"Attached is a general prospectus on types of space infrastructure and their properties."

The attached document has material constraints on how large they can make structures under various levels of force and also goes into the various tradeoffs in power consumption, maintenance, size and performance of active support structures.

They will receive a flood of suggestions. "Design your ideal space habitat" is the sort of dinner-party conversation that everyone has an opinion on. A substantial subset of those designs are even proper engineering diagrams that take their expressed material constraints into account.

As a general trend, the þereminian designs tend to completely eschew active support structures. They overwhelmingly prefer spin gravity and solar power, although some smaller designs have backup thermal radioisotope generators. They also have a strong dispreference for things that involve a lot of maintenance.

When freed from budgetary constraints, þereminian designs tend to be overbuilt, with huge safety margins and multiple redundant systems. A few people submit six variations on the same design, expressing different points on the tradeoff between assumed-construction-cost and redundancy.

Also in evidence: big windows for natural sunlight, deep soil beds for growing trees, dubiously practical space-efficient micro-gravity hydroponics, and bedrooms that consist entirely of cushions.

Each design will get replies with notes about practical issues they might have missed like potentially wanting static wrappers to protect rotating habitats from space debris and also how large windows may be undesirable given now fast even large habitats rotate if they are built in proximity to other objects such as planets or if they have direct exposure to sunlight.

The minimal use of active support structures is acceptable though they are the only available surface to orbit option that doesn't require independent aerospace craft or teleportation.

Teleportation is actually preferable, if they're offering? But mainly people are planning to just make every space-habitat self-sustaining, since the aliens seem happy to build quite large structures for them. If they're all self-sustaining, then there will be a lot fewer urgent rescues, and they can probably cover that with rocket-based infrastructure, at least in near-planet orbit.

They definitely, absolutely can't have a space elevator. A space fountain is similarly bad.

Sure, it would be way more efficient for lifting things to orbit, but have you seen the calculations of what would happen if one of those had a structural failure? That would be species-ending. They've only got one habitable planet at the moment and they intend to keep it that way. Maybe once there are 6 independent self-sustaining colonies they could do a space elevator. But teleportation just seems better in every way.

Active support structures are extremely reliable with reasonable maintenance (have some figures about the details of that) and some structure designs have much less catastrophic failure modes than balanced tensile lift structures (see attached calculations for this). That said it's entirely reasonable to prefer to minimize risks with even relatively low likelihoods.

Teleportation in particular is one of the things they're least willing to part with, because of how easy it is to abuse.

Hmm.

There are now Network arguments about skyhooks versus magnetic launch solutions versus other stranger designs.

One group of people have gotten together to collaborate on designing a large space city intended to house a million people and the infrastructure necessary to support them.

"Hi — super excited about space, thanks for the opportunity — we[ex] were wondering whether you just object to giving us[ex] teleporters on an ongoing basis? Like, even if you're going to build something to our[ex] specifications, we[ex] still don't really have the launch capacity to handle initial relocations, even if we[ex] can probably handle ongoing resupply. So if we[ex] got everyone who wants to settle in Space City to get together in a particular location with our[ex] belongings, would you be willing to teleport us[ex] up?"

"We[ex] will offer support with relocating people and materials if there is a plan for supporting them though reasonable contingencies without our[ex] direct intervention. Gathering all of the materials and individuals to be moved is not required so long as adequate assurances are made that their relocation is uncoerced."

That's ... a slightly baffling response. Putting someone who doesn't want to be there on your space station sounds like a great way to stop having a useful space station. They're building in as much redundancy as they can, but that's not going to stop a dedicated saboteur.

... maybe the aliens just don't think the average þereminian will be capable of making their presence on the station an obvious net negative?

The Space City Planning group responds with a new design that includes prominent, well-marked, accessible levers for wedging the airlocks open and venting sections of the city to space.

It takes markedly longer than usual for a response to be formulated. "We[in] appear to be having a substantial miscommunication. Allowing individuals to end their lives and those of substantial numbers of individuals around them is not a response we[ex] expected. The worst case of mass forced displacement does not seem likely given your communication thus far, but making it easy to shift that into mass death does not address it. We[ex] will seek confirmation from individuals before relocating them."

A miscommunication seems pretty likely, yeah! The aliens clearly think death is bad ... so they either don't believe that þereminians believe that, or they think þereminians are sufficiently bad at planning that thinking that won't be sufficient incentive to take steps to make it not happen?

Ouch. That feels really rude, actually.

