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eroding the proscriptions and BOOM! <spoiler warning>

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Re: eroding the proscriptions and BOOM! <spoiler warning>
Post by Jonathan_S   » Tue Dec 13, 2016 4:42 pm

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evilauthor wrote:
isaac_newton wrote:Hmmm - dont think that would be a runner [apart from being a poor story :-)]. Dont forget that the re-programming was done in the fleet over years while the journey was on-going and the terraforming proceeding. Problems:
1) population much much larger now that at Creation. Population not nicely enclosed in cryo-tubes
2) physical resources much less - most of the fleet is defunct, no-more
3) skill resources much less - Bedard and [I guess many of her henchman] went up in the pocket nuke explosian. We know the remaining Angels had some skill in this line, but were not top notch


4) Said reprogramming requires the subject have a neural interface installed in their head (I forget what they were called), something the Federation installed in all their citizens in childhood but that NO ONE alive on Safehold has now, not even any of the Inner Circle. It's actually implied to not be possible to install in adult humans, at least not with stock Fed Tech.

Good points; both of you. That would make it at minimum a much longer term plan to do the Safehold-reboot.

You'd have to grab kids, implant them, hold them as they matured while simultaneously building your tech base back up to support widespread production of neural programming hardward. Then wipe out everyone else, reprogram your captives, send remotes to clean up evidence across the world of industrial revolution, and finally release the new population back into the 'wild'...

Beats nuking everybody - but hopefully it is enough effort to deter anybody from trying to implement it...
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Re: eroding the proscriptions and BOOM! <spoiler warning>
Post by Keith_w   » Wed Dec 14, 2016 7:50 am

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evilauthor wrote:
isaac_newton wrote:Hmmm - dont think that would be a runner [apart from being a poor story :-)]. Dont forget that the re-programming was done in the fleet over years while the journey was on-going and the terraforming proceeding. Problems:
1) population much much larger now that at Creation. Population not nicely enclosed in cryo-tubes
2) physical resources much less - most of the fleet is defunct, no-more
3) skill resources much less - Bedard and [I guess many of her henchman] went up in the pocket nuke explosian. We know the remaining Angels had some skill in this line, but were not top notch


4) Said reprogramming requires the subject have a neural interface installed in their head (I forget what they were called), something the Federation installed in all their citizens in childhood but that NO ONE alive on Safehold has now, not even any of the Inner Circle. It's actually implied to not be possible to install in adult humans, at least not with stock Fed Tech.


5) a lot less people to do the work. Population growth alone will out run re-programming.
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Re: eroding the proscriptions and BOOM! <spoiler warning>
Post by Randomiser   » Wed Dec 14, 2016 4:19 pm

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NTM all the people shooting at the command staff while they try to do the rounding up, re-programming etc. They could re-programme all they colonists because they were in cold-sleep and couldn't do anything about it. The EOC is going to actively resist the Returnees and they are not going to have a dormant population to do whatever they like with. This is not going to be like the War of the Fallen where both sides were trying to maintain the myth and prevent the general population from getting advanced technology. Once it comes to an actual struggle, Charis will have no incentive to maintain the lie and will be disseminating real history and technology as a way of waging war, as fast as it can. A whole lot of books are going to turn up all over the place together with simple video projectors in a lot of village squares, playing 'archive footage'.
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Re: eroding the proscriptions and BOOM! <spoiler warning>
Post by Bluestrike2   » Wed Dec 21, 2016 8:06 pm

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evilauthor wrote:
isaac_newton wrote:Hmmm - dont think that would be a runner [apart from being a poor story :-)]. Dont forget that the re-programming was done in the fleet over years while the journey was on-going and the terraforming proceeding. Problems:
1) population much much larger now that at Creation. Population not nicely enclosed in cryo-tubes
2) physical resources much less - most of the fleet is defunct, no-more
3) skill resources much less - Bedard and [I guess many of her henchman] went up in the pocket nuke explosian. We know the remaining Angels had some skill in this line, but were not top notch


4) Said reprogramming requires the subject have a neural interface installed in their head (I forget what they were called), something the Federation installed in all their citizens in childhood but that NO ONE alive on Safehold has now, not even any of the Inner Circle. It's actually implied to not be possible to install in adult humans, at least not with stock Fed Tech.


Actually, it's not implied at all. The idea was rejected because implants and high-speed interfaces for NEAT access (which are implied to be wired for bandwidth purposes) would involve physical artifacts any Pasqualite healer would notice. Even if there's an artificial skin flap over a tiny interface port, for instance. Given how much of a high-wear environment Safehold is, Merlin rejected the option even if discovery wasn't a likely scenario. I'd have to dig up the reference, but that's really the only explanation given.

