Kinkajou interviews an American educator  (Fred) in the post-Sputnik era.

Kinkajou:   I would like to talk to you about the changes in the education system that were brought about by the Russians launching Sputnik into orbit.

Fred the Ed:  We became very concerned when the Russians were able to orbit the Sputnik. At that time we were unable to match their capability. Analysis of our society suggested that education should focus more on the sciences than on the arts. Up till this point in time, people were considered educated if they had read the classic literature, understood Latin or Greek, and were aware of the performing arts. We changed all that.

A man or woman in the New World order is educated if they understood science. This new program resulted in the wholesale creation of engineers. We created: chemical engineers, structural engineers, architectural engineers, medical and physical body engineers, engineering technologies, and even social engineering.

Kinkajou:   Yes I’m aware of the social engineering aspects arising even from “law” creation. Laws propel a direction for human action and initiative. They provide a framework to guide and limit human endeavour.

Fred the Ed: They can be a self serving irrelevancy as well. A friend of mine told me once that the Australian taxation office was creating legislation covering taxation at a rate which was in excess of the ability of any one person to read within a lifetime.  Not all law can be useful at guiding activity. The taxation law you mention would essentially be irrelevant to almost the entire population of the country.

Reading for Information

Kinkajou: To create social engineering from legal changes demands relevance. Changing laws can then mean changing ways of doing things, a form of social engineering.

Fred the Ed:  Yes, our emphasis on technology and science enabled the foundations of the modern world to be built. Computers, development of antibiotics, and the development of communications all arose from our learned understanding of the science on which our physical world was based.

Kinkajou:   Yes I believe in the long run you out engineered the Russians and won the Cold War.

Fred the Ed:  An interesting perception.

 

.....

SocialEngineeringTrue.html
American Educator : Teacher re Sputnik ascendance

 

 

Kinkajou interviews a Traeki Villager:
(David Brin: Startide Rising)

Kinkajou:   Greetings Noble Patron. I seek to communicate with you.

Traeki Villager:  I do not stand on pomp and circumstance young Kinkajou:   It is the Jophur with their torus of command who are the true patrons, not we simple villagers.

Kinkajou:   How has genetic engineering affected your people?

Traeki Villager:  We have truly become a different people and different species to myself. When the genes of other species were spliced into ours by those employed by patrons, our entire perspective was changed. Many things were thrown out of kilter. Our path to the future changed to a knife edge so different to the path on which we had evolved.

The addition of neurological control mechanisms to our body parts (our torus) completely changed us. One torus began to dominate all the others. Before we had all existed in harmony and in common.

We were a community creature, working cooperatively with our neighbours who formed a part of our very being. The advent of the commanding torus allowed the demands of one to dominate the needs of the many.

This effectively resulted in significant social engineering change to our species. We no longer became a cooperative helpful species capable of living with many others. We became a species seeking dominance and control. The changes in our genetics brought us into conflict with others as we sought power.

As the statement goes:

When one commands
One is envied by people
But oh!
The demands!

I think that the effect of uplift upon my people is a form of crime. Evolution had made us a pleasant cooperative and much liked creature. Science and genetic technology made us into monsters, of whom ,all would be afraid. We Traeki Villagers living in terror of encountering a command torus.

These things would seize and subsume us. Our very thoughts will be stolen from us. These monsters, these Jophur teach what to us are revolutionary uplift practices and they proselytise, an unforgettable offence to us. We Traeki were known for a reluctance to hurt or kill any others of any type.

However, our evolved Jophur brethren I feel are a much more limited race. Since being uplifted, we Traeki have witnessed many episodes of the Jophur murdering all who are in conflict with them.

Kinkajou:   Thank you kind one.

 

Traeki Villager:  I see you Kinkajou are wearing your usual enigmatic expression, and smiling at the curtain of time which has temporarily veiled the theatre of my future.

Kinkajou:   My colleague Goo would be most sympathetic with you and your experiences. My people truly like and aspire to be like humans. They have given us little cause for regret. Indeed I worry more about their future than my own.

