Amadeus

Great answer. I did not think of that! And now, we have all these young women out trying to get laid and get pregnant. Call that town "Get Lucky."

You could call it hunting. The objective is to catch a creature, how exactly you do that is immaterial. If you want to be slightly more specific, "sea hunting". or "'[animal name] hunting." Like, "Mary, we're going Uku hunting tomorrow morning". Mary said, "Well give it away before you get home, you're not cooking any Uku in this house! It stinks."

@M.Winkens That is not true, I can make encryption keys of any length. I've done it. I can also double or triple encrypt with multiple one-use keys; just encrypt the encrypted text. If you can't break all of them, you can't break the message. And that won't matter: The criminal would have to find my hidden encrypted file. The idea they can also know the information at the same nanosecond as me is a bit too magical for my taste, and once I prevent it from being disseminated, how do they ever know it even exists? I 100% wiped it out of the future timeline, the world evolves without it.

@Miral Obviously if from my future vantage point I know what needs to modified in the information, I can preserve that as well, before hiding the original. What you are talking about is not a concern. If I stop it from being known in 1982, and in 1992 it is known again, I can figure out why it is known in 1992, and go back and fix that. Or if I know it began in 1982, but I see that what began then is not in it's final form, then I can find out when in time between 1982 and 2022 it was "fixed", and hide all that work so it is retrievable before I stop the original from being known.

@NotThatGuy Two scenarios: No point in waiting to prevent it from ever existing. But if you want to use it, but keep it from being widely known, then the paradox avoided is having the information originate from nowhere. Creation can involve all kinds of random elements that will never occur again, the right people with the right experiences in the right place at the right time. By allowing the information to exist and THEN stealing it and destroying it, you prevent it from being disseminated and learned, without any paradox of "Where did it come from in the first place?"

@M.Winkens Shor's algorithm is just faster, it is not instantaneous, and the solution to that is simple: longer encryption keys. There is no reason encryption keys cannot be arbitrarily long, and ironically Shor's algorithm and quantum computing will also improve the speed of finding much much longer encryption keys. In this case, the same tech that creates a threat will create the defense against that threat.

@Tom: It does not invalidate that solution, it changes history to make the universe evolve without that information, while still allowing the information to be "caused" naturally, if that is a concern. Say in the original history, a new tech becomes quickly widespread and abused; a threat to humanity. The hero needs the tech to exist but with changes so it can't be abused. So it still must be invented, but not released until proper security measures, not even invented at the time the invention was created, can be employed. Our hero wants to keep the discovery private, not destroy it.

@Revolver_Ocelot That's a moot point. Clearly causality is out the window as soon as there is time travel; for example there is no "cause" for me to exist, in my present form, at any time but this moment. Our brain and body changes minutely with every passing moment. The document is just like me: I copy it in 2032, and (just like me and all I learned in my life) it can be transported to 1932, before I was born, and exist with no "cause" to exist. If I cannot do that with a document, I cannot do it with my own self or my own brain or all the things I learned since the destination time.

@Guy Who cares? It can also be copied in the future, where it is public, before traveling into the past. It can only come into existence once, sometime in the past. If it is destroyed the moment it exists, nobody had the time to copy it. In fact if necessary, to make sure one has the original, two time jumps can be made; one immediately after it exists and can be copied, and then another to plant a bomb to destroy it just a millisecond after it is created, along with any machines or humans that might have learned it in that millisecond.

@Pelinore There is trap in the "for the greatest number of its citizens", it allows the victimization of the few for the many. Is it okay if 10% of the people starve, so the money it would take to feed them can be applied to infrastructure that makes life more convenient for the 90%? My goal is, as I said, a floor on poverty, nobody dies for lack of money, or because they literally cannot work or sell themselves for money. I am not aiming for the greatest good, or trying to maximize anything. Just minimize injustice and suffering, and let the rest take care of itself.

@Pelinore yes, ti does depend on your aims and agenda. I am presuming these are the instinctual human aims of the human tribe; as of ~100,000 years ago. Survival for all, a "fair" share of both the work and the rewards of accomplishing that. With some exceptions for the particularly fortunate and particularly unfortunate. Ancient human hunter gatherers cared for their crippled and injured, and celebrated their heroes and most productive, so it was never a precise or perfectly fair share of either work or reward. Especially for young children and their mothers. But very few were just abandoned.

@Jerome Yes. I added an explanation to the text.

@AngryMuppet The question begins "Science Fiction". It uses the tag "science fiction". Not "fantasy" or "magic". A biological organism surviving a nuclear blast is 100% fantasy. Magic is fantasy. I'm willing to put up with a lot of hand-waving in science fiction, like FTL travel or biological immortality or teleportation, But, c'mon. There's a line! (I guess one way to fix it is if they can escape the bomb before it arrives; we do fire them with conventional missiles. Traveling a few hundred miles straight up in a few seconds seems quite plausible with advanced tech.)

