Jeffinar and the Imperium

The pen is somewhat ornamented - along with the brightly coloured, textured grip which is mostly practical, it has decorative etching mostly around the end, in an abstract but highly symmetrical pattern vaguely reminiscent of seaweed. The outer protective casing is clear in the middle to show the level of the internal ink reservoir, which is suspended in what looks like a more flexible clear material. The 'nib' is a roller-ball mechanism; the steady flow seems to be mostly provided by the material properties of the ink itself.

"Because B wants the world to be a better place, and the world where A can bake a cake is better than the world where A can't? It's likely A will be sharing out the cake, in turn, but probably to whoever would most benefit from it, which might not include B.

Obviously we don't all perfectly agree on the optimal solution all of the time, but generally we operate on the principles that doing something is better than being caught in decision paralysis, and realising some value is better than hoarding for the perfect moment, and that other people might have differences in judgement but did try their best to find the best use."

Yompam and Byway Selno re Bosses

"Both Jupital and I work for Langhame - my usual direct organiser-arranger isn't here, ke has a lot of other responsibilities and couldn't be spared - not that I think ke'd have wanted to, I'm not sure ke's ever been on land."

Jeeee and Byway Ikkeh re Retirements

"Yes, it's pretty common - I don't know exactly how long Thessalia's was, some people just need a few weeks, some people take years and then recuperate, and final retirement often lasts a couple of decades?

Often it is some kind of underlying medical problem - it might get less common, once we catch up with your techniques-and-technologies!

It is a pretty big deal - a lot of rotational work goes into caring for retirees. I know some people like to feel that needed, but if it was really something people wanted to do that much, the retirement-ships wouldn't need to run incentive programs for it."

Talaskai to Kriv and Ect Byway re Money

"The translators have 'money' down as either 'unit-of-exchange' or 'unit-of-account-balance' - you're trading in milligrams of something rather than adjusted-service-hours, so it's probably unit-of-exchange?

You're doing, like, sometimes children and adventurers play a game where you all race to a nearby landmark and whoever loses does the dishes? Like that, but for some kind of actual stuff that you use as a unit of exchange. There is a word for it in our language but it's kind of insulting to say adults are doing it, it's 'gambling'.

So a 'for-profit company' is an endeavour-group that only provides - whatever it provides - in return for your, uh, unit-of-exchange or unit-of-account-balance? Like, some endeavour-groups do that kind of thing, when it's not obvious who needs what, or they need some kind of input that's also scarce, and it's worth the effort to take bids for what they're producing?"

Meliashae to Lak Byway re Capitalism

"I... I'm an infotech technician and I am totally out of my depth here." Ke looks around for someone who's free - aha, Thessalia isn't doing anything much! "Thess! Thess, I've done a terrible job at explaining philosophy-of-exchange, please come rescue me?"

Thessalia to Lak Byway re Capitalism

Thessalia bustles over, with some haste but not quite as much as Ferek displayed earlier.

"Hi there! What seems to be the problem? I'm Thessalia Scribemores, I did hear a little of what you were saying, but it seems like there's some kind of misunderstanding going on?"

Meliashae fills her in with a series of high-speed whistles, although primarily they only convey they-do-everything-with-explicit-trade-and-think-we're-not-a-real-civilisation-because-we-don't!

"Oh, well, yes, we do definitely have a place in society for extrinsic reward! The rotational work system that supports the hospital-ships and retirement-ships absolutely depends on it - and I suspect Meliashae emphasised informal exchange arrangements because, no offence dear, ke is in a profession which tends to be quite enthusiastic about work-for-its-own-sake and has perhaps less dependency on scarce material inputs, although computers themselves of course do take up a considerable quantity of scarce material input - but they're just so obviously in demand - and generally by the people who are producing the relevant resources - that it's not an obvious difficulty.

Am I climbing the right mast here, or was something else the difficulty?"

Selno to Yompam

Selno nods. "What's Langhame's area of work, then?"