SocialEngineeringTrue.html

Brin, David

Traeki Villager

Startide Rising

Kinkajou interviews Gwen Tremaine (Jerry Pournelle: Janissaries)

Kinkajou:   Thank you Gwen for talking to us about your role in founding civilisation on “Tran”. Could you tell us something about the issues you have faced in building a technological civilisation on this planet?

Gwen Tremaine:   Climate change was initially a major issue we needed to face. We told our so-called “employers”, that we were not farmers. They told us they did not expect us to be doing farming. There was a local population. The planet was very primitive. In a state of feudalism.

Their need is not for farmers, but for soldiers to impose government which will create the desire to plant the required crops. This government could then deliver the harvest to them.

They told us that our reward would be obvious. You will rule as you will, without interference. You will have health and power and you will have only to see that our crops are planted. We can supply you with luxuries and comforts in trade.

We told them in turn that this seemed a long-term project. They replied that this was the nature of the project of course. The task they believed would last us our lifetime. We had very few choices open to us,

in distinction to those we were given. They told us that humans who are unwilling to work do not always have a pleasant life on their worlds. They would tell our custodians in the future that we had been offered employment and that we were unwilling to work.

Kinkajou: What was driving the climate change?

Gwen Tremaine:    The climate change was initiated by the unusual solar geometry of the “Tran” system. Tran’s history and evolution was dominated by its suns. The two major suns together gave it only a little more than 90% of what the earth receives from its own sun.

Tran was normally a cold world with only the regions near the equator comfortable for humans. But then came the cyclic approach of the third sun for 20 years of each 600. Then Tran received 10% more sunlight than Earth ever got.

In the time of the third sun, ice caps melted. The locals called it the time of “burning”. Weather became enormously variable. The world ocean levels rose.

The Shalnuksis records showed that the effects of the new invading sun’s passage were devastating to human cultures. They never rose higher than an Iron Age feudalism.

In the time of the third sun there were storms so fierce – no ships sailed. The sea rose to lap at the foothills. Tamaerthon itself became an island.

I remember looking at the planet from space. It did not look like earth. The polar ice caps were too large and there was much much more water, and too little land. Tran would probably have been a better place for ocean colony rather than for the civilisation that we were trying to build.

I remember speaking to our allies in the Tamaerthon hills. We told them it was likely there would be no harvests for two years. Our allies were aghast and felt that they were doomed. They knew that in one year of poor harvest, they would often be starving before spring.

I particularly remember one old chieftain spitting, for effect, into the log fire burning in the hearth of his council room, in considering this fate. We reassure him there should be a time of good harvest first. Rick however did say, he was not much at climatology.

Some of the changes to the landscape would be horrendous. We believe that in about five years, perhaps less, that the new Roman Empire was going to be underwater, all but the higher plateau that held Rome itself.

It is amazing to consider how much power the ability to change the climate has on the direction and tempo of human affairs.

Kinkajou:   So how much urgency did this imminence of climatic change create for you?

Gwen Tremaine:   Our Trannish allies constantly told us that this was not the time for war. Especially the priests. It is a time to gather food, to fill the holy caves. They felt that it would not be long until “the time”.

However the old writings were not clear. The records suggested that the worst could perhaps not come for a dozen years. There would be other signs of “the time”. The Demon gods will visit and offer magi in exchange for Soma.

Strangers will come, with strange weapons and a strange language. We were those strangers. With us we brought the knowledge of Earth civilisation. With us we especially brought the desire to improve the lot of humans on Tran, and elsewhere.

There was much history of the coming of previous soldiers to this world. There had been the Christians. Then had come the legions. And thus had indeed come the forefathers of all those upon Tran.

We began to realise that there were issues bigger than climate change. It was likely that other events had conspired to prevent civilisation on Tran. It was likely that we would need to tread with care in dealing with the Shalnuksis aliens. Trade was our only lifeline. The aliens had told us that we must plant the Suronimaz.

If you have nothing to sell us, we will have nothing to sell you. And with that statement they left us to our fate, wishing us great success.

