Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

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Krulle
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Krulle »

Well, blocking out physical screams is one thing, but blocking out mental anguish telepathically transmitted may touch the experimenters on a far more direct level....
Especially if telepathy is considered as transmitting truth...
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Absalom
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Absalom »

saint of m wrote:@ icekatze

True enough.

The Tuskegee Siphlies Experiment; Edison electicuting things to death to disprove Tesla; how we have our understanding of the effects of hypothermia.

And there is the fact we still look for someone to look down upon. While using race, religion, and ethnicity (3 go to things to pick on) we still look at class (upper or lower), or someother quicky group or subcuture to say: Thank heaven I am not them."

Considering how the blue space babes treat their allies and enemies, I doubt they have grown out of it.
While not entirely unjustified (both are part of the primate/mammilian/vertebrate/whatever socialization toolkit), I do feel the need to point out that you're conflating "tribe" and "rank" as if they're the same thing.
saint of m wrote:@Absalom: Could they rig something that would broarden their signiture, say add more telepathic white noise?
That's a question for Arioch to answer, though I suspect the answer will come in the form of "The Loroi don't understand the mechanisms of telepathy, and the Umiak understand even less", or something of the sort.

ShadowDragon8685
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by ShadowDragon8685 »

I hate to say it, but this seems pretty simple to me, for a value of simple that by no means equates to "easy."

The Umiak probably have keyed in that the Loroi are telepathic, what with invading Loroi worlds and dealing with stiff resistance thereon.

Aaaand they probably figured out that telepathy requires living minds, so...

Well, the Historians have personality constructs, so we know that thinking AI isn't out of the question, or automatically-supermurderously cold turn-on-its-creators stuff.

Aaand the only shell we've actually seen was Kikitik-27, and, well... Frankly, synthesizing a false background and equipment environment would be child's play...

So, possibly, there's no real Umiak there. Or if they are, they've all uploaded their memories and personalities into robotic drone-bodies and/or their ships themselves - having "Sleeved," in Eclipse Phase terms, into synthetic bodies and their ships, not only would they be far more resistant to G-forces, but they'd be invisible to the Loroi's major advantage.

I mean, why choose between the AI War and the Bug War when you can both simultaneously, am I right?

That's maybe - in fact, probably - not the case. It could be that they've invented some kind of psi-dampener/suppressor/shield/whatever that screws with psionics. But the shells are already very transhumanist - well, transoriginist - to the point where they don't even use their reproductive organs, so sleeving wholesale into robotic bodies/into their ships themselves would really seem... Logical to them.

Cardshark
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Cardshark »

Between the ponderous style of the Umiak and my debatable written english I hope it is not too much of a chore to read. Biopunk, industrial and carelessly clinical. That's the way I see the Shells. Maybe a tad bit too dark?
TOP-SECRET – COMPOUND EYES ONLY
REPORT #437-567-053
AUTHOR: KIKTALIK-28-KILLIT-TIKKUTIT / [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] 7th STUDY AND RESEARCH GROUP
SUBJECT: AD-HOC ORGANIC-MACHINE INTERFACE SOLUTION FOR ACTIVE NOISE-CANCELATION OF [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] PSYCHOSENSING UNEXPLAINED ABILITIES. AN OVERVIEW FOR FIELD COMMANDERS BEFORE LARGE-SCALE DEPLOYMENT.

To all field commanders.

Due to the repeated failure by all [[THE MURDERING RAIDERS] STUDY AND RESEARCH GROUPS] so far to measure any physical manifestation of [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] psychosensing and/or psychoactive abilities save the apparently ex-nihilo influence over matter in the case of psychoactivity, or direct stimulation of the brain of the receiving subject in the case of psychosensing, as well as related energy consumption by the emitting subject, [[THE MURDERING RAIDERS] 7th STUDY AND RESEARCH GROUP] suggested a novel approach to the problem that could circumvent the physical impossibility we faced. We attempted to integrate the functioning organic devices readily available into our technology and consider the actual inner functioning of the system as a black box that could be practically ignored as long as the entry measurable brain activity and output measurable brain activity were consistent and within margin error.

To this end we were supplied with a significant number of [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] research subjects thanks to [THE HIERARCHY]’s incursions into their space. We surgically fitted each of our test subjects with an integrated brain activity 3D sensor attached to the back of their skull, then encouraged them to communicate via their unexplained abilities in a fashion that allowed us a good estimation of the data transferred: Pairs of isolated subjects were initially confronted to problems of which one had the solution readily available and the second the display to cease the common negative encouragement one of them was subjected to. This allowed us to measure accurately the subjects’ neural activity while narrowing the content of the data transferred to a very small, acceptably predictable content once filtered the noise induced by the negative encouragement upon the subjects’ nervous system. By repeatedly increasing the complexity of the problems the subjects had to solve and the target, intensity and duration of the negative encouragement we were able to develop an accurate lexicon of [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] psychosensing communication patterns. Further induced stimulation of the subjects’ brains demonstrated the accuracy of that lexicon and, after a few [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] deaths due to sudden neural collapse upon communication attempt initiation, then regular loss of sanity of the following subjects, we consistently managed to send intelligible message to subjects despite their unease over unmistakably feeling the emitter as “Ice-cold” or “brain-dead”.

