The Misalignment of MA plans?

cthia wrote:

Joat42 wrote:Regarding the topic of sleeper agents, someone posited that some of them inherited their position from their parents.

In regards to cthia's reply that she found it less than likely that a teenager could keep a secret: who said that they where teenagers when they where told the truth?

I though we already established that any presumptive sleeper agent was groomed and tested over a very long period which would establish their trustworthiness, this automatically excludes teenagers since they are still in the grooming phase. The closer to the center of the onion the longer the process of vetting.

At any rate, to continue the discussion. Another reason I was so inclined to accept that they were approached as kids is because that is the impressionable state of humanity. The time before man becomes set in his ways and rigid - and before the kids can make counterproductive MA-like decisions - e.g., marrying a Manticoran. Marriage would seem to totally complicate Onioning, even if the wife isn't of Manticoran or gasp Beowulfan descent.

So even though they aren't teenagers, they would still have to be relatively young it seems, before they have time to acquire too much anti-MA baggage. And the younger they are, the less their mind is made up, even when it's made up.

You're assuming it's a one-step process. I agree that a lot of the values would be inculcated as children, including the value of keeping ones mouth shut around people who shouldn't know something. It would include other values, like genetic slavery is evil. There's nothing the kids are taught about how to get there.

Once the kid has proved ce can keep cis mouth shut, then, and only then, are they let into the "big secret": we're actually working to be in position to genetically uplift all of humanity. There's nothing in that security level about the MAlign, the long-term plan, or whatever. There may be something in there about the family having high-performance gene mods, which would be enough justification for keeping ones mouth zipped.

The next level would have more tests, more grooming before ce would be let in on that secret.

It's perfectly possible to have a generations-long semi-secret conspiracy. One branch of my family comes from the Calabria district of Italy - the toe of the boot. Ever heard the term Mafia?

Ummm you do know that the mafia is the very definition of an UNSECRET conspiracy right?

Everyone knows that they exist and do things and I would imagine a large number of people could name suspected members.

It's a conspiracy that survives because they have short circuited the usual societal mechanism of law and justice. They are NOT secret. Unless your J. Edger Hoover everyone knows the Mafia exist and do various organised crime activities it's just that the ability of the authorities to stop them is badly compromised by corruption or clannishness or intimidation etc.

They are also small scale and factionalised and have normal motives of make money and protect my family. They are nothing like the Onion and MA.

Silverwall wrote:Ummm you do know that the mafia is the very definition of an UNSECRET conspiracy right?

Everyone knows that they exist and do things and I would imagine a large number of people could name suspected members.

It's a conspiracy that survives because they have short circuited the usual societal mechanism of law and justice. They are NOT secret. Unless your J. Edger Hoover everyone knows the Mafia exist and do various organised crime activities it's just that the ability of the authorities to stop them is badly compromised by corruption or clannishness or intimidation etc.

They are also small scale and factionalised and have normal motives of make money and protect my family. They are nothing like the Onion and MA.

The government knows that someone will provide what ever illegal goods and services people want. So as long as the Mafia keeps their activities below a threshold and off the news they are left alone. It is often the case of do they keep the predicable devil they know or a new one who may be a lot worse.

cthia wrote:

Joat42 wrote:Regarding the topic of sleeper agents, someone posited that some of them inherited their position from their parents.

In regards to cthia's reply that she found it less than likely that a teenager could keep a secret: who said that they where teenagers when they where told the truth?

I though we already established that any presumptive sleeper agent was groomed and tested over a very long period which would establish their trustworthiness, this automatically excludes teenagers since they are still in the grooming phase. The closer to the center of the onion the longer the process of vetting.

At any rate, to continue the discussion. Another reason I was so inclined to accept that they were approached as kids is because that is the impressionable state of humanity. The time before man becomes set in his ways and rigid - and before the kids can make counterproductive MA-like decisions - e.g., marrying a Manticoran. Marriage would seem to totally complicate Onioning, even if the wife isn't of Manticoran or gasp Beowulfan descent.

So even though they aren't teenagers, they would still have to be relatively young it seems, before they have time to acquire too much anti-MA baggage. And the younger they are, the less their mind is made up, even when it's made up.

JohnRoth wrote:You're assuming it's a one-step process. I agree that a lot of the values would be inculcated as children, including the value of keeping ones mouth shut around people who shouldn't know something. It would include other values, like genetic slavery is evil. There's nothing the kids are taught about how to get there.

Once the kid has proved ce can keep cis mouth shut, then, and only then, are they let into the "big secret": we're actually working to be in position to genetically uplift all of humanity. There's nothing in that security level about the MAlign, the long-term plan, or whatever. There may be something in there about the family having high-performance gene mods, which would be enough justification for keeping ones mouth zipped.

The next level would have more tests, more grooming before ce would be let in on that secret.

It's perfectly possible to have a generations-long semi-secret conspiracy. One branch of my family comes from the Calabria district of Italy - the toe of the boot. Ever heard the term Mafia?

