Glorious Anonymous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jewhqvp9Na8&feature=related

Watch that video.

Now, the internet allows for some pretty crazy things, but the most impressive I feel is Anonymous, humanity's first collective/hive-mind. Now, Anonymous right now is actually pretty small, but she is powerfull. My thoughts: Should the internet allow such entities to exist within Thrive? Would they all be as violently liberal as Anonymous is? How will we handle them?

Always remember: When in doubt, copy Earth.

Tenebrarum wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jewhqvp9Na8&feature=related

Watch that video.

Now, the internet allows for some pretty crazy things, but the most impressive I feel is Anonymous, humanity's first collective/hive-mind. Now, Anonymous right now is actually pretty small, but she is powerfull. My thoughts: Should the internet allow such entities to exist within Thrive? Would they all be as violently liberal as Anonymous is? How will we handle them?

Always remember: When in doubt, copy Earth.

Hmmm... This will be very tricky to implement. I think that our Anonymous is violently liberal because of the nature of our internet (sharing of all things to everyone). And all equivalent forms of media sharing that may be invented on other planets will eventually become decentralized, and thus take on the nature of our internet. So i think yes. The invention of the internet would allow the government to restrict it. Even if all nations take part in this at once, i feel that the really computer-savvy people would in fact cyber-attack the restrictions. What we need is a way for this to be shown. Would it cause -order and -stability? Or would there just appear a notification that reads: "Your restriction of media: (internet) is failing.", and then the ability to restrict it costs more and more to uphold until it is finally impossible (although China seem to be managing it...)?

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Hmmm... This will be very tricky to implement. I think that our Anonymous is violently liberal because of the nature of our internet (sharing of all things to everyone). And all equivalent forms of media sharing that may be invented on other planets will eventually become decentralized, and thus take on the nature of our internet. So i think yes. The invention of the internet would allow the government to restrict it. Even if all nations take part in this at once, i feel that the really computer-savvy people would in fact cyber-attack the restrictions. What we need is a way for this to be shown. Would it cause -order and -stability? Or would there just appear a notification that reads: "Your restriction of media: (internet) is failing.", and then the ability to restrict it costs more and more to uphold until it is finally impossible (although China seem to be managing it...)?

Alright, It would drastically increase the importance of freedom, then yes? I feel that China is managing it simply because restrinction was so enforced even beforehand, the people aren't shocked and so the fight is minimal.

Now, while I'd love to have Hive-minds be able to pop up, it might be a little difficult to do, so ignore that for now.

I'd say that Anonymii would cause cultural spread to massivly increase from those nations that invent it, but would also make cencorship (Of virtually anything) almost completely impossible in those nations. All nations with the internet would have a massive jump towards liberalism and it's ilk. Propaganda and bigotry would suffer a blow, and castes would become harder and harder to maintain. Protests would come faster and more frequently, and intelectual piracy rates would skyrocket.

Tenebrarum wrote:

Alright, It would drastically increase the importance of freedom, then yes? I feel that China is managing it simply because restrinction was so enforced even beforehand, the people aren't shocked and so the fight is minimal.

Now, while I'd love to have Hive-minds be able to pop up, it might be a little difficult to do, so ignore that for now.

I'd say that Anonymii would cause cultural spread to massivly increase from those nations that invent it, but would also make cencorship (Of virtually anything) almost completely impossible in those nations. All nations with the internet would have a massive jump towards liberalism and it's ilk. Propaganda and bigotry would suffer a blow, and castes would become harder and harder to maintain. Protests would come faster and more frequently, and intelectual piracy rates would skyrocket.

Now how to put that in terms of the game... We could have all Media Corporations suffer massive losses for the piracy. And adding more unrest from low freedoms should be easy enough as well. And if the nation already had low freedoms settings then it wouldn't have so much of an effect. But i still have no clue as far as limiting propaganda. Maybe just make it harder and harder to restrict media? And the government's influence in ethics and values could drop, too.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Now how to put that in terms of the game... We could have all Media Corporations suffer massive losses for the piracy. And adding more unrest from low freedoms should be easy enough as well. And if the nation already had low freedoms settings then it wouldn't have so much of an effect. But i still have no clue as far as limiting propaganda. Maybe just make it harder and harder to restrict media? And the government's influence in ethics and values could drop, too.

