 System Crash and AI |
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 Mar 24 2005, 08:29 PM
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#76
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Moving Target  Group: Members Posts: 226 Joined: 29-July 03 Member No.: 5,137  |
Thank you NightHaunter!
I'm a big fan of the dissonance being a fragment of the crash virus, and it's plans leading to the new crash. From the way things have been going, it seems clear it will play a role in the crash, as will Deus and probably (hopefully) the Resonance., Now, if any of these entities are going to survive the crash depends on the severity and nature of the crash. Is the fundamental infrastructure of the 'trix going to have to change due to crash, or will they rebuild based on the same hosts after cleansing whatever things cause the crash? Indications point to the latter, as if it is a crash severe enough to require all new infrastructure there is no way 5 years is enough time to rebuild the system, especially if huge amounts of the data that makes up the matrix is lost. Given that things sound mostly recovered in 5 years, I would say the crash isn't that massive and the AIs will survive it. |
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Mar 24 2005, 08:42 PM
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#77
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,978 Joined: 26-February 02 From: New Jersey, USA Member No.: 500 |
That's not it. It's that none of it made any sense. It literally read not that differently from tracts put out in America railing against Catholicism...Whether from today or the 1840s. |
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Mar 24 2005, 09:49 PM
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#78
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
that's two seperate issues, there--the not making sense, and the similarity to past rants against catholicism. for the first issue, if the same rants have been made for the past century and a half, they obviously make sense to somebody. for the second issue, long-standing conspracies are what make catholics fun to non-catholics. if not for those, catholicism would be just another group of christians. how many cool stories are there written about baptists?
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Mar 25 2005, 12:04 AM
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#79
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,133 Joined: 3-October 04 Member No.: 6,722 |
Speaking from a non-Catholic, moderately educated point of view, I think you need to realise that the Catholic Church - not necessarily Catholics themselves - has a debatable reputation amongst non-Catholics, if only because it is the most prominent church entity in the western world. And in all fairness, we have to concede that its reputation is not entirely unearned. Now, no-one is denying that the Church does a lot of good as well. But when you're assembling material for a dark and dystopian future, you're going to concentrate on the more unsavoury aspects. |
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Mar 25 2005, 12:20 AM
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#80
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Beetle Eater Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 4,797 Joined: 3-June 02 From: Oblivion City Member No.: 2,826 |
Hey now, the RCC is using the Templars to liberate Catholics in repressed nations the world over. It saved Italy from being eaten up the the corps, and has been acting as a balance between metahaters and metalovers since the new pope came into power.
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Apr 21 2005, 02:06 PM
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#81
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 6,640 Joined: 6-June 04 Member No.: 6,383 |
So, what's with the italics. Are you implying he's actually an immortal elf? |
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Apr 21 2005, 02:35 PM
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#82
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,978 Joined: 26-February 02 From: New Jersey, USA Member No.: 500 |
<nods> I get what you're saying. It's just that one can find such things in popular media these days, too. (Some of the conclave coverage was bad, to wit this statement from (US) ABC's conclave entry coverage on the 18th:
Yes, that was said on air.:eek: ) I don't agree w/ the Church on many things. I have a sense of humor and can take a lot of the conspiracy theories in small doses. But I'm not seeing small doses in SR. Combined with reality, it tires. It's an overdose. If SR poked any other religion this way, there'd be howls. (The NIJ/IUM says nothing about Islam as a faith, note.) For Catholics, because the hierarchy is one of the few things which distinguishes us from other Christians, attacking the hierarchy in many ways is attacking the faith. Now, am I denying there are problems? No. The conclave brought this out. Any idiot could see run opportunities in the runup to (or during) the conclave, for instance, and church politics could generate many a surveillance run. I could see even things like the NSoJ (I would prefer a different name, though), in a very modified form. The NSOJ could be the organizational point for the "Church in Persecution", the underground churches as appeared IRL in the Communist bloc, under the Nazis, and as occurs these days in China. Runners could meet up with them in many ways; Helping to infiltrate underground clergy, for example, or providing overwatch and protection for underground Masses. But not a Vatican Special Forces...And, oh dear. Let's not touch the New Templars. That was just bad. Bad, bad, bad. |
