Dragon Ball: After the End

[Simon_Jester]

Okay, Simon? I think you might be looking at this the wrong way. By all indications currently, from what we saw in that, this isn't something that is just cultural, or the result of a weird biological quirk making things harder to comprehend or anything. They know the physical laws, they know how to explain how things work, and they're fully capable of adapting to change.

Except, from what was shown, the Garenhulders have basically had spikes driven into their brains that electrocute them while also stimulating the fear response when they're responded to technological innovation.

The prohibition isn't consistent, because it's something forced upon them, and it only trips in response to certain things.

What you're thinking: "Physical laws that allow you predict exactly what happens? That's impossible, you can't do that!"
What I'm thinking: "The physical laws allow us to know exactly how things will react. *zap* BUT IT MIGHT ALSO ACT AS A MAGICAL RITUAL TO SUMMON CTHULHU!"

Click to shrink...

See, I get that, but the consequence is the same.

My basic point is that this is as written, this magical curse induced disability is more crippling than I think the author intended, in that it is too crippling for the Garenhulders to be managing even the most rudimentary aspects of their own newfound technical base. It's not just that they couldn't have invented it, it's that in any meaningful sense they couldn't adapt it anymore, in the sense of "dig out a flat spot to build The House." Due to the increased complexity of the new technology.

Too much of the "adapt old technology" task, when dealing with 20th century technology, looks less like "dig flat spot to build The House" and more like "ham+sandwich=ham sandwich."

This is in addition to the strangeness of the patterns governing when the curse applies its "zaps." Which COULD be deliberate authorial decision, but creates further confusion in the context of whether the Exiles are capable of, say, programming a computer given the hardware and compilers to do so. Or rewriting their own legal codes. Or discovering abstract mathematics. If changing a bolt is more Unknown than changing the tax code, or if programming a computer is more Unknown than deciding where to dig a series of drainage ditches to keep a field dry during the rainy season.

But with the ramped-up version of the creativity-zapper in place... We end up with a situation where the saiyans are in proportionately much more control of the system than previously expected and much busier doing it, to the point where Kakara would probably be at least vaguely aware of how much of her civilization was constantly busy holding the Garenhulders' hands and helping them arrive at basically every single technology-based or tech-related decision.

...

It's like, suppose I said "where I grew up, it was very cold" and you said "fine."

And I said "in fact, it was so cold that the air froze solid and we had to walk through drifts of frozen air to get where we were going."

You might reasonably say "wait what, then what did you breathe?"

Whether the place I grew up is cold? That is not the problem and is probably not in dispute. How cold it was? Problematic, and the sort of area where a person might find themselves overstepping and making their fictional setting too cold, colder than it needed to be to achieve the desired narrative result, cold enough to actively interfere with the achievement of that result...

Likewise, my argument is, once again, that as written the Curse of Uncreativity is so effective it renders the Garenhulders unable to maintain their own technological economy. Not just unable to invent it, unable to do what it has been explicitly said they can do, in the context of modern technology. So incapable that the Exiles have to do so much for them that it could damage the Masquerade.

They can. They can also document it properly because they do careful preplanning, scope definition, use highly modular code, preform (excessive) testing cycles, extensive code reviews, structure the code for long-term maintenance, and totally understand what the code is doing. It may be painfully slow and expensive from our point of view but, contrary to what Hollywood and what some "I'm soooo special" programmers say, there is absolutely nothing magically creative about basic coding.

Click to shrink...

The problem is that just beginning to write a computer program requires you to sit down, crack your knuckles, and envision from scratch a tool that does an entirely new thing, built up out of existing tools that you already have (the computer language, hardware, OS, and so on).

Which is exactly what Garenhulders can't do, apparently. I'd have expected them to be able to do it, and to therefore be able to program computers in the fashion you describe... but Poptart has of late been very, very insistent that the kind of basic "combine two Known tools to create a third Known tool" or "use two of a Known tool to be more effective at the job the tool used to do" are borderline inconceivable to Garenhulders.

Apparently the magic curse zaps them whenever they try to engage in reasoning about how to redesign a tool towards a desired goal, and that would really penalize computer software development.

