chess | (no subject)

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This is the old Five Questions meme, but with inflation - now with seven questions! Comment below if you want some questions from me. This set of questions are courtesy of

sesquepadalia:

1. What cause (if any) would you be prepared to die for?

I always say that I can only ever say what causes I believe I ought to be prepared to die for, because I don't think anyone can tell what they're actually prepared to die for until they're faced with the choice.

Empirically, I'm prepared to put up with a fairly small but definitely significant risk of death for quite a range of things, including family events, LARP events and sometimes just general sociable / holiday type interactions - I refer here mostly to things I'm willing to undertake a longish road journey for, which is probably my highest risk-of-sudden-death activity that I undertake regularly.

Theoretically, I should be willing to die for:

1) A direct exchange for the life of a non-Christian - because I'm going to Heaven, and they aren't if they die at that moment, but might get there later if they have more life to live.

I sometimes think I'm constantly not living up to this one, as I don't immediately give all my money to causes which relieve lethal poverty in low-Christianity areas. I usually rationalise this by maintaining that a) my future lifetime earnings are probably still higher even accounting for my consumption habits than I could realise in immediate cash right now and go on to die; and b) my friends and family would insist on supporting me rather than letting me die of it, so it would actually be massively unfair on them.

2) Probably the conversion of at least one person with assurance that it was going to 'stick', but I'm not sure how I could practically judge this; it becomes more clear-cut further up this stack of reasoning (i.e. mass conversion of a whole community or a deathbed conversion).

3) Some kind of reasonably large-scale poverty alleviation - one which is likely to exceed the probably effectiveness of my expected future lifetime charitable donations. I define 'poverty' quite widely - any serious lack of basic material / health / welfare / education / freedom needs will do.

I note that I often suffer from suicidal tendencies and therefore the list of things I am willing to die for is likely to be much longer than the list of things I am willing to live or suffer for - some days I feel like I would be quite happy to die for just the sheer relief of not being any more, and although those have thankfully been rare lately I don't hold any great value in my continued existence.

So the fact that I haven't dedicated my life to any of these causes (although you might say I have, by ensuring I have a high regular income I can (and do to a large extent) give to people who are more competent at them than me!) doesn't invalidate the possibility of me being willing to die for them, if the situation arose.

2. If you could become suddenly brilliant at one thing, what would it be and why?

I'm not sure it's one thing, really, but my gut instinct says 'people', specifically persuading people to do what I want.

I generally think I have a high level of general intelligence already (specifically the kind of general intelligence that can't necessarily get into depth in a problem but can generally analyse just about any situation and suggest improvements and turn out to be correct) and so if I could just persuade people I was right and they should do what I want, I could usefully apply that to all kinds of things...

I expect I'd actually turn out to do all kinds of terrible things like everyone who thinks they might make a good Dictator Of The World, but that's no reason not to try, right? ;-)

The only other thing I really want (rather than just have a passing fancy towards) is more energy (i.e. to function at the level I function at when I'm manic and Being Awesome all the time rather than only very occasionally), which I don't think is really a 'be brilliant at' thing.

3. If you could spend 24 hours in the company of one person, historical or fictional, who would it be, and what would you do?

I know everyone will find it terribly corny if I say 'Jesus' and 'Listen', and I expect it wouldn't help because I'm technically always in the company of God / the Holy Spirit anyway and I don't seem to always do a good job of listening to them, but I can't think of anything better; I already have the good fortune to be surrounded by a large quantity of intelligent and excellent company pretty much whenever I want...

4. [Obligatory LARP question] What do you feel was your biggest missed opportunity with a LARP character?

There are several possible angles to this question:

The first anecdote that springs to mind contains Maelstrom Spoilers: essentially I missed a highly valuable item that I could easily have half-inched, but somehow I just entirely overlooked its existence in the bag I was relieving of all its currency :-).

Then there's the poor unplayed Maelstrom characters, particularly the Gerosan wemic old soldier turned farmer turned soldier again and the Tenizidi mystic poet, but also the Alkonian professor with her students (retainers) and determination to rewrite the Almanac properly this time (although I reused some of her for an NPC role) and the sneaky Onontakhan terrorist...

Then there's the characters I played in systems that I never got properly into because I was having a bad weekend for unrelated reasons: Tylda the white rabbit in Winter in the Willows, Nepthys the littlest Temple Guard in Odyssey.

I don't tend to have big missed-opportunity regrets in LARP though - what happens is what happens. Very occasionally I go 'ooh, I could totally have done that if I'd thought of it' (like the theft) but usually I'm much more 'hahaha, that is some great dramatic irony that my poor character missed that' :).

