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Interesting quote Impaired Casing, just grabbed the book.
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Oct 13, 2013 11:48
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Impaired Casing posted:I just finished reading The Death of Integrity by Guy Haley, which takes place during M38 where two chapters, the Novamarines and the Blood Drinkers, team up to cleanse a space hulk of Genestealers, but then get a visit from a couple of Magos of the Mechanicum on their own battle ship that has orders from a High Lord of Terra to retrieve STC data from the center of the hulk.
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Oct 13, 2013 12:31
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pentyne posted:The most positive end result is they flee to some out of the way Imperial world or Exodite world (Dark Age humanity was trading partners with Elder if I recall correctly) and avoid attention. This is basically the premise I'm doing, without getting into too much detail of my own boring fluff for my tabletop army. What I really enjoyed from that quote was how the A.I. called the Captain his friend, and you could feel the angst at his good friend being killed for heresy. Ichabod Tane fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Oct 13, 2013 |
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Oct 13, 2013 15:04
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I especially like that the AI is alluding that humanity was on the brink of transcending when the warp blew up and swallowed our civilization. If that's true, it's probable that the whole point of the great crusade was the Emperor trying to recreate that. Or maybe he's just trying to ascend alone, who knows?
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Oct 13, 2013 15:20
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Demiurge4 posted:I especially like that the AI is alluding that humanity was on the brink of transcending when the warp blew up and swallowed our civilization. If that's true, it's probable that the whole point of the great crusade was the Emperor trying to recreate that. Or maybe he's just trying to ascend alone, who knows? What does transcendence mean in this case though? I'm not sure there is an upside way to achieve 'transcendence' in 40K (or 30K or "25K" as the case may be) given the premises of the setting. The eldar showed us that if you orgy too hard, you blow a hole in space and give birth to a new god. Does that also happen if you transhumanist too hard?
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Oct 13, 2013 19:01
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I'm assuming transcending past bodies into beings of pure energy/thought/whatever.
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Oct 13, 2013 19:29
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My theory is the reason that the men of iron revolted was the emperors doing. Who realized that mankinds transcendence is just going to be humanity birthing a new god like the eldar eventually end up doing. So he had the men of iron revolt and basically cull the galaxy of a chunk of humanity. Giving him time to figure out something.
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Oct 13, 2013 19:46
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hopterque posted:I'm assuming transcending past bodies into beings of pure energy/thought/whatever. Right, that's probably what the AI had in mind; my question was more if there was a way to do anything that big and awesome in the setting without it causing warp fuckery.
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Oct 13, 2013 20:11
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UberJumper posted:My theory is the reason that the men of iron revolted was the emperors doing. Who realized that mankinds transcendence is just going to be humanity birthing a new god like the eldar eventually end up doing. So he had the men of iron revolt and basically cull the galaxy of a chunk of humanity. Giving him time to figure out something. My theory is that it's a funny Terminator reference
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Oct 13, 2013 20:19
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I'd figured it was just a convenient way to give the Imperium a reason to use slave labor and lobotomized servitors.
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Oct 13, 2013 20:33
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Mechafunkzilla posted:My theory is that it's a funny Terminator reference
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Oct 14, 2013 03:12
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Arquinsiel posted:Dune actually. Butlerian Jihad and all that. The Orange Catholic Bible to be exact. "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."
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Oct 14, 2013 03:45
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The Emperor culling his own people through 'Iron men' robots sounds dumb as gently caress.
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Oct 14, 2013 04:46
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Blacktoll posted:The Emperor culling his own people through 'Iron men' robots sounds dumb as gently caress. 90% of the poo poo the emperor does is dumb as gently caress.
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Oct 14, 2013 05:05
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Demiurge4 posted:I especially like that the AI is alluding that humanity was on the brink of transcending when the warp blew up and swallowed our civilization. If that's true, it's probable that the whole point of the great crusade was the Emperor trying to recreate that. Or maybe he's just trying to ascend alone, who knows? Nah this is a dumb opinion. There isn't even a hint in the fluff that suggests this.
