Spuckblase: You know, you’re right. I revised/returned some paragraphs that were deleted earlier, starting after ”...called that thinking sane.”
Simon: It just didn’t happen to cross my mind; as soon as I actually generated the option to be evaluated, I realized its superiority.
Steven: I thought of that, but decided not to write up the resulting conversation about Babyeater populations versus Babyeater expansion rates versus humans etcetera, mostly because we then get into the issue of “What if we make a firm commitment to expand even faster?” The Superhappies can expand very quickly in principle, but it’s not clear that they’re doing so—human society could also choose a much higher exponential on its population growth, with automated nannies and creches.
Aleksei: Part of the background here (established in the opening paragraghs of chapter 1) is that the starline network is connected in some way totally unrelated to space as we know it—no star ever found is within reach of Earth’s telescopes (or the telescopes of other colonies). Once the Huygens starline is destroyed, it’s exceedingly unlikely that any human will find the Babyeaters or the Superhappies or any star within reach of any of their stars’ telescopes, ever again. Of course, this says nothing of other alien species—if anyone ever again dared to follow a nova line.
Vassar pointed out that there’s a problem if you have exponential expansion and any significant starting density; I’d thought of this, but decided to let it be their Fermi Paradox—maybe any sufficiently advanced civilization discovers that it can traverse something other than starlines to go Somewhere Else where intelligence is a set of measure zero, and actually traversing starlines is dangerous because of who might learn about your existence and e.g. threaten to blackmail you.
The Superhappies are not much intimate with deception as opposed to withholding information, and their ability to model other minds they can’t have sex with seems to be weak—no matter what their thinking speed. This was shown in chapter 5, when the Superhappies—who don’t lie, remember—concluded their conversation with “We hope you do not mind waiting.”
The Superhappies don’t seem to have the same attachment to their current personalities, or the same attachment to individual free will, as a human does; so far as they can understand it, they’re just trading utilons with us and offering us a good deal on the transaction. Akon himself believed what he was telling them, which defeats many potential methods of lie detection.
In general, the Superhappies seem to lack numerous human complications such as status quo bias (keeping your current self intact), or preferences for particular rituals of decision (such as individual choice). The resulting gap between their decision processes and ours is not lightly crossed by their mostly sexual empathy, and it’s not as if they can simulate us on the neural level from scratch.
Several commenters earlier asked whether the Superhappies “defected” by firing on the Babyeater ship. From the Superhappy standpoint, they had already offered the Babyeater ship the categorically cooperative option of utility function compromise; in refusing that bargain, the Babyeaters had already defected.
Three hours and forty-one minutes simply happens to be how long it takes to blow up a Huygens-sized star.
The assumption of the True Ending is that the Superhappies were (a) not sure if destroying the apparently cooperative Impossible would encourage Huygens to blow itself up if the Impossible failed to return; and (b) did not have any forces in range to secure Huygens in time, bearing in mind that the Babyeaters were a higher priority. The Normal Ending might have played out differently.
Cannibal: Heh.
Spuckblase: You know, you’re right. I revised/returned some paragraphs that were deleted earlier, starting after ”...called that thinking sane.”
Simon: It just didn’t happen to cross my mind; as soon as I actually generated the option to be evaluated, I realized its superiority.
Steven: I thought of that, but decided not to write up the resulting conversation about Babyeater populations versus Babyeater expansion rates versus humans etcetera, mostly because we then get into the issue of “What if we make a firm commitment to expand even faster?” The Superhappies can expand very quickly in principle, but it’s not clear that they’re doing so—human society could also choose a much higher exponential on its population growth, with automated nannies and creches.
Aleksei: Part of the background here (established in the opening paragraghs of chapter 1) is that the starline network is connected in some way totally unrelated to space as we know it—no star ever found is within reach of Earth’s telescopes (or the telescopes of other colonies). Once the Huygens starline is destroyed, it’s exceedingly unlikely that any human will find the Babyeaters or the Superhappies or any star within reach of any of their stars’ telescopes, ever again. Of course, this says nothing of other alien species—if anyone ever again dared to follow a nova line.
Vassar pointed out that there’s a problem if you have exponential expansion and any significant starting density; I’d thought of this, but decided to let it be their Fermi Paradox—maybe any sufficiently advanced civilization discovers that it can traverse something other than starlines to go Somewhere Else where intelligence is a set of measure zero, and actually traversing starlines is dangerous because of who might learn about your existence and e.g. threaten to blackmail you.
The Superhappies are not much intimate with deception as opposed to withholding information, and their ability to model other minds they can’t have sex with seems to be weak—no matter what their thinking speed. This was shown in chapter 5, when the Superhappies—who don’t lie, remember—concluded their conversation with “We hope you do not mind waiting.”
The Superhappies don’t seem to have the same attachment to their current personalities, or the same attachment to individual free will, as a human does; so far as they can understand it, they’re just trading utilons with us and offering us a good deal on the transaction. Akon himself believed what he was telling them, which defeats many potential methods of lie detection.
In general, the Superhappies seem to lack numerous human complications such as status quo bias (keeping your current self intact), or preferences for particular rituals of decision (such as individual choice). The resulting gap between their decision processes and ours is not lightly crossed by their mostly sexual empathy, and it’s not as if they can simulate us on the neural level from scratch.
Several commenters earlier asked whether the Superhappies “defected” by firing on the Babyeater ship. From the Superhappy standpoint, they had already offered the Babyeater ship the categorically cooperative option of utility function compromise; in refusing that bargain, the Babyeaters had already defected.
Three hours and forty-one minutes simply happens to be how long it takes to blow up a Huygens-sized star.
The assumption of the True Ending is that the Superhappies were (a) not sure if destroying the apparently cooperative Impossible would encourage Huygens to blow itself up if the Impossible failed to return; and (b) did not have any forces in range to secure Huygens in time, bearing in mind that the Babyeaters were a higher priority. The Normal Ending might have played out differently.