Worldbuilding Realism Consultation Thread Mk. 4

[Allanea]

Rail is also useful in this context - after all, most coal mines are not located near the shore and the coal needs to be shipped by rail anyway.

Oh yes, I am transporting by rail, and there is existing rail to the coast, just wondering how I should handle the international shipping

It largely depends on your customer. Generally you should have some manner of agreements with your neighbors handling shipments of goods through their countries.

[Allanea]

So about cancer.

[Gallia-]

:pop sci journalism:

Besides using "cancer" as a singular noun, when in reality "cancer" is about as specific as "virus" or "bacteria", there are other failures in basic scientific literacy:

The unstated part is that the siRNA would go ham on the non-cancer cells as well. Which means it's just an extremely deadly toxin. I guess that's a cure. This has been a problem for the past ~12 years since people have killed things with siRNA.

Secondly, it's probably about 40-50 years away before commercialization, optimistically, and siRNA isn't even a "cure". It's a slightly better form of chemotherapy in that it kills enough cancer cells that they stop trying to eat you, rather than removing them wholesale from the body and turns you back into a 20 year old. It will probably be similarly invasive, or more so (ocular siRNAs for macular degeneration involve injection into the eyeball with a big needle lmao), than chemotherapy as well, but at least you won't lose your hair! So you're back to square one, so to speak, and the "war on cancer" continues for a few more centuries until people run out of ideas? Possibly.

What would human life be without death, though? All good stories need an end, and mortality is what makes us human to begin with. Although I guess if you lived long enough you would successively forget and need to rebuild new identities as your brain runs out of space and has to overwrite all your past childhoods until you never remember being born, your first name, your parents, or anything about yourself except that you've always existed. Truly a terrible existence were there any.

As an example, it took ~45 years for HIV/AIDS retrovirals, not cures, to become relatively cheap and commonplace so that you could afford them without being mega rich or whatever. So not really within our lifetimes (nor Rock Hudson's). Not quite as bad as nuclear fusion, but for people who are in their 20s today it might as well be nuclear fusion. Because you aren't seeing it before cancer kills you. Or diabetes. Or any other :first world: disease. And if you do see it, you'll be retirement age, so its practical value will be very little because there are people in their 30s and 40s who are just more productive and better uses than a bunch of old, useless codgers. The youngs of the future will, ideally, receive the bulk of medical and hospital care because the purpose of the healthcare system is to keep people productive and contributing to the tax system, rather than to keep (from a tax revenue standpoint) useless old people alive. The latter is the responsibility of the pensions system and we know where that one is headed.

A rocketry analogy is that this is like people reporting on scramjets in the 1970s. But 9/11 happened, so we'll never see scramjet anything ever outside of missiles.

[Allanea]

What would human life be without death, though? All good stories need an end, and mortality is what makes us human to begin with.

Both of these are normative claims.

Neither of us have never met a non-aging (not, technically, immortal, as bricks still fall on people) human being.

You've chosen, basically arbitrarily, to decide that human beings must include the definition of 'mortality'.

Why not equally include something as arbitrary as, I don't know, 'dementia in old age', or 'erectile dysfunction'?

[Gallia-]

What would human life be without death, though? All good stories need an end, and mortality is what makes us human to begin with.

Both of these are normative claims.

No, they aren't, unless your idea of a "good movie" is television static I guess.

Neither of us have never met a non-aging (not, technically, immortal, as bricks still fall on people) human being.

Because they wouldn't be human.

You've chosen, basically arbitrarily, to decide that human beings must include the definition of 'mortality'.

Because mortality is what everyone has in common.

Why not equally include something as arbitrary as, I don't know, 'dementia in old age', or 'erectile dysfunction'?

Because not everyone has ED or dementia. Nor will they get it. Everyone, however, will die.

There are two things shared by all humans, forever. These are: 1) they are born; 2) they will die. Nothing else is common.

If you want to be delusional and think you won't die because you invested in a Ponzi scheme, then I guess you can think that too, but you're neither unique nor common.

Besides, even an "immortal" being would die in reality. Mortality isn't just for people. It's for all things.

e5432789: However, it would be accurate to say that my claim of "iron stars are too optimistic for reality" is a normative claim. Because it literally is normative. We don't know if it will happen, we don't know when it would happen, and we don't think it will happen, but we will never know for sure whether or not we're right about that one because no one will ever live long enough to see it through. OTOH a universe without proton decay really is the final victory of capitalism IRL: all existence is shackled to literal chains of iron.

[Allanea]

No, they aren't, unless your idea of a "good movie" is television static I guess.

There's any number of franchises and shows that, to the great delight of their fans, go on endlessly.

