What you are describing is dystopian. Hence my point.
The point is not that you're killing people, it's that you either will kill them or they will die if they don't comply with cyberization. That is dystopian.
- 1
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
The point is not that you're killing people, it's that you either will kill them or they will die if they don't comply with cyberization. That is dystopian.
I was pretty explicitly arguing against the rather extreme claim that Synthetic Ascension is mass extermination, and don't really see how the words you're putting in my mouth relate to that.
In any case, no one is arguing that the ascensions can't be dystopian, only that there are ways to play or RP them otherwise. If you have a problem with altering species behaviour on a massive scale, then you can usually just give them the machine equivalents of the psychological traits they had before. With a little creativity, it's not hard to come up with a non-dystopian narrative justification for any lost or gained psychological traits, too.
- 1
In what world is "we as a society decided to advance in a specific direction but since you guys don't agree we're not going to force you to do so and will just give you the bare minimum so you can still live in here instead of forcing you to live on inferior living conditions because our whole society has changed and adapted around said mass change" dystopian?
- 3
Mostly the part that you're ignoring. Forcibly adding cybernetic parts is dystopian.
Your narrative would be a perfect answer to the problem if not for the actual description of the event being contrary to it, and that a hypothetical underclass of your species that doesn't get any augmentations isn't allowed to exist. Your argument is a good one for why offering them is benevolent, but "I think my actions are benevolent and you aren't allowed to resist" is dystopian even if they are benevolent. And they aren't, in fact, allowed to resist. That could be papered over by the description being that some don't get any - they would just join the long list of abstracted "it exists but we're not calculating it" things in Stellaris. That's not the description though, the description is explicitly not even that they have a clearly better choice, but that they have no choice at all.
- 1
If I alter entirely the way you think, the current "you" is gone.
It isn't just things we might medicate. It's not just stuff like being lazy. It includes, for example, Communal.
It's a far more fundamental change to thoughts than something that is just the same people. And it isn't even just because it's an early model, Communal is psychological and the synthetic equivalent trait is being able to physically fit into smaller spaces.
I can imagine scenarios for synthetic or cybernetic that aren't dystopian, and I'd like them to exist (swapped text for different ethics?), but they are what they are currently. I'm hoping genetic and psionic will get firmly non-dystopian options as well, genetic would be pretty bad now if the trait modification features of it weren't largely not worth it.
- 1
By the logic of "All changes to one's thought process is personality death and therefore the death of that person as an individual", isn't basic genetic modification currently in the game also complete extermination of all the pops that are modified, since it also includes the ability to add and take out flavor-wise psychological traits like "Communal" and "Thrifty"? And don't empires always have the ability to modify and impose this change on all their pops at the same time? I'm not sure if this is a philosophical standard that is sensible to apply to this game, as at that point quite literally all empires no matter the flavor or government are dystopian mass-murderers.
- 6
I'd also maintain that altering your willingness to socialize isn't on a high enough level to delete the current "you," especially in a universe where Nerve Stapling or gestalt assimilation exists. Additionally, the game and devs are usually pretty clear when something is supposed to be interpreted as hyperexageratted dystopia. Overturned definitely fits that bill, several of the advanced authorities also absolutely qualify, but I wouldn’t argue that the general process of ascension is evil. Especially since many of the advanced authorities are fairly neutral (Dictatorial Manifold or Imperial Chipset) if not out-right utopian (Democratic Transference or Democratic Concurrency)
Last edited:
- 2
- 2
It isn't "all," but in principle - yes, if I substantially alter your thoughts via alteration to your body, it would be reasonable to say that you're dead.
There is a degree of alteration past which "you" is obviously gone. You can disagree on the degree if you wish. A synthetic body carrying over absolutely nothing from the original except for leaders is a pretty clear implication that you're preserving leaders and everyone else is gone.
- 3
- 1
I don’t agree with that assumption, but I’m going to tap out here since we’re probably not going to convince one another of our points. Have a good day/evening/local time of day.
- 2
- 1
I did assume that the trait descriptions weren't always to be taken literally (I don't see why my hive drones are better at maintenance because they have a prettier smile), but I can see your point.
