From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Mar 04 1999 - 12:06:33 MST
"Billy Brown" <bbrown@conemsco.com> writes:
> ASpidle@aol.com wrote:
> > Anders, I think any future scenarios must include
> > intelligence augmentation
> > and virtual people and hybrids a la Gary Egan's book "Diaspora"..
>
> If you want to be realistic, throw in advanced robotics, automated
> manufacturing, genetic engineering and extensive biological modification.
Hmm... check, check, check, check. Got all four (but not in the era
when the colony ships were originally sent, except for some of the
latest colonies).
> You can still avoid AI and nanotech if you want to, but you need to come up
> with a pretty good justification if you're setting a story centuries in the
> future.
>
> But role-playing games commonly accept a lower standard of fidelity in the
> interest of playability.
This is essentially the Vinge problem - if you believe (like many of
us do) that change is going to be exponential, then most stories
become either very near future, hopelessly weird posthuman stories, or
you have to limit things a bit. Vinge did it in AFUTD and the prequel
with his zones, many stories and games try to limit by postulating
strict restrictions or a few suitable disasters to keep tech down.
In my scenario I have just softened the exponential a bit, and added
some possible quirks (simply put, civilizations doesn't necessarily
have to transcend, they can also go into attractors or diversify
without transcending as a whole). It is not intended as serious
futurology, even if I'm aiming for hard science fiction (O great gods
of sf, forgive me for introducing FTL! :-)
> You don't want to spend your first three game
> sessions trying to explain the world to your players, after all.
I already have. It is great luck that 60% of them are transhumanists
already, and the other have been exposed to these radical
ideas. However, some of them might have a harder time swallowing a
libertarian planet than nanotech :-)
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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