Life on Alpha Centauri

[livid imp]

Originally posted by Commy
Very true, but what about Talents? They're not simply just people who are happy about the government. Otherwise Lal wouldn't have so many...

Um....yes, that is exactly why Lal gets more talents. Once again, on the game design level, Talents are the Civ "happy people". Lal has more happy people because of a more democratic regime. You might not like the guy that gets voted in....but at least you got a vote. Democrat states tend to address the needs of the common man better than over forms of government.....unless you believe in the Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Benign Dictatorship Fairy. Everyone swears it exists but no one has actually seen it

Don't hate the faction just cause the leader is a tool.....that goes for the US too

[Commy]

If someone like Zakhorav or Morgan lead the Planet Cult, I'm sure everyone would then play them, even though they suck. I'm still wondering how, if you do democracy, you still stay in office for 500 years. Perhaps a political conspiracy? Maybe thought control? Or is it just like Sim City? The sims are just simply put, stupid...

[smacksim]

Originally posted by Hydro
‘Empathy’ is exactly the word I meant since it means: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experiences fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also: the capacity for this (Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary).
Hydro

It's the part about vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another of either the past or present that makes empathy stand out from sympathy. The two words seem to overlap in common usage, but empathy is about feeling what someone else feels, or at least projecting it on yourself.

This is why empaths are associated with telepaths in things like star trek and Alpha Centauri. (That AC references Empaths being able to know the symbols in other's minds is a very interesting aspect, pointing to a Jungian having written that part of the game text). However, if you take the simple point of view that common human empaths merely project the feelings of others onto themselves, this leads in another direction entirely. If people really did feel, or think they felt, the feelings of others around them, it would be a strange existence, no? Someone nearby stubs a toe: Group: 'Ow!'. There would be no golden rule because there isn't a way to 'Do unto others' that isn't 'Doing unto oneself'.

Imagine our world without TV, radio, video games, sports, etc. These are things to keep you the drone of your society placated. -Livid Imp

This is proof that the Virtual World does quell drones! It's something I've often thought funny about Smac. You are a drone if you play. .

That's why I think of Drones as basically being the equivalent of the unemployed or student-for-no-good-societal-reason. School is being extended further and further into adulthood, not because we need more education for some jobs (which is true, but is better had on the job itself), but because we have more adults than we have jobs. Thus, adulthood gets postponed. In the U.S., the recent trend is to start thinking that Masters degrees are the equivalent of Undergraduate degrees some 15 years ago, which were the equivalent of high-school diplomas 60 years before that.

So the ironic thing is that the University should actually be the big Drone-control facility in Smac, not a whole faction! (I know, it's not a campus, it's a country, but still). And it ends up being that the University has the most problems with drones. I think this is a little far off in parallel comparison with things on Earth today.

However, if you look at which countries have the most unemployed adults, including those in school, and taking adult to mean 'of reproductive age', I think the U.S. would be near or at the top of the list, per capita. We seem to think it's a good idea to have (guessing) 30% of working-age adults do all the work while 50% are in school, for not much of a reason, and 20% are trying to make sense of retirement. So 30% work 60 hour weeks while the 50% in school complain that the keg is empty. Weird if you ask me.

-Smack

[Enigma_Nova]

Hydro:

The point is that having no empathy toward others means that you treat them as objects, not as individuals with consciousness.

I have no empathy towards others or myself, if this is correct.
I just don't see life, awareness and feeling as salient concepts.

treat others as you would have them treat you.

WRONG.
Manipulate others in such a way that their reactions to your actions are profitable,
Because not everyone likes to be treated how I like to be treated.

remember that the person you inflict a horrifically designed anal probe upon will likely do the same to you, given the chance.

Choose and train your subject correctly, and they will enjoy what happens to them.
Why lead your people with fear and hate,
Manipulating them into following your plans willingly is much more safe and productive?
Since they enjoy it, it's moral on both ends.

livid imp:

One simple rule that trumps all others to create a stable society

That belief doesn't create a stable society.
It leads to everyone pushing their beliefs on others,
in the pretense of 'if it's good for me, it's good for you'.
Social diversity collapses, and so too does the society.

