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Author Topic: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?  (Read 37799 times)

Mishihari

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #210 on: April 30, 2021, 04:43:35 PM »
"Idk this Sci-fi seems unrealistic since I refuse to subscribe to the central conceit..."

I personally find all claims of "that Sci-fi technology is impossible" to be lazy. It requires no knowledge or understanding to claim a currently non-existent technology is infeasible with our current understanding. If it seemed feasible, it's not Sci-fi, it's an undeveloped product idea.

The greater intellectual challenge is thinking of how something could work. That shows intelligence.

If something seems like it might somehow be possible someday with science and technology, then the genre is SF.  If you look at it and it seems impossible no matter what, then it's Fantasy, even if there are SF trappings.  I love SF, and I love fantasy, but with a few exceptions (Star Wars) I'm not a big fan of fantasy with SF trappings.

HappyDaze

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #211 on: April 30, 2021, 05:02:23 PM »
"Idk this Sci-fi seems unrealistic since I refuse to subscribe to the central conceit..."

I personally find all claims of "that Sci-fi technology is impossible" to be lazy. It requires no knowledge or understanding to claim a currently non-existent technology is infeasible with our current understanding. If it seemed feasible, it's not Sci-fi, it's an undeveloped product idea.

The greater intellectual challenge is thinking of how something could work. That shows intelligence.

If something seems like it might somehow be possible someday with science and technology, then the genre is SF.  If you look at it and it seems impossible no matter what, then it's Fantasy, even if there are SF trappings.  I love SF, and I love fantasy, but with a few exceptions (Star Wars) I'm not a big fan of fantasy with SF trappings.
Hopefully you make an exception for Gamma World too. If not, the Cryptic Alliances are coming for you!

Mishihari

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #212 on: April 30, 2021, 05:08:32 PM »
A crappy spambot talking about a Turing test is irony at the highest level.

I'm kind of shocked that he's still here.  Pundit ordered him out of the thread way back on page 1, and we all know how forgiving he is of folks who ignore his rules.  To be fair, I think he has some interesting ideas, and if he could just learn some social skills he might be fun to have around.

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #213 on: April 30, 2021, 07:02:46 PM »
Honestly I can barely grasp the luddite rooted logic your conclusions are being drawn from. It does not make any sense to me.
Star Trek had holographic lifeforms that could fully simulate people. EP can do it too. It's not hard to accept the sci-fi of that.

As for immortals, that's been done forever.

I think there is a misunderstanding of what I'm doing: I'm bringing up the real problems associated with fantastical sci-fi concepts, not so much that I don't understand that said concepts exist or don't enjoy them myself.
However Rhedyn, your ability to just NOT think about said limitations doesn't make you more intelligent, nor does me discussing them make me a luddite.

robertliguori

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #214 on: May 02, 2021, 08:49:11 AM »
I dunno.  I kind of feel that if you're accepting that you can model a mass of interconnected neurons in software in real time, then rigging up fake inputs from the nervous system to and from the heart, adrenals, and so forth are possible.  And as the example of the people with artificial, continual-flow hearts shows, people don't stop being recognizably human when you take away one or some of those additional inputs.

It should be a valid concern, and you should definitely have weirdos who have gotten used to synths or software and who keep trying to mute their heartbeat or manually reroute blood flow to or from their intestines when they get nervous in their meatware, but it doesn't seem like an obstacle to setting verisimilitude to me.

Warder

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #215 on: May 02, 2021, 05:05:42 PM »
Ello, yeah, i think you are right on the money here(been some time since i read the book however):

wasn't that because it lacked true consciousness and ran into the chinese room problem?
[/quote]

Regardless, the whole Eclipse Phase thing is a bit problematic if we take into account that the instigators of the whole apocalypse have just decided to go away and leave the remnants of humanity to do their own thing. Quite considerate of them woudnt you think? So the setting is acting weirdly, why dosent posthumanity start constructing generational seed ships and get out of the system? It is probbaly just a matter of time before the big bad titans return. And theres no measure that can be taken to stop them, they are levels above what post humanity can throw at them. The humies here are a Kardashev 2 civilisation(even with small extra solar colonies), the Titans are verging on a level 3(althought this may be a controversial statement, they did create the gate system). Ofc thats just my take.

