Some relevant skills, off the top of my head:

• 'Mind-reading', e.g. how are they going to interpret a complaint or request or comment
• 'Filtering', e.g. what decision or evaluation should or must be made by a 'hero'
• 'Readiness', e.g. "this just needs your signature"

Really, there must be lots of specific sub-skills, as the three I listed overlap to a large degree.

I initially thought I would be able to list lots of skills specific to software, and of course there are many, but they're relatively unimportant for being a good sidekick generally. For example, being able to provide clear instructions on how to reproduce a bug is incredibly valuable, but that's really just an example of the general skills I listed above, i.e. providing info that's unambiguous about what's wrong (and ideally why), not providing info that's irrelevant, and providing enough info so that they can most efficiently fix the bug.

Generally, being a good sidekick requires sufficient empathy and self-awareness. Empty because you have to know the mind of your hero to know how to best help them. And self-awareness because you have to know whether your hero's cause is really yours too. Tho, of course, some sidekick's cause is ultimately serving a specific hero.

In fantasy terms, a good sidekick delivers obvious monsters that the hero can slay.

Well, I notice strong fears of being judged (and other emotions that I have determined to be from status concern) surrounding the correct use of grammar and such, so I thought there was a chance that other people would share it. That seems like a point.

I was also thinking that if I were actually not concerned about status I probably would have stopped capitalizing things at all and I would have considered making other changes. That probably isn't true, though, because the instrumental value of grammar is still really high if it's a status concern for other people.

I would.

1. Take apart the earth, use it to build a fleet of smaller habitats that make use of the materials to generate maximum sustainable habitat space.

2. Distribute these habitats into combinations of nature preserve biomes, agricultural systems and urban centers.

3. All habitats should be given sufficient technological infrastructure to power all their life support with some extra. All habitats should have internet capabilities and backup stores of all human knowledge.

4. Redistribute the population of earth into their preferred habitat with the kinds of people they would prefer to be around, pole them if needed.This includes isolating ideologies that cannot abide any other ideologies away from other habitats.

5. Dedicate a small portion of habitats to ferry services that take regular routes between other habitats. Arrange routes so that individuals with ideological incompatibility are separated from those they cannot tolerate by longer routes.

6. Sit back and let the chips fall where they may. Live in a habitat with people of like mind, eventually die but know that humanity has been given a head start to interstellar colonization and the biospheres of earth have been preserved as redundantly as possible without dismantling any worlds beyond earth.

Deeprise

I'm authoring/managing this collaborative fiction project.

The format I'm using for this project is one that is ultimately yoked to reader input. So I feel it would be valuable if a few rationalists inclined and entertained by the content contributed some input of their own.

The ultimate goal of this piece is to be an exemplar of the world and creatures I constructed, which I intend to make available as a complete visual/cultural element available for free creative commons use by anyone who has need of beings to fill various roles in the drama.