Why Germany Matters

[Tzeentch]

* TS is ridiculously optimistic in certain social predictions, especially in how it pretty much discounts any meaningful rise in identity politics. Giving "human rights" to beings that are demonstrably not human in any way (biology, thought processes, etc) should be political and social dynamite but everyone just shrugged their shoulders I guess :) Given the violence we see today over rather trivial things, I suspect that things are not quite so simple as laid out in broad strokes by Fifth Wave.

* However, keep in mind we are dealing with a world in which neoclassical economics has pretty much been thrown out the window and social systems are transitioning rapidly to a nearly post-scarcity model for manufactured items. There is also memetics to consider, and bioroids/SAIs designed with "national characteristics" in mind may appeal strongly to conservative elements that at first glance might oppose such things. If you can build citizens with Duty (Home Country) (even at a quirk level) ...

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Tzeentch

* TS is ridiculously optimistic in certain social predictions, especially in how it pretty much discounts any meaningful rise in identity politics. Giving "human rights" to beings that are demonstrably not human in any way (biology, thought processes, etc) should be political and social dynamite but everyone just shrugged their shoulders I guess :) Given the violence we see today over rather trivial things, I suspect that things are not quite so simple as laid out in broad strokes by Fifth Wave.

Huh? Look at the table of rights in the core book. There are lots of places where rights of nonhumans are severely limited. Bioroids are slaves in most parts of the world, and harshly abused slaves in the Islamic Caliphate; AIs are property in many jurisdictions; AIs without restrictive programming, or xoxes of AIs or digital ghosts, are abominations without even the right to life.

Europe is consciously more liberal than most places . . . but its AIs have to be programmed to obey European law, which is fairly restrictive in a lot of ways. And bioroids, though they have many rights, are denied the right to reproduce . . . because their exercise of that right would entail bioroid manufacture, which is illegal.

My THS campaign had, as a background incident, a suit brought by a European bioroid demanding the right to (a) make a bioroid within the EU as her child and (b) freely use the proprietary genetic codes of the corporation that built her in doing so, notwithstanding their copyrights. I think that illustrates some of the possible issues.

Bill Stoddard

[Max Schreck]

Originally Posted by Tzeentch

* TS is ridiculously optimistic in certain social predictions, especially in how it pretty much discounts any meaningful rise in identity politics. Giving "human rights" to beings that are demonstrably not human in any way (biology, thought processes, etc) should be political and social dynamite but everyone just shrugged their shoulders I guess :) Given the violence we see today over rather trivial things, I suspect that things are not quite so simple as laid out in broad strokes by Fifth Wave.

As William already stated above, the EU is almost the only place in the entire solar system where bioroids are free rather than indentured or even enslaved. Even in the free-wheeling anarcho-capitalist Duncanite space settlements, where one would think anything goes, bioroids have fewer rights than other biosapients and are not considered citizens or "people" for that matter.

Ostensibly advanced and enlightened societies such as the Pacific Rim Alliance and the U.S. regard bioroids as biological machines bred for labour wit fewer rights than "real people," and other than the EU, South Africa and post-human settlements such as Seventh Heaven, that is the prevailing attitude throughout the solar system.

Look it up. There's a handy table on p. 127 that neatly summarizes factions' and nations' attitude toward post-human intelligence.

[Kitsune]

Hmmm, well. There are other possibilities in which SAIs and their development could be studied just as well, if not better. The prime example for this should be Japan. Fifth Wave explicitely mentions the Netherlands as a peak performer of the, umm, Fifth Wave, so this country may also be one of those which have an especially high number of SAI citizens. The same might be true for Austria, Sweden, Korea as well as certain regions in the US.

Still, wether Germany matters or not, I have somewhat mixed feelings about this idea to write a sourcebook about it. So far it has been the style of THS not to have produced any explicite books about certain regions (although admittedly some parts of Broken Dreams may come close to it), and I have to say that this suits me just fine. I feel that it really contributes to the freedom of the setting that you as the GM can do what you want with the US, Europe, China and even Germany (which does matter to me as a German, wether it is has the most SAI citizens or not), without any danger of a player fast-drawing some official soucebook on you.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Still, wether Germany matters or not, I have somewhat mixed feelings about this idea to write a sourcebook about it. So far it has been the style of THS not to have produced any explicite books about certain regions (although admittedly some parts of Broken Dreams may come close to it), and I have to say that this suits me just fine.

What about all the off-planet sourcebooks?

I feel that it really contributes to the freedom of the setting that you as the GM can do what you want with the US, Europe, China and even Germany (which does matter to me as a German, wether it is has the most SAI citizens or not), without any danger of a player fast-drawing some official soucebook on you.

I think even a short Germany sourcebook will leave plenty of room for customization and further additions. What I want to do is present ideas and adventure opportunities you might not have thought of, not artificially constrain you.

All this assumes, of course, that (a) I think I can gather enough material to actually write it, and (b) the line editor accepts the proposal for such a supplement.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

- As of 2100, SAIs are still fairly rare. But as both hardware and software continue to get cheaper, it is possible (even likely) that eventually SAIs are going to be the majority of sapients in the Solar System.

I'm not sure this can happen. Xoxing SAIs is verboten, and training up skills and IQ for a new SAI is too expensive an undertaking for most jobs a biosapient could do. Since there is no Singularity, there is no reliable growth in demand for superhuman intelligence that would make it profitable to train them to higher than human IQ, if possible.

I would think that most jobs that require full sapience any of the time don't require it all of the time, so that you'll end up with gangs of xoxable LAIS and Shadows bossed by SAIs and Ghosts to leverage that expensive infosapience as widely as possible.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

I'm not sure this can happen. Xoxing SAIs is verboten, and training up skills and IQ for a new SAI is too expensive an undertaking for most jobs a biosapient could do.

What makes you think that training SAIs won't get cheaper, too?

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

What makes you think that training SAIs won't get cheaper, too?

Events and changes that affect the entire setting are considered metaplot, and TS is not allowed to have metaplot.

To avoid charges of constructive xoxing, SAI training needs to be supervised by non-infomorph sapients, and they get paid, so in order to get SAI costs down, non-SAI wages have to go down, but of course lower wages for non-SAIs makes it harder for SAI-providers to compete, so there's no net gain there.

Really, the advantage of SAIs is that they have superhuman capabilities in vigilance (can happily work or train at full human effectiveness or better 24/7), in reaction time, and in life support (they only need a little box with power and data, and otherwise having broad environmental tolerances), and they can travel between most 5W locations at relativistic speeds.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

Events and changes that affect the entire setting are considered metaplot, and TS is not allowed to have metaplot.

It is, however, allowed to have a future - and more to the point, it is allowed to have people within the setting extrapolating current trends for the future.

To avoid charges of constructive xoxing, SAI training needs to be supervised by non-infomorph sapients

How does that follow? Why shouldn't SAIs be allowed to train other SAIs, as long as they don't start out from the same seed code?

(And frankly, for many skills LAIs are sufficient trainers most of the time...)

[mindstalk]

Well, with all the talk of SAI rights and bioroid reproduction, one obvious conflict is over xoxing rights.

Also, I just realized there's a middle ground. Free private xoxing may be illegal, for legal or suffrage or wage collapse reasons. But what about licensed xoxing, a set quota of informorph population growth, like immigration quotas? Or (also licensed) xoxing-with-personality-modification, to increase the number of skilled citizens and take some advantage of copying, without an explosion of sameness? And obviously such a state might bend the rules for an informorph with *urgently needed* skills, like loyal Arabic or Pashtun translators today.

Which would spark international fears of a "race to the bottom", and more and more xoxing...