Another concept that dath ilan has and Cheliax lacks, is the notion of the virality of a discussion topic.  Gather five people in a hushed circle; let one say a thing, on subject matter X.  While on average, each of the four people there has >0.25 items remaining to say, in response to the last items said, the discussion continues; if each reply provokes less than 1 total further replies, the discussion dies out.

Questions you can actually settle by thinking about them do not *stay* viral.  To stay viral they must somehow provoke the appearance of settleability, or some other reward of talking about them, without actually being resolvable.

Civilization has always been very careful not to allow social media to exist - outside of secondary-literature discussion boards, which serve as an ongoing dire example to all Civilization of what happens when you implicitly sort ideas by how controversial and hence viral they are.  (Or if you dare to engage in Ill-Advised Online Consumerism, you can look at what happens when you do that with other topics too, not just fanfiction; but dath ilani do not usually do that.  Why would they?  Obviously it's Ill-Advised for a reason, one that they have no particular motivation to override as an exception.  Dath ilani do not grow up inside the mental world of an adversarial cognitive environment where most secrets are being kept for someone else's good and their own harm, and must clearly be uncovered as quickly as possible.  They've had a huge number of secrets kept from them as children and then they've grown up and found out that, sure, there were very reasonable reasons for all of that, it *was* for their own good or the good of Civilization after all.)

The difference between a conversation topic where each remark provokes <0.8 remarks, and a conversation topic where each remark provokes >1.0 remarks, for an extended duration, is much like the difference between a greater-fire fission reaction where each neutron breaks loose <1 other neutrons and >1 other neutrons.  It determines whether the reaction goes critical or not.  The effects are not linear.

Another concept that dath ilan has and Cheliax lacks, is the notion of the virality of a discussion topic.  Gather five people in a hushed circle; let one say a thing, on subject matter X.  While on average, each of the four people there has >0.25 items remaining to say, in response to the last items said, the discussion continues; if each reply provokes less than 1 total further replies, the discussion dies out.

Questions you can actually settle by thinking about them do not stay viral.  To stay viral they must somehow provoke the appearance of settleability, or some other reward of talking about them, without actually being resolvable.

Civilization has always been very careful not to allow social media to exist - outside of secondary-literature discussion boards, which serve as an ongoing dire example to all Civilization of what happens when you implicitly sort ideas by how controversial and hence viral they are.  (Or if you dare to engage in Ill-Advised Online Consumerism, you can look at what happens when you do that with other topics too, not just fanfiction; but dath ilani do not usually do that.  Why would they?  Obviously it's Ill-Advised for a reason, one that they have no particular motivation to override as an exception.  Dath ilani do not grow up inside the mental world of an adversarial cognitive environment where most secrets are being kept for someone else's good and their own harm, and must clearly be uncovered as quickly as possible.  They've had a huge number of secrets kept from them as children and then they've grown up and found out that, sure, there were very reasonable reasons for all of that, it was for their own good or the good of Civilization after all.)

The difference between a conversation topic where each remark provokes <0.8 remarks, and a conversation topic where each remark provokes >1.0 remarks, for an extended duration, is much like the difference between a greater-fire fission reaction where each neutron breaks loose <1 other neutrons and >1 other neutrons.  It determines whether the reaction goes critical or not.  The effects are not linear.

Another concept that dath ilan has and Cheliax lacks, is the notion of the virality of a discussion topic.  Gather five people in a hushed circle; let one say a thing, on subject matter X.  While on average, each of the four people there has >0.25 items remaining to say, in response to the last items said, the discussion continues; if each reply provokes less than 1 total further replies, the discussion dies out.

Questions you can actually settle by thinking about them do not stay viral.  To stay viral they must somehow provoke the appearance of settleability, or some other reward of talking about them, without actually being resolvable.

Civilization has always been very careful not to allow social media to exist - outside of fiction discussion boards, in which you can't really be objectively wrong about anything too important, and which thus serve as an ongoing dire example to all Civilization of what happens when you implicitly sort ideas by how controversial and hence viral they are.

(Well, if you dare to engage in Ill-Advised Online Consumerism, you can look at what happens when you do that with other topics too, not just fiction.  But dath ilani do not usually do that.  Why would they?  Obviously it's Ill-Advised for a reason, one that they have no particular motivation to override as an exception.  Dath ilani do not grow up inside the mental world of an adversarial cognitive environment where most secrets are being kept for someone else's good and their own harm, and must clearly be uncovered as quickly as possible.  They've had a huge number of secrets kept from them as children and then they've grown up and found out that, sure, there were very reasonable reasons for all of that, it was for their own good or the good of Civilization after all.)

The difference between a conversation topic where each remark provokes <0.8 remarks, and a conversation topic where each remark provokes >1.0 remarks, for an extended duration, is much like the difference between a greater-fire fission reaction where each neutron breaks loose <1 other neutrons and >1 other neutrons.  It determines whether the reaction goes critical or not.  The effects are not linear.

Another concept that dath ilan has and Cheliax lacks, is the notion of the virality of a discussion topic.  Gather five people in a hushed circle; let one say a thing, on subject matter X.  While on average, each of the four other people there have >0.25 items remaining to say, in response to the last items said, the discussion continues; if each reply provokes less than 1 total further replies, the discussion dies out.

Questions you can actually settle by thinking about them do not stay viral.  To stay viral they must somehow provoke the appearance of settleability, or some other reward of talking about them, without actually being resolvable.

Civilization has always been very careful not to allow social media to exist - outside of fiction discussion boards, in which you can't really be objectively wrong about anything too important, and which thus serve as an ongoing dire example to all Civilization of what happens when you implicitly sort ideas by how controversial and hence viral they are.

(Well, if you dare to engage in Ill-Advised Online Consumerism, you can look at what happens when you do that with other topics too, not just fiction.  But dath ilani do not usually do that.  Why would they?  Obviously it's Ill-Advised for a reason, one that they have no particular motivation to override as an exception.  Dath ilani do not grow up inside the mental world of an adversarial cognitive environment where most secrets are being kept for someone else's good and their own harm, and must clearly be uncovered as quickly as possible.  They've had a huge number of secrets kept from them as children and then they've grown up and found out that, sure, there were very reasonable reasons for all of that, it was for their own good or the good of Civilization after all.)

The difference between a conversation topic where each remark provokes <0.8 remarks, and a conversation topic where each remark provokes >1.0 remarks, for an extended duration, is much like the difference between a greater-fire fission reaction where each neutron breaks loose <1 other neutrons and >1 other neutrons.  It determines whether the reaction goes critical or not.  The effects are not linear.