Drifter Interactions And Relations

I’m pretty tired, Arrendis.

You want to fight about this … and … I’m sorry, but I just don’t care. My belief system doesn’t require, or even encourage, me to convert you.

You seem to want to say that we’re saying something really different.

Okay.

You claimed not so long ago not to be patronizing me, but there’s an edge of that kind that’s crept into our discussion these last couple weeks that I don’t think I’m imagining.

I don’t think you want to explore these ideas very much anyway. I think you want to win. I think you’re speaking from a whole, coherent world vision-- that you’re a faithful atheist. Well, I’m glad that you have an understanding of this world that suits you. I wish it didn’t seem to require you to look down on me, but, it’s not like I’m not used to similar attitudes.

I’ve tried to explain as best I can. It’s no real surprise if I fail. Even if we’re standing back to back … our backs are still turned.

I’m not arguing with you because I don’t think you’re wrong. Certainly not completely. At worst, you just haven’t explored the concepts we’re discussing to their conclusions.

So why would I argue?

But nobody seems to understand that. It’s pretty frustrating. (Another sign that I’m still just a student, myself.)

Shuijing isn’t something that works on a hostile audience very well-- not because it’s a matter of faith, but because it’s weird and counterintuitive to most people (especially people who aren’t raised in the tradition). When you want to actually understand what I believe … maybe a more private setting would help. When you want to understand … let’s talk somewhere that isn’t here.

This isn’t really something that can be worked out through argument, I don’t think.

3 Likes

So the Drifters can communicate, but it is a case of they have nothing they wish to convey via words?

Well if we’re going to go down that route, can you prove you’re not a brain in a jar every time you get in the capsule? What evidence do you have that any of the actions taken whilst in the pod actually happened? Only what your instruments tell you. But instruments can send false information.

Posted by my Bathbuddy CommsMaster 1000 using Tappytype.

1 Like

You can actually prove that with vid evidence from multiple instruments monitored by multiple independent people, high-penetration multispectral detectors, operated by multiple individuals independently, and etc.

Proving whether your physical shell is in that capsule is not hard. What’s hard to prove is if the mind that gets transferred to another body via the transneural burner after you get podded is indeed still you or just a copy of you.

Ultimately, I think that question is irrelevant since the resulting individual is still capable of emergent behaviour built upon the old data that’s copied from the previous version. If he is indeed still me, great. If he isn’t, then he is as perfect an heir as I can hope for considering that he has inherited my will, accurate down to the tiniest byte.

2 Likes

Personally I believe we’ve become digital beings now as opposed to biological. In a sense we probably have more in common with the Drifters than we do baseliners.

2 Likes

“this word doesn’t have a set meaning”

“Yes it does, here.”

I think we’re saying something really different, Aria. And I don’t look down on your beliefs, or you. But I do utterly despise this need you seem to have to say ‘you know how you just directly contradicted me? We’re saying the same thing, you just don’t get it’.

No, no we’re not. You say something has no set meaning, I say it does. You say you’re seeking an understanding of the Totality without the symbolic constructs of the mind, I say there is no true understanding because the mind is those constructs. There’s no way to cognitively perceive reality without them because they’re what’s doing the cognition. What you’re talking about achieving, the state of perception without concept, is what infants do, because they don’t have the neural connections built yet—and they build them rapidly. That’s not understanding. It’s being a meat-machine that hasn’t fully configured yet.

All we are is meat machines, and there is no deeper understanding to achieve. It’s all just lies, told by a lie, to justify its own deception.

We’re not saying the same things at all, and your insistence that we are is kind of insulting. I don’t feel like I’m the one being patronizing here.

Can you prove you’re not a brain in a jar when you’re not in the pod? The only evidence you have is what your senses can tell you, and they can send false information, too. For that matter, the only thing you have to interpret their information is your mind, and that doesn’t have to be interpreting the data correctly.

This is the stupid and useless rabbit hole that whole line of nonsense inevitably leads to. And it is. Stupid. Useless. Nonsense. ‘Can you prove what you believe is real is real?’ No, you can’t. Ever. So work with the data that your mind is choosing to tell you we’re all perceiving (but you know, we might not be, because we might all be lies your mind is telling you exist).

Until Drifters are taxonomically categorized as what I would expect to be some other species in Homo, they fall within H. sapiens and so are human. Any other measure you want to apply, like ‘their bodies were artificially created from component biomass by machines and their minds just injected’ applies equally well to us.

2 Likes

Well, you’ve worked out a large part of why I don’t believe in my own existence, Arrendis.

The one place we really seem to disagree at the moment, is this: whether words can have truly set meaning. Since you seem to want a fight, okay, let’s fight over that.

This idea is nonsense. It’s foolishness. I’ve been resisting engaging with it because I respect your intelligence.