Suronimaz is a trade crop that is difficult to grow. It will not grow under normal conditions on Tran. Just for a few years and only every 600. But for about five years especially, starting a few years from the time we arrived on the planet, it grows very well. The substance Suronimaz unbeknownst to us could probably have demand a princely price for it, had we known its true value.

Suronimaz makes chemicals like the brain manufactures endogenous endorphins. But Suronimaz makes these chemicals naturally by the bucketful. It has the about the same effect on the Shalnuksis as endogenous opiates do on humans.

The aliens (Shalnuksis) desire it to about the same extent as the Americans of my home seek alcohol. And Tran natural gets a premium price – like the rarer wines.

There was an incredible amount at stake in being able to cultivate and trade the Suronimaz with the aliens. And not just to us.

 

 

Kinkajou:   So how are we able to influence the local peoples to fulfil your needs and desires?

Gwen Tremaine:   As usual these things get off to a slow and difficult start. We were very lucky in coming into contact early with influential locals. By combining our know-how with their influence, a natural alliance rapidly developed, capable of overcoming many obstacles to survival and growth.

But when we first arrived the natives undertook a long discussion about hospitality to us. Hospitality in these cultures is taken very seriously. In some cultures if they feed us, they have to take us in and protect us from our enemies. This was one of the first hurdles to our survival.

The locals used to feudalism had some difficulty understanding our relationships. They were surprised when Rick and myself and Mason all spoke to each other as equals. Tylara didn’t know the language, but she told me that the tones were used in our conversation made that conclusion very clear.

Rick proved extraordinary capable in terms of both military planning and social engineering. I myself had tried to teach the natives the beginning of the germ theory of disease. I failed abysmally.

Rick told me that I hadn’t gone about it the right way. He had told them that diseases were caused by tiny little devils. He then revealed that blessed soap and boiled holy water would drive these devils away. The natives were able to accept this, but they could not accept my explanation of germs.

Ardvreck Castle Scotland

Ardvreck Castle Scotland

Rick had a dream to make Tamaerthon strong without the need for endless war. Tylara had been married and widowed before she met Rick. She said that her previous husband was handsome but he was frivolous. He had no Demon driving him as Rick did. Tylara said that she also had no Demon driving her then.

She then said that since then she had since learned what duty is, and no less a Demon drove her now, as did drive her husband Rick. Tylara and Rick may have belonged to each other, but they also had ambition, not for wealth – but the something greater.

When I had been discussing with my pilot boyfriend, my options for surviving on the planet, we had felt that Rick was the weaker of the two options. ( Parsons military faction being the larger and stronger). I had chosen to cast my lot with Rick, since all he was working for initially was for survival.

But Rick was an ethical man. I don’t think that this was all that made Rick successful. Ethical actions may be the best survival tactic after all. I wished that initially I had believed this. I had initially thought Parsons would be better and more successful in growing the Suronimaz because he would use brutal tactics.

Rick’s ambition was the university. He started thinking about the changes he would bring to the world of Tran. He believed he could teach medical science. He felt he did not know much but considered teaching the germ theory of disease, antiseptic practices, and getting some of the acolytes interested in anatomy and dissection.

He thought about antibiotics but stumbled on how to develop something so basic and integral to our old world such as penicillin. He had little technology. He understood chemical theory poorly. There were no surgeons. He felt that he did not know enough but perhaps could make a start.

He thought perhaps you could teach the natives how to learn. Perhaps one day to a soldier injured in battle, a perforated gut need not be a death sentence.

He told me that at first he thought it would be easy to bring technology to Tran. But over time the task had become heavier and he began to realise the difficulty involved. He needed to concentrate on tools; in fact tools to make tools.

Rick told me that it was easy to know that steel is simply iron with just the right amount of carbon. But how much carbon was the right amount?

How do you experiment if you cannot operate a forge and don’t want the local Smiths to think you are a fool. He told me that dozens of similar problems gave him a headache.

