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I think that there is another difference between Helios and the Illuminati beyond "one ruler instead of a group of people" and that's that it doesn't seem like Helios requires secrecy. If the Illuminati steps out of the shadows they lose some of their power, but there's no reason Helios can't reveal itself to the world. The ability to be transparent just feels more ethical to me, and I don't like the idea of being tricked into thinking I have some sort of free agency through voting or whatever. I would prefer whoever is in control to just tell me instead of manipulating me without my knowledge if I don't have a choice anyways.
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Oct 28, 2014 08:02
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I really don't understand how Tong's ending is supposed to be taken seriously. Smaller settlements and fewer people doesn't provide more freedom, it provides less. The fewer people are around, the easier it is to observe them and make sure that the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Even leaving aside deliberate oppression, the fewer people are around, the less specialization is possible. I would argue that specialization allows for more freedom, since it means there's more stuff that you, personally, don't have to do, but can instead get someone else to do for you. Presuming you have the money and/or connections for it, of course. The assumption that Tong is trying to set himself up as a local warlord might make slightly more sense, but it doesn't get around his arguments being piss-poor. Going with the Illuminati is pretty much just an attempt to go back to the status quo before Page. Better than Tong's ending, sure, but that's not much of an accomplishment. I suppose the Helios ending is ultimately a gamble. It's the hope that one or two people with near-perfect information can make the best possible choices. Maybe they can, for humanity as a whole. But an important part of politics is about the distribution of goods, where you can't really make sure you benefit everyone. Even if Helios/JC are consistently able to achieve pareto improvements, that doesn't really do much to adress existing inequalities. Going with the Helios ending is probably a better bet than the Illuminati, though, despite the problems involved.
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Oct 28, 2014 09:18
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I personally wouldn't mind a computer ruling the Earth as long as I was firm in knowledge that no man could possibly influence its neutrality. Human politicians are too often prone to whims and abuses of power. It has actually reduced my sister and made her withdraw from politics entirely, so there's that.
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Oct 28, 2014 10:06
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Mordaedil posted:I personally wouldn't mind a computer ruling the Earth as long as I was firm in knowledge that no man could possibly influence its neutrality. The problem with the Helios ending as presented in Deus Ex (Invisible war was actually a bit better about this) is that the AI loving lies, straight in your face, when it tries to convince you why you should let it do what it wants. It says it has "no ambition" while trying to convince you to help it betray its current leader to obtain power over the entire world. I don't know Helios, that sounds like ambition to me.
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Oct 28, 2014 10:29
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evilmiera posted:The problem with the Helios ending as presented in Deus Ex (Invisible war was actually a bit better about this) is that the AI loving lies, straight in your face, when it tries to convince you why you should let it do what it wants. Sounds to me like you just want him to clarify what he means by not having any ambition. Motivation and ambition are different, and he's motivated to not be guided by Bob Page, but holds no real ambition in trying to usurp power over the world. He's already been given that on a silver platter and is just trying to make the best of it. From one point of view.
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Oct 28, 2014 11:38
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Red_October_7000 posted:And Bobbin, read Neuromancer for crying out loud. If you can wrap your head around Umberto Eco, you can probably finish Neuromancer in an afternoon. Finally bought my own copy of Neuromancer a while ago and re-read it recently. Despite it's age, which only really shows in a couple of places, the book is still absolutely amazing. Probably should've picked up the others when I had the chance. Some day I'll actually get around reading Spook Country. Some day. 
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Oct 28, 2014 12:30
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I think that the lecture aspect of the LP was really interesting, if a little unfoucsed at times. Still, it was a really good LP, up there with Research Indicates' Trespasser LP.
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Oct 28, 2014 13:10
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I like that you went all the way up the stairs to reopen the Aquinas door instead of using multitools and then ended up with 18 of those left in your inventory. Even in the final area it's hard to let go of the video game hoarder mentality. Other than that, there's not much left to say. I had a lot of fun watching the LP and it's obvious that you spent a ton of effort on it. Thanks for all the hard work.