Also, it's funny that you mention Communal in particular; I'm not an expert, but I believe some have theorized that extraversion is actually linked to lower cortisol reactivity (with introverts being more reactive and so avoiding overstimulating environments). Its definitely more complicated then what I understand, but it might not be impossible for my theoretical lower-cortisol body to indeed make me more Communal!
As for the rest of your argument, though I do largely disagree with your points, I can agree that some text swaps couldn't hurt. I don't think the ascensions are currently themed as inherently dystopian, but if other people do then it would be beneficial to make the utopian side more explicit.
Ah, but then you get to the Ship of Theseus paradox area, in which how slow can the changes to your thinking and reasoning processes be to not constitute death of the self, or are any points where you change your mind on anything worthy of Death of the Self? Also this way of reasoning would also imply that you think you have already died several times, or at least I have, since I think extremely differently on very many things from my past self when I was in my 20s, which thought very differently from how I thought about things when I was 13, who thought very differently from the past self that was 7. I still wouldn't think any of these past selves are dead in any meaningful sense of the word, I've just gained more experience, perspective, and evolved my thought processes to think more clearly and in a more reasoned fashion in the present. And most likely I will still think differently in 20 years time from now.
And to your mention of the personality traits that biological species have for reason that the basic people are dead, quite a lot of for example behavioural traits are caused by biological differences on the low level. For example certain species of wildlife are more or less companionable with humans, this doesn't just come from them not being around humans, but from actual differences between species. So losing those traits in transference to synthetic bodies migth simply mean that since the people no longer have those hormones pushing in a certain direction to act in a certain manner, they simply do it less, or it becomes less common to not warrant a trait. Whether this constitutes a Death of Self of the individual is something that we can all have our own opinions on, it is clear I have a very different opinion from you on this topic.
So would it be better or worse if the population assimilation time were set so that it for example took 50 years? The current generation speed for humans I think is 43 years, so most of the body politic would have refreshed during that time, and thus you could think that it is not old people being changed, but new people with different thinking processes growing up and the old codgers dying out on their own accord through the march of time.
But as to your other points, yes, most if not all of the ascensions in Stellaris currently can be seen as highly dystopic if you want, depending on your personal beliefs and way of thinking, but as they say many peoples utopia is at least one persons dystopia. I personally think many of the current ascensions can be interpreted utopistically if one wants to, although many of them also easily come out as dystopic. But I think they are mostly social movements rather than governmental decrees, and thus most people are onboard with what it happening, while those who do not want to change are in such a minority that they can be left out of the simulation. But as mentioned, they can be seen as very dystopic as well if you want.
- 3
- 1
I think that is a bit too.. not sure how what's the best phrase.. linear thinking?
Our thoughts get altered all the time. It's called "living". Any new experiences (and repetition of "old" experiences) change our brains, our thought capacity and personality. So "altering thoughts" is in itself no bad thing. In fact it is natural.
If my current personality would get transferred into an artificial brain with 10 times the thinking speed, instant perfect memory, access to much finer and broader senses and so on of course my personality would very likely change quite fast. Because I will have quite a lot of new experiences.
Actually no idea if in a good or bad direction. I might become more empathic and enlightened or I might become a literal emotionless robot without empathy. A sociopath basically. Or I might just stay the same, albeit smarter. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But anyway, that is not the point.
It isn't "altering thoughts" what makes something dystopian, nor if it is natural or not(*) but if it is forced.
If I could choose to become a Stellaris Synth I would say yes in a heartbeat, even if there was no guarantee my personality does not change negatively. The possible benefits are so incredibly huge it would be worth the risk and then some.
(* i.e. Alzheimer is totally natural, but not a good thing and not a thing you can choose)
Yes, the text says it there.
However, there are other flavor text in situations and events which somewhat contradicts this text, too.
So which text is correct?
IMO, neither. The Stellaris team quite often states that they want to keep descriptions in the game intentionally vague to allow for roleplaying different empires and societies. But they do not always succeed, that flavor text you quoted is one of the worst offenders.
