Questions tagged [society]
For questions dealing with how sentient beings interact with each other in a community.
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Why would vampires sire vampires of lesser blood than they have to?
Long story short: my story has magical humanoids (known as "immortals" due to their immunity to old age and disease) existing in secret on mostly-modern-day Earth as a 1-in-1000-humans ...
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The cultural effect of torture, imprisionment and war in a community [closed]
So, I've been writing about a planet called Tabor, a tidally locked earth-like planet with harsh conditions that humanity decided to use as a prison for political and religious criminals.
To summarize,...
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What psychological effects would be caused by technological singularity? [closed]
If technology someday is evolved to the point that the world appears crazy and illogical then I believe that it will naturally cause some crazy visual and psychological effects( considering a ...
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Is it possible for another European-style medieval society to be on a separate continent?
In my world there are multiple continents with many cultures. In a far away continent, there are kingdoms that exist there. I was wondering how could they be medieval style like the mainland, and if ...
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Why haven't humans been absorbed or exterminated by orks?
Ork advantages:
Strength: orks are, on average, twice as strong as humans.
Reproduction: ork females rarely die in childbirth and usually have twins.
Height: orks can reach up to almost 8 feet tall....
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How to make pagan religions popular again [closed]
In my medieval fantasy world, Christianity, or at least it's parallel universe equivalent, is the most dominant religion. However, later in my world, pagan beliefs start to become popular again and ...
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Could space aliens be racist?
Racism, while it is widespread now, is a relatively recent invention, of which Earth's history suggests it requires certain conditions to emerge and take root. These conditions are certainly not going ...
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What would prevent the genocide of a legitimately dangerous race?
I’m writing a low magic fantasy story in which there’s a race of creatures called shadow-thralls that were basically bred as a slave race by a wizard thousands of years in the past. In the present day,...
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Social status by fuel used?
In this universe contained self sustaining fusion has been achieved. As we know the fuel for fusion is most commonly isotopes of hydrogen, and helium is produced as a byproduct of that.
Helium is, as ...
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How realistic would the emergence of strong Artificial Intelligence leading to a global war? [closed]
If sentient AI emerges and begins to dominate every field and make most of the population unemployed--even to the extent of replacing governments--then humans would probably rebel against the machines....
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Would there be any major weather events if all air pollution suddenly disappeared?
The mages have decided that enough is enough, and the second most powerful witch in the world decides to remove pollution from the atmosphere. She ties her life-force to intrinsically depend on all ...
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How would defense tactics change if 10% of people could fly? [closed]
If one in ten people possess the magical ability to fly, would this change the development of defensive measures and tactics in a society reminiscent of Britain in the medieval era? No other magic ...
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Could a species of Obligate Carnivores achieve sapience?
So I had this idea for a sort of Speculative Evolution/sci-fi project where humanity(known as the Founders) found no life beyond their solar system and decided to terra-form various planets with life ...
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How would a race of people that destroyed everything they touched wear clothes? [closed]
I have created a race of naturally mutated humans called the Homo Tenibris that destroy everything they touch(with any part of their body).
The speed at which the object is destroyed is dependent on ...
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Which factors determine the political system of the various species from the Homo genus? [closed]
In my universe, there are sixteen species from the Homo genus: anatomically modern humans, marine humans (merfolk), winged humans (angels), demons, ogres, giants, dwarfs, elves, orcs, gnomes, trolls, ...
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What makes a religion popular? [closed]
There have been many things asking on how to make a fictional religion. As I was making my world's religion, I wondered: what would make people want to believe in it? What also gave me the idea is of ...
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Why would a society be matriarchal instead of patriarchal after the development of agriculture?
My (admittedly limited) understanding of why most human societies became patriarchal basically is that as people developed agriculture and the resources to defend themselves, power shifted to men as ...
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How would a mermaid jail work?
I'm trying to write a mermaid civilization, although I have one major roadblock when developing a criminal justice system. My mermaids are air breathers (like cetaceans) so I'm not sure how I would ...
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What would social media look like in a setting where communication wasn't instant, and where content quality might be deliberately downgraded?
It's the near future, humanity has discovered a new element in the asteroid field that allows faster than light travel and communication through a brute force methods that's largely handwaved away at ...
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Why would neurodivergent people be sacred individuals?
In my world, there are magical humans often called wizards (their scientific name is Homo magicus) (so, they are still humans, just not Homo sapiens).
They are traditionally a very religious race. ...
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How can witches be prevented from cannibalizing each other to increase their power?
Mana is the life energy that courses through a metaphysical circulatory system in the human body that allows it to function and perform its daily tasks to keep an individual alive. At the center is ...
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Why would animal people wear clothes?
In my world, there are anthromorphic animal people, similar to the ones in Skyrim. There are many types, so I will just call them all this. Due to them having fur, most specifically the cat people and ...
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Is this price of magic severe enough to deter most women from becoming witches in my fantasy world?
I am writing a fantasy series about witches. It's set in a high fantasy world. To get magic powers in this fantasy world, a girl has to voluntarily transform into a magical being.
The magic in this ...
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Could it ever become a custom for human women to breed with ogres?
I'm in the process of constructing a fantasy world that resembles our world and is predominantly inhabited by humans just like us, but which also contains ogres. The ogres in this world are between ...
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Political Concerns of Laser Propulsion System
Now it's 2085, and human civilization has started to reach the planets. Using the most advanced fission rockets, we can travel from Earth to Mercury in 8 months and from Earth to Jupiter in 1 year. ...
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How can an interlocking system of portals fail to prevent the splitting of the Roman empire?
