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The Associated Worlds
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This channel contains posts highlighted by server users as notable, interesting, and relevant.
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Overmind 06/18/2022 11:25 PM
This channel contains posts highlighted by server users as notable, interesting, and relevant. (This is the new highlights channel automatically managed by @Heuristic Algorithmic . Previous highlights may be found in the archived #wordofgod and #insightful channels below.) Posts can be sent here by reacting to them with the šŸ“Œ emoji; any two users marking a post with this reaction will cause it to be reposted here. This channel will, however, be moderated for notability, interest, and relevance as above.
Overmind pinned a message to this channel. 06/18/2022 11:25 PM
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Heuristic Algorithmic BOT 06/20/2022 11:36 PM
@cerebrate said on channel #general: Just to clarify the brain drain thing, since it is a bit unconventional: this applies equally across a very wide scale. You could be the billionaire engineer pursued by regulators and Obstructive Naysayers fighting your dream of building diamond-foam floating continents to colonize Jupiter, or you could be the orphan immigrant girl with nothing to her name but her abuela's recipes, a willingness to work hard, and a dream of opening a restaurant, oppressed by the insane cost of living and the California Bureau of Fuck You And Your Hope Too. Either way, there's a place that loves people just like you and isn't shy about recruitment.
23:42
@cerebrate said on channel #general: (I'm not saying the Ministry of Citizen Recruitment openly runs advertisements with a giant pile of forms, fee demands, whiny tweets and news articles, and other assorted impedimenta with the caption "Say Goodbye To All This Bullshit", but I'm not saying they don't, either.)
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Heuristic Algorithmic BOT 06/21/2022 12:40 AM
@cerebrate said on channel #general: On a vaguely related note, I've been trying to put together something on the topic of how "spiritual Entropy" works/looks/feels, referring back to some of my original inspiration on that point, such as these Exalted author quotes: http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/Thus_Spake_Zaranephilpal/OnTheEbonDragonAndVirtue ...insofar as "losing in order to make everyone else lose worse" and "deny others their awesome and make them feel bad for their awesome" are a perfect fit for what I have in mind, as is "actively hating the idea that people get to be cool and win".
OnTheEbonDragonAndVirtue
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Heuristic Algorithmic BOT 06/21/2022 9:10 AM
@cerebrate said on channel #general: So I happened to run across a post on the Discourse asking some questions about EliƩran geography and the like, which I had put aside to answer later and then promptly forgot about, because I kind of suck. Anyway, here's the first part of a response, in which I talk about continents, climates, and where the history happens: https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/concerning-eliera/382/4?u=avatar Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/984481404475818035)
Concerning EliƩra
First, apologies. I had put this aside to give a detailed reply to, it somehow slipped my mind, and Iā€™ve only just stumbled across it again. Didnā€™t mean to leave it so long. Iā€™ll try to hit up one of these a day or so. I understand that there are around five continents on Upperside and three on Underside, but I donā€™t believe any of their names...
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Heuristic Algorithmic BOT 06/21/2022 9:40 AM
@cerebrate said on channel #general: Today I consider the joy of hanging old-style cannon names on common types of mass driver firearms, rather than referring to them by boring old bore diameters: 12 mm - falconet (light sluggun) 24 mm - saker 36 mm - demi-culverin (heavy sluggun) 72 mm - culverin 144 mm - bombard Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/960178442521939988)
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Heuristic Algorithmic BOT 08/04/2022 12:02 AM
@cerebrate said on channel #general: Quoted so I can highlight it:
For myself and my 'verse, I assume that in first contact, as in foreign policy in general, the Empire is playing out the game-theory-enhanced version of behaving in a manner appropriate to a universe of peace, harmony, friendship, and the brutally efficient annihilation of people who insist on defecting from the peace, harmony, and friendship program.
Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1004615333878964334
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Heuristic Algorithmic BOT 08/28/2022 6:40 PM
@morgrimmoon said on channel #general: (actually, unrelated to the power questions, I DO have to share Whooshh Innovations as the sort of company that the Empire would give an approving thumbs up to. They saw a problem, they engineered a truly innovate 'this is crazy' solution that works astonishingly well, and they have the sort of sense of humour that would appeal to local sensibilities. And yes, they are named that way on purpose, and yes the founders were inspired by Roadrunner cartoons.) Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1007349778969010206
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Heuristic Algorithmic BOT 09/13/2022 12:12 PM
@cerebrate said on channel #general: Regarding calibers and strength, it's less the gravity - 0.94 g vs. 1 g wouldn't make that much of a different, I suspect - and more a combination of two factors - One of them being autoloading: their obsession with automation for assorted reasons meant those came in earlier and rather more pervasively - they were using them on the Ulricik Bancrach, which is a good two generations earlier than this; and The other being that they train people to, in the most literal possible way, lift with your mind as well as your muscles. Supplemental PK to maximize efficiency, belike. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1019276848309477397
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Heuristic Algorithmic BOT 10/28/2022 10:19 AM
@cerebrate said on channel #general: By their calendar, the oldest dated greenlife remains are from ~-380,000; the oldest Pseudoeldrae archaea from ~-360,000. Eldrae alathis appeared ~-302,000 and Precursor civilization collapsed ~-301,000, so somewhere in there. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1035564947712770088
10:19
@cerebrate said on channel #general: By ours, call it somewhere around 360,000 ka. At that time you've got H. heidelbergensis, H. sapiens neanderthalensis and H. denisova all running around. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1035567487233830993
10:19
@cerebrate said on channel #general: By an amusing concidence, had I been pressed before today to deliver a handwave on exactly which human stock the Precursors picked up, I would probably have said Neanderthals from Western-Europe and Denisovans from East Asia and Polynesia. Which, while all long before any modern ethny had emerged, does let you draw some super-speculative tentative links to both the Sardinians from one, and the Ryukyuans from the other. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1035569851307147365
10:19
@cerebrate said on channel #general: (Biologists may wonder somewhat at the genetic fuckery that this root stock - relatively stocky and dark - ended producing a species known for being tall, slender, and pale. On the other hand, they'd recognize some traits coming through like long, high noses, larger eyes, a degree of dolichocephaly, etc. On the gripping hand, this ancestry almost certainly explains all those redheads.) Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1035572304329048116
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Heuristic Algorithmic BOT 01/18/2023 5:32 AM
@cerebrate said on channel #general: (One of) The problem is what I refer to in a couple of places as "certainty-level persuasive communicators", referring to Yudkowsky's AI-boxing experiment ( http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox ); if they can model you well enough, they can talk you into doing anything they need you to do. You need something on its own level simply to escape being puppeted. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/476392619157749761
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
The AI-Box Experiment:
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Heuristic Algorithmic BOT 02/17/2023 2:07 PM
@cerebrate said on channel #general: For reference, my notes on the Transcendā€™s position at any given time read as follows: ā€œ[continuing to win its game of full-contact solitaire Calvinball with the universe] Insert ā€˜all according to keikakuā€™ meme here.ā€ Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1076233384277319781
14:09
@cerebrate said on channel #otherworlds: So, speaking for the 'verse, while they have nice superstrong polyful yarn, they braid those into bundles that are a good couple of meters across at the star tower and countermass, and rather more in the middle. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/518150555139571723/1076161753299296308
14:09
@cerebrate said on channel #otherworlds: And while the elevator consortia will sell you a single-strand "Light" model, like the very first ones built, they'll do their best to talk you into the three-strand "Tri" as the baseline commercial option. That gets you three of the above cables in a triangular arrangement, 'bout a half-mile on a side. Cross-braces every quarter-mile or so to ensure that any cable breaks are supported from both above and below and that the cables can't drift into each other during normal operation; every mile these are supplemented with a service platform mounted between the cables to provide a mechanical floor with robot hotels for the linelayers and cable defense systems. Note: these cables are support only. After the framework is built, then they add directional pairs of maglev elevator tracks running up and down the structure attached to the cross-bracing . Same goes for utility core ducting, etc. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/518150555139571723/1076164709373448222
14:09
@cerebrate said on channel #otherworlds: As needs scale, add more cables. If you know your needs are large from the start, they also sell the six-cable "Hex" and models up to the thirty-six cable "Seranth Special". Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/518150555139571723/1076165068556861501
14:09