[[THE MURDERING RAIDERS] 7th STUDY AND RESEARCH GROUP] is proud to announce that we merely spent 5762 subjects in this experiment, which leaves us with a comfortable reserve for further research and development or industrial use of the resource before need for replenishment.

Upon mastery of that lexicon and our electric/light synapse stimulation solutions refined to adequate precision upon [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] neural architecture, it was trivial to apply electronic warfare active noise cancelation solutions commonly used for RCS-reduction technologies to pairs of linked receivers/emitters brains. As the neural activity of a brain detecting the psychosensing presence of a [THE HIERARCHY] member is registered, it is processed by the system them reemited with the adequate spatial distortion by the second brain of the pair to cancel the emission. As all field commanders no doubt knows, we are at least sure despite our inadequate knowledge of the phenomenon, that the [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] psychosensing abilities are location-sensitive limited in range, bound to the inverse square law of distance which most certainly demonstrates it applies in the physical universe, despite its apparent instantaneous travel over arbitrary distance, and not through hyperspace, as defended by the incompetent members no smarter than day-hatched larvae of [[THE MURDERING RAIDERS] 13th STUDY AND RESEARCH GROUP] which are a waste of oxygen and resources and should be terminated and reprocessed with no further delay.

Further experiments demonstrated the efficiency of our prototype [PSW/ANC-1] (PsychoSensing Warfare/Active Noise Cancelation – Model 1) which uses at least four devices (Each composed of a pair of extricated receiver/emitter brains, life support equipment and associated electronic warfare calculator) in a pyramidal shape to delimit a limited volume of space within which we can efficiently cancel the psychoactive emissions of [THE HIERARCHY] members, up to a 45dB attenuation when within the psychoactive threshold of fourty [THE HIERARCHY] crewmembers for a each functional system of four [PSW/ANC-1] devices, efficiency decreasing exponentialy beyond that threshold. Test subjects were unable to sense the presence of [THE HIERARCHY] members or any other sentient being at all but the closest distance well below any remotely plausible space engagement range. Despite our lack of understanding of [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] psychosensing amplification technology this weakness is attenuated by the careful life support and single purpose of the brains, allowing each one to perform at peak efficiency. Thanks to its scalable nature to system can be adapted to any ship shape and crew size.

The [PSW/ANC-4] series version is slated to be installed to all frontline units upon your next visit to port by our personnel, with spare neural units. Please keep in mind the devices are fragile in nature and are to be carefully powered and fed in nutrient by your maintenance crew, and replaced at the first diagnostic predicting probable stress failure. The survival and success of your warship depends on it.

It will certainly occur to our readers that this application of the mastery over the psychoactive communication system of the [THE MURDERING RAIDERS] is only the first of many breakthroughs that will no doubt be deployed in the near future.
I fail to see how you could actually perform active noise cancelation over something that travels without time delay, but oh, well, i liked the idea too much to pass. Technobabble Umiak space-magic ftw. It also pushed me to finally register on this forum, so hello everybody! I hope you somewhat enjoyed my text. I'm not crazy i swear.

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Hālian
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Hālian »

Hi :D

“Compound eyes only” made me LOL.
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Krulle
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Krulle »

@Cardshark: Well, hello! What a way to introduce yourself to the forum! Welcome!

Well done, thank You!

Carl Miller wrote:“Compound eyes only” made me LOL.
That, and the academic rivalries in the handbook.....


we can efficiently cancel the psychoactive emissions of [THE HIERARCHY] members, up to a 45dB attenuation
Question: how can they measure the noise in dB if they still have not detected any "telepathy waves"?

Anyway, technobabble. It just works, the rest is there to explain why further funding is necessary, prefarable the funding previously given to [[THE MURDERING RAIDERS] 13th STUDY AND RESEARCH GROUP].
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Cardshark
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Cardshark »

Krulle wrote: Question: how can they measure the noise in dB if they still have not detected any "telepathy waves"?
Well, now that you say it...
Let's say the attenuation is an empirical guesstimate derived from the detection distance measured during the device's tests. KIKTALIK-28 would certainly not be above pretending to look all professional and know what is actualy going on.

Krulle
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Krulle »

Academic rivalry, and an executive summary written for reading by the committees that control the funding....

