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Scientia Weaponizes The Future

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Eewec said:
If there's nothing left to damage, then there's nothing needing damage control.
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A kind of diplomacy right there with "Nobody notices you if nobody is left alive" kind of stealth.

The US government ( and the rest of the governments, really ) reactions I can easily imagine… I more wonder what Cauldron will think of it. Probably not much if Scientia manages to create a stable-ish state in place of CUI.

I gotta say, the whole chapter reads like a lovechild of Contessa and Dragon taking out China, and I don't know how to feel about it. I think I… don't ship it, no.
 
Setras said:
I don't think what she's done here is even morally dubious unless you subscribe to the "no killing ever" philosophy. Certainly there's nothing inherently wrong with overthrowing a government. IMO she probably has a moral duty to do the same to the US and others like them because they are just as corrupt in their own way. Though not as oppressive obviously. (How in the hell they convinced the people that choosing proxy's from the rich, who would then get to choose the president - even if it was directly against the popular vote - was in some way protecting their voting process more than just using the popular vote directly, I will never understand... That dude must have been a marketing genius bordering on outright mind control)
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If you're refering to the electoral college, it's not some evil plan by rich aristocrats but a relic of the fact that there was no such thing as phones, radio, internet etc. in the 18th century so this simplified the aggregation of votes. Also to ensure that a few cities don't end up ruling the whole US (as pure popular vote would undoubtedly cause) and thus infuriating the rural states (again, this is when the US was more like a 18th century EU than what it is today).

Now reforming it today is next to impossible because of the rules about making constitutional amendments and the Reps have no reason to ever want to change a system that benefits them so the EC endures to this day.
 
another reason not to change it is the people in the coastal cities and places like Chicago would still be running the show, as they would have originally. Once again infuriating those of us in rural areas
 
marackomarac33 said:
If you're refering to the electoral college, it's not some evil plan by rich aristocrats but a relic of the fact that there was no such thing as phones, radio, internet etc. in the 18th century so this simplified the aggregation of votes. Also to ensure that a few cities don't end up ruling the whole US (as pure popular vote would undoubtedly cause) and thus infuriating the rural states (again, this is when the US was more like a 18th century EU than what it is today).

Now reforming it today is next to impossible because of the rules about making constitutional amendments and the Reps have no reason to ever want to change a system that benefits them so the EC endures to this day.
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Makes sense. Which is why I said she should fix it - because the people in power have no incentive to do so.

Edit: and by fix it, I mean write an AI to do a better job and put it in charge :D
 
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The CUI take down took me from left field, like I know of her capabilities but I've read so many stories where even when the MC has the abilities and power to take down a nation within half and hour to a couple hours and somehow it ends up taking them like a week to a few months, it is incredible pleasing to actually read one where it is done in a fast no nonsense way.
Loved the chapter can't wait to see how the world reacts to a National Power being taken over and dismantled in 30 minutes by a singular person.
 
So for a attack on her person, Scientia obliterated an empire, while freeing* a billion people with minimal bloodshed.

Both Genghis Khan and Gandhi would call that praiseworthy. A Mongolian and an Indian, geddit?

*Much like Russians, the Chinese people will probably think 'different book, different flag, same stick.' On top of the entirity of China's IOTL history, the CUI is one more full-circle revolution to fuel the cynicism.
 
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Setras said:
Edit: and by fix it, I mean write an AI to do a better job and put it in charge :D
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That is way too dangerous in my opinion. Once you've released an AI you cannot control its growth and what it will take as its core values, moral normes etc. You could end up with a utopian post scarcity society of perfectly happy people ruled by a gentle and benevolent AI... or you could end up with an inescapable totalitarian nightmare state.

And unlike human dictators, the AI won't die of old age. It would be far wiser to keep any such AIs in a purely advisory role, rather than give the AI itself the reins.

Xedornox said:
The CUI take down took me from left field, like I know of her capabilities but I've read so many stories where even when the MC has the abilities and power to take down a nation within half and hour to a couple hours and somehow it ends up taking them like a week to a few months, it is incredible pleasing to actually read one where it is done in a fast no nonsense way.
Loved the chapter can't wait to see how the world reacts to a National Power being taken over and dismantled in 30 minutes by a singular person.
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Ditto. I always loved Worm stories where the protag (usually Taylor) makes BIG waves waaay beyond the Brockton Bay "sandbox".
 
marackomarac33 said:
That is way too dangerous in my opinion. Once you've released an AI you cannot control its growth and what it will take as its core values, moral normes etc. You could end up with a utopian post scarcity society of perfectly happy people ruled by a gentle and benevolent AI... or you could end up with an inescapable totalitarian nightmare state.

And unlike human dictators, the AI won't die of old age. It would be far wiser to keep any such AIs in a purely advisory role, rather than give the AI itself the reins.
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You also don't want to be unfair to any AI, though.

