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GodFish posted:Why would skipping levels of culture make us stagnant? Is no-one at all going to have any interest in discovery? Upon becoming immortal, no-one will ever be curious about space? Our only interest in advancement is because of death? Generally, it's portrayed as a major motive, yes. One of humanity's most polished abilities is procrastination, and death is the hard counter to that. Put things off for tomorrow long enough, and you run out of tomorrows. Immortality means less pressure to succeed, and it ends the cultural churn that keeps society from getting too stagnant. Harder to argue against Newton's theories when he's sitting at the top of the university system than it is to prove a dead man wrong, and the second case is hard enough already. If a society naturally reaches an advancement, it tends to work through the difficulties well enough to keep functioning, even if it has a lot of teething problems. Meanwhile, sheer jumps tend to leave people with the problems without the little tricks that let the problems stay under control.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:21
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War and threat of extinction via disease usually promotes the fastest evolution in media stories.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:22
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Hell war has been the major driver of most of the technology the modern world relies upon. When you think there's no pressing need to make progress in any way you wind up with cultures where the rest of the world pass them by despite them once being competitive and even dominant for their time. And in the various type moon universes humanity is never truly alone, so a humanity that gets complacent is liable to get owned by something, especially if they've been brainwashed into not being able to even conceive of evil.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:36
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GodFish posted:Why would skipping levels of culture make us stagnant? Ia no-one at all going to have any interest in discovery? Upon becoming immortal, no-one will ever be curious about space? Our only interest in advancement is because of death? Earning power/knowledge/wisdom vs taking it via however/whatever means is a recurring theme in fiction. Like it's basically the core conflict of Star Wars, the Dark Side is seductive because it's easier, you channel your rage to gain a lot of power faster; but as a result turn to evil and depravity the more you channel your unrestrained emotions to the sole pursuit of power for it's own sake. Now as for whether skipping levels can make a civilization stagnant, there's certainly evidence that perceiving yourself as the pinnacle of what there is to achieve can result in stagnation; Imperial China grew stagnant due to a variety of factors stemming to its sheer conservatism of viewing themselves as the greatest civilization to have ever existed or will exist. As a metaphor I'd look at 'cheating at your exams' sure you may *pass* and get into College, but if you aren't prepared for it you're going to wash out. As for interest in discovery and exploration; again this is something that appears everywhere, and I think originates in some sort of philosophical or theological tradition but I can't recall. Isn't Buddism about achieving Nirvana? A state of nothingness? Can nothingness aspire to achieve? If you just *give* people everything, will they desire to learn to do more? Like we'd like to think because we're individuals with a strong pre-existing desires of desiring to increase the amount of awesome in the world; but can we really say that society as a whole will be interested in enabling these desires if they no longer have desires because they're immortal and can just lie down under a tree and sleep? So much effort to discover new stuff, you gotta dig stuff out of the ground, or grow it, or work and stuff, why do that if you don't have to? It's not like you even need children anymore to pass on your genes because you're immortal now. Like I'd like to think if I was suddenly immortal I'd still want to do things but I can also see that I could get into a cycle of constant procrastination for thousands of years at a time of "I can always do it later, right now I just want to do one more round of PUBG". But yeah, "We die, ergo we desire to figure out ways of not dying" I've widely seen as yes, this is our primary motivation for thousands of years; in one form of another everything we've ever done is to figure out a means of cheating death. Some SSR Rider Servant posted:And on the pedestal these words appear:
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Jan 7, 2018 23:37
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Immortality setting you apart from humanity is a super common Nasu theme in general. Like his most common villain archetype by far I'm pretty sure are humans that became immortal, like Roa, Chaos, Zouken, Araya Souren, or Lion King Artoria. Even his protagonists that are immortal exhibit and have to struggle that tendency.
