Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[Arioch]

Why not use a drugged up, lobotimized, Loroi brain in a jar, to detect it? "This part of the Loroi brain lights up when detecting telepathic signatures, and these control the perception for distance..." etc...

Because there isn't a "part of the brain" that detects telepathic signatures. Telepathy isn't a mechanical function of the Loroi brain, it's an emergent property of the Loroi mind. If it was a simple mechanical function of the brain, then it would be relatively easy to duplicate.

The Loroi were servants/slaves to the Soia right?

Were they? The Loroi believe that their ancestors were the Soia; even if this turns out to be incorrect, I don't think it necessarily follows that they were slaves.

So if they needed artificially tailored food that grew from only certain planets the Soia altered, they would be dependent on their master who controlled the means of production, probably having a few worlds that did produce them, where Loroi elsewhere in the Soia empire would die out, despite being a galactic empire. Leaving the few worlds that had these artificially altered food sources as homes for Loroi.

You only have to watch a few episodes of Deep Space Nine (re: the Jem-Hadar and ketracel-white) to see what a terrible idea this is. Mutinies are rare in modern, professional armies, but logistical shortages are common. Engineered flaws can be exploited by the enemy as easily as by the engineers. And since the Jem-Hadar are supposedly engineered to be fanatically loyal to the Founders, I'm not sure what use this control mechanism was supposed to be in the first place. The only Jem-Hadar mutiny that I can recall in the series was caused by a shortage of ketracel-white.

As technology increases the destructive power of the individual, I think that trying to maintain control through force and cruelty becomes less and less practical.

[SaintofM]

Why not use a drugged up, lobotimized, Loroi brain in a jar, to detect it? "This part of the Loroi brain lights up when detecting telepathic signatures, and these control the perception for distance..." etc...

Because there isn't a "part of the brain" that detects telepathic signatures. Telepathy isn't a mechanical function of the Loroi brain, it's an emergent property of the Loroi mind. If it was a simple mechanical function of the brain, then it would be relatively easy to duplicate.

The Loroi were servants/slaves to the Soia right?

Were they? The Loroi believe that their ancestors were the Soia; even if this turns out to be incorrect, I don't think it necessarily follows that they were slaves.

So if they needed artificially tailored food that grew from only certain planets the Soia altered, they would be dependent on their master who controlled the means of production, probably having a few worlds that did produce them, where Loroi elsewhere in the Soia empire would die out, despite being a galactic empire. Leaving the few worlds that had these artificially altered food sources as homes for Loroi.

You only have to watch a few episodes of Deep Space Nine (re: the Jem-Hadar and ketracel-white) to see what a terrible idea this is. Mutinies are rare in modern, professional armies, but logistical shortages are common. Engineered flaws can be exploited by the enemy as easily as by the engineers. And since the Jem-Hadar are supposedly engineered to be fanatically loyal to the Founders, I'm not sure what use this control mechanism was supposed to be in the first place. The only Jem-Hadar mutiny that I can recall in the series was caused by a shortage of ketracel-white.

As technology increases the destructive power of the individual, I think that trying to maintain control through force and cruelty becomes less and less practical.

The only way I could think of answering the why have this is, to be frank, some of the dumbest decisions are made by very intelligent people. You just made a bio weapon. If i had to guess, it was an incase this happened, or a trial and error till they got to that point. There is also the fact those in power may not be the best in directing certain fields.

A more down to earth example is The one child policy in China was created by...military...rocket scientists. They were not stupid people, but a combination of they were A. Men. B. Not studied anything in any form of Biology. and C. Centuries old biases combined to make a social and potential economic disaster.

Another case where I can see this is when someone says to do it, damn the studies. THis was the Case of the Teton Damn in Idaho in the 1970, which combined with seismic activity (its close to Yellowstone National Park, which is for all intensive purposes a volcano, all the geothermic fun people go there for) among ruining the fishing. However what did the damn in was the loose soil, which ended up seeping away until a massive hole broke through and several town and cities (including Rexburg where Brigham Young University of Idaho is located).

So, yeah, sometimes people, even ones with god like levels of tech, act stupid.

[Zorg56]

I think that scientific reasons are more likely to be the case.