Reacquiring one of his old soldiers, Warner, significantly gladdened his heart. He told Warner he was really glad to see him. He told him that he was going to make him the Professor of the only University on Tran. Warner had a hard time since his escape from the Parsons faction. He told Rick that being a Professor has got to be better than fighting for a living.

But Rick was incredibly capable in terms of dealing with the social structure in the feudal environment. No detail on the military campaign escaped him. I remember seeing him shouting at his offices to spare captives.

This earned him the respect of his Roman enemies of the time. Marcellus himself said “you are no barbarian”. He stopped the slaughter in the battle and let many of the Romans surrender.

His Tamaerthon allies were sceptical. They told him that Caesar will never befriend us. They told me the only way Caesar would want to see them or any of their men would be in chains. They had little to sell him from their own poor hill lands. “What we have gotten from Caesar before, we have taken with the sword and the bow”.

But Rick had an answer to this as well. He said “Perhaps not. Perhaps we should not seek to trade with or to work with the Caesar. But only a fool gives his enemies reason to hate him, and I’m no fool”. There have to be better ways than fighting. He believed in parley and in considering other options to war, first and foremost.

In that way I felt that Rick was a little more human than many of the animals in this world, including the military man Parsons from our old world. Other soldiers had seen this about Parsons as well. T

They knew that Parsons was a professional military man and had been in the Legion. The Legion uses up people, with no gratitude for their service. They knew what they could expect if they would follow Parsons. This was one of the reasons many of Parson’s troops left.

So I think it was a good thing that Rick’s sense of ethics directed him towards the University. This was a far better path to the future with greater prospects and unending war. Helping people created a bond between them which helps build a civilisation. War builds no such bonds.

We had resolved together that one way or another; our children would inherit the stars. Tran would be the first step in enabling the human race to escape from its indenture and captivity. To allow the human race its own chance to create and steer its own destiny. For the first time in millennia, we were able to consider choices that others had not chosen for us.

Kinkajou:   Thank you for your comments Gwen.

 

ClimateControlTrue.html	Pournelle, Jerry	Gwen Tremaine	Janissaries
InternetRevolutionTrue.html	Pournelle, Jerry	Gwen Tremaine	Janissaries
OceanColonyTrue.html	Pournelle, Jerry	Gwen Tremaine	Janissaries
SocialEngineeringTrue.html	Pournelle, Jerry	Gwen Tremaine	Janissaries
WorldTradeTrue.html	Pournelle, Jerry	Gwen Tremaine	Janissaries

Kinkajou interviews Trova Hellstrom (Frank Herbert: Hellstrom’s Hive)

Kinkajou:   How long have you lived in this area, Trova?

Trova Hellstrom. This little valley has been in Hellstrom’s family since his grandmother’s day.

Kinkajou:   I understand that you have been developing a new form of social organisation for humans. Tell us something of this.

Trova Hellstrom. The relationship between ecology and evolution is extremely close.  This relationship is deeply implicated in organismal changes among given animal populations and profoundly sensitive to the density of the numbers within a given habitat. Our adaptation is aimed to increase the population’s tolerance to crowding to a human density 10 to 12 times greater than is currently considered possible. Out of this life mass, we will get our survival variations, enabling selection.

To enable us to flourish here, we have had to separate ourselves from the remainder of humanity. We use the language of the outside, but with our own meanings. Because we are virtually defenceless against the best forces of the outside, a major defence remains in them never learning that we live among them.

Our language mimicks that of the general population of humanity, but for us the same words carry very different meanings: a situation that a stranger cannot penetrate readily.

 

Kinkajou:   Your social structure has little individuality?

Trova Hellstrom. A perfect society cannot allow permanent individual names. The hive will do away with names someday. They are labile at best – the names. They are useful only in a transient way. Perhaps we will carry different labels at different stages of our lives.

Kinkajou:   But there is more than just genetic change inherent in your new social structure?

Trova Hellstrom. True. The key workers must take the supplemental leader foods without fail. But it is from the vats that we get the markers that maintain our awareness of mutual identity. Without the chemical sameness provided by the vats, we will become like those outside – isolated, alone, drifting without purpose.

Kinkajou:   So how do evolutionary pressures work on your social structures?