5. You have 1 million pounds sterling deposited in your bank account with the proviso that not a penny can be spent on yourself alone. What do you do with it?

Panic slightly; spend some time researching how to invest it well so that it generates significantly more than the original capital; spend some more time researching various charitable organisations to hand it out to.

(It's not quite enough capital to start thinking about setting up my own charitable organisation, and in any case I would have to be using some of it to support me while I did that, which is skating close to 'spent on yourself alone'.)

I might succumb to the temptation to hand some of it out to friends-and-acquaintances but I would try to resist (as they are unlikely to be the most efficient recipients). As it only says 'on yourself alone' not the stronger 'on yourself' I might do so a bit though, even though this would mostly benefit 'my social capital' rather than 'the world in general'.

(Even spending it on charities of my choice is to some extent spending it on myself, because the act of choosing which causes I find worthy is something I benefit from - see under 'yet another reason why it's important to have tax and government spending rather than relying on philanthropy' - but I think no court in the land would convict me for giving stuff that I couldn't spend on 'myself alone' to charity!)

6. You have the chance to commission a film or TV series based on a book (for the sake of argument, it's being produced by HBO, and thus probably done quite well) - which book do you choose and why?

I don't really do television (or video-format entertainment in general, apart from the occasional 'turn my brain off by watching a bad action flick in good company') but my initial instinct is to say A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge, because I think it has a very visual depth and richness of characters and locations, and would therefore actually make a good TV series (there's too much material there for a single film).

Also I really want to see what they'd make of the Tines :-).

(My main desktop computer is called Tyrathect...)

7. You are spending a year abroad; which country would you like to stay in and why? (assume that you can speak, or will be taught the local language before you go).

Japan.

It contains a large concentration of Cool Shiny Things (by which I mean scenery and traditional buildings and stuff as well as technology), I would quite like to be able to speak the language (especially if I got literacy in it too, but even if I didn't), and the culture is quite alien (which is a plus because I get to see something Different) but also seems to have fairly good provisions for 'oh, you are a foreigner, we will make allowances' which make it easier to get by in.

And I can probably eat the food and survive the climate (it might be a bit warm sometimes), which rules out many other interesting destinations.

I don't think I would want to live in Japan long-term - there seem to be some serious societal problems that just aren't as bad over here - but it sounds like an awesome place to spend a year out of the places that I could likely survive a year in...

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I'm usually game for these.

1) Giant pears with teeth invade the area where you live, destroying all before them! The expected military intervention doesn't seem to be materialising. What do you do?

2) You succeed in shattering time and bringing back the dead. Which of the dead do you particularly want to meet, and why?

3) You can commission the RPG author of your choice (alive or dead) to write the system of your choice. Who do you commission and what kind of system / setting do you specify, in how much detail?

4) You can change one thing that the current government of your country is doing (or planning to do in the next year or so). What do you choose and why?

5) You get to add one subject to the standard curriculum of schools in your country, at about the same status as Geography or History. What subject do you pick, what does that subject mean to you (i.e. what are the boundaries of what's included in it and what's not) and why that one in particular?

6) You are locked in a room and instructed that you will not be released until you write a novel of quality acceptable to your captors. You do not have any information on their taste in novels, but they have kidnapped you specifically so they probably want something in your normal range of interests. What do you write?

7) You can convert the entire world to a religion of your choice, but it must be a reasonably established current major world religion; additionally, the basic assumptions of that religion will then become objectively true. Do you perform this action, and if so what religion do you pick, and why? If not, why not? (You may pick particular sub-branches of a religion as long as the sub-branch currently counts as a major world religion in its own right.)

Answers here.

BTW, l_the_fangirl's answer to question 1 is "Get a giant wheel of Brie and a flamethrower."

Edited 2012-03-09 12:34 (UTC)

I would love to be asked some questions pls :)

1) You get a one-time offer to turn into the animal of your choice. This includes mythological creatures but only if they are incapable of speech (or communication broadly equivalant to speech). You can change back if you don't like it, but you will have used up your one chance. Do you take the offer? Why or why not? What creature do you pick?

2) You wake up in the medical bay at Thabana Weyr, with your dragon looking on anxiously. She informs you that you have been in a coma for the last ten years, and may have experienced some vivid hallucinations, but everything is okay now. Do you believe her? Do you seek out anyone from the life you led in the meantime? What do you do next?

3) You can commission any author (alive or dead) to write one novel for you, with as much or as little specification of content as you like. Who do you commission and what do you ask them to write, and what level of detail do you go into?