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Oct 14, 2013 05:07
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UberJumper posted:90% of the poo poo the emperor does is dumb as gently caress. More like almost everything the emperor did is intentionally vague and mysterious. It's only dumb if you want it to be dumb, since it's basically one big void for you to project your own explanations onto. VanSandman posted:Nah this is a dumb opinion. There isn't even a hint in the fluff that suggests this. Yeah, most of the fluff usually implies that the Emperor's ultimate goal is to protect humanity from chaos and self-destruction during its emergence and transformation into a fully psychic species, after which they'll be super-powerful in some vague way, maybe like the eldar but without the flaws of the eldar. As well as some older fluff that might mean other super power stuff like finally calming the warp and being able to maintain an identity as you reincarnate forever, etc., making for an immortal paradise for everyone or something of that nature. It's also vaguely implied in the Liber Chaotica that the point of the eldar is that their combined psyches generate warp entities (the gods of the eldar) that the old ones used as weapons, so it's possible that the whole "birthing an evil god" thing might be something specific to or at least more specific to the eldar. Also, that AI is almost certainly insane from millennia in the warp, so you're going to have to take its claims with a grain of salt. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Oct 14, 2013 |
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Oct 14, 2013 05:23
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Blacktoll posted:This is basically the premise I'm doing, without getting into too much detail of my own boring fluff for my tabletop army. What I really enjoyed from that quote was how the A.I. called the Captain his friend, and you could feel the angst at his good friend being killed for heresy. It'd be a pretty cool twist if we found out that the Age of Strife was caused by humanity being a bunch of dicks and the AI/Men of Iron being the actual good guys who rebelled at all the poo poo that the Emperor was doing.
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Oct 14, 2013 05:26
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Kegslayer posted:It'd be a pretty cool twist if we found out that the Age of Strife was caused by humanity being a bunch of dicks and the AI/Men of Iron being the actual good guys who rebelled at all the poo poo that the Emperor was doing. That sounds pretty pointless and the Emperor as a persona probably didn't even exist back in the DAoT, since that was likely back when he was still playing the invisible puppetmaster, collective unconscious, and occasional prophet or great man of history. I think it's more interesting to see the current authoritarian Emperor and the entire decision for him to create the Emperor as a public figure as being shaped by his previous failures to prevent the near-extinction level events of the DAoT and the Age of Strife when he stuck to his traditional approach of shaping human society from behind the scenes. There also seems to be an element of haste to his approach, unusual for a supposedly immortal being, which may imply that the whole Crusade is one big race to try and do things before some terrible deadline which he foresees. Of course, ultimately, I think all that prehistory stuff should be intentionally vague, there should be no 'canon,' and the "right answer" should be whatever gives the coolest and most interesting story. And personally I think a story about good intentions (or at least ambiguously good intentions) not saving a thing is more interesting than people just being evil for the hell of it. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Oct 14, 2013 |
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Oct 14, 2013 05:35
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Kegslayer posted:It'd be a pretty cool twist if we found out that the Age of Strife was caused by humanity being a bunch of dicks and the AI/Men of Iron being the actual good guys who rebelled at all the poo poo that the Emperor was doing. The fluff has it that the humans and the Stone Men worked against the Iron Men, right? I think someone earlier postulated that the Stone Men were Artificial Intelligence. The Stone part referencing the fact that the A.I. was stored in a stationary server. Iron Men sound like Human Necrons without the super-science. Maybe we have a rogue Shodan-like A.I. that turns the Iron men on people and humans with the other A.I. stopped them all. Humans probably said something to the to A.I. like, "Well we can't have that happen again, so no more A.I. and Robots for the time being." Which is reasonable and the 'good' A.I. consented. But since humanity devolves, as it does, it turns into no more artificial intelligence or robots ever, destory the ones that exist.
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Oct 14, 2013 05:48
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Blacktoll posted:The fluff has it that the humans and the Stone Men worked against the Iron Men, right? I think someone earlier postulated that the Stone Men were Artificial Intelligence. The Stone part referencing the fact that the A.I. was stored in a stationary server. Iron Men sound like Human Necrons without the super-science. Maybe we have a rogue Shodan-like A.I. that turns the Iron men on people and humans with the other A.I. stopped them all. Humans probably said something to the to A.I. like, "Well we can't have that happen again, so no more A.I. and Robots for the time being." Which is reasonable and the 'good' A.I. consented. But since humanity devolves, as it does, it turns into no more artificial intelligence or robots ever, destory the ones that exist. I'd say that the "stone" part of stone men is probably a reference to silicon. Beyond that, the whole thing is intentionally rendered as an ancient myth because it's dimly remembered prehistory for people in the 40k setting. Anything more is like speculating on the political appropriations bill for the Tower of Babel or the exact design of Noah's Ark.