Smacksim:
You mean, there's some kind of 'childhood inflation'?
Makes sense to me.
I was complaining about this the other day:

Jobs are requiring more and more education, and as such, we need to spend more of our years being educated and less of our years working.
Don't you worry that one day this process will lead to our entire lives studying, and no work being done?
What will happen to us then?

Obvious response, "the keg is empty."
**** I hate (other) uni students.

My explaination: We need to know more, to be productive in a job.
Smack's explaination: Due to unemployment, the #of people in schools is inflating.
Correct person is:
smacksim

[Commy]

I don't think that drones can be compared to "unhappy citizens", and same for talents. While from a gaming stand point they might as well be the same, apparently people are assigned as drones and talents, almost as if it is an occupation. Take, for example, the history of Domai. After running into a chemical spill, his mind was a bit screwy and he ended up as a common drone. Direct information of Firaxis faction profiles.

The "common drone" part was as if it was a job, like a chain gang type of thing where you're stuck there to work. Facilities just happen to pre-occupy the drones, so they don't appear on the base screen.

Same for talents. Take for example, when you discover centauri empathy. The little book of planet pops up, and you ask your most trusted talent, your assistant, to take the mindworms to the lab. In this case, it is clear that the talent is an occupation. Maybe not by choice, but clearly not just a happy person...

[Hydro]

EN: your concepts are interesting.

“I have no empathy towards others or myself, if this is correct”:

I have no clue how you got this from my quoted statement.

“I just don't see life, awareness and feeling as salient concepts”:

What? You’ve just contradicted yourself, since earlier you made statements about objective emotion (whatever that means), not feeling your own emotions or believe you have emotions (again, whatever that means), and differences between beliefs and feelings imply that life, awareness, and feelings are salient concepts. Please, try to keep your argumentation straight, or at least mostly linear.

“Manipulate others in such a way that their reactions to your actions are profitable, Because not everyone likes to be treated how I like to be treated”:

Not much I can say here. I assume that most people like to be treated with a moderate amount of respect, don’t like pain to be inflicted upon them, and would prefer that their family and community members be allowed to prosper. If this is NOT the case for you then I’m sure that can be arranged. Old Chinese proverb: be careful what you wish for.

“Choose and train your subject correctly, and they will enjoy what happens to them. Why lead your people with fear and hate, Manipulating them into following your plans willingly is much more safe and productive? Since they enjoy it, it's moral on both ends.”:

Sound like a quote from our good amoral friend Chairman Yang. Sadly, not everyone is a masochist that will enjoy your anal probes, nor will most be interested in subordinating themselves to your will. Dictators throughout history have tried this route and failed, sometimes spectacularly.

Your vision for humanity and philosophy of life is a dark one, EN.

Hydro

P.S. – a few years ago I read an article where games theorists held a competition on what strategy of interaction was most successful. This was of prime importance since it has implications for broad-based aspects of evolution, and for human society and even personal relationships. Strategies ranged from I Win, You Lose (and many variants), to Win-Win (and its variants). The strategy that consistently won was a simple strategy of cooperation and trust building, but if one party violated the trust to take advantage then the other retaliated in kind to ‘teach’ the other side to be cooperative. This is direct contradiction to what EN seems to be saying in what seems to be a I Win, You Lose punitive strategy of human interaction.

I would humbly suggest that, if humans are to have a future, a Win-Win strategy needs to be our objective. There are enough Saddam Hussein, Stalins, and Maos in the world, thank-you-very-much.

[Commy]

Exactly! Take a lesson from the mindworms. Cooperate with eachother, do not take advantage of anyone, no fighting, and share everything. And if you follow these rules, you just might evolve into a mindworm.

It's an interesting concept really. It reminds of a quote I found in my history book. It said something like the world is lead by fascism. The experts all tell us the things we need to do to live happy healthy lives. Conserve resources, eat healthy, blah blah blah. And if we do these things, we will have a bright future.

