1 Soul Bound
1.2 Taking Control
1.2.3 An Enchanting Original
1.2.3.20 Genetics
Kafana: “And this causes political systems to fail?”
Bungo: “Our cognition has flaws in it, like an unpatched computer system with vulnerabilities that crackers know how to exploit. Some of the flaws are trade-offs made when optimising for limited processing power. Some are features which made sense in the environment our species evolved in, but now need upgrading for the new threat environment.”
Kafana: “Such as?”
Bungo: “Using probability to calculate expected returns and correctly discounting for future returns is computationally intensive. Humans almost always just approximate it and rely upon rules of thumb. We’re bad at assessing risks, especially low frequency high impact ones. We’re really really bad at reassessing them in the light of discovering that some of our initial data was incorrect. It means that most people can be bamboozled by those who provide the first information they see about something, or a majority of the information.”
Kafana: “So once a manipulator manages to flood the attention of a voter with biased information, it takes the voter a heroic amount of effort to get back to a position in which they can be confident who is telling them the truth, because the first thing the manipulator does is cast doubt about the reliability of any information sources that contradict his narrative?”
Bungo: “Correct. And there are hundreds of such flaws. We can’t plug them all. No matter how good your written system is, sooner or later some bright chap will come along who is both willing and able to exploit the flaws in the people implementing it, and persuade them that this time it is ok to bend an ‘unimportant’ part of the system’s rules just a little, because his cause is worthy enough and the current eventuality wasn’t anticipated by the system’s designers.”
Kafana: “And once the manipulator gains a little power, they can use it to distort things further, resulting in a feedback loop that eventually breaks the system. Why do people do that? Why do they put their trust in a handful of people they’ve known only for a decade, rather than rules that have worked for generations?”
They were nearly at the olive groves now. She pulled out a couple of snacks from her stash and passed one to Bungo, then refreshed her buffs while he munched upon it.
Bungo: “Again, human nature. Back in tribal days, there was an advantage to tribes having some members be peaceful, egalitarian, open-minded, curious individuals who were tolerant of outsiders and willing to learn from them and trade with them. And also to having some members be conscientious supporters of the hierarchy, putting the collective welfare over that of the individual, willing to punish those not showing respect for the authority of the tribe’s chief, or even go to war against outsiders. Most members were somewhere between the two extremes, willing to behave one way or the other, depending upon whether the threat to the tribe seemed to be the greed of the chief, or an external threat such as invading foreigners spreading disease and subversion.”
Kafana: “And all an aspiring ruler who wants to gain more control needs to do is increase the external threat, or the perception of it.”
Bungo: “Yep. Pick a time when the economy is in the dumps, war is in the air, people are discontent with the current system and they suspect the current leaders of corruption, then sow division by talking up the chances of foreign powers invading and fifth columnists paying traitors to betray your country’s founding principles. Magnify every incident, choose a group that’s already unpopular and secretive to make a scapegoat, start using all those cognitive flaw exploits and BOOM! You’ve suddenly got a movement accumulating around a core of authoritarians who don’t care if your solutions are flawed, just as long as they’re simple and you appear strong. Use your power to make money, use your money to cement your power, and ride the tiger for as long as you can until the next person does the same things but even better, while the system crashes down.”
Kafana: “That sounds pretty dire. But if human nature is so exploitable, why have some previous periods in history had forms of government that lasted hundreds of years?”
Bungo: “The rich have always been able to use their wealth to increase their own effectiveness. They had nutrition while growing up, and get enough calories for their brains to not be dulled by hunger. They had the free time to learn from books and tutors, and practice debate against other informed people rather than spend childhoods gleaning the wheat fields helping on their parent’s farm. They could employ staff with specialised knowledge or even have opinion polls carried out, to test in advance what words will work best. But by and large, the people they needed to persuade in order to gain political power were also rich. In Britain for example, less than 5% of the population had the vote, even as late as 1860. “
Bungo: “As the franchise widened, and mass communication improved, the information and training gap between the people making speeches and the people listening to them widened. As the world grew more global, and as technology changed at a faster pace, issues and crises started arriving faster. People needed to know about more issues to stay informed, and the issues were becoming more complex. Capital went global, and people lost track of who owned what, and who was funding which movements and why.”
Bungo: “The real change came a few decades after the advent of the computer, with the rise of companies and think tanks dedicated to making a profit out of helping the wealthy subvert the system. That sort of integration between people and an external capacity to manipulate and process data can be seen as an early form of post-humanism, far more significant than mere physical augmentation. It’s been taken a lot further since, by whole dynasties rather than just individuals. Have you followed what the Huttlestons are doing?”
They entered the grove, though the name didn’t seem particularly apt for the ordered rows of trees. “Orchard” was the description that came to mind, with its irrigation channels and spaces for collection tubs. In the distance she could see buildings that might contain hand-operated mills and presses.