[Allanea]

If you want to be delusional and think you won't die because you invested in a Ponzi scheme, then I guess you can think that too, but you're neither unique nor common.

I'm not sure what your definition of 'investing' and 'Ponzi schemes' is, because it's definitely isn't what everyone else's is.

[Gallia-]

If you want to be delusional and think you won't die because you invested in a Ponzi scheme, then I guess you can think that too, but you're neither unique nor common.

I'm not sure what your definition of 'investing' and 'Ponzi schemes' is, because it's definitely isn't what everyone else's is.

I'm just knocking SENS for being nutty and wrong. Perhaps not fundamentally, but neither time nor economics is on its side.

No, they aren't, unless your idea of a "good movie" is television static I guess.

There's any number of franchises and shows that, to the great delight of their fans, go on endlessly.

You clearly don't know what "endlessly" means, then, or you can see into the future for an infinite period of time. Impressive, if the latter.

[Allanea]

It's clear that these franchises haven't 'ended', nor is there any reason, from an artistic standpoint, for them to end. As long as there are fans, people will keep making episodes etc.

The phrase 'dying is part of the definition of humanity' is completely meaningless. It's on par with 'death is what gives life meaning'. It's not even true, since, on your own statement, all or most creatures die (depending on the exact definition of 'die').

But even if it were true, something being 'part of the definition of humanity' does not necessarily conclude that it's a good thing.

[Gallia-]

It's clear that these franchises haven't 'ended', nor is there any reason, from an artistic standpoint, for them to end. As long as there are fans, people will keep making episodes etc.

That isn't "endless". I think you need to brush up on your English.

The phrase 'dying is part of the definition of humanity' is completely meaningless. It's on par with 'death is what gives life meaning'. It's not even true, since, on your own statement, all or most creatures die (depending on the exact definition of 'die').

It's quite true. If you can think of something that is more human than being born or dying, you're welcome to try. I can give you pointless anecdotes of people, who are quite literally human, who would disagree with or disprove your alternate definition of humanity. But until you show me someone who hasn't been born or will never die, you cannot really disprove my point: Which is that the thing all humans share is our mortality.

We don't share political opinions. Certainly Hitler thought he was doing a good thing when he killed 11 million people in death camps. We don't share the idea that "good" is "desirable", since people who seek out the opposite of good to affirm their own existence definitely exist. We don't even share the ability to reproduce, since intersex people exist. But we do share the parts of our lives where we're born and where we die. If you think you have a better definition of "humanity", you are wrong, because there is nothing else that humans share except that we're born and we die.

No doubt, the vast majority of people today would view someone who never dies as something other than human. Whether they view that as good, bad, or neither, depends on the individual and the society they're a part of, but they would not be considered "human". And one can easily imagine that the belief could go both ways, since people who are immortal would no longer view people who are mortal as the same either, but whether they view them as inferior, superior, or equal, is decided by the society the individual is a part of.

But even if it were true, something being 'part of the definition of humanity' does not necessarily conclude that it's a good thing.

Ah, the Allanea Rebuttal Tactic(TM): put words in other's people mouths. Classic.

I never said dying was a good thing. I never said it was a bad thing, either. It simply is.

[Allanea]

It's quite true. If you can think of something that is more human than being born or dying, you're welcome to try. I can give you pointless anecdotes of people, who are quite literally human, who would disagree with or disprove your alternate definition of humanity. But until you show me someone who hasn't been born or will never die, you cannot really disprove my point: Which is that the thing all humans share is our mortality.

Supposing this were true, so what?

[Allanea]

You clearly don't know what "endlessly" means, then, or you can see into the future for an infinite period of time. Impressive, if the latter.

You've suggested that every good story needs an end.

Yet clearly there are some people who don't want their favorite stories to end, since they keep paying money for sequels and episodes.

This would imply that they disagree with you, in terms of their revealed preferences.

[Gallia-]

It's quite true. If you can think of something that is more human than being born or dying, you're welcome to try. I can give you pointless anecdotes of people, who are quite literally human, who would disagree with or disprove your alternate definition of humanity. But until you show me someone who hasn't been born or will never die, you cannot really disprove my point: Which is that the thing all humans share is our mortality.

Supposing this were true,

Please provide examples of actual immortals. Rasputin doesn't count. Neither does Jesus.

so what?

It's a simple statement: mortality makes us human. If you take away mortality, you take away humanity. What comes next isn't human. It would not consider itself human anymore than it would consider mortal entities itself.

Mortality is the only thing that makes us "human" because it is the only thing we all share.

You clearly don't know what "endlessly" means, then, or you can see into the future for an infinite period of time. Impressive, if the latter.

You've suggested that every good story needs an end.