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Oct 28, 2014 13:25
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Mordaedil posted:I personally wouldn't mind a computer ruling the Earth as long as I was firm in knowledge that no man could possibly influence its neutrality. Counterpoint: there must be some sort of control, and decisions cannot be purely logical but must be influenced by feelings and emotions. To make an extreme example: eugenics. Should Helios decide to institute mandatory genetic sequencing for everybody, and then mandatory sterilization for everyone whose children could have genetic diseases, by pure logic he would be perfectly right in that it would benefit humanity in the long run. But gently caress that, eugenics is a horrible thing that should never be seriously considered.
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Oct 28, 2014 13:43
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg
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Oct 28, 2014 14:38
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Mikl posted:Counterpoint: there must be some sort of control, and decisions cannot be purely logical but must be influenced by feelings and emotions. You people have all been brought up by media telling you that a machine is a cold, unsympathetic machine that does not consider human beings and miss out on the great strength of the machine; it is neutral to human concerns. That may seem like a contradiction, but consider your own example. You think the logical solution to genetic diseases would be eugenics. Why are you making this conclusion? It is what you consider logical. You consider it horrible, but justified by logic. But I don't think a machine would see it the same way. A machine would see it as hampering human prosperity at the benefit of undetermined consequence. A machine would rather seek a way to nullify the source of the genetic disease and not just go into "these people no longer deserve to live" mode right away. That is how a human thinks, not really what a machine would conclude with. A machine given reign to rule mankind wouldn't be programmed with the intent to also wipe them out, or even wipe out a part of them, it would try to solve all conflicts and increase standards of living equally. Basically, what I am saying is that machines being driven by pure logic is an overrated myth.
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Oct 28, 2014 14:55
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Mordaedil posted:A machine given reign to rule mankind wouldn't be programmed with the intent to also wipe them out, or even wipe out a part of them, it would try to solve all conflicts and increase standards of living equally. It's great until the point where strict utilitarianism determines that you're the one who needs to be sacrificed for the greater good.
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Oct 28, 2014 15:19
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"What it means for something to be morally right is just for it to be approved of".
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Oct 28, 2014 15:53
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Mordaedil posted:Sounds to me like you just want him to clarify what he means by not having any ambition. Motivation and ambition are different, and he's motivated to not be guided by Bob Page, but holds no real ambition in trying to usurp power over the world. He's already been given that on a silver platter and is just trying to make the best of it. Isn't motivation to not be ruled by someone else the definition of ambition, more or less? Also he hasn't got complete power over stuff yet, but is hoping to attain that via JC's aid. He's only controlling bits and pieces so far.
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Oct 28, 2014 16:08
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What I would like to know is how the internet got centralized in the first place, since as far as I know decentralization is one of the most important features of it, ever since it's inception. Tong's ending shows how monumentally dumb and irresponsible it is to have the whole world's information infrastructure routed through a single hub. Mikl posted:Counterpoint: there must be some sort of control, and decisions cannot be purely logical but must be influenced by feelings and emotions. Funny thing about what you said is, a lot of people thought eugenics was a good idea exactly because they let their feelings and emotions guide their decision making. Remember that one german guy? 
Dragonwagon fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Oct 28, 2014 |
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Oct 28, 2014 16:20
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"A corpse. Yes. You feel something. I must know what you are feeling." Helios knows it's not the ideal ruler of the world. It only has pure cold logic to work with. Merging with a human would provide the point of view he is lacking, emotions. This would allow him to understand humans, enabling him to become the ideal ruler. So no killing the poor or rounding up the dwarves.
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Oct 28, 2014 16:26
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Considering that JC is pretty much emotionless, maybe he's not the best choice. Not that Bob Page is any better. Paul would be more appropriate.
