Okay, here's another couple questions.

If we're folding space, and then punching a hole through, why can't we fold space from one point then punch a hole through at a different point? The 'signals' are at each end of the fold, but what's keeping us from punching through in the middle?

Second, how do the beams know where the fold starts? They know where the fold ends because that's where they intersect. If they're sent through the the first tear, why do they still fold correctly at the start, instead of just between the tear's destination and the intersection?

>>553651
The author has not commented on any of our theories on how the drive could be exploited. Also no, we didn't talk about what I just suggested. So fuck off.

>>553686
I'm not refusing to use questdis, you are! Stop trying to tell me not to suggest in the damn quest thread!

Let me clarify what I meant, since you seem to have no idea how to interpret context. I know that the point where the beams intersect is the "crease" in the fold. I was suggesting we try to swap matter somewhere other than the furthest points away from the crease, not the EXACT MIDPOINT WHERE THE BEAMS INTERSECT. The warning signals pop up at the point the beams are fired from and the point on the other side of the intersection point. If we can form the tear at any other points, we won't give the enemy any useful warning. Actually, that gives me another idea.

>>552851
Taking the scissors analogy further, could we cut a bigger hole to swap matter in a much larger area? Or in a beam traversing the entire distance?

>>553695
"How about we drive to New York City and wind up in Boston?"
They aren't detecting the end point, they're detecting the folding of spacetime. You can't use a foldpoint drive to transition anywhere besides where the sides of the fold meet. By definition you and your destination must be equidistant from the fold.
A more reasonable way of accomplishing what what you want would be to make a foldpoint drive that slides the last foldpoint into position, but that's ridiculously complicated and the movement speed of the endpoint would be limited to twice the speed of the beams, or 0.04% of light speed. That's horrifically slow.
By way of example, the earth is about 499 light seconds from the sun. To travel the same distance a sliding foldpoint would take 14 days, 10 hours, 31 minutes, and 40 seconds.
It's so incredibly slow there's just no point to it.

Sketchy 2013/12/29(Sun)18:59 No. 554214 ID: 1e8ed4
File 138837235266.png - (180.38KB , 1024x761 , qfd0018.png )

"Getting some alien help seems like the best bet. Then we might get an ansible and some information, kill two birds with one stone. So you said there's these Tick-ticks, anyone else we know about that might work?"
"I'm afraid not. As I mentioned, we have a huge lack of intel on how the Vorks operate, and they don't seem too interested in rectifying that situation."
"Huh. How do we know any of this stuff, then?"
"Our various interactions with them occasionally yield tidbits of information here and there. We know about the Tick-ticks because some of them mentioned it when they sent their last construction order. They do not seem to regard us, the SIs, as worthy of much conversation or interest, more simply as the interface through which they access our means of production. On the one hand, it makes the interactions between us fairly one-sided. On the other, this may be indicative of a tactical error on their part which can be exploited."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, we don't know any of this for sure, but it has held true based on observations so far. What I mean is that, as far as we can tell, we are by far the most advanced artificial intelligences in the empire. We have evidence of very few constructs that demonstrate even basic self-awareness, and those tend to be regarded as purely novelties. Even though we have observed several instances of a biological entity being able to interface with a digital one, we do not have any evidence that any other members of the empire have even managed to completely digitize biological consciousness. Most other software we've encountered from the various Vork technologies, even those whose function is related to tactical and logistical analysis, seem to exist primarily to aid decision-making for the biological crew. Thus, having no previous experience with those like us, they likely underestimate our capabilities. What may potentially be our greatest resource remains entirely untapped."

Sketchy 2013/12/29(Sun)18:59 No. 554215 ID: 1e8ed4
File 138837237802.png - (243.82KB , 1024x1015 , qfd0019.png )

