Setting Jam: Hyperbolic Trajectory

[PTTG]

I've been really hankering for a hard-ish science fiction setting. What I mean by that is that it avoids the obvious pitfalls of softer sci-fi, and adopts the aesthetics of real diamond-hard "speculative engineering," but is ok making assumptions where convenient to allow the story to proceed. The Expanse is a great example, as is much of The Andy Weir ouvre. For visualization, see SAVAGES, The Lunar War, and Mare Ignis. Transhuman space is cool, but we're going back to the drawing board and taking a fresh look at everything, and probably looking at an earlier time period.

If you have the same craving, please join in! Ask and answer questions, and please quote. We're going by SCP rules: there's no canon but try to yes-and previous ideas.

Some non-binding general thoughts before we begin: in keeping with the themes, there's no FTL, artificial gravity, force fields, or handheld laser pistols. More recently discredited tropes are hyper-performance rockets (no acceleration above 2G is likely), hyper intelligent AI (intelligence explosion takes time and has limits), and magical nanotech (waste heat and energy storage). Any exceptions should have some rationalization, and ideally point to major adventure seeds. And finally, I would like to avoid individual modern nations having an identity in the game. Ideological factions is great, but nations should exist in the background to avoid casting any players as the bad guys.

Ok, that all done, here's some starting questions:

Where and when is this set? What are the borders of the known?
What's an important group in the game?
What's a good character background?
Why might 2-5 people find themselves in control of a spacecraft?
What's a rumor someone might hear?
What's something common now that's rare in-universe?
What's the solution to the Fermi Paradox, or is it as mysterious as it is now?
Who is a powerful individual NPC?

[whswhs]

I don't feel that I can take full part in this discussion—I find collective design an alien idea—but I'll talk about some of my thoughts for my recently proposed GURPS campaign, Trucking (though that was set in a further future). Specifically, I was thinking of it as a safetech future, especially with regard to biotech, so much so that they look back at 20th century pharma and are appalled.

* No use of oral contraceptives, on three grounds: they're excreted into the water and mess up fertility in many animal species, they alter mate selection preferences in humans, and they're historically associated with a fertility crash that caused massive economic disruption and evoked fears of human extinction

* Minimal use of psychopharmaceuticals, which characteristically have unpleasant side effects and which are seen as only palliative (the brain resets itself to compensate for them)

* General avoidance of medical treatments that prolong the final days or months of life when a person is disabled and in chronic pain

Taking this as a bioethical outlook produces some interesting cultural differences. I wasn't going to focus on it primarily, but I anticipated thinking of other implications over time, had I ended up running that campaign.

[PTTG]

Totally sounds like a faction that could be pretty widespread. How do they feel about cybernetics, particularly neuroprosthesis? (I'm skeptical of brain enhancement, but direct neural control of limbs and senses seem like a sure thing eventually.)

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by whswhs

* No use of oral contraceptives, on three grounds: they're excreted into the water and mess up fertility in many animal species, they alter mate selection preferences in humans, and they're historically associated with a fertility crash that caused massive economic disruption and evoked fears of human extinction

So (assuming they live in a universe that doesn't have unlimited available resources), is the idea that there's regular bouts of war/plague/famine whenever the population begins to grow too far above capacity, or do they just use lots of condoms?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

So (assuming they live in a universe that doesn't have unlimited available resources), is the idea that there's regular bouts of war/plague/famine whenever the population begins to grow too far above capacity, or do they just use lots of condoms?

Birth control isn't why modern economies are below replacement rate, the problem is that children have a very poor return on investment in a modern economy. For most of human history children went from a resource drain to an asset in around ten years, in a modern economy it's more like thirty years to reach neutral and possibly never for being a net asset.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

So (assuming they live in a universe that doesn't have unlimited available resources), is the idea that there's regular bouts of war/plague/famine whenever the population begins to grow too far above capacity, or do they just use lots of condoms?

Delayed marriage, and chastity till marriage. Condoms, yes, but also diaphragms, sponges, and cervical caps, and also sexual activities that don't impregnate. There's also Fischer's historical generalization that periods when the purchasing power of currency is relatively stable have low illegitimacy rate; perhaps they know how to avoid currency depreciation, whether through strict banking regulation or simply letting banks that issue too many notes suffer from runs.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Delayed marriage, and chastity till marriage. Condoms, yes, but also diaphragms, sponges, and cervical caps, and also sexual activities that don't impregnate. There's also Fischer's historical generalization that periods when the purchasing power of currency is relatively stable have low illegitimacy rate; perhaps they know how to avoid currency depreciation, whether through strict banking regulation or simply letting banks that issue too many notes suffer from runs.

Erm... is the second half of this a new topic, or is it a continuation of the first half in a series of euphemisms? I confess that I honestly can't tell.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Erm... is the second half of this a new topic, or is it a continuation of the first half in a series of euphemisms? I confess that I honestly can't tell.

The purchasing power of money decreases when there is more money pursuing the same quantity of goods and services. If you have strict regulation of the issue of money, you might avoid that; if banks that issue too many banknotes ("paper money") face runs and go bankrupt, natural selection favors the cautious banks and the cautious bank customers, which may also work to stabilize the purchasing power of banknotes. If Fischer is accurate about stable purchasing power going with minimal illegitimacy, this may be relevant.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by whswhs

There's also Fischer's historical generalization that periods when the purchasing power of currency is relatively stable have low illegitimacy rate.

This is almost certainly just "social stability is associated with low illegitimacy, and economic problems are one cause of social instability".

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anthony

This is almost certainly just "social stability is associated with low illegitimacy, and economic problems are one cause of social instability".

I don't have a theory of why this observation might be the case. I'm not sure your explanation is right, but I don't see any obvious argument against it.

But is it clear that a stable purchasing power of money is a problem-free state? It sometimes seems as if governments now all aim at a steady ongoing rate of inflation as a policy goal. Milton Friedman even advocated it, I believe.