What you’re really talking about when you claim that words have a set meaning “to an engineer,” is specialized language-- what we’d call “jargon.” It’s not like engineers have access to some secret language of True Names that is the language the universe speaks. And the way you talk about language-- the way you want ME to talk about language? You’re carving a large section of the utility of single words away. Like “human.” If we confine the word the way you want to confine it, we lose a lot of the other ways people use it-- and that matters for understanding how people think and how people behave and even understanding how they are trying to fool and manipulate you into stuff like treating people as non-human.

And I KNOW YOU KNOW BETTER, ARRENDIS! Not only is it an unworthy claim coming from you of all people, but I know you already understand all this because you routinely manipulate language in ways that PROVE you understand perfectly well!

A word is a tool, yes! It’s a tool that works because we collectively give it certain meanings, and agree to use it for those meanings, and usually to infer which meaning is intended from context. EVERYONE DOES THIS! Engineering is a context! So is law! So is biology, and FISHING! And baking! And sailing! And on and on and on and on and on!

It works because of shared meaning. The word, by itself, is meaningless; it’s what the word is tied to in the mind of speaker and listener that gives it meaning. And that, can vary from community to community, specialty to specialty, and person to person. Mismatches are commonplace, languages (even the ones used today) are legion, and words and their meanings shift greatly over time. There is no one “true language.”

It is not a precision tool! If you want precision, you develop a specialized lexicon-- a jargon, to match a specific field, so that you can talk about a specific thing and everybody who shares your jargon will understand what you are talking about without having to ask for clarification or having TELEPATHY! The argument that all of language has that kind of precision, a single “right” meaning, is just outright nonsense, and I can’t believe you’d sincerely claim otherwise!

Which means, almost certainly, you’re doing a thing you enjoy doing and playing a game. I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, but I don’t engage in these discussions for that reason! I do it to explore reality, not to get manipulated and tricked by a very clever and capable sophist!

Arrendis, I consider you a friend, but the other person who tends to argue with me in this way is Veikitamo Gesakaarin. I’ll occasionally fend something off from her, but I really don’t like talking with her; she’s a box of mist and broken mirrors, a person-sized mansion of illusions I don’t care to unpack outside of warning people not to go there, ever, because while illusions can be fun, a large percentage of the blood-stained fun-house killers in that place are absolutely verifiably real.

We’re getting really close to the heart of my beliefs, now. I don’t have the time or energy to fend you off if you’re not going to … to help. Mostly what you’ll do if you’re just going to try whatever angle of attack you can come up with, is upset me. Like you have here.

There’s an itch at the back of my brain, this weird little worry that maybe you meant every word. It’s always there-- that argument for giving someone the benefit of the doubt, if there’s any doubt at all. Usually I listen to it. But I know you like to play games, and I know you’re too clever for me to ever assume you’d make an argument like this seriously when you’ve already proved you know how malleable language can be. I want to trust you, but I can’t. You made sure of that yourself.

And this is too “real” for me to want to play games with you about it. It’s stuff that’s really important to me. Trying to really understand this world … it’s the only way anything in it makes sense. I think, if I really get lost on this path, I’ll die, or worse.

(Last time I ended up as a pirate who wrote a philosophical instruction manual for people who can’t be human anymore-- how to be a better monster, essentially. It was distressingly well-received.)

Messing with people’s heads is rude, Arrendis. Please don’t screw around with mine.

2 Likes

Umm… I am not as glib with words as you lot with your Walls’ o text.

But I am pretty sure I exist!

Reminds me of a story my Unc’ used t’ tell before he went all wonky.

Two philosopher types were arguing about existence.
One male Philosopher was contending that the other did not exist.
In response, the other female Philosopher walked over and kicked him in the shins.
As the non-existentalist hopped on one feet and cried out in pain, the kicker responded
“Thus I exist.”

4 Likes

If you do not exist, then you cannot “aim to develop in [yourself]” anything, let alone a “kind of perception”. Because you don’t exist. You can’t be “a practitioner, a ‘seeker’” of anything… because to be that, you would need to be. You play both sides of this existentialist fedo feces and then tell me ‘we don’t really disagree’ when I stand here and repeatedly say ‘BOTH OF THESE THINGS CANNOT BE TRUE, AND YOU ARE FULL OF CRAP IF YOU EXPECT ANYONE TO BUY IT’.

Maybe you should stop and consider exactly which of us is the one playing games here.

3 Likes

Goodbye, Arrendis.

Say hi to Ali for me, if you see her.

1 Like

I mean, we know two important things.

  1. Where they are.
  2. How to kill them.
3 Likes

The problem is that the second one is likely to change at some point.

1 Like

Uh-- that’s actually a little debatable on both points, Pieter.

More precisely, we know where some of their facilities are and how to blow up some of their stuff.

