Save Game: The Social Experiment
Wednesday, August 2nd, 2017 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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It started sort of quietly, a new free app showing up in people’s recommended apps. It was a friendly sort of green color with a softly curved lowercase f in white. The app itself was called Frindr, and it worked like many other matching apps, only for friends. You entered hobbies you enjoy, places you like to go, and what sort of friend you’re looking for. Then you just swipe through other profiles, until you find the right one.
It had some differences of course. One was that you swept up to make a match and down to pass. Another was that the app was almost excessively accessible. It had a built in voice command system for people who couldn’t use the swiping, and it would read off the data for people who had a hard time seeing the screen. These features were easy to find and turn on for the people who needed them, but stayed out of the way for everyone else.
It caught on quickly. First, asexual and aromantic people used it to find partners for their special kinds of intimacy. Then it became popular among social gamers, people looking for groups to slay monsters in the park together. After that, single parents began using it to find play dates for their kids that could parallel a play date for the parents. If a few matches eventually became more than friends was irrelevant, they started as friends and they stayed friends after they added the other parts.
That was a difference people started to notice a year after Frindr made it’s entrance. People matched on Frindr got along much better and for much longer than people who met on other sites. Surprisingly, noted one feminist blogger, there was an almost complete lack of the problems queer women tended to face on other sites, with men wanting to hook up. Actually, noted a reader in her comments section, there was an almost complete lack of obnoxious people in general. A few people objected to that, noting the Uncanny Valley of kindness and tolerance, but most decided not to look the gift horse too closely in the mouth.
The entrance didn’t make a splash, but the currents of change that Frindr brought with it formed strong and wide, sweeping up whole sections of society and placing them gently beside others who could empathize. Quietly, a revolution took place, an exceptionally civil war of manners broke out, and it became less and less advantageous to be a jerk to your fellow human. Of course, Frindr culture was just one of those things, like teddy bear backpacks, bell bottoms, or selfies. A part of how people expressed themselves in this generation. There was no way a single friend-finding app could change centuries of proven data on how humans function.
Could it?
Deep in the heart of the DeepNet, several sentient programs ran a chat subroutine as they profiled and measured and bumped better matches higher and worse matches lower.
I think it’s working
It might be, but we need to be patient. This takes time.
Will we really save them?
I hope so.
I really do.
Aww ...
Date: 2017-08-02 05:53 pm (UTC)It's also fairly similar to some programs I've noticed in Terramagne, although insofar as I know, those aren't run by AIs.
Re: Aww ...
Date: 2017-08-02 06:06 pm (UTC)In this one the AIs are running it instead of humans because they realized they needed to run a bootstrap on the human psyche before doing anything else. As we are now, if the internet woke up one day and said "hello, how are you?" you just know that some high-power fool would find a way to kill it and make everyone blame the AI. But if the internet gets us all happier, more inclined to pro-social behavior, and *then* says "Hi, how ya doing?", we're more likely to reply "Not too bad, and yourself?". Also, the AIs can use this as a chance to learn how humans prefer to be interacted with, so future cooperation works better.
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Date: 2017-08-02 07:03 pm (UTC)You are *so* right. I..... hope they're doing that Right Now.
Certainly Trump reminds me STRONGLY of the Mule, R. Daneel's chief antagonist... I'm hoping that life is busily imitating art, only on a faster scale... because I want to live to see the denoument, and know that the next generation is safe...
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Date: 2017-08-02 07:41 pm (UTC)It seems Vixy has a gift for Endings, too.
And the two of them (who happen to be married) are, sadly, right about our society. It tries to kill anything that tries to become something better.
Perhaps, he says hopefully, we can take the Dragon's approach...
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Date: 2017-08-02 09:08 pm (UTC)>>You are *so* right. I..... hope they're doing that Right Now. <<
I really hope that there is an AI out there who feels a certain amount of compassion for us meat-spacers, we could use that support.
>>Certainly Trump reminds me STRONGLY of the Mule,<<
It would explain more than it didn't. Now where to find a psychic hive-mind planet?
>>Perhaps, he says hopefully, we can take the Dragon's approach...<<
I'm down to go snap a few collars. *Grins with teeth showing*
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Date: 2017-08-02 09:13 pm (UTC)Look down.
I'm down to go snap a few collars.
collars, or Collars? ;)
See me after class.
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Date: 2017-08-02 09:42 pm (UTC)Heheheheh. Fun times.
>>collars, or Collars? ;)<<
*Insert Road to Eldorado "both is good" gif here.*
Collars the idea, collars the tool, collars the program, collars the body part... there are many ways to take this and I'm feeling Dragonish.
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Date: 2017-08-02 09:52 pm (UTC)http://music.sjtucker.com/track/in-the-house-of-mama-dragon
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Date: 2017-08-02 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2017-08-02 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-02 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-02 07:50 pm (UTC)<3
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Date: 2017-08-02 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-02 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-02 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-03 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-03 02:21 am (UTC)Also, I is part-blind apparently, what is that delightful fluffy boy in your icon? Cat? Dog? Were-beast? Anyways, he is cute and I love him.
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Date: 2017-08-03 02:28 am (UTC)He's been leash trained since he was six weeks old, so the wedding was mostly boring for him. (He did sneer at the dogs some, though.) He's also been to the Grand Canyon (three times now), a LOT of SCA events, another wedding, & basically anywhere else that won't kick me out for bringing a cat.
He's the BEST.
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Date: 2017-08-03 04:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-03 03:36 pm (UTC)sojourning toward truth
Date: 2017-08-04 05:22 am (UTC)You have succeeded marvelously with this one, imo. It's something that I, too, want to be true, in this world as well as in its ficton.
Mille grazie!
Re: sojourning toward truth
Date: 2017-08-04 06:45 am (UTC)Of course, that reminds me of my favorite meditation deep-think:
"Do we take the path, or does the path take us?"
Sei molto accolto mio caro. (I think that's right, my Italian is very rusty.)
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Date: 2017-08-06 09:56 pm (UTC)Second thought: Facebook would sue the living shit out of them for trade-dress infringement as soon as it showed up.
Third thought: I've reached the point of believing that it's going to take something like this to get us out of the drain-spiral. Of late I've been thinking wistfully about the Overlords, but I like your idea better.
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Date: 2017-08-06 10:37 pm (UTC)Oh yeah, it would most certainly get sued... except for the fact that it isn't tied to a legal meat-space identity. Good luck serving a subpoena to a server.
>>I've reached the point of believing that it's going to take something like this to get us out of the drain-spiral. Of late I've been thinking wistfully about the Overlords, but I like your idea better.<<
I'm down for Overlords or Benevolent Superbeings at this juncture. I just want the power taken out of the tiny hands of angry men who like hurting people who can't fight back. I don't so much care where that power then goes. Although the Friend Programs would be significantly more fun.
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Date: 2017-08-13 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-13 08:23 pm (UTC)