update from sparkleup
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Madison Scott-Clary
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<p><em>The System has no meaningful way for us to control its goings on, and thus could be a good place for disaffected citizens to coordinate with phys-side agents on acts of terrorism.</em></p>
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<p>This is one of those arguments that is difficult to refute because, on the surface, it is indeed a potential reason that one might upload.</p>
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<p>That said, enough thought about how international terrorism works is enough to put this to bed as yet more FUD. First of all, it is the responsibility of each country to monitor their own citizens to within the limits of their national policies (and, let us not kid ourselves, well beyond). If a disaffected citizen is willing to engage in a terrorist act on their home soil, then it is the responsibility for the government to deal with that individual.</p>
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<p>I will grant that this leaves the upload to contend with. There is no easy way to detect whether or not the system has punished them, and there’s certainly no way for them to be extradited, should they be discovered.</p>
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<p>I will grant that this leaves the upload to contend with. There is no easy way to detect whether or not the System has punished them, and there’s certainly no way for them to be extradited, should they be discovered.</p>
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<p>Do not doubt your respective governments’ abilities to track these actions, however. It is something of an open secret that they are always a decade ahead of us mere mortals when it comes to encryption, and thus cracking of those encryption methods used ten years prior. They’ll be able to track communications from the System easily enough, just as they track any other form of text-based communication.</p>
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<p>(And to my NEAC government handler who reads all of my posts, finger hovering above the big, red ‘arrest’ button: hello! I hope that you are well.)</p>
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<p><em>Without clear news sources coming out of the System, there is no way for us to tell that the Council of Eight is effective at governing those sys-side.</em></p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-11-17</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-12-20</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> This is quite true, my dear wag. They can’t vote. They have no say in our political affairs out here, just as we have no say in theirs. How could we? I mean, sure, I bet some of them read DDR posts and wonder <em>what the hell is going on out there?</em> But consider what their politics must look like to us. What would <em>we</em> vote on? Whether or not they must post signage that their sims allow non-euclidean space? Is it okay for you to try and impersonate someone when you can become like them to exacting detail (except for, surprise, their individual personality)?</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> I think we’re still split pretty evenly on speciation. Even I am. One day, I’ll think, “Sure, they may be fundamentally different from us, but they still <em>think</em> like us. They still reason like humans. Except for the biological differences, they still are.” Other days, though, I’ll wake up and think, “We have no common frame of reference with these people. They’re just too different.”</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> This actually came up in a few conversations with my friends sys-side. It sounds like they share some of that ambivalence toward speciation. They can’t interface with phys-side as we can, and we can’t interface with sys-side as they can, so how could they even be considered the same species as us? And yet here they are, taking place in a political debate as filigreed and baroque as any other, and doing so with the same rational minds that we have, even if only at one remove. “At this point,” one of them said as we laughed over another fruitless debate. “I’m not even sure we should be discussing individual rights with governments that have no way of knowing how we work. We might as well just secede and end the discussion there.”</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> But who knows if speciation will even wind up playing into it, in the end. I’ve noticed that, even though we remain split on the topic, tempers have cooled on both sides. I’m surprised — pleasantly so! — to see this agreement building even in Cairo; I know that many of my compatriots there bore apathy or even antipathy towards the system after previous dealings between NEAC and the S-R Bloc. We’re no longer at each others throats about whether or not they’re so fundamentally different from us that it requires some strange new way to think of them as individuals.</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> But who knows if speciation will even wind up playing into it, in the end. I’ve noticed that, even though we remain split on the topic, tempers have cooled on both sides. I’m surprised — pleasantly so! — to see this agreement building even in Cairo; I know that many of my compatriots there bore apathy or even antipathy towards the System after previous dealings between NEAC and the S-R Bloc. We’re no longer at each others throats about whether or not they’re so fundamentally different from us that it requires some strange new way to think of them as individuals.</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> And honestly, that’s my hope. I think that way whether or not they’re humans, whether or not they have their own customs and social structure, whether or not they’re even a separate country. Even those who are falling on the side of speciation are starting to refer to them in terms of individuals. “Them.” “How many of them.” “Who in there even thinks X?” All of these are ways that we refer to individuals, and, you who are still arguing this belabored point that they should have no choice on what is done with their personalities once their bodies are gone, you are now thinking of them as what they are: individuals.</p>