 

[Gore17]

*smashes head into the desk repeatedly*

Simon, I don't think you're getting it, and I don't know how to bridge this gap.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Um...

I get that the Garenhulders are under a magical curse that zaps them whenever they think about a designated list of topics that are deemed Unknown, or possibly the abstract concept of Unknown-ness itself.

I get that consequently, they are so afraid of technological innovation that they don't DO it. They're willing to invent complex magical-thinking justifications and defense mechanisms for why they don't do it- either that, or the curse zaps those ideas right into their brains.

I get that the Garenhulders are super-duper conservative to the point where making the smallest incremental modification to the design of a thing takes years. So that for all intents and purposes, Garenhulders are restricted to making cookie-cutter copies of existing proven technologies except under extremely dire pressure.

I get that the existence and presence of the Exiles is supposed to act as a patch on this system that enables them to maintain a technological civilization despite this disability.

Is any of what I said inaccurate?

 

[Bakkasama]

So, from what I get of this:

1- It is not that they are incapable of innovating but that they are mortally afraid of rapid advances
2- This makes people supertitious about any changes on a cultural level and be ritualistic in how they aproach things
3-Which means that when people learn a job, culturally they are the only ones allowed to perform it since they are the ones who know the ritual, as seen with the house and bridge builders.
4- That means that even if you have the understanding to do a similar job, you don't because you aren't trained in its ritual.
5- Those that are trained in the ritual know enough to effect changes to adapt it to the situation, they usually don't innovate because altering rituals is taboo.
6- Innovation occurred when a garenhulder who specialized in a fieldgrew too frustrated with the problems and enacted change
7- However, since changing rituals and attaining advances too fast is taboo, when not blocked by their own prejudice they are blocked by other members of society and change must be proven without measure of doubt to be safe for others to accept it as seen with the bolt exhamination.
8- Enter the exhiles who introduce new tech claiming that they had it for years without being suddenly smitten for it to convince them it is safe. The issue seems to be that breaking the taboo would lead to punishment by an outside force according to superstition. In this sense, the werewolf thing is less about car can turn you into werewolf and more messing with things you don't understand and rocking the boat leads to supernatural punishment. Exhiles sidestep this with lies about when were they made.
9- Garenhulders do understand how things work in their fields so once shown that a change does not lead to karmic retribution, they simply integrate it. It is likely that a lot of the things introduced were things the Garenhulders already had the knowledge to do but didn't because of superstition that the exiles lack.
10- This led to the exhiles being the ones that both introduce and finance bigger changes, putting them in charge of the boards that aprove new changes in the bigger companies
11- There is a saiyan conspiracy to foment technology, in which their members talk about which new tech to introduce and publicly exchange tech to spread new knowledge faster.
12- This leads to both saiyans that work in their companies but are not part of that elite to have their changes aproved faster and the same can be said for Garenhulders experts in their fields.
13- However, since the taboo is still there, a long testing progress is still required. Saiyans sidestep this by saying they worked the new models inparalel with the old ones.
14- That doesn't solve the issue of Garenhulders being afraid to innovate themselves.
15- Which causes some areas to advance faster than others and take advantage of that. As seen in the flint muscket testing, the Garenhulders can accelerate their testing if they are more afraid of the consecuences of not getting it right than of the divine punishment
16- So when a faction gets a new tech and uses it to take advantage of an opposing faction, the later is forced to develope it on their own, which leads to variation in models.
17- Given Garenhulder nature, if they didn't have access to the plans, said variation might lead to improvement because the first faction had to get through the hurdle of proving the change would not doom them, leadingto a simpler design and then not improving on it. Since both factions already had the knowledge for the new model and better versions beforehand, once the second faction knows that it won't instantly kill them, their version might end up better: Both had the knowledge to make a better model than the first beforehand but culture stopped them from making them. The fear from being destroyed by the first faction makes the second speed through the testing and since both could have done better than the first try initially, it might end up better.
18- If it ends up better, then the exiles can play a game of 'stealing' the design from the second source and giving it to the first or a third. Since it works for the second, it should be safe to copy it exactly. Innovation comes from 'accidentaly miscopying' the stolen plans and the receivers applying the changes before they realize there are changes and later, once they see that it works, being afraid to change it to the original second soirce.
19- So the exiles introduce new tech, prove it is safe by pretending they had it for years without divine retribution, cause a power imbalance which makes other Garenhulders to try to recreate the new technology to survive (since they know it is safe in theory but have no time to copy the exact design that is denied to them) which leads to innovation. Once they all have similar tech levels, open trade is open which lets the Garenhulder experts to compare differences and see which deviations are safe in theory. They don't like applying said deviations but the experts are perfectly capable of aplying them depending on the situation; they just make the bare minimum change for it to work both for their own fear and to appease the non experts.
20- This might actually be related to their storytelling tradition since oral tradition relies on ritualistic forms and they have a vision of all technique or creation following a ritualistic process.
21- The idea of making each part separately might help innovation since it means there are bigger chances of small specialists improvements to pile up, specially since the 1% is part of a conspiracy to see those changes through. Basically, saiyans would be manipulating Garenhulders into making the small changed without realizing (relying on the fact there are more garenhulders) and them introducing the new ideas.

