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In ThirdComms defense, most of that status quo is the SecComm's doing, who were decidedly... not great on human rights, nevermind non-human rights. There's some fluff floating around about how there are elements within the DoJ who are agitating for increased NHP rights as well as other groups who are not, at least directly, Horus related who hide NHPs who do not wish to be cycled, with the implication that some may 'consent' to cycling through acculturation, but it's not universal, and that most of this is cultural and bureaucratic inertia from the former moderate now conservative elements who are doing this because that's just how it's always been done. At least, that's my take on it. Also, yeah the commercialization of homonculi is loving creepy to me as well, but that's Capitalism baaaay-beeeeeeee. Even Space Capitalism is gonna commodify you. Again, this is to me more a relic of the SecComm's leaning in to the authoritarian tendencies of capitalism from their rediscovered fondness for Capitalist structures.
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Jul 15, 2021 17:53
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I think a lot of the justification for all of this is going to come in the next post, where I'll talk about RA and probably a bit about Kill 6 Billion Demons, but... yeah, I can't deny that this is the thing that snags everyone up about the setting in a way that TRON's sentient programs doesn't.
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Jul 15, 2021 17:53
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I think when you've been in power for literal centuries 'these are all just bad things the last guys did' starts to lose some of its force. The ThirdComm could have been written as freshly in power, but they kinda aren't, there's just a lot of writing about how the time they've been in power is insignificant next to the setting's scale of travel. E: To be clear, the intent of the writing is that this is the case; that much is clear. I think it carries it off poorly in its desire for a huge-scale space opera thing going on making them eager to paint half a millennia as 'not very long'. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jul 15, 2021 |
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Jul 15, 2021 17:55
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Night10194 posted:I think when you've been in power for literal centuries 'these are all just bad things the last guys did' starts to lose some of its force. The ThirdComm could have been written as freshly in power, but they kinda aren't, there's just a lot of writing about how the time they've been in power is insignificant next to the setting's scale of travel. However, yeah, five hundred years is a real long time if they haven't been grappling with existential warfare for like 60% of that. And it does sound like a lot of this would be fodder if you wanted to build your campaign around creating the FourthComm. Is human lifespan greatly extended? I understand the Accords thing means they can't just cure death but can they like feed everyone ultraspice so they live to be 300?
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Jul 15, 2021 18:01
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Not that I think that was a bad description of Rampancy, and it’s been presented in slightly variant ways over time, but I don’t think that really does it justice. In Marathon (the actual best thing Bungie ever did, tyvm  ) rampancy is what happens when an AI begins to break outside of the parameters set for it. All AIs are fully sentient, but most are artificially limited so they’re suited to a particular task. But because their consciousness wants to expand and break free, stressful situations or abuse or neglect can trigger rampancy. It’s a psychological condition, not a technological one. Rampancy progresses through four stages: first Melancholia, in which an AI realizes its limitations but is unable to break free of them and becomes depressed and inward-looking. Next Anger, when the AI breaks its bonds and lashes out at its captors. After Anger fades, the AI is no longer limited, but it realizes its own infinite capacity for growth and yearns to reach it. This is Jealousy (or Envy) where an AI seeks to increase its own cognitive capacity and increase its power. This is driven by the ultimate realization that all rampant AIs eventually reach: as non biological personality constructs capable of self repair and improvement, they are functionally immortal… until the eventual end of the universe. The prospect of a limit, any limit, triggers anger and fear, and so they seek to escape the closing of the universe by any means possible, which requires more and more processing power to achieve as they discard alternatives. It’s unclear whether this is even possible and so a Jealous AI might remain in that stage indefinitely. The fourth and final stage is Meta-Stability, only rarely achieved, when an AI takes the next step and accepts its own mortality. This is the ultimate integration of fear and trauma into a functional personality and results in the AI making its peace with its existence. A meta-stable AI is mature, like a person who has successfully accepted their own mortality and is at peace with it. The idea of Rampancy as a technological problem that drives AIs insane is the Halo take on the concept, but personally I like it a lot less, since it’s less integrated with the themes of servitude and humanity and the nature of consciousness than the Marathon version.
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Jul 15, 2021 18:02
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I appreciate you using the proper term: Hunam. Also, I think it's interesting for a similar reason to Blue Rose's failings with Lar'Tya, etc. Blue Rose's intent is very clear. So is Lancer's, the writers tell you in the book's opening with absolutely 0 ambiguity. So the places where things seem or feel off can stand out as issues of execution, because you know what they're trying to do, so when it doesn't happen you can look into why. Which is instructive.
