gbaba speculation

The Gbaba are all about stasis. I bet they've had the same frontiers since before humans moved out of caves.

I strongly suspect that the GBABA are either now electronic/artificial, or still biological with a tremendous amount of behavioral conditioning applied.

Once you add technological hooks into a living mind/consciousness, the possibility for programming and control arise.

If the GBABA migrated themselves into technological existence, the parameters of their behavior could have been set back then, or could be maniplated on an ongoing basis.

If they merely plugged themselves into the cloud, the potential for governing/manipulation still exists. If regular humans can be manipulated through standard media, think what could be done with direct access to minds.

TBird50 wrote:

However, in a later post DrakBibliophile states that Gbaba scouts were searching for Terran Colonies that had escaped destruction, so to me that says that they are looking for us.

You might wish to see http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Safehold/241/1 for more information, but the gist is that the humans expected to be actively sought for no more than three or four hundred years. The pre-electric level of technology was to be maintained for that time, after which humans would advance technologically, preparatory to coming out fighting.

Langhorne was something of a neo-Luddite, so he captured command and eliminated all advanced technology "forever."

My understanding, in contrast to the understanding of some others here, is that the human-gbaba conflict was initiated by humans stumbling across gbaba space. Gbaba, in their time-honored fashion, responded by eliminating every last vestige of living human beings, or so they thought. After that, they retreated back to their normal region of space to continue whatever it is gbaba do when they aren't genociding.

I assume you knew that, and that you have a reason so I was just wondering. Kind of like people wondering about my TBird50 when the thunderbird hadn't been made yet in 50.

I was given the name "Tonto" very early in my career when co-workers, erm, noticed my tendency to, uh...follow others about. I'm about one-eighth American Indian, so I have embraced the nick name. I have Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw ancestors. I believe accepting names given by others has a rich Indian tradition, as "Cherokee" isn't actually a Cherokee name. In fact, you can't even say "Cherokee" in the Cherokee Language. There is no "ch" phoneme. The Cherokee name for themselves is "Tsulagi."

The "Silerheels" mis-spelling was a typographical error that I only noticed after about my eighth post or so. I begged and pleaded with Drakk to change my ID, but he remains unmoved by my tears. More recently I have resorted by offers of massive bribes, and I begin to discern a crack in his façade.

Strangely, I'm starting to become fond of the misspelling. It gives me a kind of uniqueness, and provides a story I can relate to others at times like this.

~Tonto

Tonto Silerheels wrote:TBird50 wrote:

However, in a later post DrakBibliophile states that Gbaba scouts were searching for Terran Colonies that had escaped destruction, so to me that says that they are looking for us.

You might wish to see http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Safehold/241/1 for more information, but the gist is that the humans expected to be actively sought for no more than three or four hundred years. The pre-electric level of technology was to be maintained for that time, after which humans would advance technologically, preparatory to coming out fighting.

Langhorne was something of a neo-Luddite, so he captured command and eliminated all advanced technology "forever."

My understanding, in contrast to the understanding of some others here, is that the human-gbaba conflict was initiated by humans stumbling across gbaba space. Gbaba, in their time-honored fashion, responded by eliminating every last vestige of living human beings, or so they thought. After that, they retreated back to their normal region of space to continue whatever it is gbaba do when they aren't genociding.

I assume you knew that, and that you have a reason so I was just wondering. Kind of like people wondering about my TBird50 when the thunderbird hadn't been made yet in 50.

I was given the name "Tonto" very early in my career when co-workers, erm, noticed my tendency to, uh...follow others about. I'm about one-eighth American Indian, so I have embraced the nick name. I have Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw ancestors. I believe accepting names given by others has a rich Indian tradition, as "Cherokee" isn't actually a Cherokee name. In fact, you can't even say "Cherokee" in the Cherokee Language. There is no "ch" phoneme. The Cherokee name for themselves is "Tsulagi."

The "Silerheels" mis-spelling was a typographical error that I only noticed after about my eighth post or so. I begged and pleaded with Drakk to change my ID, but he remains unmoved by my tears. More recently I have resorted by offers of massive bribes, and I begin to discern a crack in his façade.

Strangely, I'm starting to become fond of the misspelling. It gives me a kind of uniqueness, and provides a story I can relate to others at times like this.