In a bookish sense. My personal preference is that mortality is a good thing. As I've said, and as you've apparently (and unsurprisingly) failed to read, my personal preferences have no sway on whether or not something is true.

Yet clearly there are some people who don't want their favorite stories to end, since they keep paying money for sequels and episodes.

Indeed.

This would imply that they disagree with you, in terms of their revealed preferences.

Are you implying that people who watch Guiding Light are immortal?

[Allanea]

Are you implying that people who watch Guiding Light are immortal?

I am implying that people who watch Dr. Who don't seem to think it needs an end.

[Allanea]

Please provide examples of actual immortals. Rasputin doesn't count. Neither does Jesus.

t's a simple statement: mortality makes us human. If you take away mortality, you take away humanity. What comes next isn't human. It would not consider itself human anymore than it would consider mortal entities itself.

Mortality is the only thing that makes us "human" because it is the only thing we all share.

So to reiterate: since no immortal homo sapiens exist, mortality is what makes us human, therefore if immortal homo sapiens were to suddenly come into existence, they wouldn't be human?

[Gallia-]

Are you implying that people who watch Guiding Light are immortal?

I am implying that people who watch Dr. Who don't seem to think it needs an end.

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

Please provide examples of actual immortals. Rasputin doesn't count. Neither does Jesus.

t's a simple statement: mortality makes us human. If you take away mortality, you take away humanity. What comes next isn't human. It would not consider itself human anymore than it would consider mortal entities itself.

Mortality is the only thing that makes us "human" because it is the only thing we all share.

So to reiterate: since no immortal homo sapiens exist, mortality is what makes us human, therefore if immortal homo sapiens were to suddenly come into existence, they wouldn't be human?

Obviously.

[Allanea]

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

You've argued a good story needs an end, and obviously some disagree.

Obviously

That's a rather circular argument.

[Gallia-]

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

You've argued a good story needs an end, and obviously some disagree.

No.

I've stated something quite obvious, that mortality makes us human because we all share it. Everything else I've "argued" is something of your own invention. Perhaps you have trouble dealing with literal statements, although I find this only slightly difficult to believe as you've consistently implied in the past that you yourself are literally minded. That seems rather a lie, because I would suspect someone who is literally minded to agree with the statement that "something which all humans share is something which forms the identity of human".

Obviously

That's a rather circular argument.

Thankfully it'll never need stating in a serious context, because immortal homo sapiens will never exist.

Otherwise we'd have a bunch of ne'r do-wells running around succumbing to the same petty vices that Humanity did before them, like the Greek or Norse gods. Except they'd never stop, because they're immortal, and they don't get crippling back injuries, die of old age in prison, get Alzheimer's, or whatever. When you break it down from that viewpoint, SENS is actually somewhat nightmarish, like any utopian ideology. It's possible that "trans-humanism" or "post-humanism" or whatever will become the monarchism/fascism/communism/Islamism of WWVI. Or maybe WWVII, since it looks like the next war is actually going to be fought between different flavors of capitalism.

Our future, thankfully, is filled with far more boring things. Like Digital Leninism, Silicon Valley/Yangtze Delta cyber-Stasi, and the digital panopticon.

[Allanea]

Otherwise we'd have a bunch of ne'r do-wells running around succumbing to the same petty vices that Humanity did before them, like the Greek or Norse gods. Except they'd never stop, because they're immortal, and they don't get crippling back injuries, die of old age in prison, get Alzheimer's, or whatever. When you break it down from that viewpoint, SENS is actually somewhat nightmarish, like any utopian ideology.

I'm failing to see anything nightmarish about that, but I guess that's in the eye of the beholder.

[Ainin]

Why is this in this thread

[NeuPolska]

Why is this in this thread

Gallia and Allanea do this every so often

Don't question it

[Gallia-]

Otherwise we'd have a bunch of ne'r do-wells running around succumbing to the same petty vices that Humanity did before them, like the Greek or Norse gods. Except they'd never stop, because they're immortal, and they don't get crippling back injuries, die of old age in prison, get Alzheimer's, or whatever. When you break it down from that viewpoint, SENS is actually somewhat nightmarish, like any utopian ideology.

I'm failing to see anything nightmarish about that, but I guess that's in the eye of the beholder.

I can see it being OK if you:

1) Have scruples to not kill lesser beings.
2) Believe in the inherent value of all life.
3) Aren't a murderous psychopath.

But not everyone has these beliefs or the scruples to follow them. Which is why it is nightmarish. Imagine Andrei Chikatilo being an immortal superman or something. Or even simpler, look at the utopianism of the Soviet Union compared to the Soviet Union in actuality. Utopian ideals are easily corrupted. In the Soviet Union's case it was less than a generation before it returned to the Potemkinism of Tsarist Russia. The difference is that you could kill the Soviets, if you'd ever needed to. We actually did kill Hitler, too.

