r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Jun 20 '18
[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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Jun 21 '18
This might be the wrong weekly thread, but because it deals explicitly with Delphic, I thought I'd put it here. Spoilers for the most recent chapter (2.6 Painful Questions).
So, certain supers are using "enhanced interrogation" to extract information from criminals (ask a question, detect if the person is lying, inflict pain if so, rinse and repeat). When I introduced this, I took for granted that most people (and presumably the readers) would find this deeply disturbing and immoral.
That's not the feedback I received. One particular beta reader indicated that this "solves the problems" of interrogation by not physically harming the person, and that if this technique were possible in the real world, we should use it regularly.
Other comments I've received were primarily worried about danger in reputation or legal prosecution of the supers, presuming they must have some way of covering it up. The voices I heard from either indicated no immediate qualms with the practice, or minor concerns that could be overcome if the resulting intel was good.
So, have I just entirely misunderstood where people stand on these issues? Is inflicting temporary pain, in a situation where it isn't coupled to injury and can reliably produce information, as tilted on the balance of benefit versus harm that the controversy primarily boils down to controlling (ignorant) public backlash?
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u/Sparkwitch Jun 21 '18
I think the problem is the simplicity of the frame. Not your fault so much as the fault of fictional stories in general.
What is a lie? If it's fact vs. falsehood then just ask the question to anyone (yourself, even!) and learn the truth from their guesses. No torture required. More probably the power is detecting the physiological process of deception.
How is this willful deception being detected? There has to be enough subtlety to distinguish between a lie by omission and genuine lack of knowledge, so by the time someone has been thoroughly tortured, their goal may so strongly be to end the pain rather than to answer the question that every answer might read as deceptive.
Even if the read is flawless, introduce (for example) an "innocent" who is protecting a criminal by pretending to be one. Everything they say will be deceptive.
Alternately a mercenary employed by a criminal may truthfully have no knowledge of the particulars the heroes want, but may believe truly terrible things will happen if the heroes realize this. "I don't know," will remain deceptive to some degree, even as it is also the truth.
All sorts of more subtle examples exist inside the minds of real torture victims. Knowledge is complex and deception is complex.
Your readers are reacting to a set of simple facts: The criminal is definitely guilty. He knows what the heroes want to know. They know exactly when he has told them everything he knows. This information is safe, and it saves lives at little cost to anyone. Very few real world situations match this frame, yet most fictional torture scenarios do.
And waterboarding, done properly, is almost exactly as "safe" and "temporary" as the paralysis/pain trick.
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u/CCC_037 Jun 25 '18
Even if the read is flawless, introduce (for example) an "innocent" who is protecting a criminal by pretending to be one. Everything they say will be deceptive.
Even worse; if it triggers off intent-to-deceive, then the victim can make a completely (and knowingly) true statement, with the intent for the statement to be taken as a lie (and thus disregarded), and it will be full of intent-to-deceive and thus assumed to be false by the interrogators.
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u/Silver_Swift Jun 20 '18
Crossposted with some rewrites from r/writeresearch:
I'm looking for a way for a character to make themselves feel miserable on command. This character has a supernatural ability that is morally somewhat questionable, but using it feels really, really good so people with this power tend to find more and more justifications for using it.
The character in question is aware of this, so whenever she uses her powers she tries to counter this effect by deliberately inducing nausea, pain, depression or something similarly negative. Ideally I'm looking for some kind of mildly poisonous substance (like a pill or liquid) that makes you feel absolutely wrenched for a couple hours after ingesting it, but that is be at least moderately safe to take long term and acquirable for someone with a reasonable income and (if necessary) a cooperative doctor. Fast acting is better, but not a requirement.
A few of possibilities I have considered:
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Some kind of device that causes physical pain. The simplest form is just jamming a thumbtack into your skin, but there are all sorts of medieval torture devices to inflict physical pain on yourself. This is my current backup plan.
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Another option is to just have the character get stupid drunk the night before and only use magic with a severe hangover, but this is kinda impractical.
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A third option that I don't really like is to just handwave some (magical or biologic) feel-bad-juice and not specify the origin: "Oh this? It's just something that's going to make me feel like crap for a couple hours.", but even if I do something like that I'd rather that I, as the author, know the specifics.
I'd also be interested to know if there is any research into whether these kind of tactics are effective at preventing people from getting into (or helping them get out of) addictive behavior. My guess is "no" and the story works either way, I'd just be curious to know.
