Generation starships and their internal society structure

[Ninja-Bear]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

 

i

ii) Religion is a social control mechanism that perpetuates top-down government and ignorance. Same same, only a debate from one cycle later. Bismarck's attempt to break the power of the German Catholic Church led to a decade-long "Kulturkampf" in which the idea that the Catholic Church used ignorance to control the masses was given much play, along with such charming notions as Virchow's notion that Catholics (and Jews) were to the body politic as bacteria is to the human. (Protestant) Americans and Britons adopted these ideas for slightly different reasons (immigration and elections, and Ireland, respectively), but thanks to the facile writing of one John Draper (History of the Conflict of Religion and Science) it is with us still. And it is no coincidence, nor entirely without relevance, that Draper was a New York Democrat and an early Darwinist. It might seem that race only gets involved in this debate peripherally ("Catholics are teh stupid, because the priests were celibate!"), but, in fact the dark waters close over our heads very quickly when you start thinking along these lines.

At least IMHO.

Again, there are many, many books with refutations, but a used book store near a college will probably yield this earnest old discussion: http://www.amazon.ca/God-Nature-Historical-Encounter-Christianity/dp/0520056922/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259005752&sr=1-1

 

That's utter hogwash. The only form of "religion" which was divised as you mentioned would be Confuciousism. Now is the church perfect? No. Its going to be as good or bad as the people in charged are. And also worth noting that Darwin wrote his book to justify slavery.

[Clonus]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

So, as for a generational ship, I see a bunch of problems with both feudal and democratic systems. The first is that a spaceship has a lot of maintenance requirements that would be difficult for the uneducated masses of a feudal society.

 

Uneducated masses are not a requirement of a feudal society. Not that I consider feudalism to be any way to run a railroad.

 

So you'd want some kind of enlightened society. But a democracy? Over time democracies tend to cause the rise of populist parties, who keep their policies as vague as possible to try to gather as widespread support as possible (I'm presuming that starting up a party is relatively easy and that there are 6 - 8 major parties in existence at any one time.

 

Parties are more of an artifact of representative democracy. Popular democracies just have factions and the colonial population should be small enough to make a popular democracy workable. If nobody gets elected, then there's no need to make campaign promises, because there are no campaigns, platforms and policies. The important thing though is that the population/politicians can't be allowed to make resource disbursement decisions. Those have to be preset from the start. The colonists would no more make decisions about them, then we decide on the output of the sun.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

That's utter hogwash. The only form of "religion" which was divised as you mentioned would be Confuciousism. Now is the church perfect? No. Its going to be as good or bad as the people in charged are. And also worth noting that Darwin wrote his book to justify slavery.

 

 

My apologies for not being more clear, Ninja-Bear. The sentence you quote and disagree with is a thesis that I was trying to critique from a historicist point of view. (Obviously you could go a very different way and talk about how it is used today by, for example, Dawkins and Hitchens, but that's not really my bag.)

Shorter Lawnmower Boy: it's nineteenth century anti-Catholic b.s.

 

Now, about your notions of "Confucianism...."

[Zeropoint]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Yes.

You take a mathematical statement, and by using a mathematical proof, you demonstrate that it is necessarily true. The statement is now a theorem, and can be used to prove other mathematical statements.

Without causality, nothing can be proven. So suddenly all of the theorems vanish and with them everything that depended on them.

 

Everything that we called science is now nothing but coincidences which may or may not repeat.

 

But: does this conclusion necessarily mean that causality MUST hold? Is the universe under any obligation to make sense to us?

[Nyrath]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

They both are. Both fired, both hit, both died.

How? In the first reference frame, B is dead before he pulls the trigger, so he does not fire, so A is not killed.

In the second frame, A is dead before he pulls the trigger, so he does not fire, so B is not killed.

So which one is dead?

 

How do you come back at 9:00am to begin with?

By using your FTL drive.

 

Details here

http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000089.html

 

This is why violating causality is a Bad Thing. It is sort of like dividing by Zero in mathematics.

[Kristopher]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

And also worth noting that Darwin wrote his book to justify slavery.

 

What now?

 

Pardon me if I don't take your word alone as proof on that one.

[Clonus]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

And also worth noting that Darwin wrote his book to justify slavery.

 

No, it really isn't, seeing as how Darwin was a fervent opponent of slavery.

[Doc]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Say you jump into the good FTL starship Sky Trash at 11:00 am' date=' travel FTL in such a manner that you travel back in time to 9:00 where the younger [i']Sky Trash[/i] is sitting on the launch pad, and use the laser cannon to blow the younger Sky Trash into itty bits.

 

Now, if the younger Sky Trash is destroyed, you could not have entered it at 11:00 to travel back in time to destroy it. So it could not have been destroyed.