4) Cryogenics are perfected, and you win a ticket to be frozen until medical science advances enough to fix all of your medical problems. But you only have one ticket and your friends and family can't afford to be frozen with you. Do you take up the offer? Why or why not? Would your decision change if you could take one other person with you on the ticket (assume they're okay with this)?

5) Aliens enter the room you're in, freeze time, and offer you one favour: you can become suddenly rich (they'll fiddle your bank records so you gain a lot of money in suitibly plausible ways), or you can be transferred into a new, functioning body of your choice (up to the peak of human capability in any one area and generally decent in the rest), or you can have advanced technological knowledge (not completely revolutionary, but the next step to our current technological level in a variety of fields). Which do you pick, and why?

6) You can kill one person, anywhere in the world, at any point in history, without reprecussions (assume it's even a virtuous act). Which person do you pick, and why?

7) You can switch lives with any person on currently on the planet. They won't know you've done it - for all intents and purposes, they will just become you. You will retain all your memories but also be able to access their memories, knowledge, competencies and habits so that you can pass for them perfectly and do as well as them in whatever position you find yourself in. Who do you pick and why? If you wouldn't do it, why not, and who would you pick if it wasn't optional?

That's nineteen questions!

(good ones, though)

I maintain each question is all the same question, it's just that English is an imprecise language so some of them need a more verbose explanation :-p.

Do you want some?

Edited 2012-03-07 12:39 (UTC)

I would love some questions.

1) You can perfectly replace any current politician with yourself. You will acquire their position, their history, their contacts, their memories etc etc, but also retain your own memories etc (you can choose whether to take on their appearance / body or not). They will take your place and live your life with only slight disorientation (they don't get to keep their memories etc). Do you perform this action, and if so who do you pick? If you wouldn't, why not, and who would you pick if the switch was compulsory?

2) Aliens kidnap you and insist that you accept some kind of technological enhancement which is primarily a weapon (e.g. laser eye beams, implanted unobtanium claws), but are open to negotiation on the details. What do you persuade them to give you, and why?

3) You are given the power to wipe one country off the map entirely; it won't be a violent destruction, it will just cease to exist, the land that it occupied being shared amongst its current neighbours (and the people will have Always Lived In Eastasia, and most of the effects it had on the world will have had some other cause). If you don't use this power, it will be given to someone else. Do you use it, and if so on which country, and what effects do you expect that to have on the world?

4) A ticket for a flight into space (an orbit and a visit to the International Space Station) arrives through the post. Assume that you meet the relevant physical requirements. You can use it, transfer it, or sell it. What do you do and why?

5) You recieve a letter congratulating you on winning the secret lottery to populate a base on the surface of Mars. The project seems plausible and you have heard rumours of it, and there is nothing to indicate that its general philosophy does not align with yours in any major or serious way. Do you take up the offer? Are there any further investigations you would need to do or conditions you would need to have stipulated before you can make the decision?

6) Conscription is reintroduced, and somehow you don't manage to get a medical / age / gender exemption. Which branch of the forces and military job specification do you attempt to get placed in - or do you attempt to resist the draft in some illegal fashion, even though the penalties are likely to be severe? (You can assume the situation for deployments is pretty much as it is now; not everyone gets deployed but there's a decent chance, there are many small nasty local asymmetric somewhat-morally-grey conflicts rather than one big war going on.)

7) You wake up one morning and there is a smallish bronze fire-lizard in your room, waiting patiently for you. It indicates, with a mixture of hope and sadness, that you should follow it to some nearby location as soon as possible. What do you do? What do you expect happens next?

I wasn't going to participate, but you are asking such good questions, so I think I will...

They are awesome questions, I agree.

Was that a request for some?

Its tempting, but not if you are overcomitted

1) Tomorrow, you wake up to find that you are female, and Kaz is male. Everyone other than you appears to believe that this has always been the case. What is your immediate reaction, and how do you think it would go on to affect your life?

2) You have the opportunity to resurrect one person. They will return from death in approximately the same age and state of health as they were, aside from the particular thing which killed them, and appear in your vicinity. This opportunity does not expire, and will automatically be used on you in the case of your own death. Do you use it right away or save it for later? Who do you / do you expect or plan to use it on?

3) You receive a pill, with an accompanying letter claiming that consuming this pill will cause you to live forever. The letter contains no details of the variety of immortality provided. Do you take the pill? If not, why not - would you do so if you were certain the letter was not lying / if you could specify certain things about the variety of immortality provided? If so, what variety of immortality do you hope to gain, and what variety would you expect?