Ikkeh to Jeeee

Ikkeh nods and gets back to demonstrating the outline of his power plant! Jeeee won't have a lot of existing referents for it, but does Jeeee have any outstanding questions?

Kriv & Ect to Talaskai

"Adjusted service-hours? Adjusted service-hours doing what?" Kriv says, at the same time as Ect says "Betting in your culture is considered childish?"

Yompam and Byway Selno re Langhame

"Langhame's a hospital-ship - possibly the largest, it depends how you measure it! That means our main area of work is providing medical care, and because of our size we've also got a sizeable research-endeavour-division, which is the area I work in."

Tetratopia and Jupital

Hopefully Tetratopian Standard's uniformly distributed maximally distinct consonants and vowels help with the language barrier! Though they are designed to be uniformly distributed and maximally distinct in a hominid throat heard by hominid ears. Tetratopia has Bad computer-generated Kastakian, if that helps? 

(Tetratopia doesn't hear a request-for-clarification in that, alas.) Yep, sharing standard-techniques is important. Here are some culinary principles, check out all the standardized-food-products we've made on the curve defined by what we know about optimal nutrition! 

(Someone listening in the background flags "hey, they didn't mention cryonics", the hypothesis of conspicuously not mentioning things raised to their attention by how Tetratopia conspicuously didn't mention infotech. A couple of ???s back home on that matter, coming up with various theories as to why they'd consider their cryonics to be sensitive, if indeed they do; lots of guesses about how Tetratopia preserving a Kastakian could be an s-risk, or how they're like the last premodern societies and have a taboo on it for some horrible unreason. At about this time, they might notice that there isn't a cryonics protocol in the standard medical procedures given. Nothing yet clearly actionable.)

The delegate is having a bit of trouble distinguishing that description of career-matchmaking-clearancehouses from jobs! Very broad strokes - there is some amount of something that needs to be done, and some amount of something that gets done, and those have to be the same, and the least painful way to make them the same is the thing that needs to be done is converted to the thing plus sending the person who does it some amount of "number" ("money"), and this works-at-all because you can send money to get things done so having money is desirable, we have some theorems about it? Does this describe a career-matchmaking-clearancehouse? If so, how does that differ from career-matchmaking done outside there? (How does that differ from general trade done outside there?) If not, what do career-matchmaking-clearancehouses do extra? 

Prediction markets are like that except it's a contract that pays out some amount of money if a thing happens, so when many people buy and sell these contracts the price is the probability that the thing happens, and people can get lots of money by buying from or selling to people who assign less accurate probabilities, so traders are incentivised directly to get them right and there can't knowingly-be a better source of information because traders would match that, and then you can make decisions based on these probabilities.

Tetratopia does have more standardisation! It's not just interoperability, you get economies of scale and lots of optimisation-power for picking really good standardised things! 

Lak to Thessalia

"You have a place in society for -" he repeats back the Kastakian phonemes for 'extrinsic' "- reward, if I'm right that that's a synonym for 'money' in your language - to explicate my thinking, that's like having a place in your proverbial brain for electrical signals. The part of society that's not 'extrinsic' reward, what is it made of? What holds it together?"

Jeeee and Ikkeh re power plants

Jeeee has a lot of outstanding questions! Ke is especially trying to work out what kind of materials science is missing between the techniques-and-technologies ke knows and what's here, and also trying very hard to dig up some techniques-and-technologies that Kastakia can provide to Byway, perhaps in wind power or hull construction or novel plastic-like composites that use organic ingredients instead of (or as well as) oil-derived ones?

Talaskai and Kriv/Ect Byway on Gambling and Accounts

"Uh, yes, that's why I didn't want to use the word straight up? I mean, adults balance probabilities all the time in order to work out where to, like, send stuff or go to work, but that's kind of gambling with the universe, not with another person?