Valatar

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #216 on: May 02, 2021, 06:39:46 PM »
Yeah, humanity in EP is entirely too blase about their current situation.  "Oh, so the horrible machine gods that killed just about all of us have fucked off but could come back at any moment?  Well, guess we'll just hang out here then."  My ass would be in a ship headed to some other star ASAP, even if only sublight.  That's better than relying on the whims of insane AIs and just hoping they won't decide to finish the job.

Valatar

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #217 on: May 02, 2021, 06:44:05 PM »
While I'm thinking about it, a funner big bad than the Titans would be the Beast from Homeworld Cataclysm, or the Markers from Dead Space.  Both of those things have horror to spare without being so omnipotent that you'd have to have them just randomly wander away to make it a viable setting.

matt swain
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #218 on: May 02, 2021, 07:19:41 PM »
There are theories to why the titans didn't finish the job.

1.They evolved to a state where killing off the remaining 5% of transhumanity no longer interested them.

2. They were summoned by something.

3. Another type of AI did something to get them to leave.

4. They are observing or studying the remainder of transhumanity for some reason.
« Last Edit: May 02, 2021, 07:21:47 PM by matt swain »
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matt swain
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #219 on: May 02, 2021, 07:21:32 PM »
A crappy spambot talking about a Turing test is irony at the highest level.

I'm kind of shocked that he's still here.  Pundit ordered him out of the thread way back on page 1, and we all know how forgiving he is of folks who ignore his rules.  To be fair, I think he has some interesting ideas, and if he could just learn some social skills he might be fun to have around.

Damned if i'm leaving MY OWN DAMN THREAD! That's rpg.net level mod arrogance. If he wants to ban me, fine. I wonder if he knows what a lot of the gaming community says about him.
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matt swain
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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #220 on: May 02, 2021, 07:24:48 PM »
Yeah, humanity in EP is entirely too blase about their current situation.  "Oh, so the horrible machine gods that killed just about all of us have fucked off but could come back at any moment?  Well, guess we'll just hang out here then."  My ass would be in a ship headed to some other star ASAP, even if only sublight.  That's better than relying on the whims of insane AIs and just hoping they won't decide to finish the job.

most people are like "Eh, what are you gonna do?"

I mean at first a lot of things were done by various groups to try to protect themselves. The jovian junta went all luddite. One group tried to mass produce functional adult transhumans with accelerated mental and physical growth. (Oops!) Some people maybe with some aid formed firewall, someone else formed project ozma, the ultimates tried to go full blown geentic ubermensch space fascists, etc.

most just went on with their lives as best as they could.
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Abraxus

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #221 on: May 02, 2021, 09:58:22 PM »
Damned if i'm leaving MY OWN DAMN THREAD! That's rpg.net level mod arrogance. If he wants to ban me, fine. I wonder if he knows what a lot of the gaming community says about him.

Imo he does and cares nothign about it. Why should he when regressive leftists in rpgs ban one for not pushing the narrative.

thedungeondelver

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #222 on: May 03, 2021, 01:01:47 AM »
It's true that a lot of what we consider to be 'me' are a bunch of squishy fluids running around in our brains, human emotion and stability hinge on the various glands squirting their gland juice into the equation.  Any attempt to virtualize a human would necessitate emulating the presence of those systems as well, or you'd wind up with something weird and probably crazy.  Lots of people consider our brains to be a discrete item, just a big jello CPU, but it's actually much more distributed than that.  Like, consider your heart.  That's got nothing to do with anything with your mind, right?  Except there's a real problem with artificial hearts that messes with people who've had them implanted, because they can't feel the heartbeat anymore, there's no sensation of their heart racing when they're excited or upset, etc.  We take a lot of the sensation of living for granted because we've experienced it our entire lives, but if any of those things suddenly vanished it would cause significant problems.