But if it was not destroyed, you entered it at 11:00 and traveled back in time to destroy it. So it is destroyed.

 

Is Sky Trash destroyed or not?

 

Isn't there another way to look it around? I read once about this time travel paradox thing and two general possibilities were exposed as what would happen in such a case. The first possibility is the paradox as stated by Nyrath, while the second didn't implied a paradox at all; if this second possibility is true, people moving back in time and destroying their now future possibilities to do so would now live (and act) in a parallel universe, a universe where they will not move back in time to do what they already did.

 

Of course, it may end the paradox, but it would mean that some event in the universe (in this case, the destruction of the ship) could happen without any cause at all, nor past or future. If this is so, we could maybe consider FTL and time travel to be beyond our grasp for ever, as we never discovered any event proved to have no cause att all, wich would demonstrate as far as we know that nobody in the future will ever travel back to us and be his or her own cause. Then, we couldn't have the Terminator at all, as Skynet was it's own cause...

 

Edit: geez... I read back my post and I figured out it wasn't clear at all... Sorry, those are harder subjects to handle when you write in another language...

[McCoy]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

But: does this conclusion necessarily mean that causality MUST hold? Is the universe under any obligation to make sense to us?

Consider the alternative. That the Uncertainty Principle worked on a Macroscopic scale. Speed of light would be different for different observers, currently predictable chemical reactions would happen much easier or not at all. Gravity would be a variable, planets would not keep their orbits. The weak nuclear force would vary, no more predictable half life of radioactive elements. As would the strong force, no elements heavier than hydrogen.

 

"Chaos is King, and Magic is loose in the world!"

[McCoy]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

And also worth noting that Darwin wrote his book to justify slavery.

What now?

 

Pardon me if I don't take your word alone as proof on that one.

No' date=' it really isn't, seeing as how Darwin was a fervent opponent of slavery.[/quote']

What they said, to which I will add, cite please.

[Clonus]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Consider the alternative. That the Uncertainty Principle worked on a Macroscopic scale. Speed of light would be different for different observers, currently predictable chemical reactions would happen much easier or not at all. Gravity would be a variable, planets would not keep their orbits. The weak nuclear force would vary, no more predictable half life of radioactive elements. As would the strong force, no elements heavier than hydrogen.

 

"Chaos is King, and Magic is loose in the world!"

 

Oh, is that really the only alternative? All or nothing?

[Kristopher]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

How? In the first reference frame, B is dead before he pulls the trigger, so he does not fire, so A is not killed.

In the second frame, A is dead before he pulls the trigger, so he does not fire, so B is not killed.

So which one is dead?

 

I misread what you said as a slightly different situation.

 

By using your FTL drive.

 

Details here

http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000089.html

 

This is why violating causality is a Bad Thing. It is sort of like dividing by Zero in mathematics.

 

That looks like it explains how a message ends up getting there before it left, according to theory.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

 

Say you jump into the good FTL starship Sky Trash at 11:00 am, travel FTL in such a manner that you travel back in time to 9:00 where the younger Sky Trash is sitting on the launch pad, and use the laser cannon to blow the younger Sky Trash into itty bits.

 

Now, if the younger Sky Trash is destroyed, you could not have entered it at 11:00 to travel back in time to destroy it. So it could not have been destroyed.

But if it was not destroyed, you entered it at 11:00 and traveled back in time to destroy it. So it is destroyed.

 

Thank you. I know it's a tad of a tangent, but thank you for so succinctly describing the exact reason that I always choke on Time Travel fiction.

 

You can't go back to 1935 and kill someone (Hey, you know the "classic example," but no one's going to accuse me of Godwin ). You _can't_. If you could, then you wouldn't, because he'd have been killed.

 

To put in another way, if you had, in 2009, a time machine, and opted to use it to travel back in time to kill someone, the you have already failed, because you have already been there and tried. 1935 happened and the universe moved on. You were there, and you failed. Go ahead and read about him in history books, build a time machine--- just remember that you've already been there and it already didn't work, or you wouldn't have motive to do it in the first place.

 

Is Sky Trash destroyed or not?

 

Not. For some reason, you will fail in your attempt to destroy it. If you didn't fail, you wouldn't be there to try in the first place. As noted above, while you were getting ready to board the ship, you were also somewhere in high orbit, trying to figure out why your missiles aren't launching.

 

Now I've got to run back through this thread to catch up; it seems to have taken some interesting turns since I last checked in.

 

 

 

 

I don't know if it's even appropriate now--

 

you know, I think I'll just start another thread later.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

I've seen a lot of interesting ideas on the governing of G-ships in this thread, most of them by people who appear to be far more versed in the subject than I am.

