Expert Programs: SOC-based skills?

paltrysum

Emperor Mongoose
Expert programs in concert with a wafer jack enable you to perform skills you don't have or increase your aptitude with ones you do. From the Core Rulebook:

"Expert software packages mimic skills. A Traveller using Expert may make a skill check as if he had the skill at the software’s Bandwidth -1. Only INT and EDU-based checks can be attempted. If a Traveller already has the skill, then Expert grants DM+1 to his check."

Using Expert with a neural link enables you to perform physical skills as well. From the CSC:

"A neural link is a more complex form of neural comm. In addition to providing the capabilities of a neural comm, it also allows the computer system access to the Traveller’s nervous system, allowing him to use a wafer jack or computer system to grant him physical skills. A Traveller must connect his neural link to a computer system or wafer jack containing Expert software to use the skill."

What about SOC-based skills? Do you allow for Expert Programs that provide or enhance SOC skills like Leader, Persuade, Carouse etc.? The rules don't seem to allow it so I'm wondering how people handle it.
 
By RAW, SOC-based skills would simply seem to be the ones that expert software can't help with.

Consider the range of societies, and that RAW implies that SOC applies to all of them. In other words, an Imperial baron would have a better than average inkling of how to behave among Zhodani nobles, and how to persuade an independent world's leaders to consider Imperial membership (or at least to ally with the Imperium in a war). Given the changing attitudes of Charted Space over time, this might be difficult to program.

That said, an argument could be made that a neural link might allow for SOC too. Carouse certainly tends to have a physical element; Persuade and Leadership can have one too.
 
I’d limit the expert program to questions involving knowledge - what’s the correct etiquette? Is that person on the other side of the lounge a member of the Imperial peerage or a jumped-up frontier noble? What’s the extent of Baron Such-and-Nonesuch’s ancestral fife? That would make sense to me.
 
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If a true AI is possible at TL 11, wouldn't that make it possible to have a "human culture" expert AI who would be just as helpful for soft skills other programs are for hard skills?
 
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