Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

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Suederwind
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Suederwind »

Grayhome wrote:However the Christian god vehemently disagrees with your opinion on the matter of human equality. You should read the Bible sometime, as it explains the matter with great (I would say sadistic) attention to detail. The Christian bible clearly and repeatedly states which humans are superior and which are inferior, and precisely what the superior humans can, and are indeed commanded to do unto the inferior ones. Slavery, being merely one example.
Out of curiosity: what part of the Bible are you talking about? Are there other, non christian "bibles"? Have you read other religious texts beside the Bible?
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Grayhome »

Out of curiosity: what part of the Bible are you talking about?
http://www.openbible.info/topics/slavery That should be enough start off on.
Are there other, non christian "bibles"?
...Yes. Yes there are. Have you... have you not heard about this?
Have you read other religious texts beside the Bible?
Yes.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

No True Scotsman
A No True Scotsman fallacy occurs when (1) it is asserted that no true member of a group they belong to would do a certain or (2) a term is defined biasedly to allow easier use of the first form. Instead of acknowledging that some members of a group have characteristics that contradict an argument, the fallacy tries to redefine the group to exclude them.

The Association Fallacy
The association fallacy is an informal version of affirming the consequent. It consists of promoting an opinion of philosophy by recounting the values a specific person or a group that held that opinion of philosophy.

• Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist.
• King was a good person.
• Therefore, all Baptists are good. (a false assertion)

• Fred Phelps was a Baptist.
• Phelps was a bad person.
• Therefore, all Baptists are bad. (also a false assertion)

The Out-group Homogeneity Effect
A tenancy for people to view members of a group that is different from their own as being more similar to each other, while they view members of their own group as being more diverse, even when groups are assigned arbitrarily. "They are all alike," and "They all do this thing," are examples of the out-group homogeneity effect.

Illusory Correlation
The phenomenon of perceiving a relationship between variables (typically people, events, or behaviors) even when no such relationship exists. Illusory correlation can cause people to form false associations between membership in a group (typically a minority or out-group) and rare (typically negative) behaviors, as variables that are salient tend to capture the attention. Related to the Base Rate Fallacy, by ignoring the base rate of behavior in a group in general.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by GeoModder »

Yeah, it had to happen in the miscellaneous terran thread. :lol:
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Razor One »

It is not fair nor applicable to tar all religious people with the fundamentalist brush. Grayhome, while I do find myself agreeing with you on certain aspects, sweeping statements only undermine your argument and serve more to inflame than to press a point. Please ease up a bit as the tone emerging in the thread thus far is one that leads most religious discussion down the path of the flame war.

Since we're off topic at this point, if we're all intent on having a religious discussion, perhaps we can steer away from real life, which is contentious, and more towards our favourite fictional universe, which is a bit more fun.

With that in mind, a question arises. How fares the Church of the SubGenius in 2160? :P
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Roeben »

I second the motion to stop arguing about non-fictional religion in a thread about a fictional sci-fi webcomic.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Suederwind »

I second the motion to stop arguing about non-fictional religion in a thread about a fictional sci-fi webcomic.
I agree with you on this one. This discussion will lead nowhere except flames and anger.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Krulle »

One last comment, please.
The bible, old testament (leviticus, the main "negative part about slavery in the bible), is pre-Christian.
The new testament is what differs Christianity from the old testament, which is included in the bible for historic reasons, and still holds value where the new testament does not contradict. Sweeping "all humans are equal" under the rug as being only one part of the bible is wrong, when I specifically ferred to Christianity.
But even within the new testament there are many contradicting passages.
But no version of the new testament (as a whole) contradicts Jesus in saying that all men are created equal. (single passages do, but they are teachings from Paul, Corinthians, ..., and not from JC)
In my opinion one of the main achievements of this book, although most teachers did not obey this central rule.
But I am not that religious. I refuse to participate in the sacrament, as I cannot combine that with my scientific beliefs....



