New reader with a question about wormhole networks

[Drashner1]

I like the carnival troupe idea. In a way it might make for a more interesting story if a whole group of people is traveling along the wormhole network. It could also be one member from the group who decides not to be a performer and wants to travel further. Maybe my protagonist prides herself (emself?) on being able to survive without augmentation.

This is probably workable, given how flexible Y11K tech is. Normally people would interface with/command technology via Direct Neural Interface implants. But the tech would be able to adapt to their lack of this (assuming you want them to not even have DNI - which is equivalent to being willingly blind and condemning yourself to death by Terragen standards - but some baselines presumably go that far.)

In my first scenario, what would happen if some powerful and rich being creates a baseline human, and says to them, "You are free to go anywhere and do whatever you want. But if you stay here, talk to the tourists, and don't augment yourself, I will feed you and pay you and protect you, and you can enjoy the orwoods in your off time." Would this be against NoCoZo rules?

Well, they wouldn't actually need to be either all that powerful or all that rich to create a baseline human. By Y11k (actually some thousands of years before) even modosophont schoolchildren create new lifeforms from scratch, either as part of their education or for fun. Creating a new sophont being is likely regulated in various ways, but isn't (in principle) all that different from reproduction (which is also regulated in various ways).

Regardless, since the baseline in question is being given a choice, then it would presumably not go against NoCoZo rules regarding coercion. But...by doing what you describe, the human in question is essentially condemning themselves to both an early death and to being crippled while they are alive. For the promise of food and some money - which they could get doing other things and while being augmented - meaning they are functionally ageless and immortal (as well as immune to virtually all disease and able to heal from nearly any wound, including regenerating organs and regrowing limbs), can have information fed directly into their mind, access senses and sensory experiences not possible for a baseline, increase their intelligence, copy their minds to be able to be in multiple places at once, and visit nearly countless numbers of virtual realities and universes.

Which would you choose, given the choice?

That said, since there are baseline humans in the setting, and some of them choose to live in primitive conditions, there are apparently some who will choose this. But they are likely to be rare and you'd need to explain why they are going along with that particular choice.

I'm also curious about the story you described. If an AI creates a human as a slave/exhibit/curiousity, and some authority notices and takes the human away, what happens then? The human has no money and no skills in a very free-market stretch of the galaxy. Does NoCoZo have welfare? In Rynn's post he mentioned "living off of free basic products and charity".

I imagine there would be various options. Such as...

a) Some element of the NoCoZo do provide some level of welfare, at least on a temporary basis, giving the human time to both augment and educate themselves to the point where they can get a job and start earning income.

b) Some elements within the NoCoZo provide the human with a loan that they use to pay for education and augmentation such that they can get a job and pay back the loan.

c) Much the same as (b), but the human accepts a period of indentured servitude in exchange for either a loan to pay for augments/education or for these things to be directly provided by the person holding their indenture.

d) The human goes to the embassy of one of the other empires and asks for asylum/to emigrate. Many of the empires run some form of autotopia and will happily take the human in as a new citizen, while providing them with anything from a guaranteed basic level of support to anything they care to request simply because that's what they do as a matter of course.

And so on.

Different cultures may have very different approaches, but if a NoCoZo member world decides to let the homeless starve to death, would some administrator step in and forbid it?

Allowing people to starve to death seems pretty coercive. A polity that did such things runs the risk of being punished (or flat out conquered) by one of the empires or even a lone high transapient/archailect who decides to be offended by it. Or shunned by potential customers who find its behavior offensive and therefore it will soon collapse economically. It also seems likely to result in some number of people choosing to 'vote with their feet' and move to other empires - which seems to count as 'losing' in whatever sort of competition or game the sephirotic archai may or may not have going on between them.

Beyond that, there is the question of why there would be homeless people/starving people in the first place. The conditions that lead to homelessness/starvation in RL don't seem likely to apply in Terragen civ. People are engineered to be long lived and healthy, as well as highly intelligent. Science understands the mind completely and mental diseases are simply prevented (along with all other diseases). Mental damage from events or trauma can be easily undone. Etc.

Basically, people are readily able to work if they wish.

Todd