Sounds about right.

I was of the mind that you could set certain things to be propaganda. Is this not true?

Tenebrarum wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Now how to put that in terms of the game... We could have all Media Corporations suffer massive losses for the piracy. And adding more unrest from low freedoms should be easy enough as well. And if the nation already had low freedoms settings then it wouldn't have so much of an effect. But i still have no clue as far as limiting propaganda. Maybe just make it harder and harder to restrict media? And the government's influence in ethics and values could drop, too.

Sounds about right.

I was of the mind that you could set certain things to be propaganda. Is this not true?

I figured that propaganda would be restricting non-government media and spending lots of resources trying to influence things in the NE. I don't think we have a set mechanic for it, really.

restriction is not necessary, but it indeed helps a lot

US_of_Alaska wrote:

I figured that propaganda would be restricting non-government media and spending lots of resources trying to influence things in the NE. I don't think we have a set mechanic for it, really.

Well, if we have non-government media than presumably we have government media, which would prove ineffectual against Anonymii.

Biggest issue: Are these mere mechanics or will we actually have Anonymii handing out threats, anouncing invasions, etc.?

Tenebrarum wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

I figured that propaganda would be restricting non-government media and spending lots of resources trying to influence things in the NE. I don't think we have a set mechanic for it, really.

Well, if we have non-government media than presumably we have government media, which would prove ineffectual against Anonymii.

Biggest issue: Are these mere mechanics or will we actually have Anonymii handing out threats, anouncing invasions, etc.?

I think it can be handled through mechanics, or possibly Rebel Population.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Tenebrarum wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

I figured that propaganda would be restricting non-government media and spending lots of resources trying to influence things in the NE. I don't think we have a set mechanic for it, really.

Well, if we have non-government media than presumably we have government media, which would prove ineffectual against Anonymii.

Biggest issue: Are these mere mechanics or will we actually have Anonymii handing out threats, anouncing invasions, etc.?

I think it can be handled through mechanics, or possibly Rebel Population.

In that case mechanics. Anonymous declared war on Australia, but it wouldn't be a physical war.

Tenebrarum wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Well, if we have non-government media than presumably we have government media, which would prove ineffectual against Anonymii.

Biggest issue: Are these mere mechanics or will we actually have Anonymii handing out threats, anouncing invasions, etc.?

I think it can be handled through mechanics, or possibly Rebel Population.

In that case mechanics. Anonymous declared war on Australia, but it wouldn't be a physical war.[/quote]
But when we think about what kind of war they are really declaring, all they are doing is removing the filter. So, really it'd just remove the ability to place media restriction.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

But when we think about what kind of war they are really declaring, all they are doing is removing the filter. So, really it'd just remove the ability to place media restriction.

As I said, let mechanics handle it.

Also: All nations with internet access should be treated as sharing borders.

Tenebrarum wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

But when we think about what kind of war they are really declaring, all they are doing is removing the filter. So, really it'd just remove the ability to place media restriction.

As I said, let mechanics handle it.

Also: All nations with internet access should be treated as sharing borders.

I guess you mean diplomatically and culturally? All SCs could see all other SCs living conditions?

US_of_Alaska wrote:

I guess you mean diplomatically and culturally? All SCs could see all other SCs living conditions?

Yes, but to a lesser extent economically. The amount of time transport would take would still be the same, but all other effects would act as though they were neighbors.

Anonymous can be as violent and malevolent as they want, because they are anonymous: they have no fear because of the fact that they are a crowd. It's called crowd mentality, and it happens to everyone within a large group of people- you become less risk-averse because you believe that there will be fewer consequenses because the crowd will help you. This is why normally tame people are violent when they riot.

I think this sort of mentality could easily be programmed in to the game. If a creature iis surrounded by many others of its own species (or species that it is comfortable with), its aggression will increase.

~sciocont wrote:

Anonymous can be as violent and malevolent as they want, because they are anonymous: they have no fear because of the fact that they are a crowd. It's called crowd mentality, and it happens to everyone within a large group of people- you become less risk-averse because you believe that there will be fewer consequenses because the crowd will help you. This is why normally tame people are violent when they riot.