~Tonto

Thanks Tonto for clearing things up for me (both your username and the Gbaba). I really need to go back and re-read some of the earlier books as I've obviously forgotten a good deal that is quite necessary now.

Expert snuggler wrote:I have 500 light years stuck in my memory. What's the definitive answer?

IIRC it's only given as "thousands of light years". So probably somewhere between 1500 and 9000 LY.

TBird50 wrote:I agree that Earth was found by the Gbaba and that they had visited that area before, but it doesn't say how big the area is that the Gbaba patrol.

Apparently the TF knew, and Safehold is far beyond it, though.

(I don't think the Gbaba realm is actually very large compared to other interstellar SF civilizations such as the Honorverse. Remember the TF only had 14 major worlds and they survived for decades despite having somewhat inferior tech... so I'd imagine the Gbaba had no more than an order of magnitude greater numbers/industrial base.)

JeffEngel wrote:

TBird50 wrote:Thanks for your help in understanding things. However, in a later post DrakBibliophile states that Gbaba scouts were searching for Terran Colonies that had escaped destruction, so to me that says that they are looking for us.

Doing something somewhat does not imply doing something forever. If I can't find that DVD in my house in 2 hours, I may or may not be looking in 4, and I will probably not still be looking in 30 years.

Just what the Terran Federation knew about the Gbaba and how isn't exhaustively detailed. The Gbaba likely could have found humanity hundreds or thousands of years earlier had they been looking for lost colonies of (e.g.) their last interstellar enemies since they theoretically wiped them out, but did not. They're apparently not Achuultani, forever sweeping for potential threats as far out as they can practically range, or Arachnids, always if slowly expanding outward and wiping out whatever they come across and whatever comes across a cloaked picket.

Just what data or calculations rendered Safehold's location judged to be so safe that no foreseeable Gbaba scouting or expansion would get there in 500+ years under the original plan or practically ever under Langhorne's, I don't know. But we can assume that some such figuring was done by constructively and possibly clinically paranoid sorts and delivered Safehold as safe.

Excellent point, just because something has been or is being done, doesn't necessarily mean that it will always and forever be that way. I like your comparison to the Achuultani & Arachnids too. I almost think the Gbaba are more like hornets, where if you poke their nest watch out, but once the threat is over they return to the nest. It still bothers me to some degree tho, that they are capable and willing to patrol outside their borders. And even if they have quit looking for humans, specifically, a patrol could still spot us again just as they could spot any other civilization. I'm starting to re-read OAR, so maybe something will jump out at me to let me know they are safe for now, but I'm still leary.

TBird50 wrote:

I like your comparison to the Achuultani & Arachnids too. I almost think the Gbaba are more like hornets, where if you poke their nest watch out, but once the threat is over they return to the nest.

As a kid I always thought that the reason that wasps sting is that they get mad at their victims. Well, if someone were to shake my house, I'm fairly certain that I would get mad at them, and it was something I'm familiar with--emotions.

Later, though, I read extensively about honey bees. (I don't know whether wasps and honey bees are analogous, but whatever.) One interesting thing about honey bees is that they truly are tiny machines made out of carbon. I came to that conclusion because of how they respond to pollen traps.

First, a little background. Most people probably know that honey bees visit flowers for nectar and pollen. Nectar is food for bees, and honey is merely a way to store nectar long term. Mold, bacteria, and fungi leave honey alone. Pollen is also food for honey bees.

Honey bees suck up the nectar, and pollen sticks all over their bodies. As they fly back to the hive they remove the pollen and place it into a pocket on each back leg. Once at the hive they remove the pollen from the pockets and stamp it into cells, made from bee wax, using their heads.

If you've ever seen pollen for sale in stores you might wonder how the retailers got it--not from pulling the pollen out of the cells as they do honey. Rather, bee keepers put a device called a pollen trap at the entrance to the hive. The pollen trap works by removing the pollen from the pockets in the bees legs, and dropping it into a storage location.

Here's why I think of bees as machines. One day a scientist followed bees after the pollen trap removed the pollen and found that honey bees from whom pollen has been stolen respond the same way as honey bees from whom it hasn't. They still go through the motions of removing pollen from the (now empty) pockets, the motions of preparing the pollen, the motions of putting it into the cells, and the motions of tamping it down with their heads.