The first and the greatest of Rome's emperors, Julius Caesar, had conquered vast swaths of territory for the empire, making it rich beyond measure and extending its reach across various continents, ...
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How would animal husbandry and domestication change if animals could talk and think [closed]
In the world where Intelligent and speech are much more common and any animal bigger Then rat size rodent Not only has human level intelligence but the ability to speak and understand human language. ...
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What kind of 'techniques' would a corrupt, power-hungry government use to dehumanize its army?
I am writing a story that takes place in an alternate universe in which the timeline is all screwed up. The society this question is about (let's call it Rome) has lots of futuristic technology, such ...
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What is the simplest set of rules a masquerade can have to maintain history as we know it?
A common trope in fiction involving things like magic or aliens is the concept of the "Masquerade", wherein the fantastic elements of the setting are kept secret from most of society. While ...
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Why would a settlement set up shop INSIDE a supermassive creature's mouth?
In a story idea I have, there is a massive, stationary beast, with teeth the size of houses, a body as large as a continent, and an unfathomably large mouth (don't ask how it sustains itself, nobody ...
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How could a church maintain the illusion of an Eternal Flame for hundreds of years?
In the world I am developing, a group called the Garotakor Kobark base their belief system on a fire that has burned consistently for hundreds of years. It has been contained within a step pyramid-...
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After we drain the Sun and migrate, why would humanity find the Solar System important?
Long ago, our ancestors worked out how to travel faster than light: by sending craft directly into the Sun, employing fusion, quantum entanglement, and a healthy dose of handwavium/science ...
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What reasons might these advanced humans have to abduct and then dismember, traumatize, and possibly even kill dragons? [closed]
THE DRAGONS
When standing on all fours, a typical full-grown dragon is about 3 times as tall as a human. They are quadrupedal with opposable thumbs, with four legs and two or four wings, and can ...
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What would be the cost of living in a country where only millionaires and billionaires are allowed to live?
I am imagining a small country with a relatively small population; say around five million people, where by law everyone living there needs to be a millionaire or a multimillionaire/billionaire.
So ...
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Possible population levels in a Kardashev Type 2 Scale civilization
Acording to Futuretimeline a type 2 Kardashev society could be achieved around the year 3100 when science is advanced enough to allow the creation of a Dyson Sphere and due to its size it could house ...
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Why can’t the everyman get housing without the Lords of America?
I am continuing to evolve my neo-feudal America after it falls from superpower status, basing this evolution on political science research which links such an evolution to the privatization of ...
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Origins of the Feudal Lords of America?
I have a political science problem in my story.
I reduced this to a simple binary choice to prevent opinions, abiding by the perfect question checklist. If this question is confusing, I am on chat ...
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How can a matriarchal religion support a patriarchal structure?
The Cult of the Holy Mother is a female-dominated religious organization that retains a large role in the shaping of society and affairs of the nation. The cult traces its origins to a virgin woman ...
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How can an expression of a god's power be used to authenticate the legitimacy of a sect within a religion?
The Cult of the Holy Mother is a female-dominated sect within a larger religious organization led by a male patriarch. Although the cult is small, it retains a significant role in the imagination of ...
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How realistic would for Canada to become richer and wealthier than the United States because of climate change and global warming?
I believe that global warming could make Canada one of the most fertile land areas for agriculture and one of the countries with the most stable climates. So would be realistic that climate change ...
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Political Stability of this Federalized Feudal Realm
I have a fiction piece I am working on, which contains a Empire whose people are anologues of Russians. They're paranoid, defensive, and prefer to build walls and castles wherever they go for safety. ...
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In a society based around moral relativism, how would the courts or government in general work? [closed]
In one of my worldbuilds, there is a very popular and atheistic philosophy that is based around absolute moral relativism and total opposition to religion. But, I'm struggling to come up with ways a ...
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How is the Alien Parasite's Empire in my Story going to Justify Bans on Clone Bodies for the Parasites?
PREMISE:
A sentient race of neural parasites is in a civil war between the Symbiotes, who've used their extensive knowledge of genetic engineering to alter themselves into symbiotes, and the Parasites ...
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How would the police protect against magic users?
In this setting, magic and the supernatural is real and acknowledged by wider society. Magic is a relatively rare ability; while it is still an issue to think about, it is too rare to expect all ...
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Does an Undead Kingdom where the Lower Class live near the surface while the Upper Class lives underground below them make any sense?
I'm working on a story where all the characters are various Undead (we're talking typical D&D Ghosts, Wraiths, Zombies, and Skeletons, albeit with sentience) that all live together in the highly ...
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How might dragons react to humans kidnapping and 'training' dragons [closed]
Basically, the dragons are European dragons, with fire breath, wings, and everything else. They are normally highly independent, but will cooperate when under duress. They do have a writing system but ...
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What circumstances could lead to the creation of numerous pan-Celtic macronations? [closed]
TDLR: After peace and stability in the West goes to hell, the UN collapses, and nationalism arises. Ireland and Scotland return to being fully Celtic again while England becomes a 3rd world country ...
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What socio-economic pressure would cause humans to depend on an interstellar resource? [closed]
It's generally cheaper to make it at home, but when we can reach another star, what non-magical pressure would make that not true for humanity? There exist small niche markets in wine and some ...
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What is the minimum population for a civilization to advance technologically, if given knowledge of math, physics, astronomy, etc
My civilization has global free energy, understands the physics of antigravity, etc.
It was able to advance technologically through its own efforts. Six separate civilizations become a confederation ...
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How does the Law handle temporary curing of sociopathy?
I know that sociopathy isn't technically in the DSM any more, but what I mean by the term is an individual devoid of a conscience. They don't feel guilt no matter what they do and as such so long as ...
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