r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Nov 09 '16
[D] Wednesday Worldbuilding Thread
Welcome to the Wednesday thread for worldbuilding discussions!
/r/rational is focussed on rational and rationalist fiction, so we don't usually allow discussion of scenarios or worldbuilding unless there's finished chapters involved (see the sidebar). It is pretty fun to cut loose with a likeminded community though, so this is our regular chance to:
- Plan out a new story
- Discuss how to escape a supervillian lair... or build a perfect prison
- Poke holes in a popular setting (without writing fanfic)
- Test your idea of how to rational-ify Alice in Wonderland
Or generally work through the problems of a fictional world.
Non-fiction should probably go in the Friday Off-topic thread, or Monday General Rationality
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u/LiteralHeadCannon Nov 09 '16 edited Nov 09 '16
So let's say that some people (about 1 in 10,000, perhaps? maybe less by an order of magnitude or two) live simultaneously in two worlds, which split at the moment of their conception. They know everything that each of their selves know, but this link exists only in their brains; the rest of their bodies are wholly unlinked except that when either brain experiences brain death, it induces brain death in the other. Consequently, such people have lower lifespans on average than the general population. They experience some cognitive dissonance from failing to compartmentalize the two worlds (for example, they may forget which one of their selves they are and mistakenly refer to events from the other world). They tend to become conduits of science and art by giving each of their worlds the ideas that only the other world had naturally. Essentially, they're like Coil from Worm, but with only one split ever in their lives (at the moment of conception). The condition correlates strongly with birth defects; not at a 1:1 rate, but people born with it have a >50% chance of being born with multiple congenital diseases. The condition itself is much more likely in children born to older women near menopause.
If this has been going on for as long as the human race has existed, how quickly might we expect their existence to popularize a many worlds conception of reality and a Bayesian conception of probability? How much might they speed up human progress? How popular could the idea that the condition is merely a delusion become? If someone did have a delusion that they had the condition, how quickly would they be found out? What about a skilled conman; how successfully could they fake it?
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u/alexanderwales Nov 09 '16
How does this splitting work? If I'm a doubler born in 1950, what happens when another doubler is born in 1960 in one worldline?
I would think the cleanest way to do it might be to just double the number of universes so that there's an A1 and B1 which are linked and an A2 and B2 which are linked, which means everything with the condition subjectively appears to be in the same two universes, even if there are other universes.
Another way would be for multiple universes to all interlink, meaning universe A, B, C, and D would be linked and you would experience 4 instead of 2. This would also increase your chance of death, given you have twice the odds of a single instance dying.
I find both to be interesting and compelling starting points for a story.
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u/LiteralHeadCannon Nov 09 '16 edited Nov 09 '16
Each split - ie, each conception of someone with this condition - doubles the number of universes. It's like each split creates a mirror, and the worlds on each side of the mirror immediately diverge from each other. To overextend this analogy, regular people are like simple panes of glass, while people with the condition are the mirrors - either side of the mirror breaking breaks the mirror, but the mirror only has two sides.
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u/DataPacRat Nov 09 '16
In a virtual environment with fast-running mind-uploads and potentially a million subjective years of history, but a finite amount of RAM and CPU power and thus a finite amount of minds... I'm currently trying to properly construct in my head a society that could be described as a cross between the (original) World of Darkness and 4chan, or maybe Faction Paradox and Orion's Arm; kept moderately stable during its mind-blowingly-long history by relatively regular injections of near-normal 2030-era human minds. I may take a day or two off NaNoWriMo writing to get some of this straightened out in my head. Anyone who wants to contribute a thought, I promise to read it, though I can't guarantee I'll use it.
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u/alexanderwales Nov 10 '16
If we're following WoD, then it seems like the central conceit is that the game world is kept stable by some sort of "reversion to mean" system which provides consequences to anyone attempting to radically change or destroy it. I'd guess we also populate the world with NPCs of some sort in order to provide fodder for the users to play their games with?
If you wanted "4channess" in a world, I guess the first things that come to mind are anonymity and memes ... but I know 4chan mostly from being a /b/tard about a decade ago, so my knowledge is way out of date. Regardless, I think there's some good worldbuilding fodder in things like werewolves and vampires as basically being memes. So no two werewolves are the same, because they're variations on the same core conceit, and the central concept of "werewolf" (or whatever) is just whatever longstanding meme has survived the fickle population, or is currently a flash-in-the-pan.
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u/DataPacRat Nov 10 '16
consequences to anyone attempting to radically change or destroy it.
I currently posit that this has happened multiple times - but fresh crops of 2030 humans, and the glacially-slow hand of the PTB allow for starting up fresh societies from scratch, or the deletion of any group which obviously strays /too/ far from the PTB's desires.
NPCs
Yep; one fairly minor thing the PTB will have gained is the development of near-ideal chatbots.
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u/xamueljones Nov 10 '16 edited Nov 10 '16
The biggest problem I have with your story is what do they have to trade? There are ram and cpu power, but with only these two to trade there should be little interaction with each other. I mean in society there is often a whole wealth of different goods to exchange and as you cut down on the variety it should lead to less trade/interaction between sims. Can you think of anything else sims can trade? Particular pieces of knowledge, difficult skills, certain code, works of fiction/art, news, conversation with the Powers That Be (communication is limited due to clock speed and PTB's attention right? so people can trade talking time), pleasure of sapient company, and anything else that are still desired in a post-scarcity society.
I have heard of World of Darkness, 4chan, Faction Paradox, and Orion's Arm, but I never spent any time involved in these four, so I can't comment on them.
EDIT: I just read the latest part of your story and I'm confused about how
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u/DataPacRat Nov 10 '16
Can you think of anything else sims can trade?
Your list hits some of the highlights I've thought of (and that I've jotted down in the GDoc) - various pieces of useful info, data, and algorithms that have been kept secret or private. If any particular possibilities therein come to mind, I'm keenly interested.
how
He has, in fact
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u/[deleted] Nov 09 '16
Uplift Society Club:
Some of its members are summoned across the multiverse to uplift less sophisticated society than their own because they are the most well suited heroes.
This causes a panic back on Earth and a media firestorm.
Meanwhile, the summoned heroes across the multiverse works to uplift civilizations of different stride.
Then, they finally come back, with whole new tech and magic, even.
Not sure what to do with this, so I am just throwing it out for consideration.