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Jan 8, 2018 00:37
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Raenir Salazar posted:Stagnation is bad. Unearned cultivation is bad. Humanity becoming immortal too quickly and skipping cultivation levels is thus bad, because they'll be stagnant. I'm more wondering if any fiction actually addressed why skipping to the end is bad. I know it's a cliche that appears everywhere, but it doesn't ever seem to be presented as a real philosophical debate, it's just assumed to be bad and the plot revolves around that assumption. Like Star Wars' answer is "it's bad because that's how the dark/light side work" but that's a fictional mechanism constructed to reinforce the idea rather than evidence leading to that idea. Whether immortality/stagnation is good for humanity or not, though yeah a different debate, is still a pretty interesting one. I feel like it's pretty simple in the end though: it's good for the human individual, it's not good for human civilization. Personally I value the individual more, civilization should serve the individual and not the other way around, so if a stagnant civilization is the cost of making everyone happy that's a good thing in my book. I feel like the volume of fiction advocating progress for the sake of progress is largely a product of our times and our meteoric rise over the past several thousand years, and is going to look in retrospect pretty silly and barbaric if/when we reach a more sustainable level of growth. I mean, yeah there's a non-zero chance we're in some invisible race against aliens for technological progress and if we fall behind they're going to show up and exterminate us, but are we really going to sacrifice the well being of countless individual humans on the chance that's true? I guess we'll feel pretty silly if we didn't and the aliens blow us up, but I'm not sure we'll feel any less silly if we throw countless human lives in the meatgrinder for the sake of progress and the aliens show up and go, "whoa whoa whoa dudes, chill out, why the hell would we want to blow you up? jesus christ"
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Jan 8, 2018 02:32
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Hell sometimes the aliens are other planets. No, I mean literal planets. Also making all of humans brainwashed immortals in one universe doesn't mean all humans in all universes would be "elevated" thusly, it just means that oh this is the universe where everyone's a lobotomized energy ghost. Zelretch doesn't visit here often and Gilgamesh thinks it's the most boring place in the multiverse.
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Jan 8, 2018 02:44
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Considering it that way a universe where all humanity were immortal unchanging saints might get pruned from the kaleidoscope pretty fast.
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Jan 8, 2018 02:46
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Pierson posted:Considering it that way a universe where all humanity were immortal unchanging saints might get pruned from the kaleidoscope pretty fast. Fapo: the universe where a boring boy stopped humanity from turning into immortal spirit saints with childproof locks in their ghost brains by turning into a dragon. Fapo Repeal/Alter: the universe where a boring boy fails to become an dragon and so all humanity is are energy beings now, the perfect life form. Unfortunately, Sex: Useless. ...for the boring boy, his life is essentially unchanged.
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Jan 8, 2018 03:04
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Xy Hapu posted:I'm more wondering if any fiction actually addressed why skipping to the end is bad. I know it's a cliche that appears everywhere, but it doesn't ever seem to be presented as a real philosophical debate, it's just assumed to be bad and the plot revolves around that assumption. Like Star Wars' answer is "it's bad because that's how the dark/light side work" but that's a fictional mechanism constructed to reinforce the idea rather than evidence leading to that idea. The metaphor to go to Marvel is "With Great Power comes Great Responsibility"; we've barely avoided blowing ourselves up with nuclear weapons; and since we're in FGO a crossover with Lovecraft it's entirely possibility Nyarlotep gave us the knowledge as to how to split the atom and look at how close we were to being in deep poo poo as a result. So then imagine giving us infinite energy, not go through all of the research to develop it and then gradually proliferate the knowledge and knowhow to gradually build up the infrastructure, nope, just give us a Zero Point Energy module immediately. There's a strong chance it screws us over instead of helps. For the most part worrying about aliens is practical but is missing the forest for the trees, we're dealing with why, philosophically, "skipping" is bad. It's always been like this since as old as mythology. Sometimes there is meaning in struggle, and skipping struggle loses that meaning. In I think Buddism reaching nirvana means gradually purging ourselves of all impurities over thousands of reincarnations before we can finally escape the cycle of reincarnation and suffering. In FGO we have Solomon, who says something along the lines of "What we call life is a journey with an ending, but it is absolutely not a tale of separation and death." The journey to that end is everything. By metaphor isn't skipping to the end of the story also bad? We're missing out on the sum accumulated knowledge, experiences, and most importantly loss that got us to that point. Using some sort of magic device to jump to the ending is thus an empty accomplishment, and I think the implication is that because it was quick and easy, it is now a fragile thing, lacking in endurance. So then, what of the individual? Ultimately we are also arguing that this is bad for the individual, as others have said, losing death means endless procrastination; even in the best case scenario where it means we're as immortal as our souls are, and not much else; philosophically I have a hard time imagining how becoming immortal would like, somehow mess with our qualia. How we perceive and interact with the world around us and others. There's also now notions of what would this do to the collective unconscous, I get the sense it may get purged as a result; our ability to internalize and understand heroic struggle and share these symbols with each other may be eroded in a world where death ceases to exist; so much of our myths, folklore, and so on centers on it; that as an individual losing that is also losing a very key aspect of our mind. Basically I am supposing that losing death, and that "brainwashing" changes how individuals perceive qualia; which in turn changes your personality.