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Apr 21 2005, 08:19 PM
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#83
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,314 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Lisbon, Cidade do Pecado Member No.: 185 |
Give us another couple of weeks. Really. ;) |
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| Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_* |
Apr 21 2005, 09:04 PM
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#84
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Guests |
No, I'm just trying to not be a complete bastard and use some of the more creative terms that come to mind sometimes. |
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Apr 21 2005, 09:21 PM
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#85
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,032 Joined: 6-August 04 Member No.: 6,543 |
It also condemned ever meta race, and magical person. True it did a 180 on those topics, but still a Pope stated that all meta humans and magical people are demons or those who work with/for them. He did this wile sitting on the throne that makes him unfailable. And the RCC saves one nations from corps, and you think this a good thing? Recall what the RCC has done in the past. Do you really think they should be civil leaders? The RCC is fighting for the rights of the people who are in the same curch as they are. Um, that sure makes them saints, right up with Ares going to war with Omitech for oppressing the rights of Ares' employies to freely sell their products. If you are a large group, you are not a saint for trying to increase the amount of power you have. You are not a good guy for trying to save your own ass. You are a good guy for going out of your way to help others. The RCC is not helping anyone other than it's self by helping more people become part of the RCC. OR at least more active members of the RCC. Yes, the RCC church has done great things. It has also done a great many bad things, and the things you have listed do not make the RCC good, but they do not make them evil either. Those actions are simply what any one should do. Taking control of a nation and helping people of the same faith. Those are Amoral actions. |
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Apr 22 2005, 09:11 AM
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#86
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 401 Joined: 7-June 02 From: Living with the straw sheep. Member No.: 2,850 |
Actually, if they were what anyone should do, they would most definitely be moral actions. Helping people is a moral action. The fact that they are the same faith as you does not make the action any less moral. It makes you a less moral person (or organisation) if your choice of whether or not to act is based upon that particular criterion. As to the RCC's actions in SR... In the past in the SR canon timeline every major institution has done things both praiseworthy and deserving of condemnation - there's no reason to assume that the Church of Rome would be any different.
To rephrase an oft-quoted caveat about securities: Past performance is no guarantee of future actions. Consider that the same question can be asked about the UCAS president, all of the MegaCorp heads... Do you mean to ask if the Church should have a civil-leadership role IRL or in SR? I don't think it would be a good idea IRL (Church-state separation is a good thing). In Shadowrun...sure. Dark future and all that. And not all priests are raving paedophiles, not all Jesuits are conniving scum, and not all Republicans are baccie-chewing Evangelical Christian Humanis Policlub Meta-haters with big guns, but that's the way the game seems to present things, sometimes. |
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Apr 22 2005, 12:45 PM
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#87
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Genuine Artificial Intelligence Group: Members Posts: 4,019 Joined: 12-June 03 Member No.: 4,715 |
My personal theory is that the crash comes from whatever the Network rebuilds. In addition to the Network persisting in it's own pseudo-borg type of hive mind existance, I see four things possibly coming out of the Network.
1) Deus. (duh) 2) Megaera (slightly less duh) 3) Something new entirely (with the two AIs instruction sets constantly clashing, they could create some new amalgamation AI that has much of Deus' power, but maybe inherits some human perspective or morality from Megaera) 4) Morgan. Morgan's code was raped to create Deus. Pieces were torn out and incorporated in him. Megaera is what was left of her. Between the two of them, there exists absolutely every piece of Morgan, if she just gets reassembled correctly by the Network. |
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| Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_* |
Apr 22 2005, 03:41 PM
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#88
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Guests |
Of course not. Evil comes in the form of temptation. |
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Apr 22 2005, 07:23 PM
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#89
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 141 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Austin, TX CAS Member No.: 1,097 |
It could have something to do with the jedi, I mean Otaku, finding out the darkside, I mean dissonance, was stronger.
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Apr 22 2005, 07:27 PM
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#90
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,840 Joined: 24-July 02 From: Lubbock, TX Member No.: 3,024 |
OMG, the dark side isn't stronger.