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Oct 28, 2014 16:39
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Monni posted:"A corpse. Yes. You feel something. I must know what you are feeling." The irony being that this, the 14th or so murdered soldier or engineer, is no tragedy; just another source of loot to the player. Fit that into your algorithm, God-Emperor Helios.
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Oct 28, 2014 16:44
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Morroque posted:The only thing I keep thinking about Deus Ex as it goes on is how huge it is. There is simply no way a game like this could be made today. The size and complexity of it all is severely impressive. I feel sad that my computer is too advanced to play the game today without the game loop running on hyperspeed. 
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Oct 28, 2014 16:52
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With regards to the discussion about Bobbin's positions on reality, I think probably one of the biggest errors in reasoning I see regularly is the misunderstanding that scientific measurement and study, for all the good it's done us, is still inductive, not deductive. In a world that increasingly moves away from religion, spirituality, etc. etc. and values more and more the metrics over the experience, this is a problem. Science, at best, points an indicator towards truth. It might show us a sign of truth, or a symbol of truth. We may, through scientific inquiry, approximate truth. But we cannot ever, through the scientific method, deduce truth. There is no absolute truth to be found in symbols, just as a railroad crossing sign only indicates that there might be a railroad crossing, but it cannot prove it. Science helps us to refine our understanding of reality, and it helps us to make predictions that allow us to improve our technology and our ability to affect reality, but at the end of the day, the question, to me, comes down to what we value more as "real." For a long time, I grew up believing in an objective reality, and I still do of course. But I don't know that an objective reality corresponds to an objective truth. Ultimately, the sun might burn out, as a million stars already have, but if there's not a living being to experience it, it's inconsequential, and perhaps not even true. I mean, truth is a value, it's a state we attribute to things, but every attribution requires someone to attribute, and the ability to meaningfully communicate that attribution state. What is truth? It's a complicated question, but I don't suspect it's a question we'll find an answer to through scientific inquiry. We can determine small truths, "people can see red," but this is not meaningful in a void. After all, Mary the super-scientist can know everything there is to know about wavelengths of light and dictionary definitions, but until she has actually seen red, she knows nothing about the experience of red. In what way does she know red, then? If I've read everything there is to read about a place, but have never been there, I really have no direct knowledge of that place. Let's say Niagara Falls. I can see photos, watch videos, eat, think, sleep, and dream of Niagara Falls, but until I've been there, I know nothing at all about the Falls, I only know what I have read, studied, seen footage of, etc. And, importantly, those things aren't the Falls. In a world where we have near instant access to media about so many things, it's easy to mistake the photo for the object. Baudrillard said a lot of crazy things, but one thing Baudrillard made a lot of sense about in Simulacra and Simulation is how easily we mistake the symbol for the thing. You can ask someone to describe Jesus, or describe Beethoven, or describe any number of people from the past, and many of us can. If I say "picture Napoleon," you get a mental image, but you have never seen Napoleon, you've only ever seen a representation of Napoleon. And not only that, but with, for example, Jesus, not even the artist has seen Jesus! Anybody who draws a representation of Jesus is either creating his conception from whole cloth, or representing a representation, to the point that the thing itself is no more. Nobody has seen or experienced a quark, because we lack that ability. We have all seen or experienced machines that tell us there is a quark, but that's not the same thing, just like if I show you a picture of a Beatles' concert, you've still never seen the Beatles in concert. Even if you watch a movie, in surround sound, of the Beatles in concert, you still don't have the experience of the Beatles concert, you have the experience of watching that movie. They're distinct, and different, but in our minds we're quick to blur them. As the LP points out, none of us have the experience of listening to Bobbin talk about these things, we have only the experience of listening to a video online that represents Bobbin talking about a thing. So the question, to my mind, isn't about whether or not there's an objective reality, but rather, how we experience that reality, how we interface with it. Increasingly as a society, we love metrics and measurement, even when people run, they take little machines to count their steps and heartrate and distance and time and so on and so on, to the point where if it's not documented, it's as if it didn't happen. We live in a world of "pics or it didn't happen." But when we live our lives that way, we miss out on the actual experience of life. And that, to me, is what's actually real. I know the sun burns at temperatures I cannot conceive of eight light minutes away, but to me, the sun is still warmth and light through the window, not some sphere of burning gas and plasma. And in fact, it is that to everyone, every single person, because even the most learned astronomer in the world has never experienced the sun as a sphere of burning gas and plasma, they've always experienced it as a distant source of light. The light I see from the stars at night started its journey to me before humanity itself existed, but that's not what's real. What's real is the beauty and majesty of a starlit night, the tapestry of lights against the darkness. To me, that's real, and all the talk of light years and burning gases? That's just something we've added to the experience. And it might be different to you! But that's your reality, and it cannot be mine, because our experiences are distinct, and our experiences shape what we do to that information, and what we do to that information? That's all we can actually experience. That's our reality.
