Alternatively, imagine skillsofts that slowly integrate, rather than requiring them to be installed in an implant, or provided an unlimited bonus. Suddenly, the technology exists to make anyone competent at anything without effort, or make them a genius overnight. The divide between rich and poor grows even further, as the wealthy turn themselves into geniuses by mentally clicking the download button. The few desperate enough to turn to black market skillsofts occasionally get a good deal, but the majority end up insane due to incompatability, or deeply indebted to crime lords. Just enough aren't snared, however, to make people think it's worth it. It doesn't even need a sinister angle to have scary consequences. Still, if you want a Firewall-friendly X-Risk included, a new set of skillsofts are released as freeware, including a very basic skillsoft implant, which actually do at least a little better than what is currently on the market. However, it leaves unusual flaws and holes in the skills people develop. These seem innocuous, but people start putting two and two together and notice the perceptual holes have some rather unpleasant similarities...

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

Alternatively, imagine skillsofts that slowly integrate, rather than requiring them to be installed in an implant, or provided an unlimited bonus. Suddenly, the technology exists to make anyone competent at anything without effort, or make them a genius overnight. The divide between rich and poor grows even further, as the wealthy turn themselves into geniuses by mentally clicking the download button. The few desperate enough to turn to black market skillsofts occasionally get a good deal, but the majority end up insane due to incompatability, or deeply indebted to crime lords. Just enough aren't snared, however, to make people think it's worth it. It doesn't even need a sinister angle to have scary consequences.

You know, that sounds just like education. Or computers. That turned out to be some scary shit that really left the poor in the dirt, eh? Sarcasm aside, that's a socialist maladaptive meme you're running around with there. If you stop and look at reality, then advantages that can be bought for money end up working out better for everyone - they provide wealth for society making everyone richer so more can afford it, while the advantage is put under price pressure, making it even wider accessible.

Well, we know that the mesh (vaguely) offers instant translation. Presumably, this means there are near-perfect linguasofts, and freely available. It's hard to resolve this kind of access with the existence of knowledge skills at all, really, except for cases of secret information.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

It's not socialist. Populist, maybe, but not socialist.

So what you're saying is, you think skillsofts are a problem because the average guy will be jealous of the rich having access to them? That's a strange argument.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

Now, do I think the technology should be banned? Of course not. I believe the benefits outweigh the problems. However, does denying the problem make it any less real or potentially horrific? Again, no.

There is no problem. So someone can skip years and years of education. Why is that a bad thing? You get say 5 years of productive work extra over their lifetime, that's good for everyone in society. And they don't take up spots in education, pressing prices down so not so wealthy people can afford top education, also a bonus - and that trickles all the way down to the bottom. It might suck for highly paid ivy league teachers though. So it makes people incredibly capable. Is society really worse off with more people like Einstein and Steve Jobs? Of course not. Everybody wins when such creative and productive people work. Even if we forget the fact that such tech tends to drop rapidly in price and become widely available, even if it remained forever expensive, it would be a good thing, wouldn't it? Except for the jealousy populism thing of course. But that line of thinking, "sure it is better for everyone but compared to what that guy is getting, it doesn't do enough for ME", just never sat right with me. It is like complaining about HIV treatments because Africans can't afford it - the problem is obviously not the treatment, it is poverty, and that's what should be adressed. If you want to argue the need for universal tax-funded access to at least basic skillsofts if such are developed, I'm all with you (just like how I feel about education and health care today). But that's a political decision that is independent of the technology, which would benefit all whether you're living in the very inequal USA or the Danish welfare state.

Clunker wrote:

Skillsofts can only provide ACTIVE skills, not KNOWLEDGE skills, per RAW in the EP core Gear section. Any thoughts (Game-Mechanically or In-setting wise) on why this should be?

In-setting wise: active skills are procedural memories, the perception-action loops that involve the frontal cortex, basal ganglia and cerebellum. Knowledge skills are largely semantic information, stuff that go into the association cortices. It could simply be that it is much easier to add enhancement to the more well-defined basal ganglia system than to the general-purpose cortex. Or there could be a different enhancement for knowledge skills: a semantic upgrade, allowing direct addition of "knowledge" to the brain. Maybe this upgrade exists, or it existed but has been widely removed since the Fall: it tended to get infected by certain kinds of infoviruses in a very bad way. Or it could be the McGuffin in an adventure: Cognite is now presenting its new semantic upgrade, and various factions want to get hold of it for various reasons. Game-wise I don't see any reason to limit to just active skills.

I'm not saying it'd be overpowered; quite the opposite. It'd be a huge waste of resources to get level 40 knowledge skillsofts. I was just saying it's kinda weird that Know skills even exist, with the mesh there. :)

Yerameyahu wrote:

Well, we know that the mesh (vaguely) offers instant translation. Presumably, this means there are near-perfect linguasofts, and freely available. It's hard to resolve this kind of access with the existence of knowledge skills at all, really, except for cases of secret information.

I was looking to find out some peoples opinions on the question of language softs as well. My players and I found this little problem with the RAW so far. I think there is an indication your Muse can translate. How many languages can it translate or is it using the Mesh to do the translation/Interpretation to the players, or would it be better to rely on skill softs? Of course now I have discovered knowledge skill softs are none existent in game with RAW (could House rule of course) but then does that apply to AI like Muses? Another thought I had was to make skill softs for languages only but make them incredibly expensive (possibly borrowing from an above posters idea or reference to skill softs being crafted from pruned forks on the production side), even for a muse. Then I would get into the problem of how much should other programmed skill softs for a Muse cost relative to a language skill. I think my biggest problem with this is that it seems as if I don't do something to rectify the Muse interpretation issue or solve the issue of whether they need skill softs the players will view languages as a pointless waste of xp for character development.

If there are language softs in the game, they should be *very* cheap, not more expensive than the already pricey activesofts. This is literally something Google does right now. Real language skills are obviously far superior, but poetry is rarely required.

A side note about "why knowledge skills exist, given that the Mesh is accessible": For the same reason that specialists in various fields of knowledge exist today, despite the Internet (and will continue to do so). While Google puts enormous quantities of information at anyone's fingertips, and an AI sorter would render it even more useful (hopefully), the person with great depth of knowledge in a given field will be able to use search engines and knowledge databases more rapidly and with better synergies relevant to their particular field of knowledge than someone who isn't familiar with it and is just searching on a few words. I regularly hear people say that 'There's hardly anything on the internet' about certain things relevant to my fields of study, and end up showing them that there is actually quite a lot...But not if you search for it in layman's terms and without clear understanding of what you're looking for. Deep knowledge of a field lets you approach information-mining not only with the obvious keywords but helps you know what inferences can be used to access related information that doesn't come up with that shallow search, and this will continue to be true no matter how rapidly the amount of information on the internet grows. Part of being a specialist includes knowing what to look for and how to sort the relevant from irrelevant information about a field rapidly.