Sociopath Community

"One person in power usually means dragging in a group somewhere down the line."

There is always a group, but if its starts from one person, he can pick the group members

"How familiar are you with the effects of media on people's heads? Hitler loved it, but these days people possess more of a jaded tolerance to it's control potential. You have to be clever instead of direct, so you'd need a hell of a media crew."

I'm familiar to some extend. Enough to indulge and learn more if i want to

"There's either no such thing if you figure you'd be invincible in there, or it'd not be enough for me from not being an invincible scenario, just positions that are safer than others. The safest place is before the mistakes were made at all.

It's good to have backup plans since every plan has a potential to fall apart, but relying on the escape pod when the problems that lead to it can be addressed strikes me as negligent. Believing "it should be fine" invites Sloth to the party.""

a fortified position is not invincible . its fortified. You need either time, surprise, or a lot of force to break it.

Because of this, i forgot to mention, that 'field intelligence'(or information on the problem/subject) is very important, so no surprises are present. Without that, a risk is always there, as you will have to guess, instead of knowing the facts.

And if you have good Intel, you will know if there is a massive force that can break your fortification ahead of time, so you can prepare for it.

At the end, if its a slow poke that needs time to break your fortification, then you have time to come up with a counter attack.

When a fortification is attacked, it takes a lot more resource to break it, then it takes to keep it up. This also gives you an advantage.

They don't know how... they've been institutionalized since kindergarden. They could have learned useful things during thier 8 year sentence, but instead they did absolutely nothing.

By the time they got to high school, their brain had shrunk to the size of a hamsters, inside a hamster wheel.

"Your quickness to trusting such a thing has me questioning my inability. I just can't trust when it's a person running things."

I can trust one person much easier then a group of people.

"What sort of goal gets around selfishness? What makes a common enemy effective is that the ingroup becomes larger. Without enemies it becomes more and more about the individual, and with that the ingroup splits into trees that grow to trivialize their former connection."

i dont know, i made a few realistic examples in my last post, but there could be anything, its the future

"Shaping isn't really a simple process, and it takes a while."

Yes, it is and yes it does

"I worry of the cases where backtracking becomes impossible, when the damage is too much. Seeing threats in advance can help with thinking on counter-measures. There's many paths, but through mapping data you can find which one is statistically more likely to grant success. There isn't always room to start again if a mistake doesn't allow for it."

Always find a fortified position. This is where you can go when pressured and when you cant find a good solution. You can survive in such a position long enough to figure out a way out, a way forward. While you expand away from your fortification, follow a guideline, but always see all the other possibilities and side track when its beneficial or required. Always keep as many paths open as you can, just encase. Eventually you will be able to create a new fortified position more forward. Then you can abandon your last one.

When in trouble, backtrack to the fortified position and always keep the way open.

Rarely you would have to take calculated risks, but if you are good at improvising and you did the calculation right, it should be fine.

"I can trust one person much easier then a group of people."
One person in power usually means dragging in a group somewhere down the line.

I can find reasons wrong with a group that could also happen from the single individual, they'd just come about through different causes. There's few models I think would work, and they usually work for horrible reasons. An example would be the society in Psycho-Pass.

"i dont know, i made a few realistic examples in my last post, but there could be anything, its the future"
I see people as willing to grasp at opporitunity, even if that grasping costs more than the gains. With that and the risk of variation between people's thoughts it's only a matter of time before it begins to fall apart. There'd need to be some way to keep them in line, a cautionary measure, not just a goal. Goals can be disagreed with, while outright fear must be faced and rallied against.

Novels and shows that demonstrate dystopian futures I don't always see as a decline, but more as a logical inevitability. When people are given the means of freedom, even an inch of oppression will piss them off. In that sense you're always stuck with the question: "Is this place mine, or theirs?", and both answers are bad choices.

Edit: Come to think of it, it'd be rather genius to design a predator for humans that could be directly controlled with the appearance of independent AI. As long as no one figures out who's steering they'll have something external to fear, like how Santa Clause in Futurama brings families together, and the threat ends up no worse then The Wizard of Oz with a death count under it's belt, a far more negotiable situation when compared to an AI that knows nothing else.

"Yes, it is and yes it does"
How familiar are you with the effects of media on people's heads? Hitler loved it, but these days people possess more of a jaded tolerance to it's control potential. You have to be clever instead of direct, so you'd need a hell of a media crew.

"Always find a fortified position."
There's either no such thing if you figure you'd be invincible in there, or it'd not be enough for me from not being an invincible scenario, just positions that are safer than others. The safest place is before the mistakes were made at all.

It's good to have backup plans since every plan has a potential to fall apart, but relying on the escape pod when the problems that lead to it can be addressed strikes me as negligent. Believing "it should be fine" invites Sloth to the party.

"Yes and i would much rather like it"
Your quickness to trusting such a thing has me questioning my inability. I just can't trust when it's a person running things.

"Or people would have evolved beyond that and we'd just need a common goal."
What sort of goal gets around selfishness? What makes a common enemy effective is that the ingroup becomes larger. Without enemies it becomes more and more about the individual, and with that the ingroup splits into trees that grow to trivialize their former connection.

"I think this can be avoided if people are shaped with the right mentality."
Shaping isn't really a simple process, and it takes a while.

"It would be too easy and boring if everything goes exactly as planned. This is why a plan has many paths and can 'backtrack' :P"
I worry of the cases where backtracking becomes impossible, when the damage is too much. Seeing threats in advance can help with thinking on counter-measures. There's many paths, but through mapping data you can find which one is statistically more likely to grant success. There isn't always room to start again if a mistake doesn't allow for it.