Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

[hyzmarca]

soo.... 700 million a year could be considered a rounding error on a global scale? That would be like the earth gaining the population of Europe every year. That seems like it'd be noticed. Am I confusing something here?

That's a tenth of the population. So fuck no. You'd double the global population in a decade. Not good at all.

Compare to illegal immigration.

There are between 7 and 30 million illegal immigrants in the United States, depending on whom you ask. The official statistic is 11 million and that's probably correct.

If there were 10,000 shadow monsters spread around that population it's going to be difficult to notice.

But spread around is the key. The more dense the population, the more obvious they are.


The Crude Birth Rate is around 1.94% globally. You want your shadow population growth to be much much less than that.

It's probably not a good idea to choose a steady rate. Make it sporadic. Instead focus on the communities formed by these individuals and their activities.

[Prak]

Oh yeah, I wasn't setting a specific number, I just needed to know whether to say "if all shadow migrations across the world were counted, a typical day might see tens of thousands" or what.

[Orca]

It depends on how complete the Shadow (in your thread in IMHO) is. If it goes and adjusts birth records and old economic statistics, as well as people's memory of them, then there is no sensible limit. OTOH if it leaves the occasional weird-looking person who can't speak any Earth language then people will notice rapidly no matter how few there are.

So, what do you want the answer to be?

[Laertes]

To argue by example:

Over the past fifty years Britain's crime rate has dropped like a stone. However, the average perception of crime among middle class people has risen. This is because crime has become much less exclusively concentrated in poor areas and has started to affect the rest of the population. Humans, it appears, are much less bothered about absolute numbers than they are when people fall within our Dunbar's Number of social connections.

In other words, if you wanted to have the Shadows add people without anyone noticing, it'd be more believable to have them occur in a few big clusters than to be spread evenly throughout the world. A new town appearing in the flatlands or an insular ethnic neighbourhood appearing in a big city is odd but nothing more than that. One person added in every ten thousand will be noticeable, and arouse panic.

[tussock]

Infrastructure is how they'd be most noticed in a cluster. You need housing, roads, electricity, fuel supply, sewerage and treatment, schools, hospitals, police, all with registered workers and ... for real new settlements that stuff takes years to build and get all the contracts and legalese sorted out, and large parts of each new group have to be on official databases that expect you to be a real person and not a fake identity.

Now if they took over from some other part of the population, body-snatcher like, you're golden, have as many as you like. Even non-hostile they can just replace dead people, walking out of freak car crashes or skiing accidents only to leave their families and start a new life with that weird cult out west that the gutter-tabloids say are secretly aliens.

[Laertes]

There are abandoned towns in surprisingly many parts of the world. The high plains of South Africa have abandoned farming or mining towns; I'm told that Australia, the US, Siberia and Argentina all have the same thing going on. The infrastructure is just sitting there and decaying. Sure, most of the paperwork isn't in order, but if nobody goes out to look at it (and why would they?) then people might overlook you for years.

Your idea about the invasion-of-the-body-snatchers style people is a good one, but that turns it into a very different thing. After all, each one of those identities they're taking used to be a real person; that turns this into a very different thing, ethically speaking. Every Shadow implies that a person was murdered to give them cover.

[radthemad4]

You could go halfway on the body snatchers thing and have everyone on Earth or the Shadow have an 'alternate universe counterpart' who is the being who's goals, personality and outlook most resembles them. When one switches realms, they 'fuse'. This gives them memories of both, and the ability to switch between forms at will.

However, once this is done, the two are essentially one person so they will either have to choose to remain on Earth, the Shadow, or go between the two whenever they feel like it. I suppose it won't bother high level mages using simulacrum though.

[hyzmarca]

To argue by example:

Over the past fifty years Britain's crime rate has dropped like a stone. However, the average perception of crime among middle class people has risen. This is because crime has become much less exclusively concentrated in poor areas and has started to affect the rest of the population. Humans, it appears, are much less bothered about absolute numbers than they are when people fall within our Dunbar's Number of social connections.

In other words, if you wanted to have the Shadows add people without anyone noticing, it'd be more believable to have them occur in a few big clusters than to be spread evenly throughout the world. A new town appearing in the flatlands or an insular ethnic neighbourhood appearing in a big city is odd but nothing more than that. One person added in every ten thousand will be noticeable, and arouse panic.

That does add an interesting vibe to things.Mysterious small towns in the middle of nowhere are great for horror and fantasy stories. But the thing is, there is no incentive to interact with the rest of the world that way.

[Stahlseele]

Finding out why there are mysterious small towns in the middle of nowhere would be a start?
And don't make it something boring but realistic like econocomical reasons <.<

[Prak]

I am toying with the idea that the migration is actually an exchange, such that when a creature is brought over from D&DLand, they actually displace a person from our world.