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Oct 28, 2014 17:33
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fool_of_sound posted:It's great until the point where strict utilitarianism determines that you're the one who needs to be sacrificed for the greater good. Why would anyone need to be sacrificed? For what greater good? You are presenting a scenario that need not exist.
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Oct 28, 2014 17:38
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I've always been favorable to the Tong ending. But I also never really thought so much about the direct implications and subtext of Tong specifically asking you to do it. I think conceptually it could be as viable a solution as any of the others. In this world, most of he systems that we rely on today to provide for people have been so corrupted that they at least function sub-optimally. It kinda feels like the Tyler Durden ending. Just blow it up and reset. The corruption has gone too deep and it can't be saved. I really think it's the fault of the writing that the ending is painted into a corner of Tong basically being greedy. But yes in context of the game, that's just a horrible choice.
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Oct 28, 2014 18:05
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Also consider that people in this universe also live with nanomachines that most of the population already has in their bodies because of the gray death. What's to say that Helios can't reprogram it or manufacture a different good virus to eliminate other diseases instead.
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Oct 28, 2014 18:06
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Mordaedil posted:Why would anyone need to be sacrificed? For what greater good? You are presenting a scenario that need not exist. "There is a massive famine due to the effects of global warming that I was powerless to stop; I can only healthily feed 90% of the population, who do I allow to starve?"
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Oct 28, 2014 18:10
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fool_of_sound posted:"There is a massive famine due to the effects of global warming that I was powerless to stop; I can only healthily feed 90% of the population, who do I allow to starve?" I agree with you about the dangers of utilitarianism, but Helios has a universal constructor. We don't know what the necessary ingredients are, but we do know he can produce organic matter essentially ex nihilo, so producing food can't be that complicated.
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Oct 28, 2014 18:17
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And not just organic matter, but living beings hellbent on eating JC's rear end. Pumping out protein shakes and vitamin pills shouldn't be that tough.
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Oct 28, 2014 19:50
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fool_of_sound posted:"There is a massive famine due to the effects of global warming that I was powerless to stop; I can only healthily feed 90% of the population, who do I allow to starve?" Well every other government we've had so far would answer "the poor, and also let's only feed 80% so that I can be absolutely sure I have enough for myself and all my friends". So I don't see how Helios would be any worse. Helios also has the potential to deal with global warming a lot better than human governments as well. I mean it'd have to be, it's an AI with access to almost all available information, nanotechnology, and three UCs. evilmiera posted:Isn't motivation to not be ruled by someone else the definition of ambition, more or less? Also he hasn't got complete power over stuff yet, but is hoping to attain that via JC's aid. He's only controlling bits and pieces so far. Wanting to be merged with JC instead of Bob Page isn't a sign of ambition, it's a sign of good judgement.  Marker17501 posted:Considering that JC is pretty much emotionless, maybe he's not the best choice. JC isn't emotionless at all though? He expresses emotions (poorly) plenty of times throughout the game.