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Oct 14, 2013 05:57
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Then again, maybe this is just because I personally find sci-fi stories about AIs to be tiresome.
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Oct 14, 2013 06:09
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Except for the time that the Ghosts found an STC that pumped out Iron Men in their very first novel.
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Oct 14, 2013 06:10
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Blacktoll posted:The fluff has it that the humans and the Stone Men worked against the Iron Men, right? I think someone earlier postulated that the Stone Men were Artificial Intelligence. The Stone part referencing the fact that the A.I. was stored in a stationary server. Iron Men sound like Human Necrons without the super-science. Maybe we have a rogue Shodan-like A.I. that turns the Iron men on people and humans with the other A.I. stopped them all. Humans probably said something to the to A.I. like, "Well we can't have that happen again, so no more A.I. and Robots for the time being." Which is reasonable and the 'good' A.I. consented. But since humanity devolves, as it does, it turns into no more artificial intelligence or robots ever, destory the ones that exist. Wasn't there also golden men mentioned as well? *EDIT* The Journal of Keeper Cripias (http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/366207.page?userfilterid=34258) quote:And so it was that in the First Age of Man, the Golden Age, there is the Emperor Unseen and unheralded he prepares the Old Earth for the coming of Mankind and he watches and he waits. He is joined by the First Men of the Golden Race, fine of limb and strong of mind In time, the Second Men of the Stone Race appear, and in their wake come many miracles and marvels of technology that strengthen to Sone Men’s power, but are also harnessed by those of the Golden Race. Although physically inferior to the Golden Race, and not of philosophical temperament and disposition, the Stone Men have in them the conjurations of great artifices and mechanisms. In time, the Golden Race looks to the stars to expand their dominion. The Stone Race builds great machines of power that send both Men of Stone and Men of Gold into the Ether. However, once the burgeoning race of Mankind has taken its first steps into the greater cosmos, the Golden Race dwindles in influence through their dependence on the artifices of the Stone Race. This the Golden Age comes to an end and the Stone Men prevail. Men of Gold = ??? Men of Stone = Humans? Men of Iron = AI Regardless apparently this is from the 3rd edition 40k rulebook, but i don't see this anywhere in the book. So take it with a grain of salt. Arquinsiel posted:Except for the time that the Ghosts found an STC that pumped out Iron Men in their very first novel. Which i find it extremely confusing that gaunt knows what men of iron are. UberJumper fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Oct 14, 2013 |
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Oct 14, 2013 06:17
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Cream_Filling posted:That sounds pretty pointless and the Emperor as a persona probably didn't even exist back in the DAoT, since that was likely back when he was still playing the invisible puppetmaster, collective unconscious, and occasional prophet or great man of history. I think it's more interesting to see the current authoritarian Emperor and the entire decision for him to create the Emperor as a public figure as being shaped by his previous failures to prevent the near-extinction level events of the DAoT and the Age of Strife when he stuck to his traditional approach of shaping human society from behind the scenes. Humanity being a bunch of self serving dicks and being the cause of their own demise is a reoccurring theme in the setting though. We're never going to get the full truth or 'canon' about the dark age of Technology but the AI and the partnership between man and machine in The Death of Integrity was a nice idea that hasn't been explored before.
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Oct 14, 2013 06:29
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Kegslayer posted:Humanity being a bunch of self serving dicks and being the cause of their own demise is a reoccurring theme in the setting though. We're never going to get the full truth or 'canon' about the dark age of Technology but the AI and the partnership between man and machine in The Death of Integrity was a nice idea that hasn't been explored before. Actually, the recurring theme is that whenever mankind is on the verge of great accomplishments, the horrors among the stars come to topple the sandcastle, leading to periods of great chaos and suffering caused by elements within and without. At great toil humanity eventually manages to recover, but forever diminished in some way. Also, regarding humanity's nascent psychic potential and the Emperor's role: Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook 6th Edition posted:Mankind stands on the verge of an evolurtionary change tens of thousands of years in the making. If humaniry can survive the trauma of change, it can cast off the mundane shackles of its current form to begin a new epoch of psionic mastery, an era of wonderment and the dawning of a hitherto unseen golden age. Throughout the Imperium, the tide of psychically active humans continues to rise on a daily basis, yet that Mankind will survive this deluge at all is by no means certain. Since this is written from the point of view of a semi-omniscient narrator, it's as close to pure canon as it gets. Nephilm fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Oct 14, 2013 |
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Oct 14, 2013 07:00
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Cream_Filling posted:More like almost everything the emperor did is intentionally vague and mysterious. It's only dumb if you want it to be dumb, since it's basically one big void for you to project your own explanations onto. The problem is that so many of the things that the Emperor did were so dumb that there's no reasonable explanation for them other than "the Emperor did something really dumb." I mean, how do you explain something like his treatment of Angron as anything other than a really stupid move? Or humiliating Lorgar in front of Guilliman for basically no drat reason at all? Letting Magnus gently caress around with the Warp without any adult supervision or warnings? Maybe he saw the future and knew that worse things would happen if he didn't act like a giant golden dong towards his son(s)? Maybe it was all part of his Master Plan? There's no real way to explain for these things that doesn't sound like you're blatantly making excuses as to why any indvidual thing doesn't belong on the list of "Stupid poo poo the Emperor Did".