[blink]

Calabria district of Italy??? Oh man, a friend of mine is on my arse to visit her this summer. I owe her and I promised. And so many signs are indicating that I should this year (which my wife and I have already planned to.) She and her husband and both their families live there. (Though separate villages) I last visited her the spring of the year that I first joined the forum but she and her husband was still living in Turin at the time. She knows that I have a precoccupation with castles as I've mentioned here on the forum several times. So she invited me to visit her and one of the several castles located there (all I'll have time for), which would finally make 20. FINALLY!!! (My niece teases me that I am stuck on 19 longer than Serena Williams was stuck on 19 majors. LOL)

At one point in my life, college, it seems every skirt I chased was Italian. At one point I was beginning to think fate was trying to tell me something. Yet, it was a best friend of mine that married an Italian. That best friend is a brother. IOW, I'll be in Calabria this summer! My brother and his wife are coming with.

All of that to say that I've had many discussions about the mafia. With Italians. The reasons the secret was so easily kept within the mafia are the very same reasons it wouldn't work for the MA. The same reasons I've put my finger on. The mafia are all about the family. All for one and one for all. Sicilians adopted the same clan-like mentality as the MA seeks. But for safety and survival. Yet they were loyal to the family structure. If someone told me that "Blood is thicker than water" originated in Italy amongst the Sicilians, I'd believe it.

Whether they can act like a bunch of MAlign, I doubt it.

I don't smoke and I'm always arguing about clean air. Calabria has been found to have the cleanest air in Europe and Maria uses that fact fiercely on me. "Come on and breathe air like it was intended to be. Clean."

I'm searching the books trying to find a timeline when AD began seeding the galaxy with sleepers. He left Beowulf to found Mesa and engage in his research. How long before he was successful enough with his seeds for them to germinate and harvest?

cthia wrote:I'm searching the books trying to find a timeline when AD began seeding the galaxy with sleepers. He left Beowulf to found Mesa and engage in his research. How long before he was successful enough with his seeds for them to germinate and harvest?

The guy who left Beowulf was Leonard Detweiler. Albrecht came much, much later.

The information you're asking for is simply not available at present.

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:I'm searching the books trying to find a timeline when AD began seeding the galaxy with sleepers. He left Beowulf to found Mesa and engage in his research. How long before he was successful enough with his seeds for them to germinate and harvest?

The guy who left Beowulf was Leonard Detweiler. Albrecht came much, much later.

The information you're asking for is simply not available at present.

http://www.davidweber.net/files/downloa ... eline2.pdf

can give us 2 facts:
1447 PD: First wormhole junction is discovered.
1479 PD: Manpowers first known attempt to covertly study Treecats and the fauna of Sphinx (Short Story: The Stray)

IIRC there was something somewhere that said that lenard chose mesa because it had a wormhole? If it is true than mesa was founded sometime between 1447 & 1478.

Also IIRC there are several passages in the books that say the lenard detwilers stratagy was started 600 years ago, and 1447-1477 would be 545-575 years ago.

There also a passage that detweiler got mesa cheap because it would have required a lot of terraforming to make it habitable IIRC. Lenords solution was to make everyone a genie tailored to the planet.

That being the case, I would expect that the sleepers probably were started more than 500 years ago, but that is just a guess.

BTW 1585 PD: The Manticore Wormhole Junction is discovered
more than 150 years after the first wormhole was discovered and 100 years after manpower first attempts to study treecats.

cthia wrote:I'm searching the books trying to find a timeline when AD began seeding the galaxy with sleepers. He left Beowulf to found Mesa and engage in his research. How long before he was successful enough with his seeds for them to germinate and harvest?

munroburton wrote:
The guy who left Beowulf was Leonard Detweiler. Albrecht came much, much later.

The information you're asking for is simply not available at present.

darrell wrote:http://www.davidweber.net/files/downloads/honorverseTimeline2.pdf

can give us 2 facts:
1447 PD: First wormhole junction is discovered.
1479 PD: Manpowers first known attempt to covertly study Treecats and the fauna of Sphinx (Short Story: The Stray)

IIRC there was something somewhere that said that lenard chose mesa because it had a wormhole? If it is true than mesa was founded sometime between 1447 & 1478.

Also IIRC there are several passages in the books that say the lenard detwilers stratagy was started 600 years ago, and 1447-1477 would be 545-575 years ago.

There also a passage that detweiler got mesa cheap because it would have required a lot of terraforming to make it habitable IIRC. Lenords solution was to make everyone a genie tailored to the planet.

That being the case, I would expect that the sleepers probably were started more than 500 years ago, but that is just a guess.

BTW 1585 PD: The Manticore Wormhole Junction is discovered
more than 150 years after the first wormhole was discovered and 100 years after manpower first attempts to study treecats.