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Oct 28, 2014 19:59
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paragon1 posted:
Says you, who wouldn't want to hear "Old Men" in their minds every day of the week?
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Oct 28, 2014 20:03
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Paramemetic posted:I agree with you about the dangers of utilitarianism, but Helios has a universal constructor. We don't know what the necessary ingredients are, but we do know he can produce organic matter essentially ex nihilo, so producing food can't be that complicated. TBH I forgot about the UC. Yeah, going post-scarcity basically makes Helios' ending the best, even if the AI is otherwise flawed.
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Oct 28, 2014 20:13
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Paramemetic posted:I agree with you about the dangers of utilitarianism, but Helios has a universal constructor. We don't know what the necessary ingredients are, but we do know he can produce organic matter essentially ex nihilo, so producing food can't be that complicated. Okay, so it'll have piles of supertwinkies falling out all over the place, but how do you get them anywhere useful? Distribution is going to be a problem. There's 3 UCs under Area 51, but the surface of Area 51 took a nuke, so it's going to be dangerous to transport food stuffs out of for a while. There's one in the ocean lab, but it's at the bottom of the ocean. I think the Versalife UC in Hong Kong got blowed up, didn't it? So that just leaves the X-51 UC at Vandenberg that's viable for production and relatively easy distribution. But it's clear out in California, so it's a cross-country trek to get anything out to the East Coast. But then, if we have Jock's helicopter doing delivery runs... So unless J.C. Helios can see the famine coming, and start building UCs as major distribution hubs, or do something else to prepare for easy transportation of food goods out of a UC to all over the country, it's going to be a while to ramp up the distribution, which means people dying until you get that all sorted out.
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Oct 28, 2014 20:36
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Mordaedil posted:I personally wouldn't mind a computer ruling the Earth as long as I was firm in knowledge that no man could possibly influence its neutrality. You might want to check out the previous and current seasons of Person Of Interest, which delve into this very question. While they haven't made a position just yet, the fact that the main characters (one of them being a super genius AI programmer) are opposed to this should provide some insight into where it's going.
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Oct 28, 2014 20:38
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Use a UC to make a thousand UCs, all problems solved. Still problems? Nano There's only so much common sense you can - or should - bring to scifi (even "hard" ) before the hand-waving gets a bit embarrassing.
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Oct 28, 2014 20:48
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Iretep posted:Using water as a coolant is the most common way to cool down nuclear reactors from what I remember. To my understanding there isn't any significant advantage as far as effectiveness and safety goes to use other types of coolant. Water is easy to get, cheap and probably has the simplest way to administer the cool down. It is common to use water, yes (both light and heavy types), but there are many other possible coolants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_metal_cooled_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor One of my favorites is liquid sodium, which just screams "bad idea." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant quote:On December 8, 1995, the reactor suffered a serious accident. Intense vibration caused a thermowell inside a pipe carrying sodium coolant to break, possibly at a defective weld point, allowing several hundred kilograms of sodium to leak out onto the floor below the pipe. Upon contact with air, the liquid sodium reacted with oxygen and moisture in the air, filling the room with caustic fumes and producing temperatures of several hundred degrees Celsius. The heat was so intense that it warped several steel structures in the room.[7] An alarm sounded around 7:30 p.m., switching the system over to manual operations, but a full operational shutdown was not ordered until around 9:00 p.m., after the fumes were detected. When investigators located the source of the spill they found as much as three tons of solidified sodium. 
KillHour fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Oct 28, 2014 |
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Oct 28, 2014 21:18
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Yet still, nothing is better to pipe away heat than a liquid metal.
