Latest blog post: Redraw of chapter 1 is happening (2024-05-11)
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Comments (8)
I kinda like that plan. There is no charity, and they won't tell them anything Is possible, but if they assume it is, and make it, they will share knowledge and resources for it.
Humans can naturally assume the Raharr have some form of FTL, but no idea how it actually works. So while the Raharr's presence provides a bit of an unfair advantage by proving FTL Is possible, humans still need to figure out How their FTL works.
That's TOO much TOO soon. I think the idea is to avoid pockets of power and allow more to access the technology that ramps-up to those unknown levels.
"But we will offer only offer what you can replicate on your own."
Is that only offer knowledge we can replicate on our own? As in: This is how you smelt iron. This is how you smelt steel. This is how you build steam engines. This is how...
Or: This is what an FTL engine looks like, and these are the materials and production machines we use to build one. You might want to start with THESE materials, and THESE precurser construction methods...
Presumably he doesn't mean 'replicate once, largely by accident'. I would also hope there are hidden clauses about health and safety laws. "Your R&D teams need to have the gumption and authority to recognise that they've messed up so badly they need to stop and start again - before we'll give you anything truly dangerous."
A third option could be that they won't offer anything unless they can prove how to make it. For example, humans might not have the most efficient nuclear reactors, but they created it, so they might offer knowledge and resources on how to create more efficient ones. Or, if they can create a hypothetically functional plan for a FTL engine, it might meet tenough criteria for them to share how to Actually create it, instead of letting humans trial and error it.
My read is that they'll offer theoretical knowledge to make various technologies, but require a homemade production model of any given technology before offering their own version of that technology as an aid/trade good. That way the humans' R&D establishment stays reasonably strong, new technology introductions are reasonably spaced out, and there's no alien monopolies of anything.
Remember that at least some of this is probably DANGEROUS, and should be approached with extreme caution and safeguards, knowing what could happen if you don't! ("What? That whole continent is GONE? The Tectonic plates have shifted?")
"Just saying, you should get your moon base operational before scheduling that experiment."
Only it might be better in deep space, out of the ecliptic, where nothing will break!
"GRBs don't really care, though."
You might be able to bet on that in Vegas, but still have to wait a few million years to collect.
Humans can build batteries ten times better than those put in Tesla - but they only last a few charge cycles. Does that very questionable 'success' count? Does it have toi be a finished product? Limited production? Mass production?
Are the 'tech levels' universal for all humans? I mean America tested nuclear rockets a couple of times, 60 years ago, so North Korea can ask for some now, yes? Or is it going to be restricted to the specific people who provide the tech examples? In which case, this is locking in wealth and power and not spreading it arounmd.
Hopefully the human authorities put in rules against patenting alien technology...
How about just a new energy source?
That is the reason Musk bought Tesla, he needed the battery tech for Space X. They would not license it to him, so he bought the company.
In addition he got cars he could put into orbit! Now that's an achievement!
I didn't really glance at the map on the last page, but now I have, and it leaves me with questions like "Did the US Pacific Northwest and a chunk of British Columbia secede and unite?", "Did Russia break up into half a dozen different states?", "By the way, is the Pacific Northwest open to California joining them?", and "Wait, Borg, didn't you promise to stop joking about secession until the political climate reaches a point where you're sure whether it actually is a joke?"
Explained in the comments on last page
Resource base and knowledge. So access to raw materials if required, but I'm not entirely sure what "knowledge" means. My best guess would be their base, scientific knowledge, but it could extend all the way to technological designs. Sort of giving humanity the instructions and putting it to humans to build what they can.
But that still worries me with regards to our geopolitical atmosphere. What I could see happening is a technological arms race as the various nations take the knowledge and pour all their resources, economy and will towards achieving technological and military superiority as fast as possible. It feels like the Raharr would want Earth to move towards and more unified and planetary serving system of governance, but since their own species doesn't really come from such a fractured past and they don't appear to have met any other species which has, they may not have the necessary social knowledge on hot to safely guide humanity to that end.
P.S. Anyone else notice the map in the background? Looks like North America has seen Alaska merge into Canada and another nation appear on the West side merging Canada's British Columbia and U.S. Washington and Oregon. Then a new country above Georgia which could be Georgia extending up towards Moscow that appears to be a nation on its own. Far Eastern Russia and Vladivostok seem to have become their own nations and I could be mistaken but Korea looks reunified. Iraq looks like its extended out to include Syria but details after that are either difficult to make out or go beyond my basic knowledge of geography.
The Alliance gets a new trading partner, an addition to their diversity, and a reasonable expectation that humanity will not develop into an enemy. And the big reason they wouldn't have done that normally is a lost cause now.
Also, technological uplift for one planet performed solely through knowledge lending is probably chump change compared to the Alliance's overall security budget.
