Capsuleer Infomorph Mishaps - Transhumanist Problems

Is the betterment of industry such an inherently wholesome thing, either?

… Leaving that aside, sir, I don’t think the best soldiers are socio- or psycho- pathic. Of course you need people to be able to pull the trigger, but, unless you want such an awful thing as war getting even more awful, you might be better served by those who are aware of the compromises they make, and make them with open eyes, than by those for whom nothing valuable is at stake when they choose to open fire-- even if it’s on lifeboats, surrendering troops, civilians, or their own people.

War may be a playground for such people. I don’t think that makes them better soldiers, though.

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I personally would argue that, as Industry allows the betterment of people’s living conditions, the expansion and improvement of it is a moral good, much like the expansion and improvement of things like law and security. But it’s a more complex issue than that, and I respect you at least pointing out the flawed comparison. Perhaps I should have suggested using Capsuleer tech for rescue missions, or for deep space exploration as a more apt “non-violent” comparison.

I recall a quote from one of my advisers here, that I think quite apt for the situation “The first casualty of war should be compassion for the enemy”, and it has served me well in my time in combat. If you’re worried about how awful it would be to starve someone to death, you’re less likely to start cutting their routes of supply or poisoning their wells. Perhaps that’s just efficiency, but I know many who would call that sociopathy.

And, beyond that, look into history, as ancient as you want - How many leaders or generals tried to do something like this, to create soldiers who would never disobey orders and take pleasure in slaughter? With the psychosurgery that capsuleer and transhuman technology affords them, it would be a tempting option to those in charge I’d wager.

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Personally I’d call ruthless tactics, “ruthless tactics,” sir. They’re often cruel; also, often effective. That last is reason enough for me to consider them worth considering, and, I’m maybe not awful at coming up with them. Happily I don’t have to very often.

There was a time when I was afraid I might really be “faking it” at empathy (even to myself), but, no, I’m not, so, I just have to run with the usual extensive set of tools humans have for getting them to do awful stuff to each other.

It’s pretty effective.

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The Federation has Liberalism.

The Empire has God.

The State? The State has anime and memes.

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That’s … a bizarre statement. From you particularly. It sounds more like a State critique of the Federation: that its cultural identities and alleged diversity-- even the Gallentean culture itself-- all melt away into an empty and ultimately nihilistic “popular culture.”

What are you trying to do, Veik?

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Wars are not just fought with guns and bullets, Aria. Wars exist on a broad spectrum.

Consider:

Humans are a visual species. If it were not so, visual art would not be so prevalent in human cultures ever since the discovery of being able to daub colours on rock walls.

The Caldari State exists as a corporate society – do you know what corporations are really good at? Advertising. Do you know what is the preferred medium of advertising? The visual medium. Because like it or not, it is effective. Do you think the average baseliner reading these fora give a flying ■■■■ about reading walls of text? I submit they do not, they don’t have the time for that much critical thought. A well crafted image captivates the attention more than any amount of text, because it is succinct and appealing – which is why it is so frequently used in both advertising and propaganda.

Anime is an industry in the State, and it is an industry that serves a purpose more than simple entertainment – it also functions as a vector in the interstellar culture wars.

Just look at the basic format of the vast majority of anime in terms of tropes and storytelling: The teenager who must undergo the traditional Hero’s Journey, and along the way discover friends in order to understand the true meaning of camaraderie, duty, sacrifice, and discipline in order to overcome evil. The underlying themes in Caldari anime remain underlying themes in the Caldari cultural mileu.

People like you dismiss it all as nothing more than frivolity; the naivety of youth. Yet at the same time you balk at just how popular anime is in societies that have close parallels to, or contact with the Caldari State – the Achur; the Jin-Mei; the Khanid Kingdom.

Because you fail to realize just how effective the visual medium is as an extension of Caldari corporate soft power in the promulgation of its cultural memes abroad.

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No, they’re not. The best soldiers don’t waste the lives under their command. They don’t throw them away without concern because they’ve insulated themselves against even the awareness that those are living, breathing human beings. Yes, when necessary, they will sacrifice those lives as well as their own in the service of their cause/nation/whatever, but the important part there is ‘when necessary’. The level of disconnection she’s talking about, ‘I’ll fire you if you remind me you’re human’ is an entirely different level of sociopathy.

