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

[Rynn]

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.

One option could be to have the character come from a baseline reserve world. That would explain why they were baseline, perhaps in addition to that they're very light on augmentation by OA standards and instead choose to use more external technology. E.g:

- Robot personal assistant rather than DNI
- Angelnet reliance for safety plus docbot for health
- Fashionable wearable tech for AR/VR

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?

That basically comes down to how reproduction is regulated. Again even in the NoCoZo you might run into problems freely reproducing. In this case the parent may find themselves sued for neglect by the offspring.

If you like the idea of the baseline reserve character you could combine the two ideas. Have the character approached by an entity/group whilst they are still on the reserve offering them a job in a carnival with a contract that stipulates no augments.

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". 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?

The answer is, essentially, market forces. The most powerful archai in the NoCoZo exercise that power through commerce so a benevolent, somewhat safe lifestyle is assured through that. A few example scenarios:

1) You want to make a slave. First you'll need the equipment (like an engenerator and software) but when you try to use it it locks up/melts. You've violated the terms of service. You also violated the terms of service on your rent, your education (no using bioengineering for slavery!) and find that your standing in reputation markets has bombed so you'll be paying premiums on everything, from medicine to milk.

2) Recovered from the earlier catastrophe you decide to work smarter. After a century of hard graft you've got your own private hab. In that hab you laboriously work to build your own engenerator, free of any contract. You go to turn it on and: bang everything else turns off. Because every other piece of equipment you bought came with a customer agreement contract that you've just violated. Similarly services like traffic control have been withdrawn so you may get blasted by a ships drive plume.

3) It's thousands of years later. You've set yourself up on a planet with no technology other than your hands. In all this time you've slowly worked up from stone tools to an engenerator. You can and do create a slave. Bad things happen. One day lights flash in the sky; it's a task force from Freedom Security Inc, contracted by the charity Ancaps for Abolition. They take the slave from you and enact punishment. Unless you can fight them off yourself you're now subject to their whim, no other security firm comes to your aid because of the loss of status associating with you would create (though they may step in if Freedom Security go too far, because it attracts customers being noble).

Final point regarding money in the NoCoZo: you'll never find yourself homeless, starving or lacking in basic goods. For two reasons; firstly the aforementioned charities (likely backed by archai), secondly the cost of offering basic services is virtually nothing for businesses and landowners. A few hundred cubic meters, some CHON and other feedstock, some solar panels, an assembler and a library of vots. All of those could keep a person alive indefinitely, are all examples of self-sufficient tech and are the cost equivalent of a cup of coffee in OA terms.

Money in OA is extremely different. It's not used for the type of material goods and services we associated it with for everyday life. Money is used, pretty much exclusively, for non-fungible goods and services. Brands, private membership, artwork, specific land etc. Everything else is allocated differently.

[somnolent]

In the resource allocation page there's an interesting theory under Uncapped Personal Resources: "As a result of this memgeneering these worlds and systems are often the most frugal of all Sephirotic Worlds, since the citizens of these worlds may strive to reduce their consumption and population growth to sustainable levels and compete against one another to demonstrate their austerity."

Maybe this culture could even be an offshoot from such a group that decided to "go baseline" to prove their austerity. It's kind of an odd mismatch for a planet like Frei, which celebrates enjoyment. But maybe that is part of the larger memetic plan somehow...

[Drashner1]

In the resource allocation page there's an interesting theory under Uncapped Personal Resources: "As a result of this memgeneering these worlds and systems are often the most frugal of all Sephirotic Worlds, since the citizens of these worlds may strive to reduce their consumption and population growth to sustainable levels and compete against one another to demonstrate their austerity."

Maybe this culture could even be an offshoot from such a group that decided to "go baseline" to prove their austerity. It's kind of an odd mismatch for a planet like Frei, which celebrates enjoyment. But maybe that is part of the larger memetic plan somehow...

This doesn't really work when we consider that Frei is a warm gas giant. Living there would require bubblehabs at least, and a general level of advanced tech all around. So why an avoidance of implants or genetic engineering? That's before we get to it being a medium to major center in the Old Core worlds that draws visitors from across the Civilized Galaxy.

Frei isn't deeply described but it seems very unlikely that a culture of low-tech baselines would be the dominant group there (for that matter baselines don't really dominate anything anywhere, almost by definition). For that matter, you originally were talking about a character, then about a group or organization, and now suddenly it's a culture. Things seem to be expanding here, and it's not really clear what is going on.

With that in mind, what is this in service of? Are you proposing a story of some kind or something else?

Also, why the aversion to any kind of genetic enhancements or cybernetic augmentations? I understand that you find this 'easiest' to imagine, but at the end of the day, we are imagining a spacefaring civilization 10,000yrs in the future, one that has been engaging in massive amounts of genetic engineering and cybernetic augmentation for most of that time. Those who don't use such technologies are very much in the minority and it's not really clear how (or why) someone who eschews them would be able to play any kind of important role in the setting. Perhaps it would be easier in the grand scheme of things to put some energy into imagining how these things work (even if it is a bit more of an effort) and incorporating them to at least some degree in whatever you are trying to create here.

On a related note, and just to make sure there's no misunderstanding on this point, being a 'baseline' means not being genetically engineered (being a real life type human basically), not lacking augmentations (which are cybernetic enhancements). Up to a point a baseline can have a number of these, but is still a baseline because they are not genetically enhanced and are therefore physically and/or mentally inferior to those who are (Near-baselines, Superiors, and Tweaks).

Todd

[Rynn]

Just to back track a moment, are you looking for:

1) A main character that is baseline?

2) A small baseline community within the system?

3) For the system to be baseline dominant?

Option 1 would be a lot easier to justify than 3. As I said earlier in thread a citizen from a baseline reserve, sponsored by a group/individual to come to the NoCoZo, would work quite well.