Yes, good question: What do THEY want? Zane probably has that all worked out, but what is it?
drugs, guns, fast cars, booze and all the Sleaze an entire planet can deliver.
Besides that, everything an entire unknown new civilization has : Tourism, travel, friendships, food, crops, books, myths, tales, plays, movies, work of Philosophers, research, religions (for those so inclined, I go for the top sentence myself), museum, art, archeology, geology, sightseeing....the list goes on. Can we even imagine what the Alliance will think when they see their first T-rex skeleton or the Pyramids ?
When you can get every industrial resource through deep-space mining, objectification of value will change to softer Cultural&intellectual values..At least so I would think...
And if needed be : Military Allies if you run into someone....not benevolent.
I'm somewhat surprised that you would omit the common interest established on page 115 ... :-P
I did but deleted it before posting =) I thought "Sleaze" covers it.
But yes....Someone will try....Someone will try.
Also Pizza! Well "food" should cover that one too but maybe the next Terran conflict will be over "with or without pineapple" then.
Going from "have successfully polluted the orbits of their home planet" to entirely self-controlled interstellar travel (and contact) within a generation sounds a lot faster than what we could hope to achieve unaided, I think. In fact, I'm not sure that I should not be worried about the aftershocks it'll have on our culture, just because the Alliance tells us that they're doing the thing at a speed they consider safe for us ...
I see that the "web site" input field is absent from the comment entry form again, and my nick linking to the Wiki's page on the Ktak has returned in exchange ... :-3
... let's see what removing all LtC cookies can do ...
(When did FF stop offering every single cookie for inspection/deletion, and started to give just a count of "this site has set ... cookies with a total size of ... kB" instead!?)
So basically, Zane is not offering us new "microwave-oven" tech, but is offering us Alliance standardized microwave-oven tech?
Or, you already know how to make rocket ships, here's how to make safer, standardized rocket ships?
And what's in it for the Alliance to "help" the humans? I think it's like the Reapers in the Mass Effect series of games, the Alliance will have the humans evolve and develop technology along the same predictable lines as themselves, thus the humans won't develop an insurmountable tech advantage. (I'm not saying the Alliance wants to "purge" the galaxy like the Reapers. Just that they wouldn't want (another?) new species having a tech advantage they cannot overcome or replicate, in the same way the Native Americans couldn't replicate steel armor or gunpowder weapons)
Giving us technology allows the Alliance to steer our progress and development, it makes us predictable in their eyes. However, if the Alliance wanted us to develop along certain predictable pre-ordained lines, they would give us new tech, thereby preventing us from discovery ourselves, we wouldn't invent new FTL tech if we were given the Alliance FTL tech... This is the Reaper thing from Mass Effect again...
Right, I'm curious to see what the other side of the trade offer from Zane is here. What will Zane say is in it for the Alliance?
And has Gharr turned on his implant yet?!
Outside benevolent/hostile conduct and controllable development is a very complicated issue. Because everything has side-effect.
Dumping a truckload of finished advanced tech on a lesser civilization may save lots of lives, stop starvation, halt climate-change and pull everyone out of poverty and therefore be more moral. But at what cost ? Do you now have friends or vassals ?
Pushing us in the right direction like "Try do this instead with you Tokomak reactor and it then runs" will have helped us vastly more but maybe take 20 years more with the lives lost in the meantime to pollution, destroyed crops, resource conflicts etc. This can be perceived as unmoral.
We can all agree it would have been nice if someone gave us Penicillin at the times of the Plague but not the AK47. Now we are back at development under control as you mention.
It all depends on the intended end-result and as the Raharrs discovered with the Sillurians even they do not know it in advance if it is achieved until they stand in the middle of it. But no-one no matter what wish to nurse a new species up and then it usurps your own position.
It reminds me of a quote fraom my childhood favorite movie with Terrence Hill and Henry Fonda "My name is nobody" copypaste :
"Nobody: There was this little birdie, who didn’t even know how to fly yet. Then one freezing cold night, he tumbles out of his nest and lands on the ground. Well, he starts going, “Chirp, chirp, chirp,” like crazy because he was damn nearly freezing. Lucky for him, along comes this cow, sees him, and feels sorry for him. So she lifts her tail, and SPLAT! drops this steaming hot cow pie right on him! The little birdie is nice and warm again, but he’s still not happy and keeps going, “Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp,” louder than ever! Then a mean old coyote hears him and comes running. He reaches out a paw, and pulls him out of the cow pie. He brushes the dirt off him real nice, and then… swallows the birdie down in one gulp!"
The moral of that story is that people who sh*t on you do not necessarily do it because they are evil and people who help you out o the sh*t does not necessarily do it because they are nice.
its something that I think has guided me more than once in my life since then,
Maybe it would just start with improvements on basic things that we're already used to, like a USB power station (that charges itself.) A guided method would be to watch and see how this affects the Earth-dwellers.