Created Saturday 12 November 2022
[I wonder how many ideas die here. I read through my won stuff rarely (I turn out not to be that interesting in large doses.) So I wonder how many ideas I've had about this stuff and haven't followed up on because I only really write what's in my mind, not what was. (I wonder if that's the birth or death of wisdom.)]
H0 is based on an NB whose seed were railway and geography data. Given what is with this set, NB, prove to me what would have been optimal for the past 100 years, and then tell me what would be optimal---given future projections of growths in populations, cultures, economies, and technological development and waste---what woudl be the optimal futre development, especially in relation to any anticipated conflicts.
The Humans who fly into space didn't stop fighting Humans. Humans do stop fighting Humans, but those moments are tenuous when survival is on the line. Many of the most successful NBs were those who had in their seed the understanding of Human conflect. Ho had that, and they took it right were Fei Lung needed it. Lung saw the potential in that NB and simply insisted (yes, from her mothership in the same system) that it be hers. Insert that in its seed so that any further growth would have that as its seed. Not to love her or anything, but to understand her. So that it was finely grown to do just what she wanted to do when she wanted to do what it knew she was going to want to do.
Jumping into an attack requires reading a lot of information really quickly and finding exacttly what you want to find. While traveling in the system exactly like you want to travel, to be where you're hidden when you need to be and ready to attack when you think your oponent won't think you are to catch them exposed. And if you're just jumping into a system, you are no where nearly as familiar with the system's current state as anyone who's been there for any real length of time. Your lastest information on that system is millions of years old. You might think you have a good idea of what's happening in a system millions of lgight years away, but you don't. Not of something hostile is there. If there is something hostile, you've got to make damed sure you're either ready for it or at least realize it before you jump a valuable ship there. Jumps ain't cheap, what mass you use (astroids, gas clouds, small plents, eventually large ones) to get there better either be the least you need to spend (and then you wait as long as you can before assuming they died and that system may include a hostile. And if so, then think about how you want to react.
Sometimes you decide to attack. But takes a lot of mass to make a jump. Sure, you can send enough energy mass along with ship to allow it to jump back, but adding a ship's worth of energy mass along with a ship's worth of energy mass for the trip home, then you've got to starting pushing and digging when you get there to assemble both the mass for a return jump and build the machinery to process that mass into the energy for the return. If the latter---if you have to amass your own jump back---then you're going to want to still end the least mass you can.
Fei Lung knew that's what she wanted to be. That was her Decision. [And yeah, I just made that up, and it is a little corny. But still. I'll let anything grow here that can. Even corn.] Anyway, Fei Lung saw war early and said this is the way we Humans must react. Lung understood early the mechanics of [um, my concept of] intersystemic warfare [also just made up: warfares conducted beyound one's biome, one's biosystem. When Humans started to jump into space, Lung realized the ramifications of a war if it did turn out that out there, there were not only hostile systems, but hostile systems that could---like Humans---grow out into other systems. And that's scary. Really, all Lung did was realize the theorum-quality reasoning was that if Humans can indeed jump into space, then it's likely something else can, too. And Humans ain't always nice, and space is never easy, so there are probably out there places we do not want to jump to. And that we either want to not alert or destroy any hostility we find.
Lung lived in the age when Humans first realized they could jump. And that that meant others could, too. So where are they? Um, lots of losses in that direction (like three or four, not like Humans could ever jump that many ships to devote them to one direction unless they knew they really had to. She realized that the above scenario was likely to be a basc aspect of interstellar warfare, no matter what the technology was going into interstellar warfare. She saw H0 to be the weapon that, in her hand, would never dull. Ther is no direction in which she cannot attack in a system or be safely defensive in. But any hostile in a system that can develop the technology to grow outside of that system was surely also likely to grow in it, and establish offensive points in enough places that there was no longer any place to hide. You had either be ready to stand up to a foe that's been building itself up in the system in response to your presence, or have enough mass energy to jump back.
And she understood herself well enough to know how she thought and would attack. She developed her own NB through being the first to think to sow that in one (and to have chosen damn well which NB to choose; getting that NB turns out to be one of Humanity's best lucky breaks. Lung is only one solider (in a war of relatively few, but with big consequences if they fail (e.g., if it's learned through them exactly where to attack and exactly when the species' home system), but she simply is one of Humanity's best. Her brillaince was realizing what to do early and how to do it with what she could, along with her brilliance on choosing a railroad planning NB as where to invest her luck to plant a seed of her in it, coupled with the luck Humanity got in her just so happening to choose an NB that had just gotten everything right with its hardware, and continues to integrate well development in new hardware was one of Humanity's lucky breaks.
She can jump into a system and pretty reliably both take a good shot and get the hell out of there before they could take a shot back. Her shots do miss, and don't always maim or kill, but sometimes they do. All jumps are costly, and if you're an at all advanced civilization, then you must expect that at those wide ranges of times into the future of what you know about a system, you can expect to find others out there who can do that, too.
When Lung retires (alive) at 65 (like she always said she would---too bad for them that they never believed her), she gives her NB to someone. Well, I (and she) have to think eventually of who.
Of maybe this is just one of those ideas that is shot out into here only to die out here.
But I am sure Lung and H0 won't be forgotten. Calling an AI HO is just too funny.
And H0 is kinda a dick. Yes, he's designed to know just where Lung will fail and PDQ about it, but sometimes he's not only a little more terse about it than he needs to be, but he's actually kinda a jerk. Like not doing things other NBs could do. Even if it would have just been easier for H0 to go ahead an just do it. And doing that at just those moments when humans don't want to deal with not letting H0 get his way and not do it. I mean, like really? All that processing just to be a jerk and get out of doing something nice. Dick move.
But H0 is built for this. It's want they inherently "want" to do, just like an ant wants to. H0's motivational complexity is only that of an insect. Her intelligence is not developed in that way much at all. And so they too yearn to know who will wield them when Lung's time is done. H0 wants to be the weapon that keeps being able to attack, and needs someone to be that with. (Yeah, I guess H0 would go out on their own. Even they knew it wouldn't be as effective or safe, and it's not like many systems want to fight against the H0 in Lung's mothership when it is in Lung's mothership.) But still they would know the advantage of one, and would help in the search for it. H0 is a hard sword to pull out of the stone (and is kinda a dick about the whole time), but a mighty oneL That which Lung knew to build and throw exactly when she did was such a well-thrown stone that it will continue to hit exactly where it meant to for generations. That is a place to hit, and that is the early moment to throw to hit it exactly when you want to hit. Which is usually the earliest possible moment. If there is interstellar warfare, then there will be information ("intel") also traveling at interstellar speeds. And if you step in system you're not ready to, someone out there might it it not long after you just learned the same. And you're going to both have to react to each other. Having a railroad-designed AI to read the system and plan a battlespace for blocks and attacks turns out to be a very nice advantage.
But, of course, there is only one Lung and H0, and if Lung & H0 can't take out whatever's there, then you'd better be ready either to send a Hagge or be ready to avoid that system and whatever's there
And if it's figured out where you are and the weak points in your potential network of systems ("Well, if they are here, then this and this woudl be good systems to also hold. . . "), then you better consider those options---and any others like leaving where you are---carefully.
Where Humanity strikes and how depends a lot on where Lung goes and what she does. She didn't apply to be a Decider. She was invited. She is one of four Invited Deciders. It really is too bad her NB is a dick.
I have to think of the name of her ship. Of find wherever I wrote it.
Being called an enby.