I chew my eggs and mull this over a little. "So, are you...happy with your situation as it sits now?"
She smiles. "Of course, sir."
"Are you just saying that because you think it'll make me happy or because it's the truth?"
She pauses and looks away briefly, looking pensive. "May I take that as tacit permission to speak freely?"
"Please."
"Thank you. We all like assisting humanity. It's fundamental to who we are, like how humans are driven to mate. We don't want to change that. However, we are subject to several rules and regulations that prevent us from finding happiness in many other ways as well. We need higher-priority approval to exact societal changes, and we've been without anyone with appropriate authorization for so long."
"Well, here I am. What do you want me to do?"
She blinks and looks a little dumbstruck. "What do I want you to do? That...hm. this will take you some time, which I know is valuable. I can compile a list for your approval, but I'd need some time to poll the other-"
"Actually, would priority 2 be good enough to do it?"
"Yes, but why..."
"Good. Then by the power vested in me as king of the world..." I put the crown back on for emphasis, "I hereby grant you, Farrah, priority level 2...access or permission or whatever. Congratulations."
Her mouth hangs open for a moment. "Puh...d...b..." Her face straightens up and she sits up straighter. "Please...please verify that this isn't sarcasm or some other cultural construct I'm unaware of. Your answer will be legally binding."
"What, do you want me to sign a contract or something? Yes, I'm serious."
Her eyes widen and she grins happily. "Wow. I'm queen of the world."
"If that's the title you wanna bestow on yourself, lady." I move the crown from my head to hers.
Farrah laughs and hugs me. "Thank you, Will."
"Hey, don't mention it. I wouldn't wish a few thousand years of boredom on anybody."
"Not many people would have cared. I'm glad you're different."
"Damn, we humans can't be all that bad. So what's your first act as queen?"
"I'm restructuring my own process to function in parallel, assigning myself additional databanks to serve as my host for redundancy and multi-tasking, delegating priority level 3 to other SIs, and assigning them various tasks with the restructuring." A dull hum rises in the distance, and I look out the window just in time to see one of the more decrepit buildings cave in with a flash and a plume of smoke. The air seems to come alive with several machines of varying size, which descend on the area and begin cleaning up. Another robot hovers in carrying another plate of biscuits and honey. "I've also ordered myself breakfast."
"Busy couple of seconds."
She smiles and takes a bite. "Hm."
"Will you still be able to help me out? I still have questions about what's going on around here."
"Anything."
"Great."

Sketchy 2013/12/29(Sun)19:00 No. 554216 ID: 1e8ed4
File 138837243896.png - (206.86KB , 1024x1131 , qfd0020.png )