Trova Hellstrom. Some threat is good for a species. It tends to stimulate breeding, to raise the level of awareness. Too much however, can have a stupefying effect. It is one of the tasks of hive leadership to adjust level of stimulation and threat.

Kinkajou:   From whence did your beliefs arise?

Trova Hellstrom. We share a schismatic belief that insects will outlast us. Thank my mother for this. To survive we must become more intensely like those upon whom we pattern ourselves.

Kinkajou:   But surely your new social structure will destroy the social structure existing in the general human populations?

Trova Hellstrom. We must never merely oppose the outsiders. We should work with compromise and constant pressure to absorb them into our unity. This is what we do now. I believe in talking to you, that your understanding may help us to plan for the future.

Kinkajou:   Thanks for your tolerance and understanding. Social engineering can be revolutionary or evolutionary. I’m pleased to see that you have taken an inclusive approach.

SocialEngineeringTrue.html

Herbert, Frank

Trova Hellstrom, Brood Mother

Hellstrom's Hive

 

Kinkajou interviews Sally Fowler
(The Moat In God’s Eye: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle)

Kinkajou:   Thank you Sally for agreeing to share your expertise in anthropology to give us some insights into the issue of social engineering and its effect on society. It has been said that species evolve to meet their environment. But, intelligent species change the environment to suit themselves. So as soon as species becomes intelligent, they should stop evolving.

Sally Fowler:  Not true at all. We constantly stress and challenge others and measure their ability to meet many of the demands placed upon them. As intelligent sapients, we routinely engineer situations –albeit through social engineering – to create situations where people routinely will be forced to behave in particular ways.

In my world we were faced with evidence of intelligent toolmaking species, which had travelled 35 light years to find our human civilisation. We were very concerned that these aliens have no opportunity to obtain military technology from us such as the Langton Field or the Alderson Drive.

For these reasons we sent to warships/exploration ships to the Mote. If they captured the first ship – the “MacArthur”, then our second ship – the “Lenin” would be ordered to blast the “MacArthur” out of space. To make absolutely sure they sent Admiral Lavrenti Kutuzov to command the second ship. Everyone thought the man was a butcher. He was the man who sterilised the planet Istvan.

My friends all cried out “Of all the paranoid creatures in the universe to send on a first contact mission!” “These contacts are intelligent aliens. This could be the greatest moment in all history and we want to send off an expedition commanded by subhuman who thinks with his reflexes”.

However, saner minds prevailed. They felt it would be more insane to send an expedition commanded by someone so optimistic, someone who already saw the aliens as a friend, someone who looked to the opportunities. Such a one they felt would not see the dangers. They felt that although someone like the Admiral may see too many dangers – that they’d rather be wrong their way (seeing too many dangers), then in seeing too few or no dangers.

In short we humans had engineered a situation to guarantee a specific response. Anyone who did not behave appropriately in situation would face very negative consequences. Evolution and the social engineering in action.

Kinkajou:   The situation of the Mote aliens was in fact very complex, was it not?

Sally Fowler:  The situation in the Mote was complex because genetic capacities were engineered to create specific social outcomes. In our civilisation, every individual is a generalist, able to deal with many different situations. In the Mote, the aliens all had specialist functions. This took us much time to understand, and even longer to understand the implications and consequences.

The first alien “form” with which we were acquainted was the Engineer. The capacity to work on instruments: redesign, recalibrate and rebuild instruments was almost genetically hardwired into this life form. 1000 cycles of evolution had guaranteed that these lifeforms could work rapidly and quickly and with blinding speed with the by-products of a technical civilisation.

Their mouths were wide, lipless and turned up at the corners, looking like a half smile of genuine and permanent happiness. Their appearance made us want to trust them. Engineers were geared to “do” and preferred a situation free from decision-making. An engineer need only go where she was led, and repair and redesign when the opportunity arose. They were as trustful as children.

Their trust was indeed easy to come by. Her first move on coming out of the airlock was to tear open the plastic sack containing the miniature lifeforms and give them to the first-hand that asked for them. She never bothered with them again. She went where she was led.