@cerebrate said on channel #otherworlds: (Note: there's not a technical reason you couldn't run a pair of tracks and a utility core up the cable directly, although you need special clamps to transfer the load right and to handle the taper. That's what you have to do on a "Light", after all. But the designers of commercial space elevators are of the option that if and when terrorism, incompetence, or simple bad luck makes something explode in an elevator car or a utility core, it does so away from the main load-bearing structure . It's not like blowing a cross-brace is a good thing, but it's a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to fix than resplicing one of the big ones.) Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/518150555139571723/1076165944025567242
14:09
@cerebrate said on channel #otherworlds: It is worth noting that the running costs on a "Tri", per volume, are generally significantly lower since the design is much cleaner and doesn't require you to spend time and energy dealing with the compromises, like allowing for significant horizontal motion on your elevator cars. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/518150555139571723/1076166583149396128
14:09
@cerebrate said on channel #otherworlds: Well, the big ones are usually designed to cope with cable breaks, to some extent, so you'd have to do more than break one cable to have to chase down the countermass. But even so, as it so often goes in construction, the bigger the break, the harder the fix. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/518150555139571723/1076166897101443205
14:09
@cerebrate said on channel #otherworlds: Of course, on that note, since the elevator cars (each the size of a small building, since you can't stick customers in a small box listening to muzak for the long trip to orbit) come with escape systems for major emergencies - be pushed free of the maglev track and, if in orbit, drift; if in atmo, retro-rocket and parachute back to the surface - to a large extent protocol for bomb threats or bomb detections or skyjackers or other in-car problems is to blow them free of the elevator and sort it out later. It doesn't solve the problem, but it sure reduces the potential scope of it. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/518150555139571723/1076171853560807444
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Heuristic Algorithmic BOT 03/04/2023 4:24 PM
@cerebrate said on channel #general: Just to be really clear on this point: the citizen-shareholder initiative for the implementation of the Transcend was approved in 5025, and the Flowering didn't occur until 5175. Serious transsophont technologies didn't start coming along until at least the third millennium. Hell, Eternal Progress wasn't even published until 687, fourteen years before the invention of calculus. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1080742044584120390
16:24
@cerebrate said on channel #general: So when things went rather differently when the Empire ran into the Native Americans Iniositac and Variasotec, that was not the product of enlightened transsophont godbrainism. That was the result of a bunch of baseline Selenarian mercantile companies with visions of knowledge unknown, products unsold, and trade routes being extended 1200 or so miles that-a-way, and pursuing their spa-sized bathtubs filled with gold dust enlightened self-interest the best way they knew how. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1080743289143177259
16:24
@cerebrate said on channel #general:
how large were the initial bits of infrastructure for the transcend?
Define "initial". After all, the first iteration of the core algorithm fitted neatly inside a small pearl-sized processor. But at the time of the first flowering, supporting the Transcend required one or more synapse moons around each major world (a synapse moon being approximately 12 miles in diameter, much of which is a fractal froth of exotic matter), each supporting a variety of unity spires - each a 432' building in its own right - and other local interface nodes, so suffice it to say, a lot. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1081703557734092810
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Heuristic Algorithmic BOT 03/04/2023 4:42 PM
@cerebrate said on channel #general: The moon-sized computers are mostly concentrated around the central computing facilities of places like CoricƔl, because moon - rather than moonlet - sized facilities tend to be inconvenient to integrate into places where people already live, in terms of volume and mass both. Synapse moons are as much communications nexuses as processing nexuses, so it's important that they fit nicely into existing habitats. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1081707226160435290
16:42
@cerebrate said on channel #general: At CoricƔl, the actual units of the processor shell would be in a similar size range, but in appearance resembling fractal chandeliers of organic crystal rather than clunky moon-brains, partly because that works better for computational entasics and thermal dissipation, and partly because the universe is full of boring gray balls already and some intelligences have a sense of aesthetics, thanks so much. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1081708254704455731
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Heuristic Algorithmic BOT 03/04/2023 5:08 PM
@cerebrate said on channel #general: Honestly, the problem with size, in-setting and culturally speaking, is that anyone can do size. People have been doing size since the measure of national greatness was how many rocks you could afford to pile on your chief dead guy. So leave size for the ILTC. When you can turn a star into something you can wear around your neck to power your personal archangel and the throneworld folded neatly into the ring on your left pinkie, then you have won the design contest on elegance, something not accessible to anyone with enough spare rocks. Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1081712327038091324
17:08
@cerebrate said on channel #general: (On a similar note, this is why the Empire is happy with its few hundred worlds and just picking up the odd particular choice new one here and there. Any bunch of militaristic jackasses - Galactic Empire, Imperium of Man, or Interim Coalition of Governance, say - can go around boasting about their millions or billions or trillions of worlds. Yes, boast some more about the staggering breadth of your mediocre domain. Yawn. It's not about being the biggest. It's about being the best .) Original message: https://discord.com/channels/379850656191741952/379850656644595715/1081714277007753316
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