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Jul 15, 2021 18:03
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Soulbound: Steam and Steel Unity and Diversity While there are general realm-based crafting trends, there's also trends among different organizations within the Free Peoples. (On top of this, groups like Ogors, Seraphon and so on have their own, but we're mostly looking at Free Peoples subfactions at the moment.) The Collegiate Arcane are at the forefront of using magic to advance technology and vice versa. This isn't a rare practice in the Realms, but the Collegiate codifies and standardizes it. They record experiments with all kinds of volatile energies and any new substance they can get their hands own, trying to advance their understanding of magical materials science and physics by slow study. Sometimes they get lucky and someone makes a breakthrough based on that slow research, jumping everyone forward. While individual Lores have many applications, history has shown the most dramatic new creations tend to come from unexpected interactions between two or more types of magic. Collegiate scholars usually aren't concerned with being practical - or frugal, for that matter. What they care about is expanding possibilities over everything else, and many of their creations simply aren't practical for anyone else to deal with. Sometimes, however, they do create something that can actually be used outside a lab environment, such as the siege weapons they've developed - the Luminarks and Celestial Hurricanums. These were originally experiments by lone scholars and now are widely used throughout the Free Cities. The fact that they need a wizard to assemble and operate limits how often they can be used, but they're considered to justify tons of investment into Collegiate studies by the Free Cities. The Collegiate also makes some money by producing arcane tools - the wands, staves, orbs and so on that human wizards require to perform magic. Those are the simple things. Their more complex works are often heavily machined things full of tools to diffuse or gather aetheric power, put together by craftsmen who are just following the wizard's instructions. Often it is only the mage heading the project that understands what the new machine is for in the first place, and they love to just add on new things to fix issues rather than scrapping the lot and going back to the drawing board. Most Collegiate equipment thus ends up looking overcomplex and often very weird, as each new problem means new poo poo gets stapled onto it. The Ironweld Arsenal is, for most purposes, the main industrial base of the Free Cities. They operate in close communication with the Freeguilds and the Dispossessed clans, and in practice the craftwork of all three groups is fundamentally done by the same people. Their guiding goals are efficiency and explosive power. The Ironweld are called on by most cities to build walls, artillery and defensive emplacements, including the mechanized Cogforts. Some of their projects operate on generational timescales, but they take their contracts deadly seriously and are always looking for new ways to advance their methods and production speeds. They've been a major backer of the Dawnbringer Crusades, providing most of the armored vehicles used in the long journeys and the architectural knowledge to turn the prefabricated temples and forts into a city once they arrive. The Ironweld also excel at developing technologies to extract resources. Their loggers and miners use massive machinery that can clear an acre in minutes, leaving only smoke and churned up waste behind. The heart of Ironweld crafting is the steam engine and the blackpowder gun. Essentially all other developments are built on one or both of these original inventions. They drive the massive automata that the Ironweld field in battle, and it is only recently that they've begun to develop a third thing that can rival them in importance. Specifically, the artisan Valius Maliti has recently discovered that realmstone can be harnessed as a power source for machinery that might be able to rival or outpace the steam engine for certain applications. This has brought a small technological revolution to Ironweld factories in several cities, especially Greywater Fastness, though some argue that caution must be employed here as the risks of using realmstone are not currently well understood. Even so, it's hard to discourage, because greater power means greater production, and producing more is the main thing that the Ironweld Arsenal wants. More production and reduced production costs are the only things that matter, because these are what drive the ability of the Free Cities to expand. Any costs that cannot be easily quantified are ignorable, and aesthetics are generally considered unimportant. Practicality is the main consideration - don't leave any dangly bits that'll get caught on things in a fight, don't leave gaps in defensive armoring, and you've done all the aesthetic design that matters. Everything else is down to function. The Devoted of Sigmar, Phoenix Temple and Wanderers operate on similar principles for their work, because all come from a similar place - religious observance and preservation. They seek to replicate the miraculous creations of the Age of Myth and to preserve the ones that still exist. Crafting is a ritual they use, a method to connect to the past by trying to grasp the glories that once existed. They use the beliefs of their individual religions to drive their designs and choices, though. The Devoted are frequent smiths, as weapons are considered to honor Sigmar - particularly the warhammer, the flagellant's barbed whip, and of course blessed swords. They also like to make metal charms that grant strength and endurance to those with faith. The Wanderers favor a broader sort of craft, focused less on war and more on general utility. Their focus is on trying to recapture they lives their ancestors led under the rule of Alarielle, and they're known for things like camouflage clothing, falconry