Adjusted-service-hours is what account balances are made of? Usually it's rotational work - I don't know if that's coming across properly, like, it's work people usually don't want to do for a very long time and often don't really want to do at all, at least not enough that they'd do it without a direct reward? Then whoever issues that account has prices - or tiers, some just do tiers - in adjusted-service-hours for various things, like having a berth with a window or a balcony, or first pick for limited food or activities or whatever?"

Thessalia and Lak Byway on Capitalism

"Yes, extrinsic reward is usually account balances, although it can also be specific scarce goods or services, that's all pretty much covered by 'money' in your language I think, at least the standardised goods that are usually used for exchange?

Most people work for one of the two other varieties of reward, though - intrinsic reward, or improving-the-world.

Intrinsic reward is where people really love what they do, and want to do more of it if they can possibly get the opportunity to do so? I think everyone who's here in the delegation, and the translators and techs that are supporting us, and even some of the security people, are working on that basis here. People motivated by intrinsic reward will actually pay for opportunities to do the work they want to do, if that's a thing that can be done?

Improving-the-world is where people want a specific thing to be true of the world - like, 'nobody goes hungry', or 'kids who want to leave their parents get a boat to leave on', or 'people can recover from this particular kind of cancer', or, well, 'no really dramatic bad things happen because there is suddenly a portal to meet aliens'? They don't necessarily just intrinsically enjoy the work they need to do to make that thing happen enough to do it for that reason alone, but they really want the thing to happen, so that's their source of motivation to do the work.

I'm not quite sure I'm getting what you mean by 'holds it together' - that's not generally considered a good quality, in a direct translation? Obviously it's good if things that need a lot of people to get them done can get enough people to do that - which is why we do use some extrinsic reward if it's really important - but it's incredibly easy to accidentally trap people in a situation they really hate if you give out too much extrinsic reward for things, because they'll take the position with the high extrinsic reward - especially if they can put that reward towards improving-the-world rather than just personal comfort - and feel like they can't give it up, because the cost of losing the extrinsic reward is too high?

We already get that sometimes with improving-the-world motivated people, who burn themselves out because they think the cost to the people they're trying to help will be so much worse than the cost to themselves - and they might be right in some cases, but it's not something that as a society we usually want to encourage, because it has a lot of bad second-order effects like discouraging people from improving-the-world, and burning out people who the trade-off wasn't worth it for."

Jupital and Tetratopia

Excellent set of food schemas, not 100% sure that will translate biologically but it will definitely help Kastakia know how to provide food products for Tetratopia, assuming Tetratopia requires additional food or enjoys novel food inputs?

Ah, so that's actually a description of how rotational work happens - sometimes a career-matchmaking-clearinghouse will recommend rotational work, after all some people do make a career out of things that other people will generally only do rotationally, but most of them are aimed at careers - long-term passion projects? The only work that generates explicit 'money' is rotational work - work that people don't generally want to do for very long, or at all, which is made more palatable by adding to an account balance with some entity that can get the person things they want later - usually that's better amenities in retirement, as that's pretty much the only generally applicable desire?

Things that need to be done that don't have quite as much of a mismatch in needs-to-be-done and people-want-to-do-this generally make up the difference with people who want to work on improving-the-world and are happy to do something that they wouldn't do for its own sake to do that. If nobody feels motivated to do that, and the work isn't essential enough to be rotational work, then it clearly didn't really need to be done?

A career-matchmaking-clearinghouse is usually focused on exposing people to opportunities that they might want to take up because they turn out to really like doing that thing, or that they might want to take up because they want to improve the world and this is a good way of doing it; in some ways rotational work recruitment is a specialised kind of career-matchmaking-clearinghouse, Jupital supposes, yes. Some of them just match people to opportunities they might not have thought of without consulting them, some of them actually have contacts with endeavour-groups who are willing to accept very-likely-short-term members in areas that would normally require training, and thus favour people who'd like to stay a bit longer, so people can try out things they might like but aren't sure about?