Or just to show their superiority over nature, just because they can.

[Krulle]

The Chinese themself see the one child policy as a success, otherwise they'd still be greeting each other with "Have you eaten already today?"

It was necessary, to allow the agriculture to catch up to feed everyone, and to be able toconcentrate on the economy as a next step.

It was not a beloved idea, but it worked.

[SaintofM]

The Chinese themself see the one child policy as a success, otherwise they'd still be greeting each other with "Have you eaten already today?"

It was necessary, to allow the agriculture to catch up to feed everyone, and to be able to concentrate on the economy as a next step.

It was not a beloved idea, but it worked.

Until you take into account that you potentially have one child growing up shouldering the responsibility of caring for two sets of grand parents and their own aging parents.

Or the fact the one child policy also means that said one child is now often catered to the point they are often called little meatballs or emperors, the former referring to the rise in child obesity.

Or the fact that due to cultural norms that their revolution hadn't snuffed out that there are tons of men without a native Chinese woman to marry, not by choice but because there isn't one around. Forcing many to either mail order bride, bride kidnapping. This has also caused a profitable rise in real dolls to cope with said loneliness.

And the Chinese government says it works until it didn't, and its been bumped to two and they are spending the same amount of time, money, and energy they put into propaganda for the one child to the two child policy.

Also the Chinese government also says they own Taiwan, bans Winnie the Pooh because their leader doesn't like being compared to them, and had an extermination order on a bird species because they called it a pest when in fact it ate the very pests eating their crops.

[boldilocks]

The Chinese themself see the one child policy as a success, otherwise they'd still be greeting each other with "Have you eaten already today?"

It was necessary, to allow the agriculture to catch up to feed everyone, and to be able to concentrate on the economy as a next step.

It was not a beloved idea, but it worked.

Until you take into account that you potentially have one child growing up shouldering the responsibility of caring for two sets of grand parents and their own aging parents.

Or the fact the one child policy also means that said one child is now often catered to the point they are often called little meatballs or emperors, the former referring to the rise in child obesity.

Or the fact that due to cultural norms that their revolution hadn't snuffed out that there are tons of men without a native Chinese woman to marry, not by choice but because there isn't one around. Forcing many to either mail order bride, bride kidnapping. This has also caused a profitable rise in real dolls to cope with said loneliness.

And the Chinese government says it works until it didn't, and its been bumped to two and they are spending the same amount of time, money, and energy they put into propaganda for the one child to the two child policy.

Also the Chinese government also says they own Taiwan, bans Winnie the Pooh because their leader doesn't like being compared to them, and had an extermination order on a bird species because they called it a pest when in fact it ate the very pests eating their crops.

It's a big mistake to assume that the chinese people and elites are moved by what seem to be mainly liberal bourgeoisie concerns and sensibilities.

[Luge]

It's a big mistake to assume that the chinese people and elites are moved by what seem to be mainly liberal bourgeoisie concerns and sensibilities.

This. Mistakes and successes are evaluated differently when a civilisation with a different culture is using a totally different value system.

No one seems to question that an alien species like the Umiak will have a different value system to us ("What? We only lost four divisions and three million civilians on that offensive push? That's twice as good as usual!"), but overlook cultures much closer to home that have different values to us westerners.

L.

[Arioch]

It was not a beloved idea, but it worked.

Did it? China's population still increased from 800 million to 1.4 billion from 1970 to 2015 during the period when population "controls" were in effect. There's really no appreciable change in the slope of the curve compared to the previous period, until the late 90's when GDP per capita started to increase, and birth rates likely decreased on their own.



The Chinese government claimed that the policy prevented 400 million births, but of course, they would say that, and there's no way to confirm or contradict such a claim.

[Krulle]

In the agricultural regions, the one child policy was often not strictly enforced, as agrarians could use every hand on the fields...
The enforcement was often only ini the cities, and in the regiins which the central government wanted to pacify...

Hence, the full effect only showed once the people starting moving to the cities, with the raise of the GDP, and the opening of our markets for their cheap products.

But the main effect was that the childs survived, because beforehand often 5 kids were born, of whcih two dies on malnutrition...

