How sane can you get?
 

Setting Background: TL10, STL interstellar, no non-Terran-derved life more advanced than slime, no superscience save for power-generation and reactionless drives.

With all the resources available from UltraTech, BioTech, relevant Pyramids, and simply spending time training, how much saner than we'd consider normal can any individual get? (Similarly, how sane can /every/ member of a society get?)

I know, I know, 'sanity' is one of those wiffley-wobbley words. Let's go with a definition along the lines of "able to participate in, and positively contribute to, society, even when things start to go wrong". And let's assume the "Stress and Derangement" rules from Horror are in play.

As a first approximation, it looks like what I want is to maximize somebody's ability to succeed at Fright Checks, even when facing large penalties, either by maximizing the roll or negating such rolls entirely through Unfazeable (though I'm not sure that it's quite appropriate for this setting); maximizing treatment effects to cure Derangements and insanities; and grabbing a pile of Taboo Traits from BioTech to fend off some mental issues before they ever get started. For an example of training, I'm thinking along the lines of a program that lets participants buy Fearlessness up to level 20 (IIRC, the max level of attributes for regular humans), and then a graduate program to buy Will up to 20, and then (from Power-Ups 2 p21) a few levels of Special Exercises (Will) to be able to increase it above the usual cap.

Are there any societal details that might help reinforce their members' sanity? Government-sponsored psychiatric care is obvious for any acute cases, but what might be available to nudge people away from developing acute cases in the first place?

Re: How sane can you get?
 

GURPS Social Engineering offers the option of taking, for example, Resistant to Influence (based on one of the Basic Set advantages being effectively Immunity). You could assume that mental hygiene has given most people +3 (or even +8) against some class of negative mental or social influences.

Re: How sane can you get?
 

Common Sense and Intuition as globally applied traits would likely help. They're mostly meta, but they're present as Brain Enhancements in Bio-Tech (hence, can be applied via proteus neurovirus) and would be a solid way to model having good baseline instincts and intuitions. Intuitive Mathematician would help with statistical thinking, which humans are notoriously poor at dealing with.

For psychological stability, in addition to the Fearlessness/Unfazeable, going the Eclipse Phase route and having an AI secretary-alike which also provides counseling might work. Combat Reflexes gives you a bonus against Fright Checks and means you don't "freeze" when things surprise you or go horribly wrong, and Autohypnosis gives Will bonuses, especially if you can teach a No Nuisance Rolls perk for that. The possibility of a Computer Implant with a therapy AI pre-coded seems promising for retaining and recovering mental stability; even if it's not as good as a human therapist, it's something. Dedicated Biological ones (see Pyramid 3/37, Thinking Machines) could potentially be applied via proteus neurovirus and even be hereditary.

Re: How sane can you get?
 

I think I can almost see where you're going with that, but I'm not quite sure how to finish it up.

Unfazeable is 15 points, the same as the Indomitable that "Resistant to Influence" is based on; but since Unfazeable allows auto-success at Fright Checks, that seems to imply a +3 costs [5] and a +8 is worth [7], compared to standard Fearlessness +3 at [6] and +8 at [16]. So I'm guessing that's not quite what you had in mind.



I've jotted down all of those points for potential use. :)

While I like that article for near-future computers, I think I'll be sticking to baseline GURPS computronium for now, maybe throwing in the 'vatbrain computers' from BioTech p28-9 if I want more meat than metal for some reason.

Re: How sane can you get?
 

Well, no. I didn't attempt to define one for Unfazeable, precisely because Fearlessness already covers that ground. But note that taking Fearlessness 8 is normally irrational anyway; it costs 16 points, and you can get Unfazeable for 15!

But, for example, GURPS Powers: The Weird defines External Control (including Influence, Hypnotism, and mind control and possession) as Very Common, so you can get +3 for 10 points, or +8 for 15 points. That wasn't based off of an existing advantage that could be taken as Immunity, but made up a new one. You could define some other category of things that grant resistance rolls, and classify them as Very Common, Common, Occasional, or Rare.

The place where it gets tricky is where you're dealing with mental derangements. Most of those require, not resistance rolls, but self-control rolls, and the cost of bonuses to those is built in; you can't buy a resistance or immunity. I think that the standard RAW form of not being subject to them is Taboo Trait: <category of mental disadvantages> and it costs 0 points.

Re: How sane can you get?
 

With TL10 Bio-Tech:

IQ +2 [40]
PER +1 [5]; WILL +1 [5]
Advantages: Common Sense [10]; Intuition [15]; Intuitive Mathematician [5]; Language Talent [10]; Mathematical Ability 4 [40]; Photographic Memory [10]; Unfazable [15]; Versatile [5].
Perks: Autotrance [1]
Taboo Traits: Aggressiveness; Genetic Defects; Lecherousness; Mental Instability; Shyness; Laziness.

Re: How sane can you get?
 

I would think that if anything better science would make us more insane and less able to cope with stress. As we develop better medicine and ergonomics or even cyberware we can be less stable with a greater capacity to seem sane so the frailty we would tend to breed out is now being absorbed into our gene pool. Not crippling madness running rampant, but overall most humans are probably on average a little crazier in the future.

The good news is there's probably a pill for that. As we better understand the fear response in the brain there will be safe medications that will effectively allow us to shut off our fear response. Just about anyone will have access to fast acting inhibitors that shut greatly dampen human fear response to allow you to cope with your worst anxiety. Soldiers (If we still have those) would have a switch installed that basically shuts off fear so that they can charge mind-numbing cosmic horrors without fear of PTSD.

Re: How sane can you get?
 

"Traits that would otherwise be bred out are staying in the gene pool" is somewhat less of a concern when you have widespread TL10 in vivo genetic engineering technology. :P

Re: How sane can you get?
 

If you want a cold wall of steel, I would device an inhibitor chip granting you cosmic unfazeable and indomitable. If you want a cool wall of steel, I would also include charisma & empathy at cosmic levels from another dedicated chip and finally, for the sake of being more effective, photographic memory and common sense with reliable as the third component.

If you do not want chips, then you could device a selection program to pick the best humans around the world (similar to Halo's spartan program). These people will have all the traits you require. The rest (training) shall depend on the individual's skills you want to develop or need.

This may result in a person ready to handle whatever comes at the best of their capabilities.

Re: How sane can you get?
 

Add Additions, Compulsions, Obsessions and Phobias.

Re: How sane can you get?
 

Mental Instability covers:

Re: How sane can you get?
 

I actually have some very superstitious notions that genetic tampering will not make us more sane. But I agree it could very likely be used to make us more resilient to stress.