It engenders the idea that ‘hey, it’s just me here, and I’ll come back, right? So who cares if I get this battleship destroyed? Might as well amuse myself!’ It’s a mindset that throws lives away not out of necessity, but out of apathy. There’s no reason not to do [thing that will kill people] because you don’t think of your crew as people. So it doesn’t matter if it’s necessary, is it at least amusing?

Getting people under your command killed because it’s amusing… That’s not the behavior of ‘the best soldiers’. It’s the behavior of a callous, uncaring monster.

That is sociopathy. The first casualty of war should be comfort. Things need to be done. They are often horrible things. They are often things that make you ache and rage at the necessity of them. But if they are truly necessary, then they are necessary. That doing them makes you uncomfortable, that you will always bear the burden of knowing what you did… that’s not something you should ever want to leave behind.

A good soldier, even a general, does the terrible thing that must be done, and mourns the necessity.

The person who does the terrible thing and does not mourn… needs to be put down like the rabid beast they’ve become.

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Considering the source, I’m having trouble finding this… genuine.

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I really wish this forum would thread replies more reliably…

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Yes, but you’d feel the same if I’d said ‘the sky is blue’.

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Well yeah, it’s red. Point is, you are among those who I have personally witnessed throwing countless lives away over fuckin’ nothing. Staggering amounts of dead, for… what’s the saying, “shits and giggles”? Don’t get me wrong, I quite enjoyed it. I have my own bodycount at that, and the outer region wars are nothing if not occasionally gratifying in their levels of staggering bloodshed.

… but then to turn around and talk about sociopathy and “doing what’s necessary” as if you ever have? That’s just… weird, at best.

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It’s neither, you two. It’s just refraction due to the atmosphere. The majority of the wavelengths of light that reach your eye and all…

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Not where I am! I’m trying to get some planetary exposure in, so I’m currently on a temperate planet taking some time off.

Did you catch this statement earlier?

Yeah, so… that’s exactly the conversation I’m referencing. I told you then that I was worried about how little it worried me at the time… and after I left, I spent a lot of time thinking about that, and about the things you said. When you’re actually right, Miz, I do at least try to listen. You’re just not right as often as you think you are (but then, none of us are. If we didn’t think we were right, we’d change our opinion).

So, yeah. The verbal bitchslapping had an effect. Maybe more of one than you’ll believe.

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I’ll give that some consideration if actions ever actually follows the words. I have a suspicion they won’t.

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Ruthless tactics take a willingness to disregard ones empathy to inflict, even if inflicting them is necessary to prevent future suffering. Being sociopathic (or at least, closer to that than the baseline) helps greatly in that, and makes one a more effective soldier. There’s certainly something to be said for having love for your comrades and being willing to die for them as a way empathy can be powerful, however.

The only real example I can point to here is the Sansha’s Nation, who worked near locked to the orders of Kuvekei, who seems to lack a great deal of empathy. Whilst I’ll admit ignorance to the play of many of the major battles (it was so long ago that doctrine, hulls and command structures used then are near-irrelevant, so I declined to study them intently), but the fact that it took all four empires to break its back says to me something about the power of co-ordinated sociopathy as a military doctrine. Especially considering that they still exist.

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And generals (or admirals, or “Fleet Commanders”) are there to ensure that they do not throw away those lives without good cause. Letting people die, losing the resources spent to train, clothe, feed and pay another trained member of your army for no reason is not sociopathy or a lack of empathy, it is stupidity.

What you speak of with regards to people thinking it is “just them” is certainly a real phenomenon, one I’ve observed even in my own forces, who are ostensibly one of the more sane capsuleer empires. But, honestly, I see no reason to dissuade them at this point. From my perspective it seems almost like a psychological defence mechanism, a decision to absolve them of the fact that they are constantly having to deal with people under their command dying. I’ve always thought it bizzare that capsuleers seem to have a vastly lower rate of psychological attrition compared to any other soldier from any other branch or theatre of history, and perhaps this sort of abillity to willfully emotionally disengage is why. That said, I am no combat psychologist, so I’ll leave that for others to investigate.