4) Aliens kidnap you and place you in a holodeck-like environment. The computer system presents you with a vast catalog of scenarios - none are personalised to you, but other than that there is approximately every conceivable thing available. Assuming you believe yourself to be stuck there for life, what kind of scenario(s) do you choose? How hard do you look for a way out of the situation before resigning yourself to it - and how much does the answer change if your immediate family are kidnapped with you?

5) You receive a communication (via trusted channels) from a good friend of yours which suggests in no uncertain terms that you, and probably your family, need to leave the country immediately; the black helicopters are not quite on their way yet, but they will be within the week. How do you react? If you choose to flee, how do you prepare and where do you plan to go?

6) Eleanor comes to you with an announcement. She has learned how to teleport. She demonstrates this ability to you, over fairly short distances, convincingly. What do you do about this new-found ability?

7) (sorry, you might have to filter this one for Maelstrom FOIP, but I couldn't resist) You wake up and find that you are your current Maelstrom character. Both your memories and their memories are entirely intact, but your personality is dominant, for the moment at least. Do you change his plans, and if so, how? If not, why, and how well do you expect you will cope with your new life?

1) You wake up one morning to discover that you are General Sir David Richards. You have (slightly hazy) access to all his memories and a reasonable command of his habits / inclinations / routines; the probability of you being ousted as an imposter is low, unless you deliberately do something egregiously out of character. What do you do with this newfound position?

2) You are given control of one reasonably large nuke and a delivery system that will reliably deliver it anywhere in the world. You are informed that you must use it on a populated area somewhere in the world. If you don't, control will be given to a randomly chosen other human being instead. No definition of 'populated area' is provided, but you are aware that excessive rules lawyering may result in another nuke being presented to the next random human anyway. Do you use it, and if so where do you target it?

3) You recieve one billion dollars from a secretive organisation which claims to seek out people that it believes will do something intelligent and worthwhile with the money and provide it to them. No strings are attached to this money, although you are warned not to investigate the organisation too closely. What do you do with it?

4) Radical new surgery is developed which can add up to a foot to the height of a person that is currently below average height. Would you be interested in this? If so, how safe / inexpensive would it have to be for you to use it?

5) Overnight, the city in which you live is besieged. There is a cordon of tanks supported by infantry surrounding the place, with some limited air support. They don't appear to be moving in on the place, but supply lines that move via conventional traffic are cut, and they do appear to be gradually digging up the pipework and cabling and setting up jamming on various frequencies to ensure the place is entirely cut off. What steps do you take to survive this situation, and how do you expect the crisis to develop, assuming there is no rescue and they show no signs of being about to leave or negotiate?

6) You are offered your very own Doom Zeppelin, free of charge. It comes with the relevant permits and paperwork to moor it somewhere nearby, and the only condition that is placed on its use is that you cannot sell or transfer it and must be present on it for any voyages that it undertakes. It contains all the military and luxury accoutrements you might want on a Doom Zeppelin. How is it equipped and what do you do with it? (It's still a criminal offence / act of war etc for you to use most of that stuff, even though it comes with the relevant clearences to own it and fly around with it.)

7) You are kidnapped by aliens. They insist that you choose their next victim, who you will replace in their current life - with their body and hazy recollection of their memories, as you will be transferred into their brain also, but still primarily with your own mind imprinted onto them. You infer this has already happened to you, with their previous victim. It is not stated what they will do if you refuse, but from their tone it appears unlikely to be pleasant and unlikely to halt their activities. What do you do?

"You are given control of one reasonably large nuke... If you don't, control will be given to a randomly chosen other human being instead."

AKA "being president of the united states" :)

I suspect the President of the United States has a) more than one reasonably large nuke and b) surprisingly large amounts of constraints on how they can use them (starting with the constraint that they have to be the kind of person who could become President of the United States)...

My answers, like Gaul, are divided into three parts. This is because it is kind of long. Part 1 is linked. Others as they are written, I guess.

Likewise, chess, I would like some questions if you're not bored of them yet :)

1) You recieve a very convincing message from some aliens, informing you that your request for a Neutronium Kitten has been recieved and delivery will occur in approximately three hours, to your front room. There is no obvious way to return their call or communicate with them. What do you do?

2) You are offered the chance to become an Instant Expert in any one field of academic endeavour. This includes both a knowledge download and a history of publications in the field with a position at a university which specialises in that field. Which field of academic study do you choose, or do you turn the offer down entirely?

