Official "Discuss the latest page" thread

[Aegis J Hyena]

Maybe the best form of government would be a benevolent dictator in form of an artificial construct , designed in such a way to enforce the benefit of the many over the benefit of few at the expense of the majority. Humans, history has shown repeatedly, cannot be trusted with this kind of power.

In the Quantum Vibe universe they tried that. It... didn't work. At least, as their history mentioned it. https://www.quantumvibe.com/strip?page=1292

I'm wondering what doesn't stop some rogue Hals (heh) from gaming the system and turning the Souri Collective into the Borg. Or maybe letting the Mazikeen slooooooooooooowly do that for them...

Edit: Modified thoughts. Already I hate it. Police state, incoming...

[CorvusCorax]

yeah, but that rogue AI in quantumvibe totally optimized for the wrong goal - leading to slow stagnation and decline of the colony.

There's more extreme thought-cases of that.
An AI that would optimize to never let any human do anything wrong might simply not let them do anything at all.

Or even worse: Optimization Goal: end all suffering --> solution: total annihilation (noone suffers ever again)

Lesson to be learned. the optimization goals for such an AI cannot be taken lightly as there are often unforseen consequences.

That doesn't mean its impossible, it just means, whatever goals are programmed need to be tested very carefully. One one hand it should coincide with the wishes of almost everyone in the population and are generally agreed upon by everyone. On the other hand one has to be careful these wishes themselves are not harmful in the long run.

And then of course there are environmental constraints that have to be taken into account. A planet, a colony, a solar system has limited resources. Civilisation is heading for "pretty fun times" (in the dwarf fortress sense of the word) if the population size grows larger than the ecosystem can support. On the other hand people like to thrive in organic growth, conquering new lands, solving new problems, spread and multiply.

As such the task of such an AI would never be easy because fulfilling everyones wishes would lead to an unsustainable situation. As such some restraint needs to be applied. The best way to make everyone happy is to allow its own civilisation to spread at the cost of other competing civilisations - aka give every citizen a challenging, fruitful and fulfilling job in conquering the observable universe.

That might work well if the universe is infinitely sized but in a limited sized universe and several competing civilisations controlled by AIs in which one of them must ever win, that could lead to a scenario similar to that in the novel 1984. war is peace ... lets not go there...

If you think about it, is the question what goals you want to give an AI to optimize really that different from what rules you want a society to obey - combined with the question --- will these rules really make everyone happy? Or are you steering your utopia towards a gaping abyss?

[CorvusCorax]

This AI was named wisdom, and it was tasked with ensuring the security and stability of the Collective for all time.

...By rewriting every individuals brain...

and here I thought just "ruling" a society was a risky thing. There could have been checks and balances. But if the AI can rewire everyone's mind into not ever opposing it -- in fact this being its main objective -- I think this has a serious potential issue with quality control...

... which didn't seem like a really bad idea to anyone at that time...

O...K...

I guess either they had slight overconfidence into their own 1337 coding skillz, or they were slightly naive, or both... but whatever it was, it sure wouldn't matter anymore once they were all bestowed with wisdom

[Departure_Dave]

Looks like direct democracy wrapped back around into being representational democracy or a constitutional tyranny. This seems incredibly inadvised.

[Aegis J Hyena]

Well, we now know Wisdom's "motive" --- but if it can hit the Collective, why not every mind? Why stop at just those with controller class augs.

Edit a week later: It's a big galaxy. How can they already be running out of planets?

[CorvusCorax]

The best way to make everyone happy is to allow its own civilisation to spread at the cost of other competing civilisations - aka give every citizen a challenging, fruitful and fulfilling job in conquering the observable universe.

That might work well if the universe is infinitely sized but in a limited sized universe and several competing civilisations controlled by AIs in which one of them must ever win, that could lead to a scenario similar to that in the novel 1984. war is peace ... lets not go there...

called it!

[CorvusCorax]

Edit a week later: It's a big galaxy. How can they already be running out of planets?

The galaxy has shitloads of planets. But planets that you call "class M" are comparably sparse. If you are not the only faction in the galaxy, you have additional constraints, they need to be in closer proximity to already colonized planets of your own faction than to those of the "competition" or you won't keep that colony for long if there's a conflict.

And last but not least, it needs to be close enough to get there in the first place. The galaxy might have gazillions of planets but its also incredibly huge. If your inhabited worlds are all towards the edge or tip of a spiral arm, then eventually you reach the vast and empty void that lays between them, with the next larger assembly of planet-bearing stars tens of thousands of lightyears away. There's always isolated stars in the large voids between them, and some of them might have inhabitable planets, but they are too isolated to allow effective defense or even trade between them.

You could possibly send an expidition force across the long void into another spiral arm, but there would be little to no trade with these "new world planets", they would form their own, separate dominion pretty quickly and could send or receive no support if things go to "fun"

[Aegeus]

If you can build large space stations, the sort that people can live on long-term (like the Exchanges or the Republic's civilian/military stations) then you don't need a life-bearing planet, only one with resources. Heck, you don't even need a planet - asteroids are more accessible and don't need you to go up and down a gravity well constantly.

This should go double for the Souri, who are augmented and spend half their time in VR, so they have less need for a real biosphere than baseline humans. But maybe two centuries of utopia-building gets you accustomed to a much higher standard of living than the rest of the galaxy?

[mala]

If there are no planets build Dyson swarms. Why are they still even using planets in the first place? Artificial habitats are safer and can house trillions around a single star.

[CorvusCorax]

If there are no planets build Dyson swarms. Why are they still even using planets in the first place? Artificial habitats are safer and can house trillions around a single star.

A Dyson swarm won't be able to hold atmosphere on its own. Having to construct so much pressurized free floating habitats might be too inefficient to support a massive, growing civilisation.

Effectively, to support life, you need an efficient shield against galactic and stellar radiation. Usually this is provided by a suitable planets magnetic field and/or atmosphere.

Gas giants have a habit of creating too much radiation on their own, while small rocky worlds typically have no atmosphere or enough magnetism. If you also require the planet to be far enough from its star to not have unsurvivable temperatures and close enough to get enough energy, guess what: you have a habitable (or at least terraformable) planet anyway.