This seems to be a mix of user information and using the same text to advertise for more funding....
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dragoongfa
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by dragoongfa »

I don't know, such a report feels very human in its self importance. Umiak are hardcore humble monomaniacal entities so the researchers themselves wouldn't advertise themselves in such a way.

A non research overseer giving proper credit were its due, siphoning resources where they would do good and sending incompetents were they would be of better use would seem more Umiak.

Cold, calculating logic in making callous decisions without any self importance. Just an other cog in the vast machine that is the Hierarchy.

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Zarya
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Zarya »

I was still fretting about how the Umiak manage to hide very large scale offensive movements and have searched the forum for discussions on AI and Advanced General Intelligence (AGI). This topic may not have many fans in the context of Arioch’s storytelling, but it is something developing on Earth and even at our tech-level it has the potential to unnerve many.

(I remember reading that the idea of automated ships was dismissed as unpractical somewhere, but can’t find that discussion).

Simply speculating: I’d venture that the Umiak / Hierarchy applies some form of it and scaled up its use. If they can risk a deep jump into the Leido system and accept significant material losses (hardware mostly, perhaps not sentient bugs), they may have applied AGI. This deals with both the farsensing and the aspect of jump-sickness, and it may behave just as monomaniacal as the Umiak have proven to be (hard to see the difference from outside-in too). AGI has the potential to be just as evil, effective and calculating - or far worse when it has the potential to outperform in terms of bug’s intellect.

If something like this is applied, I hope that Umiak AGI has some inherent weaknesses that a smart, creative biological sentient can exploit in order to win. An ideal scenario would then be that can be turned against the Umiak, and then have it delete itself.

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icekatze
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

While I have a high degree of confidence that AGI in real life will continue to advance to the point of surpassing humans in general purpose problem solving, if we allow it; that is something that we've been told isn't the case in the outsider universe. Stories about people are more interesting than stories about unmanned probes as well.

Arioch has also highlighted a few in-universe problems with automated ships.

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Zarya
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Zarya »

icekatze wrote:hi hi

While I have a high degree of confidence that AGI in real life will continue to advance to the point of surpassing humans in general purpose problem solving, if we allow it; that is something that we've been told isn't the case in the outsider universe. Stories about people are more interesting than stories about unmanned probes as well.

Arioch has also highlighted a few in-universe problems with automated ships.
Thank you icekatze, that’s one of the quotes I couldn’t find.
Also agree with the point you make about people (real bug) stories in this context, and it’s the storytellers’ prerogative too.

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orion1836
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by orion1836 »

Where do the Umiak hide their armies?





...in their sleevies. :lol:

I'll show myself out.

Demarquis
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Demarquis »

From the other thread:

"It could even be human derived, if they captured one of the other scouts, and reverse engineered our ability to block detection."

"Or simply keep a few "Yomans" alive and in captivity. Much simpler. They would not even have to know why they were being kept alive for so long."

I'll just point out the obvious, merely placing a human in a ship would do nothing to hide the entire ship. The entire crew would have to be human, and I don't think the Umiak have had the time to enslave the thousands that would be needed to crew an entire invasion. And how could they trust such an army?

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Krulle »

And finding some Humans on a shuttle somewhere, capturing them and experimenting on them might not give the knowledge that the Humans have a lotai.
They might find that out if they subverted some Loroi to work with/for them to analyse aliens.

The war is old enough that that might be "loroi kids" which grew up in Umiak crèches, but I would not count on it resulting in a stable mindset.
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Cthulhu
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Cthulhu »

Demarquis wrote:
Thu Jun 16, 2022 5:25 pm
From the other thread:

"It could even be human derived, if they captured one of the other scouts, and reverse engineered our ability to block detection."

"Or simply keep a few "Yomans" alive and in captivity. Much simpler. They would not even have to know why they were being kept alive for so long."

I'll just point out the obvious, merely placing a human in a ship would do nothing to hide the entire ship. The entire crew would have to be human, and I don't think the Umiak have had the time to enslave the thousands that would be needed to crew an entire invasion. And how could they trust such an army?
You know, even if Arioch gave his OK for necro'ing such an old thread, it should be at least worth it. This was already discussed long ago.
Krulle wrote:
Thu Jun 16, 2022 6:05 pm
And finding some Humans on a shuttle somewhere, capturing them and experimenting on them might not give the knowledge that the Humans have a lotai.
They might find that out if they subverted some Loroi to work with/for them to analyse aliens.

The war is old enough that that might be "loroi kids" which grew up in Umiak crèches, but I would not count on it resulting in a stable mindset.
The timeframe would not be consistent, also, where would the Shells get enough humans to experiment upon?