3) You receive a letter stating that you have been chosen randomly to have the privilege of being one of the brain scans included in an interstellar probe launch. The letter explains that it is a great honour and the procedure is noninvasive, and the probe will be targetted at an area that the eccentric rich sponsor believes contains an alien civilisation who will be able to revive your copy and interact with you at the other end, possibly long after the human species is extinct. You will be remunerated for your trouble, but not to a massive extent - just enough to cover expenses and compensate for the hassle. Do you accept the offer, and if so why / why not?

4) You wake up in a rather good fascimile of your current dwelling place, except all of the walls are transparent, and there appears to be a crowd of what your brain can only resolve as 'aliens' gazing through one of the walls and occasionally gesturing in your direction. Your house is well stocked with the necessities (which appear to be refreshed overnight, assuming you wait long enough to find out), the internet is provided but appears to be a static copy rather than containing any live services, and every computer game on Steam is unlocked. How do you react?

5) You are commissioned, for more money than you ever expected to be able to make in your life, to create some kind of artwork. The details are left entirely to your discretion, and your sponsor does not provide any information about their tastes, but reserves the right to withhold payment (beyond an initial sum which is enough to support you comfortably for the next five years) if they are not satisfied. What do you create, and how much time and effort do you dedicate to it?

6) You are kidnapped by aliens and instructed that you must name one city of at least one million inhabitants. The city will be removed wholesale from the Earth and taken to be preserved in their museum; the people therein will not be directly harmed but will lose all contact with loved ones etc outside the city. They do not state what will happen if you don't do it, but it is implied that it won't be very pleasant and they will probably just pick someone else until they have an answer. Do you pick a city, and if so which one, and why?

7) You are offered the opportunity to switch places, for one year, with another willing participant. You will recieve their body and memories etc, while also retaining your own memories and mind, for the duration. There are a wide range of participants in various ordinary occupations at about your level or lower (or slightly higher, but no millionaires or famous people) around the world. Do you take up the opportunity? What kind of person do you choose to swap with (or would you choose to swap with, if it was compulsory rather than voluntary on your part alone - they have still volunteered)?

Ooh, thank you. You're good at this :)

Yes, please.

Don't you have some downtime text to be writing or something? :-p

1) If you had to become one of your LARP characters, who would you pick and why?

2) You suddenly find yourself with the opportunity to move yourself and your family anywhere in the world, and carry on about the same kind of life that you currently do (e.g. there's a job that's just as good for you). Do you take the opportunity, and if so where do you move to and why?

3) An eccentric billionaire offers to ensure that you and yours never want for anything again, on the condition that you use some of their investment in you to design, produce and run (or cause to be designed, produced and run) the best LARP system the US has ever seen. Do you take up their offer? How do you go about fulfilling your end of the bargain, and what do you think the end result would look like?

4) You uncover, tucked away in a cupboard you don't remember having, a working teleportation device. Items (and creatures and people) placed on the intake can be instantaneously transported to your choice of co-ordinates (at a range that appears to be 'anywhere on the planet', but not out to the Moon) and subsequantly recalled to the device, either on a timer or by an operator at the controls. What do you do with your discovery?

5) Aliens offer you the schematics for one of the following: the replicator, the warp drive, or the holodeck. You have no reason to consider them untrustworthy and they can all be reasonably assembled with some effort by the current US industrial base. Which one do you choose and why?

6) You receive a letter in the post, informing you that the world is in fact controlled by secret masters, and the person at the top of the organisation is selected from the population by sortition; following the death of the previous Secret Master from complications of extreme old age, you have been chosen to replace them. Soon after you are done reading, the black motorcade pulls up to whisk you and your family away to the Undisclosed Location. What do you do with your newfound power, or do you attempt to reject it?

7) You win a lifetime supply of one reasonably common consumer good. What would you most like to have won and why? What would you consider to be a 'lifetime supply' of that good?

Don't you have some downtime text to be writing or something? :-p
I'll see what I can tackle tomorrow, when I have no toddler underfoot. I saw a few that looked interesting.

you totally win at this meme :) i think ive enjoyed reading your given out questions more than i have reading some other completed ones on my F'list :)

Would you like some questions?

yes! why not, although i will have to find time to anwer around the uni work im definately absolutly studiously doing :S

You do indeed ask fantastic questions. Although I fail to post very often, I'd quite like a few of these (although I make no guarantee about answering them quickly).

Your questions rock, btw. I wish I were as good at coming up with them. I had to cudgel my brain to find seven half-decent questions to ask someone I know fairly well, and you managed seven good ones for a near-stranger.

Questions. I can do questions.

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