 

I certainly can't claim that there is any degree of realism or possibility in my own "solution" for my games, but I'll offer it up, if only because it is different than what has been offered thus far:

 

 

Corporate structure. That's what I went with for my G-ships. Most were done by gigantic corporations anyway, at least that's who footed the bulk of the bills. There were trade-offs, such as mining rights, staffing the ships with company men, etc.

 

But for the most part, everyone on the ship did his job because it very much was "his job." Future generations were raised, educated, and applied for jobs. Resource management, birth permits, etc, were handled by ever higher boards and committees.

 

Why did I propose this would work when certainly there was no way in their lifetimes for these people to "get a check?"

 

The Dogma of Always Ways, if I might coin a term. I'm getting old. I've noticed as I approach my dodderage the same sorts of things my father and his father before him noted. Surely you're all at least passingly familiar with the complaints of the aged "back in my day we never woulda stood fer it!" or "that ain't no way we ever done it!" This one comes up a _lot_ in discussion of politics, particularly social programs and policing / human rights discussions.

 

So how does it happen? How does an entire generation that "never woulda stood fer it" raise a generation of folks that not only stand for it, but accept it as the norm?

 

The Dogma of Always Was. Just to go with a non-controversial example that most folks are familiar with, let's use the CDL. Before, those of us that pushed trucks had one (or six) different licenses from various states. Then someone decided "hey, it would be great if we could keep tabs on all the truck drivers in the nation." (no; it's not a political discussion: there are valid reasons and conspiracy theories abound on this subject, and I don't aim to go into them here ).

 

At the time, most of us making a living pushing trucks were outraged. But the ideas pitched to the public were soothing, and folks blindly accepted it as something that was just due, and us clutch-pumping maniacs would just have to deal with it. It was a small step. One national ID for a subset of the people. A lot of us quit on the spot. (seriously. The best fall-out of the CDL was the general bump in pay for long-haul stints brought about by those who quit over it. ).

 

Many, many years later-- let's call it a generation, because at this point, I don't even remember how long ago the CDL was. Everything's stabilized. Why? Most of the drivers on the road today never had a Chauffeur's, or a Class 5, or whatever their home state called their version of the CDL. They were kids-- or not even born!-- when the CDL debate was making its rounds. They don't bat an eye at the idea of needing a CDL to push a truck because "it's always been that way." They can't imagine it some other way.

 

As Gnaskar said: he can't imagine living under some other system than his own. It wouldn't feel right to him. Yet those of us in America _do_ live in a different system, and can't imagine living under a radically different one. Why? Because this is the way that "it's always been," even though history and the various dates on the lawbooks demonstrates quite clearly that the world we live in is _not_ the way it's always been. Yet we don't take change and hold it against "what originally was;" we hold it against what we remember from our own personal "way back whens." That is because, as humans, the situation existing at the moment we matured, that's "just the way it is, and the way it always was."

 

Applying that forward to a corporate-structured G-ship was almost practical: the first generation would make provisions that their children would not have remotely the same stimulus of life before the ship. To solve that, the first two generations never left the system. They were part of the "shakedown" of each ship, in super-distant solar orbit, living and dying. The third generation was the first to truly travel, after the ship was "proven worthy." And by this time, the social structure-- job, home, recreation, and even ultimate goal---

 

that's just how it's always been.

 

A small memorial service is held for "criminally dangerous sociopaths" and the universe continues to slide past the ports.

 

 

Human history in my universe chose two paths for G-ships, actually, but I think I've gone on long enough here for now.

[McCoy]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Oh' date=' is that really the only alternative? All or nothing?[/quote']

Yes.

 

The universe has consistent, predictable laws, even if we do not fully understand them, or it doesn't. If x then y. If you have if x then sometimes y, there is a variable you are not accounting for, and once you isolate that variable If x then y under conditions z is predictable.

[Doc]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

To put in another way' date=' if you had, in 2009, a time machine, and opted to use it to travel back in time to kill someone, the you have already failed, because you have already been there and tried. 1935 happened and the universe moved on. You were there, and you failed. Go ahead and read about him in history books, build a time machine--- just remember that you've already been there and it already didn't work, or you wouldn't have motive to do it in the first place. [/quote']

 

Humm... This could explain why Adolpj Hitler survived so much assassination attemps; people in the future will try to go back in time to try to eleminate him, not realizing they already failed...

 

But more seriously, it gives me a good idea for a game setting, not really Star Hero type, though. In a more or less contemporary setting, people have to deal with travelers from the future, as they always are within our society. A part of them may be trying to do things, not realizing they already succeeded or failed, and some other might even be here because they know from their history they already did something... Of course, as our society doesn't have any record of this presence, they must keep a low profile, wich is where some naive but good willed paranormal detective players enter the scene...