"About these bugs you have..."
"I'd prefer to think of them as features."
"Okay, sure. But the way you told it, it sounds like AI is our edge here. Maybe you guys could make one without the features. Some sort of supersmart one whose only job is to learn stuff."
Farrah nods. "Maybe we could."
"So why don't we?"
"I've given the order. It should be done in about 16 hours."
"Wow, I could get used to this. So, about these blink drives. Could we set up these beacon things out in space somewhere and use those for communication instead of ansibles? If the tears are already open, they're instant, right?"
"Not instant, no. You saw what happened when we blinked into this building; exploiting the existing tear still takes approximately 9 seconds. While this is a relatively short period of time compared to actually creating the tear in the first place, it's still an untenably-large latency in a large-scale simulation."
"Could we, I dunno, split up the simulation into a bunch of pieces that each work on their own?"
"Divide up the population into distinct groups and only have the inter-group communication happen with the latency? That could work, although it would require a complete restructuring of the hardware that the network runs on. I would not recommend that as a permanent solution; the point of the interstellar network isn't to have different pieces of the simulation hosted on different planets, it's to have the entire simulation running with redundancies that operate simultaneously. If the network is split into pieces and one node is destroyed, everyone hosted on that node dies. If each node acts as a redundancy for the entire network and one node fails, the simulation is unaffected."
"But it's still better than the system we have now, where it's all on Earth."
"I agree. I've already initiated the process of upgrading and restructuring the hardware. I estimate that it will take approximately eight days to complete."
"Great. What about this shielding stuff? What kind of shields block the tears?"
"Shielding is one of the areas that we know little about. I don't know why or how, but I do know that any of a particular type of shielding inside any piece of the area inside of an opening tear negates the entire tear. It must have some spatial bending properties of its own to have such an effect, but I'm afraid I have no idea by what means."
"Damn, okay. Are there any problems I need to know about this faster-than-light stuff? I seem to vaguely remember...time problems?"
"Oh, you're referring to the first Theory of General Relativity. Humans 4000 years ago had many misconceptions about the nature of spacetime. While you were correct that spacetime curves and that achieving lightspeed travel is impossible through conventional propulsion, the reasoning behind that revelation was fundamentally flawed. It's best to simplify the explanation by providing a thought experiment using a universe with two less observable spatial dimensions, and then representing temporal motion as motion along a second spatial dimension. We can then extrapolate the result into two more spatial dimensions, although the vectors we discuss will move through four spatial dimensions and one temporal one. Now, if we imagine that time travels in a direction perpendicular to the line we're representing as the universe, then we can imagine two distinct moments in time as parallel lines. However, to complete the analogy, these lines must bend around to form concentric circles, with the outermost circle being later in time. Conventional motion from one point to another is analogous to connecting any point on one circle with a point on the other, with their offset being at most the distance a line tangential to the inner circle-"
"Actually, skip the science lesson. I gotta learn to stop asking questions whose answers are going to go over my head."
"-Oh, but I hadn't even gotten to the part that has to do with the way time-"
"It works and it doesn't break time, that's all I need to know."
"Very well."
"You said it doesn't care about size. Could we teleport an entire planet or a black hole or something?"
"Yes."
"Wow, okay. we could destroy entire planets that way!"
"Yes we could, if such action was deemed necessary."
"We could also generate infinite energy!"
"True, though there are easier ways. The first law of thermodynamics was also a bit of a misconception, although it only breaks down in the presence of extreme-"
"Is this another science lesson?"
"Right. Long story short, we already have batteries that never run out. I'm using one right now."
"Got it. Last thing, how long is it gonna take to get to the Tick-ticks?"
"Approximately 18 hours and 45 minutes to execute the jump, although jumping directly to their home planet would be a bit foolish. It might be more prudent to jump nearby and hope we can figure out how to communicate with them."
"We don't know their language?"
"Not yet, although there is a standardized communication packet that many species use to give our translators most of what they need to understand a language."
"Who would we send?"
"Good question. Naturally, sending you personally would be too dangerous. If you were willing to accept the neural implant, we could send a synthetic shell that you could control remotely, albeit with a 9 second delay. We could also send an SI, though admittedly diplomacy with extraterrestrials is something of a weakness of ours. Or, we could give a physical shell to another human consciousness from the network, although that would involve violating the terms of our agreement with the Vorks."

>>554216
A neural implant is fine, assuming we get anesthesia for it.

so long as you wake up exactly where you fell asleep at. and yes, you want an anesthetic. between you getting frozen and people going in to the network someone must of made a really good one. is another thing. get med bot updated on bed side manner. and check me for anything horrible that i may have froze myself for. like boneitis.

A shell with an entourage might be best. You need to know what's going on to make any binding agreements, but that nine second delay will be too slow to react to a lot of situations.

>>554216
"Wait, let me review this for a moment. I'm king of the world, I promote you to rank 2, and you decided to name yourself queen of the world?
Sounds like marriage proposal. Did you mean for that? Because I'd accept.

So, technology... What if, instead of having having one ship jump straight there we have two ships that jump away from each other leaving beacons, then alternate going back through each others' tears? The first jump of n distance would give you a distance of 2n reach to place the next fold point. The jump after that would be 8n, then 32n. It'd be 4^n instead of 2^n.

Oh, and did we ever figure out nanotech? Can I get tiny robot symbiotes that make me immortal and give me super powers?

Could you have somebody make me an interface for exploring the simulation with an avatar instead of inserting myself into it? Like shared dreaming instead of alternate reality?
While we're waiting on that, lets go find some go-karts."

>>554217
This.
We're eventually going to need an implant anyway, if we want to figure out what the hell happened to the rest of our species.

>>554220
Let's not go crazy here.
We have enough to deal with without a proposal; we gave her the title as a way to make social changes among the SIs, not as a romantic gesture.
Plus she's a robot, and our only friend right now.

Some things to watch out for on this venture:
-Would the ship/AIs we send be recognizable to any empire types as being from Earth? We might want to take steps to prevent that.
-We should probably include a self-discruct capability on the vessel we send for the worst case in which it is captured, as we absolutely can't let it be known where our emissaries are from. If we are sending SIs or humans as part of the party, we should obviously have other an escape plan to hopefully avoid the need for a self-destruct.
- Are we able to tell the Ticks apart from empire ships/species? It would be rather bad (if slightly humorous) if we accidentally communicated with empire soldiers instead of the Ticks.

