Telepathic Matrix

[Hierophant]

Actually, I think we could have a new thread on what people don't do because of roleplaying. I would be very interested in that, and I think it's worth having a thread on that, if there isn't one already. I can talk to bvanevery about the individuality thing here if it's not off-topic, otherwise sure, we can have a new thread as well.

[bvanevery]

It's implied humans would also die in this extinction if you don't help Planet break the cycle by helping it reach enlightment.

Look why can't we give it more time with more chemicals, more nukes, more tectonic missiles, and general extinction of that species ala Lab Three Aftermath?  I mean it's authorial fiat that I have to go along with Planet or die.  Why not kill Planet?  Or do a lobotomy on Planet, or whatever.  We've got Industrial Automation, we've got borehole pressure mines, we've got singularity bombs...

BTW, none of the other victory conditions said that we all died in the end.  So it seems a big empty threat to me.

[Hierophant]

bvanevery, I hope you don't see me asking you some questions as being personal. I don't share your position but I am interested in understanding it.

On the AC transcendence event specifically, I would say that the victory text is ambiguous, but at least does not show conclusively that individuality is destroyed. It seems to show that the individualities are retained but are part of a greater mind:

"In such times of repose, You often sift through Your personalities and recall Your former selves. Your alpha self derives from an individual once called $NAME1. Over the millenia the exceptional focus and judgement characteristic of this fragment have proven effective on numerous occasions. The $NAME1self now drives all of Your long and short range planning, and is the principal force behind the encapsulation project. Ponderous but playful is the Voice/Planet personality, avatar of Your sessile precursor, who in the present age has devoted her centuries to philosophical pondering. Many others flit about within You. Some, like the prankster $SHIMODA9 and the demon $NAME5 are semi-dominant and often hover near the plane of Your Thought. Others plumb the depths and create new worlds within the abyss of Your open-ended neural network."

But even if it is a destruction of individuality, I am interested in knowing what exactly it is that bothers you. Would you also be opposed to a "death of the self" sort of thing that Buddhists try to attain? I cannot remember her name, but I read about a woman who said she attained that state through meditation. Obviously we have to take their word for it, given that we cannot yet inspect their mental states, but suppose it is possible. Would you be opposed to attaining such a state as well? Or is it less repulsive, as long as it's still "your mind" and that your mind is not intermingled, so to speak, with others?

[bvanevery]

Would you also be opposed to a "death of the self" sort of thing that Buddhists try to attain?

Yep!  And I don't privilege special mental states as somehow being more desirable places for our minds to dwell.  People in the West have so often been turning East to seek the Other.  This is just restlessness and lack of confidence in their own purpose, lives, and thoughts.  I am Existentialist.  I am aware that I am choosing the meaning of life, and that nihilism is an easy thing to slide into.

If Planet really doesn't want to let you exist on your own terms, and cannot be persuaded, or can't really do anything about its own emerging nature, then I'm fine with brain surgeoning it or killing it.  Same as any basically any enemy to the existence of the human race.

I think human beings as they are today are basically better than any Planet.  Minus of course the possibility of us completely destroying ourselves.  I'd have that theme in a game.  The nuclear winter, the final biological war, no survival.

Now that I think about it, isn't it mildly interesting, that no faction ever got around to basically opposing Planet?  I mean, why should you in your right mind want to cooperate with this... thing.  Let's say you're not Gaian, or Cultist.

[Hierophant]

I understand wanting to create your own meaning, but how does having a self or not, or being in a group mind or not, interfere with that process? Or are you saying that the "I" that does the creation has to be an individuated self? I'm not sure what the relevance of that is.

I suppose that the Morganites, as the opponents of the Gaians, should be the rightful opponents of the planetmind, and they would be particularly into transhumanism (at least, transhumanists tend to be also very pro capitalism in the current era), so I imagine they are the ones who were "left behind" on Planet, as the end text says. Still, they seem pretty happy about it, if we trust the observations of the planetmind. I suppose a million years of living in a different context will change your views a bit.

