Tag Archives: complex

Vested Interest

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Systems can be fragile, only working under ideal conditions. Other times, they can be robust, designed to work even under inhospitable conditions. A particularly robust system can have the quality of being biased towards self-preservation. Not a bad thing in and of itself.

Problems arise when a system that includes the input of intelligent designers (as might be the case with computer systems and technical engineers) has a morally-irresponsible bottom line.

Many systems, however, are completely incapable of being personal. And good thing, too! Can you imagine if a hurricane was fully aware of the impact it was having on human life and local ecosystems? If they were aware and could do something about it yet elect not to, then they’re more than just destructive forces, they would be evil entities. If they’re aware of their impacts but can’t change anything, assuming they would if they could, then they come away from the experience carrying extreme guilt. Considering how unpreventable they are, extending said extreme weather system’s sensitivity to such a degree would only torture the poor cyclone with guilt and self-loathing (if it were biased to favour the well-being of living beings. There’s nothing saying that that must be the case). All for what? It’s not like it can do anything but follow the course of events as they unfold. A system like that isn’t designed to make it’s own decisions and direct it’s own actions (as far as I am aware. Correct me if I’m wrong). It would appear that such systems follow the teachings of Chaos to the exclusion of all others.

For other systems, it’s too bad they could not be more sensitive to their impacts. Perhaps there’s plenty of potential for intelligent decision-making, but such capability is poorly exercised. A lot of things that we take for granted come from this second kind of system.

Some systems are so complex, however, that intelligent, decision-making stages are too far removed from other stages, ones where, say, consequences are experienced, and where feedback is imprecise at the best of times.

So, too many times, intelligent decision-makers are not even aware that systems they’ve put in place may be causing more harm than good. The focus is in the wrong place (profit, 9 times out of 10). In the pursuit of misguided goals, we make barbaric choices. We’re quick to dismiss ethical concerns we’re confronted with, justifying our actions, minimizing our faults, shifting the focus on ‘greater evils’, twisting the facts, and basically doing anything and everything we can to cocoon ourselves from the negative realities of events we’re directly or indirectly responsible for setting into motion.

If there’s money to be had, we’ll engage and indulge in all manner or inexcusable behaviour, with no more regard for human, animal, plant, or any other natural creation’s inherent dignity than we can get away with neglecting (and even abusing) in the court of law.

And even then, with enough money on our side, it’s perhaps easier to pay the wrong people in the right places off than actually grow a sense of real responsibility and start making some genuinely good decisions. It’s more profitable to keep existing systems in place, and improve them only towards widening said profit margins than to do just about anything and everything else within our power to influence and control.

When we have these kinds of deeply vested interests, we will go so far as to destroy the pioneering spirits of entrepreneuring individuals, people with dreams of changing the status quo for the better, and keen vision for how to do so. [edit: while there’s an incredible number of awesome humans with commendable values, unless or until the kind of humans I have talking about (the kind who exploit anything and everything out of greed) are dealt with, I don’t see good odds of being allowed outside this universe (and go any other place, like Drendast where universes intersect)]

It doesn’t matter who we are. We all need to take a good hard look inside every once in a while and, with as little bias in our own favour as we humanly can (never a perfect check and balance, but it’s better than nothing), admit to ourselves what patterns of behaviour we have in our lives which contribute towards the perpetuating of systems that, in all seriousness, insult the very core of our beings, ultimately bringing harm to the well being and dignity of ourselves and others here on the only planet we’ve presently got.

Oh, and it never hurts to gain the perspective of others, especially others who can be trusted to be honest. How do we know who those others might be? We can never be sure (another imperfect check and balance), but if the feedback we get from others is ever uncomfortable, odds are it isn’t being candy coated, and that, at least, is never a bad sign.

Nothing To Do With Thermal Lensing

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I have an idea, but it’s hard to explain. It’s about heat and life and stuff.

And, after a few days of being stagnant in the keeping-up-with-blogging department, I feel as though that is precisely what I should ramble about today: my difficulty explaining things.

The idea that I had been struggling with trying to share has lead to a deeper vice of mine, and that is that I struggle with describing things that are of a somewhat unfamiliar nature, period. If it were up to me to describe what snow looked and felt like to members of an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon in order to not be cooked alive (for whatever reason), I’d be screwed. Doesn’t matter how well acquainted I am with the concept, it’s others whom I must enlighten.

