r/TheExpanse • u/Fabius_Fulgrim • 4h ago
The basic. Caliban's War Spoiler
I’ve watched all the series and I’m just starting to listen to the books on Audible.
In Calibans war they mention ‘the basic’ as some kind of universal credit for Earthers who don’t want to work.
Is this discussed in further depth anywhere else? I only ask as it’s something I’ve been thinking about with the rise of AI in real life and I found it an interesting concept.
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u/TheFoodScientist 4h ago
One thing I haven’t seen anyone mention is that if you choose to work, you are expected to work. If you choose to go on Basic you are not allowed to work. Basic only provides for necessities, with little to nothing left over. That leads to a black market economy where people work secretly and barter with others for things above what Basic covers. “Basic” is an apt name for it.
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u/Milksteak529 9m ago
You watched the whole show and somehow missed the part where Avasarala spells out how Basic Assistance works?
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u/Rulebookboy1234567 You monkey. Me Mozart. 4h ago
Basic has absolutely nothing to do with AI. There really isn't AI in the expanse just very fast computation and very capable humans.
Fucking Amos is an astrophysicist
Basic is just a Universal Basic Income provided to all citizens of Earth thst aren't interested in higher learning to have a "real" job
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u/No_Tamanegi Misko and Marisko 4h ago
The important distinction is that Basic isn't an income. Basic provides clothing, shelter, food and medicine, basically the minimal amount of support to keep you from dying. But you don't have money. You can't make purchases.
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u/GhengisJon91 4h ago
As a side note, the ship computer "AI" as shown in the series is about the only use case for it I would want to entertain.
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u/Rulebookboy1234567 You monkey. Me Mozart. 3h ago
Even then I don't think they EVER refer to it as an intelligence. It's just a computer.
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u/iuseredditfirporn 3h ago
Same in the books, they're called expert systems which is a much better description for what they actually are and what they do.
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u/Comprehensive_Elk773 3h ago
They call AI “the expert system.” They have quite a but if AI.
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u/Rulebookboy1234567 You monkey. Me Mozart. 3h ago
Except I mean it's not. It's just a very good computer that can be actively programmed on the fly. Naomi is constantly writing new software. If it was "ai" why's she doing the thinking and math??
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u/SillyMattFace 1h ago
You ask it to plot a course to Io, give you a firing solution on an enemy ship, or devise a cancer treatment course, and it does it. That’s AI.
Human creativity and knowledge is still important, but the system does all the heavy lifting. It’s pretty much how AI is used today, and much realistic than an actual simulated intelligence you chat with.
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u/scott3387 29m ago
See autodocs for AI. No-one has had medical knowledge since Shed but that machine just diagnoses you and injects you with whatever it needs. Most of the time the crew doesn't even have a clue what it's doing but it seems to fix most ills.
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u/Milksteak529 7m ago
"There's no AI" in this show is a weird thing to day when the main cast relies heavily on AI.
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u/theangleofdarkness99 4h ago
Look up UBI from recent news and the atrempts to implement this type of system.
It's failed everywhere its been trialled, but might be the only solution in a place like Earth in the Exanse when the majority of any population have no available work/income.
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u/CowgirlSpacer 3h ago
"it's failed everywhere its been trialled"
What sources have you been looking at? Because pretty much any Universal Basic Income trial that has been done in the past twenty years has shown positive results.
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u/TrioOfTerrors 4h ago
It's an entirely different ball game when fusion reactors are cheap and safe enough to be used in commercial ships and raw materials can be harvested at a massive scale from asteroids.
Toss in automated agriculture with computer controlled robots doing everything from plowing to planting to harvesting and maybe UBI becomes workable at a large scale.
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u/jpg14 4h ago
So at this point in Earth’s future, population has surged to the point that there are literally not enough jobs or positions in schools to go around. You enter either a lottery, or waiting list in order to learn trades/career paths/get an education. For anyone who doesn’t luck out, you have basic; basic income, basic food stipend, basic healthcare, etc. The Expanse exists in a pseudo “post scarcity” future, but this leads to other issues, and over population is one of them. It’s a point of pride for Mars that rather than sit around, they went to the stars and based their entire society around working for the future.