I think this sort of mentality could easily be programmed in to the game. If a creature iis surrounded by many others of its own species (or species that it is comfortable with), its aggression will increase.

Not nessicarily. Our evolutionary history provides us with that mentality: safety in numbers. And it's not nessicarily aggresion either, it's lowered inhibitions.

Tenebrarum wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Anonymous can be as violent and malevolent as they want, because they are anonymous: they have no fear because of the fact that they are a crowd. It's called crowd mentality, and it happens to everyone within a large group of people- you become less risk-averse because you believe that there will be fewer consequenses because the crowd will help you. This is why normally tame people are violent when they riot.

I think this sort of mentality could easily be programmed in to the game. If a creature iis surrounded by many others of its own species (or species that it is comfortable with), its aggression will increase.

Not nessicarily. Our evolutionary history provides us with that mentality: safety in numbers. And it's not nessicarily aggresion either, it's lowered inhibitions.

When you look into evolutionary biology, you'll see that things like this are quite common, because this kind of behavior is actually helpful to social species in the wild; it allows them to do more than they could alone. we can then effectively treat this as a universal method of behavior because of the very high probability that it will be developed through natural selection.

There's many sorts of behaviors that are exhibited by many animals that are totally unrelated to each other. These behaviors evolved separately in many unrelated species because they work- they are an example of convergent behavioral evolution. One of the easiest of these to identify is consciousness, which has emerged over and over again in many species.

~sciocont wrote:

When you look into evolutionary biology, you'll see that things like this are quite common, because this kind of behavior is actually helpful to social species in the wild; it allows them to do more than they could alone. we can then effectively treat this as a universal method of behavior because of the very high probability that it will be developed through natural selection.

What about very territorial creatures? They'd take far longer to develop sentience or technology, but it's still possible. And anyways, aggresion is definately not the right term for this. If so, we'd have people just start punching eachother if they were in a crowd. In fact, the term crowd itself is too broad. This doesn't effect large numbers of people just sitting in a train station.

~sciocont wrote:

There's many sorts of behaviors that are exhibited by many animals that are totally unrelated to each other. These behaviors evolved separately in many unrelated species because they work- they are an example of convergent behavioral evolution. One of the easiest of these to identify is consciousness, which has emerged over and over again in many species.

Um... Yes... That's true, but I fail to see the relevence to the current topic...

Here on Earth we have quite intelligent octopi that can even manage to use more complex tools, but they are not social in any way, in fact they are best at doing all alone. Technological and cultural development of these species would be much slower, but still possible, because where humans excell in numbers, members of these species could manage it all alone.

Tenebrarum wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

When you look into evolutionary biology, you'll see that things like this are quite common, because this kind of behavior is actually helpful to social species in the wild; it allows them to do more than they could alone. we can then effectively treat this as a universal method of behavior because of the very high probability that it will be developed through natural selection.

What about very territorial creatures? They'd take far longer to develop sentience or technology, but it's still possible. And anyways, aggresion is definately not the right term for this. If so, we'd have people just start punching eachother if they were in a crowd. In fact, the term crowd itself is too broad. This doesn't effect large numbers of people just sitting in a train station.

Excellent point. we need a good efinition for both.

Quote :

~sciocont wrote:

There's many sorts of behaviors that are exhibited by many animals that are totally unrelated to each other. These behaviors evolved separately in many unrelated species because they work- they are an example of convergent behavioral evolution. One of the easiest of these to identify is consciousness, which has emerged over and over again in many species.

Um... Yes... That's true, but I fail to see the relevence to the current topic...

We need to remember that aliens will only be as different as natural selection will make them- our society may not be as different from theirs as we think, because socioeties that don't work collapse.

What the duece, people. Anonymous is not some powerful entity. Anonymous is the placeholder for an unrevealed identity.

Sure, it was used as a psuedonym on a certain popular image-board during a so-called "operation" against scientology, but society's general view on this whole anonymous thing is ridiculous.

THE PEOPLE THAT MAKE THESE VIDEOS ARE TROLLING YOU. ANONYMOUS HAS NO MORE POWER THAN ME OR YOU. Unless of course, you mean the power to annoy. 4chan has that more than enough power to annoy the whole of Belgium. Well, assuming at least some of them can speak dutch.

