armrha Posted June 19, 2020 Posted June 19, 2020 I think the cat pet should change color in the presence of radiation. One of the difficult parts of the disposal of nuclear waste with extremely long half lives and extreme dangerous contamination risks is the idea that the nuclear waste could easily outlive a culture that created it. Addressing this issue has been a project for many groups, but the most famous example is the Sandia report from 1981. They describe the difficulty of the problem: You can't depend on any of our icons or alarm diagrams surviving through the future millions of years. We have no data points on how language will evolve over that timescale and if there will even be any common language elements in language at that point in time. It is a uniquely intriguing semiotic / linguistic problem. So there have been a lot of proposals, some implemented at the danger zones. For example, one nuclear waste site has signs written in many languages and every ten years or so, they write new signs while keeping the old signs, with the idea that as long as they can keep it up, they'll be a massive body of text with linguistic drift that can hopefully explain the danger of the site. Here's an example pictogram submission, trying to keep it simplistic enough and obvious enough that you could interpret what was going on even with no language understanding of the site: The language information is probably a familiar message to some, I always thought it was quite eerie and interesting: Quote This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the body, and it can kill. The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited. You can buy it as a kitschy little house sign too for your wall: Anyway, I think these messages are extremely cool and interesting, but one proposal stuck out to me as a different way to manage the problem. In Paolo Fabbri and Françoise Bastide's semiotics paper, Lebende Detektoren und komplementäre Zeichen: Katzen, Augen und Sirenen from 1984, Fabbri proposes a biological solution. Re-engineer the domesticated cat genome so that the cats will change color in the presence of radiation. He selected domestic cats because they aren't subject to ecological pressures for their survival, being entrenched in the human population as scavengers or as pets, and suggested the change be anchored in the name of the creature, i.e. the new cats would be 'ray cats', though as long as the knowledge of the danger associated with a cat turning that particular shade survived culturally as ritual or myth, it could be useful for describing the danger. I love that Aurora doesn't have visible radiation, radiation doesn't make everything glow green when it's killing you. But I thought this was extremely cool and would be a nice feature if we suggested that in the next 400 years, such engineering did take place and most domestic cats, especially those on board space stations, have this engineering within them. Thanks for reading.
Carver Posted June 19, 2020 Posted June 19, 2020 I thought this was bait, but it's actually a historical concept. Interesting, though I'm unsure how it'd work mechanically.
geeves Posted June 19, 2020 Posted June 19, 2020 This is actually quite interesting, I would definitely support this if the code was of good quality.
wowzewow Posted June 20, 2020 Posted June 20, 2020 If cats took rad damage, it would be pretty simple to just make it so they'd glow whenever they took rad damage.
armrha Posted June 21, 2020 Author Posted June 21, 2020 Yeah, it wasn't too hard. I went ahead and made a PR: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/9186
Kintsugi Posted June 22, 2020 Posted June 22, 2020 While certainly a fascinating concept from a real life historical perspective, and an exercise in cultural universals that just about anyone can appreciate - I do not at all support the addition of glowing cats to the Aurora. In fact, I think the concept is quite absurd.
KingOfThePing Posted June 28, 2020 Posted June 28, 2020 The english translation of the german source also leaves out one important detail on why this should be done (or at leats considered): Quote "Damit soll verhindert werden, daß ein Teil der Gesellschaft dem anderen politisch instrumentalisierbares Wissen voraus hat und ihn damit erpreßt." To translate it freely it means that this project is intended to prevent one part of society from having knowledge that can be used for political purposes ahead of the other, thereby blackmailing the latter. I am not saying this would not be relevant in the future, I am just pointing it out. To the PR I am rather indifferent. Depends on how it looks I guess.
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