So, when I want to write a book that’s intended to be chock full of interesting, weird, abstract concepts, and each of those concepts reinforce other strange ones, I am forced to go at it from a developmental approach: Start with the basics, establish a foundation, then build up.

The reason I find this difficult is because I want the reader to be plunged right in. I want to throw a reasonably diverse mixture of both familiar and unfamiliar ideas at them from the outset, so that way, there’d be things they can latch on to, and there’d be things they’re left wondering about.

From there, I fully intend on developing those unfamiliar threads in such a way that they gradually evolve in the reader’s mind, like a jigsaw puzzle slowly coming together, until they eventually become something they find intimately familiar. And/or, in the weaving of other concepts and threads, I will put a foundation together in such a way that all of the unfamiliar bits (which, to be fair, I would only mete out a reasonably little at a time) become instantly clear all at once, as though the reader were given the cipher for a crucial code they’ve been unable to solve for a long time.

So, my idea involving heat and life and stuff could be an unknown concept that instantly pops when the right information comes along, or one that slowly evolves over time, or, more likely, one that’s best left alone until the right fundamental principles that the universe of the story happens to abide by are first established. But therein lies another difficulty: it seems to me almost that all of the story’s universe’s fundamental principles are, themselves, unfamiliar and abstract.

So.

What does my story, Elyen, have in common with anything a human from Earth alive shortly after the turn of the 21st century might find familiar?

– The main characters are usually humanoid, so there’s often strong physical resemblance
– There are, more often than not, weather events that are similar to what we might expect here on earth
– Though the grander setting is nothing at all like Earth, from the perspective of a given humanoid character on the ground, the existence of mountains, bodies of water, forests, plains, desserts, etc., are all Earth-like enough for most readers to connect with
– Fantastic technologies exist which should be explainable in a way that fans of Sci-fi would have little difficulty appreciating
– Various forms of magic exist that fans of Fantasy will have little trouble understanding

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s just a cursory list for now. Here’s a list of some of the concepts I’m toying with which, I believe, are less common and therefore much trickier (but not impossible) to explain:

– “The Singularity” is the name of a type of major event that happens at various points throughout the history of the people of the story (yes, as in, there’s been more than one such event in Drendain history)
– Drendast is the name of the planet most of the events of the story takes place on. Drendast is a mega Aether-world, so large that it has multiple stars the size of Earth’s sun revolving around it, and not the other way around
– Most of the characters and beings on Drendast are photovores, naturally evolved [or, in some cases, genetically engineered] to subsist solely on the nearly perpetual light from the planet’s suns
– Physics on an Aether-world like Drendast are conveniently exotic. ‘Anomalies’, such as tri-pole magnetism, are taken for granted here
– The overarching philosophy behind the story incorporates, among other things, an offshoot of Taoism, which, if I understand anything at all about, only proves to me that I understand nothing at all
– Drendast happens to serve as a kind of ‘hub’ within it’s local multiverse, bridging connections via Conduits (think wormholes and you’ve basically got it) between universes both near and far.

And there’s loads and loads more concepts besides that.

The point is that I don’t always know where to start when it comes time to describe something. When I want to talk about a race of beings based on heat (rather than, say, carbon), I soon find myself struggling to explain their environment and behaviour, both of which involve (from the what I assume is a typical human perspective) altered states of reality, vaguely spiritual themes, Immersion (another very key concept I’m aiming to expound upon in the near future), and so on and so forth. Not easy.

Suddenly, explaining just one thing (what this race of heat-based beings are all about) is no longer just one thing, but many things, each of which are equally tricky.

I’m long winded. I’m still new to this whole blogging thing, and I don’t think I’ve quite figured out the most appropriate and tasteful format for presenting ideas, especially in terms of length, so, my biggest concern is not going on and on forever. To this end, I think I’m gonna start explaining concepts in parts. Starting after this blog, if I want to share a complex idea, expect to see it presented in chunks.

Or maybe I can do up a sort of wiki reference page, since I’m almost certain to reference earlier blog entries when presenting new ones related to Elyen. Something for me to look into. Anyways, that’d be all for now.