ANYONE CAN ORGANISE A DDoS ATTACK ON A FEW WEB SERVERS. You really only need like fifty people with high-bandwidth lines (Apparently rampant in America (Belgium you Australian government)) can take out a host with a simple packet flooding program (I mean god, those programs can be written in as little as twenty lines of code(assuming you are using winsock, in unix it's even less lines of code, seriously)), on a host not designed to handle huge amounts of traffic.


Also, things like the widely touted Time magazine vote rigging was in fact mostly the work of about a dozen core people, post captcha. Pre-captcha, the vote rigging was done pretty much by zombocom (Oh my god, the identity of an ANONYMOUS????? WHAT???) when he discovered the salt for the md5 hash and wrote a simple voting program, and distributed on 4chan to automatically spam a certain amount of votes in order to spell MARBLECAKE. Anyway, my point is

People like this (meaning someone with the technical knowledge to rig online voting such as the Time magazine rigging) exist all over the world without being attributed to "Anonymous" even though their identity happens to remain, well, anonymous. And a small percentage of people on 4chan tend to be very loud about their "friends" with technological knowledge, making it seem like something like, say, Anonymous, to be all-powerful, when really, there is only another small percentage of people with any real skill (that dont actually draw attention to themselves like the loud stupid ones). while the rest of the people on 4chan actually, oh i dont know, PUT UP IMAGES. CAUSE. ITS AN IMAGE BOARD.

Its reasons like this that im glad Britain is turning into a Totalitarian Police state with a hint of Big Brother.

Bashinerox wrote:

*snip*

We're more talking about the general idea of anonymity's affect on behavior. "Anonymous" was just a nice draw-in to the topic.

Bashinerox wrote:

What the duece, people. Anonymous is not some powerful entity. Anonymous is the placeholder for an unrevealed identity.

Sure, it was used as a psuedonym on a certain popular image-board during a so-called "operation" against scientology, but society's general view on this whole anonymous thing is ridiculous.

THE PEOPLE THAT MAKE THESE VIDEOS ARE TROLLING YOU. ANONYMOUS HAS NO MORE POWER THAN ME OR YOU. Unless of course, you mean the power to annoy. 4chan has that more than enough power to annoy the whole of Belgium. Well, assuming at least some of them can speak dutch.

ANYONE CAN ORGANISE A DDoS ATTACK ON A FEW WEB SERVERS. You really only need like fifty people with high-bandwidth lines (Apparently rampant in America (Belgium you Australian government)) can take out a host with a simple packet flooding program (I mean god, those programs can be written in as little as twenty lines of code(assuming you are using winsock, in unix it's even less lines of code, seriously)), on a host not designed to handle huge amounts of traffic.


Also, things like the widely touted Time magazine vote rigging was in fact mostly the work of about a dozen core people, post captcha. Pre-captcha, the vote rigging was done pretty much by zombocom (Oh my god, the identity of an ANONYMOUS????? WHAT???) when he discovered the salt for the md5 hash and wrote a simple voting program, and distributed on 4chan to automatically spam a certain amount of votes in order to spell MARBLECAKE. Anyway, my point is

People like this (meaning someone with the technical knowledge to rig online voting such as the Time magazine rigging) exist all over the world without being attributed to "Anonymous" even though their identity happens to remain, well, anonymous. And a small percentage of people on 4chan tend to be very loud about their "friends" with technological knowledge, making it seem like something like, say, Anonymous, to be all-powerful, when really, there is only another small percentage of people with any real skill (that dont actually draw attention to themselves like the loud stupid ones). while the rest of the people on 4chan actually, oh i dont know, PUT UP IMAGES. CAUSE. ITS AN IMAGE BOARD.

None of that really goes against the idea that internet users will destroy internet filters...

Bashinerox wrote:

angrypost is angry

My point here was using Anonymous as a jumping off point to show the sort of effect the internet has on large groups of people. I am in no way claiming Anonymous has powers beyond what we know they have. In fact their only real weapon is not numbers as they say, but the ability to deseminate (sp?) information widely and quickly.

Now, back on topic, are the mechanics here good?