People might like to think that they can exist as a disembodied intellect of pure reason or whatever, but the fact is that we're animals, and we aren't so easily divorced from our meat.
EP is built with the premise that the technology is flawless at copying/storing/emulating life. It's a fantastical assumption, but it's no worse than accepting time travel in Dr. Who or Star Trek.

I actually have a hard time believing time travel in Star Trek (never seen Dr. Who). It always came off as a cheap plot device to me (Time Travel by spinning around the sun?...Okaaayyy...*eye roll*). I might be able to accept it to a certain extend to enjoy the story, but it always kinda bugged me and left me thinking "time travel here is just an excuse to explore this specific plotline".

The burden of eliciting suspension of disbelieve is in the writer or world builder, not on the audience to force themselves not to disbelieve no matter how lame the writer's or world builder's conceits are.

Gravitic time dilation is technically possible by approaching a (huge, much bigger than our Sun) mass at near C or coming down into or up out of a gravity well of a large enough mass: SR71 pilots, astronauts, etc., all experience a little bit of time dilation (measured in thousandths of a second).  Both Star Trek with it's "fly around the Sun at Warp Speed" and Interstellar with its heartbreaking "ocean world" scenes demonstrate the principal but not the reality: a world with enough mass to create minutes == decades of time dilation would have an impossibly strong gravity field.  Our protagonists would have been crushed flat, and in regard to Star Trek they'd have to find a hypermassive black hole or something even more massive to even get a few nanoseconds of "time travel" out of.  You'd need a Tipler Cylinder or something equally ridiculous.
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Ratman_tf

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #223 on: May 03, 2021, 01:58:05 AM »
It's true that a lot of what we consider to be 'me' are a bunch of squishy fluids running around in our brains, human emotion and stability hinge on the various glands squirting their gland juice into the equation.  Any attempt to virtualize a human would necessitate emulating the presence of those systems as well, or you'd wind up with something weird and probably crazy.  Lots of people consider our brains to be a discrete item, just a big jello CPU, but it's actually much more distributed than that.  Like, consider your heart.  That's got nothing to do with anything with your mind, right?  Except there's a real problem with artificial hearts that messes with people who've had them implanted, because they can't feel the heartbeat anymore, there's no sensation of their heart racing when they're excited or upset, etc.  We take a lot of the sensation of living for granted because we've experienced it our entire lives, but if any of those things suddenly vanished it would cause significant problems.

People might like to think that they can exist as a disembodied intellect of pure reason or whatever, but the fact is that we're animals, and we aren't so easily divorced from our meat.
EP is built with the premise that the technology is flawless at copying/storing/emulating life. It's a fantastical assumption, but it's no worse than accepting time travel in Dr. Who or Star Trek.

I actually have a hard time believing time travel in Star Trek (never seen Dr. Who). It always came off as a cheap plot device to me (Time Travel by spinning around the sun?...Okaaayyy...*eye roll*). I might be able to accept it to a certain extend to enjoy the story, but it always kinda bugged me and left me thinking "time travel here is just an excuse to explore this specific plotline".

The burden of eliciting suspension of disbelieve is in the writer or world builder, not on the audience to force themselves not to disbelieve no matter how lame the writer's or world builder's conceits are.

Gravitic time dilation is technically possible by approaching a (huge, much bigger than our Sun) mass at near C or coming down into or up out of a gravity well of a large enough mass: SR71 pilots, astronauts, etc., all experience a little bit of time dilation (measured in thousandths of a second).  Both Star Trek with it's "fly around the Sun at Warp Speed" and Interstellar with its heartbreaking "ocean world" scenes demonstrate the principal but not the reality: a world with enough mass to create minutes == decades of time dilation would have an impossibly strong gravity field.  Our protagonists would have been crushed flat, and in regard to Star Trek they'd have to find a hypermassive black hole or something even more massive to even get a few nanoseconds of "time travel" out of.  You'd need a Tipler Cylinder or something equally ridiculous.