I'd guess more like 400 years, but that's just a guess. The big clue is the "more recently settled" thing for the planets with sleepers. Although that obviously doesn't apply to Visigoth, which is on the other side of the hyper-bridge to Mesa, and which had to have been settled before Mesa was settled.

Probably the bigger issue is that it would take time to develop the Onion and the the people who would be willing to infiltrate a new (or existing) settlement and begin the process of taking over its political process.

The question that occurs to me is why Mesa went cheap when it had a wormhole terminus? Even if the owners had to live in space stations, like Yildun, that ought to suggest "cash cow," once the sector began to be developed.

JohnRoth wrote:

cthia wrote:I'm searching the books trying to find a timeline when AD began seeding the galaxy with sleepers. He left Beowulf to found Mesa and engage in his research. How long before he was successful enough with his seeds for them to germinate and harvest?

munroburton wrote:
The guy who left Beowulf was Leonard Detweiler. Albrecht came much, much later.

The information you're asking for is simply not available at present.

darrell wrote:http://www.davidweber.net/files/downloads/honorverseTimeline2.pdf

can give us 2 facts:
1447 PD: First wormhole junction is discovered.
1479 PD: Manpowers first known attempt to covertly study Treecats and the fauna of Sphinx (Short Story: The Stray)

IIRC there was something somewhere that said that lenard chose mesa because it had a wormhole? If it is true than mesa was founded sometime between 1447 & 1478.

Also IIRC there are several passages in the books that say the lenard detwilers stratagy was started 600 years ago, and 1447-1477 would be 545-575 years ago.

There also a passage that detweiler got mesa cheap because it would have required a lot of terraforming to make it habitable IIRC. Lenords solution was to make everyone a genie tailored to the planet.

That being the case, I would expect that the sleepers probably were started more than 500 years ago, but that is just a guess.

BTW 1585 PD: The Manticore Wormhole Junction is discovered
more than 150 years after the first wormhole was discovered and 100 years after manpower first attempts to study treecats.

I'd guess more like 400 years, but that's just a guess. The big clue is the "more recently settled" thing for the planets with sleepers. Although that obviously doesn't apply to Visigoth, which is on the other side of the hyper-bridge to Mesa, and which had to have been settled before Mesa was settled.

Probably the bigger issue is that it would take time to develop the Onion and the the people who would be willing to infiltrate a new (or existing) settlement and begin the process of taking over its political process.

The question that occurs to me is why Mesa went cheap when it had a wormhole terminus? Even if the owners had to live in space stations, like Yildun, that ought to suggest "cash cow," once the sector began to be developed.

Darrell, I cannot say how much I appreciate your effort here. Your powers of sleuth rivals Sherlock's, thanks!

And oh, the link of the timeline alone is mouthwatering. I never got that memo before.

Munroburton, thanks for setting me straight regarding which Detweiler is which. My brain seems to clone them at will.

Another question has occurred to me. Detweiler left Beowulf for Mesa and decided to make everyone a genie tailored to the planet. Does this mean that the Mesans endured the inhabitable conditions of the planet until they were altered? Obvious question that arises is how long did it take to alter them? They must have lost some people beforehand and the first alterations were most probably inside of Beowulf's fence, considering that they were all known modifications and readily available at the time. Of course, they could have effected the mods before leaving Beowulf.

John, your input begs to know where Detweiler came up with the funds to purchase Mesa. Though it was cheap, I don't imagine that any planet goes as cheaply as the Louisiana Purchase did. Was he a magnate of the likes of Hauptman? Following him in storyline alone implies great riches. Yet, from where?

Louisiana Purchase:
Louisiana Purchase, Encyclopædia, Britannica. inc., The western half of The Mississippi river basin was purchased in 1803 From france by The United States at less than three cents per acre 828,000 828000 square (2,144,520 2144520 square), km it was the greatest land bargain In U. S. history

cthia wrote:John, your input begs to know where Detweiler came up with the funds to purchase Mesa. Though it was cheap, I don't imagine that any planet goes as cheaply as the Louisiana Purchase did. Was he a magnate of the likes of Hauptman? Following him in storyline alone implies great riches. Yet, from where?

Louisiana Purchase:
Louisiana Purchase, Encyclopædia, Britannica. inc., The western half of The Mississippi river basin was purchased in 1803 From france by The United States at less than three cents per acre 828,000 828000 square (2,144,520 2144520 square), km it was the greatest land bargain In U. S. history

Detweiler clearly wasn't working alone. He probably founded a consortium or a trust(something along those lines) which brought together the purchasing power of anywhere between tens of thousands to millions of Beowulfans who disagreed with the Code's limitations.

As an example, Manticore Colony Ltd paid 5.75 billion EuroDollars for the rights to what would become the Manticoran Binary System and had about a billion left over for insurance after acquiring a colony ship packed with all the essentials. With 93,000 adult colonists, that's an average investment of $75-100,000 each, though obviously individual contributions would vary.