Kafana: “I’ve heard the name, of course. Cutting edge medical group from America, aren’t they? Oh, and I seem to remember that Patrick Huttleston is really old.” She pointed at a particularly large and gnarled tree with a grumpy looking blue-banded sparrowhawk perched upon it, “a bit like that one, perhaps.”
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Bungo: “He’s old, sure enough. One hundred and five. Desperate to keep living too. But nothing like these trees. A well-tended olive tree will last 500 years or more. Creating a grove like this is the work of generations, noting which trees produce the best oil and carefully propagating them, matching gene lines to soil types, performing out-crosses and selective recombination, etc. It takes a unity of vision and of shared purpose you only get from a dynasty that passes an inheritance down multiple generations, making investments whose pay-offs will only be of benefit to the great-great grandchildren.”
Kafana: “I’d like to see that. Do you mind if we pause a few minutes? I want to try out my new Truesight skill, see if I can add to it the ability to detect genetic relationships between individuals.”
Bungo: “We’re here to experiment with magic. What can I do to help?”
Kafana: “Can you pick me a single leaf from multiple trees? Not all from the same area - I want a good chance that some are the offspring of others.”
A few minutes later he returned and she laid them out on the ground in front of her. She started by using her Guardian’s pendant to examine a leaf she’d picked herself from the tree next to her, diving into it as though it were a patient, focusing in closer on a smaller and smaller area until she could sense the information coiled inside it. She didn’t know much about genetics, but she drew on her link with Bungo and kept her visualisation vague in case XperiSense weren’t actually simulating this world down to that level of fidelity.
Next, she visualised her leaf as a key and the tree it came from as a lock, then touched one to the other and named the pair as a gestalt. She worked slowly, building up hierarchies of concepts, visualising them clearly as possible and naming each one as she went. Finally, she named the process she wanted carried out with the keyword “Relations” and checked her work, glowing in her orglife overlay, before saying the word out aloud and feeding mana into it slowly, so she could see each layer activate in turn.
First a fan of thin green lines spread out from the leaves, reaching towards their respective trees, small bulges of mana pulsing along them like living things.
Next, perfect semi-circle arcs of thin golden light rose up from individual leaves, one at a time, and landed on other leaves. Some leaves had many connections, some fewer. It was like watching a fireworks display in slow motion. After that, secondary thinner arcs formed, indicating relationships such as siblings and grandparents. Each arc had a label by it which came into view if she focused upon it. No third order relationships formed - she’d specified things carefully, after her information overload earlier by the stream.
Finally, when she was happy with the result, she gave the keyword “Confirm” and small violet blobs of information shot from her leaf-index to the trees themselves, and added the information to her shared overlay. The gestalts dissolved and the main drain stopped. Looking at the results, she guessed that all the older trees had been grown from seeds, but that most of the trees under 300 years in age had been propagated by root cuttings.
Bungo, who’d been watching quietly with his mage sight turned on, gave a round of applause.
Bungo: “That was awesome. How did you know how to do that? You got it on the first try! I took ages to develop my chemistry sight.”
She blinked, taking in his words.
Kafana: {Sys, did you just take over my mind? Was that, like, a cut-scene?}
System: {No Kafana. It is closer to the experience you had when you formed a gestalt with the other Wombles and Suor Isabella to craft the Hearts of Light.}
Kafana: {Um, who was I in gestalt with?}
System: {In this case, Dro won the argument, by claiming a grove of trees was clearly her territory.}
Kafana: “It was thanks to Dro. And I’m going to thank her right now, by casting a spell to make these trees which aided me the healthiest trees that produce the richest flavoured olive oil I can!”
> Tender and beautiful fronds
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> of my beloved olive tree,
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> Let Fate smile upon you.
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> May thunder, lightning, and storms
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> never bother your dear peace,
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> Nor may you by blowing winds be profaned.
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>
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> Frondi tenere e belle
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> Del mio Oliva amato,
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> Per voi risplenda il Fato
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> Tuoni, Lampi, e Procelle
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> Non vi oltraggino mai la cara pace,
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> Ne giunga a profanarvi Austro rapace.
She took the liberty of altering Ombra mai fu’s lyrics a little, but mainly she concentrated on pouring her heartfelt gratitude into her music, expending her mana recklessly until she and Bungo were both down to just 10%. It was part prayer, part healing and part ingredient improvement.
Bungo: “I don’t know what we just did, but I’m going to recommend to Wellington that we invest in this grove.”
Kafana felt surprise. Bungo, talking about prudent long-term financial investments? He noticed her expression.
Bungo: “I had a long chat with Wellington about how I could most help our group using my skill set. He had some suggestions. It’s part of the reason why I’ve been spending time looking at soil fertility and geological formations likely to contain valuable minerals. I’ve been feeding data into some pattern analysis software, and I think I’ve partially reverse-engineered the algorithm XperiSense used to develop their land-masses. They’ve really increased the sophistication since they created Morob. I almost get the feel that, compared to Covob, Morob was just a test-run. It isn’t just the NPCs here that are miles ahead.”
They continued their walk up towards the summit.