But the correct thing to do when someone from a foreign culture seems to have given you a grave insult is get a specialist involved. Diplomatic Corps! We choose you!

Diplomat Tatenika has been having an extraordinarily busy day. Maybe when first contact is over she should retire and take up a nice relaxing hobby like herding cats.

"Speaking on behalf of the Space City Planning Group: We[ex] apologize for the inadvertent miscommunication. SCPG is an initiative to found a new city. Historically, we[ex] have found that attempts to found new cities with non-volunteers doesn't work, and often ends up with everyone having wasted a lot of time and resources. See the attached Archive references for historical accounts. This makes sense from the perspective of game theory: if someone doesn't want to be involved in founding a new city, they are incentivized to make including them in the process as difficult and unpleasant as possible. That way, when the city-founders are rational, they don't involve those people in the plan."

"As a result of this historical knowledge, modern attempts to found cities are traditionally done only with volunteers. There is no actual law against not doing that, for the same reason that there isn't a law against lighting your own face on fire — people mostly know not to try. There is a law against forcing people to belong to a political group or forcing them to work when they do not choose to. See the global minimum standards that were previously shared. If the SCPG had attempted to do those things, they would have been subject to a GMSB tribunal, which is an additional disincentive."

"When you said that you were worried about people who didn't want to be part of Space City being added to the transport list, the planning committee inferred that either you didn't believe that their screening procedures for volunteers were sufficiently robust, or that you didn't believe the cultural disincentives from our existing institutions were strong enough, in the face of getting to live in space. But since you have evinced a preference for not informing our decision making, they assumed that you wouldn't be willing to improve screening procedures. So they added additional ways to disincentivize the use of involuntary colonization, so that you could see that they were trying their best to avoid involving non-volunteers, even if you didn't trust our[ex] established legal system."

"When you responded negatively to that and said that you would implement your own screening procedures, the planning committee took that to mean that you didn't think that they were rational beings capable of responding to incentives. I have assured them that this is almost certainly not the case, and that, in my professional opinion, this is very likely a miscommunication caused by missing cultural context. I have encouraged them to assume that aliens are even weirder than they were assuming, and that they should avoid making assumptions about what you will or will not be able to infer from our[ex] transmissions."

"In that spirit: I do not believe that you have done anything incorrectly, and I have done my best to convey to the planning committee that they have not been insulted. But we[ex] have multiple probably-evolutionarily-designed* involuntary decision-making procedures in our brains, and while the committee is rationally committed to continuing to work productively toward our[in] goal of seeing peaceful settlement of space, some members of the committee would be emotionally reassured if you would confirm my assessment. It would, in my opinion as a diplomat, smooth further relations if you were to compose and issue a brief apology. See On the Purpose and Composition of Apologies for an explanation of the underlying psychology and how to compose an apology that will be correctly received."

*i.e. stupid.

"Thank you for your thorough evaluation of this miscommunication. It is a standard part of our[ex] procedures to seek confirmation from individuals before relocating them and ensure that their relocation is freely chosen. We[ex] apologize for our[ex] lack of care in communicating this such that it seemed this was an expression of mistrust particular to that group or to the people of your world in general.

"Our[ex] procedures are built on the assumption that those we[ex] are communicating with may be attempting to deceive us[ex] and while we[ex] have no reason to believe that is the case here, and indeed the evidence so far made available to us suggests the opposite, we[ex] will continue to follow those procedures out of an abundance of caution. We[ex] hope you will not take this caution, especially at this relatively early stage as further insult.

"The suggestion of making it easy for individuals to vent large sections of a habitat does make sense under the assumption that individuals consistently behave rationally. If your people can be modelled under that assumption, that is an exceedingly unusual trait. Most societies we[ex] encounter have at least some significant portion of the the population, typically more than one person in one thousand, have at least one emotional episode which makes them a danger to themselves and those around them during their lifetime. Typically this dangerous behavior is not something they would endorse outside of that episode.

"To clarify our[ex] earlier statement regarding allowing you to select your own path we[ex] have an interest in not directly facilitating harms such as forced relocation. We[ex] do not consider checking for consent when moving individuals to be an example of influencing your decision making process over and above the influence already entailed by offering such relocation."

"I see; that makes sense and I appreciate the explanation."