It might be interesting to have entire towns occasionally swapped, but I'd want to keep that very occasional. On the other hand, I could just fantasy something up that's the "real" reason this actual abandoned towns are abandoned in game.

[Koumei]

To argue by example:

Over the past fifty years Britain's crime rate has dropped like a stone. However, the average perception of crime among middle class people has risen. This is because crime has become much less exclusively concentrated in poor areas and has started to affect the rest of the population. Humans, it appears, are much less bothered about absolute numbers than they are when people fall within our Dunbar's Number of social connections.

Is that the reason? I figured it was just the fact that every single crime of any scale is now recorded on police databases (unless it's a crime they don't care about, obviously), and you can easily get hold of this collated data, and the news can really easily find out how much crime is happening all over the country and suddenly this dude in Kent can find out about all that crime happening over in the Isle of Man and it just seems like more.

[hyzmarca]

To argue by example:

Over the past fifty years Britain's crime rate has dropped like a stone. However, the average perception of crime among middle class people has risen. This is because crime has become much less exclusively concentrated in poor areas and has started to affect the rest of the population. Humans, it appears, are much less bothered about absolute numbers than they are when people fall within our Dunbar's Number of social connections.

Is that the reason? I figured it was just the fact that every single crime of any scale is now recorded on police databases (unless it's a crime they don't care about, obviously), and you can easily get hold of this collated data, and the news can really easily find out how much crime is happening all over the country and suddenly this dude in Kent can find out about all that crime happening over in the Isle of Man and it just seems like more.

No one cares about crime statistics. What matters are individual crimes, preferably committed against pretty white women.

Here's the thing, crime reporting doesn't rise and fall with statistics. Crime makes good headlines. The more sensational the crime and the more sympathetic the victim the better.

So the media goes out of its way to report certain classes of crime, those that will get the highest ratings or sell the most papers. So anecdotal evidence shows a bunch of sensational crimes. And that's what people pay attention to.

[tussock]

Yeh, crime was never a poor people thing. Rich folk murder just as many people as poor folk do per capita, there's just less of them. Dunbar's number is a thing, but people drive their kids to school now because kidnapped kids are awesome headlines, not because anyone knows anyone whose child has been kidnapped.

From an RPG perspective, folk have been telling bullshit stories about some magic dude running off with all the town's children since long before the Pied Piper reached print.



Incidentally, the wikipedia for Pied Piper of Hamelin was interesting. It's about how good rat control practices lead to effective grain storage, rapid over-population, and mass emigration of youth to nearby areas that were recently depopulated by various invasions and wars. But also how everyone is always more interested in hearing about child stealing.

---

Also, people do victim surveys. Random calls and ask thousands of people what crimes they've suffered recently, and real crime rates have basically collapsed. Fallen by half in a generation. Probably because we took lead out of the petrol, or at least most of it.

Hilariously, the police-recorded crime rates in countries can be inversely proportional to the real crime rates. As a basic concept, they just don't have as much time for the small stuff when there's more murders, and when there's very little crime they have a bunch of time to try and get heavy convictions for much lesser real offending.

[Blade]

The way we handle risk is adapted to living in the wild. If you hear stories or see signs that a tiger has eaten someone recently, you'll be on the look out for tigers and won't care much about getting killed by falling rocks. It works well in these circumstances.

But fast forward a few thousands years, and now you're more afraid of flying Malaysian Airlines than you are of driving to the airport, despite the fact that you're statistically far more likely to die in the car.

[Shrapnel]

A question regarding URLs: How do you link to a URL with a "!" or a "?" in it?

[Sam]

A question regarding URLs: How do you link to a URL with a "!" or a "?" in it?

You can leave it for people to copy/paste, use the [url] tag, use a shortcut url like goo.gl or bitly, or use these: http://www.december.com/html/spec/esccodes.html

[schpeelah]

Use url escape characters, I believe. %21 for ! and %3F for ?

[Shrapnel]

Many thanks!

[ishy]

Do those work in chrome? They didn't in the past.

[Stahlseele]

My cornflakes are soggy. Again.
WHY does breakfast Cereal NOT come in Zip-Lock-Bags damn it? <.<

[Pixels]

Because their primary markets are not places so humid that simply being open causes the cereal to become soggy? If it is truly that much of an issue you can try rolling and clipping shut the cereal bag, or storing it in a resealable container/bag.

[Prak]

You can also-
1- Open corn flakes
2- Empty commercial bag into freezer bag
3- Place freezer bag back into cereal box.

[TiaC]

Put a desiccator in the bag?

[Maj]

Stop eating cornflakes. :þ

[Chamomile]

You can also-
1- Open corn flakes
2- Empty commercial bag into freezer bag
3- Place freezer bag back into cereal box.

In a recent visit to a tropical region of the world, I found it was common to store cereal in the fridge.