- 3
So what about genetic modification?
Swapping "unruly" with "docile" in a species is by that logic effectively the same thing, isn't it?
Basically the only way you can avoid doing something dystopian would be never to modify a species.
Just take genetic ascention for the clone vats and don't alter your pops, just grow new ones?
There are thought-based species traits which can be replicated on Synths, like my favorite (Deviants).
So it should be possible to build a species which is thought-compatible to your standard -- even in its negative intrusive thoughts.
I think that the different situation paths of each ascension do leave room as to how you ascend, that is, respecting those who do not want to taint their holy flesh VS forcefully conscripting your population into a megalomaniac cyberization project. Civics like natural design further allow roleplaying a "purity path" of shorts, even if it cannot compare with regular ascension paths due to balance constraints.
That being said, I miss an ascension path that does not rely on self-modification. Psionic ascension is the closest thing to that (and therefore, one of my favourite ones), but I would like to see some kind of "social" ascension focused on a utopian or cultural vision for your empire too, perhaps something akin to Star Trek: Post-scarcity, harmonious coexistance with aliens, megastructures doing the work for us, yadda yadda. I know that those elements exist currently in the game, but they are mostly scattered (well, and I can't currently come up with a cohesive description of what I attempt to express, I am afraid).
That being said, I miss an ascension path that does not rely on self-modification. Psionic ascension is the closest thing to that (and therefore, one of my favourite ones), but I would like to see some kind of "social" ascension focused on a utopian or cultural vision for your empire too, perhaps something akin to Star Trek: Post-scarcity, harmonious coexistance with aliens, megastructures doing the work for us, yadda yadda. I know that those elements exist currently in the game, but they are mostly scattered (well, and I can't currently come up with a cohesive description of what I attempt to express, I am afraid).
- 1
The -15% non-cybernetic pop happiness tied to every egalitarian cybernetic government.
There's literally not enough good ascension perks to fill the 8 slots.
- 2
There are some civics which lock u out from taking any ascension path. You could say they are mini-ascensions by themselves.
To summarize from both your posts - yes, in principle this is the same thing. Genemodding your species to alter their behavior, desires and capacities for your benefit is dystopian.
There's a substantial difference between "I changed my mind about X" or "I no longer enjoy X" and "I no longer enjoy X because I was deliberately altered by a third party so as to no longer enjoy X/change my opinion about X."
There's at least some degree of consent here, where if you agreed to it, it ceases to be dystopian. Agreeing under threat for Cybernetic means Cybernetic is always dystopian, because even if we then say that EVERYONE does agree to modification, agreeing "or else" is dystopian.
For Synthetic, the same problem is largely repeated. It's an even more fundamental change that entirely erases your original species in every respect, and there is again an "or else" qualifier to the idea that your entire population agrees to the change.
For Genetic, as well as general genemodding, there is not narratively an "or else" - both because tradition texts don't have anything so severe as "there is no room in our society for the group that won't exist in our society after we do this, but does before," and because you actually DON'T have to genemod inherently to use the ascension. Or didn't before, anyway, I haven't played 4.0 yet.
The inherent effect of Genetic was to do... absolutely nothing, actually, and there's no alarming flavor text really contradicting that, so it isn't necessarily dystopian. It's definitely not ruling it out, but it isn't inherent. You can either assume literally your entire species agreed to it (importantly, NOT under threat) or that anyone who didn't is abstractly "present, somewhere" still. Or just not use genemodding, which was basically not worth the project costs a lot of the time before anyway.
The inherent effect of Cybernetic is to declare that not being Cybernetic is unacceptable and make your entire species Cybernetic. That's extremely clear-cut. There is no choice, at the absolute best interpretation the pro-Cybernetics side is saying "well due to our changes you'll die unless you get Cybernetics." Even if everyone then does, that is dystopian.
The inherent effect of Synthetic is essentially the same, slightly toned down rhetorically actually, but with even worse actual pop modifications.
- 1
So that's why I feel like death warmed over the morning after going drinking
- 2