You might wish to tell the empires that, as it seems a great many of them are proclaimed war heroes.

And those heroes did exactly what they thought necessary to victory. Tell me Arrendis, do you truly mourn every kill you’ve ever participated in, be it directly or otherwise? Or does it fade with time, does it get easier? Did you ever kill someone and think that they deserved it? Do you think about the famillies of the crew members on the vessel as you train your artillery on them? I’m sure you’ve hesitated once or twice. I think that’s only natural. Has that hesitation ever cost you anything? Have you seen people on your side die, because you, emotionally, could not do what had to be done? Did that weigh on you as heavily?

I feel combat is not a time for those who must justify every decision before taking it, or at-least cannot train themselves not to. Not for moral reasons, but for the simple fact that it is you or them in the majority of cases. I’m not talking about firebombing orphanages from orbit, or whatever cartoon villain atrocity one might commit, but in terms of efficiency I feel it is a benefit for one to be willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve victory, and be willing to do so every step of the way.

Of course, I wouldn’t argue that that would make it the ‘ethical’ way to structure ones army, but if you were designing a new breed of soldier, and had control over how their brains worked on a microscopic level… Well, it would be tempting to take that advantage, wouldn’t it?

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That doesn’t make it right. It’s lovely to be able to rationalize and justify monstrous actions. They’re still monstrous, and those who can do them without conscience, monsters.

This presumes those war heroes never felt the weight of those actions, that they never mourned the losses or raged against the terrible necessity they felt they had to answer. Have you been in their heads? Do you know they had no regrets?

I won’t lie: it started to. It started getting easier, watching fleets die on both sides. During the deployment to Hakonen, I started to really get desensitized to it all. I think I hit my lowest point on August 8th. That’s a day or two after the Typhoon fleet Miz was talking about. You can tell I wasn’t quite… me… then, too:

The ship has guns on it. Which, I think, also speaks to this:

That Ashimmu? That’s not me. Other than the occasional instance of hunting Blood Raiders in Delve (which, given their proclivities, is a necessity) that’s not something I do. Look at the rest of my losses, Jin’taan, right up to my most recent. That’s who I am, or at least—these days—who I’m trying to get back to being.

So, to answer this: I don’t train my artillery on people. And yes, I’ve had moments of hesitation… not the kind you’re talking about, but yes, moments where it’s all too much and my brain stutters through the next few seconds. And every time I do, people on my side die.

Every time someone on ‘my side’ dies, Jin’taan, it’s because I couldn’t do what needed to be done. That might mean I hesitated. That might mean I didn’t talk Asher out of being a fecking idiot again. It might mean I haven’t gotten enough people properly trained through RepSwarm to make sure that we can field 70 Logistics cruisers in each and every fleet.

If those people die, that’s on me. And… yeah, for a while, I got numb. I got cold. I said things I wish I’d never said, but at the same time… saying them… let Miz call me out on it. And even if I was too worked up and angry in that moment to appreciate it, she probably saved my sanity. She put ideas in my head that refused to go away, and that forced me to stop and take a long hard look at who I was becoming.

Pulling back from that… getting back to being the person who had nightmares for years about the impotence of being sub-capital Logistics in the middle of B-R… it’s a slow, clawing process. I’m not sure I’m there yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever be sure. But I can be damned sure that going the other way… isn’t a path I’d wish on my worst enemy.

I completely agree. But combat’s not the only time there is. In combat, you’re answering the necessity of the moment. Once you’re in a fight, you play your part so the people on your ship, in your fleet, get home safe. That’s what you committed to do.

But why’d you commit to that? Why’d you go out on that fleet? Why’d you decide that was an objective worth people dying over? Sometimes, we don’t have that choice. Sometimes, we’re answering the necessity: we act, or those who are coming to harm us will do worse harm to more people. That doesn’t make the decision lighter, and it doesn’t make the decision easier to live with later, if things go bad. It just makes it necessary.

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You just make sure the people who can do so without a conscience, can.

