As the title says: we’re playing. This is not about defending your pet conspiracy theories or showing off your intellectual superiority by shooting other people down.
That said:
It has long been said that Nostradamus successfully predicted most of the major events forward of his point in history (I am too damn lazy to look it up) with believers pulling out vaguely worded stanzas showing how “this matches [major event] so perfectly, you guys!” Fie to those who point to vague wording or the fact that the same stanza was used five other times as a “totally accurate prediction”.
So pick something – it can be any medium but should be published in some way that the average person stands a chance of knowing (of) it: no private diary entries, please. Preferably, it should be something that requires a bit of massagery and handwaving to show “how [they] totally saw it coming, you guys!”
Fallout. Sure, it seems ridiculous with all that 50’s tech around, alongside nuclear everything but if you think about it…
We stand on the brink of nuclear war with NK who are allied with China. While our tech isn’t blatantly fifties, what easier way might a videogame have to shorthand the culture of the 1950s. Which is where many of the USA’s leaders (and some followers) seem to be harkening back to. Plus, there’s the murderbot AI’s and benevolent seeming corporate overlords that are evil as fuck. screwing people over for one more datapoint (and profit!).
Sure, sure, they’ll say it’s just a game and don’t read so much into it, but don’t go signing up for any group rates on underground bunkers, people. And be nice to your friendly neighbourhood ghoul.
While Charles Fourier incorrectly predicted that global warming would reduce the frequency and severity of hurricanes, he did predict oceanic acidification and the resulting extinctions.
He thought the oceans would turn to lemonade, and better sea creatures would replace the “vile” current ones.
He seems to have hewed to the “tangerine trees and marmalade skies” school.
Or perhaps he thinks, after a modest jolt of climate change,
"… the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains."
The masters are liable to get replaced because as soon as any technique becomes at all stereotyped it becomes possible to devise a system of instruction tables which will enable the electronic computer to do it for itself…
They may be unwilling to let their jobs be stolen from them in this way. In that case they would surround the whole of their work with mystery and make excuses, couched in well-chosen gibberish, whenever any dangerous suggestions were made.
I like that Fallout analysis. I’d say Portal is relevant as well.
Machines test humans subjects with only cursory regard for safety, apparently just to give themselves something to do, and/or confirm the contempt they already have for human life. Human defeats machine at the successful end of a game, only to get to the next sequel and discover essentially nothing has changed.
Sounds a lot like Facebook’s media exposure psychology experiments and various things Amazon/Google/etc. have got up to.
And this is how we keep the machines from learning how we know the whole future. As you can foresee for yourselves, we will always be 72 steps ahead of them. They will never know which parts are jokes, distractions, deliberate well-compensated falsehoods, or the truth.