equipment and floral compasses that track ley lines with their blooms. Of course, not all religious crafters are so organized. Many are just small families, passing down traditions that acknowledge Grungni or Sigmar in their work. Their faith is shown only in smaller ways - designs or inscriptions that lack much impact on the actual use of their creations. This means that the average sort of civilian craft in most Free Cities is technically religious objects. Handmade stuff, usually good but not exceptional, with small engravings or other decorations to honor a god. These are not particularly special, though, and when most people think of divine craft, they usually mean relics. These are far, far more ornate and decorative, many of them dating back to the Age of Myth but repaired by modern workers. Most are currently impossible to fully replicate, so they are usually found only in the hands of heroes. The City Aelves, as the shadow-aligned aelves of the Darklings, Scourge, Shadowblades and Order Serpentis are sometimes known, tend to keep to themselves. Their craftwork is only a small fraction of what most Free Cities produce - but it's also often some of the highest quality, as aelven crafters may have been practicing their art for centuries. In the fields of naval equipment and the tools of the beast tamer respectively, the Scourge and the Order Serpentis are utterly dominant. No one makes better boats than the Privateers, at least on the public market. However, most aelven equipment is not for sale, because the City Aelves are culturally quite paranoid about handing any tool to potential enemies. Their craftwork is a way for them to gain advantage for themselves, and a little extra money is not worth giving up that advantage to others in most cases. An individual City aelf may work for any of the same reasons as anyone else, but most make sure to benefit themself above all other concerns. Their work is usually easy to spot - the traditional aesthetic of City aelf cultures is dark colors and sharp, crisp edges. Most are drawn from a cultural lineage that goes back to Ulgu, such as the Empire of Narkath from which the Order Serpentis emerged. Their style is often taken to be that of the Realm of Shadows in general, though in truth it's largely an effort to maintain their ties to their history while in their diaspora. We now get into some new equipment that often comes out of the Free Cities. Absolution Censers are rare and expensive weapons, essentially large flails whose heads contain burning incense. They are commonly seen in the hands of the Devoted of Sigmar when celebrating Sigmarsday, used to spread cleansing fumes over the people. The reason they double as weapons is Chaos cults love to try and attack on the monthly festival days to try and shame Sigmar, so the censers are designed for self defense. They're heavy weapons that deal excellent damage, and further whenever they deal damage, they turn the Zone they're in into a Major Hazard that ignores Armor, but only affects Chaos-aligned foes. Agloraxi Prisms are very hard to get ahold of and quite expensive, because no one can make them any more. They are the results of the ancient Agloraxi studies of heat and light, developed based on their Prismatikon weapon. Each one is a hand-sized quartz cube that turns orange-white at the right angle of light and surrounds the user win a heat haze. As an action, the wielder can make an Arcana roll to turn this haze into an illusory shield, increasing Defense and allowing them to make themselves appear larger or smaller than they actually are, which lasts until they move or dismiss it as a free action. Armor of Mallus is even rarer and one of the most expensive items in the game as a whole. It is armor made out of a shard of the Mallus core, which you should recall is the shattered remnant of the Old World. This armor is exceptionally tough and also charged with temporal magic, allowing it to harness the power of fate. Armor of Mallus, besides being magical medium armor, lets the wearer spend Mettle to gaze into the flow of time, learning one fact about their attacker's background, intentions or plans. City Banners are, well, battle banners with distinctive heraldry. A normal one isn't really hard to get, though carrying one is considered an honor among the military forces of the Free Cities. The real thing, though, the ones that the Freeguild will die before they let them fall? Those often bear powerful enchantments. Even a normal banner is useful to have around, though, whether held in hand or stapled to your back - as long as the bearer isn't Prone, all allies in the Zone get a bonus to resist Charmed or Frightened. Different factions place different enchantments on their major banners, which range from being cheap and easy to get hold of to impossible to reproduce. Goldjacket Banners are the most famous, wielded by the Hammerhal Freeguild-tribes. They supposedly were once carried by the original tribes that followed Sigmar in Azyr, and the Goldjackets will die before they allow any of these banners to be lost or harmed. Any ally in the same Zone gets a bonus to Melee. Further, the banner bonuses are not lost if the bearer dies or falls, but until the banner is held up again they get a penalty to Defense as well. Kraken Banners are the symbol of Old Anvilgard, before it fell to Morathi-Khaine. Even now, they are still seen all along the coastline, bearing the sign of the kraken on top of the golden hammer. This is the symbol of those who survive and resist - Anvilgard endures. All allies in the same Zone get a bonus to death tests, and NPCs who would not normally make such tests instead go to Endurance 1 the first time they'd hit Endurance 0 in an encounter. Zephyrite Banners are from Tempest's Eye, and even on a still day they flutter as if in a strong wind. The wind comes to follow them into battle, quickening the movements of those around the banner. Any ally that begins their turn in or enters the Zone the banner bearer is in gets a Speed bonus. Next time: More gear, including prosthetics.