You recognised that your strong moral and empathetic compass would make it difficult for you to act in a way that would be effective in warfare, so you decided to leave that to someone else. I can very much respect that, but it only goes to further my previous point, that sociopaths make the best soldiers.

I was asking you those questions simply to prove the point. I do not doubt that you are someone who is emotionally and empathetically alert. Believe it or not I’ve read enough of your writing to know that much, at least, I was merely attempting to lay out that because of that you are a worse soldier because of your lack of sociopathic tendencies, which you illustrated quite nicely as actively preventing you from being capable of a role which is inherently necessary to warfare, and whilst I’m sure you perform admirably as a Logistics pilot, it removes your tactical flexibility as a veteran soldier to your commander.

That’s a good question, and I do not know. Most of the ones that come to mind did not live beyond their heroism, so we will never know. But I hear very little protest over them being memorialised and deified by the general public. And - in my opinion - for good reason. A government is correct to wish its military leaders to act in such a manner as it ensures their security, through the implicit threat of it being done again. That’s not being callous, that’s being pragmatic.

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No, I make sure people who do answer the call of what they’re told is necessity get to come home again. Or at least, I try to—after all, I’m not always successful. Are there sociopaths among the line capsuleers? Yeah, there are. I’m not stupid or naive enough to think there aren’t. They’re the people shooting random crap on gates even when we’ve told them not to.

More, though, I try to do things like the aforementioned ‘talk Asher out of being an idiot again’. Most of the Directorate aren’t sociopaths, even if I know damned well most of you won’t believe that. Maybe some of them have me fooled. It’s certainly possible. I don’t claim omniscience. But working with them every day for years now doesn’t give me that impression of my fellow directors.

Well, there’s Aryth… but he’s finance, not part of the military command structure.

But the rest… no, not even Mittens. Which brings us to the other part…

Of course the ones who live and are lionized don’t protest it. More would probably be lionized if they hadn’t privately expressed their reservations about such treatment. And those who don’t, who go along with that public spectacle, do it for the same reason they committed the initial acts: because in the interests of the state, of the organization… it’s necessary.

It’s why, even though the CEWPA wars are utterly meaningless, they still go on. All that loss of life… in a terrible way, it’s necessary as a pressure-valve, as a way of channeling the most dangerous and destructive elements of society into an avenue where they aren’t so dangerous. That may well be why CONCORD allows us to continue our nonsense out here in nullsec: it keeps us “contained”. It is, as you say, pragmatic.

But none of that means sociopaths make the best soldiers, Jin’taan. Sociopaths are the ones most likely to not bother following orders not to shoot someone on a whim. They’re the ones who’ll conduct an orbital bombardment or attack a non-threatening tower just because it’s there, who don’t give a rat’s ass about the defensive timer you’re trying to get the fleet to on time, they’re gonna get that aggression timer anyway because that Kestrel over there isn’t warping away fast enough and they wanna kill it.

Because they don’t care about your orders. They care about their wants. They’re sociopaths, not soldiers.

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Having met some of your leaders, I’ll concur on this. They’re pragmatic, callous maybe, but very rarely (if ever) are they evil.

Still, my point is simply that you take the role where you perform best whilst accepting you’re helping others kill people. Let’s hypothetically suggest the new doctrine fit made you add a Remote Tracking Computer to your Legion and had you put it on someone arbitrarily selected, so you have no way of knowing if they’re up to your moral expectations. Would you activate it, and indirectly allow the killing of others? If not, what makes that different from your current actions in a fight, other than you not being able to stomach getting one step closer to something you consider morally repugnant?

That’s not sociopathy, that’s a lack of discipline.

Yes, now we’re getting into that awesome ‘No True Scotsman’ argument space where you suggest an action that’s non-conducive to victory and suggest it as something a sociopath is more likely to do (which I can’t dispute) and I say that that is either the result of a bad commander, or a bad soldier not following orders, but troops not following orders has nothing to do with their lack of empathy.

A lack of empathy does not make one incapable of anything except empathy, and empathy is not a valuable battlefield asset when taken as a whole. If you can find an aspect in modern warfare where it is, I would be interested in attempting to understand that area in more detail.

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