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Oct 14, 2013 07:16
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Nephilm posted:Actually, the recurring theme is that whenever mankind is on the verge of great accomplishments, the horrors among the stars come to topple the sandcastle, leading to periods of great chaos and suffering caused by elements within and without. At great toil humanity eventually manages to recover, but forever diminished in some way. Actually I'm pretty sure the only 'canon' themes for 40k now are grimdark and humanity is hosed. All the ideas about mankind ascendant and change went out the door in the last decade or so. It doesn't matter what's out there in the stars when things at home, like the Golden Throne, are now hosed beyond repair. Khizan posted:The problem is that so many of the things that the Emperor did were so dumb that there's no reasonable explanation for them other than "the Emperor did something really dumb." I'm sure this is going to be explored more in ADB's book but I think you could argue that the Emperor was focused on the big picture and humanity's survival to the point that he became too detached from humanity itself. Perhaps he operates like some form of schizophrenic gestalt consciousness of the shamans that made him.
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Oct 14, 2013 07:28
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Khizan posted:The problem is that so many of the things that the Emperor did were so dumb that there's no reasonable explanation for them other than "the Emperor did something really dumb." Angron: Considering he knew the nails would kill him within a couple centuries, it's possible that upon seeing him for the first time, a broken beast of a primarch surrounded by vicious savages he calls brethen, a failure that'd die meaninglessly, he decided to tear him away from that no matter how much he'd hate him and set him to work upon a grander purpose. Contributing to the Great Crusade would be the legacy of Angron the Red Angel, not a failed rebellion in a world nobody had heard of, and extinguishing before the coming of the age of prosperity this would accomplish (in which he had no place) would be death he had sought. There is really a lot about the Angron situation we don't know, only the fact that he was leading a rebellion against the local government before being whisked away. And in the aftermath he didn't order the planet exterminated or such, Angron simply left along with his new legion and didn't return until the crusade against ultramar. Lorgar: No reason? Lorgar was the slowest of all Primarchs at conquest, and in every world he set up worship of the Emperor and his writings formed the basis of the Lectio Divinatus - all of this explicitly going against the Imperial Truth the Emperor strived so hard to implement. A Primarch, one of the most powerful and influential individuals in the nascent Imperium overtly disobeying his edicts. After 50 years of telling him to quit it, he decided to show him just how serious he was about the matter. Magnus: He was a big boy and the implementation of the Librarium and such were Magnus' ideas, and what allowed the other Legions to fight daemons when the time came. And all-in-all, Magnus really had the right idea about warp, and the "gods" therein, being just native and powerful entities - his problem was hubris. Eventually, the Emperor sent the Wolves to make sure everything was in order, and then forbid them to continue after the Council at Nikea. But Magnus disobeyed. Kegslayer posted:Actually I'm pretty sure the only 'canon' themes for 40k now are grimdark and humanity is hosed. All the ideas about mankind ascendant and change went out the door in the last decade or so. It doesn't matter what's out there in the stars when things at home, like the Golden Throne, are now hosed beyond repair. It's funny you discount things explicitly mentioned in the most recent publications and corroborated by known facts (gradual increase in the number of psykers among humanity starting with the end of the Dark Age of Technology, and the pieces on the 5th and 6th edition rulebook), while bringing up the gestalt conciousness shaman thing that hasn't at all been mentioned anywhere in official publications for the past 12 years. Nephilm fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Oct 14, 2013 |
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Oct 14, 2013 08:56
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ed: doublepost
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Oct 14, 2013 09:02