Sorry if wall of text, it was posted from phone.

On another note... how are them Garenhulder medics?

Edit: So abstract things like mathematics and theoretical work would be less affected by this curse of fear but when it is tried to put into practise, the unknown comes. The more tangible the discipline, the harder it is to go past it and the fear of the unknownis if a repid change in how things are done or fabricated is due to karmic retribution insteadof ignorance BUT said fear cause ignorance in anything but your chosen field.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Well, the last few steps are a bit eyewateringly complex, but if it works that way, I see how things can be made to function. If you can get large numbers of Garenhulders to innovate or at least make changes, which is not quite the same thing, as a reaction to an external "threat" by rolling out new technology and forcing them to find a way to imitate it, that would work.

The problem is, your entire chain of reasoning relies on the idea that the curse is only creating a superstitious dread, something that just about any given Garenhulder can fight their way past if they're sufficiently motivated. That's... not the sense I'm getting out of this.

It seems more like a form of brainwashing that methodically prunes out of people's minds the very idea that they can generalize technological principles, or zaps them with some kind of psychic shock whenever they try. With only a pretty sharp minority of people being immune or at least resistant.

 

[Gore17]

The problem is, your entire chain of reasoning relies on the idea that the curse is only creating a superstitious dread, something that just about any given Garenhulder can fight their way past if they're sufficiently motivated. That's... not the sense I'm getting out of this.

Click to shrink...

They can:

Exactly. Granted, they're comfortable with the tech they possess now, and their inability to improve it in any meaningful way (absent those two matchlock inventors trying to prevent the destruction of their nation, and similar acts of existential desperation) hasn't exactly changed since c. 700s-level tech.

Click to shrink...

Takes them a bit, but they can do it.

Also, I imagine that the Exiles support those less prone to being anti-innovation.

 

[Rihtan]

The problem is that just beginning to write a computer program requires you to sit down, crack your knuckles, and envision from scratch a tool that does an entirely new thing, built up out of existing tools that you already have (the computer language, hardware, OS, and so on).

Click to shrink...

That's one way of doing it. Or, you could take an already existing process and slowly replace individual pieces of the process. Calculators at a bank move from wholly mechanical to electro-mechanical, then a network link ties them together so the numbers are transmitted to the next person without error, and so on and on. Then, over decades and centuries, that process is slowly expanded as small changes are invented, tested, and implemented. Its almost more evolution than innovation but you can eventually end up with something like a modern computerized bank without ever making a major change.

Simon, is it possible you are being a little too absolute in your view of the situation?

 

[PoptartProdigy]

Now that I read it, well... in that case it comes down to me grossly underestimating just how much in the way of supplies and machinery the first generation of proto-Exiles crammed into the ships. Them having the tools to 3D-print (so to speak) literally all the things that go into, say, a 20th century civilization (because not ONE design can be left to the natives to figure out themselves) is simply not a capability I'd thought was being attributed to the Exiles.