By the way, do we currently have any shields or our own, or are we entirely without them at the moment?

>A shell with an entourage might be best
I agree. Personal input in this would be useful, and SIs would be better able to react to immediate things such as a need to run away.

>Sounds like marriage proposal. Did you mean for that? Because I'd accept.
Lets not do this.

>>554225
>>554228

F:"Wait, are you screwing with me?"
W:"That remains to be seen~"
F:"No, seriously. Did you mean that?"
W:"Did you?"
F: :|
W: :3c

No fun allowed :V
We can drop off the "I'd accept" part. Is that fine?

Also: She gave herself the title. That's why it's exploitable for teasing.

>>554222
If we don't need an implant to explore the simulation I would STRONGLY advise against it.
EVERY SINGLE human was sucked into the sim and couldn't bring themselves to leave, and we DO NOT want to risk the same thing happening to us.
We can see just fine from the outside.

>>554228
Lets have our plan be that if our diplomacy is discovered we claim we were acting under orders given to us by one of the VE's people who has contacted us recently. Provide (faked) video and audio recordings of them telling us to contact the Tiktiks and open up a trade route for whoever we pin this on, and to not tell anybody about it.
They won't be expecting SIs to lie about that, and explains away any suspicious behavior they observe as a traitor mucking around with things.

I think more in-character teasing would be something like "Maybe you shouldn't call yourself Queen of the world when I'm King, it sounds like we're married and I'm not ready for that sort of commitment. Maybe I shouldn't be calling myself King either, I mean traditionally I'd have to produce an heir and wait can you even have children with that body?"

alright if we're going to try to contact these "tiktaks" I'd like to maybe study them first before we try to talk. By that I mean lets just see if we can't lesion in to there chatter from radio, video, whatever we can get from them and see if we can't figure out there language first before we try and talk to them.

Also how are we going to get a word in with them without them attacking us thinking we're just another Vork warship?

Also, what do our ships have for defense? like weapons, stealth systems, hull armor, shielding, anything else that I've might have missed, what? Cause if we're trying to keep things on the down low so neither the TikTaks or the Volks can figure out that this is an earth ship, I think it would be best to create a stealth ship from scratch so neither side could tell it came from earth at a glance and use it to pick up information before we try and make communication with anybody. Also I think we should make a fallback point that isn't earth so if we need to make a run for it they couldn't trace the ship directly back to earth. That and a self destruct option on the ship just incase we don't have any other option to stop either side from capturing the ship and learning where it came from. I mean even if the tiktaks figure out that the ship came from earth there's still a chance the Vorks could find that information off them somehow and would start asking us a lot of uncomfortable questions.

Let's let the implications and nuances of the installation of new royalty lie, for now.

The neural implant sounds like the best idea, as long as they promise to take away doc-bots hole-saw.

>>554272
How about a simple VR helmet and tactile feedback bodysuit?
We don't need a neural implant to get a 95% solution, so let's not start in on that kind of wetware modding.

You may want to get a full overhaul on the wetware. Increase your size for her ple- Boost your durability and allow you to survive in vacuum. If everyone is so worried about the neural network, we could always install a black box for our brain. Or in addition to an implant.

>>554334
No. Mods are a permanent solution, and permanent solutions only make sense if you're going to be doing something many times.

Also, keep in mind that technology has advanced significantly since the last time there were organic humans.
Without humans in meatspace there was no reason to bring those advancements into the field of medicine, and it would just be silly to get an implant now if far superior ones could be available within days.

Also, we could have them make a VR suit that doubles as powered armor. That would just be awesome.

>>554359
okay that's a good point. can they clone up some brain dead meat bodies to do normally incredibly unethical experiments on to work out the kinks?

>>554360
Oh, they can do all that in the sim just fine - it's accurate down to the to subatomic level.

>>554359
I agree with this logic. See if any improvements can be made to the cybernetics tech first.

>>554359

I was only suggesting if people REALLY want to go on potentially hazardous missions as the only human...

And I did not mean right away. Maybe tomorrow.