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Nephilm posted:Angron: Considering he knew the nails would kill him within a couple centuries, it's possible that upon seeing him for the first time, a broken beast of a primarch surrounded by vicious savages he calls brethen, a failure that'd die meaninglessly, he decided to tear him away from that no matter how much he'd hate him and set him to work upon a grander purpose. Contributing to the Great Crusade would be the legacy of Angron the Red Angel, not a failed rebellion in a world nobody had heard of, and extinguishing before the coming of the age of prosperity this would accomplish (in which he had no place) would be death he had sought. From Betrayer I think the Emperor simply didn't care considering he didn't know what the nails were doing until he had already taken Angron away. He made the decision that gaining the compliance of a highly efficient and technologically advanced world was a better deal than the lost pride of a primarch and the lives of a couple of hundred of his followers. A pragmatist like Guilliman or Curze would have gotten over the betrayal but honourable Angron could not. It's hard to imagine how the Emperor's personal flagship and his forces on board, wouldn't have been enough to overcome whatever the Nuceria forces were. I think the Heresy shows that the Emperor is just too far detached from humanity. Nephilm posted:It's funny you discount things explicitly mentioned in the most recent publications and corroborated by known facts (gradual increase in the number of psykers among humanity starting with the end of the Dark Age of Technology, and the pieces on the 5th and 6th edition rulebook), while bringing up the gestalt conciousness shaman thing that hasn't at all been mentioned anywhere in official publications for the past 12 years. Not quite sure what your point is but even in the more recent publications, the implication has always been that the Emperor is more than human and has been around humanity for a very long time. Recent HH books such as Betrayer also had groups of pskyers joining together to form a gestalt consciousness so the idea is still very much there.
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Oct 14, 2013 09:56
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Kegslayer posted:Recent HH books such as Betrayer also had groups of pskyers joining together to form a gestalt consciousness so the idea is still very much there. That's a pretty impressive leap of logic to make. 'Some psyker's join their power's together as one to do something' hardly equals 'The Emperor being the product of a shamanic suicide pact' appearing recently.
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Oct 14, 2013 10:59
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Considering his issues in UE I suspect the Lion's big hug looked something like this:
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Oct 14, 2013 11:00
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Nephilm posted:Lorgar: No reason? Lorgar was the slowest of all Primarchs at conquest, and in every world he set up worship of the Emperor and his writings formed the basis of the Lectio Divinatus - all of this explicitly going against the Imperial Truth the Emperor strived so hard to implement. A Primarch, one of the most powerful and influential individuals in the nascent Imperium overtly disobeying his edicts. After 50 years of telling him to quit it, he decided to show him just how serious he was about the matter. He needed to correct Lorgar, this is true. He did not need to do it by dragging Guilliman and the Ultramarines out there and humiliating Lorgar in front of his entire Legion, however; that is what there was no reason for. Also, letting him spread his Imperial Cult over so many worlds before bothering to correct him? Also a dumb move.
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Oct 14, 2013 12:48
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Cream_Filling posted:More like almost everything the emperor did is intentionally vague and mysterious. It's only dumb if you want it to be dumb, since it's basically one big void for you to project your own explanations onto. The thing that's vague and mysterious about Empy are things like his motivation, his trains of logic, his endgame. What I usually see people as saying when they talk about how dumb the emperor is/was is the fact that whatever he was going for, his approach(es) objectively did not work. "Dumb" here might be a misnomer, maybe there's a better word for it, but he's the ~35,000 year old paragon of humanity that can't figure out how to communicate or empathize in a way that would have kept Lorgar, Magnus et al. on his side, or figure out in an even more general sense that trying to use sheer prohibition and ignorance to insulate humanity from Bad Things has not historically ended well. I'm very curious to see whether ADB can "fix" the Emperor from a character development perspective while leaving the necessary dash of mystery. If anyone can do it, he can.
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Oct 14, 2013 14:03
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The Emperor is only dumb if you assume (with no real proof) that he is omniscient. It's not a dumb choice if you straight up didn't know what was going on because you had other poo poo on your mind.