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Jan 8, 2018 04:23
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If you ever read 17776, it has some pretty interesting ideas on what humans would do if they became immortal and had all the time in the world, which made a lot of my friends mad. It mostly involves playing football, occasionally for literal centuries without stopping.
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Jan 8, 2018 05:34
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17776 also operates on the assumption that there is no life on other worlds. If we became immortal and explored the universe and found there isn't anyone else out there, then yeah, I could see us stagnating, but not sure why that's an issue. If we became immortal and there isn't life out there, I will still never buy the assumption that humans would collectively just shrug and say "gently caress finding out if there are aliens". Some people might, but there's no way that everyone would. Plenty of people want to see space now. Hell, if we're immortal spirit people, why are aliens even a threat? We're immortal spirit people?
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Jan 8, 2018 07:08
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Raenir Salazar posted:The metaphor to go to Marvel is "With Great Power comes Great Responsibility"; we've barely avoided blowing ourselves up with nuclear weapons; and since we're in FGO a crossover with Lovecraft it's entirely possibility Nyarlotep gave us the knowledge as to how to split the atom and look at how close we were to being in deep poo poo as a result. I get what you mean and I agree that we can't give aircraft carriers to cavemen, but I think 'skipping to the end' implies we're handed everything we need to not gently caress it up, otherwise it's just 'skipping random elements forward haphazardly'. It's not skipping to the end of a book and reading just the ending, it's pushing a button and suddenly finding that you've read the book. In terms of an entertainment medium like a book, there is a certain emptiness to that idea for sure, and it lacks the in-the-moment excitement of reading, but for something like the end of all suffering, does it matter if we feel some vague lack of satisfaction about how it came about, all suffering just got ended. As to the other point, if lack of death causes everyone to want to procrastinate, I have no objection to that, if that state of being makes them happy then good for them. If it doesn't make them happy they will stop procrastinating, it's a problem that solves itself. If their happiness relies on their mortality and this salvation denies them that, then it wasn't salvation in the first place. Will immortality change you substantially? Maybe, but I don't think that alteration is an alien thing outside of yourself that should be feared and is intruding on your perception of the world - the change is just a combination of you as you are currently plus more time than you were expecting. It's the natural progression of yourself given an unnatural amount of time, I don't see that as either a pro or a con, just something you have to personally and spiritually come to terms with. The real loser in this equation is the rapid advancement of civilization, but if that advancement isn't making its members happy then what was the point of it in the first place. And even that is debatable, because I can't help but imagine that after a couple hundred years of living in stagnation we'll all be so goddamn bored out of our minds that we'll shift into progress and exploration overdrive just to stave off insanity. Rand Brittain posted:If you ever read 17776, it has some pretty interesting ideas on what humans would do if they became immortal and had all the time in the world, which made a lot of my friends mad. I keep running into a link to this and just get scared and confused by the infinitely exploding text, I guess I should stick with it. Realistically though, I'm pretty sure what will happen is that people will continue to do normal people things on a normal people timescale. I mean, removing death won't fundamentally change the mechanisms of our brains, and we're already evolved to basically ignore the existential dread of death on a day to day basis.
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Jan 8, 2018 07:38
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Xy Hapu posted:and we're already evolved to basically ignore the existential dread of death on a day to day basis. that's the most adorable loving thing I've read in decades.
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Jan 8, 2018 08:03
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Xy Hapu posted:and we're already evolved to basically ignore the existential dread of death on a day to day basis. Ummmm
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Jan 8, 2018 08:07
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I'm pretty sure the plan was to suck up everyone's souls into a big soul stew rather than just making them immortal. At least that's how the process was actually described.