It's a tricky problem, but for my money the best answer I've seen so far is Banks', which is to have a whole lot of AIs, and have them be equal citizens. If some AIs start acting up, you've got the rest of the AIs available to step in. Pretty much the same idea as regular humans dealing with human criminals.

The assumption, of course, is that the AIs won't all go wrong in the same way, or gang up on the humans. But that's a good argument for treating them really well.
 
Tankrider said:
She just made so many enemies, other countries will see this and wonder where she will draw the line for them, she just dismantled a parahuman group and intelligence apparatus of a country, there will be plans made to oppose her actions in several places & maybe even preemptive strikes planned with disposable assets that cannot be linked back to them.

It doesn't matter whether she has the power to repeat this feat, people will either believe she lucked out this once and act against her to eliminate this possibility or they will try to get leverage over her.
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I mean, or she could mention that it was based on the CUI attempting to kidnap and enslave her? "This attempt failed, subsequent ones will also fail. Nobody will be amused if I need to wholesale remove the governments of multiple nations. Don't make me do it."

Like, there are probably some who won't believe it, but she's releasing a lot of her stuff publicly; combine that with the fact that most governments aren't already inextricably linked (afaik) with a core group of parahumans capable of that kind of forcible conscription, and the likelier response is that this will act as a deterrent of sorts, at least for a while.

Good news for Taylor, bad news for those other countries: in the time that they're busy figuring out what to do, she's going to have time to finish rendering herself as close to invulnerable as she can, given that Ziz is actively trying to kill her and is apparently willing to recruit assistance from halfway around the world to do it, now. (Because, c'mon, this screams Simurgh plot.)
 
TaliesinSkye said:
You also don't want to be unfair to any AI, though.

It's a tricky problem, but for my money the best answer I've seen so far is Banks', which is to have a whole lot of AIs, and have them be equal citizens. If some AIs start acting up, you've got the rest of the AIs available to step in. Pretty much the same idea as regular humans dealing with human criminals.

The assumption, of course, is that the AIs won't all go wrong in the same way, or gang up on the humans. But that's a good argument for treating them really well.
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The key thing though is that it doesn't necessarily need to be a super intelligent AI, just an incorruptible one. At that point it's still better than a human ruler
 
Setras said:
The key thing though is that it doesn't necessarily need to be a super intelligent AI, just an incorruptible one. At that point it's still better than a human ruler
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An awful lot of societal management is allocating scarce resources in ways that cause some people to win and some people to lose. Sometimes there are clear ethical choices to be made, but oftentimes it's murky. I suspect having an AI or VI making those decisions for people without people having input wouldn't go over well, even if it was genuinely making excellent decisions.

Politics. Politics makes everything a thousand times more complicated.
 
Pirafir said:
The irony there is that it's democracy which is much more stable. In comparison to history, the US having only one civil war in 250 years is an extreme outlier.
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Yeah, the whole transition of power is a serious issue for monarchies, as are pretenders.

But when monarchy was all they knew, it probably seemed a lot less frightening than something essentially new.
 
marackomarac33 said:
it's not some evil plan by rich aristocrats
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Maybe they didn't consider it evil (after all, giving political power to just anyone was a new-fangled idea they were rather skeptical of at the time), but the malapportioned components of the electoral college were designed to at least in part take power away from "the people". The part that gave extra representation to slave owners is obvious enough, so I won't go into it, but here's Madison on the senate:
The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 said:
The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge the wants or feelings of the day-laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages. The landed interest, at present, is prevalent; but in process of time, when we approximate to the states and kingdoms of Europe, — when the number of landholders shall be comparatively small, through the various means of trade and manufactures, will not the landed interest be overbalanced in future elections, and unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.
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TaliesinSkye said:
Yeah, the whole transition of power is a serious issue for monarchies, as are pretenders.

But when monarchy was all they knew, it probably seemed a lot less frightening than something essentially new.
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While there was a strain of monarchist/semi-monarchist thought going around, I don't think it wound up that big an influence on what we got for government, except maybe in the degree to which the presidential executive has a powerset somewhat similar to a king.

Much of the American leadership was enormously classist, though, and that was not subtle. Remember, property requirements for the franchise were fully normal and expected. And the Virginia Planters (such as Madison and Jefferson) were in many respects were a deliberate recreation of English landed aristocrats. (Aside from the novelty of putting it wholly in charge of a full nation-state, they were quite used to such limited-franchise democracy in colony governments.)

Also, don't forget that originally the appointment of electors was at the discretion of the state governments. They weren't obligated to make it a public election, and initially many didn't.

Of course, the original plan pretty much exploded on the launchpad. Electors weren't supposed to be personified proxy votes, but they almost immediately became so.
 
JoshuaSweetvale said:
So for a attack on her person, Scientia obliterated an empire, while freeing* a billion people with minimal bloodshed.

Both Genghis Khan and Gandhi would call that praiseworthy. A Mongolian and an Indian, geddit?