Then at the same time, had humans not exploited the world, taken advantage of everything, we would still be swinging from trees. Yes, perhaps happiness and moral values are the way we should live, but it is not practical. We need to survive, and unfortunately that sometimes means lacking the perfect moral values. Scientists don't have lab rats because they like to torture them. They have them to increase our knowledge. We never sought to become destructive, it is simply how we can live and survive. And unfortunately, we have to deal with it...

[livid imp]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
That belief doesn't create a stable society.
It leads to everyone pushing their beliefs on others,
in the pretense of 'if it's good for me, it's good for you'.
Social diversity collapses, and so too does the society.

How in the hell does "treat others the way you wish to be treated" get turned into "It leads to everyone pushing their beliefs on others" ????

If I decide I will not steal from you, because I would not like to be stolen from....how did that push a value system on you? You wouldn't even know I had made that decision unless I tell you. You must be trolling to get your spam count up with a statement like that. And if you truly believe that treating others kindly is a way of pushing values on people, then you are completely delusional.

Oh and I love this one too: "Social diversity collapses, and so too does the society"
Hear that everyone? Thieves, rapists, and murderers aren't bad people, they are just keeping our society "diverse". Apparently, without these vital individuals preying on us all, we would forget to go to work and have children. Artists would have no reason to pursue their art and games just wouldn't be fun anymore. Then our society would collapse....all because we did not recognize the contribution that criminals make to human race. **Livid Imp wipes a tear from his eye** Truly inspiring EN. Thank god we have omniscient teenagers around....they know everything!

[Hydro]

livid imp - good points.

Being aggressive and nasty to people is great fun as long as YOU are the one inflicting the pain. Funny thing is that the sadists always cry for their rights when the tables are turned. Witness Sadaam Hussein's daughters recent wailing about how he is being horribly abused, and that his detention is against the Geneva Convention. **sniff** I had to fight back tears.

EN – perhaps you could console your soul mate? Sadaam could sure use a good shoulder to cry on right now.

Hydro

[livid imp]

Originally posted by smacksim

That's why I think of Drones as basically being the equivalent of the unemployed or student-for-no-good-societal-reason. School is being extended further and further into adulthood, not because we need more education for some jobs (which is true, but is better had on the job itself), but because we have more adults than we have jobs. Thus, adulthood gets postponed. In the U.S., the recent trend is to start thinking that Masters degrees are the equivalent of Undergraduate degrees some 15 years ago, which were the equivalent of high-school diplomas 60 years before that.

The unemployed being drones? Well yeah, most people are pretty damn unhappy being unemployed.

Other than nair-do-well frat guy types whose rich parents send them to college on a knee-jerk reaction, I have never met anyone in college that wasn't there for a specific reason. OTOH, I have to agree that there is a 'education inflation'. High school diplomas are better suited as toilet paper now-a-days. You have to have a BA/BS to hold even the simplest jobs, and a MA/MS to be considered truly educated.
I believe the reason for this inflation is lazy HR dept that will blindly choose the candidate with the highest level of education rather spending time to figure out who would be the best person for the job. A lot of people go to college, get their degree, and don't retain sh!t once they get out. I'm friends with a guy that got his degree in CompSci 20 years ago, but went into PCB electronics. When he wanted a job in IT (something he had NEVER done before) back in 1999, he got coached a little the night before the interview so he wouldn't look completely clueless.....and he got the job, beating out guys that had been in IT for years. He's my friend and all, but that is BS

Originally posted by smacksim
So the ironic thing is that the University should actually be the big Drone-control facility in Smac, not a whole faction! (I know, it's not a campus, it's a country, but still). And it ends up being that the University has the most problems with drones. I think this is a little far off in parallel comparison with things on Earth today.

If you arrive at a paradox, it may be because you are using the wrong paradigm. Universities are hot beds of dronish activity, but not just because of lazy, pot-smoking, video game playing students. Instead, your generally more intelligent students start finding out about politics (something almost never discussed in high school) and begin putting their foot down on issues. [/QUOTE]

Originally posted by smacksim
We seem to think it's a good idea to have (guessing) 30% of working-age adults do all the work while 50% are in school, for not much of a reason, and 20% are trying to make sense of retirement. So 30% work 60 hour weeks while the 50% in school complain that the keg is empty. Weird if you ask me.