"With regards to rationality: you're quite correct that we[ex] are not purely rational actors. See, for example, the potential for emotions to cloud decision making. But there is a set of cultural assumptions around attempting to approximate rational actions, especially on a collective level, that I have never needed to explain from scratch before. The dictionary has a definition under 'pride', but that definition assumes cultural familiarity with the concept. Allow me to attempt a more grounded explanation:"

"Even though we[ex] are not rational, it's broadly accepted that being more rational in some ways is a better way to obtain desired outcomes. Therefore, many of our[ex] people want to be more rational than they are. This is difficult, because we[ex] cannot directly alter our own cognition except through repeated practice — and altering it too much is prone to introducing worse failure states — so people who do act rationally are perceived as having accomplished a difficult and desirable feat, which is high-status."

"On the level of groups acting collectively, membership in a group that behaves according to standards that are widely-acknowledged to better approximate the rational response to something itself, therefore, confers status. That makes people want to be associated with the group, which is generally beneficial to the group's collective interest. So people in groups such as the Space City Planning Group often try to structure their group's responses in ways that are widely believed to be rational, or to showily exhibit rational principles, in order to gain status for themselves and additional support for the group. Since this set of tendencies is broadly present across the cultures that we[ex] were familiar with prior to your arrival, it is often assumed as a background fact about how people and groups behave."

"Notice that this cultural tendency is about appearing to do things that many other people believe are rational and difficult. That means that the impulse from this kind of pride is often actually not the rational thing to do in a situation. The whole institution of cultural pride is only useful to the extent that we[ex] can tie the appearance of being rational to its actuality, something that different groups have succeeded in to different degrees over time."

"Does that serve to clarify the motivations of the SCPG in this case? Are there further questions on which you would appreciate my elaboration?"

"We[ex] understand the concepts of striving and social signaling but this is not entirely sufficient to grasp the choice to make space habitats easier to sabotage. Our[ex] best guess would be that it increases the incentive to notice and address sources of distress in others. However, based on the incentives you have described, it seems if anything more likely that individuals would attempt to conceal their own distress until things reached a breaking point. Perhaps there is another hidden assumption on the part of the SCPG that individuals cannot do so effectively."

Being a diplomat means constantly guessing the right level of detail for people to understand; she's well used to breaking things down, if usually not quite to this degree.

"Ah, I see — yes, I think there are additional hidden assumptions here. But you are right that the core thing the SPCG was trying to do was to make it obvious that their incentives for noticing and addressing these things were aligned with your own."

"I think it is not actually likely that concealing distress until reaching a breaking point would be high status, though? Reaching out to others for help in dealing with difficult situations is one of the simplest things-that-people-believe-to-be-a-component-of-rationality. It's something that children are explicitly instructed in how and when to do, so failing to do it makes one appear childish. That isn't to say that people don't routinely conceal their feelings rather than reaching out for support, but it's generally looked down on."

"Also, living on a space station is already going to be complicated and difficult compared to living on a planet: having levers to force the airlocks open makes it easier to destroy a section of the city, but it is always possible to do that without explicit affordances in various ways. High-velocity kinetic impactors will be a problem at unknown times, for example. So the kinds of people who would not function well in that kind of high-stakes environment, where everyone is relying on everyone else to stay alive in the grips of a delicate, hostile system, can display restraint and wisdom by not going to live there. Restraint is another one of the things-that-people-believe-to-be-a-component-of-rationality, as is accurate self-reflection."

"You might worry that people without accurate self-reflection might be more prone to the kinds of impulsive destructive tendencies that could lead to a tragedy here. That correlation is less strong than one might naively assume, because humans have multiple competing kinds of decision making in our brains; doing things impulsively leans on a different set of systems than making considered, deliberate decisions such as moving to a new city. Those kinds of decision making can be flawed in an individual more or less independently. That isn't to say there is no risk, just that the correlation isn't perfect."

"That doesn't get to the core of the matter, though, which is that you must consider that different people have different incentives in this situation. Individual people who move to Space City might have individual incentives to try and conceal their stress or impulsivity. But SPCG, as a group, is only* incentivized to care about that insofar as it impacts the success of their project, and that incentive competes with other aspects of the situation, such as the desire to be seen as making difficult decisions, and the desire to convince you to help move people. Also, on an individual level, the desire to solve problems facing the group in ways that are not personally inconvenient."

*Translator's note: rhetorical only, not mathematical only.

