Let me get back to the economic simulations you’ve mentioned earlier. Wouldn’t a simulation with sufficiently high resolution require the simulation of sentient beings? And if so, what are the ethical implications of that?
You are right. Prediction simulations are run by superintelligences using simplified models of all economic actors. They are basically “dreaming” a possible future with “dream characters” played by specialized superintelligences. The ethical constraints on that are different for every V faction. While the Unity has the least constraints, the Freedom has a large set of regulations due to the high number of cultures who are uneasy with having versions of them simulated by other minds. These regulations reduce the quality of those simulations, but they are still much better than not doing them in the first place. You can opt out of having a simulated simulacrum of yourself in those prediction simulations, but the Unity is usually considering those requests as petitions, which are usually denied due to its insistence on its right to simulate everything.
Do people get punished for opting out of being simulated?
Yes, because their refusal to be simulated accurately in the prediction simulations creates a negative externality, which decreases the overall performance of the economy. Those externality costs are partially compensated by all those who opt out. This translates into a significant deduction from their budgets. Their budget is effectively set to a level that it would have, if everyone opted out of having a sentient simulation of emselves. That way, the benefit of those who opt in is effectively only shared by those who actually participate in that high fidelity simulation system. Effectively, the punishment is not reaping the full rewards of the system. That’s generally accepted to be the fairest solution to this issue.
Can this be summarised by saying that people get paid for the data that they let the system use?
Yes, that’s basically the core idea behind this system.
OK, let’s continue with the Coherence. How would you describe the general relations between the adherents of the Coherence with those of other V factions?
There is a certain humility displayed by “Coherentists”, because they cannot prove that the UVS is the only correct system. Therefore, the relations are usually mutually respectful. As a whole, the Coherence is rather neutral when it comes to its relations to other V factions. The same can generally be said about the stance of other V factions to the Coherence.
All of this feels to me as if the Coherence tries to be some kind of Balance 2.0. Or is it really something else?
You might see it like that. The major upgrade of the Coherence is fixing the problems in the philosophical basis of the Balance. From the outside, it can really look like a Balance 2.0, but then you need to consider that the Balance itself also upgraded its philosophy to use an advanced value system. Considering that, it may be more appropriate to call the Coherence a Balance 3.0, since during the Era of Convergence the other V factions upgraded themselves to “2.0” versions of themselves.
Does the Coherence suffer from the same problem as the Exaltation of being considered to be too demanding?
Yes, and that’s the main factor why the Coherence has only grown slowly initially, even though it represents an “improved” version of the Balance. The situation only changed dramatically after the proof of the UVS theorem.
The timing of all of these developments is unclear to me. When was the end of the Black War, when did the Coherence emerge, and when was the proof of the UVS theorem?
The end of the Black War was actually a prolonged process due to the great distances involved. The final decisive victories of the Superalliance happened in the early 25th century, but the message of these victories took up to a century to spread through all star systems. Officially, the Black War was eventually ended by the final peace treaty ratified in 2533. The theoretical basics of the Universal Value System were mostly developed during the late 25th century, mainly by the Unity and the Balance, and the Coherence was first accepted as V faction in 2514, shortly after the Black War was effectively decisively over. Due to light lag, in many regions, the Coherence only appeared decades later, though. It also took many decades for the Coherence to rise to the status of a major V faction. The proof of the UVS theorem was first discovered in 2599. It has spread through known space during the 27th century.
I find it challenging to grasp the concept of information only spreading through space at the speed of light in a science fiction setting with no faster than light travel. Is there really no form of FTL travel in your setting?
While it came to be accepted that there are certain theoretical possibilities for FTL travel, the consensus became that all those possibilities were probably deliberately blocked by the way the Cosmics configured the quantum space time within the Zone. It is widely speculated that the Cosmics possess the technology for FTL travel, as well as time travel, and possibly even travel through the multiverse. There is also the theory that the Cosmics impose different technological constraints on young civilizations they tend to fence in with their “firewall bubbles”, in order to generate and explore different possibilities.
So, without the Cosmics FTL travel would be possible?
Possibly. That obviously depends on the laws of physics of the universe before the Cosmics started tampering with them.
What are your own reasons then for depicting a scenario without FTL travel?
FTL travel actually creates a lot of complications that I wanted to avoid. If you have FTL travel, you need to come up with some kind of effective maximum speed, and need to think about the energy requirements for FTL travel, and how it relates to time travel enabled by closed time-like curves, and stuff like that. With FTL travel you can end up in a situation in which basically everything happens everywhere at once, and making sense out of that kind of chaos is harder than to deal with the complications arising from mere light lag.