VTC. There is no plausible world I can think of, and nothing biological evolves to withstand multiple nuclear bombs that can also be killed by "thousands of soldiers". Cheyenne Mountain is 1/2 mile thick granite in all directions with 4' hardened steel blast doors inside that and they don't expect to survive a direct hit by a nuclear bomb. The temp is 100 million degrees Celsius; center of the sun, nothing "evolves" to withstand that. It is implausible that biological life even exists at that temperature. Thus there is no correct answer possible.

@NotThatGuy This article says 35, but then says "early thirties". I have read a more recent and conservative cutoff of 32, based on a survey of mutations in infants. But it is not much different. For fiction purposes, I will presume the dictator bent on improving the human race is more conservative than 35. webmd.com/baby/….

@NotThatGuy There is no difference, reaching maturity is a gradual process, there is no guarantee that a person has achieved it by 18. And by the same token, aging is a gradual process. Some women might be fine having children in their late 30's, others may not. Cutoffs are an average risk judgement that we expect to keep most people away from trouble.

@AlexbGoode I don't think it is misleading at all. For any gradual process, like aging, that begins at low risk and rises to high risk, there is a cutoff point at which we deem the risk worth addressing. The same think for genetics. Many medical professionals recommend that women have their babies before the age of 32, for precisely this reason. The risk has grown too high. We have such cutoffs throughout society. An age to vote, an age to drink, an age at which we can consent to sex, an age to start prostate screening, an age to retire, an age minimum for holding elected offices, etc.

@Ottie Let me remind you that this is fiction about a brutal enslaving immortal dictator. Also, the task is not just breastfeeding, but mothering in general. If artificial insemination is an option, then the dictator can select his ideal couples, gather sperm and eggs to produce his new genetic specimens, and force non-selected women to carry those blastocysts to term and raise the children (to which they have contributed no genetic material). The "ideal" women would never get pregnant. Just harvest an egg per month from them. The only worry is management to prevent inbreeding.

@LuizPSR Surrogate mothering is an excellent idea, if the technology exists in this fictional setting!

@JamieL. Really? I don't understand your outrage. we are talking about fiction, you understand that, right? In fiction, the villains are often brutal, using and killing people without compunction. He's apparently willing to sterilize all but his chosen few. He may even prohibit sex altogether. He is an immortal "way into eugenics". And that means genetic engineering, breast-feeding and infant care do not interfere with this. notovny's suggestion is a good one.

@Cloudberry Perhaps you are right. It is true that the ideal waiting time is about 2 years between births. But I am basing this on two factors. Historically, women have given birth for this long, many for longer. And the questioner asked for a minimum. Finally, the point of the questioner is selective breeding; so he can select for women that manage this level of baby production without dying. Retiring healthy was not a parameter, and since they are clearly enslaved, counter-indicated, in my view.

@wizzwizz4 I work on AI frequently, I don't think you know what you are talking about. Code doesn't "care", you are abusing the language. Unintended behavior from AI is not an example of "emotion", just a lack of restrictions for a mechanical machine. That isn't "caring" about it. They are not creative. They operate within our limits. If anything, higher intelligence would let it set its own limits that we overlooked and be safer. Don't analyze a dumb system and project its behavior to a smarter system. Mindless pursuit of a goal is not "intelligence" for machines or humans.

@wizzwizz4 Your premise fails on the face of it. A robot "caring" is an emotion. A robot "worrying" about who would do something if they don't do it is also an emotion. Robots are machines that do what they are told to do, even self-destructing on a legitimate command (I've programmed a military robot that does that). Limited self-interest can be programmed, we do that in self-driving cars to not bump into things, to slow in the rain to a stoppable speed, but at a lower priority than preserving life. Without emotions, robots don't care if they exist or don't; they don't "go rogue."

@FaitoDayo There is no reason for a robot to develop any sort of emotion. Self-interest rises from emotions. Fear. Greed. Love. Hatred. If we don't give robots any emotions, there is no reason for them to do anything other than their purpose, like a car. Your car acts at your direction; it doesn't get bored or angry or pine for the open road. If you drive it off a cliff, it obeys without fear. Perhaps an altruist codes the robots to play fair. Perhaps they are unhackable. Perhaps smarter than us. Rational Intelligence does not imply emotions exist. We make them without any emotional system.