Quicker, easier, more sedcutive, but not stronger! Your sith lies won't work here! |
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Apr 22 2005, 07:31 PM
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#91
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 141 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Austin, TX CAS Member No.: 1,097 |
Ah...my young padawan, we shall see. When Deus pops out its gonna be a slaughter and any resonance users will assimilated (wait which movie are we using here...)
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Apr 22 2005, 08:17 PM
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#92
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,032 Joined: 6-August 04 Member No.: 6,543 |
So, you miss the part where there actions are basically consolidating a base of power. The UB did the same thing, so did Aztlan. Aztlan wanted to have a one faith system and it pushed out all other systems. Much like RCC had done and will try to do. Looking at the larger picture, taking over a nation is completely amoral, because that is just a stepping stone to other actions. Helping those who follow you is the same. Both those actions can be seen in good or bad lights, depending on whose eyes you look threw. Take the RCC helping people in Aztlan. Are they helping those who do not believe in the same god as they do? Not that I have seen. It seems to me, if you are not willing to bow down to Jesus, you may as will die like the rest. This is not saying that the RCC is a bad group, but it is only willing to look after those who are willing to help them. Thus they are only helping those that would in turn help the RCC. The moral thing would be to help those without the need to be helped in return. Taking over that nation, well, that is just a basic power grab. With that power the RCC could do good. But at the same time Aztlan could do good with it's power grab. I have yet to see proof the RCC is the knight in shining armour, but that doesn't make them evil. They are acting not much better or worse than any other political party that has had control over that area. So, did they really save the area, or take power and changed the names on the parking spaces? |
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Apr 25 2005, 08:39 AM
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#93
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 401 Joined: 7-June 02 From: Living with the straw sheep. Member No.: 2,850 |
I think you might have missed this part:
This comes down to how you judge what people do: on the basis of intent or the basis of consequence. Both are obviously relevant. Just because I have a selfish reason (getting Iraqi oil) doesn't invalidate the outcome of a good act (getting rid of Saddam Hussein).
I addressed helping people, not taking power. What was going on when the RCC took over? Did they bring peace to a rampaging civil war? Is that good, or bad? I don't know. My point in my original post was to note that any large organisation in the Shadowrun world is going to have its shades of grey. That starts to ruffle a few feathers when you start talking about a RL organisation that a lot of people are emotionally attached to (such as the RCC) - especially when there seems to be a lot of confusion going back and forth as to whether someone is talking about the RCC in SR, in real life, or the portrayal of a real organisation in SR canon. There's no reason for the RCC to be a repository of Saints in the SR setting - just as there's no reason for anyone to assume that Aztechnology is 'teh :evil: ' or whatever. |
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Apr 25 2005, 02:49 PM
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#94
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,978 Joined: 26-February 02 From: New Jersey, USA Member No.: 500 |
No organization is a repository of Saints. I dun think anybody was claiming that.
I certainly wasn't. But SR is working around some very, very sensitive nerves. This is even more the case in the US than in Europe, because of the different histories. I'm of the view that the RCC, IRL and in SR, is not much worse than the rest. Yes, there will be "filth", as the new Pope so bluntly put it in his Way of the Cross meditation this most recent Good Friday. There will be corruption. There will BE things that maybe don't feel right. But it doesn't go down well when you have things like are posited in SR. (The IEs claiming they were Jesus was not cool, and they did write that...), such as with the NSOJ, the New Templars, etc. OTOH, yes. The Church now has honest-to-God temporal power. This can be enormously seductive. But I'm going to posit some things. 1. The Church probably doesn't want that power, but is running the new Papal States because there would otherwise be no authority. The past century and a half IRL have bred out of the Church any desire for it, because Nothing Good comes of it, usually. 