Click to shrink...

Well, bear in mind that the Exiles of one decade ago are not the Exiles of three centuries back, just barely stumbling off the ships. They have had a little time in which to build new 3D printers (to continue the metaphor). And data storage, at Exile tech levels, is really light. They brought all the information they needed.

They did lose a lot in the transition, mind, and especially in the Dark Age to follow. Son Mato, up in heaven, is probably appalled at how much his people have lost. But Earth was just that far ahead of 20th-21st-century Earth that even after that loss, they have a lot.

Also, bear in mind how little effort the Exiles have to take on to keep this up. Garenhulders do market analysis to figure out what consumers' complaints and needs are, Exiles spend an afternoon researching old tech that meets that description, Garenhulders receive a blueprint, Garenhulders build the blueprint into a finished product, Garenhulders sell the finished product.

Honestly I wouldn't count on the limit increasing that much.


That...doesn't sound appealing. It comes off as a bit meta-game-y to me, and it's sure to run into a host of problems, including the "but are you really present with me right now" concerns of loved ones.

Like, don't get me wrong, Action Economy strain hurts, but after a certain point we just need to accept it. If we try to game the system too much, @PoptartProdigy may just say, OOC "you can never have more than X number of actions in a year no matter what you do". I'm kind of astonished we haven't hit that limit already.

Click to shrink...

Maybe once there's not a great wailing and gnashing of teeth every time it comes time to apportion action points, I'll consider that a needful adaptation.

Um...

I get that the Garenhulders are under a magical curse that zaps them whenever they think about a designated list of topics that are deemed Unknown, or possibly the abstract concept of Unknown-ness itself.

I get that consequently, they are so afraid of technological innovation that they don't DO it. They're willing to invent complex magical-thinking justifications and defense mechanisms for why they don't do it- either that, or the curse zaps those ideas right into their brains.

I get that the Garenhulders are super-duper conservative to the point where making the smallest incremental modification to the design of a thing takes years. So that for all intents and purposes, Garenhulders are restricted to making cookie-cutter copies of existing proven technologies except under extremely dire pressure.

I get that the existence and presence of the Exiles is supposed to act as a patch on this system that enables them to maintain a technological civilization despite this disability.

Is any of what I said inaccurate?

Click to shrink...

Without passing comment on whether or not it's a magical curse or something else, that's broadly correct. Garenhulders are perfectly content to sit around with the tech they already possess and change exactly nothing unless there's a severe need for it. The Exiles are indeed the only (or nearly so) reason that the possession of a wooden fort is not the arbiter of political influence in one's local area.

 

[fictionfan]

@PoptartProdigy : Do we have any idea of the length of Garenhulder history before the Exiles came? How long were they stuck in medieval stasis? Warning TV tropes.

 

[Lailoken]

That jump in expected drive performance was going to be pretty darn enormous. So much so that one suspects that the new drives were fundamentally different rather than just faster versions of the old ones. The ability to be "anywhere" specifically might imply some sort of jump/teleportation/wormhole/transdimensional/timeshift drive.

In which case, one has to wonder it the fact that they had been testing them and were less than a week from full deployment when The Enemy showed up is a coincidence.

See, that trips over the "no ham sandwiches" prohibition in a lot of practical cases, if you try to apply that prohibition consistently.

"Well yes, having a form you can fill out worked well for the last thousand things we tried it on, but that doesn't prove it would work here! We don't know what will happen if we try it this time! It might turn into a monster!"

There's no problem if you grant the Garenhulders at least a minimal ability to reason about new ideas abstractly or by analogy, but that is precisely the ability I'm being told they don't have.

If Garenhulders can't program their own computers, then things get that extra bit... sillier.

You were addressing the question, "can Garenhulders do abstract mathematics and model systems mathematically?" My main question is, how, if they're this super-allergic to thinking about why things work? I mean, I'm trying to imagine explaining anything in physics or chemistry to a person with these hangups, and with a mindset characteristic of a culture where "tweaking your car's suspension causes it to turn into a werewolf" is considered superficially plausible enough to make a non-camp horror movie. And... guuuuhhh.

