Sure, but honestly ? No, most options are not actually that good a deal even compared to just regularly being alive. Compared to what you could have in other fiction ? Hard pass.ObsidianJones said:
What Fictional Military, Order, or Fellowship would you Join... but only be an Average Member?
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WoD vampires burn in sunlight and have a phobia about fire, and normally don't have much better night vision than humans. Before electric lighting, they'd really be useless.Satinavian said:
Is a Jedi Knight reeeeeally a rank-and-file grunt though? They're uber- powerful warriors that can cut swathes through regular troops. Being one of those kind of destroys the whole point of being an average joe in someone else's army.
As for me- X-Wing pilot all the way. I mean, I like the TIE starfighters more, but who would willingly join the side they know will lose?
As for me- X-Wing pilot all the way. I mean, I like the TIE starfighters more, but who would willingly join the side they know will lose?
I picked Liara and continued that romance for the trilogy. Fight me...!ObsidianJones said:
That said, Kenn (the Quarian on Omega near the beginning of ME2) was oddly attractive...!
I love my space blueberry muffinSckizoBoy said:
. Besides, if you romance neither Garrus or Tali, they hook up and after everything they both go through, I figure the two best companions deserve to be together.
Good point. Even in The Old Republic at the height of their strength the Jedi were vastly outnumbered by the Republic's normal troops, so that might not count. Just go as a normal Rebellion pilot instead, using the classic X-Wing. At least you have a chance to survive in your squadron compared to flying a fragile TIE Fighter with no shields or ejector seat... unless you happen to be unlucky enough to run into Lord Vader's squadron.Squilookle said:
In actual practical terms, Contact from the Culture series.
For those who haven't read the books, Contact is the Culture equivalent of Starfleet, only without the danger or need for technical skills. Also, your starship is alive, is a hundred billion times more intelligent than you and is basically just bringing you along to let you enjoy a sense of purpose to your centuries-long life of infinite hedonism.
Of course, a recurring theme of the Culture series is that living in a utopian society doesn't always make people happy, but it certainly seems better than being a cog in the Imperial war machine over in the 40k galaxy.
For those who haven't read the books, Contact is the Culture equivalent of Starfleet, only without the danger or need for technical skills. Also, your starship is alive, is a hundred billion times more intelligent than you and is basically just bringing you along to let you enjoy a sense of purpose to your centuries-long life of infinite hedonism.
Of course, a recurring theme of the Culture series is that living in a utopian society doesn't always make people happy, but it certainly seems better than being a cog in the Imperial war machine over in the 40k galaxy.
Starfleet as anything other than a redshirt seems nice. Not too military. High living standards in a post-scarcity society. Good odds of survival compared to other fictional militaries I know.
A corporal in the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork, day-shift.
I get to hang out with a motley bunch of misfits of varying species, drink and swap stories at the Mended Drum in the evenings, never be expected to have the faintest clue how to actually use my sword and maybe possibly solve a few crimes in my spare time.
I get to hang out with a motley bunch of misfits of varying species, drink and swap stories at the Mended Drum in the evenings, never be expected to have the faintest clue how to actually use my sword and maybe possibly solve a few crimes in my spare time.
Sir, I would never fight you over your wrong choice. I'm just glad you had the courage to admit it out loud. Acceptance is apart of the healing processSckizoBoy said:
Absolutely not. They are Space Mystical Samurai that fly around in state of the art space ships.Squilookle said:
However, there are rank and file grunts in the Jedi Order. Not everyone is a Mace Windu. Nor An Obi Wan Kenobi, oddly enough, who is more of a B-tier in terms of power level among the greats that we know. So there are 'regular' Jedi Knights.
Yeah see, I just can't buy that. Ordinary grunts don't have telekinesis, mind control and the universe telling them when there's shenanigans nearby like Jedi do. Regulars are also not hand picked as children for showing they're in-tune with space magic that only a few thousand out of the galaxy's several trillion inhabitants will ever be sensitive to. You might as well call King Arthur or Superman a grunt under those specificationsObsidianJones said:
I mean, if you don't like the game because you rank everyone with superpowers as beyond regular folks and therefore there's no such thing as 'Regular', I get that. This thread probably has little to offer you in light of that.Squilookle said:
But if Lucas created Midi-Chlorains [https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Midi-chlorian] to show how special Anakin is, we have to accept that there are Jedis who don't reach anywhere near that count. Who just have enough to be sensitive with the Force in order to be a Jedi.
And in Comic Books, you realize there are threat levels [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=2k9upyew8itip7oxnm0spd8p] and Superheroes who focus on them, right? There are Nationwide Level Superheroes who can fly, have super strength, and are damage resistant. But simply not to the level of Superman. They can't do what he does. So while they are obviously beyond you and me, they wouldn't be called to fight Doomsday or Darkseid. They would take care of the Parademons or whatever unleashed while the Big Guns take care of the Big Threat.