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Oct 28, 2014 21:27
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I like the fact that all three endings of this game have some appeal but are yet all obviously sub-optimal. Personally, the only ending I do not favour is the Tong ending. As several other people have said I don't share the hope that hitting the reset button will lead to a vastly different outcome in the long run, or at the very least that it is the act which is the most likely to promote a beneficial change in societal outlook. That said there are plenty of people who think that hitting the reset button is indeed the best solution even today. That it will free us of all the old baggage dragging us down. I (as I made it clear) believe that the baggage will be carried by us through a disaster like that. The killer for me though is that the short term costs in terms of loss of life etc would be huge. Of the final two options I think the least worse can certainly be debated but on the balance of things I think the ambiguous manipulation behind the scenes of the Illuminati is less likely to draw immediate opposition and more likely to allow for for a certain amount of diversity than an omniscient all judging overmind, especially one guided by the tastes and outlook of a single person. I do value diversity highly. This is in part because I do think finding the best solution for everything is really difficult and many things involve trade-offs which are difficult to assess ahead of time. I also value it because different people do in fact value different things and one solution will not fit all people. As much as some people would like there to be a single objectively best solutions for all the little challenges and choices that life sends our way that is not how we apparently work. There is another interesting question about the Helios ending though. How much of a "human" outlook would JC actually be able to give to Helios once he has merged with the machine? The way he perceives the world would have changed immensely from the way he perceived it before and I personally think that the strengths and limitations of our perception are very much part of what makes us human; along with all the glands, pumps, chemicals which are part of us but we rarely consider how they affect us. As an aside, I much preferred the ending (and build up to the ending) of this game than DX:HR's. As bare bones as the fleshing out of the consequences of the endings here are they are essentially nonexistent in DX:HR and the build-up is sparse as well.
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Oct 28, 2014 22:51
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Wa11y posted:Okay, so it'll have piles of supertwinkies falling out all over the place, but how do you get them anywhere useful? Distribution is going to be a problem. There's 3 UCs under Area 51, but the surface of Area 51 took a nuke, so it's going to be dangerous to transport food stuffs out of for a while. There's one in the ocean lab, but it's at the bottom of the ocean. I think the Versalife UC in Hong Kong got blowed up, didn't it? So that just leaves the X-51 UC at Vandenberg that's viable for production and relatively easy distribution. But it's clear out in California, so it's a cross-country trek to get anything out to the East Coast. But then, if we have Jock's helicopter doing delivery runs... All the other endings would have the exact same problems or worse, so what?
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Oct 28, 2014 22:55
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This isn't exactly breaking ground here, but I think Helios is the better option here. Better, not best. Tong's ending is freedom so complete it supercedes everything, and such individualism was never really human. And Everett's ending, as mentioned doesn't really solve anything, it puts the few in control of the many, the only thing changing being who's in control. In my youth I chose Tong's way, because in my naiveté I empathized with his desire to escape authority and didn't really consider what that would cost, but now, both the destroy and rule ending seem needlessly nihilistic to me. Why is it necessary to destroy the past/accept the present to be happy. Helios, at least looks forward by presenting a new solution that hasn't been tried, and I really think it's on to something. This is not going to make me a lot of friend here, but... I am interested in the direction that the sequel, Invisible War, took with the Helios ending. In IW, when you find JC/Helios again, his plan is not to rule as a dictator himself, but rather to turn to the people instead; he wants to create a real democracy in which everyone gets a say in how the world is run. Of course, that game took that ending in the least interesting direction possible (as it did with every ending, really; heck, 2 endings are more or less straight copies of the ones in this game!) by making us all a hive mind, which I felt sad about, because I really think it was making a lot of really salient points. How can the few rule over the many; how can the white man in Massachusetts know anything about what some girl living in the Sudan really needs to live and survive? If there was a machine who could read peoples minds (not control or join together, but read) and find out what they want, and then directs the resources of the world without fear or favor according to these wants, well... it seems to me we'd get rid of a lot of problems in the world right off the bat. The food of the world could be directed to the hungry without inconveniencing the wealthy, universities and schools could be constructed near population centers and would never want for materials, crimes would be stopped before they start because the would-be criminals have already been identified and their problems addressed...it could truly be a level playing field. Instead of a world of individuals, we'd be a world of communities, and no one would be alone. Of course, this too is an incomplete solution, and assumes that every right thinking human just wants to be happy, that they just want a nice place to live, to have a healthy family, to follow their dreams. It assumes that evil happens because of a lack of opportunity or resources, and doesn't take into account the other parts of humanity: greed, fear, hatred, sadism, sociopathology, even plain ol' ambition. Science has proven multiple times that a thing that makes people comfortable is being ahead of other people; some studies have even shown that we will in fact forgo a greater amount of wealth and prosperity if we know our neighbor gets even less. If we are such creatures, would we really be satisfied with a unified social strata, even if that strata is one where everyone wins? So maybe in the end there is no solution to the problems that surmount the world. And that's the ending these games need, but don't really have as of yet: option to say "gently caress you" to all of the participants and leave humanity to its own path. (yes, I am aware of a similar ending in human Revolution, but I really wouldn't call that satisfying.)