If only 30% of working-age adults were employed you'd have open revolution on your hands. 50% in school? So like 125 MILLION Americans in colleges....don't think so. Unemployment over 10% is considered epidemic. The US unemployment rate is closer to 7% than 70% Your numbers are so off you could go work for Bill O'Reilly.

[smacksim]

It's I guess too bad that you were not seeing the bigger picture in my arguments. I don't expect a superficial acceptance of ideas in the common framework. I hoped to make my 'other framework' obvious. Apparently I should be more specific. And pray gods, don't let me work for O'Reilly the Bill. (I would work for O'Reilly the publisher).

Unemployment, Traditional: refers to those over 18 without jobs and actively looking for jobs (ie, not in school)

Unemployment, Real numbers Smack's way: number of persons between 12-80 who are not fully employed. I'll go grab a population model from census, but in the interim, I think you can see that this encompasses a much larger portion of the population than the traditional model. These population slices are not the same thing.

Education Inflation, traditional gripes:

We need more and more education to compete with others who also feel they need more education (proximal cause)

We need more education because Human Resources people hire from the top of the crop of multiple degrees (proximal cause, and not in my experience altogether common, if the applicant is exceptional)

We need more education because we don't like Pink Floyd (o.k., had to put that in)

We need more education because jobs actually need the kinds of learning/training/socialization we recieve in schools (this is just not true for almost any job. Job-specific training provided by an employer would be much more efficient. Why this doesn't happen is a big long story.)

We need more education because we can afford to 'better ourselves'. Hey, this is true in my book. We need less workers per capita, so people can afford to do many more non-work things, such as study. However, this isn't a need per se. This isn't a reason to keep people out of a workforce directly, if we need more workers.

We need more education to further improve our standard of living as a species and otherwise follow the course of 'progress' we have begun. (Increasing standard of living as an individual, that's another argument). Well, I agree and disagree. Without hard numbers this is tough to argue, but I'd say that 1 - 5% of those with advanced degrees contribute directly or indirectly to improving the human condition because of large numbers of years in school. Geniuses find ways to express their genius, while the average joe who stumbles upon a breakthrough does so because of conditions rather than education, for the most part (grants promoting cancer research, university competition to map the human genome, possible commercial use and personal promotion, etc. etc.). Those of us not generating original 'progress' do provide an atmosphere of competition that helps the cream rise to the top. That's a factor hard to quantify.

And as to my joke about the University as drone control rather than faction, it makes perfect sense if you follow my arguments, which I'll try to clarify further. If you don't read it, too bad. I think some people do follow what I'm saying and it might be intersting to at least understand my argument so as to better defeat it than by merely missing the point. It's really nothing personal, but I get a bit sick of the casual ease with which we human beings adopt common rationalization and popular opinion to defend our comfortable misunderstandings. And this is really not personal at all, but I just happened upon it last night :

"Intellect is invisible to the man who has none." -Schopenhauer

Anyways, here goes.

Civilization improves efficiency of workers.
Less workers needed for civilization.
More diverse jobs created to fill gap.
Civilization improves efficiency of workers, again.
Adulthood gets postponed by schools
Sub-argument for above:
Less jobs available -> More competition for existing jobs -> more school required for the very same jobs -> balance in job market as some of the job pressure is taken up by those in school.

Notice that this argument has nothing to do with 'bettering ourselves', improving the human race, taking on more challenging jobs, or any other traditional reasons. Those reasons that are true are only consequential to the economic reason, if they are true at all. Those reasons that are falsehoods exist to promote the un-natural process of extending childhood beyond it's biological years.

Now, prove me wrong rather than deflect me with misunderstanding (a happy challenge. Again, nothing personal at all against you Livid Imp. I appreciate your posts greatly. I just get 'sparked' when I feel misunderstood. Don't we all?)