Let's have a conspiracy theory instead. The Umiak had already contacted the TCA years ago. Seeing that Humanity was utterly outclassed, the bigwigs decided that it would be prudent to join the Hierarchy voluntary, before they could send a division or two to "persuade" us. Especially since the Humans are apparently the template species of their Enemy, and we were permitted to send test subjects instead of fulfilling the usual, ruinous production quotas. While the bugs were busy experimenting upon the "volunteers", the Human leadership would work out plans how to sell the inevitable to the general populace.

But the universe does have a sick sense of humor, and decided to throw a monkey wrench in those schemes. An Orgus ship stumbled upon the Esperanza colony, thus spoiling everything. However, the government realized that this wasn't as bad as they first thought. Why not pull off an "Operation Northwoods" to paint the Loroi as the bad guys?

The brave Scout Corps were sent on a mission to find out more about the combatants, yet one ship, the Bellarmine, would be destroyed by the evil, mind-raping, enslaving, genocidal space-elves. Oh no, it turns out that our very existence is considered anathema to their religious beliefs! Fortunately, the Hierarchy, who were contacted by another ship, agreed to protect and support us! Free of charge, no less (after all, they already got their farseer-jammer).

The Bellarmine was ambushed and blown up by a Shell, or even an (upgraded) Human ship, which knew exactly where to look. What they didn't know about, was that a single crewman survived, or even worse, was picked up by the Loroi. Now, Alex shall stumble upon the "device". Face-to-face, so to speak.

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Keklas Rekobah
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Keklas Rekobah »

One of my Traveller players came up with a novel idea: A helmet-like device lined with thousands of reverse-biased PN junctions, or 'diodes'.  These diodes were optimized for noise emissions from 7 to 70 Hz (corresponding with alpha, beta, and gamma brain waves) and up.  The output would somehow interfere with mind-reading attempts, and the telepath would detect only static when attempting to mind-read the wearer.

The effect would only work when someone was actually wearing an active helmet; if someone was simply in the same room as an unworn, yet active "psi-helmet", his or her mind could easily be read, and the mind-reader would not detect any static.

(Traveller rules already had a "Psi-Helmet", but my player gave a believable explanation of how/why it should work.)

Whatever the Umiak have developed, I am sure they only know the 'what', but not they 'why' of its effectiveness -- in much the same way that most people seem to understand the 'what' of analog television (e.g., plug it in and switch it on), but not the 'why' of analog television (e.g.,  the NTSC Standard ).
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Demarquis
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Demarquis »

@Cthulhu: Dude, that's awesome. I doubt that's where the story is going, but it would be so cool.

@Keklas: I think it would work better if the emissions were electro-magnetic, since that's what brainwaves are made of, and therefore the helmet would do an excellent job of jamming any "telepathic" passive sensors. Course, you would have to heavily insulate the inside of the helmet, otherwise you will jam the thoughts of the person wearing it!

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Cthulhu
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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by Cthulhu »

Keklas Rekobah wrote:
Thu Jun 16, 2022 9:24 pm
One of my Traveller players came up with a novel idea: A helmet-like device lined with thousands of reverse-biased PN junctions, or 'diodes'.  These diodes were optimized for noise emissions from 7 to 70 Hz (corresponding with alpha, beta, and gamma brain waves) and up.  The output would somehow interfere with mind-reading attempts, and the telepath would detect only static when attempting to mind-read the wearer.

The effect would only work when someone was actually wearing an active helmet; if someone was simply in the same room as an unworn, yet active "psi-helmet", his or her mind could easily be read, and the mind-reader would not detect any static.

(Traveller rules already had a "Psi-Helmet", but my player gave a believable explanation of how/why it should work.)

Whatever the Umiak have developed, I am sure they only know the 'what', but not they 'why' of its effectiveness -- in much the same way that most people seem to understand the 'what' of analog television (e.g., plug it in and switch it on), but not the 'why' of analog television (e.g.,  the NTSC Standard ).
The Loroi had millennia to test various hypotheses, and I think that brainwaves would be the first thing they looked into. Sadly, telepathy is not based, related or even influenced by EM. Or any other physical phenomenon, for that matter. The Umiak had only a few decades to experiment upon captives, and I doubt that they found something which the Loroi overlooked. Instead, it's likely that the Shells have acquired this fleet-lotai ability from a most surprising source. Maybe even related to the Humans, the coincidence is just too good to pass up on, at least from a storytelling perspective.
Demarquis wrote:
Thu Jun 16, 2022 11:30 pm
@Cthulhu: Dude, that's awesome. I doubt that's where the story is going, but it would be so cool.
I also think that it's somewhat unlikely. It would be an incredible plot twist, though.
SpoilerShow
But actually, that's what THEY want you to think! Bellarmine was an inside job!!!!

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Re: Fan Theories on How the Umiak can hide from the farseers

Post by DevilDalek »

I still think it's down to the Umiak having some captured farseers that they've some how learnt how to send out reverse interference!

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