@FaitoDayo Why would anybody need to "define" that process? The robots implement it, we need no overarching government to tweak it. The robots do all jobs in the premise of this question; including law enforcement, including "politics", which is primarily about the allocation of resources. Other than on-demand services like medical care, the robots ensure everybody gets their fair share of the production for discretionary consumption, which they compute and distribute themselves; and since all requests are through them, they know exactly what each of us has to spend. They enforce fairness.

@AmiralPatate There are major problems with geothermal power. It is clean, but in many places where it has been tried, drilling operations seem to destabilize the rocks and increase tremors in the area. I don't think it is scalable. Wind and solar energy are scalable; particularly thermal solar. This can be implemented on unmanned floating platforms on the open sea generating clean renewable energy that can be collected by a variety of means. e.g solar energy splits water into H and 2O, compresses and iquefies, they get collected to power steam turbines for electricity. No impact on land.

...then their "excess money" can be used to entice others (whose basic needs are also being met) to provide services that perhaps the robots do not provide. Sex, humor, entertainment, larger or fancier living quarters, etc. Excess money would imply the robots can provide a variety of sizes and quality of goods, so we can get a better gaming system, or more travel, or a music studio, if we prefer that over a bigger kitchen. Room for personal preference trade-offs. Or, we can sell our human-only services, and meet more of our personal preferences with fewer trade-offs.

@OscarBravo The current system does not give everyone a basic living wage or an equal share of the global productivity, so obviously it cannot do the same job. But it does at least part of the job; labor is paid and the average worker gets at least a surviving wage. But the OP question is about a fictional future when those problems are all solved; robots do everything and there is no reason to work. In that case, Money does the whole job; everybody is entitled to an equal share in the global productivity of the robots; if that exceeds their basic needs, then ...(continued)

You are the one that identified it as the thesis. I am the one that said it was not clearly written, and the third paragraph should be rewritten to explicitly call out the thesis. Which would have made it clear. So again, you don't know what you are talking about, and NOW you are moving the goalposts, claiming what YOU identified as the thesis is not clearly the thesis. You aren't interested in writing advice, you are just interested in arguing.

Sorry, you just don't know what you are talking about. I'm out, you are on your own. My answer stands as written. Good luck.

@Apollyon IT IS A METAPHOR and that can be used to foreshadow or forecast, either one. Yes, I would mind telling you about my publications, I post here under a pseudonym for a very good reason. I don't need to know who you are, you don't need to know who I am. If you don't think I know what I am talking about, I suggest you look at my rank on this site (I am #1) and besides that I don't care. Don't take my advice. My answer is not for just you, but for other readers with similar questions that would like to write well. If you don't care to write well, have a nice life.

@Apollyon You are just mistaken, foreshadowing does not have to be literal or explicit at all. It is just like an echo of what is to come, a similarity, and that holds here. I am a professional, paid and published writer, if you would rather believe whatever you make up in your own mind, I can't help you.

I am a college professor with 5 college degrees; I spent 12 years in college. If you recognize there is a metaphorical relationship then it WAS foreshadowed. As I said, the third paragraph is not well-written, and it should have called out Kintsugi directly, but it definitely was foreshadowed that this would be the metaphor. It IS the thesis, and the thesis was applied.

Kintsugi "heals" a broken piece of pottery by gluing it back together, but not by trying to hide the seams. It highlights them in gold and draws attention to them, and in the opinion of many people, this adds beauty to the piece. In this writing this is being used as a metaphor and saying the "scars" and damage (literal or otherwise) we get from failure and loss are not ugly, but should be highlighted to add beauty to our character and personality, the fact that we survived and healed and moved on makes us better people than if we suffered no adverse experiences at all.

@WeckarE. Well that is my point, at a sufficient level of generalization all stories are about a problem. And that is useful, only PROBLEMS can be cast as problems, and to be a story (as I just answered candied_orange above) to BE a story there has to be something to solve, a desire for something different, an obstacle to overcome. That is what a PLOT is about, how does the protagonist(s) go from having a new problem to overcoming the new problem (or suffering for lack thereof)? All stories are about a problem, or a series of them. If writing is not about a problem, it isn't a story.

@candied_orange Those are not "stories" in the sense we use on Writing. They are descriptions. There is nothing to be solved, there is no desire for something different, there is no plot or obstacles. That is not a story.

@PoorYorick In Futurological Congress, Tichy certainly has a problem, he's been drugged. In Alice in Wonderland Alice's "problem" is just satisfying her curiosity in an adventure. In On the Road, Sal is weakened and depressed; his problem is a lack of adventure which Dean corrects, making Sal confident and joyful, and also gives him a friend. If you read a story and wonder what will happen, or how the character(s) will come out, you are perceiving problems and conflicts. If it is all just description, that is not a story, IMO. You don't have to share my opinion.