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<p><strong>Yared:</strong> That, my friends, feels like progress to me. We are starting to come to an understanding of what the System is, whether it’s a home for the disaffected and dying, an international forum where individuals can truly live together, or a country in its own right, is home to thousands of individuals, each with their individual lives, individual reasons, individual feelings. They’re people. The System is their home. We cannot take that from them without violating their individual rights.</p>
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<p><strong>Jonas:</strong> Well written as always, Yared. </p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-11-17</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-12-20</p>
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<p>Sasha.</p>
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<p>Michelle.</p>
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<p>Sasha.</p>
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<p>That last hypothesis encompassed much of the previous two, and would explain why the looming tenth anniversary of the founding of the system seemed to make it all the worse. Ten years since the founding, eleven years since RJ disappeared, giving emself up to the act of creation.</p>
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<p>That last hypothesis encompassed much of the previous two, and would explain why the looming tenth anniversary of the founding of the System seemed to make it all the worse. Ten years since the founding, eleven years since RJ disappeared, giving emself up to the act of creation.</p>
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<p>Ah well. She had lingered long enough outside the coffee shop, so she swallowed down her rising gorge and mastered a few waves of shifting form, skunk fur and human flesh fighting for dominance. The human form won today: round of face rather than mephit snout; curly, black hair rather than thick black fur. It would do. She would be Michelle for the meeting.</p>
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<p>The Council of Eight, for all its high status and demand, met in incognito in unassuming, downtempo sims rather than some conference room or grand palace. The eight of them would trickle into the sim over the course of a few hours, set up camp on a hilltop or in a cafe, enjoy the ambiance, and then set up a cone of silence to discuss business. They had been noticed once or twice, but never hounded and certainly not attacked.</p>
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<p>Debarre and user11824 were there already, slouching before their coffees in comfortable silence. Both looked up and waved to her when she entered, so she requested a mocha and joined them around the table.</p>
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<p>She laughed. “Oh, sure. Let us go with ‘True Name’.”</p>
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<p>“Much better! Alright, your assignment is to work with me on the individual rights conversation.”</p>
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<p>“Is that heating up?”</p>
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<p>“Yeah, there’s some real grade-A stupidity going on out there.” Jonas paused to wave to the rest of the Ode Clade, which left the sim <em>en masse</em>. “Lots of this and that about how software can’t be an individual blah blah blah. One particularly vile shithead suggested that if we wanted to be treated as individuals, we would need to contribute to society as equals with those still in the embodied world. He suggested we could split the system and dump individuals into flight computers and software rigs and other expert systems to run those so that they wouldn’t have to keep designing them.”</p>
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<p>“Yeah, there’s some real grade-A stupidity going on out there.” Jonas paused to wave to the rest of the Ode Clade, which left the sim <em>en masse</em>. “Lots of this and that about how software can’t be an individual blah blah blah. One particularly vile shithead suggested that if we wanted to be treated as individuals, we would need to contribute to society as equals with those still in the embodied world. He suggested we could split the System and dump individuals into flight computers and software rigs and other expert systems to run those so that they wouldn’t have to keep designing them.”</p>
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<p>True Name frowned. “What a dick. Is that kind of opinion common out there? I am still coming off the mountain of work that was the reputation market.”</p>
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<p>“Not so common now, but those voices are getting louder by the week.”</p>
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<p>“Damn.”</p>
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<p>True Name laughed. “Never mind. Let us go change some minds.”</p>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-11-25</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-12-20</p>
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<p>“You need a vacation like Michelle.”</p>
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<p>There was a low rattle from the rags, and True Name imagined that must be Zeke’s laughter. “Don’t tempt me. I don’t have the funds to fork, so you’d be down to seven.”</p>
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<p>“Why <em>did</em> you make it so expensive?” Jonas elbowed True Name in the side.</p>
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<p>She held up her paws defensively and laughed. “I did not. The price is tied to system capacity.”</p>
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<p>She held up her paws defensively and laughed. “I did not. The price is tied to System capacity.”</p>
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<p>“The laws of physics were a mistake and reputation is a lie.”</p>
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<p>“It is the best limiting factor that we have that is not a complete fabrication, at the moment.”</p>
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<p>“I rather miss coins.”</p>
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<p>“Well, then, you are all free to stick around or go if you want,” True Name said. “I am going to stay and get well and truly plastered.”</p>
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</article>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-10-18</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2021-12-20</p>
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