The idea of universal laws that actually work all the time, consistently, would be super-reassuring to Garenhulders, I would think, but also super-difficult for them to even remotely begin to comprehend if they can pretzel-logic themselves this hard.

I hadn't, at least not as of that time.

Now that I read it, well... in that case it comes down to me grossly underestimating just how much in the way of supplies and machinery the first generation of proto-Exiles crammed into the ships. Them having the tools to 3D-print (so to speak) literally all the things that go into, say, a 20th century civilization (because not ONE design can be left to the natives to figure out themselves) is simply not a capability I'd thought was being attributed to the Exiles.

Okay, think about the last time you looked under the hood of a car. Note the very large number of parts and the complexity of the system. Think about how many of those parts would need at least slight modification to make, say, a six-cylinder engine into a four or eight-cylinder one.

If it takes five years for a bunch of people to figure out "this bolt keeps breaking, replace it," then while in some very technical, rules-lawyering sense, they are "altering a design..." In the meaningful sense of being able to make working examples of high technology (i.e. beyond the early to mid-Steam Age)...

They have no realistic ability to alter a high technology design. Not on the timescales we're seeing.

To make alterations that mean anything, given how engineering of high technology actually works, they'd need that minimal "ham + sandwich = ham sandwich" capability, or some of it.

See, emphasizing the underlined bits makes this work. This is pretty much what I've been trying to get at all along.

If a not-too-abnormal sandwich-maker is capable of taking ham and a sandwich, and making a ham sandwich that they are pretty damn sure won't kill them, and eating it to show that it's not poisonous, and getting other people to sign onto the "ham sandwich" thing, the system can work.

If only about a hundred thousand people on the entire planet are capable of doing this, while the entire rest of the population does nothing but actively obstruct anyone who dares to try making a ham sandwich... Then you have a plausibility problem.

[Interestingly, I have heard someone speculate that autism may actually be caused by a severe over-sensitivity to changes. To perceiving minute differences in stimuli as being enough to make them "not the same category of thing," thus disrupting the ability to perceive that things are "normal" and comfortable. And likewise disrupting the ability to group together a bunch of not-quite-identical things like 200 different smiles as a single unified "smile" phenomenon. So comparing the Garenhulder Problem to autism may not be quite as inappropriate as one might think...]

Click to shrink...

Archmaster sandwichsmith Joe is capable of not only creating a ham sandwich, but even adding cheese and toasting it. Because of his decades of intimate experience grappling with the deepest of the dread arts of the sandwich he is also fairly confident that he could do so safely. However, the governmental food regulatory board is going to demand a compelling reason to justify taking the very smallest possible step to marginally address that reason before allowing him to begin stage one of five animal trials, after which clinical trials can begin, after which general deployment can begin, after ten years of which the process may be begun again for the next step if it is small enough and the reason compelling enough to justify it.

Joe chafes at this and considers it excessive, but if he heard that grandmaster stewsmith Stew down the street had an idea for adding lemon to Standard Rabbit #437 Joe would consider the same process recklessly lax, because he certainly doesn't want his family eating Unknown stew, thankyouverymuch.

You'll notice that this actually isn't that much of an exaggeration of how some real-world disciplines are treated, often to objectively irrational extents.


-and yes, a lot of autism has to do with trouble pruning and chunking stimuli during processing. The best example I can think of is a savant who can take a half-second glance at a city from a helicopter and photorealistically draw it with a style that consists of starting at the top left of the canvas and working his way down in a line before returning to the top for the next vertical line like a dot matrix printer. However, if you ask him to make additions or some sorts of small imaginary modifications which any child could (Can you put an airplane in the sky? You've drawn lots of airplanes before in different contexts.) he is completely lost. His impressive ability comes from his brain treating the entire scene as a single monolithic cognitive object, but that also means that he can't break it down into subcomponents to be individually manipulated.

Except, from what was shown, the Garenhulders have basically had spikes driven into their brains that electrocute them while also stimulating the fear response when they're responded to technological innovation.

Click to shrink...

We call them cannulas.