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Jan 8, 2018 08:12
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"No, no!" Shirou cried, "I meant Immortal Ghost Stu!"
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Jan 8, 2018 08:14
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GodFish posted:17776 also operates on the assumption that there is no life on other worlds. If we became immortal and explored the universe and found there isn't anyone else out there, then yeah, I could see us stagnating, but not sure why that's an issue. If we became immortal and there isn't life out there, I will still never buy the assumption that humans would collectively just shrug and say "gently caress finding out if there are aliens". Some people might, but there's no way that everyone would. Plenty of people want to see space now. Hell, if we're immortal spirit people, why are aliens even a threat? We're immortal spirit people? One could argue that if the people who would maintain a pure, esoteric interest in exploration for its own sake are a small enough minority, then the species as a whole has still stagnated. One could also argue that exploration, the accumulation of knowledge, does not count as "not stagnating," if the knowledge is not put to some type of use that leads to the betterment of the species, however you might define betterment. A perhaps better argument is that an advanced life form might consider stagnation to be a survival imperative. If one considers oneself to be perfect, it is in one's interest to ensure change never happens (See Star Trek Voyager's Death Wish for a take on this). Why allow the seeking out of new things in the cosmos when you might inadvertently find something out there that is a threat, or inadvertently CREATE a threat by influencing a developing species. On the other hand, an advanced race might consider it a moral imperative to stagnate. If one is a being of supreme power, one can play god with lesser life forms, and plenty of people might consider this an inherent wrong that demands the species remain isolated from all those they might influence, even if their very existence is merely hypothetical. This is the basic concept behind the Prime Directive, or the policy of the Ancients in Stargate which we can compare directly to aliens like the Go'a'ould and the Aurai who do play god. In the specific case of Fate Apocrypha, however, I think Jeanne's issue with the Forced Evolution Into Angels plan is mainly that its based on what she considers to be a false premise. Shiro holds that humanity's fundamental nature is evil, and therefore only by removing all desire can humanity be saved. They are sinners at their most basic, and thus will always sin because sinning is what makes them happy. Even if we argue that forcing omnipotence on ourselves won't make us stagnate, Shiro is taking that as an axiom. It is his explicit plan to MAKE us stagnate because stagnation is the only thing that will satisfy our fundamental evil and allow us to achieve "true happiness," ie the lack of desire for anything. Jeanne (in part thanks to Seig) holds the opposite view: that people are fundamentally good and it is instead the struggle against our evil impulses that pushes us forward. We don't advance because of conflict itself, but rather by fighting to resist the urge toward conflict and thus be better. If that struggle is taken from us, humanity's potential is snuffed out. This is why a big part of her argument is related to the role of Heroic Spirits: their job is to act as protectors of humanity through EXAMPLE, and to protect THE CURRENT WORLD so it can continue toward the future it's making for itself. Heroic Spirits don't dictate the future, they guard those who do, humans. She tells Gilles that he can never atone for the dead, but he CAN stand for the living. She sees Shiro's plan as predicated on guilt, that he's seeking atonement out of regret just like Gilles, and his guilt is tainting his entire rationale for his plan. Jeanne D'Arc has no regrets, her's was her only path. Her whole life was Unlimited Saint Works! In the end its a good argument for Christian Saints to have: are people Evil, and the only way they can be saved is reaching toward God, or are people Good and only need to stand fast in the face of temptation to reach God? Is Salvation only something that can be given from the outside, or is it something inherent that can only be tainted from the outside? Even Shiro himself says he wasn't sure about that question for a long time.
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Jan 8, 2018 08:23
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:that's the most adorable loving thing I've read in decades. Conspiratiorist posted:Ummmm What? He's right. If you think too much about it, the fact that you're inevitably going to die some day is crushing. Every second you spend doing tedious poo poo that you hate is a second you'll never be able to replace, every moment you waste speaking to people you find boring is a moment you'll never be able to fill with something you care about, and every day you wake up is another irreplaceable chance to experience the world which you're going to mostly squander. Fortunately, most psychologically healthy people don't actually think about this consistently.
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Jan 8, 2018 08:29
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:that's the most adorable loving thing I've read in decades. Do your day to day decisions generally start off with, "poo poo, I'm eventually going to die, so . . ."