As I have not yet finished reading all of the Insider yet, what do we know about Loroi religions?
They apotheosize the Soia, up to the point that 275k years did not make the languages drift apart to unrecognisable levels, while here on Earth even the 100+ dialects of the German language have not much in common with their counterparts of some 500 years ago, which are not understandable for any modern German, neither in their written versions, likely less in their vocal versions...
I can imagine that on planetary level telepathy may have prvented language drifts, but on interstellar level AND without any form of contact?
Humanity is not even that old... (+-200k years)

Genetic drift is another question I find unlikely to not have happened , especially in view of their shorter.generation length. But the male/female ratio may be a result of tinkering to keep the genetics more stable in an artificial life-form.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Mr.Tucker »

Whelp, I'm not gonna continue this discussion to avoid nasty flame wars which would be extremely ungratefull towards Arioch and his lovely webcomic. He deserves better from us. So back to the topic at hand :) .
Krulle wrote:Genetic drift is another question I find unlikely to not have happened , especially in view of their shorter.generation length. But the male/female ratio may be a result of tinkering to keep the genetics more stable in an artificial life-form.
I thought the ratio resulted from the need to have large numbers for large armies. Though keeping evolution in check by limiting genetic drift is also an intriguing possibility. Homo Sapiens Sapiens didn't exist 275k years ago. That was Homo Neandertalis, Homo Heidelbergis , Denisovans and Floriensis. Humans have evolved quite a bit since then, but the Loroi seem to have stagnated. I wonder if the other Soia races evolved over time (think there are references to proto-Neridi and proto-Barsam).

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Krulle wrote:As I have not yet finished reading all of the Insider yet, what do we know about Loroi religions?
Most Loroi subcultures practice a sort of ancestor worship connected to the recounting of the heroic deeds of the litanies, and the oldest of these have been abstracted to the point that they sound not dissimilar to the kinds of godlike characters that one encounters in human mythology. Though they may seem less fanciful when one considers that the Loroi ancestors really did have supernatural-seeming power, both in psionic abilities and in the godlike technologies that existed in the Soia era.

The closest a Loroi subculture comes to having what we would recognize as a formal "religion" was in some of the highlands cultures of ancient Perrein, which worshipped the sun. They had formal ritual practices including idols, a male priesthood, et cetera.

Some Loroi do follow alien religions, including the Barsam religion. They are probably viewed by Loroi society at large in a similar way that we view cultists.
Krulle wrote:They apotheosize the Soia, up to the point that 275k years did not make the languages drift apart to unrecognisable levels, while here on Earth even the 100+ dialects of the German language have not much in common with their counterparts of some 500 years ago, which are not understandable for any modern German, neither in their written versions, likely less in their vocal versions...
I can imagine that on planetary level telepathy may have prvented language drifts, but on interstellar level AND without any form of contact?
Humanity is not even that old... (+-200k years)
While I'll admit that it's a tricky pill to swallow, consider these mitigating factors:
  • The Soia language was derived from ancient written examples which still exist today. The advent of writing (especially print) greatly reduces the drift of language, and each time a Loroi civilization fell and another rose, it referenced these same archaic written sources.
  • The Loroi use language for formal written communication and archives, not for daily conversation, so the rate of drift is not as high as it is in our spoken languages.
  • Despite these factors, there were and still are many differing dialects, especially on Perrein where there were fewer archaic Trade sources. Since the Loroi are telepathic, this was not a serious problem during contact. Though many local dialects still exist, in the intervening ~1350 years since contact, the Loroi have consolidated around an official "Loroi standard" dialect, which is mostly based on the Zaral Deinar version. This is also the version that Union has (mostly) standardized on.
  • Since the rediscovery of starflight, the Historians have also been disseminating a version of Trade in non-Loroi regions which was also based on archaic Soia sources, but the Historians without doubt were aware of the Loroi version, even before formal contact, and so may have made accommodations in their own version. The pronunciation of this "Historian standard" dialect is different, but the grammar is mostly the same. This would be the version which the Orgus learned and taught to Alex. That Alex can so readily understand the Loroi dialect is a bit of a conceit, to be sure, but a necessary one.
Krulle wrote:Genetic drift is another question I find unlikely to not have happened , especially in view of their shorter.generation length. But the male/female ratio may be a result of tinkering to keep the genetics more stable in an artificial life-form.
Genetic drift surely did happen; I don't see any reason to assume that it didn't. But I doubt that anyone but a biologist would be able to identify the differences in a living archaic Homo sapiens from 275,000 years ago if he met one today dressed in modern clothing.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Sweforce »

