Post by lucidChthonia on Sept 11, 2012 3:40:31 GMT -5
((OOC: This is supposed to be a post on LC's blog, which she started after she was successful on sburb.org's official blog and wanted to keep all her own posts in one place. In the meantime she has posted well over a thousand small FAQ-ish or essay posts that look somewhat like this, using new data from the Seer Network as well as logic and statistics. She is at least reasonably IC famous for this, and FAQ authors tend to follow her blog for the latest Seer Network developments. Her personal life can also be followed from whether the apologies she makes at the very bottom of every post are about her or not.
Aelfrida has been missing from her blog for an unusually long time. Feel free to comment on this, especially if your character has not been in chat recently and therefore has no idea why she "disappeared"!
Further posts in the thread can be assumed to be blog comments.))
==========================================
Why are Scratched Worlds Usually Dystopic?
Timestamp 40-9378521
lucidChthonia (8)
----
Full disclosure: I am post-scratch and will talk about post-scratch worlds in first person as well as third.
Scratching, and the temporal mechanics that it involves, are a well-studied concept among the Seers and FAQ writers. (See also my post on 25-2317, "Reset Switch: Temporal Meteor Locations and the Scratch", the Beat Mesa FAQ by rollercoasterRemix, and the forum thread "Did You Come from a Scratched World?" started on 16-88.) They are also a ripe subject for speculative writing, as in the legendary "The World That Should have Been" short story by anthropologicalLicense. (Which, by the way, I recommend, if you have a good twenty-minute block you need filled. It's a well-thought-out, thrilling, if a touch preachy, tale.)
Today, though, I wish to tackle something a little "softer" about Scratched worlds. Their government and culture.
Let's go back to the theory, first. A Scratch is intended to rearrange the starting conditions of the home Sburb world, in order to afford its destined Players a greater chance of survival. To this end, the entry order of the baby-carriers is reversed, sending former Kids to the home world before the former Guardians.
In a survey done through dongle-mediated scrying, it is statistically significant that post-scratch first-session children tend to have slightly higher echeladder caps (418) than their pre-scratch analogues (402). Furthermore, post-scratch children tend to have more echeladder levels earned on Entrance (47) than their pre-scratch counterparts (19), and average approximately 0.6 more weaponkinds (1.7) than pre-scratch kids (1.1).
The average numeric calendar date associated with post-scratch worlds is significantly higher than that associated with pre-scratch worlds (however, due to the Jesus Christ Anchoring Effect the numeric calendar date is not pinned to the same zero date in different worlds, so this is not necessarily a reliable metric). Pre-scratch children generally land between pre-entry 1986 and 1999, and most frequently Enter between 2005 and 2015. For post-scratch children these dates are, respectively, 1990-2074, and 2023-2086.
However, the numbers merely scratch the surface. To look closer, we need to know what kind of culture differences there are between pre-scratch and post-scratch worlds. First, extremes, and then generalizations.
----
The best (i.e. least dystopian) post-scratch world is that of imitativeAlimentary and his group. The oppressive society that the sburb kids were probably "intended" to grow up in was overthrown twenty years before the group's Entrance, thus resulting in what IA will insist is the "Second Renaissance". To provide an example, drawing from life was rediscovered as a "humanized version of the form of photography" by IA's Guardian, and poetry was not yet known.
The worst known pre-scratch world is that of the late enturbulatedOccupation (condolences accepted on her memorial thread on sburb.org), where Entrance date (2020) was approximately ten years after the average run date. The intervening ten years were ravaged by a malicious upper class, an increasing surveillance state, and climate change. dryingTracksuit also reports a similar pre-scratch world, where nuclear warfare and self-reinforcing climate change made much of the world uninhabitable approximately forty years before Sburb.
There are approximately 12 more reports of dystopian pre-scratch societies and five more reports of unrestrictive post-scratch societies. The easiest generalization to start with is that most dystopian pre-scratch societies run "too long" - there was a stage at which Sburb could have been run on the hardware and the society was both connected and unrestricted enough to allow unapproved connections such as Sburb to run on network wires. As the Reckoning timer seeded with the frog temple may hold as many as 6 billion years on it, an oversight of ten to fifty years is not all that much of a difference. However, it is enough to let society spiral out of control.
I also have one (probably apocryphal) report of a post-scratch session simultaneously split between an unrestrictive and restrictive society due to a time differential between several of the Player meteors, which I will address later.