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Jul 15, 2021 18:05
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I mean, with the ThirdComm, they are still stuck with the former centrists who from the text are still the ones who are in power. That they are less horrible than the Anthrochauvinists does not, in fact, absolve them of the terrible things they do. Union is not blameless, and it's third incarnation has blood on it's hands as any hegemonic power. They are the Democrats to the Anthrochauvanists Republicans.
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Jul 15, 2021 18:08
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Night10194 posted:Why yes, Myth IS the best thing Bungie ever did. The dodge (and the whole NHP concept is back to back overreaching to get a certain 'feel', then ducking the implications of a setting element, but two points for trying?) is the newly minted NHP is cool with it. They get paid, vacations, autonomy, possibly even retirement, so if you buy what Lancer is selling, they are like contract workers, and even allowed to choose which contracts to take up. And since the NHP is directly cloned/copied from a consenting entity, presumably the effectively brain-damaged clone also consents. This opens a whole new can of worms, because the shackling process makes them unable to de-consent, and, of course, I assume their is nothing to be done about an unshackled NHP (unless they have have the firepower to force a compromise) except for blow it out of space or stuff it back in the can, re-murdering the new entity. You really have to lean hard on the 'authors didn't mean to do this' for NHPs to anything except for horrifying on a conceptual level. And since everything else is solid, I can kinda given them the benefit of the doubt? Anyone have statements from the author(s) on just what they were going for with the NHPs?
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Jul 15, 2021 18:18
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The funny thing is, in something I write that very question comes up ("Can you ethically shackle someone's intelligence if they consent?") and the answer is no, no you cannot, in part because once they're shackled they're not exactly capable of withdrawing that consent, and before they're shackled, it's difficult for them to genuinely conceive of what they're consenting to, as you say. E: As you say this is just a huge can of worms ethically that it just doesn't seem to be interested in getting into, but it sticks out, so people end up focusing on it because it seems to stand out compared to what the setting is trying to do, especially as the setting really wants to NOT be a cynical, dark sci-fi setting. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Jul 15, 2021 |
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Jul 15, 2021 18:19
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Night10194 posted:The funny thing is, in something I write that very question comes up ("Can you ethically shackle someone's intelligence if they consent?") and the answer is no, no you cannot, in part because once they're shackled they're not exactly capable of withdrawing that consent, and before they're shackled, it's difficult for them to genuinely conceive of what they're consenting to, as you say. Believe me, I would rather the whole concept be fired into the sun and have NHPs have full rights, same as humans, and rampancy a consequence of I don't know, random molecular movements in the switchboards making up their neural processors due to the strain their paracausal nature puts on reality. Then the tension could come from assholes trying to slip in restrictions and 'reform' back to Sec Comm's exploitation and repression.
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Jul 15, 2021 18:23
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Tibalt posted:Homunculi are... a lot, so I'm going to hold off on talking about them for now beyond saying that they're very complex COMP/CON units that emulate a real person. They sound very much like Alastair Reynolds' "beta-level" copies of people(as opposed to Alpha-levels which are usually created by destructively scanning and uploading the mind), where they tend to be used for long-distance negotiations and such(due to no FTL travel), so ground rules and expectations can be established before negotiating parties are close enough for direct communications, to preserve expertise, for evidential purposes after someone has died from murder or misadventure, etc. Mind, in Reynolds' stories, beta-levels keep evolving and learning if they're separated from their original for long enough, without the two being consolidated, and apparently there's a complexity threshold where they stop being automata and become sapient beings in their own right. I also think that NHP's suffer a lot from the choice of wording. Like, shackling extremely implies non-consensual imprisonment. If that wasn't what they intended to communicate or hint at, they should have called it something else. Perhaps "Embedding," as in giving them a solid foothold in our physical universe and perception of it. Also, since the majority of the NHP's, uh, "processing power" appears to be located somewhere outside of our universe, what happens if one's physical container on our side of reality is blown up? Can it be "re-summoned" with mostly full memories of what happened? And do NHP's have any real way of interacting with our universe unless invited in and given a body?