2. Beyond absolute essentials, don't expect new Orders. That's not how the Church has worked since...Hell, for a century now. --- There's some reason for a different tone than what we've seen. SR's publication style, being the output of those on the fringes, will naturally be somewhat anti-religious. But in the real world, beyond the fringe? It could be argued (and, indeed, the entry on Lung in DotSW seems to imply this) that in some fundamental ways, religion has been all that's kept things from going truly off-balance. Look at Aztlan and the RCC as different points on a spectrum. Aztlan is temporal powers using religion for their own benefit. This is generally a bad thing, and in Aztlan's case is actually Corrupting. The Church, on the other hand, has been there. It does not want temporal power. Unfortunately, the shattering of Italy in SR means that it has had no choice but to take up that burden. At the same time, it constantly fights the battles that having such power puts upon it. As a temporal power, though, it's become somewhat distracted. It's had to maintain (to a limited extent) a bureaucracy (beyond the Curia, which IRL is actually really small - some 2k-odd people as the central authority of 1.1 Billion Catholics), a military (the Swiss Guard is only 120), and all of those things. The Popes of SR would have come into the priesthood maybe just during, just after John Paul II and Benedict XVI (if one assumes that that is as IRL, which I will for argument's sake). That's not a clergy used to temporal power. It's a clergy that has done its best to keep its independence, but otherwise avoided "things of the world". Solidarity wasn't so much managed by the Church as something that just sort of happened, inspired by it. Meanwhile, I'd recommend that anybody considering the topic peruse the encyclicals Pacem in Terris from John XXIII, Populorum Progressio from Paul VI, and (as might be expected) a small horde of encyclicals from John Paul II: Solicitudo Rei Socialis, Laborem Exercens, Fides et Ratio, and Centesimus Annus. Also helpful would be the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes. If anybody has additions or comments on that list, speak up.:-) Now, there's a fun thread which presents itself on speaking more in terms of this, but I'll let someone else put that forth.:-) |
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Apr 25 2005, 02:56 PM
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#95
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
one century out of, what, the better part a millennia? another half-century could easily see the church swing back towards the "old" ways, especially in light of the fact that other cultures' old ways have been shown to contain paths to great power. |
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Apr 25 2005, 03:01 PM
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#96
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,978 Joined: 26-February 02 From: New Jersey, USA Member No.: 500 |
Well, that's the thing. This past 150 years (more or less) has been rather traumatic. (And we're speaking of two very different definitions of old ways, too.)
Between the 1860s and...hell, I suppose you could say the 1960s, the Church was banned and otherwise harassed in a lot of the world...Often because it claimed secular power. When it didn't, life got a lot better for it. |
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Apr 25 2005, 04:38 PM
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#97
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Incertum est quo loco te mors expectet; Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 6,548 Joined: 24-October 03 From: DeeCee, U.S. Member No.: 5,760 |
Something worth pointing out, infalliability must be consciously activated. It's not like wired reflexes, it isn't always on making you do things you regret. It's more like your headware telephone; high cost, and almost never used. And not only did the Church (and the pope) officially recant those views, they did so earlier than most anyone else, with surprising haste for such a notoriously slow institution. Personally, I rather disbelief that they accepted magic as easily as they did with so little time. Isn't Atzlan Catholic? Most of Mexico and Central America is. Of course, if the Jesuits are helping the rebels, I suspect there's been a break with the church. Also, the Yucatan peninsula, where the rebels are, have a very high rate of mixing with the pre-existing Mayan and Aztec religions, which can be seen even today. If the Jesuits are working there, I suspect they're overlooking a lot of differences to further their goals. After all, any attempts to convert will be more effective coming from a professed friend than from an enemy. For the most part, I think Penta described everything well. I do kinda like the Catholic Church having all sorts of secrets, but I'm not so keen on their being put in a bad light about it. Maybe if people figure they have a lot of deep magical secrets, they'll get more converts. |
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Apr 25 2005, 08:55 PM
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#98
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
did it, Penta? sure, fewer people rallying against it--but it also lost a lot of ability to directly affect the world. the Church has goals, and secular power helps it achieve those goals. by giving up that power, the Church loses much of its ability to achieve the goals it sets for itself. it's a trade off, a balancing act, and it's not hard to imagine the balance swinging back the other way.
Aztlan is most definitely not Catholic. Catholicism is the religion of the rebel, in Aztlan--the RCC is officially banned. |
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Apr 26 2005, 12:27 AM
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#99
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,144 Joined: 22-September 04 Member No.: 6,690 |
_Mexico_ was heavily Catholic, Aztlan is heavily um... Aztec-y.
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Apr 26 2005, 01:11 AM
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#100
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,978 Joined: 26-February 02 From: New Jersey, USA Member No.: 500 |
Yes.
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