Anyway, there are many more factors at play, including that the one child rule never applied to minorities within China....
And in the curve we also see the full effect of access to medicines and medical treatments.
Quite a few of those still living withint the latest set of data within the graph would've died a lot earlier, reducing the numbers in the stats...
(median age 1970: app. 19.2 years, median age 1990: 23 years, now (2015) it's 36.7 years, https://www.statista.com/statistics/232 ... opulation/)



I agree though, that opening of the western markets for Chinese products, and the consequent sharp rise in wealth, had much stronger effects...

[Arioch]

The population curve looks very similar to other east Asian countries that had no official population control measures. As populations become more affluent and urbanized, birth rates start to fall... but that's got nothing to do with government-imposed fertility restrictions. It's difficult to make a case statistically that the policy had any effect at all.

[Voitan]

Why not use a drugged up, lobotimized, Loroi brain in a jar, to detect it? "This part of the Loroi brain lights up when detecting telepathic signatures, and these control the perception for distance..." etc...

Because there isn't a "part of the brain" that detects telepathic signatures. Telepathy isn't a mechanical function of the Loroi brain, it's an emergent property of the Loroi mind. If it was a simple mechanical function of the brain, then it would be relatively easy to duplicate.

Surely the "mind" of a Loroi cannot exist without life, and ergo a brain? If an Umiak wanted a telepathic detector, I'm sure they first tried to convince/torture Loroi to be traitors, if not that, try to find what makes Loroi have Telepathy, and make some biological machine out of it.

[Arioch]

The only way I could think of answering the why have this is, to be frank, some of the dumbest decisions are made by very intelligent people.

I think a much simpler explanation is that the premise was devised by lefty Hollywood writers who don't know the first thing about how the military works.

Surely the "mind" of a Loroi cannot exist without life, and ergo a brain? If an Umiak wanted a telepathic detector, I'm sure they first tried to convince/torture Loroi to be traitors, if not that, try to find what makes Loroi have Telepathy, and make some biological machine out of it.

Sure, a mind requires a brain, but that doesn't make it easy to understand. Point to the part of the human brain that makes humans sapient/sentient/whatever. It should be easy... just compare human brains and animal brains and find the part that humans have that other Earth animals don't have. Except that there is no such part, as far as we know. And it's not just the size of the brain, either; there are less-intelligent animals with larger brains. It's not that simple. Sure, humans are sentient because of how our brains operate, which is related to how our brains are structured, but sentience is an emergent property of the system, of the mind in operation, not of a particular physical feature of the brain that can be easily identified or duplicated.

You might say that this seems to be an incorrect analogy, since "sentience" is merely a question of degree, rather than a binary state; sentience is hard to define because there's no clear dividing line between the capabilities of humans and animal minds, whereas telepathy is much easier to recognize and define. But the way telepathy works in the story is directly related to the concept of the mind: the Loroi are not sending "brain waves" or some measurable medium of communication at each other; telepathy is literally the interaction of two minds on some abstract level that does not involve the physical. This is why telepathy is not limited by the speed of causality and is only affected by physical distance to a certain degree. There's only so much about this that the Umiak can learn by studying a Loroi brain, even a live one in operation. It's like a hunter-gatherer trying to figure out how a smartphone works.

The Umiak have captured and tortured plenty of Loroi, but that doesn't bring them much closer to understanding how telepathy works, because the Loroi don't understand how telepathy works either.

Okay, so you torture or mutilate a Loroi captive so that you get some kind of grotesquerie that will work for you -- and sure, the Umiak have done this. It's not much use as an infiltrator or a double-agent, because it will be immediately identified upon returning to the Loroi -- telepathy makes lying almost impossible. And it's not any use as a telepathic detector, as ordinary Loroi only have a signature detection range of a few hundred meters. A random captured Loroi is not a Farseer.

[icekatze]

hi hi

If the Umiak could raise a creche of Loroi to be loyal to them, they might make for a formidable group of interrogators, even if they could only be used against non-Union targets that the Umiak are expanding into. Even if they had instilled loyalty into a group of orphan children after a generation or two, the truthfulness of telepathy would probably make maintaining that loyalty difficult if they were to start reading the thoughts of other Loroi who weren't raised carefully.