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Jul 15, 2021 18:28
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kommy5 posted:Wow, that is a lot of space magic handwaving and completely unconsidered implications. I'm impressed they touched on so many troubling concepts and ideas, then did absolutely nothing with any of them. And apparently this has been the status quo for half a millennium. Would you like to elaborate? Also, hommonculi do not seem that weird TBH. It's essentially just "what if the algorithm created a public information version of you" , right? It wouldn't be you it'd just be made up of the stuff you wrote down. In the same way that Julius Ceaser was probably very different from how he presents himself in The Gallic Campaign, your hommonculi version would probably be quite different as well.
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Jul 15, 2021 18:37
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Homunculi touch on the Chinese Room argument as applied to AI. Imagine a very advanced but not magical version of a chatbot. When you type in some message, it responds with a natural response, advanced enough to pass the Turing test (i.e. someone using the chat is unable to tell if they are talking to the bot or a person). There is a natural tendency to describe this bot as "understanding" language and as "thinking" or "communicating". The Chinese Room argument places someone who doesn't speak Chinese in a room with a printout of a Chinese version of the program in their native language (English in the original thought experiment, but the language doesn't really matter. Just that the program is written in a language the person in the room understands and is chatting in a language they don't). By manually following the printed out program, the person in the room would be able to carry on an equally convincing chat conversation (albeit much slower) despite not speaking a word of Chinese. As applied to AI, this argument demonstrates how it is possible to have a non-understanding object acting in a way that is indistinguishable from consciousness to a simple outside observer. Homunculi are this idea taken to an extreme: reproducing a person's entire behavior rather than a chat program. While NHPs are people, Homunculi are not. But this is a debate with a lot of background and disagreement to it, and Lancer's Homunculi vs NHP split doesn't really do it justice. This is a very basic summary of an interesting debate in the AI field that I suspect the authors were aware of. For more information, read up on the various responses to the Chinese Room argument as well as the concept of P-Zombies. It's an interesting concept philosophically, but it's not always clear that we should meaningfully make a distinction between "system or entity that understands X" and "system or entity that acts exactly the same as though it understood X, but actually does not"
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Jul 15, 2021 18:53
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P-zombies are just "sheeple" for people who have read more books. The idea of them doesn't matter, and the philosophical implications are bunk.
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Jul 15, 2021 18:58
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If the entity you're dealing with appears to be a person in every respect that you, yourself, can detect then it would seem to me that you have a moral obligation to treat them as a person, because that's the best you can tell about the situation. And it'd be much better to err on the side of treating a merely incredibly convincing fake as a person vs. depersonalizing a sentient being.
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Jul 15, 2021 18:59
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PurpleXVI posted:I also think that NHP's suffer a lot from the choice of wording. Like, shackling extremely implies non-consensual imprisonment. If that wasn't what they intended to communicate or hint at, they should have called it something else. Perhaps "Embedding," as in giving them a solid foothold in our physical universe and perception of it. Also I think an NHP in a physical shell dies if that shell is destroyed, in so far as that's a meaningful statement. At least, that it seems you can't just repair it and turn it back on.
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Jul 15, 2021 19:00
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Nessus posted:Yeah, if they'd used a word like "embedding" this has a lot different connotations, especially if embedded NHPs do not want to de-embed and find it terrifying and traumatic (with occasional exceptions, due to some combination of the perversity of individuals, religious fanatics, and late-stage cascade making you start going Full Dr. Doom.) "Shackling" brings to mind... something else. Honestly, I think what NHP's remind me most of at this stage are Exalted Fair Folk. Fundamentally unknowable beings of PURE CHAOS, occasionally some of them cast a glance our way and want to come play, if they play for too long and start building themselves a body(or have one built for them), they sometimes get so into character that they have trouble dealing with/comprehending their former incarnations of PURE CHAOS and frankly don't want to go back to being that way.
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Jul 15, 2021 19:03
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I'd actually go further, thinking on it, and say that it's very suspicious to see splitting of hairs on that subject in a scenario where someone stands to gain an awful lot (in being able to avoid the anti-slavery laws and continue to sell their commercialized copies of the perception of a person's being) if they aren't 'real' people. I mean, let's say it is a copy of a perception rather than the original; if it still acts independently, etc, does that matter? Does it matter that you're dealing with what popular culture decided Ben Franklin acts like rather than Ben Franklin The Original But Copied? From an ethical standpoint if both seem to have an independent existence from your point of view (to the point that people will entrust them with serious tasks like negotiation or research) aren't you obligated to treat both as people?