 

[Simon_Jester]

You know what?

I give up. I just give up.

I don't know how many other STEM types there are in the thread, maybe everyone knows more than me. Maybe I'm just hallucinating that this wouldn't work as written, that the effect that is supposed to create a viable technological civilization with weird anti-innovation memes would in fact work too well and make anything beyond a Steam Age technical base untenable.

I'm tired. I've spent thousands of words trying to explain myself and people think I'm crazy for still talking about this. It's easier for me to just quietly sit down and dance the cognitive dissonance tango.

 

[Goi]

I think the problem here is you think their an advancing 20 century thing but they would for the most part being fine as they are, even if we instantly stopped innovating completely society would be able to almost remain at our current level of tech easily. Hell the internet would be more stable without all these new algorithms messing things up or hackers.

Sure if they were left on their own they would of probably never reached this level of tech but they didn't they were just here is how you make this and maintain it. They were given that knowledge and our mechanics know how to maintain our car to the point that the only reason people make new one is we want better ones there is no need for that in actual civilisation.

The thing is our current level of tech is fine and if it stayed that way with people only maintaining it then it would allow civilisation to continue we would not really advance. Like,the example of going from six to eight cylinder there was no actual need for that just car companies trying to make a better car but to maintain a 20 centeray civ that kind of thing I should unnecessarily. Why brother to make a better car when the one you have does the job you need.


From what I can tell is that they wouldn't build a truck from a car not because they don't know how but because of the unknown so without a push or seeing oh this is a safe thing they would of been like a frozen picture almost of the 20 century.

The exile either have the blueprints so only need to make it which we know more than a thousand exiles are doing such things or need to make new ones but then all they need to do is claim oh this technology is very old.


Edit didn't see your last post there Ignore me if you wish

 

[fictionfan]

You know what?

I give up. I just give up.

I don't know how many other STEM types there are in the thread, maybe everyone knows more than me. Maybe I'm just hallucinating that this wouldn't work as written, that the effect that is supposed to create a viable technological civilization with weird anti-innovation memes would in fact work too well and make anything beyond a Steam Age technical base untenable.

I'm tired. I've spent thousands of words trying to explain myself and people think I'm crazy for still talking about this. It's easier for me to just quietly sit down and dance the cognitive dissonance tango.

Click to shrink...

You are correct. It would not work. However we having fun writing something like fan fan fiction trying to make it work. It's fun.

 

[Gore17]

You know what?

I give up. I just give up.

I don't know how many other STEM types there are in the thread, maybe everyone knows more than me. Maybe I'm just hallucinating that this wouldn't work as written, that the effect that is supposed to create a viable technological civilization with weird anti-innovation memes would in fact work too well and make anything beyond a Steam Age technical base untenable.

I'm tired. I've spent thousands of words trying to explain myself and people think I'm crazy for still talking about this. It's easier for me to just quietly sit down and dance the cognitive dissonance tango.

Click to shrink...

*pats on the back* Trust me, I do in fact know and understand how you're feeling.

In another thread, it was revealed that the other species had issues will applying cause-and-effect, or coming up with stuff. They aren't dumb, and they learn quickly, they just happened to have biology that meant most of them couldn't make the mental connections between things, though exceptions exist. Also meant that the scientific method didn't exist amongst them, because the "create a hypothesis" and "create a way to test it" stages run into problems.

So, to use your Ham and Sandwich metaphor, these people don't make Ham Sandwiches because the idea simply never occurs. But once explained, they happily make Ham Sandwiches, and then set out to experiment on how to make the best Ham Sandwiches.

This damn near broke my brain trying to comprehend. Also, that and this reminds me of this video:


Also, I think a big issue is that you're directly comparing their technology/society to our own.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I think the problem here is you think their an advancing 20 century thing

Click to shrink...

No, I don't, my entire point is that even if they are not advancing, their inability to design tools adapted to specific situations as the need arises, without developing any new technologies to do it with, is too crippling for them to sustain a static "20 century thing."

Their inability to efficiently fix design flaws in existing equipment.