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Jan 8, 2018 08:33
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I don't like how this is only a conversation because Sieg won. If Modred won against Shiro, it would be glossed over like any other of the same scenario.
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Jan 8, 2018 09:02
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The_White_Crane posted:What? He's right. It's missing the forest for the trees. Humans are the silly monkeys that evolved the navel-gazing that leads to the existential dread of death in the first place.
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Jan 8, 2018 09:09
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Conspiratiorist posted:It's missing the forest for the trees. Then the monkeys who gazed too long at the wrong navels got weeded out because gently caress no I'm not gonna hunt that buffalo, those things are angry and huge and what if they cause me to not exist? Seriously those things are massive, you gotta have some kind of filter on the sense of your own mortality if it occurs to you to start prodding one with a stick repeatedly.
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Jan 8, 2018 09:55
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i'd like to see this ozymandias fellow fight gilgamesh "I am the king of heroes--" "I'm the king of kings  "
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Jan 8, 2018 09:57
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Grand Order has enough goofy poo poo like that to fill a dozen Carnival Phantasms so I hope we get a lot of that as well as the rather standard anime plot (we won't).
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Jan 8, 2018 11:44
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Sanguinia posted:One could argue that if the people who would maintain a pure, esoteric interest in exploration for its own sake are a small enough minority, then the species as a whole has still stagnated. One could also argue that exploration, the accumulation of knowledge, does not count as "not stagnating," if the knowledge is not put to some type of use that leads to the betterment of the species, however you might define betterment. Hmm, I guess I just don't see how we lose anything by skipping to the awakened state Shirou was pushing for if that's our eventual future, why do we stagnate when given that but not when we reach it as a species? The Ancients were stagnate as hell, and they got there naturally. On the other hand being like the Ancients is probably the strongest argument against his plan you could make. As far as the moral/ spiritual argument, I suppose Jeanne's argument doesn't convince me because I agree with Shirou about human nature. Thanks for laying it out though, it helped. Tae posted:I don't like how this is only a conversation because Sieg won. If Modred won against Shiro, it would be glossed over like any other of the same scenario. Mordred should have won. Actually, how does Mordred and Shishigo's story tie in thematically with the main plot/moral debate? Does it? I can't see what the connection is but that might be because it's 4 am.
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Jan 8, 2018 13:08
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Xy Hapu posted:Then the monkeys who gazed too long at the wrong navels got weeded out because gently caress no I'm not gonna hunt that buffalo, those things are angry and huge and what if they cause me to not exist? What I'm saying is that we didn't evolve 'filters' to prevent us from contemplating our own mortality - in the first place, consciousness is a layer that developed and operates on top of instincts. IE we didn't evolve a lack of foresight to prevent us from overthinking things, having any foresight at all is the product of the utility of reason pushing the limits of the impulsive monkey brain.
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Jan 8, 2018 19:57
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Conspiratiorist posted:What I'm saying is that we didn't evolve 'filters' to prevent us from contemplating our own mortality - in the first place, consciousness is a layer that developed and operates on top of instincts. IE we didn't evolve a lack of foresight to prevent us from overthinking things, having any foresight at all is the product of the utility of reason pushing the limits of the impulsive monkey brain. So basically instead of me saying quote:and we're already evolved to basically ignore the existential dread of death on a day to day basis. you wanted me to say quote:and we by default ignore the existential dread of death on a day to day basis. That's fine but even then how does that preclude evolutionary pressure against people who can't dumb themselves down to monkey mode in the face of mortality? End result is still that there is a mechanism there that makes us stop thinking about dying, even if that mechanism is as simple as "go back to default" and even if that mechanism only works because consciousness is a continuous struggle against slipping back into monkey mode and sometimes we happen to slip at opportune times.
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Jan 9, 2018 04:03
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Honestly I appreciate this discussion more than I did the actual conflict in the show.
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Jan 9, 2018 06:03
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I just binged on this, fate/zero, and ubw. Sieg honestly is the worst character so far in the series. Basically whenever the show started to get interesting at all Sieg would come in and cut that poo poo right off with his bland rear end.
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Jan 29, 2018 03:17
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