Intergalactic Summit

Well, actually, you apparently execute people who are minding their own business out in non-empire space, nuking planets and attempting extermination on any and everyone who shows sympathy to the cause you have decided is so awful.

It's okay though! It just means we can't be bothered to consider your feelings on the matter as we try to build ourselves up to the point where that can't happen again.

Hi.

Spirits help me, where to begin....

Pilot, we capsuleers are terrible at controling our emotions. Terrible. It's not so much the ability to install the emotional-control technology Natalcya Katla helped pioneer; it's more that we're subject to a condition that strips some pretty important ones. Empathy, for example.

Of course, we keep quite a few, which sometimes seem to be trying to swell to fill the void. Pride, for example.



My body is genetically about 28 years old. My mind is about 34. That gap is not yet wide enough for me to claim to "think" very differently from a "baseliner," especially given how long people can live these days.



To the first: by remaining anchored to old, tested identities, they provide an anchor for those of us who explore "ahead"-- a way back in the event that we step wrong.

Which we have done, and continue to do, plenty.

And not every "old way" is by any means outmoded.

To the second: by the same right by which you consider yourself their "better"-- the right of power. We can kill them by the thousands, but they can pull the plug at will.

We have nuclear missiles, among other weapons of mass destruction. They have failsafes and toolkits.

I suggest you avoid tempting them ...



... with nonsense like this.

We are not fit to rule, pilot. We are barely fit to serve. Our chaos runs too deep, our compassion for humanity too shallow. My superior, Khross-haan, deems me a hypocrite because, although I see this flaw in us, I do not truly value human life. Whether he is correct or not, probably I never will, not even to the level of the baseline Caldari public with its love of blood sports.

I could lay waste to a hundred million lives, spread suffering and misery like a plague, and not feel a single drop of remorse. It appears that the difference between you and me is that I know this for a bad idea.

It is true that our way of life is a new one. The lessons of the worlds that birthed us suit us imperfectly. (I, of course, like any good loyalist, will proudly proclaim that mine is the exception.) But as long as we are living, our own habitat, the Black, is a bad tutor.

If I am walking back towards that "Dark Age" culture into which I was born, it is because I have looked over the edge you propose we all rush gleefully towards.

Pilot, there's nothing there.

Ok. Look at the logic I presented you earlier. You are telling me you don't see any sickness there in the eternal cycle of advancement leading to skirting the edge of the destruction of our species?

I happen to believe that capsuleers are not really an intentional evil, but one born out of desperation and fear. This is actually a good thing, for us, because it means that given proper controls we can be harnessed.

You will note that I use the word harness in the same sense as I would use the word bridle, by the way. We need controls. Effective controls. Controls we won't be looking for ways to break, like the ones CONCORD has on all of us.

Pilot Thessalonia, apart from chips so that we are subservient to Sansha's will, what sorts of controls would you propose?

Please forgive my skepticism that one man alone should be in that first role.

I'm not looking for your tech. I'm looking to understand the structure you'd propose. Some of the terms you use are relatively imprecise ("unity with everyone else"). I prefer self-organizing groups, possibly even an "adhocracy", over hierarchies, because circumstances change and power corrupts.

Integer:

Circumstances change, power corrupts, but in the presence of a dire need to maintain a certain level of order (which we absolutely depend on to maintain our supposedly elevated status), hierarchy is essential.

Besides, your designation of us as baseliners' "betters" betrays a belief in hierarchy so long as we are at the top, yes?

... a job we'd be lousy at.

No system will be perfect, but the lack of a system will fall dramatically short of even that.


Thessalonia:

Thank you, but I suspect that efforts at controlling us could very effectively stop at making remote-detonation microexplosive charges a standard component in capsuleer cranial cybernetics. Not that I want that, but I suspect it would accomplish the necessary level of control if we had to be brought to heel.

If the earlier sentiment about what should be done with demented infomorphs gains momentum, we may all some day discover that our gray matter has been primed for demolition.

Mr. Khross,
You have given a well-worded response and you express my sentiments probably better than I could myself. The power, gifts and abilities of capsuleers should be received and exercised humbly in service to humanity. We should be at the disposal of humanity as servants not disposing of humanity as cruel, narcissistic lords.

Our technological augmentations are not part of our evolution, they are the enhancement of our physical forms, the same forms that those baseliners share. Until women start pumping out kids with ports on the back of our necks for a pod, we will not have evolved.

I have been hesitant to wade into this discussion, so have spent a little time deciding on my comments. I have a statement, and then a question.

This is not how evolution works. On a biological scale, you are not selecting for inherent characteristics within a varying population - you are implanting, literally, the characteristics you wish to see. This is more of a planned iteration, not an evolution and there are many pitfalls to be wary of when iterating upon a population. An evolution naturally takes the best possible characteristics within a population, whereas an iteration may make sub-optimal choices. This statement holds for the sociological scale upon which which your argument is made.

I'd like to address this point in particular, your statement that the old societies should be "Swept away" so that a "new evolution" may take place. This is... exactly the opposite of how a society evolves. Evolution requires a population of societies which then compete for limited resources (in the modern case, primarily the active memespace of its population). This competitive pressure creates a search space in which the societies search for the best model to meet the challenges of survival.

Your suggestion fits within this model, though. You are suggesting that a new society form (common in this model, usually failing) with a competitive memetic structure. Like Kuvakei's society, It has a low rate of propagation, is highly resilient once present in a host, and spreads by a ground-up model (at present, at least). It has a low tolerance of competitors and will actively attack competing memes. Given its slow propagation and its aggression, I don't predict it will last long - strikes me as a fast-burn meme, instead.

To my question, though. Implicit in your claim is that we're somehow "better" than baseline humanity. Can you specify exactly how? We can fly spaceships a little bit better than they can, and we can learn a little more quickly, but I'd hardly call this a large jump. Can you be more specific?