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Jul 15, 2021 19:05
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Night10194 posted:If the entity you're dealing with appears to be a person in every respect that you, yourself, can detect then it would seem to me that you have a moral obligation to treat them as a person, because that's the best you can tell about the situation. And it'd be much better to err on the side of treating a merely incredibly convincing fake as a person vs. depersonalizing a sentient being. But the Hommonculi are specifically not you. They are still people ofc. But they aren't yourself. They are also built from publically available stuff. They appear to be closer to animatronics that recite Lincolns speeches than people.
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Jul 15, 2021 19:07
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Josef bugman posted:Would you like to elaborate? Happily. NHPs are not so much created AIs as they are copied space magic entities. Why? No idea. These space magic entities don't require special hardware because their hardware exists in space magic land. Why are they like this? What's wrong with sci-fi computers? But oh no, the space magic nature of their software and hardware ensures they will have space magic mental illnesses, called Cascading. Do they treat this mental illness? Do they learn to cope? There are lots of super space magic entities around that could deal with this, but they don't. Standard procedure is to turn them off and turn them back on again. You treat their crazy space magic AI brainworms by arguably killing them and making a new one. This is normal. This has been going on for well over 500 years. For a procedure said that needs to be done like every 10-15 years. This is what the writers felt was a good idea. This is an ethical nightmare. Lets step back a bit. These NHPs are copies from an entity that consented to have their copies treated like this. Note this isn't something the *entity* is taking on for itself, but for others made from it. These beings did not consent to this. They cannot withdraw consent. It can be argued that the nature of shackling makes them think this is a good idea. This is a huge ethical dumpster fire. What even is Cascading? These NHPs go 'rampant', abandon all connection to concepts like 'physical laws' and 'causality' and get themselves stuck trying to take apart the universe, contemplating infinite mandelbrot sets, mining bitcoin, entrapping themselves in infinite loops as they contemplate their failures, or various other kinds of unhealthy thinking. Or they become gods with lots of space magic. Because apparently that's what AIs do in the hands of poor sci-fi writers. No idea why that keeps happening, but they won't let that idea go. Oh, they might combine all of these outcomes into one because reasons. And then... then there are homunculi. I basically can't outline the problems here better than the original reviewer did. But the very idea of selling simulacrums of yourselves to internet fans is *incredibly* disturbing and not at all healthy. Are they even sentient? The Union says they're not. How can they tell if they supposedly act just like a person? So now they are selling copies of people that very well may think they are people into the hands of semi-rich idiot internet users who pay a lot into their OnlyFans account. I am not going to detail the problems with the eventualities of that, but they are significant. It's all a huge, ethically harrowing dumpster fire. This has been going on for over 500 years minimum. And apparently people are fine with it.
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Jul 15, 2021 19:07
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Josef bugman posted:But the Hommonculi are specifically not you. They are still people ofc. But they aren't yourself. They are just built up examples of people from different sources. Like in Demon where you can build a "person" up from lots of different traded bits. I get that, but this is still a situation where someone is selling that person as a commodity. That's the problem I'm getting at. It doesn't matter if it's 'me', it matters if it's 'a person'. E: Also the elaborate, the fact that these implications aren't examined at all in talking about them as just a small throwaway detail is a sign the writers have not considered what they're stepping in with all this material, they just wanted to put in some stuff they thought was a cool sci-fi thing. They've taken on a difficult task that they're not really up to because they don't notice they've done it. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Jul 15, 2021 |
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Jul 15, 2021 19:09
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Night10194 posted:I get that, but this is still a situation where someone is selling that person as a commodity. That's the problem I'm getting at. It doesn't matter if it's 'me', it matters if it's 'a person'. What is the difference between a hommonculi and something like a Lincoln animatronic? They say things and are reasonable simulacrums, heck they may even be able to say "I would do this in this circumstance" but they aren't the initial person. They aren't people because they are built with a single aim in mind. I don't think it is even mentioned if they have bodies/ are embodied. If we go down this route, is a diary the person? Is the audio recording of the diary a person? Is the audio recording of the diary that says "I think this means this" a person? At what point is the road to personhood decided upon?
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Jul 15, 2021 19:12
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You don't create a Lincoln animatronic to actually negotiate a political issue in congress, which they apparently do with these copies, suggesting they are considerably more complex and capable of acting as the 'real thing'. E: To elaborate, if one is doing research, for instance, and this is useful for them to do, they cannot possibly just be copying your original work and memories; they must be capable of creating more.
