pouët.net

People in the region where I live are afraid to travel to the local demoparty because of, believe it or not, they are afraid of cops that grab people from the street and send them down to the war.

I know it is a very dumb idea, but what if I write a computer program that prevents people from doing obviously stupid and destructive things and make them less violent or so, also help them beat their own fear, i duno. And thus prevent the war.

I want to prevent future war using the technological way. I am not sure if I can stop the war that is already started. Ideally, that would be a robot that organizes people together and use social engineering tricks to prevent the war.

The solutions from the science fiction books below are somewhat overkill. There must be another way.

• Stanisław Lem - Observation on the Spot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observation_on_the_Spot (Win) Those aliens get their world modified too much, and they get the thing done. Must read.
  
• Stanisław Lem - Przyjaciel (Fail) Big financial computer takes over the world but slips a little at the beginning.
  
• Stanisław Lem - The Invincible (Fail) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible Biological evolution failed because of robots.
  
• Kir Bulychev - The Rusty Field Marshal (Fail) Old combat robot activates and starts fighting, serving to command room that already disappeared a long time ago. Not the thing I am looking for, though, but let it stay anyway.
  

I need some inspiration from you. Maybe more books.

The dumb idea was to post this on demoscene forum. (actually, it is not dumb idea. people who know assembler probably know how things work in this world or even already did a research)

Not a bad idea at all! Obvious answer: Use art, make a demo about it.
I'm skeptical about social engineering tricks. That's what warmongers do and might backfire. I can recommend scifi by the strugatsky brothers, but don't remember the title(s) I read from off the top of my head.

This. You already have a robot that can get people together, and it's the same robot that you wrote your post on. If the form of art you're most comfortable with is demos then you might not reach as many people as you would with folk punk or something, but at least you're reaching someone. Drops make lakes, while obsessing over an ocean you can never reach does no one any good.

You will face opposition. Downthumbs on Pouet, if that matters to you. From trolls, from people who still think demos should "not be political" - hopefully by now most people have grown up and realized that disconnecting from the world like that is a fantasy. Even from people who actually support the war - we have sadly seen some of those even on Pouet, though thankfully not many.

But don't let that bring you down. Make a demo about it.

As far as book recommendations go, I'd like to A Song for a New Day, by Sarah Pinsker, published in 2019. It's set in the near future and follows a musician doing gigs in a world where public events are illegal and the threat from both cops and the exploitative schemes of platform capitalists is a constant issue. The timing is... unfortunate, and in a post-2020 world it's easy to read it in ways Pinsker most likely never intended, but it is still a beautiful celebration of art, communities and grassroots action.

Have you read In Search Of The Miraculous by Ouspensky? In Chapter 6 someone asks Gurdjieff similar questions and how to stop wars. Probably not the kind of answer you want to hear, but it's something to ponder.

Sounds like something that could actually happen the crazy way things are at the moment.



I've read some Strugatskij but can't remember any that deals with war specifically. Perhaps some Philip K. Dick short stories if they are available where you are? He has a few dealing with pointless old wars.

Not specifically about war, but I remember militaristic societies as backgrounds and the Strugatskys reflecting much on psychology and criticism of our own societies, e.g. the madness of bureaucracy taking on a life of its own, so more servicing itself than people. Kafka came to mind. In this there are more useful hints to overcoming war and oppression than in technology I guess, and I found it great dreamlike stuff to read in general.

As long as there are *diots at the top who dictate these stupid wars there's not much you can do about it.

It truly hurts to read a message like this in *2022*. I wish you all the best of luck and health.

p.s. Stanislaw Lem is one of my favourite authors

Thank you all for all your suggestions. I did not read those books yet, I'll give it a try.

My mind is constantly changing, I have a lot of ideas, all of them are technical. But my mind also tells me that each of my ideas can be abused, rendered unusable, fail, or make it even worse. I was thinking of wireless mesh networks (Freifunk, meshtastic, APRS), distributed forums, such sort of thing.

There is one thought that came from SF books. If you want to fix the world, do little things. If you do something on scale, it will fail, and then everybody hates you.

So I am NOT going to fix the whole thing, but provide some little help. First of all, I want ... I duno, I guess I will stick to the mesh network idea.

Demoscene helps. You see, there are solutions, distributed messengers, some very interesting stuff. But they are big and buggy, probably the term bloatware is what it is about. Demoscene is against bloatware. If you know how your hardware works, if you are able to create demos, then you can deliver interesting hacks also in other fields such as privacy, communications, this sort of thing. I am glad that I have found people who is interesting in making software smaller and more straightforward, because it is a way to go.

ain't that the truth. I was shocked to see that "someone" would simply ignore that kind of basic knowledge.

War is 90% logistics (if you can help there, do). Communication is equally important, of course.

I would say run aways as possible and don't even think about helping "at scale"...only if you become stronger, wiser and have enough power, otherwise it's suicide.

*run far away as possible

alternative solution: order the soldiers on both sides back home, (re-)introduce fair trade, be good neighbours.

life could be so simple but nah, we have to make it a living hell. for no* good reason.

*disclaimer: won't detail "reasons" b/c they are utterly irrelevant to the majority of the world's population