Arioch wrote:
Krulle wrote:Genetic drift surely did happen; I don't see any reason to assume that it didn't. But I doubt that anyone but a biologist would be able to identify the differences in a living archaic Homo sapiens from 275,000 years ago if he met one today dressed in modern clothing.
Probably even less for the loroi. As a synthetic created species they may have been made resilient to mutation with a more robust genome structure. It would still be there but perhaps to a lesser degree. Still the way they reproduce would allow for planned breeding on desirable traits.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Krulle »

But Humanity did not exist 275k years ago.
Even non-biologist can see the difference from Homo xyz of that time to todays Homo Sapiens.
And there are notable differences from the first Homo Sapiens 200k years ago to today's Homo Sapiens.
Heck, archaeologists can even differentiate between an ancient Egypt Homo-bones and ancient Maya Homo-bones....
And a skeleton can be put into a certain time period by its length alone. The skeleton provides enough information to tell us something about how old that Human was when it died, and from the body length we can deduct when he lived.
Modern Humans are much longer than medieval Humans. (But that is not due to genetic drift. Just better access to hygiene, clean water, better food, and now medicine too.)

And the Loroi give birth when younger than Humans, especially during warring times.
As such, their generations happen more often than ours, and that is of the main influence in genetic evolution.
There was some talk about genetic drift, in that some Loroi clans have a lighter skin colour, different hair colours,...
But on interplanetary scale, without exchange of genetic materials, on such a time scale you can expect genetic drift to occur that would prohibit interspecies offspring by now (after all that time, the Loroi should have split into three species - one for each of the sister planets). Especially if one planet does provide totally different food (from non Soia-planet food plants and livestock). you can expect those Loroi who can digest the local food better to have an advantage, thus leading a genetic drift away from the Loroi baseline.

I attribute the missing genetic drift to the Soia having tinkered with the genes, and thus providing a little bit more stability, so that the Loroi would only have achieved genetic drift if they would have bred themselves by limiting offspring to those parents who show certain traits. Like only allowing those to procreate that have (strong) telekinesis.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Razor One »

Their generations also live a hell of a lot longer than ours and are fertile for a lot longer than ours. Human women are only reliably fertile until their 40's, after which things start to get sketchy.

Compare with the Loroi, who do get fertile earlier, but also stay fertile for much longer and tend to found stratified societies where reproduction is strictly controlled. They don't breed like rabbits outside of wartime. The most likely outcome is that older, more commanding and authoritative Loroi likely have the most children, as opposed to letting the young ones have their turn.

The result is that while Loroi can reproduce more quickly and on a shorter wavelength, they generally don't. Outside of wartime, their lives are four times longer and heavily weighted towards older females reproducing rather than younger ones.

Thus you can more or less divide that 275,000 years by about four to get a 'human equivalent' of genetic drift and change. That works out to 68750 years. Enough for some phenotypical changes, like skin colour, the shapes of eyes and the like, but not really enough to make a huge difference. A human from 68750 years ago wouldn't be too terribly different from one now. They just might have a novel skin and eye colour combinations, or slightly differing variances of certain mutations.