*Much like Russians, the Chinese people will probably think 'different book, different flag, same stick.' On top of the entirity of China's IOTL history, the CUI is one more full-circle revolution to fuel the cynicism.
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Yeah, can confirm that living in Russia sours you quite a lot on the whole "revolution to overthrow a corrupt government and install a better one in its place" idea.

But this is magical land of imagination with hyperintelligent AIs and armies of cheap, easily reproducible drones with futuristic weaponry, so, like, it's probably going to work out for Scientia. Well, better than irl at least.
 
Raiseth said:
But this is magical land of imagination with hyperintelligent AIs and armies of cheap, easily reproducible drones with futuristic weaponry, so, like, it's probably going to work out for Scientia. Well, better than irl at least.
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That said, it would be an interesting departure from the norm if Scientia, despite all the tech and drones and AIs still fails to actually succeed at nation building and leaves China a fractured, destabilized mess despite her best intentions. Because as oppressive and evil as the CUI was, a great number of Chinese people WILL resent being "saved" by a foreigner, and for many others this whole endeavor will reek of 'Century of Humiliation 2.0'.

People do not like being told what to do, especially in politics (hence all the heavy handed oppression of authoritarian regimes - very few go full tyranny for the evulz, it's almost always due to a rational reason) and so will resist Taylors efforts to build them a new state simply on the grounds that it's being imposed from the top down (AIs and future sociological knowledge or not).
 
marackomarac33 said:
That said, it would be an interesting departure from the norm if Scientia, despite all the tech and drones and AIs still fails to actually succeed at nation building and leaves China a fractured, destabilized mess despite her best intentions. Because as oppressive and evil as the CUI was, a great number of Chinese people WILL resent being "saved" by a foreigner, and for many others this whole endeavor will reek of 'Century of Humiliation 2.0'.

People do not like being told what to do, especially in politics (hence all the heavy handed oppression of authoritarian regimes - very few go full tyranny for the evulz, it's almost always due to a rational reason) and so will resist Taylors efforts to build them a new state simply on the grounds that it's being imposed from the top down (AIs and future sociological knowledge or not).
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She did sign up for making sure democratic governments are set up smoothly, didn't she?

That trick, it does not tend to work. Scientia could win a counterinsurgency, but doing so is basically a critical mission failure...
 
Anti-No said:
If the diplomat did not report home? That's on their diplomatic corps.
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That was common practice in XX century. Germany declare war on USSR by handing notes in emabssies in Berlin and Moscow almost simultaneously (30 min delay in Moscow) with all out atatck on USSR. USSR did the same thing with Japan in 1945.
 
Interesting chapter.

I hope that you will show the consequences of this action properly in the coming chapters. This single action just made Scientia the enemy of every single government on the planet. But more than that, it also showed that USA no longer cares about any balances of power, having a casus belli (no matter how obvious a lie it is) or anything else. This means that on the diplomatic side all the governments in the world are about to declare Scientia the international criminal number one with bounties and kill orders galore. On the shadowy side, any and all kinds of contingencies the other governments have against the US are about to be activated, because the time of deterrents is over - you either strike now or you won't exist tomorrow. USA is stuck in a position where they either decry Scientia in a vain attempt to reduce the retaliation from other countries or they lean into it and essentially declare openly that they finally intend to fully conquer the world and everybody else better officially become vassals now... which they cannot do at least until they have brought Scientia under control. Ironically, either way Scientia is about to be declared a supervillain by the US as well.

I am not familiar enough with Chinese culture and politics to say how big the power vaccum will be. It might be relatively small and short while various people clear up who takes the seat of their former boss or it might go so far as to lead to splitting the country into several ones, including stuff like infighting and famine due to food transport logistics breaking down. Either way, if Scientia wants to establish her morals in the country, she will have to assume direct control and keep it for several decades, until at least a complete generation grows up on whatever propaganda she deems to be good. Be it democracy, meritocracy, God-Empress Scientia or just welcome our robotic overlords. She will have to defend the Chinese borders and interests against all neighbours. Essentially, she will have to take the time to really rule or her big win for humanitarian ideals will become nothing more than yet another bloody publicity stunt.

And all this is completely not taking into account the parahumans. Taylor just lit the powder keg Cauldron was trying to keep under control for the past decades. She completely shattered the illusion the PRT was more or less successfully upholding in the US by utterly destroying one of the strongest governments on the planet within hours. Various parahuman groups around the world, especially those that control whole governments publicly or from the shadows, will have to react either by diplomacy or outright war declarations...

Ha, now that I think about it, Scientia's declaration of war on the CUI opened herself to an interesting precedent. If governments decide to run with it and fully declare war on her, it would mean (from a purely law perspective) everybody helping her would go from risking at worst jail time to active treason in a time of war. Well, in practical terms the whole thing will be essentially a presigned kill order for everybody working with her.

Honestly, this single action by Scientia will probably cause more conflict world wide than a dozen Endbringer attacks.
 
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