 

 

I certainly can't claim that there is any degree of realism or possibility in my own "solution" for my games' date=' but I'll offer it up, if only because it is different than what has been offered thus far:[/quote']

 

Thank you for remembering us the first purpose of this forum!

 

 

Anyway, why would a generation ship have to go FTL to travel somewhere? As long as it gets to relativistic speed, due to time dilation, the people in it might get to places thousands of LY away in no more than three generations, isn't it?

[Nyrath]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Oh' date=' is that really the only alternative? All or nothing?[/quote']

Would you like your employer to calculate your salary in a universe where 1+1=2 only at random times?

[Nyrath]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000089.html

 

That looks like it explains how a message ends up getting there before it left, according to theory.

He is using physics-speak. In physics, a "message" could be a radio message, an FTL starship, a bullet, or anything else capable of influencing the awareness of the observer.

[Nyrath]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Isn't there another way to look it around? I read once about this time travel paradox thing and two general possibilities were exposed as what would happen in such a case. The first possibility is the paradox as stated by Nyrath' date=' while the second didn't implied a paradox at all; if this second possibility is true, people moving back in time and destroying their now future possibilities to do so would now live (and act) in a parallel universe, a universe where they will not move back in time to do what they already did.[/quote']

 

This thread is being hijacked for yet another tired re-hash of the "but maybe This will get around that meanie Einstein preventing me from having an FTL starship." The gory details are here

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3v.html#causality

 

If you read the link, you will see that there are four ways of avoiding time paradoxes: Parallel Universes, Consistency Protection, Restricted Space-Time Areas, and Special Frames. The latter three are examples of the Novikov self-consistency principle.

 

They all have problems.

 

You were talking about Parallel Universes.

[Nyrath]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Thank you. I know it's a tad of a tangent, but thank you for so succinctly describing the exact reason that I always choke on Time Travel fiction.

 

You can't go back to 1935 and kill someone (Hey, you know the "classic example," but no one's going to accuse me of Godwin ). You _can't_. If you could, then you wouldn't, because he'd have been killed.

 

To put in another way, if you had, in 2009, a time machine, and opted to use it to travel back in time to kill someone, the you have already failed, because you have already been there and tried. 1935 happened and the universe moved on. You were there, and you failed. Go ahead and read about him in history books, build a time machine--- just remember that you've already been there and it already didn't work, or you wouldn't have motive to do it in the first place.

If I understand you, you are arguing that the past is deterministic, which is more or less Consistency Protection.

 

But again, this is a thread hijack.

[Nyrath]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Humm... This could explain why Adolpj Hitler survived so much assassination attemps; people in the future will try to go back in time to try to eleminate him' date=' not realizing they already failed...[/quote']

Though it might make some people think.

 

Check out this hysterical cartoon:

http://www.viruscomix.com/page382.html

[Clonus]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Yes.

 

The universe has consistent, predictable laws, even if we do not fully understand them, or it doesn't. If x then y. If you have if x then sometimes y, there is a variable you are not accounting for,

 

You mean like Time Travel?

 

Would you like your employer to calculate your salary in a universe where 1+1=2 only at random times?

No, but I could cope with it happening only under certain bizarre circumstances that just don't happen in day to day life. Do I care if 1+1=2 inside a singularity? No.

 

But yes, time travel and FTL travel which are apparently the same thing are doubtless impossible. All the really cool things are impossible or just don't happen to exist.

 

But back to generation ships. So here are the accumulated possibilities as I see:

 

A dictatorship enforced by control over essential ship's life support so nobody can rebel.

A meritocratic bureaucracy

A popular democracy (with limited access to ship's resources and systems)

An oligarchy of shareholders and workers

 

Any more?

 

It's a good point that the actual social order is most likely to be determined by who is going and why. Are they political dissidents being exiled, a religious movement looking to find a world where they will be alone with each other and their faith, people fleeing ecological devastation or what?

[Peregrine]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Run, do not walk, and read thee Oath of Fealty, which has as a key background point a group attempting to answer these very questions.

[Clonus]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

Run' date=' do not walk, and read thee Oath of Fealty, which has as a key background point a group attempting to answer these very questions.

 

It's different. There they do have outside threats and resources.

[McCoy]

Re: Generation starships and their internal society structure

 

But back to generation ships. So here are the accumulated possibilities as I see:

 

A dictatorship enforced by control over essential ship's life support so nobody can rebel.

A meritocratic bureaucracy

A popular democracy (with limited access to ship's resources and systems)

An oligarchy of shareholders and workers

 

Any more?

Benevolent Dictatorship by AI or other immortal.