----
Let's go back to the purpose of a Scratch. Theory, and what documentation is known, both substantiate that the purpose of a Scratch is to alter details of a timeline so that the next group of players is better-equipped to play a game. In most of these cases, this means that the new group of players will play in a society that has more of an emphasis on several of the following: violence, strategy/tactics, music, architecture, physics/spacetime theory, and/or puzzles similar to those in Sburb. In practice, to enforce "interests" is usually facilitated by the installation/debug NPC, who generally accomplishes this by creating a highly authoritarian society.
It is generally known that the vast majority of our Trolls come from post-scratch worlds. Two pre-scratch Troll worlds are known; they still contain an Empire, but the nobles promote social safety nets through a strong cultural noblesse oblige, and Trolls in these worlds may even be raised by either their Ancestor/guardian or an interested outsider. Pre-scratch trolls also do not require sopor to sleep.
The fact is that pre-scratch societies have much more of a variance than post-scratch societies. Pre-scratch societies can range from pacifists living off the land, all the way to the "clock ran too long" dystopias mentioned above. Post-scratch societies inevitably have long histories of dystopia, although it is still possible for the dystopia to be overthrown.
----
An interesting, although apparently unsubstantiated, tale that has been circulating these forums for timestamps goes something like this: After a scratch, the four post-scratch children were indeed sent to their home planet on meteors. However, two of the meteors landed in the 1990s sweet spot for Sburb players, and two landed just over four hundred years in the future, in a dystopian society wherein their species was essentially dead. Somehow, their chat client was threaded through a transparent Trollian-type timetrav encryption, so that the four were unaware that they were in different time periods for several years. I find this difficult to believe (why would you conceal from your own coplayers the year of your landing?); however, if the report is reliable, it provides an interesting case study for the general timeline of an Sburb-bearing society.
The "general pre-scratch" society of the early to mid 2000s is one of the best psychological environments for an Sburb player to come from, with the detriment that they will generally have less fighting experience and less Game-relevant knowledge. A "general post-scratch" society, which (depending on the world) can be generated as early as 2005 or as late as 2350, is often a military dictatorship, inevitably established with the aid of the session installation/debug NPC, and places a significant emphasis on glorification of violence. The new world order, as I'll call it, is rarely if ever established by a clean break; certain portions of its influence are visible to those who look closely for up to fifty years beforehand, due to the installation/debug NPC's early intervention. It is possible for Guardians to die in attempts to prevent this from happening. Approximately one-third of post-scratch children no longer have a living Guardian at time of entry (the comparable number for pre-scratch is less than one in a hundred).
It may be interesting to note that "clock ran too long" pre-scratch dystopias generally have fewer surviving Guardians, older average players, and greater combat experience, making them significantly akin to post-scratch players in several regards.
It could be speculated that (for whatever reason) leaving a society too long makes it decay naturally, and the NPC may merely wedge open the cracks to hasten the process and/or install a dictator immediately before or after a societal collapse to maintain order and mandate activities that promote Sburb preparedness.
The main detriment for post-scratch players, however, is the fact that many of us enter the Game with pre-existing mental damage and less emotional intelligence than pre-scratch counterparts. Preliminary surveys seem to suggest that post-scratch players have and maintain a rate of mental disorders in all subsequent sessions that is significantly higher than pre-scratch baseline; at least 95% of post-scratch replayers to respond to the surveys have reported chronic mental illness (whether neurontological or game-mediated), long-term Corruption problems, and/or symptoms suggesting the aforementioned). This rate is approximately 80% for pre-scratch replayers. It should also be noted, however, that post-scratch replayers have a higher survival rate, so this may skew the results; the survey was not controlled for number of sessions.
----
In conclusion: Post-scratch societies are generally significantly more dystopic due to the influences of the NPC as well as general societal decay resulting from the greater length of time involved. Players from pre-scratch dystopias often have more similarities to their post-scratch counterparts than to pre-scratch non-dystopia players. Post-scratch players are significantly more prepared for the physical rigors of the game, and survive longer than pre-scratch players. However, post-scratch players are often not prepared for Game-related emotional challenges, and may maintain a significantly higher than average rate of mental disorders in all subsequent sessions.
Data that may improve these conclusions includes the following:
* Average runtime of a post-scratch first session compared to a pre-scratch first session
* Study of the distribution of zero-dates in various pre-Sburb worlds (Jesus Christ Anchoring Effect)
* A more scientific survey on the rate of mental disorders in replayers in general (this may depend on a reliable way to detect neurontological mental illness, which we do not yet have)
* More observations on the actions and goals of pre-scratch NPCs vs. post-scratch NPCs
As always, if you have information, drop me a PM through the timetrav tunnel, and if you have questions/comments about the Game or us Replayers, please direct them to Sburb.org proper and NOT my blog comments!