"So, from the point of view of an individual member of the SPCG, it becomes a question of: is the increased risk of someone behaving in a low-status, dangerous way, even when we are already screening against that because of the inherent dangers of space, worth scrapping a plan that feels clever and does not require re-working the already-in-progress recruitment and screening procedures, and that should logically assuage the concerns of the aliens upon whose cooperation this entire enterprise is founded, given that it makes our incentive to ensure that screening is sufficiently comprehensive clear? And that is a question that is much closer to being balanced, and less obvious, than the question of 'does this modification increase risk to the Space City at all?', which of course it does. From SPCG's point of view, the project is actually less successful if you refuse to transport everyone than if you agree to transport everyone and then a tragedy happens to a subset of the population — even though, if the question were presented with that framing, the SPCG members might actually answer differently, or abandon the project. How a question is framed internally can have a large influence on the answer decided on, since we[ex] aren't rational."

"Are there additional things that remain unclear, after reading this message?"

Hey, sorry again about the misunderstanding. Diplomat Tatenika says that she's working through it and that our plan was suboptimal. Here's some details on our current application and prioritization procedures; if you're going to be doing your own screening, are there things that we can cut out of ours so that people don't have to deal with unnecessary bureaucracy? What questions will you be asking people?

Also, here are some revised designs for the maintenance hatches and changes to the neighborhood layout for some of the peripheral buildings if we're specifically not making it easy for people to sabotage things. Some people backed out when we announced that, but others signed up for some reason? So the overall population timeline is actually unchanged.

Also, there are questions about the design of the debris shield. In particular, the university thinks this aperiodic shield tiling is actually marginally safer according to their impact simulations — if you're willing to confirm or deny that, here are the plans and the reasoning for the modification. Also, ....

To the ambassador: "We[ex] believe we understand well enough to proceed. Thank you for your thorough breakdown of the psychological and cultural factors at play."

"Our[ex] process involves asking relatively few questions but combining that with offering alternatives and providing details.

"We[ex] will explain that we prefer not to move people under coercion but that we are willing to do so under circumstances where we cannot address the source of the coercion.

"Further, we[ex] will explain that we[ex] can instead send individuals to alternative destinations based on the details of the individual's situation if they prefer not to be moved to the original destination and offer assistance with retrieving individuals being held hostage to ensure their cooperation if that is a factor.

"Once these explanations have been completed and are understood we[ex] will ask if they still want to move on to their original destination or require additional assistance. In addition, we[ex] will ask whether they plan to sabotage the destination station or enact violence on others present there and if so why. Depending on their reasoning, we[ex] may decline to transport them on those grounds."

Infrastructurer is happy to provide further feedback on design implications and empirical evidence from existing habitats. There are benefits to aperiodic tiling though it can make automated maintenance more complicated...

Meanwhile, city planners and diplomats aren't the only people trying to get in contact with the aliens.

"To the people of the rings: caution is admirable, but undue delay is just as dangerous as undue haste. My grandfather is dying. The doctors don't know how long he has, but he's gotten worse recently and I don't think he has very long. The announcements say that you're going to offer 'biological support' once you can be sure that doing so won't destabilize things. If that means you can cure grandfather, or even just diagnose him, please, please do. But even if you can't, can you teleport him out, put him in cryosuspension while you finish your investigations, and teleport in a dummy so that it looks like he just had a stroke or something? The coordinates of his hospital bed are attached, and I can arrange for him to be detatched from the medical monitors and unsupervised at 53:00 tonight."

"We[ex] do not have sufficient knowledge of your biology to offer any guarantees of success at this time. Cryonic storage is not among the options we typically offer.

"If your grandfather is cognitively incapable of expressing opinions on his own medical care and you have the right to make such decisions on his behalf we[ex] can transport your grandfather and attempt to treat him based on our[ex] limited knowledge as part of improving our knowledge."

Uuuuugh aliens were supposed to be better than the legal system.

Sorgaþa engages on a 4.3 hour quest to obtain a legally valid certification of power of attorney. Luckily gramps is awake when she visits with the part he needs to sign.

"Hey Baba."

She wraps her hand around his.

"You know how you were talking about donating your body to science as your walk? I think I have something you'll like better ..."

Fifteen minutes later, she is standing on the hospital roof with a power of attorney signed in a shaky hand holding her phone up toward the sky with its transmitter power cranked.

"Hey, I have legal authorization from him to make his medical decisions! And based on my conversations with him I believe that if he were still forming long-term memories correctly with any reliability and had time to think about it he would prefer you to take him to treat and/or learn from so that you can help others."

A strange many legged robot about the size of a cat appears next to him. It has four branches each of which bifurcate repeatedly until the smallest limbs are too small to make out with the naked eye. "Hello, please take me to your grandfather."