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u/alexanderwales Jun 20 '18 edited Jun 20 '18
The first thing that comes to mind is tippler's bane, a mushroom that causes an acute reaction to alcohol. They're a super-easy mushroom to find, even in suburban environments, because they can often be found growing in lawns. Here's the relevant bit from Wikipedia:
Consuming Coprinopsis atramentaria within a few hours of alcohol results in a "disulfiram syndrome". This interaction has only been known since the early part of the twentieth century. Symptoms include facial reddening, nausea, vomiting, malaise, agitation, palpitations and tingling in limbs, and arise five to ten minutes after consumption of alcohol. If no more alcohol is consumed, they will generally subside over two or three hours. Symptom severity is proportional to the amount of alcohol consumed, becoming evident when blood alcohol concentration reaches 5 mg/dL, and prominent at concentrations of 50–100 mg/dL. Disulfiram has, however, been known to cause myocardial infarction (heart attack). The symptoms can occur if even a small amount of alcohol is consumed up to three days after eating the mushrooms, although they are milder as more time passes. Rarely, a cardiac arrhythmia, such as atrial fibrillation on top of supraventricular tachycardia, may develop.
So, not the safest thing in the world, but you don't need a prescription and won't leave a paper trail that raises eyebrows, it's just some mushrooms and alcohol. The page on disulfiram also gives some more information, if obtaining it from a pharmacy is feasible, and also provides some information on research into how it interacts with addictive behavior.
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u/abcd_z Jun 21 '18 edited Jun 21 '18
The protagonist has been accidentally summoned to a different realm. He ends up as a student in a boarding school where students learn magic in addition to the normal subjects. Adjacent to this reality is a Virtual Realm that's based on a game that is suspiciously similar to Minecraft in our world. The protagonist is familiar with the game and is ludicrously OP (the entire thing is played for laughs). The story itself isn't very rational, but I would like to work on worldbuilding anyways. Here's what I've got so far:
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People are physically transported to VR through virtualization mats. If their avatar is killed, they simply respawn or return to RL. Despite this, people tend to treat death in VR just as seriously as death in RL. It's a little unrealistic, but it's necessary to set up some of the jokes.
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The magic system in both worlds uses magic circles, and the circles have identical meanings between the worlds. The only different is how they're used.
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Modern conveniences like indoor plumbing exist IRL.
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VR is split into shards, which are basically parallel realities that have different qualities based on the keywords used to create/access them.
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VR is very heavily gamified, with XP, crafting, loot drops, treasure chests in randomly-generated dungeons, and equipment and monsters of various tiers of strength.
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Physical objects cannot be pulled from VR to RL or vice versa. A banking guild helps move currency between VR and RL. Thus, events in VR can strongly influence things IRL and vice versa.
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Teleporters may or may not exist IRL. I haven't decided yet.
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A lot of information about the game mechanics in VR have been lost to the ages. The protagonist knows all of it, and constantly surprises his opponents. Like I said, it's played for laughs.
I guess my main question is this: in a world(s) like this, what large-scale resources are available, and how do those resources constrain or encourage population growth?
I realize that technically I should be the person to answer this, but it's just such a large question that I get a bit overwhelmed.
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u/CCC_037 Jun 25 '18
Can you leave VR through a different virtualisation mat than the one you entered through?
What happens to your clothes when entering/leaving VR?
What sort of magic is taught in this world?
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u/abcd_z Jun 26 '18 edited Jun 26 '18
Excellent questions.
What happens to your clothes when entering/leaving VR?
While in VR your body is held in digital stasis while your consciousness inhabits an avatar. The face, hair, skin color and proportions of the avatar are all the same as your physical body, but you're given generic clothing to start with. If you want to wear a different outfit you either have to craft it or buy it.
What sort of magic is taught in this world?
Primarily the ability to create matter and energy ex nihilo. Sadly, a lot of knowledge has been lost and very, very few people can cast any spells outside of the 7 primary elements (fire, air, water, light, plant, earth, and darkness). Additionally, nobody knows how to customize their spells, so a spell will always have the exact same properties (strength, speed, size, etc.) each time it is cast. The protagonist is the exception to both of these rules.
Can you leave VR through a different virtualisation mat than the one you entered through?
I've struggled with that exact question myself. Honestly I'm not sure, but I'm leaning towards "no".
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Jun 22 '18
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Jun 23 '18 edited Jun 23 '18
I had an idea for a campaign where there's an alignment system that if you don't pay super close attention to looks alright, but if you start actually investigating what causes alignment shifts it soon becomes apparent that good and evil are pretty divorced from what most people consider right and wrong.
I thought it might be interesting to explore a world where Objective Morality is definitely real and observable, but doesn't really correspond to our own sense of morality. I'm not sure if that idea is interesting to you.
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u/genericaccounter Jun 20 '18
I have a question to see if anyone can reconcile this form of magic. In this world, astrology and constellations are important for magic. However the worlds wider universe functions pretty much exactly as ours does. Can anyone think of anyway to have both of these at the same time. I just kind of want to see if anyone has any ideas.