----
Special thanks to ventricularPipefitter, dryingTracksuit, fishingWugong, dilutedMilk, imitativeAlimentary, and someone who wishes to remain anonymous for providing information, genesisArtificer and stagnantAnimus from the Seer Network for numeric data, and my requisite apology to tenaciousTheseus for punching him in the face.
Aelfrida has been missing from her blog for an unusually long time. Feel free to comment on this, especially if your character has not been in chat recently and therefore has no idea why she "disappeared"!
Further posts in the thread can be assumed to be blog comments.))
==========================================
Why are Scratched Worlds Usually Dystopic?
Timestamp 40-9378521
lucidChthonia (8)
----
Full disclosure: I am post-scratch and will talk about post-scratch worlds in first person as well as third.
Scratching, and the temporal mechanics that it involves, are a well-studied concept among the Seers and FAQ writers. (See also my post on 25-2317, "Reset Switch: Temporal Meteor Locations and the Scratch", the Beat Mesa FAQ by rollercoasterRemix, and the forum thread "Did You Come from a Scratched World?" started on 16-88.) They are also a ripe subject for speculative writing, as in the legendary "The World That Should have Been" short story by anthropologicalLicense. (Which, by the way, I recommend, if you have a good twenty-minute block you need filled. It's a well-thought-out, thrilling, if a touch preachy, tale.)
Today, though, I wish to tackle something a little "softer" about Scratched worlds. Their government and culture.
Let's go back to the theory, first. A Scratch is intended to rearrange the starting conditions of the home Sburb world, in order to afford its destined Players a greater chance of survival. To this end, the entry order of the baby-carriers is reversed, sending former Kids to the home world before the former Guardians.
In a survey done through dongle-mediated scrying, it is statistically significant that post-scratch first-session children tend to have slightly higher echeladder caps (418) than their pre-scratch analogues (402). Furthermore, post-scratch children tend to have more echeladder levels earned on Entrance (47) than their pre-scratch counterparts (19), and average approximately 0.6 more weaponkinds (1.7) than pre-scratch kids (1.1).
The average numeric calendar date associated with post-scratch worlds is significantly higher than that associated with pre-scratch worlds (however, due to the Jesus Christ Anchoring Effect the numeric calendar date is not pinned to the same zero date in different worlds, so this is not necessarily a reliable metric). Pre-scratch children generally land between pre-entry 1986 and 1999, and most frequently Enter between 2005 and 2015. For post-scratch children these dates are, respectively, 1990-2074, and 2023-2086.
However, the numbers merely scratch the surface. To look closer, we need to know what kind of culture differences there are between pre-scratch and post-scratch worlds. First, extremes, and then generalizations.
----
The best (i.e. least dystopian) post-scratch world is that of imitativeAlimentary and his group. The oppressive society that the sburb kids were probably "intended" to grow up in was overthrown twenty years before the group's Entrance, thus resulting in what IA will insist is the "Second Renaissance". To provide an example, drawing from life was rediscovered as a "humanized version of the form of photography" by IA's Guardian, and poetry was not yet known.
The worst known pre-scratch world is that of the late enturbulatedOccupation (condolences accepted on her memorial thread on sburb.org), where Entrance date (2020) was approximately ten years after the average run date. The intervening ten years were ravaged by a malicious upper class, an increasing surveillance state, and climate change. dryingTracksuit also reports a similar pre-scratch world, where nuclear warfare and self-reinforcing climate change made much of the world uninhabitable approximately forty years before Sburb.
There are approximately 12 more reports of dystopian pre-scratch societies and five more reports of unrestrictive post-scratch societies. The easiest generalization to start with is that most dystopian pre-scratch societies run "too long" - there was a stage at which Sburb could have been run on the hardware and the society was both connected and unrestricted enough to allow unapproved connections such as Sburb to run on network wires. As the Reckoning timer seeded with the frog temple may hold as many as 6 billion years on it, an oversight of ten to fifty years is not all that much of a difference. However, it is enough to let society spiral out of control.
I also have one (probably apocryphal) report of a post-scratch session simultaneously split between an unrestrictive and restrictive society due to a time differential between several of the Player meteors, which I will address later.
----
Let's go back to the purpose of a Scratch. Theory, and what documentation is known, both substantiate that the purpose of a Scratch is to alter details of a timeline so that the next group of players is better-equipped to play a game. In most of these cases, this means that the new group of players will play in a society that has more of an emphasis on several of the following: violence, strategy/tactics, music, architecture, physics/spacetime theory, and/or puzzles similar to those in Sburb. In practice, to enforce "interests" is usually facilitated by the installation/debug NPC, who generally accomplishes this by creating a highly authoritarian society.
