoxing impossible rather than illegal solves the 'too many copies' problem... though it would annoy the 'digital soul' branches of transhumanism.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

So, basically we need to decide which branches of transhumanism are most viable for the story we want to tell (or the game a specific GM wants to run),or reboot it as a single 'example' setting that focuses on one branch and does not include anything that really contradicts it.

Going for biological transhumanism, for example, doesn't absolutely mean that SAIs and ghosts must be impossible, but is made easier if they are, and making xoxing impossible rather than illegal solves the 'too many copies' problem... though it would annoy the 'digital soul' branches of transhumanism.

You could combine SAI and bioroids believably...but you need to limit the SAI. Cheap, reliable, ubiquitous high-end SAI tends to make bioroids (and augmented humans, and normal humans) superfluous. Ghosts, yeah, you probably need to take that out of the setting entirely unless you want it to dominate the setting.

But if SAI requires special hardware and macroframe-sized machines and isn't readily copyable...then it can plausibly coexist with bioroids and transhumanity, because it's rare and expensive and limited. Which could still be a transhumanist setting, just not one that works along Moravec's vision (which, incidentally, is the better part of half a century old already).

THS already limits SAI to a degree. The setting specifically does not include the god-like AI-things that show up from authors like Stross and Vinge and settings like Orion's Arm and so on. That was necessary to make a playable and comprehensible (for humans) setting at all, but it doesn't go far enough in practice.

Also, if you want bioroids and humans believably sharing one setting, you need to make bioroids at least a little expensive and difficult to make. Not as much so as SAIs, but there should be some believable reason why they haven't displaced normal humans from almost all roles. As Moravec noted back in 1978, second-rate supermen are just as threatening as first rate ones, from the POV of a normal.

That doesn't mean you can't put a human mind into a machine, of course. It just requires that you build the machine around the brain and central nervous system from the human. Which is definitely transhumanism. It also presents a load of story hooks.

(And if someone says they'd never subject themselves to that, you can reasonably ask why they'd balk at that but consent to having their brain sliced and diced into ground meat in order to make a software version of themselves, which is a far more radical thing.)

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

You could combine SAI and bioroids believably...but you need to limit the SAI. Cheap, reliable, ubiquitous high-end SAI tends to make bioroids (and augmented humans, and normal humans) superfluous.

Well, in THS, SAIs are neither cheap nor ubiquitous. If anything, it's the LAIs that seem to be the elephant in the room, constantly underestimated by the lore.

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Ghosts, yeah, you probably need to take that out of the setting entirely unless you want it to dominate the setting.

Do Ghosts really dominate THS, or have an 'urge' to? Because to me they seem to be a minority both going by lore and by what players seem to go for.

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

(And if someone says they'd never subject themselves to that, you can reasonably ask why they'd balk at that but consent to having their brain sliced and diced into ground meat in order to make a software version of themselves, which is a far more radical thing.)

There's a thing going for infomorphs: once the initial procedure is done, unless it's botched, you now have near-infallible reversibility in the form of backups, so long as you properly manage your backups. From now on, any accidents, malicious assassinations, or modifications can be undone. Meanwhile, brainboxes tend to be fiddly devices keeping the payload one unlucky event from death, especially in RPG settings (because RPG designers tend to overemphasise failure states).

Of course, not everyone will agree to either of the two procedures.

[ericthered]

Transhuman space might be made stronger by cutting out the transhuman and the space aspects, and focusing in on the memetic ecology and the high digital integration.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

There's a thing going for infomorphs: once the initial procedure is done, unless it's botched, you now have near-infallible reversibility in the form of backups, so long as you properly manage your backups. From now on, any accidents, malicious assassinations, or modifications can be undone.

And the people who have philosophical problems about reverting to a backup probably had the same problems about getting uploaded in the first place.

(One assumes that AIs are designed not to have this attitude, though one who did might be interesting.)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Transhuman space might be made stronger by cutting out the transhuman and the space aspects, and focusing in on the memetic ecology and the high digital integration.

That would be a different setting. Not that there's anything per se wrong with such a setting, but it hardly counts as a THS reboot.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

(One assumes that AIs are designed not to have this attitude, though one who did might be interesting.)

It's amusing that Sole Executionism seems to be a memeplex originating from AIs, not meatbags, in THS.