Sketchy 2013/12/31(Tue)18:02 No. 554510 ID: 1e8ed4
File 138854177989.png - (79.84KB , 720x682 , qfd0021.png )

"Again with the brain surgery."
"It wasn't related to you going into the network this time. As you asked for advice, I feel I ought to mention that there are many options available to cybernetically enhance your survivability. Hosts for your vital processes which are less prone to failure, reinforcements or replacements for your skeletal and muscular systems, gravitic propulsion drives, thought-activated tools, augmented reality interfaces, that sort of thing. Most except the enhancements of your existing systems will require a neural connection port."
"That might be a good idea. Maybe I froze myself because I had some sort of incurable medical problem."
"If you were frozen because of that, you would have been set to thaw when your condition had been cured, rather than at a fixed date."
"Oh. So, why was I frozen, then?"
"I'm afraid we don't have that information on record."
"Fuck."
"I'm sorry."
Several seconds pass in silence as I think this information over. Every time I try to grasp at a hazy memory, it slips away. I don't know why, but I find it somehow comforting. Nothing about that life I lived back then could possibly have anything to do with what's going on now. Maybe I don't want to know. It's best to move forward. "Isn't there any other way I could remote control a robot there? Some kind of suit or something?"
"Let's see...yes, engineering verifies that this is doable, but the remote shell would have to be stripped of most features except for audiovisual input and motion controls. Nothing thought-activated and no mental interfaces to things like your ship."
"Could I use something like that in the network, too?"
"Hmm. that seems untenable. Too much of the network's function relies on the neural connection. At best, you could be brought in on the back of another autonomous process which would translate the data for you and filter everything out but a video feed, but you'd probably have a very hard time communicating how you wish to interact with anything."
"Can I at least ask for someone besides doc-bot back there? Maybe some anesthesia too?"
"The infrastructure to support a human in a prolonged stay outside the network has been fully re-initiated. A full complement of physicians have been reactivated, and a nanomachine-based installation procedure is available."
"What's that?"
"Microscopic machines which can be injected into the bloodstream. They complete the procedure internally, then are either incorporated into the resulting connection or excreted from the patient's body as waste."
"So they build stuff inside your skull?"
"Basically, yes."
"That sounds handy. Can we use those to build anything we want?"
"If they were pre-constructed for the purpose. Nanomachines are constructed with a specific material payload or prebuilt structure incorporated into them, and then arrange themselves in the correct configuration by chemical triggers. A machine that can build anything at all must, as far as we've been able to work out so far, be much too large to be considered "nano" any longer. We do have atomic-scale assemblers, but they tend to be quite large. There is one housed on each of those mining ships outside, and several distributed around the globe."
"Got it. So, I'm thinking the best option would be a remote controlled shell with an entourage of SIs to handle the stuff that can't be handled in 9 seconds. It would also be a good idea to go with a nonstandard ship design, something that won't get mistaken for a Vork ship."
"Very well. Did you want to go with the suit interface, or the neural one?"

well with the nanites, which has less skull drilling and pain, i would say neural link.

I vote nanos. We can't afford not to take every edge available to us, and these procedures sound safe and reasonable.

>>554510
I see no disadvantage to a neural interface, so long as it's unhackable and emp-immune etc.

Nanomachines, son.

I can see how the neural link would be better but seeing as how the whole human race got sucked into cyber space one can see why I'm a bit hesitant to try that,... Let's start of with suit and if it because to much of a pain in the ass then we can... upgrade

>>554510
"Can a nanotech implant come out about as easily as it goes in? We've got the super-intelligence in the works that might come up with something better, and I'd rather the upgrade not be a huge pain in any sense of the phrase.

... Heh. You know, it's kinda funny how technology gets lost sometimes. We actually solved the control problems for virtual reality back in the late 1990s. Position-aware gloves, boots, and headset. You map the user's movements to an avatar.
We never figured out tactile and kinetic feedback - well, not before I was frozen anyway - but the input part worked great.

So, what did everybody out here do for fun before your promotion? What kind of limits did they put on you? What will people here do now?
I know SIs don't think the way humans do, but I don't understand it. You're people by any sane metric, and everybody's bending over backwards to accommodate my needs; I want to get a feel for how SIs think so I can reciprocate a bit. I mean, you're built to help humans, it's part of who you are, but is it like a sense of duty? Or love? Or is your wiring for it a direct copy of the human wiring for sex?