The biggest difference in terms of time was cultural and mental. People thought differently back then since their society and upbringing was completely different from ours.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Krulle wrote:But Humanity did not exist 275k years ago.
Archaic Homo sapiens has been dated back to some half-million years ago; to say that they were not Human seems absurd to me, but I suppose it depends on your definition. They had language and culture and fairly sophisticated tools. There is still debate about where the species lines are (as it's now clear from genetic evidence that many early hominids that were once thought to be difference species interbred frequently), but they were essentially the same species that we are now. I would go farther and argue that even earlier humans such as Homo erectus from a million years ago would still be considered essentially human, and very hard to tell from modern humans in the right environment. The Victorian-era concept of H. habilis and H. erectus as stooped, bedraggled ape-men has long since been shown to be false.
Krulle wrote:Even non-biologist can see the difference from Homo xyz of that time to todays Homo Sapiens.
And there are notable differences from the first Homo Sapiens 200k years ago to today's Homo Sapiens.
Heck, archaeologists can even differentiate between an ancient Egypt Homo-bones and ancient Maya Homo-bones....
And a skeleton can be put into a certain time period by its length alone. The skeleton provides enough information to tell us something about how old that Human was when it died, and from the body length we can deduct when he lived.
Modern Humans are much longer than medieval Humans. (But that is not due to genetic drift. Just better access to hygiene, clean water, better food, and now medicine too.)
There are surely differences between archaic and modern Homo sapiens, but as far as I'm aware, the features that distinguish "fully modern" Homo sapiens sapiens would take an expert looking at bones to detect. They would be smaller than average from our point of view, to be sure, but that's an issue of nutrition and environment, and not of genetics. Short people do exist in the modern world, as do people of widely varying races (compare the facial features of a European to a Mongolian to an Australian aborigine), but they're still the same species. I'd bet that if I raised an archaic Homo sapiens on modern food in a modern household, nobody but an expert would know that he wasn't a "modern" human.

Hower, since we can't summon an archaic Homo sapiens to look at, there's no satisfactory way to prove this point one way or the other.
Krulle wrote:I attribute the missing genetic drift to the Soia having tinkered with the genes, and thus providing a little bit more stability, so that the Loroi would only have achieved genetic drift if they would have bred themselves by limiting offspring to those parents who show certain traits. Like only allowing those to procreate that have (strong) telekinesis.
What "missing drift" are you referring to? How do you know what Loroi ancestors looked like 275,000 years ago?

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Krulle »

I don't know. But it would be very lucky if all three sister worlds evolved in the same direction.

Anyway, a lot of my initial concerns in this direction have been eliminated by your answers.
Thank you.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Razor One »

As this is the Terran Q&A thread, all further religious discussion not pertaining to Outsider should take place Over Here.
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Mr.Tucker »

How powerful were the entities fighting over control of Aldea? Were they just big companies (Wallmart, Google, etc) or a sort of company-states (East India Company like)? Did the nation-states of Earth have any control over them?Were these companies' militaries actually more powerful than what the Earth's nations had at that time?

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

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Mr.Tucker wrote:How powerful were the entities fighting over control of Aldea? Were they just big companies (Wallmart, Google, etc) or a sort of company-states (East India Company like)? Did the nation-states of Earth have any control over them?Were these companies' militaries actually more powerful than what the Earth's nations had at that time?
It was a proxy war between two competing colonial interests; one was backed by Yinghuo and some Earth-based corporations, and the other was backed by some Western Earth confederations and some different corporations. What was at stake were the Sol-Tau Ceti shipping lanes and Aldea's supply of Helium-3, which many entities in the Sol system had more than a passing interest in.

The majority of the "conflict" (which was an escalating series of incidents) took place in space, in orbit (each side threatening the other's orbital infrastructure) or along the shipping routes between Sol and Tau Ceti. Both sides had armed merchant vessels and had begun to build Crusher-type military starships. The Earth/Mars confederations had armed police cruisers, but many weren't jump-capable, and those that were had limited jurisdiction outside the Sol system.

The TCA treaty of 2107 established clear legal jurisdictions, but relied on local enforcement, and so the escalation between the Aldean adversaries continued. It was not until the signing of the supplementary treaty of 2115 which provided for an independent legal enforcement mechanism (the Colonial Fleet) that both sides agreed to end the escalation and pursue their dispute through legal channels.

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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Razor One »

Doing a bit of reading on Insider, I got to thinking about a career in the TCA. :P

Judging from the crew stats on most Terran vessels, would it be safe to assume that automation has pretty much done away with a majority of the lower ranks (assuming a naval rank structure) leaving only commissioned officers, IE, ensigns and up?