I am not saying "but they can't be advancing like this!" I am saying "they couldn't maintain what they've got!" And "they couldn't create the supporting infrastructure to build what they've got in the first place!"

But explaining why, for like the fifth time, only to have to explain to yet another wave of people that yes I understand what Poptart is trying to do artistically here and how they are trying to do it, that no I am neither crazy nor stupid, is beyond my stamina. Since you either have not read my previous posts, or have not understood them, I can only direct you to reread them and think about reasons I might not be wrong, not just reasons I might be wrong. Consider what the world might look like, hypothetically, if I knew what I was talking about, and compare it to what real engineers do in real life.

*pats on the back* Trust me, I do in fact know and understand how you're feeling.

Click to shrink...

No, no you really do not. You think you do, you confidently assure me you do, but you do not.

I honestly don't know how to explain it more plainly, but no, you have not understood the reason I perceive a problem here. If you would like me to try one more time I might be up for it tomorrow, but it's gotten exhausting to be perfectly frank.

[snips a bunch of stuff, realizing that earlier he was letting himself get sucked back in]

 

[Ridiculously Average Guy]

I mean, one way it could go:

The Curse/Block scales with how aware a Garenhulder is to the fact that they're innovating/inventing.

So if they can thread balance the knives edge that is 'common sense'/obivious and 'doing something unknown' they'll be fine. BUT, if they're too aware of what they're doing, it won't fly.

So some of the innovated Garenhulders are like absent-minded supergeniuses or sleepwalking Sparks, only effective as long as they don't get poked about it.

 

[Deathbybunnies]

I suspect that Simon is correct, but that one of the various factors we aren't aware of fixes the problem in a way Poptart can't hint at without giving it away.

 

[Blonddude42]

No, I don't, my entire point is that even if they are not advancing, their inability to design tools adapted to specific situations as the need arises, without developing any new technologies to do it with, is too crippling for them to sustain a static "20 century thing."

Their inability to efficiently fix design flaws in existing equipment.

I am not saying "but they can't be advancing like this!" I am saying "they couldn't maintain what they've got!" And "they couldn't create the supporting infrastructure to build what they've got in the first place!"

But explaining why, for like the fifth time, only to have to explain to yet another wave of people that yes I understand what Poptart is trying to do artistically here and how they are trying to do it, that no I am neither crazy nor stupid, is beyond my stamina. Since you either have not read my previous posts, or have not understood them, I can only direct you to reread them and think about reasons I might not be wrong, not just reasons I might be wrong. Consider what the world might look like, hypothetically, if I knew what I was talking about, and compare it to what real engineers do in real life.

No, no you really do not. You think you do, you confidently assure me you do, but you do not.

I honestly don't know how to explain it more plainly, but no, you have not understood the reason I perceive a problem here. If you would like me to try one more time I might be up for it tomorrow, but it's gotten exhausting to be perfectly frank.

[snips a bunch of stuff, realizing that earlier he was letting himself get sucked back in]

Click to shrink...

I've known you were right the whole time, but I've also known that your crusade to explain this is mostly hopeless. Poptart was an English major (I think), not a STEM major. Poptart lacks the background to really get into the issue and understand the extensive implications of how things are set up. There's impressive background work, but the flaws start to show when you get closer than you're meant to look. Like Engrish instead of proper English in Anime It's not something that matters enough to get changed to me.

Instead Poptart has the background to write this glorious quest.

 

[Lailoken]

I mean, one way it could go:

The Curse/Block scales with how aware a Garenhulder is to the fact that they're innovating/inventing.

So if they can thread balance the knives edge that is 'common sense'/obivious and 'doing something unknown' they'll be fine. BUT, if they're too aware of what they're doing, it won't fly.

So some of the innovated Garenhulders are like absent-minded supergeniuses or sleepwalking Sparks, only effective as long as they don't get poked about it.

Click to shrink...

I suspect that this is less a matter of some Garenhulders being exceptional and more one of each Garenhulder only being capable of ordinary, or even above-human, innovation in a very specific field and everybody holding everybody else in other fields back in a crab-bucket problem because every field other than their own looks scary to them.