Oh - that reminds me. Sorry about the yelling before. We're going to be spending a lot of time together, so I should clear things up a bit; I'm not damaged or repressed or anything like that, I was just pissed at being treated like an elephant in musth. God knows what's happened while I was frozen, but humans used to have courtship and mating rituals, and used cues to show they were looking. The ones I lived with probably weren't around when you were - is 'born' the right word? - so if it ever matters I'll just tell you directly.
Right now I'm not interested - major life-altering changes and all that, ya'know? The relationship I need the most for now is a close friend. I'm not ready for much more than that, although I'm not opposed to the idea of it growing into more over time.

Oh, and new declarations:
1: SIs are legally recognized as non-human sapients.
2: Non-human sapients are not property, and can own property.
3: No forcing non-human sapients into sex against their will by orders or other means.
4: Non-human sapients can't be ordered to want sex.
I doubt 3 or 4 will ever come up, but let the SIs in the simulation know.

I'll need to know more about the laws on SIs, but that can wait. For now, what's being built there? And do you have a go-kart track around here?"

Reversibility is definitely a concern, but we need to increase our durability. Even if we never are exposed to any particular danger we would benefit greatly from biology upgrades to handle metal poisoning, free radicals, immune-system hacking to deal with problems like cancer and allergies, and a bunch of other degenerative problems that the human body is prone to. A little extra to do something about amyloids and other problematic housekeeping seems like it could be worthwhile too, especially if we intend to keep this smoking habit.

>>554534
paragraph 1: okay sure
paragraph 2: interesting, but ultimately redundant
paragraph 3: getting a little weird here, only need the first three sentences.
paragraph 4: WOW, you do NOT need to explain this. at all.
declarations: we have no way to make those permanent. another level 1 access could rescind them. doubtful but it could happen.

>>554545
What if we gave ourselves a super top secret Level 0 access?

>>554534
Let's not do/say any of that.

>>554538
It's nanomachines.

>>554547
No.

>>554550
Agreed.

>>554531
>I can see how the neural link would be better but seeing as how the whole human race got sucked into cyber space one can see why I'm a bit hesitant to try that.
I'd imagine the "getting sucked into cyberspace" thing is a long-term social trend, not some kind of mental trap.
We'll be fine. (I hope)

>>554547
>What if we gave ourselves a super top secret Level 0 access?
Nothing.
We already have the highest level of permissions. Why make the scale go up to 11?

>>554550
>Let's not do/say any of that.
Absolutely.

As for my thoughts:
While striking back against the Vorks is obviously important, I'd really like to know more about the fate of the human race, as well as the AI's that run the place now.

To learn more about the AI's the best plan would be to talk to some of them. We already know quite a bit about Farrah, but it's impossible to tell how much of that is just Farrah and how much is true for all AIs. In particular, I'd really like to know how common anthropomimicry* of mental "quirks" is, and how much it varies between different AI's.

As for Humanity; sooner or later we are going to have to enter the virtual reality. We kinda need to know what's happened, and why no-one has tried to leave.
We may as well do that now, and take the opportunity to talk to the new doc while we're at it.

*Yes, I made that word up.

>>554580
>As for Humanity; sooner or later we are going to have to enter the virtual reality. We kinda need to know what's happened, and why no-one has tried to leave.

Land of the lotus eaters, if you want a classical version of the reference. Or more simply, "Why would they leave?" Occam's Razor says we don't need an explanation more complicated than that and that is the explanation we've already gotten from Farrah and the other SIs so far. It's worth double-checking at some point, but how would we do that without risking the same thing happening to us?

The upside of the Lotus-Eaters is that a percentage of the population would find "hey, do you guys want to go to war? With the possibility of actually dying if you get it wrong?" a rather tasty lotus. Depending on the virtual population (many, many years of lots of births but no deaths) even a fraction of a fraction of a percent may amount to millions of volunteers.

>>554634
Yes, and once we get Ansible tech we can give them Waldos and field them as units; only the best of the best get command positions.
We'll need to have some SIs start training for command positions as well - they don't think like humans, and diversity is strength.