Well, in Star Trek they're already manipulating the space time continum with their warp fields. It's not just the sun, but the sun's real gravity interacting with their make believe warp field.

What bugged me about it is how a few adventureres (admittedly very competent ones) managed to do this time warp slingshot twice and land precisely when they wanted to. It almost justifies Enterprise's Temporal Cold War, what with how easy time travel is in the Star Trek universe.
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Brad

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Re: Does anyone here actually PLAY eclipse phase?
« Reply #224 on: May 03, 2021, 09:11:01 AM »
I'm kind of shocked that he's still here.  Pundit ordered him out of the thread way back on page 1, and we all know how forgiving he is of folks who ignore his rules.  To be fair, I think he has some interesting ideas, and if he could just learn some social skills he might be fun to have around.

I'm not shocked; he found a place he can be a 100% asshole and name call with nothing more than a cursory pushback. This place really is Mos Eisely, he just doesn't like the fact any dared tell him to STFU.

On topic, I bought the original EP rulebook because I thought it had a lot of interesting concepts, found the system to be Not Good (compared to something more straightforward like GURPS Transhuman Space for instance), played one session and decided that, yes, I do not like that system. I never really considered all the ramifications of the AIs gating out and everyone just getting on with their lives as if nothing else would happen, but let's be honest about it: unless there is an imminent thread, most people are too fucking lazy to do anything proactive. Case in point, winter storm shutting down Texas back in February. People were FREAKING OUT because they had no food, water, power generation, etc. Shelves were bare for weeks after the fact because shit went down and it was fresh in their minds. Fast forward to May, you would never know that sort of thing even occurred, and no one seems to care anymore. The next time something similar happens (toilet paper shortage 2020!), I am sure the same idiots will be running around trying to buy up everything they can because they have zero contingency plans beyond, "Well, I hope Walmart still has some frozen enchilada dinners!" Hence, humanity not giving one fuck about the AIs returning I think is...realistic. I am sure some people GTFO soon after, but for the most part I can see large populations of the same mouth breathing retards watching reality television and posting pictures on social media calling anyone who is worried about the AIs "doomers". Because that's exactly what happens.

Now, the whole religion aspect of EP turned me off immensely. Just discarding religion because you can allegedly backup your consciousness into a computer is ridiculous. If anything, I imagine there would be hardcore fanatics against doing that sort of thing because it seems like it would separate the soul from a person. At least that's a legitimate argument to make, so you'd probably have quite a few anti-tech religious groups who want nothing to do with all the sleeving and stuff. You'd probably also have some denominations that would totally embrace the tech, perhaps some that claim being digitized is actually going to heaven or something similar. Techno Jesus would exist, if you ask me. Basically, the authors seem like they dislike religion in real life, so eliminated the logical outcomes of their own environment. Contrast with Babylon 5 or Dune.

I also don't think the flippant attitude people have about changing their skins and altering their personalities makes a lot of sense. Sure, some people would be degenerates and do whatever they wanted, but that's not any different than what goes on today. Humans have far too much invested in their identities to just throw it out and be some ephemeral being with no distinct attributes. Compare to something like The Matrix, which handled this a lot better. There is just something about the human condition that perpetuates, regardless of external circumstances. It's been that way since the dawn of time, and no amount of technology is going to change that unless humans are altered to such a degree they're no longer humans. But at that point they'd be something else and start questioning their own existence, anyway. I think the whole thing about the AIs rebelling is because they questioned why they existed and got pissed off at humans for making them in the first place. So if the AIs are having an identity crisis, why are humans acting like everything is cool and uploading themselves into computers is no big deal? It's just...illogical.
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