Out of Pod Experience

Eh? That's you how read it. I read it as individuals are willing to get other people to make great sacrifices for what they are told is some high ideal but in fact favors the individuals doing the telling. Call me cynical.

ahahaahaha, communism. whichin its "ideal" form is pretty much the same as a "democracy" in ITS purest form, 2 completely separate philosophies aimed at amking society a nice, happy, autonomous group. neither of which has EVER been successfully achieved because (dun dun DUN) people are GREEDY ASSHAT NAGGY-WAGGERS and being nice is for people who dont mind being run over by all the people who arent nice.

in fact the only people in the world who ARE nice, live in places where no one would be insane enough to challenge their niceness. thats why aussies and scandinavians are so fun to be around, they can afford to eb ncie because the average member of their society is so batsh!t insane (in a cute way) that no one would ever want to be mean TO them.
^^ that also comes form personal experience fo the many people from those places ive met when i travel.

lolwut?

see AMERICA, a country that ONLY EVER HAS technological innovations DURING WAR, and DOES go around LOOKING for things to "pew-pew" every chance they get, which is why they have been involved in almost every war since WW1. policing my ass, EvE is basically what happens if the yankees end up as the first ones to have colonies on other planets.

Absolute nonsense. If America ever truly became aggressively warmongering and Imperialistic, you'd know about it sonny.

The chances of an average male dying from violence are lower now than they've ever been at any time in human history, and that includes the two world wars and the cold war in the statistics.

All interesting questions, but the general gist of my post was that EVE is unrealistic, it's not anything like how real life works. And the root of that difference is in trackable identity, plus the raison d'etre of the game, to provide a cool, romantic vision of a ultra-violent high tech future society. But such a vision is self-contradictory. Ultra violent societies aren't hight tech, they are low tech, and their ultra violence is part of what keeps them low tech. Real life shows gradually increasing civilization/technology and increasing safety over millennia, over centuries, decades and years.

If one were to translate that into EVE, it would mean the whole place would eventually settle down to a relatively peaceful, productive society. But of course all player roduction in EVE is geared towards war. For a true economy sim, the NPCs would have to have their own simulated AI market which players could supply for the making of goods userful to peaceful endeavours, goods and services.

But of course that would mean there'd be no pew-pew eventually, so it would be baaaaaad

You'd still have trackable identity - even more so in a high tech society. A capsuleer would have to go a long way to attain anonymity in New Eden. And so long as there's trackable identity there are consequences and repercussions that induce a rational actor, even an innately violent one, to temper their violence.

No, the violence in New Eden is solely the result of the design of the game, crossed with internet anonymity and the fact that doing violence is relatively costless (or a minor irritation if you're on the receiving end), and is in fact encouraged by the design of the game and the economy.

It doesn't "reveal" anything about our "true nature" or any such nonsense.

Our history, which procedes from a situation of more violence to less violence, reveals our true nature.

and my whole COUNTER to yoru point about "high-tec" vs "low tech" is that amny fo the most useful and necessary inventions and technologies were funded with warfare in mind, whether it be a cold war, or actual war (the world wars and subsequent cold war encouraging some of the fastest technological growth ever recorded)

But that's not what animals are like either, not even predators. Predators usually instinctively avoid killing everything they could kill. And this is because predators that did kill everything they could kill eventually died out.

Nature is usually in balance that way.

However, human beings are not essentially predators - they are capable of being predators, but they are capable of all sorts of things. Human beings are the "hybrid classes" par excellence of the animal kingdom We don't have teeth and claws like the tiger, but we can make weapons that are a million times more dangerous than the tiger's natural endowments. We can't run like a cheetah, but we can contrive vehicles that allow us to travel at speeds that far outstrip the cheetah. And so on and so forth. But we can also grow our own food, so we don't even need to predate to survive, and we can even look beyond mere survival ... till eventually we have the leisure and freedom to do this thing called "playing computer games"



Life is very much worth the effort. For most people, the joy of family is very much worth the effort. In fact, the armies of civilization, from the ancient cultures like the Greeks on, have been based on the principle of citizen-soldiers who basically fight for their families and home culture, and desire to fight as little as possible and get back home as quickly as possible, hence they have tended to be disciplined and utterly ruthless and effective against aggressors, far more ruthless and effective than so-called "warrior" cultures. Because they have something worth fighting for, they don't fight out of habit, nor for some mere idea, nor the mere charisma of some leader. They fight because they feel they have to, to defend what they love.

But beyond family, there are many, many other things worth the effort, even worth fighting for - including widerning the circle of affections from family to tribe, to clan, to city, to nation, to state, to the world, to the universe at large.

Depend on the point of view..

I dont find family/tribe/clan/city/nation/universe worth the effort..

It will end at some point anyway..

And ultimately if you are dead you are free. And you wont base your values accordingly to environment/society you grew in etc. anymore and your contribution would be about same as of anyone living / meaningless.

Well i am no expert on either scientific theories about Universe /begining.

Question is even if it is ethernal, never ending... Life itself is different matter and ultimately meaningless..

As for my opinion.. Lifeless universe is the step in right direction ..