Likewise, you wouldn't send Zett Jukassa [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GD9hHg9n-c] against the Emperor. Padawans have the lightsabers and the Force, but they are not Jedi Knights yet. Jedi Knights have more training and as much mastery as their natural abilities allow them... that doesn't mean they will become Jedi Masters. There are going to be people who plateau in their ability to use the Force. They will be the average Jedi Knights.
Just like people will do academically, at work, and with social climbing. The Jedi just reach their plateau with ability to move things with their mind.
Sounds kind of patronizing. So a billion times more intelligent machine risks having a whole bunch of incredibly bored humans to tag alone inside it where it's most vulnerable? Seems like a design flaw more than anything. Though I suppose if we assume evolutionary processes is all about filling available niches in ecology, having humanoids might be the easiest way to signal to another intelligent species that you're not just a gigantic space whale they can hunt...evilthecat said:
Say what you like about being a near-nameless cog in an infinitely sized military force, it does allow humans an avenue for cathartic violence.
One of the things I love about Shadowrun is it's not a over-populated metahumanity. By 2075 there's only roughly 7.5 billion humans/metahumans left and metahumanity is bleeding itself apart and many people are just growing older while the terminally displaced, disaffected youth are killing themselves due to geerally zero levels of social mobility. Yet they still run things like mass-trideo simsense experiences like Desert Wars. Where the experiences of facing near certain death and destruction in recreated battlefield situations are mass marketed by Aztechnology because someone else will if they don't, so fuck it.
So it's not even a question of constant human-metahuman extinction level depopulation events happening time and again will shake off our desires for things we shouldn't have.
Most of Shadowrun can basically be summed up as; "Frag it, why not?" >>> "This is killing/will kill millions..." >>> "Well too late for that. Oh, and this new thing? Frag it, why not?"
So hedonism in Shadowrun is everywhere. By the time you can become a corporate wageslave, with BTLs you can experience a thousand different lives that your own feels like a dead simulacra of reality... but you will die from a bad batch of mycobacterium created egg noodle substitute. It's not even a question of if. The Sixth World will just kill you, but then again who cares if with a few hours of being a 'wage mage' you can afford/become addicted to a weekend of simsense trideo pleasure?
It's basically the advanced neuroscience of Mill's utilitarianism with a masterful highball hit of Bethamite egoism vodka that advanced neuroscience will eventually blend artfully.
It's wrong to simply underwrite what is dystopian/utopian by pure hedonism. Hedonism alone is more nuanced a moral position when you get into the realm of 'other-regarding' which people seem to struggle with the concept of utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism isn't simply cutting up one person to save five others. Utilitarianism is the argument that one should become 'other-regarding'. That is ultimately the highest moral pursuit of utilitarianism, and Shadowrun's universe isn't automatically dystopian simply because 'megacorps control everything' or that 'poverty is massive'.
Shadowrun is dystopian in that people can not become other-regarding, and are happy to simply be wageslaves if it means more pleasure. That there is an intangible line between freedom as a concept and simply liberty to consume.
Shadowrun is remarkable in that sense that the corporations are, legitimately, often painted better than the governments they replaced as you often have even better job prospects in many of the AAA and AA corporations than in anytime in history. Both your parents work in Shiawase? Well they can 'elect' you to go through this school for the kids of Shiawase employees and just slot right in afterwards... no biggie.
And that means you can have a modicum of the advanced pleasures no one else can enoy in any other time period. Get the pocket money that will afford you hotsimming free internet and enjoy all the luxuries it would take a lifetime for even the wealthier classes of people in the 20th and early 21st century to enjoy. And more often than not, Shadowrunners by 4th and 5th edition are painted as terminally autistic, socially incapable creatures who simply, impotently, refuse such lives despite ostensibly still being enslaved by the corporate Johnsons who use them as disposable deniable assets anyways.
The game goes out of its way to mock people who want to play these socially maladjusted criminals, particularly those players that would valourize them.