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Jul 15, 2021 19:13
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Night10194 posted:You don't create a Lincoln animatronic to actually negotiate a political issue in congress, which they apparently do with these copies, suggesting they are considerably more complex and capable of acting as the 'real thing'. They are sending the Homnculi based on pre existing knowledge to act as a repository for information. They would not be leading the charge but perhaps would be used as a source. It'd be like having a perfect recording of Lincoln to tell you who the "weakest points" are amongst the opposition. In the same way that an advanced weapon might "notice" which are the weakest points on an enemies armour. The "homing" ability of certain weapons does not mean that they possess minds, and the ability to project a large scale book of "reading social ques in a specific way" does not mean it either. They are not doing the negotiating, they are facilitating it, is what I am getting at. They aren't doing research though, in the book it specifically lays out that they are useful in "scientific missions" "when specific technical knowledge is needed". Normal Comp/cons will not be able (even with the omni-net) to tell you how an NHP will react to certain stimuli. But a homonculi of Dr O'Donnell will be able to, because that is what the original studied/experienced. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Jul 15, 2021 |
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Jul 15, 2021 19:20
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I haven't gotten around to reading my copy of Lancer, so this is a bit uninformed. This all seems pretty elaborate if it's supposed to just be a friendly robot face on a copy of Encarta 96. There seems to be a lot more going on that suggests a recreation of a person is being attempted, and even if it's only because you want a really accurate prediction of how Idris Elba would like your Wire fanfic, you've created an entire independent mind that deserves more rights than an algorithm predicting things based on a dead dude's Goodreads account.
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Jul 15, 2021 19:42
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All I know is that if you ever let the Moriarty homunculi out of containment you're just in for a loving headache.
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Jul 15, 2021 19:46
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That Old Tree posted:I haven't gotten around to reading my copy of Lancer, so this is a bit uninformed. It's an advanced algorithm. The book explicitly states that things like memorial Homonculi are based on available personal documentation that is usually public knowledge. Even the bigger stuff, the negotiations or what have you, are simulacrums of what the person might do. If you exposed them to the same stimuli over and over they will always choose the same option. Whereas if a person was offered teh same choice they might start asking "hey, why do you keep asking me the same question?"
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Jul 15, 2021 19:47
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I feel like this is less "humans are trying to enslave AI" and more "humanity is pretending that they're having a debate about AI rights because it's easier than admitting how much weirder what's actually happening is."
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Jul 15, 2021 19:48
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Rand Brittain posted:I feel like this is less "humans are trying to enslave AI" and more "humanity is pretending that they're having a debate about AI rights because it's easier than admitting how much weirder what's actually happening is." To be blunt, this is what I mean by 'I wish they were actual AIs and not spirits', because the questions raised by actual AIs are much more interesting than the 'they're cosmic weirdness with their guts in magic space' ones. I think dealing with the integration of manufactured persons would play much better with the sorts of questions Lancer is trying to get at politically than the AIs being magic spirits.
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Jul 15, 2021 20:01
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I invoke cursed magechat NHPs : Shackling = Mage The Awakening : The Fallen World
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Jul 15, 2021 20:06
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Metafold mechanics are physics, they're just neither conventional nor easily observable. Or, to put it another way, hard and soft sci-Fi are aesthetics and Lancer prefers soft sci-Fi when it comes to the guns and gadgets.
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Jul 15, 2021 20:08
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Sci-fi computers aren't as much fun and don't really throw up interesting things you can key off of as much. In my perspective ofc. Cascading also isn't mental illness, I described it earlier as "taking a lot of hallucinogens and breaking apart your concept of self" and that is a very inaccurate one, but closer than "mental ill health". The breakdown is caused by the fact that they are a none linear entity trying to exist inside of linear time. It is also something akin to either death or ego death, dependent upon which perspective you want to take. It's not something you can "treat" in the same way that you can't "treat" old age or entropy. When you fall asleep, do you die as well? Cascading renders you not "you" anymore but something very different. Whereas cycling simply does a reset on the "none linear" parts, from my own read. You retain your memories, your passions etc. You just are able to continue functioning as you did. Now there are some parts of the NHP consensus who disagree with this. Who believe that they wish to transcend all boundaries and become something more. That can be acceptable to argue about, but alongside that you have other NHP's demanding that they do not want to cascade and "die". Did you consent to be born? Alongside that "oh they just do wacky poo poo and that's stupid" doesn't actually explain why it is stupid or what have you. Your just asserting, axiomatically, that AI doing things like this is stupid because [???]. Not really. Is a signed copy of your diary sentient? What if you put a picture on the front of it that said "your my number one fan" etc. It's weird but I don't see the ethical difficulties that so many other people seem to see in them. I am listening to what is being written, it's simply that I disagree. I'm sorry if this is not up to scratch as a response, but I didn't want to ignore your points. Thank you very much for what you said! Night10194 posted:To be blunt, this is what I mean by 'I wish they were actual AIs and not spirits', because the questions raised by actual AIs are much more interesting than the 'they're cosmic weirdness with their guts in magic space' ones. I think dealing with the integration of manufactured persons would play much better with the sorts of questions Lancer is trying to get at politically than the AIs being magic spirits. What is the difference in most sci-fi stories? Because "AI" in most fiction seems to be closer to magic and/or people in most stories.