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Oct 28, 2014 23:02
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A bit late, but a quick note on the video: You wonder why the MJ12 troopers have started killing everyone else. I assumed this was due to Vandenburg now being able to produce the vaccine; MJ12's control of the government seems to be based on the fact that they've infected the president and other politicians with the black death and are demanding cooperation in exchange for the ambrosia, but now that someone else can produce it they probably realize they're hours away from losing all their influence and having the government turn on them. In fact, as I recall Page refers to the whole merge deal as plan c; it's his backup plan for taking over the world now that the real plan is crumbling all around. Back to the endings, I wasn't as quick to trust Helios as everyone else apparently was. He clearly has ambition and the capacity for betrayal; witness how he decides to merge with JC instead of Page simply because Page isn't ready yet. He'll use JC's humanity to accomplish his goals, most likely, but how much say JC will have in the process, and just how good/bad a world ruled by an unaccountable machine god will be for humanity are seriously up for debate. And, well, Everett is clearly going to betray you the moment he sees an advantage in it. It's pretty clear from all your interactions with him that he should never be trusted. He has the advantage of not being cruel like Page, but other than that is basically just replacing one dictator with another. But so is the Helios ending; They're basically just variations on each other, IMHO. If you want absolute power in your character's hands, go with Helios, if you want more distributed power go with the Illuminati. Either way, hope you don't get betrayed. So, the Dark Age ending is the only one where I trusted others to be honest with you. Of course, it's also the least palatable ending as far as absolute results; you are quite likely to die, and destroying global communications and the power grid will almost certainly kill millions, if not far more. And as pointed out, it wont last forever; unless humanity is able to change it'll all happen again sooner or later. I still went with the Dark Age ending, though, since I'm pretty anti-absolute dictator.
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Oct 29, 2014 00:12
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I choose the Illuminati when I was a child and I would choose them again. There is possibly a little fear of the unknown in my decision making but mostly I am very content with the status quo. I live in a prosperous first world nation, in my childhood I have both been very poor and approaching whatever the 1% is. I had excellent public schools, good friends, pleasant and polite authority figures (police, health workers, politicians, etc) and I have never felt that life was unfair. I can't empathize with anyone who think our institutions are broken and would like to see them broken apart. I have a very sunny disposition and even in my worst depression days I never felt like life was not going to get better. So considering all this, I would probably be the most loyal soldier in the Illuminati.
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Oct 29, 2014 00:20
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KillHour posted:It is common to use water, yes (both light and heavy types), but there are many other possible coolants. Or the Japanese plant that was blazing off ( signing, but not performing ) their maintenance and experienced a sodium loop to steam loop rupture resulting in a steam/hydrogen explosion. That was in the mid- to late-00's because I was working in a light water reactor at the time.
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Oct 29, 2014 00:42
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