General trade - most things, you broadcast or ask some specific person or group for the things you need for something, and someone shows up and provides them, or tells you they're available at a location if you can go there to get them? If the things are particularly scarce or difficult, you might need to submit some kind of persuasive application, or promise the producers some scarce inputs that they need - sometimes this does get complicated enough to almost be 'money', the other kind of rotational work that shows up more and more nowadays is work in mining or manufacturing concerns - which is paid either with credit to an account balance with a retirement-ship that the endeavour-group supplies, or with credit towards getting a share of rare resources for a project later, which can be used in trade onwards? People tend to get twitchy and upset about it when this gets too complicated, though - when too many things are bundled together, it gets harder to make good decisions about them, and people get more anxious about the decisions?

Prediction markets... they, uh, sound like the kind of complicated trading exchange that makes most Kastakians get a terrible case of decision paralysis, or make bad decisions and then get upset because they think they should have made better decisions? Maybe when computers are better this can be more frictionless, like you could write a program to generate the numbers rather than having to look at them yourself? Even with that, Kastakians would probably prefer a version where there was just a published leaderboard, rather than extrinsic-reward riding on it, extrinsic-reward always messes with Kastakians' utility functions, which is why we're very careful with it?

Yes - it's incredibly important that people don't have to waste effort re-inventing the wheel, Jupital is so glad that Tetratopia understand this! Here, a couple of data-access terminals which can hopefully be used by non-Kastakians have finally been set up - Tetratopian techs can get the first go on them, here's how you access the techniques-and-technologies database on each of them, here's how you input your own technical information, these friendly technicians are on hand to help you find the right place in the enormous category tree. If the first thing they want to do is upgrade the terminals or provide a better computing system to base this exchange off, even better, but we do acknowledge that computers are a significant user of scarce material resources and don't expect that?

Ferek is still mostly hovering near Talaskai, but receives a report from one of kis people on the Byway/Imperium fallout, and sends kem to go and hiss/click at Thessalia (and less urgently the other Kastakian delegates talking to Byway people) in a military code that Ferek insisted the Kastakian delegates all learn and the translaters avoid teaching; the message content is approximately 'don't mention the violence'.

Consul Restem, Reren, and a bunch of other auxiliaries leave the main talking area and go to a spot closer to their portal, surrounded by the imposing looking drones carrying halberds, who put up some sort of screen or tent with thick padding or cloth that muffles sound. Drones occasionally enter and leave the tent.

Neksil and Jeffinar

"I apologize on behalf of the Consul – he had to attend to other matters. Your pen is beautiful, and we would love to learn about how to manufacture the roller ball mechanism. We care a lot about our writing utensils.

That is a good goal, but how did this trait of your species come out? Evolutionarily speaking. As a limiting case, an allele which increases the fitness of all others indiscriminately at the expense of all others will surely go extinct. Hm. It's probably group or kin selection, isn't it? But I don't know enough about your species to make hypotheses as to how it would have played out.

It used to be that the mindset you're talking about was much rarer in the Keeper population, but nowadays it's somewhat more common, with people wanting to benefit not just kin, but also non-kin who cannot reciprocate."

Drones emerge from the tent and go towards 'important-looking' people from the Tetratopian and Kastakian delegations, for the latter, specifically Yompam, Jeeee, Talaskai, Thessalia, and Ferek, offering to whisper a message into their ear if they accept, or alternatively offer them a piece of paper to read (which they will hold in their hands to show, rather than offering it simply).

The message will go: "We have received a report of one of ours talking to one of the Bywayeans, specifically Eyyeh, where our delegate Reren revealed many things about our species' biology and psychology as a show of good will. However, the other party stridently refused to reciprocate, preferring to conceal information about themselves, believing us to be hostile when we have made no aggressive actions. We believe that openness is conducive to good relations and trade, and came here with the assumption that other parties will act in good faith. 