How important those facilities and that stuff turns out to be is still kind of an open question.

3 Likes

Yes, adressing these points…

For example, we know as well where are Sansha and how to kill them. Our fleets against them are damn effective. But while knowing where they attack - we don’t really know where is their headquarters, where should we strike to end this once and forever. It looks like the situation is the same with drifters.

For the second point, there is the Federation. We definitely know where they are, and we definitely know how to kill them, but that is definitely not enough to end the war.

The killing can continue forever with them sending more and more troops against us, would it be Drifters, Sansha or the Federation - the situation won’t change. We need to find a way to actually stop that. And for this we need to kill not just their general troops, not just soldiers they produce in mass, but their headquarters.

Decapitate the snake.

Find Drifters HQ and eliminate that. Find hole, where Sansha hides and cleanse that. Destroy Federal Senate, President Office and FedNavy HQ.
If we find the way to do that, we will do something significant, we will end the war.

Meanwhile our knowledge about how to kill them - it doesn’t solve anything. It just lets us defend ourselves against them (Sansha, Drifters, Gallente, whatever). But while we do, the conflict continues and more people die.

There are too many questions, too many unsolved problems, and I really expect us not just using what we have, but try to shift the boundaries, lift the veil, seek the truth and find the way.

D. Kim, Strike Commander,
State Protectorate, CMC,
Caldari State

2 Likes

Might I lead us back to the question as to where the results of the Drifter autopsy are? Surely they must be available or I am just blind.

2 Likes

You mean the autopsy after which they attacked Empress Jamyl I?
Well, it’s here. I am not sure though if you should take it as a fact or a professional work, but it is available.

Considering that the work was put out by CONCORD via the Scope, I think that’s a fairly effective endorsement of the effort.

2 Likes

So I have looked it over and I’m still very confused, as I’m sure everyone else is. The organic and inorganic components were reversed in roles? This tells me that as easily as they could have made completely synthetic bodies, they want something specifically from the human form and biology. I think it’s the brain they want, as by far the most amount of attention and care went into the cranium and the cerebral tissues.

The Sleeper implants and the similar genetics to the Jove made me think. I remember my time with the DUST mercenaries while they were still in service. While I never got access to their implants or their specifications - and why would I? I was a mobile fortress technician classified as a combat engineer - I was told many times how their implants came from Sleeper bodies, and the many horror stories of Sleepers possessing the mercs before we made our own implants, and I think the Drifters, or at least the majority of them are using Sleeper corpses for hosts. This is supported with what we know of their behavior in harvesting Enclaves for parts and bodies.

So we have this. Infomorphs have made synthetic bodies to use human tissues as a secondary - or otherwise afterthought addition - system, have either subdued, subverted or aligned with Sleeper drones, produced extremely fragile, cost effective, powerful vessels, have taken technology from Sleeper Enclaves, Jove Observatories, killed Empress Jamyl I, and otherwise disrupted human activities in K-space, even if for a brief period, are collecting and studying technology, and producing more of themselves via corpse harvesting. Though none of these events are in any particular order.

So we have this. They want tech. They want organic tissues for their creation, when they could go without, or so we think.

So they want the human brain, the process it does, or some analogy to it. What can it do that they cannot replicate?

Perhaps the sleeper drones have gained sentience and are creating infomorph avatars in the form of their creators (as they percieve it).

1 Like

That I find unlikely, and I don’t see evidence for it. I have a so called self-aware intelligence sitting in my hanger in Jita 4-4, nay, I have two of them, but I don’t see them exhibiting behavior like the Drifters. Mostly because they’re only that aware when in combat, and they’re otherwise not as alert or aware when out of combat, as a safety feature required of me by CONCORD.

And unless the Sleeper drones were designed to evolve - which would suggest the eventuality of a Technological Singularity, and trust me, that would be far worse than the Drifters - they would not develop awareness of self in what we understand of sentience.

No, whatever these infomorphs are, they are human made, or possibly human remnants, but are not directly created by or are the result of Sleeper Drones. And even if they are, we have little to no chance of determining that, as the biggest problem we face is we cannot interface with Sleeper or Drifter technology, let alone their users, to determine these things. If we could, all it would take is hacking their systems and stealing their data, and an eventual key to their language and data could be unlocked.

How is the study on the trinary relics coming along, @Makoto_Priano ? If the Sleepers are indeed responsible for this, we could find evidence of that in the relics, or find evidence that the Drifters are an outside or external force that did not originate from the Sleepers.

2 Likes

There are possibly a great many things that could be found, including the recipe for the fabled Talocan Hyper-Euclidian Souffle.

It is important to not rush the research. Likewise, it’s important to keep open eyes when working with this manner of project, as preconceptions and desired outcomes may actively harm the research.

3 Likes