I've been wanting to bring this out during a free will versus predestination debate, but haven't yet been able to. As in--God could have made us into big carbon-based machines that always obeyed his commandments, but then we'd be missing a very important part of our lives.

So, instead I'll bring it out in this discussion to say that I think the Gbaba are like big carbon-based machines.

~Tonto

TBird50 wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Doing something somewhat does not imply doing something Just what data or calculations rendered Safehold's location judged to be so safe that no foreseeable Gbaba scouting or expansion would get there in 500+ years under the original plan or practically ever under Langhorne's, I don't know. But we can assume that some such figuring was done by constructively and possibly clinically paranoid sorts and delivered Safehold as safe.

Excellent point, just because something has been or is being done, doesn't necessarily mean that it will always and forever be that way. I like your comparison to the Achuultani & Arachnids too. I almost think the Gbaba are more like hornets, where if you poke their nest watch out, but once the threat is over they return to the nest. It still bothers me to some degree tho, that they are capable and willing to patrol outside their borders. And even if they have quit looking for humans, specifically, a patrol could still spot us again just as they could spot any other civilization. I'm starting to re-read OAR, so maybe something will jump out at me to let me know they are safe for now, but I'm still leary.

What gets me is that under the Langhorne Plan humanity would be betting on the Gbaba never reaching Safehold, Under the Pei Worry - the expectation that the Langhorne Plan would fail eventually, humanity would get back on technological progress, and meet the Gbaba without knowing what they were in for - there's still the expectation that the Gbaba would not reach Safehold in, say, 5000 years. That suggests some extreme confidence that the Gbaba would stay put, and what justifies that much confidence is not detailed. Something of the sort clearly underlies the confidence of all parties there - the original Ark planners, Langhorne and Bedard, the Peis, and Langhorne's heirs - but we do not seem party to what.

Tonto Silerheels wrote:Here's why I think of bees as machines. One day a scientist followed bees after the pollen trap removed the pollen and found that honey bees from whom pollen has been stolen respond the same way as honey bees from whom it hasn't. They still go through the motions of removing pollen from the (now empty) pockets, the motions of preparing the pollen, the motions of putting it into the cells, and the motions of tamping it down with their heads.

I've been wanting to bring this out during a free will versus predestination debate, but haven't yet been able to. As in--God could have made us into big carbon-based machines that always obeyed his commandments, but then we'd be missing a very important part of our lives.

So, instead I'll bring it out in this discussion to say that I think the Gbaba are like big carbon-based machines.

~Tonto

The philosopher Daniel Dennett, following Douglas Hofstadter's discussion of a similar tick with sphex (digger) wasps, calls that kind of thoughtless mechanical activity as "sphexishness", and frames the concern about free will as largely a fear that we're in some sense or another sphexish. (The sphex wasps, in this case, will keep checking a hole even if they just did moments before, if they have to drag back prey to put in it an experimenter has moved.)

The point, for Dennett, is to try to catch what it is we're worrying about with free will discussions and work from there, in case it turns out that determinism really isn't the thing to fear. At risk of oversimplifying, the contention is that "free will worth wanting" is simply the ability to make informed decisions consistent with one's values and act on them. That, and moral responsibility, certainly doesn't require some mysterious separation from the natural order or some utter randomness deep down in there.

A couple of questions:

1. Human Space Explorers discovered settlements on other planets that appeared to either end in MAD or by a intergalactic conflict between different species. I know that many wanted and hoped that it was just one race that destroyed itself, but the other crowd thought there may be something out there that the TF would be needed for. My question is did they discover any of the said settlements within their own solar system?

2. Is it possible that the Gbaba had visited Sol before and possibly even Earth to wipe out even older civilization settlements that the people of Earth could have mistaken for their own ancestors, or perhaps the people of Earth were the remnants of another space faring race that eluded detection while the Gbaba searched for them and this is a wicked cycle that Nimue will finally break.

That is I'm sure far from the end of my questions/speculation, but I will continue to hold out hope for other humans in the galaxy due to the definition of Gbaba: "The Gbaba completely destroyed the Terran Federation and, so far as is known, all human beings in the galaxy aside from the population of Safehold."