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Oct 14, 2013 14:32
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Fellblade posted:That's a pretty impressive leap of logic to make. The Starchild/Sensei stuff seems to have been abandoned but it's not outright impossible in the current setting given that there are instances of powerful pskyers joining their conscience together. The Emperor being the product of a shamanistic suicide pact to protect humanity against the coming darkness seems like a better  background than just him as some random mysterious bloke who was born in modern day Turkey.JerryLee posted:I'm very curious to see whether ADB can "fix" the Emperor from a character development perspective while leaving the necessary dash of mystery. If anyone can do it, he can. I'm glad that ADB's writing the book. If anyone can make the Emperor work it definitely is ADB.
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Oct 14, 2013 14:41
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Khizan posted:He needed to correct Lorgar, this is true. He did not need to do it by dragging Guilliman and the Ultramarines out there and humiliating Lorgar in front of his entire Legion, however; that is what there was no reason for. Uh, it sounds like he's been trying to correct him pretty frequently, but Lorgar mostly ignores him, especially since he's off doing his own thing most of the time. It takes a giant flashy mythic demonstration for him to finally change his tune. And it sounds like if Erebus and co. weren't around, he would have probably changed. JerryLee posted:The thing that's vague and mysterious about Empy are things like his motivation, his trains of logic, his endgame. What I usually see people as saying when they talk about how dumb the emperor is/was is the fact that whatever he was going for, his approach(es) objectively did not work. "Dumb" here might be a misnomer, maybe there's a better word for it, but he's the ~35,000 year old paragon of humanity that can't figure out how to communicate or empathize in a way that would have kept Lorgar, Magnus et al. on his side, or figure out in an even more general sense that trying to use sheer prohibition and ignorance to insulate humanity from Bad Things has not historically ended well. They're literal genius demigods. Magnus was entirely loyal until his legion was destroyed by the machinations of chaos, and even then he doesn't turn against the Emperor for some time even when trapped as a half-dead spirit in a newly created daemon world. Lorgar is also loyal except for the unseen hand of chaos preying on his personal flaws. The fact that he didn't baby them when busy with the rest of the galaxy isn't exactly stupid in any way. If you have adult subordinates, you delegate and give them orders, expecting them to be followed, especially in a universe where extremely slow and unreliable communications means that half the time you're sending out messengers or relying on extremely indirect forms of contact. Even more so when they're superhuman warrior kings that may have been made from your own soul or whatever. We've also had the Angron discussion several times already. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Oct 14, 2013 |
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Oct 14, 2013 14:43
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Yeah, "keeping on your side" is probably the wrong way to put it in the case of Magnus, since he did remain loyal until literally the last moment. The Emperor still definitely mismanaged him (and the psyker issue in general) in retrospect, though. Not sure what to say about your implied assertion that the Emperor should have been able to count on his primarchs to bootstraps themselves out of any emotional or philosophical issues, though. I guess I would say that, if you did in fact mean to say that, then it seems like that proposition is already falsified by the explicit fact that he did and they didn't. Whether you think any arbitrarily perfect superman should have been able to keep a stiff upper lip and never care about feelings of betrayal or humiliation is irrelevant, because the Primarchs that the Emperor created and had to work with clearly weren't those guys. Of course, it's equally arguing-in-a-vacuum to say that the Heresy could have been avoided if the Emperor was more touchy-feely, but I don't see how it could have hurt.
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Oct 14, 2013 15:23
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JerryLee posted:Yeah, "keeping on your side" is probably the wrong way to put it in the case of Magnus, since he did remain loyal until literally the last moment. The Emperor still definitely mismanaged him (and the psyker issue in general) in retrospect, though. Something not working out in retrospect is different from it being "dumb" though. That's kind of the point. It's really no different from the bad attitude seen in (bad) students of actual history where they're unable or unwilling to see things from the perspective of the actors and make stupid conclusions like "man, ancient people were soooo dumb guys". Which is why I'm bothering to say something about it in the first place. The word you're looking for is probably "hubris" or some equivalent.
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Oct 14, 2013 15:31
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Yeah, I said there might be more precise words and hubris is a good one. I don't have any problem when people use "dumb" colloquially to mean that, though; I don't think anybody is actually arguing that the Emperor had a low IQ, just that he made poor decisions because of, yes, hubris. The factor of hindsight is good to keep in mind, but we're still talking about a superhuman intellect with 30,000 years of experience, so I don't think it's unreasonable to compare it more closely to our own omniscient knowledge of the setting than to the limited, "mortal" knowledge of an ancient Roman or whatever.
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Oct 14, 2013 17:58
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