Friday, July 5, 2013

Transhumanism in My Traveller makes things more Contraversial

Some transhumanism concepts I'm mulling over for IMTU. The thing about these concepts is that they are in the background and really act as setting color, the game is busy with the adventure and what the players are doing and focusing on. 

The options are free and available for PCs who decide to take it. It seems Gender is around for religious reasons, and preference.

Extended Lifespan. This will affect population growth rate, labor market, and very much the lifestyle. Politics will be affect by this because of Universal Healthcare, shrinking job markets and quality of life, as well as the economic opportunity to buy life extensions.

GURPS Biotech allows this to be easily bought off, TL10 there is immortality at a $100,000 a year cost. 

Contraception At Will. for both men and women, what if ovulation or sperm production is something that can be turned off and on at will, instead of a drug trigger. Reminds me of the misinformation about rape that was going around for while. 0cp Feature. 

Inbreeding. The ability to inbreed without genetic defect. This is one of the weirdness of T^2 and TS when you consider the human template able to ignore genetic defects. A lot of meaty discussions here, but for a GM that would entertain such or put it in their game, like some parts of the world it is an accepted way of life and leave it at that. 

Gestation Pods. A big deal in Vorkosigan and it was also tackled in Honorverse. I think its a bigdeal for many families, given the economic considerations of raising a family. Parents not having to worry about their growing fetus being exposed to hazards. A robot body can protect the fetus pro-actively and move around the facility as needed. Given how expensive this is I wonder if families would lend to close family and friends their gestation pod for use? Basically a SM-3 Very Expensive Automed in UT197 ($25,000 13lbs empty (this is much larger because the one in UT41 may not accommodate larger babies). Clinics rent this out. BioTech p.20 has them as growth tanks.

Partial and Full Cyborg. This is more complicated because human augmentation is now in the realm of "equipment" so wealthier people can afford better cybernetics. Healthcare is going to be extremely expensive, along with the NEW quality of life cybernetics introduce. You now have a question about if "Universal healthcare" should upgrade the population regardless of wealth level and how some states would implement or strongly oppose movements to implement such a cost burden.  Without such "socialism" what will states do with the greater disparity in population performance -insert dystopia here-. Cyberiztion is a more scary topic if you start talking about Health Care, Class-Struggle/warfare, etc... So much Cogntive dissonance here because there are Political ideologies involved.

The only caveat is that this requires a larger industrial base, or you can remove that requirement, as GM-god. If there is no need for a lower tech industrial base, then what place do the trillions of poorer folk have in the economy of a Interstellar Trade... 
In Macro-Economics/Psychohistory a Famine that can bring about another Long Night because of butterfly effect. 
Hermaphrodite. it can be Genetic Therapy, Bio-enhancement, or a genetic human type. A more invasive form of genetic engineering. 0 points
What if gender is now a mater of chromosomes? Reminds me of the Jane Elliot's Eye Color Experiment.  Side Note - Vorkosigan has a Hermaphrodite character.

Gender-Morphs.  Like Hermaphrodite humans except that their ability to change gender at will is a 1 point perk (Hermaphromorph B59 5points; Limited per day 4x -20%; Costs 4 FP -20%; Increased Time, 180 seconds -40%). 

Regular Humans in light of all this "Sin and Taboo". people are free not to go these routes, with this freedom there are regular humans. Its up to the Gm to make this common or not. I'm inclined to make human baseline to be common in My GURPS traveller only because in worlds like RETHE in Regina Star system with 30B people, more people than the rest of the entire subsector with such a low tech world many people are baseline humans. 

I want to make RETHE the main "exporter" of crew labor and ha 3rd world unsustainable growth levels. Much of its wealth is in remittances. At 2% growth rate which is 600M a year and possibly 10% are OSWs (out-system worker), thats 3 billion RETHE OSW with about 60M joining them every year. 

Over-All Effects. The effects of such freedoms are happiness/utility, better labor adaptability, maximized use of labor, and more efficient meritocracy - basically more exceptional people in a macro scale. 




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