
A Game of Consequences - pavel_lishin
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/06/a-game-of-consequences.html
======
afarrell
Lets think about this on an even smaller scale: Individual abusive
relationships. Given the degree of individual suffering they inflict and the
degree of societal harm and crime caused when children grow up in an abusive
environment, I strongly suspect that it is worth investing significant
resources. Also, it may be that the same principles of justice and conflict
resolution that apply to this problem can then be scaled up to larger
problems.

On Earth, when we see someone in an abusive relationship, our solution is to
provide them with resources that allow them to exit the situation. As this
essay explains, that is not an option in space. How then can we prevent long-
running abusive relationships (romantic or otherwise) in space?

Some lines of thought:

0) More clear-cut definitions. One problem in conversations around
verbal/emotional abuse is that it is not very well-defined. You can easily
find lists of "signs that a relationship _might_ be abusive", but it is hard
to have a discussion around the trade-offs to make in preventing a phenomenon
when not everybody can agree on when something is actually an instance of that
phenomenon.

1) Filtering: It may be that the most effective thing we can do is just to
screen for people who have habits of abusive behavior. Given that both false-
positives and false-negatives are costly, what are some good classifiers with
a low error rate?

2) A conception of abuse-adjacent (or reckless) phenomena: Drunk driving does
not directly kill or injure anyone. However, it has such a high risk of
causing traumatic injury that the law punishes people for it nonetheless. Are
there habits that have such a high probability of developing into abuse that
we should prohibit them under some category of interpersonal recklessness?

3) Better tools for detecting and changing situation-triggered habits: A
person's habits can be dramatically different in different physical settings
and in different dyads of people. This makes doing #1 before a mission more
difficult. It also means that if a crew notices #2 (and using #0, convinces
the person it is a problem), the person can work on training different habits
in one simulated situation and then copying those over to real life.

------
msandford
The way it reads, the consequences of failure are so high that we're going to
make it a pressure-cooker kind of situation which will inevitably cause the
very outcomes that their whole governance model is based on avoiding.

The baseline will likely be "everything is great, be happy!" and expressing
dissatisfaction will be deviation from baseline. Deviation from baseline can't
be tolerated because Bad Things Can Happen (tm) so a few people who express
dissatisfaction outwardly will be locked up, shipped home, etc. People will
quickly learn to shut it if they don't like their situation and viola we've
got a resentment escalating apparatus assembled. What happens next? Eventually
someone can't stand it anymore and goes fully off the reservation with dire
consequences.

Pretending that you can effectively manage your way out of the unpredictable
nature of human beings when they don't have any outlet is tremendously naive
or arrogant, or perhaps both.

The idea that we can just design something that'll last for more than ~50
years without falling apart spectacularly only works on Earth where the people
who really are sick of $X have the choice to opt out by moving jurisdictions.

Seasteading -- as crazy libertarian as it is -- is probably the only thing
that provides hope of finding a truly stable governance mechanism. It's like
those crazy libertarians say, we need tons and tons of tries to get governance
right without needing a revolution every time we make a mistake.

~~~
pythia__
>Seasteading

Or Patchwork.

------
venomsnake
There is critical delay of communications beyond which an empire becomes
ungovernable. If the Atlantic was narrower Her Majesty would rightfully rule
the whole of North America. If it was wider - we may not have been able to
settle there.

And history gives us pretty good idea what kind of ping political governance
tolerates.

~~~
ThomPete
One of the best analysis of the US geopolitical situation I have ever read is
this.

[https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/geopolitics-united-
states-...](https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/geopolitics-united-states-
part-1-inevitable-empire)

Thought me a lot.

~~~
danbruc
While they do some interesting analyses, the mindset they express is just
horrifying.

~~~
ThomPete
Sometimes the right people say the wrong thing and the wrong people the right
thing.

I understand the controversy but that doesn't take away from the value of
their analysis IMO.

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Houshalter
I think it's a bit naive to assume there will be self sufficient space
colonies with humans that are just like us, 300 years from now. Imagine a
person 300 years ago speculating about the present.

Assuming we somehow survive 300 years, technology will be so advanced. We are
just a few years away from genetically engineered humans as it is. And people
argue about whether AI is 20 years away or 100, but we Will certainly have it
by 300.

------
smoyer
We've known for quite a while that "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise a
kid ..."