But given the Umiak's overall paranoia and desire for supremacy over the Loroi, I'm not sure that they would take such a route, even if it were feasible. They don't seem like the kind to trust anything they can't do themselves.

[Hālian]

Does Trade use any punctuation other than the two marks listed in the Insider (such as equivalents to periods, commas, parentheses, dashes, question/exclamation marks, or quotation marks)?

[Murph]

Remember since it is future Alex telling the tale, then we have to assume that he survived the deadly peril.

[Arioch]

Does Trade use any punctuation other than the two marks listed in the Insider (such as equivalents to periods, commas, parentheses, dashes, question/exclamation marks, or quotation marks)?

Presumably, there are a variety of special-purpose symbols, especially for various professional specialties. But written Loroi Trade is not a conversational or prosaic language, so I don't think there would be too much use for the marks listed above.

[orion1836]

This might have been asked, but have the Loroi discerned *anything* physically detectable in their brains when it comes to telepathy or telekinesis? Any kind of brainwaves that could be measured by TL10 equipment?

We may not understand how exactly the brain works, but we can notice areas of it light up during certain circumstances. I wonder if the same holds true for Loroi brains when they're actively sending or moving something with telekinesis.

[Arioch]

This might have been asked, but have the Loroi discerned *anything* physically detectable in their brains when it comes to telepathy or telekinesis? Any kind of brainwaves that could be measured by TL10 equipment?

We may not understand how exactly the brain works, but we can notice areas of it light up during certain circumstances. I wonder if the same holds true for Loroi brains when they're actively sending or moving something with telekinesis.

I think there is still some argument among brain researchers about the degree to which human brain functions are either localized or distributed. My own sense of it is that while I think many functions, especially "lower level" motor, sensory or body infrastructure functions are localized to a significant degree (often in the lymbic system or "animal brain"), I think some "higher" functions are more distributed (often throughout the cerebral cortex), and that there's also evidence of some plasticity even in functions that are normally localized. I don't want to pretend to understand a subject that even professional researchers don't fully agree upon, and I don't really want to get into the details of Loroi brain anatomy, so it's probably best to frame the discussion in abstract and hypothetical terms.

The short answer is that what parts of the brain are active depends on what the subject of the psionic activity is. If an individual is engaged in a telepathic discussion about a picture, for example, then all the systems of the brain that you might expect will be active -- communication, reasoning, memory, emotion, visual processing, etc. There is no signature section of the brain that is especially active during psi use... although the brain itself it total (and the entire body metabolism, to a certain extent) may be more active. Although telepathy use is not normally associated with fatigue, psychokinetic use can be. But you can think of this as energy expended in intense concentration and excitation of the metabolism, rather than energy literally being expended to transfer to the moving of objects.

[SaintofM]

The brain is the most complex computer known to date, with each section used for different functions. Its also very complicated, like the bossman on the site said.

Its only a misnomer that humans use only 10% of their brain at any given moment (mythbusters busted that with some of the cast using up to 30 at rest).

Simply put the mind controls a vast amount of bodily functions that you rather not have to think about all the time.

A healthy body temperature.
Digestion
Fighting an Infection.
Breathing.
Heartbeat.
Flinching in pain

The use of a hundred percent is called happy seizure time.

I would assume mind over matter abilities like telepathy would need to be even more complex.

I would also assume this would use up more energy. Most of our calorie expenditure is used in maintaining body temp and brain function. This increase in body temp I would assume this would use more energy. THey may need less due to lower body temp.

I am not saying they need to have Super Sayian's bottomless stomach, but I can see them feeling they need a gold medal olympians victory dinner after using them for extended amounts of time.


I could also wonder what the strain on the mind is like. They say humans only have so much will power and/or number of good decision in a day, and that can easily be drained from a hard day at work, putting up with a contentious person, and so on. A soldier like Fireblade might have more fortitude, as most would have to be able to remain calm under fire, but the stress will get to them.

[boldilocks]

If running 10 km burns 700-1000 kcal in a human, would it burn the same amount in a loroi, or is their musculature simply more efficient at the point of use.