It is generally known that the vast majority of our Trolls come from post-scratch worlds. Two pre-scratch Troll worlds are known; they still contain an Empire, but the nobles promote social safety nets through a strong cultural noblesse oblige, and Trolls in these worlds may even be raised by either their Ancestor/guardian or an interested outsider. Pre-scratch trolls also do not require sopor to sleep.
The fact is that pre-scratch societies have much more of a variance than post-scratch societies. Pre-scratch societies can range from pacifists living off the land, all the way to the "clock ran too long" dystopias mentioned above. Post-scratch societies inevitably have long histories of dystopia, although it is still possible for the dystopia to be overthrown.
----
An interesting, although apparently unsubstantiated, tale that has been circulating these forums for timestamps goes something like this: After a scratch, the four post-scratch children were indeed sent to their home planet on meteors. However, two of the meteors landed in the 1990s sweet spot for Sburb players, and two landed just over four hundred years in the future, in a dystopian society wherein their species was essentially dead. Somehow, their chat client was threaded through a transparent Trollian-type timetrav encryption, so that the four were unaware that they were in different time periods for several years. I find this difficult to believe (why would you conceal from your own coplayers the year of your landing?); however, if the report is reliable, it provides an interesting case study for the general timeline of an Sburb-bearing society.
The "general pre-scratch" society of the early to mid 2000s is one of the best psychological environments for an Sburb player to come from, with the detriment that they will generally have less fighting experience and less Game-relevant knowledge. A "general post-scratch" society, which (depending on the world) can be generated as early as 2005 or as late as 2350, is often a military dictatorship, inevitably established with the aid of the session installation/debug NPC, and places a significant emphasis on glorification of violence. The new world order, as I'll call it, is rarely if ever established by a clean break; certain portions of its influence are visible to those who look closely for up to fifty years beforehand, due to the installation/debug NPC's early intervention. It is possible for Guardians to die in attempts to prevent this from happening. Approximately one-third of post-scratch children no longer have a living Guardian at time of entry (the comparable number for pre-scratch is less than one in a hundred).
It may be interesting to note that "clock ran too long" pre-scratch dystopias generally have fewer surviving Guardians, older average players, and greater combat experience, making them significantly akin to post-scratch players in several regards.
It could be speculated that (for whatever reason) leaving a society too long makes it decay naturally, and the NPC may merely wedge open the cracks to hasten the process and/or install a dictator immediately before or after a societal collapse to maintain order and mandate activities that promote Sburb preparedness.
The main detriment for post-scratch players, however, is the fact that many of us enter the Game with pre-existing mental damage and less emotional intelligence than pre-scratch counterparts. Preliminary surveys seem to suggest that post-scratch players have and maintain a rate of mental disorders in all subsequent sessions that is significantly higher than pre-scratch baseline; at least 95% of post-scratch replayers to respond to the surveys have reported chronic mental illness (whether neurontological or game-mediated), long-term Corruption problems, and/or symptoms suggesting the aforementioned). This rate is approximately 80% for pre-scratch replayers. It should also be noted, however, that post-scratch replayers have a higher survival rate, so this may skew the results; the survey was not controlled for number of sessions.
----
In conclusion: Post-scratch societies are generally significantly more dystopic due to the influences of the NPC as well as general societal decay resulting from the greater length of time involved. Players from pre-scratch dystopias often have more similarities to their post-scratch counterparts than to pre-scratch non-dystopia players. Post-scratch players are significantly more prepared for the physical rigors of the game, and survive longer than pre-scratch players. However, post-scratch players are often not prepared for Game-related emotional challenges, and may maintain a significantly higher than average rate of mental disorders in all subsequent sessions.
Data that may improve these conclusions includes the following:
* Average runtime of a post-scratch first session compared to a pre-scratch first session
* Study of the distribution of zero-dates in various pre-Sburb worlds (Jesus Christ Anchoring Effect)
* A more scientific survey on the rate of mental disorders in replayers in general (this may depend on a reliable way to detect neurontological mental illness, which we do not yet have)
* More observations on the actions and goals of pre-scratch NPCs vs. post-scratch NPCs
As always, if you have information, drop me a PM through the timetrav tunnel, and if you have questions/comments about the Game or us Replayers, please direct them to Sburb.org proper and NOT my blog comments!
----
Special thanks to ventricularPipefitter, dryingTracksuit, fishingWugong, dilutedMilk, imitativeAlimentary, and someone who wishes to remain anonymous for providing information, genesisArtificer and stagnantAnimus from the Seer Network for numeric data, and my requisite apology to tenaciousTheseus for punching him in the face.