 

[Goi]

No, I don't, my entire point is that even if they are not advancing, their inability to design tools adapted to specific situations as the need arises, without developing any new technologies to do it with, is too crippling for them to sustain a static "20 century thing."

Their inability to efficiently fix design flaws in existing equipment.

I am not saying "but they can't be advancing like this!" I am saying "they couldn't maintain what they've got!" And "they couldn't create the supporting infrastructure to build what they've got in the first place!"

]

Click to shrink...

Except they don't need to fix design flaw because they already have perfectly working designs that work well enough maybe not great. but they do the job they may have issue and the people can see them but they work fine so people are happy.
Also they don't need to adapt tools because they won't be trying new things unless forced. or the one of the at least 1000 exiles(This was how many worked on a single project even if it was a big one) who are part of this go oh they have this problem right here is the design they need because they have most of what we would considered a tech base at least in blueprints it is just a question of making them
Also they can adapt it but social pressure is the main thing stopping them like we see the engineer know how to fix the issue that don't stop it working but make it inefficient

 

[Bakkasama]

I would recommend not to think much about it? I mean, if the issue is that they can't evolve their tools and models for the different sutuations they encounter, just assume that since the exiles are the ones introducing the new tech and the teach to make it and that their tech is a lot more advanced than ours then they make sure the first model they introduce is as flexible and needing the least future modifications as they humanly can make it. It still doesn't quite work but it does make it easier to handwave it if you don't think much about it.

I did come with the previous explanation saying how it would be possible for them to make such changes despite the curse but Simon was the only one to comment on it and he is right in that taboo and superstitious fear are not quite strong enough dedcriptors for what we see

 

[Simon_Jester]

Except they don't need to fix design flaw because they already have perfectly working designs that work well enough maybe not great. but they do the job they may have issue and the people can see them but they work fine so people are happy.
Also they don't need to adapt tools because they won't be trying new things unless forced. or the one of the at least 1000 exiles(This was how many worked on a single project even if it was a big one) who are part of this go oh they have this problem right here is the design they need because they have most of what we would considered a tech base at least in blueprints it is just a question of making them

Click to shrink...

I don't think you understand the scale of the problem.

Either stop breezily asserting the problem doesn't exist, back it up with more than just basic summaries of what everyone else already said, or leave me alone. Please.

I would recommend not to think much about it?

Click to shrink...

It's like if you were enjoying an episode of Star Trek and then the writers tell you the ship's engines run on peanut butter, unicorn hair, and the outrage of honest politicians. Be kind of hard to resist laughing at the Enterprise engineers the next time they took themselves seriously, not so?

It's hard to unsee something like that, especially if it's being firmly insisted on by the work's creator for one reason or another.

 

[Ridiculously Average Guy]

Garenhulders could always just be akin to supergeniuses behind their fear of the unknown.

So they can look at a car, or a computer, or whatever, and as long as it doesn't trip the UNKNOWN-DOOM-KRAKATHOW bit of their brains they'll take it in without issue.

"182 moving parts with different types of metals needed per section? Yeah I can do that, why?"


If we go with the theory that they were a space-era race that got scaled back down, and given how DBZ genetics work, the Garenhulders being latent Bulmas isn't too out there.

 

[Aranfan]

313 GE

Garenhuld

You're an engineer.

Your job is, broadly, to apply existing technology. Sometimes you're hired by manufacturing plants, in which case your job is to plan the workspace and determine how everything should work together. Sometimes you're hired by people who want to build a bridge, and you are responsible for the (insanely dangerous) work of making the small tweaks to the standard bridge design that make it fit with its new location.

You do not design things. You do not change the fundamental design of things. Yes, you alter standard designs to suit circumstances, but standards are standards for a reason (what that reason is, you couldn't rightly say -- but then, nobody thinks too hard on things related to the Unknown). You wouldn't dare change a thing.

Click to shrink...

At least in the current day, they can do ham+sandwich=ham sandwich level stuff. So the demands of their current tech level is forcing them somewhat further out of their comfort zone.

 

[Gore17]

Okay, I think we've played this out. Best to leave it before the mods arrive.