-Smack

[smacksim]

Numers in thousands: US census 2002.

Under 5 years old (1,000): 19,609
5 to 17 years old (1,000): 53,286
18 to 44 years old (1,000): 113,187
45 to 64 years old (1,000): 66,686
65 years old or + (1,000): 35,602

Total US population in 2002: 288,369

Arbitrarily, to try to get a bracket of persons 12-80 years old, Subtract the first bracket, half of the second (5-17 years), and half of the last bracket.

Answer: 288,369 - 19,609 - 26643 - 17801 = 224,316,000 potential workers in the broadest sense.

Employment peaked that year at 130,411,000 + about 3,000,000 farm workers. For a total employed of 133,411,000.

So, about 59.47% of the possible workforce was employed.

The diminishing role of farms in employment is interesting.


As less and less people grow food, more are free to X.

The X population must go somewhere!

(Tangent: Almost exactly 1% of our population in the US grows all the food (and then exports even more), whereas, in 1910, it was something like 20%.)

Anyways, the data support many possible conclusions. Among them:

As less people are required to grow the food, more jobs are created out of thin air (witness the service industry, and now the tech industry).

As less people grow food, more go to school.

As less people grow food, many get stoned.

O.k., clearly I've gone too far.

-Smack

[livid imp]

No hard feelings taken. For the most part I agreed with much of what you said. And I have no problem being wrong about something, but I want to see the sources that state 30%(60% or whatever) are doing all the work and 50% are in college. I dispute the numbers and a few of your statements, that is all.

btw: In your sample of work age Americans, you really can't include the 65-80 year olds. They really are not "work age"

Without them in the equation I come to 74%, but that number still seems suspiciously low. 26% unemployment is huge, something is not right. Think about it, go to every 4th work age/able person you know and they should be unemployed by those numbers.

[smacksim]

I add the older people because many of them can and do still work. When (Roosevelt?) made social security compensation, it is rumored that the discussion went something like this: 'Mr. X, you're telling me the average age of death is 65 and we want to give special benefits to those over 65?' 'Right. Now you see how we can afford it, and it'll win votes'. 'In that case, do it! Anyone who can benefit from this deserves a reward, not that there will be many to claim it.' Anyways, at least here in the states we have a huge problem because people are still retiring at 60 or 65 and then going on to live a full 20 years of retirement, all the while being subsidized by those 'young pips'. Irregardless of the other mis-spending currently, it's a big problem. There is some discussion of pushing retirement back to 70, but you see, that would increase the pressure on the job market, which is exactly the opposite of what we need. Any more pressure and people will need advanced degrees for the simplest of jobs.

'Yes Mr. Jefe, I have a doctorate in pharmokinetics. I did my post-doc work in East LA. I can move the drugs!'

(I don't know why I'm hung up on drugs today)

At any rate, much of the older population is quite capable of work. All the age brackets contain those invalid for occupation for one reason or another, and that'll help bring the figures up substantially. Still, while you are surprised to get numbers in the 60-70% range, I'm surprised to see numbers above 40% after doing my homework.

I like to imagine what it would be like if it took only 1 person to grow all the food, 1 to ship it, and 1 to sell it. Would the country be much different? Not really. Those numbers are already very low compared with the rest of jobs. What I'm getting at is that most jobs are fluff. They are jobs we can afford to have created because of the extra 290,000,000 of us. I'm certainly not going to argue that we need less jobs, or that those jobs are not important. I'm just trying to point out that at certain points the job market seems unable to expand horizontally, so we put people in schools and jails and in the Bureau of Bureacracy. Heck, the current sane prison population outnumbers the farmers by (guessing, again) 4:1. If the prisoners grew the food, we'd have another 3,000,000 unemployed directly.

So all of this leads one to suspect that schooling is drone-control. No one planned it. But if true, it's weird, eh?

-Smack

[livid imp]

Anyway, it looks like we have push this thread into "intellectual masturbation". I really hate that, so I'm done, see you on the next thread.