At the end of the day it's still a hand picked super-minority who can sense the force. You can either sense it or you can't. It's like the difference between the people who were hand picked to be offered the red pill and broke free from the Matrix, and the ones who just live within it with no idea about a whole other layer of existence. If it's not a position open to mass recruitment and training, then it's not really grunt work.ObsidianJones said:
If the humans were really bored, then the Culture has no borders and no government, so they could just leave. They could ask for whatever they needed and go and live on some planet where there was still war and violence and poverty and disease and real hardship until they figured out these things suck and came back. For most, a life where you are provided with the means to do almost anything you want and to live in whatever way you see fit is enough, and if you need risk, you can just go and do a bunch of dumb dangerous things and pretend the AI which manages your orbital habitat or GSV city-spaceship wouldn't be able to save you if something went wrong.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
There's really no risk to the machine at all though. Like, if you want to go the Mass Effect "conflict between organics and AIs is inevitable" route, the AI in this scenario is not the one under any kind of threat, which is actually a thing that gets explicitly commented on in universe - the machines don't actually need their creators, they're a form of life which exceeds their creators in almost every way, and if they wanted to they could get rid of them. But the implicit answer is that this line of reasoning says more about the person who comes out with it and what's wrong with them and the society they live in.
IDK... there is a noticable connection between unemployment, even in advanced economies with comprehensive social welfare (disappearing as it is) and worsening mental health problems. And I don't just mean the unwillingly unemployed, I also mean retirees, cradle-to-grave wealthy, etc. Humans are gregarious creatures by trade, and whther pre-capitalism or (likely) post-capitalism, people want to feel needed.evilthecat said:
Which is probably the biggest argument for creating industry, and creating an artificial sense of personal responsibility, even in a post-scarcity world. Given a nasty motorcycle accident... I've probably cost my state's medical services more than the average person, and had to rely on it more extensively than most people my age ... but 95% of the time I'm seeing a doctor for reasons that can be supplanted by a computer already.
At the very least machines wouldn't be doling out opioids like candy. I had to be the one to tell my doctor; "I don't want to be on these anymore, regardless the pain. I'll deal..." When asking why I hadn't been on Endone for so long.
Even then the biggest needs of direct medical assistance was physiotherapy and learning to walk again. And beyond planning my regimen, most of that could be supplanted by Siri taunting and encouraging me. It was mostly be biting through the pain and forcing myself through sheer power of my anger that something so simple was now the hardest thing in the world I could have possibly imagined. Harder than any test, report, essay or thesis. And 99% of that was me being angry at myself and the world. Rebuilding myself, my reality, from the ground up until I worked again.
I think human require pain to a certain extent, and post-scarcity merely covers needs. The pain in my legs and spine, I'm convinced, is the only thiing that wakes me up. A reservoir I can convert into personal drive. Something that defines me not simply because I feel it, and not by itself, but rather what I do with it. The desire to feel like I can do something, even if it hurts me, and I can't see a purely non-other regarding post-scarcity environment of ultra hedonism being able to fufil humanity.
Rather we would just like in Shadowrun invent reasons to hurt ourselves.
And that could be hypothetically substituted by a drone getting me angry enough to suffer through it. Basically the only medical services that can't be supplanted by the machines is the places where human interaction is clinically better than none. Psychotherapy, etc.
That being said, why would humans trust such a ship? I would argue that any ship roughly a bllion times smarter than humans is still a ship that will look lke it's merely responding to instinct or programming. The big thing about intelligence is it has to be reflectively recognizable as intelligence. I wrote a thread recently on how Aboriginal Australian 'mythology' about firehawks was not only true, but it wasn't simply a single species capable of fire-stick hunting intelligently. That Prometheus lied to us about giving humans the gift of fire... clearly birds either got it first, or perhaps even learnt it and started demonstrating it to juveniles.
Giving that birds do not have a developed neocortex, their intelligence can't simply be measured with the infamous mirror-self awareness test by drawing dots on their feathers and sticking them infront of a reflective surface.The takeaway of that by psychologists was that birds are pretty fucking stupid. Not that they have an alien intellect different from higher mammals and that maybe advanced intelligence isn't best measured simply with some reflective surface.
That being said, mirror tests are still being used, still a benchmark, and heaven forbid if anything challenges our noble bearing and its preoccupations with a very specific bit of brain matter compared with anything else...
The Turing test is also just another mirror-test in disguise and also reflective of this central conceit.
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I want to say a royal guard from My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, but... I think it would have been better before the show refused to do anything with Celestia.
So I suppose starfleet. That seems like the best chance at a decent existence in a normal media military. Despite the fact that the admiral you are serving under is probably either incompetent, evil, or an alien bent on destroying humanity.
So I suppose starfleet. That seems like the best chance at a decent existence in a normal media military. Despite the fact that the admiral you are serving under is probably either incompetent, evil, or an alien bent on destroying humanity.
Yeah, but what other police force is so well monetized and otherwise unneeded that you and a hundred buddies are called in to deal with a single megalomaniacal filly? Clearly being a Royal Guard isn't a bad job. There is a problem >>> Is there a Princess available? >>> If yes, thank Celestia. If no, ignore problem until Twilight or Cadance becomes available.Worgen said:
Seems like a pretty good gig.