[Nexii]

Actually it is stated in the game interludes that only a majority of humans decide to transcend. Not all are forced to, the remaining are put in stasis while the Ascent to Transcendence is completed. A million years later Planet has breathable air for humans, it's implied that those that don't are still considered friends.

[bvanevery]

Nice epilogue detail.  Of course, that's not really the end of debate on such issues.  To transcend, I gotta join a collective?  I'm pretty sure the ones left behind could think of a different way they'd rather do it, in time.  Such were plotlines of Stargate Atlantis, particularly with the "unwanted siblings" of the human race, the Replicators.

[EmpathCrawler]

Nice epilogue detail.  Of course, that's not really the end of debate on such issues.  To transcend, I gotta join a collective?  I'm pretty sure the ones left behind could think of a different way they'd rather do it, in time.  Such were plotlines of Stargate Atlantis, particularly with the "unwanted siblings" of the human race, the Replicators.

Depends on what you think a "collective" is. Transcendence appears to involve shedding your physical form and existing in a big fungus brain. If you want, you can download your individual consciousness to a puppet body and do stuff. So it's not the Borg Collective.


Presumably this is why the other victory conditions conveniently end just before you decide how to deal with Planet for the next chapter of history. Maybe that does mean a lot of fungicidal formers. If the game was made now, scouring away all the fungus tiles would probably earn you a Steam achievement or something.

[Nexii]

I think it's explained somewhere that removing the surface fungus isn't quite akin to killing Planet like I also assumed. The neural net has roots deep in Planet. This is why Voice of Planet makes the same tiles that had fungus at the start of the game regain it (or at least somewhat...maybe not all)

[bvanevery]

The neural net has roots deep in Planet.

Drill baby drill!

This is why Voice of Planet makes the same tiles that had fungus at the start of the game regain it

I don't believe that.  At all.  I think it's an idea that you ran into somewhere over the years, that isn't true.

[Hierophant]

bvanevery- do you believe in free will?

[bvanevery]

Yes.  And I do not believe in Determinism.  I think it's nothing more than thought experimental fiction that people like to make up about causality.  The empirical evidence is we do in fact have free will.

All you have to do to demonstrate your free will, is do something rather improbable on the spur of the moment.  You are free to express yourself in terms of interpretive dance, disruptive public behavior, strange spending patterns, writing either gibberish or odd cogence, whatever you feel like doing.  Or suddenly not doing.  With your creativity, you can demonstrate your own personal ability to make decisions, that had no predictability.

You can do it right now, as often as you like, as exhaustively as you like, until you've adequately proven the point to yourself.  That you do make independent decisions.

[Hierophant]

I see. Maybe that's the source of the disagreement? Because I definitely do not believe in free will.
Do you think you'd still hold the same positions on individuality if you didn't believe in free will? (that is probably an unanswerable question)

[bvanevery]

I work with what this universe actually is.  What we can actually observe it to be.  We have enormous amounts of scientific evidence to describe what it is.  We still have holes in our knowledge, and some things are provably unknowable.  For instance, the Halting Problem in computer science.  It is impossible to write an algorithm that will tell you when an algorithm will terminate.  It is unknowable.  This fact, has a lot to do with why I both believe in free will, and think the human race is not inherently doomed to destroy itself.

Thought experiments that try to exceed what the universe actually is, pretty much end up being BS.

Determinism has a very basic problem of verifiability.

[Hierophant]

You believe in free will because some things are actually unknowable? I don't get the connection between these two things. Are you saying human consciousness is unknowable, because we'll never understand free will? Otherwise I don't understand what our epistemic limits have to do with free will at all.
Either way, it doesn't really matter if I understand why you believe in free will, I am mainly interested in the connection between your view on free will and your view on individuality... if the first is the cause of the second, that is.