If you consider what happened with Nahrmahn as he was dying, the textev strongly suggests that actually implanting an adult is doable. He didn't have an implant, so the recording device was unable to access stored engrams (memory traces) and what you'd call his personality. Merlin and Owl directed Nahrmahn's nanites to scavenge his body for the necessary materials to build an implant to facilitate the recording while his body was fighting off the effects of massive trauma. That scavenging caused other problems, precisely because they were disassembling organic matter from and using it to quickly build an implant to effectively bridge the biological and digital.

You also wouldn't wing it in a situation like that. The Federation had a basic implant design, which was then hooked up to internal processors and whatever else was necessary. You might skip the bells and whistles, but you'd still use the standard wiring mesh (or whatever it is) that the recording interface would use to access the brain.

Based on current progress in memory research as well as brain-computer interfaces, we can reasonably speculate that any BCI trying to achieve this would have to have the ability to both access (re: read) and stimulate (re: write) neurons and synaptic connections in order to record engrams and map out how their connections when activated since memories aren't stored in distinct and separate units. And that's basically what an implant would be.

The fact that Merlin and Owl were able to record Nahrmahn's personality, despite the problems due to circumstances and how they built an interface, strongly suggests that there's no reason the Inner Circle couldn't implant an another adult. There might be advantages with childhood implantation, but that's not the same as saying that only children can be implanted. Based on our current understandings of neuroplasticity, there's no neurological basis to suggest that an adult'd brain wouldn't similarly adapt to the introduction of new connections to an implant. The brain adapts and reorganizes itself based on stimulus, far more than we previously believed.

And any implant would be designed to work with the brain's existing structures (and it'd have to access pretty much all of them), rather than just being something "new" that's plugged into it with the brain left to figure it out on its own.

You'd implant children because you could, and because there'd likely be a series of neurological benefits early-on as a result. Plus, it'd completely revolutionize childhood education with immense social benefits. And it'd give you a complete personality recording as the child's personality develops, which would be immensely satisfying should there ever be major brain damage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuronal_ ... allocation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -synapses/
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Re: eroding the proscriptions and BOOM! <spoiler warning>
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Wed Dec 21, 2016 9:35 pm

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Bluestrike2 wrote:You'd implant children because you could, and because there'd likely be a series of neurological benefits early-on as a result. Plus, it'd completely revolutionize childhood education with immense social benefits. And it'd give you a complete personality recording as the child's personality develops, which would be immensely satisfying should there ever be major brain damage.


In addition a child's brain is more plastic to new developments--I would think that if implanted as a child the result would be more useful to the person than if they were implanted as an adult.

I see this the other way around with my wife. She didn't wear glasses enough as a child, her brain never really learned to use her peripheral vision even when she's wearing glasses. While technically she has a normal field of view in practice it only applies to things like large motion (say, someone walking nearby.)

This lack is sufficient that one day I hid a birthday cake from her by putting it on a high shelf in plain sight. Someone with normal vision would have seen it within 5 seconds of walking in the door. She smelled it but didn't find it.

I strongly suspect implanting as an adult would show something of the sort--the brain simply wouldn't learn to make full use of it.
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Re: eroding the proscriptions and BOOM! <spoiler warning>
Post by Brigade XO   » Thu Jan 19, 2017 8:12 pm

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I have to wonder if whatever is under the Temple or perhaps parked in an orbit somewhere further out in the system would really decide that the solution to Safehold having gotten a leg up onto electricity and a lot of other things would be to kill off the Humans?

Does the equipment still exist (and have people who can effectivly use it) to do anything like re-installing the Langhodrne plan? They would not be starting with a population in cryo that also has the implants to access human brains and reprogram them.
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Re: eroding the proscriptions and BOOM! <spoiler warning>
Post by DrakBibliophile   » Thu Jan 19, 2017 9:29 pm

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Well, if the Archangels (or who-ever it is) are still operating under the Protect Mankind By Keeping Safehold Low-Tech mindset, then I doubt that "killing everybody on Safehold" is a likely response.

Now, IMO it's remotely possible that the Archangels might kidnap enough humans for a "breeding population", destroy human civilization on Safehold, and try to start over from the "beginning".

Still we don't really know enough about the "Return Of The Archangels" involves to know what will happen.


Brigade XO wrote:I have to wonder if whatever is under the Temple or perhaps parked in an orbit somewhere further out in the system would really decide that the solution to Safehold having gotten a leg up onto electricity and a lot of other things would be to kill off the Humans?

Does the equipment still exist (and have people who can effectivly use it) to do anything like re-installing the Langhodrne plan? They would not be starting with a population in cryo that also has the implants to access human brains and reprogram them.
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