We did not think they were of value because when she left her ship she deliberately vented the atmosphere from within it – killing all the little ones as if they were parasites. Was obvious that she didn’t want them running around her ship. They are obviously not valuable and not a threat.

She had so revealed to us the “miniature” life form. My friends were embarrassed when they saw these miniatures having sex on camera. However I myself was horrified. The last time anyone had looked, the miniatures were both females. So it meant that they had changed sex.

I realise how important the concept of changing sex was. It must hold for all of the alien life forms in the Mote. It would affect their lifestyle, their personalities and their histories. It shows that young “Moties” become largely independent at fantastically low ages. It would completely change the entire social arrangement of their civilisation.

There would be no shortage of mothers or child bearers and therefore no cultural mechanism of overprotection such as survives within the human Empire. No one person would be any more or any less valuable than any other, apart from their specific attributes and skills.

It took us some time to understand that the miniatures were in fact highly trained animals, capable of technical work performed at command. They had little intelligence, but significant eidetic task-based memory. We suddenly realised that they were loose within our ship.

Many of the men in my watch section would say that if you left some food – grain, cereals, mess leftovers, in fact anything at all – in the corridors were under your bunk, something that needed fixing – it got fixed. People have allowed the miniatures to go unchecked in the ship due to their value for convenience in fixing things.

Suddenly, we realised that these animals were capable of learning technology and possibly passing it on to others – such as the aliens of the Mote. The real threat was the potential of losing the military level technology. We were forced to take action, to retain our secrets. It was a danger we had not anticipated.

There were other classes of lifeforms as well.

We became acquainted with the mediator class when one of them arrived on our ship. The mediator took time when she arrived to strip off her pressure envelope leaving herself naked. We later learned that the Mediator wanted us to know that she was not a warrior. She wanted to convince us that she was unarmed.

She told us that she was assigned to us. We were a project – a masterwork. She was to learn as much about us as there was to know. She was to become an expert on us. She had a specialty interest. It was not the gigantic rigid badly designed ship that interested her. It was our attitudes towards that ship and the other humans aboard, our degree of control over other humans and our interest in their welfare that she found most interesting.

All these things related to her role. She was genetically engineered to function as a social mediator and only in that capacity. Consequently she would focus only on these aspects of our emissary ship.

 

 

Kinkajou:   It would seem that the humans on the ship had some difficulty coming to terms subspecies specialisation in a civilisation. A generalist model did not hold. The model was more akin to that of an “ant hive” with its masters, communicators, warriors and workers. It is not a model that would be expected to be found in a high-level technical civilisation.

Sally Fowler:  Perhaps of more interest to them was their appreciation of the effects of the individual on a society. How a single individual could completely change the prospects for a society to survive through their social engineering influences. They have a legend – about “Crazy Eddie”.

He was an idiot – a savant tinker. Always he would do the wrong things for excellent reasons. He would do the same things over and over and always they would bring disaster. And he would never learn from these experiences.

The mediator talking with us gave us an example. When a city has grown so overlarge and crowded that it is in immediate danger of collapse, when food and clean water flow into a city at a rate just sufficient to feed every mouth and every hand must work constantly to keep it that way – when all transportation is involved in moving vital supplies and none is left to move people out of the city should the need arise – then it is that “Crazy Eddie” who leads the moves of garbage out on strike for better working conditions.

 

Kinkajou:   We have considered this scenario before. There is a theory which believes that the growth of civilisations involves a series of increasing optimisations until a point is reached when the failure of a single vital subsystem, leads to a collapse of the entire structure.

“Crazy Eddie” may in fact be an optimisation that minimises the risk of critical subsystems failing. An interesting perspective indeed. Thank you Sally for your insights on how social engineering affects the world in which we live.

SocialEngineeringTrue.html	Niven, Larry & Pournelle, Jerry	Sally Fowler	Mote In God's Eye
SocialEngineeringTrue.html	Niven, Larry & Pournelle, Jerry	Sally Fowler	Mote In God's Eye