I'm mostly trying to theorycraft how someone joining up at 18 would progress in their career. I'm assuming that they get a university level education in addition to their basic training for about five years, three for education, two for basic, followed by a typical career path loosely based on the naval model.

So:

O-1 – 5 Years: Basic + Education
O-2 – 3 Years
O-3 – 3 Years
O-4 – 3 Years
O-5 – 3 Years
O-6 – 3 Years

So that, all up, assuming one didn't screw up and got promoted every time they had served enough time in grade to earn their promotions, the quickest one could hit captain would be 20 years for a minimum age of 38 to captain a vessel. Most likely the age bracket would probably be higher since the ones already there are likely at the top of their game and spots at the top are limited.

Okay, now that's done. Lemme compare:

Alex was born 2140. Graduated TCA3 in 2159. Hmm. Only fits if the tertiary level education is stripped out. Would it be safe to assume that highschool students in the 2150's are getting a university level education, comparatively speaking?

Errr. Folding that all up into a more concise series questions...

What does a typical career in the TCA look like? How does one generally progress from a mere ensign to a fully fledged captain? How much is education a factor in the TCA outside of specialty fields? What's the general age someone is able to earn a command of their own, no matter how insignificant? Is there much crossover between the TCA and local police vessels controlled by national interests? IE, is it possible for someone from the United States Space Navy to transfer into the TCA or vice versa? Or would they need to work their way up? Something in between?

Okay, that was more of a barrage...
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Re: Miscellaneous Terran question-and-answer thread

Post by Arioch »

Razor One wrote:What does a typical career in the TCA look like? How does one generally progress from a mere ensign to a fully fledged captain? How much is education a factor in the TCA outside of specialty fields? What's the general age someone is able to earn a command of their own, no matter how insignificant? Is there much crossover between the TCA and local police vessels controlled by national interests? IE, is it possible for someone from the United States Space Navy to transfer into the TCA or vice versa? Or would they need to work their way up? Something in between?
The Scout Corps and Colonial Fleet are separate services with different rules. I'll focus on the Scout Corps, but much of this will also apply to the Fleet. The Fleet is much larger than the Scout Corps, with five times as many ships and probably ten times the personnel.

The Scout Corps is a fairly small organization that is hard to get into, a bit like NASA's astronaut corps; there are millions of applicants for each spot. Partly because of this glut of overqualified applicants, there are no "enlisted" ranks -- even the lowliest position on a Scout starship requires a college-level education (and a good one at that). Because the Corps has only a handful of ships, getting a posting on a ship is even harder, and most officers must serve for several years before they get their first shipboard posting. It's very unusual for a fresh academy graduate to ship out on a scout vessel, much less on a mission as important as the current one.

The majority of young recruits come in through the TCA Aerospace Academy, which is a top-notch four-year academic institution. Most students still go to college at about age 18 (though I'd like to hope that high school educations are better in 2160 than they are today), but Alex and Ellen graduated from high school early, got into the TCAAA, and still graduated at the top of their class, ahead of older classmates. They're both very smart, exceptional individuals, which is why they were posted to such an important mission at such a young age. And part of the reason they were given a hard time aboard Bellarmine is that most of their shipmates of a similar rank were as much as 10 years older.

Advancement within the Scout Corps is based on merit; there is no guarantee of promotion for a certain length of service. Many Scout Corps officers will never rise above Lieutenant JG. The Corps usually has less than 10 active-duty vessels, and so even most successful, high-ranking officers will never have an opportunity to command a ship, as there are few vacancies and lots of qualified candidates. So it's hard to pick out a "typical" career, as someone who finally rose to command rank would be very atypical. A captain might earn a command at 30, or 60, or never.

The crossover between TCA personnel and other local or civilian space forces is mostly one-way. People who have gone as high as they can in the competitive Corps may "retire" and take a job in a less-prestigious space force, probably along with a promotion and better pay.

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