We have also found that Byway has no central government, and so this was not a coordinated action and merely that of one individual. However, we have updated significantly upwards on the possibility that Bywayeans are people-who-treat-all-nonformal-gifts-as-free – that is to say, that they only consider formal pre-agreed arrangements. We are not very sure of the first part, but are more sure of the second part – it seems that all intraspecies interactions in Byway are mediated by formal arrangements. We also believe that Bywayeans trade in information, which explains why some members of their delegation are concealing things from each other. This is also the case for us, but not for information which we believe is 'common' in our civilization, which we will freely give out, since giving someone information does not cause you to stop being able to benefit from it, in the same way material goods would. However, we will only freely give it out if we are assured that the same norm is upheld on the other side, which the Bywayeans do not seem to have. Our civilization cares about deontological symmetry and are very willing to adopt prosocial norms so long as both parties agree to adhere to it.

We would advise other delegations to be careful about what information you give to Bywayeans outside of the context of a formal contract for information exchange, and also to, potentially, ask for collateral to ensure the contract is upheld. Since Byway has no central government, it cannot be assured that a state from their civilization would award damages to the injured person in the event of a breach of contract."

Hansil, who was paying attention when the last remna to talk to any Bywayean left Eyyeh, makes his way over to him.

What emotion creeps into Hansil's voice, is petulant impatience. "Did the one talking to you, tell you where they're all going?"

Eyyeh's voice sounds like heavy instrument-cords wound too tightly and off-key. "No, but based on what he did tell me, I hope it's far away from Byway, and fast, and for a long time."

Should Hansil be nervous about the possibility Eyyeh's right about the remna, or ticked off about the prospect Eyyeh cost him his survey results? He's not sure. "Why?"

"Their default ancestral equilibrium was fully-connected threat of theft. They aren't inherently strongly motivated to respect others' property. To keep them from constantly stealing everything off each others' backs such that no productive society is possible, their culture has evolved some kind of memetic structure called a 'government'. That's the other part of why they're so weird - their eusociality is another part, and I don't have a strong idea of how the absence of respect-for-property, the hermaphroditism, and the drone caste, are connected."

"Oh." Hansil says. He scrutinizes the remna conference. He can't eke out any meaning in the way the psychedelic fabrics and tentacles are milling about, other than that those big mean-looking faces don't look happy. (In theory, that should have literally zero bearing on whether they actually are happy, given that he's reading signals that evolved within the intraspecific signaling equilibria of an entirely alien species. In theory. In practice, the entire fabric of sanity has been shredded to patch scrap, and the aliens make human expressions.)

Hansil supposes he's glad in retrospect that Hansil didn't give Cinsal his true bid price for Linsal filling out the survey - but against an alien race of mutual thieves, that seems like it'd been probably a hollow victory. "What did you tell them?"

"That I proudly declined to be the final embarrassment of my species by immediately divulging reciprocal detail." Eyyeh side-glares Hansil. "Sir Hindsight me at the peril of your own self-belief."

"I'm not going to," says Hansil. He continues watching the remna conference. His genius is in natural philosophy, always has been. He might sorely regret losing the fantasy of late-night talks with brilliant remna scientists about the relative psychologies of their two species, but that dream was a distant impossibility all along anyway if the remna are as bad as Eyyeh says. The adversarial social game is not his melody, and he knows enough to respect Eyyeh's negotiating prowess. At least far enough to assume that Eyyeh hadn't made any mistakes that would be obvious to him. Probably. "We should warn everybody." Eyyeh nods. The two of them walk down the tables and communicate what's going on with the remna as efficiently as they can. Any nearby Kastakians hear them clearly. The other representatives nod in acknowledgement, their expressions revealing various trace amounts of horror, frustration, and anger at Eyyeh's imagined mishandling. Eyyeh keeps his chin up. Maybe Ikkeh could have done better in his place, but it wasn't Ikkeh Reren approached.

Selno to Yompam

Selno makes an expression of chagrin. "I really am sad - I have a co-cultist - co-diagrammatist specifically - who runs a very similar operation to Langhame's, and he'd be much better in my stead for direct trading with kem." He brightens. "But Langhame will get to meet him soon enough. How is the immunotechnology supply side parceled out in Kastakia? Ours is mostly siloed into biotech sellers at various levels of specialization at this point, segregated from medicine operations entirely. But there was a lot more overlap in medicine and biotech ventures a grossyear ago."