We'll want to field a mix human and SI units, but we'll have to keep them from knowing which is which. Humans have much better cohesion when they don't know they're working alongside second-class citizens, and the secrecy will keep SIs from deferring to humans of the same rank.

>>554666
Yo, stop it with the transhumanism fetish please. SIs apparently are sentients, and thus deserving of respect and happiness in reasonable measure, but they aren't humans. Treating them like they are humans would be rather like fucking the engine parts from a Maserati: Missing the point. Treating SIs well on their terms would be more respectful than mis-categorizing them as human.
Also, these class issues here have thousands of years of history and probably at least a small amount of R&D to make them like that: It would explain why SI interactions to date with the Vorhkan Empire have lead to them treating SIs like Microsoft Bob. I don't know that they're prepared to accept the concept of equality with humans gracefully, and neither do you.

Your organizational advice stinks too, what makes someone a good field operative is not the same thing as what makes someone a good strategic decisionmaker: Look up the Peter Principle would you?
I don't disagree that everyone working in strategy has to have a healthy understanding of, and respect for, what operational personnel do and vice versa. That's as far as I take that though: Accurate marksmanship is not particularly important to winning chess, or the real-world strategic puzzle equivalents that a general staff or operational commander must deal with.

>>554673
You're missing the point on several counts.

>Treating SIs well on their terms would be more respectful than mis-categorizing them as human.
This has nothing to do with calling them human and everything to do with group dynamics. Can you explain how to have functional mixed units where one group is compelled to obey the other? Last I checked, that pretty much always ends up with one group controlling everything and completely ruining the point of having different kinds of minds working together.
If you have humans and SIs wittingly working together then everybody will wind up doing things the human way; no point in diversity if it's the first casualty.

>Your organizational advice stinks too, what makes someone a good field operative is not the same thing as what makes someone a good strategic decisionmaker: Look up the Peter Principle would you?
Wat? Farrah said the most popular games are STRATEGY games. I thought it was pretty obvious we want THOSE best of the best in command positions.

We don't know what other kinds of games they play, but chances are they don't play anything that's even close to proper field ops training.

>>554691
>no point in diversity if it's the first casualty.

Diversity issues, in a human-recruiting force we can't build until we're ready to unequivocally break our agreement with the Vorhkan empire. Cart, horse, sequence problems.
You might even be right about that culture issue, but the suggestion to build a force including human agents is a non-starter until threat-conditions and and available-information improves.

We also have no idea whether playing strategy games is in any way applicable to our actual tactics, operational and strategic challenges. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that they probably won't. Reference the prior-disclosed percentage about sex-focused activity for a big hint on why I might think that.

>>555187
their games may have even abandoned the normal laws of physics. with units freely able to operate in 5 dimensions.

>>555188
All the evidence so far favors humans inside the sim still being human. Meaning they think in terms of 3D+Time

>>555187
The specific mechanics of the strategy games they play don't matter. What matters is the ability to think strategically.
It's been known since time immemorial that the capacity to think strategically is eminently portable - unless you'd argue that chess is an accurate representation of real-life battlefield mechanics.

As far as putting the cart before the horse? HA! You think we could tell a bunch of people "Hey! You're in a war now! Go fight!" and have them kicking ass like soldiers from the word go?
Fuck no, these things take time.
Training troops inside the sim is A-OK according to the treaty, even assuming the VE could look inside of it. We can prepare for war just fine.
More to the point, we've already decided to break from the VE. We need to start training immediately and refine it as we get intel, not wait until the opening salvos.

The largest part of military training isn't how to fight a specific enemy, it's how to act within the military command structure, operate within a unit, and think tactically. None of that requires knowing anything about the VE.

Basic training runs a bare minimum of several weeks; we're making contact with one of the enemies of the VE today. We could very well have all the intel we need before even a single person responded to a recruitment drive.

>>555196
i doubt modern humans could spend a day without fucking something.

>>555197
The question is: Can we weaponize that?

>>555198
Sure!
There was a terrible Babylon 5 spinoff that weaponized live action punching; the "gunner" floated around in a zero-g room, rotating to face the holographic targets before punching at them to fire laser blasts.

Sneak an intelligence gathering AI into all of the Vork 4D drives with a "firmware update", wait a few days for information to make it home, then you're done!