@Orangesandlemons How would that result in a story where nobody has a problem? To me the basic definition of a story is that problems are encountered and resolved, one way or another, happily or tragically, for better or for worse. Showcasing an Ideal seems to imply solving a problem of being "less than ideal", or dysfunctional. If the dysfunctionality is not show for the contrast, then again, we have just written a description without conflict and to me that is not a story.

@vsz I don't regard those as stories. Perhaps poetry? But it is not a story if nobody has any problems.

@Džuris Correct, my whole point is the classifications don't actually capture most stories, and following such a blueprint may result in a flat story. My "plot" is useful because it captures what a (modern) story is, they are always about a problem that someone is motivated to solve. Usually it gets divided into sub-problems. Understanding how humans deal with problems is more useful than saying "it is a quest", or "it is a journey and return", or "it is a tragedy". Those are useless, while viewing the story as a problem that people are dealing with is much more useful.

@JCRM The point of this stack exchange is writing new works, not analyzing historic fiction. My answers are geared to new works and modern definitions, and modern consumers.

@JCRM Comedies usually have happy endings because unhappy endings aren't funny. But not every story with a happy ending (most of them) is a comedy. What makes a comedy a comedy is it is designed to keep the audience laughing most of the time. Some stories have no funny moments. Most do (because life does), but wouldn't be classified as comedy, because the attraction to the story is a vicarious adventure, watching characters strive to overcome some problem that is not that funny. E.G. finding a cure for a child's cancer may have funny moments, and a happy ending, but is not a comedy.

@Džuris Yes, a story can be about a crew, or an ensemble; that is fine; but ultimately these are decomposable into individual character arcs. There is plenty left to "reason" about, you still will have a plot that needs to be devised (or discovered on the fly), you still need challenges and mysteries and emotional moments. You still need to decide who dies and why, if they succeed or fail, what is plausible in your setting, etc. As I have shown above, you can reason about a type of problem, and learn plot tricks to resolve it, without following a blueprint of step-by-step plot beats.

... In ways I cannot anticipate. Revolutions may happen, countries can change leaders, wars can break out, terrorist attacks might destroy San Francisco and wipe out my setting. Social norms may change, politics may change. Art doesn't have to be permanent to be enjoyed and admired and considered a work of art. I absolutely craft stories I think are artful, but I do not aim for immortality. If I write an evergreen story, great, but my only goal is to be read by a lot; in 1 year or over 50.

@Galastel I do not object to art, and I certainly want to produce something with a measure of beauty and emotional power. However, you ask "how many sell well only to be forgotten next year?" Why is longevity the measure of beauty? To me that seems false on the face of it. If I write a book set in today's world, it can be a work of art that is dated within five years, due to the pace of technology, medicine, science and social norms that will surely change in the next five years (cont)

Meanwhile, somebody producing "art" that sells a few hundred copies has, relatively speaking, entertained a tiny fraction of the blockbuster. I don't think that much about "lasting value", some of my favorite (most entertaining to me) movies don't stand the test of time, and the same for series in rerun. I loved them while they were running, but now "seen that, loved it, what else is on?" Like an ice sculpture, longevity is not a prerequisite for something to be called art.

@Galastel I am a writer that wants to get read, to get read I need to sell books, and the more I sell the happier I am. I am not in some vain pursuit of proxy immortality, nor am I in pursuit of praise by critics. For example, though I don't care for them, some of the teen farce movies are blockbusters, and I feel like that proves they entertained a massive audience -- So good for those authors! It isn't my turf, I wouldn't try it, but who cares? They entertained people. (cont)

@TimothyAWiseman Convince yourself. Find the top 100 best selling escapist fiction books of the decade, or movies. Limited to those with a hero and a villain that is conscious. Find a summary. In how many do you find Hero dies and the villain succeeds? Compare sales of these to any other combination, including both die, neither die, or the hero lives and the villain dies. By "escapist" I exclude Historical fiction (e.g. slavery as it really was) and Political fiction (about what is happening now). And no mid-series books, the full story must END permanently with Villain Wins, Hero Dies.

@Galestel Pyrrhic victory; Jordan blew up the bridge as he planned to do, and to save the woman he loved, self-sacrificed and stayed behind knowing he would be killed. That is not the OP's scenario in which the good guy dies and the villain wins; Jordan both accomplished his mission and sacrificed himself for true love.

@FriendlyNeighborhoodDemon And where in Breaking Bad was the hero opposed to the villain that died in the end so the villain prevailed? You aren't talking about the scenario the OP outlined! This question is specifically about the good guy hero we have been following for an entire series failing and dying and the villain he has been opposed to for an entire series winning. Breaking Bad is a different kind of story, a war between bad guys. In the end the bad guy MC has a Pyrrhic victory, killing his enemies and dying too; but ensuring his family gets his money.