Yompam to Selno / Byway plus Interrupters

"Oh, good, you do have religions! I was kind of wondering but we all agreed to park proselytization for the first delegation because the risk of it going extremely wrong was too high; some people who follow particularly evangelism-focussed religions were not at all happy about that, they're a bit worried this might be our only chance, but personally I'm much more of a 'if God wants it done He'll find a way' kind of person..."

At about this point a drone shows up; Yompam agrees to the whisper but about two sentences in says "Oh no that is a long message, please let me read it instead."

Having scanned over the message, ke turns back to Selno, "I'm very sorry for the interruption, it didn't make much sense anyway. Immunotechnology - by which I'm assuming you mean vaccines and antivirals and so on - is often researched best in research-endeavour-divisions of hospital-ships, just because the cases come to us - sometimes an external endeavour-group will have a great idea, test in some lab and animal models and then show up to the hospital-ship to do the last steps, but usually that means we essentially just absorb them for the duration?

'Siloed' has some interesting implications if the translation has got it right - I am not really an expert on philosophy-of-exchange but do your biotech sellers really not share technologies-and-techniques? Obviously sometimes you're working on something and you're not sure enough of it yet to stake any of your reputation on it by publishing, but in a persistent fashion?"

And then a Kastakian with a taser and riot baton in kis belt stops by a moment to hiss and click something in Yompam's general direction, which ke waves off with an impatient "Yes, yes" trill.

The Kastakians in general respond to the interruptions thus:

Jeeee immediately asks for the paper from the drone, thanks them politely, and then goes straight back into the interrupted conversation; ke just nods and flicks kis tail at the Kastakian interruption, not even bothering to answer vocally; ke does pause briefly for the Byway message about the Renma, but looks at most a bit puzzled about it.

Talaskai takes the whispered message, starts bouncing with impatience about halfway through, but doesn't ask for it written; ke just waves the drone off with a wing when it's done. Ke gets the Kastakian message direct from Ferek and blatantly ignores kim in a way that is clearly a social snub if anyone is yet understanding Kastakian body language. Ke does listen to the Byway message and responds to it to Kriv / Ect: "I thought there was something off about them!" Ferek covers kis face briefly with kis wing in a cringe about how the Imperium probably heard that.

Thessalia apologises before taking the drone message - "Sorry, I'd like to take this briefly, a moment, please?" - and asks for it in writing; ke takes longer than the others reading it over more than once, then nods and thanks the drone politely as if it were a person. Ke nods seriously at the Kastakian messager and thanks kim too; a similar reaction is deployed to the Byway message, including looking appropriately shocked at the revelation.

Ferek nods at the drone, asks for the written message, scowls a bit at not being allowed to take it for further reference, reads it quickly but carefully and also twice to memorise it; ke is fairly abrupt in dismissing the drone but that appears to be kis general practice with kis own people too. Ke listens carefully to the Byway message but doesn't seem to be particularly moved by it; shortly thereafter, ke deputises two Kastakians who haven't been taking an active part in proceedings so far - Tavinter, who has been wandering around listening intently, to go and try to talk to Hansil and Eyyeh, and Junilla, here with the Remember To Eat Brigade, to offer the renma more snacks and possibly a quiet word.

Meliashae has thrown kiself into fussing over the terminals hastily repurposed for enabling information sharing, waves off the Kastakian messenger and only hears a little of what Byway are saying; from what ke hears, ke starts on a patch to make the contact-and-desires section on the authorship details form more prominent, so that any Byway individuals who want to use the terminals can feel more comfortable that they're going to get the appropriate quantity of credit for their work.

Junilla and the Imperium

Junilla bustles over to the least occupied-looking non-drone renma with a fresh basket of snacks. "I don't suppose your secret meeting would like some refreshments?" she asks brightly.