Will you be able to kill an immortal Adolf Hitler? Or Andrei Chikatilo? Or Kim il-Sung? Or will you need to submit to the protection of an immortal do-gooder like Immortal Eisenhower or Immortal Dave Petraeus?

It's difficult to see something like SENS not creating an even more dramatic power disparity than already exists, where the well-to-do are so powerful they have literally defeated death, and all mortals are declared untermenschen.

There are two or possibly three stabilizing factors that mortality gives us:

1) The ability to correct faults in political systems that cannot be resolved peacefully.
2) The ability to throw off shackles of slavery with a chance of freedom.
3) The ability to defend the basic rights of men who are enslaved or cannot free themselves without assistance.

Immortality removes two of those three things (1 & 2) and requires for the third that an overwhelming number of immortals hold the belief that all living things should be treated with the same rights and respect as immortals. If you had immortals majority composed of, say, nothing but Communist Party members, UN Human Rights Council envoys, and Saudi Sheikhs, the world would be vastly more grim than if it were majority composed of Western liberals from NATO or the European Union.

Of course, I suppose it is somewhat an eye of the beholder thing, since a Politburo member or Saudi Prince would say that the former is much better than the latter, because they have to listen to less prattle about "human rights". Suffice to say, in a world where humanity is the lesser of the two identities, it seems rather unlikely that "human rights" would carry much weight. Certainly, immortals would have more rights and more value than mortals, and certainly they would seek to restrict entrance to their elite club to hoard as much power as possible, especially if they are formerly human. Because social power actually is a zero-sum game, and by introducing more people to immortality, you inherently devalue it to meaninglessness. It would take a rather special person to want to make everyone immortal, and to respect the wishes of a person who doesn't want to become immortal, because that is going to be an increasingly heterodox viewpoint in the future IRL if it isn't already.

An analogy might be giving everyone the same wage no matter their job, or giving everyone at a business a $70k/year wage.

That said, utopianism is the only real blight here, because it blinds people to the fact that every attempt to create a wide ranging social improvement that results in such tremendous changes as "free the means of production" or "institute a global peaceful religion under Allah" which are idealistic at heart inevitably turn into something less idealistic and more bloody. And taking away mortality makes the Bolsheviks or Islamists look absolutely pathetic in magnitude of utopian belief.

I don't agree with everything Popper says, but I do agree with him about social engineering.

OTOH, there's no easy way to slide people into immortality piecewise. You have to do it all at once or never at all, because otherwise you will end up with a pretty easily exploited power disparity.

Which is really where I disagree with the SENS stuff as being inherently good. You can't ease people into transhumanism or whatever. You have to do it fast and at once, so everyone is immortal at the same time, and we aren't left with literal untermensch and literal ubermensch. Otherwise that's just a recipe for, at best, the greatest social upheaval and mass strife since the first man fought over a wildebeest on the Savannah. Because you end up with "humans" and "better".

e: But really, moral decisions are meaningless babble for philosophers, not actually contributing people, to discuss. Immortality and stuff like it, like SENS, are about as moral as a seat cushion or a hammer.

[Allanea]

Being unaging would have done Chikatilo or Hitler very little good.

[Gallia-]

The point is that immortality, being amoral, is only as good as the person who has it. If we made all the Chinese Communist Party immortal, we would be in a very bad place.

Since you seem to be of the opinion that liberal democracy is already an immortal person, though, it's probably difficult for you to imagine a world where the ruling ideology is not liberal democracy, but something worse. I suppose you think this is a universal thing, rather than something uniquely Western European derived from the Enlightenment, and something which has no equivalent outside of Western Europe and Western European-influenced societies, and that this means that the PRC and other "illiberal" places will inevitably succumb to liberal democracy at some point.

But...what if they don't? You automatically eliminate two of the three most important ways for people to break free of illiberalism with immortality. The third has the potential to eliminate itself if liberal democracy becomes marginalized in the future, as Hitlerism, Monarchism, and other tyrannies have in our own time.

For someone born in that time, I suppose, then it won't be so nightmarish. It will just be the way the world is. But for someone in a time period where liberal democracy is the reigning (albeit waning) world ruler, it is quite frightening.

But again, you can't really be convinced unless you see it with your own eyes I guess. For everyone's sake alive today and tomorrow, I hope no one does TBH. The "told you so" would be pretty bittersweet.

[Allanea]

On this logic, we should also make no other medical or scientific advances, for fear that they might be used by the Communist Party of China to strengthen its rule.