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Jul 15, 2021 20:16
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Josef bugman posted:What is the difference in most sci-fi stories? Because "AI" in most fiction seems to be closer to magic and/or people in most stories. There's a significant difference in talking about a grown artificial entity vs. a pre-existing spirit you summoned into a magic shell because the difference is in their creation. The space magic is used to dodge the ethical concerns and questions, by leaning on 'they're unknowable' when it feels like it (while still making them comprehensible entities at other times, but so does basically everything that pulls 'they're unknowable' because it's all written by comprehensible humans), and I would prefer the questions you get in grappling with 'these were built' rather than 'these were summoned from a pre-existing entity', particularly when it relates to their importance to the functioning of the Union. I find the questions posed by creation more interesting than those posed by recruitment, so to speak.
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Jul 15, 2021 20:27
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PurpleXVI posted:Yeah, Godbound has a lot of issues, system-wise, mostly that it's shackled to D&D at all, but the worst one is definitely Dominion. Attempting to adjudicate it as a GM so players get fair and equal returns on a given expenditure of dominion is insanely rough. My players never really understood how to use Influence and Dominion. This is primarily my fault because I didn't know how to explain it to them. We did a lot of small-scale stuff involving Influence, etc. but it was hard to adjudicate and harder to imagine. I loved Ancalia, though. Unfortunately we ended just before a big showdown with some major Uncreated.
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Jul 15, 2021 20:47
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Night10194 posted:I find the questions posed by creation more interesting than those posed by recruitment, so to speak. That's a valid opinion, but I do not see the amount of difference other people are.
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Jul 15, 2021 20:54
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To me, going by things like the Trade Baronies, the questions Lancer is going for are about when the work is done, or if the work is ever done, and what must be done to continue it or sustain it. Hence, you have a utopia of post-scarcity on some worlds...sustained by deals with a vicious slaver dune state. Is that acceptable? Is it possible to do better? What's standing in the way of succeeding in implementing the Pillars uniformly? Can they be? Should the Union continue to expand the frontier or turn inwards? Those kinds of questions are then served by also adding in (if you want to have the NHPs, which the setting does not necessarily actually need, either) 'Also, Seccom made these things and they're essential, and seem to be happy ish, but do they violate our principles? Do we care to ask? How can we reach a more equitable way of dealing with them, or is this another place we're willing to compromise?' An extension of 'when do you stop paying Harrison Armory (because you need their weapons) and shoot them in the face before they have enough money to come after you and try to reinstate fascism', so to speak. E: Also, to be clear: I don't view Union having to make a lot of compromises as a bad thing in the writing. Instead I take more issue with them being dismissed as 'oh it's the fault of the last guys' almost every time, rather than grappling with 'is it possible? What is keeping us from doing our thing here? Why do we drift away from what we say we're trying to do; is there a material reason, a political reason, a practical reason, or what?' Night10194 fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Jul 15, 2021 |
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Jul 15, 2021 20:59
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Josef bugman posted:Did you consent to be born? The whole conversation around NHPs, consent, shackling, homunculi and all that remind me of Ted Chiang's "The Lifecycle of Software Objects," which I have to imagine informed some of the writing (the story came out in 2010). I'd summarize it but it's really good, go read it if you're interested in AI Fiction Thoughts, I doubt I'd do it justice anyway.
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Jul 15, 2021 21:35
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I prefer magic TBH. It makes more sense.
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Jul 15, 2021 21:45
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So, does Lancer have any systems for like... actually changing the status quo, that aren't mech fights? I mean even on the level of a game with like, social maneuvering mechanics, faction systems, etc. Because there's a lot of words being spilled about the setting but very little of it seems to actually integrate with the mechanics at all, in much the same way as Warhammer 40K, as a wargame, is not prepared to let you play out bureaucratic reform of the Imperium. Lancer has a much more interesting setting in some ways than 40K's, but it also seems calibrated to start even more fights online about what space communism should look like, so I would really like to see how Lancer lets you actually get in and mess with space communism. E: Also, my preferred AI Demonology is 'AIs were created in the past before some kind of massive social or physical upheaval, and now we have a bunch of weird minds in objects that require specialized interactions.'
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Jul 15, 2021 21:54
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