HeinousOne Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 The amount of truth involved in this thread is mind boggling. My favorite Sith for this month so far is definately Heft. I almost felt like a Catholic priest sitting in confessional with him while reading some of his posts. I completely agree with Ivan's line of thinking. I think I shall think of myself as a Sithian Tiger. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heft Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 The amount of truth involved in this thread is mind boggling. My favorite Sith for this month so far is definately Heft. I almost felt like a Catholic priest sitting in confessional with him while reading some of his posts. I completely agree with Ivan's line of thinking. I think I shall think of myself as a Sithian Tiger. You're not going to try and touch me "down there" are you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lycurgus Rex Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 The original topic stays alive, yet the rebuttals just fade away... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hymenbreach Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 The original topic stays alive, yet the rebuttals just fade away... popular =/= right Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corinan Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 popular =/= right You're not right, just idealistic. Unrealistic as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heggo Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 (edited) Hymenbreach, you seem to be somehow under the impression that your polemic against us and our friends has cultivated for you a sexy revolutionary ethos, or perhaps that of some crusader for justice. Believe you me: you have neither cultivated this ethos nor proved that truth is on your side. OOC: You also don't seem to get that you're advocating boredom. Edited April 10, 2009 by heggo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hymenbreach Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 Hymenbreach, you seem to be somehow under the impression that your polemic against us and our friends has cultivated for you a sexy revolutionary ethos, or perhaps that of some crusader for justice. Believe you me: you have neither cultivated this ethos nor proved that truth is on your side.OOC: You also don't seem to get that you're advocating boredom. OOC/IC: I'm advocating the Status Quo in which my alliance is thriving. Plus, where would the interest be if we all agreed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heggo Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 Since when has the Legion been thriving? And since when has the status quo in anyway been conducive to anything that is vaguely exciting? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hymenbreach Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 Since when has the Legion been thriving? And since when has the status quo in anyway been conducive to anything that is vaguely exciting? since we went up 10pts in 6 months, since we quadrupled our nukes, etc. Hate us mindlessly if you want, but grow we have. Believe me, the last couple of years were plenty exciting enough for the Legion. We're enjoying this quiet period. We know it won't last, but we'll make hay while the sun shines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeinousOne Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 You're not going to try and touch me "down there" are you? You really are a Dark one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heggo Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 since we went up 10pts in 6 months, since we quadrupled our nukes, etc. Hate us mindlessly if you want, but grow we have. Believe me, the last couple of years were plenty exciting enough for the Legion. We're enjoying this quiet period. We know it won't last, but we'll make hay while the sun shines. You make your alliance sound like a retirement home. I believe that the Legion can be (and probably is) more than just a place for people to reminisce about the excitement of yesteryear while hiding in the so called "peace" of the treaty web. Honestly, if you want to count stats and live in quiet peace, join the GPA. They're nice people over there, they'd welcome you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vilien Posted April 10, 2009 Report Share Posted April 10, 2009 since we went up 10pts in 6 months, since we quadrupled our nukes, etc. Hate us mindlessly if you want, but grow we have. Believe me, the last couple of years were plenty exciting enough for the Legion. We're enjoying this quiet period. We know it won't last, but we'll make hay while the sun shines. And what do those nukes mean? Your argument is in favor of a status quo not because it protects those who are weak from those who are strong, but specifically because it does the opposite. To you, peace is safety. Your safety is the guarantee that your choice of allies stays on top. All of that stats gain means nothing if you're not willing to do something with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rokula Posted April 11, 2009 Report Share Posted April 11, 2009 This thread delivers. I must agree with the OP here the current state of affairs when it comes to treaties is laughable at best. There are so many alliances with MDP, MDoA ,etc... that smirk, troll, disrespect and laugh behind the backs of their so called allies. I wish to admin that every treaty that stands right now would be rendered null and void so we all could start anew. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lycurgus Rex Posted April 11, 2009 Report Share Posted April 11, 2009 Guys come on, leave Hymenbreach alone. He along with every other legion member think they are the messiahs that will restore the legion to greatness....I dont know when that exact period was though, any ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hymenbreach Posted April 11, 2009 Report Share Posted April 11, 2009 Guys come on, leave Hymenbreach alone. He along with every other legion member think they are the messiahs that will restore the legion to greatness....I dont know when that exact period was though, any ideas? I have a special watch with no hands. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ttaagg Posted April 12, 2009 Report Share Posted April 12, 2009 (I apologize in advance for not having read the entire thread. I've got too much work to do, but the OP was quite suggestive and provoked my curiousity.) Being relatively new to the game and as-of-yet still unaligned, I've gotten a very large number of "ZOMG JOIN MY ALLIANCE" spam. While most are completely nondescript, I must first laud NSO not only for the relative creativity in their theme, but also in executing it well (at least all of the PM spam I got was tied into what your alliance wants to be). I find your "Sith Code" to be provocative almost entirely for the sake of being (possibly ironically) edgy. But that doesn't mean it doesn't raise valid points. With respect to the segment contained in the OP - "Peace is a lie", I'm not sure it has been sufficiently considered to justify your code being the "only relevant philosophy". If we consider peace to mean simply "no war", I feel like we lose a lot of complexity of your argument. (And, to bring the real world into play, you get into situations where there is large-scale military action but no DoW. Is this then peace? By the preceding definition, yes, but I cannot agree to this in good faith.) It seems that you consider only the effects of a nebulous idea of peace. Since you haven't suggested a definition (or maybe you did and I'm just too tired to find it), I propose we consider peace to be a state of affairs between two alliances where there is no overt, sanctioned hostility. This does not have to be in the form of in-game wars, and the permission does not need to be granted in writing or even necessarily by the leadership of an alliance. For example, if a large portion of alliance A shows distaste for members of B on their internal forums, I could still call this peace. People are fickle and enjoy drama. However, when serious hostilities occur in the open (these forums and IRC are good realms for this), then I feel like the peace is broken. A single person or small group is a rebel, but when alliance leaders or a large portion of an alliance's prescence engages in the hostility, the peace has been disturbed. Furthermore, I will consider the "cyberverse" to be in a state of peace only if for all alliances A and B, A and B are pairwise peaceful towards each other. Actually, this is a bad definition of peaceful cyberverse, as there is bound to be some small alliance that is the local punching bag (i.e. FAN, I think). Thus, I think it better if we can state that there is a threshold of % of politically active players represented by all these universally pairwise peaceful alliances that needs to be exceeded. (In other words, with an arbitrary number of 90%: The cyberverse is in a state of peace if and only if there is a set of alliances {A_1,A_2,...A_N} that are all pairwise peaceful and that the total number of politically active CN players in these alliances exceeds 90% of all politically active CN players.) This constant doesn't interest me much other than by its existence. It necessarily has to be quite high (probably closer to the 96-99 range than 90 in order to be a good metric). ((I hope we can find this definition agreeable, and if not feel free to propose another from which we ought to proceed.)) A naive application of your code would suggest that there is never a time that these overt hostilities are not present anywhere in the game. This sort of absolutist reasoning seems flawed merely because it is absolutist (i.e. "Always the case that there is no peace."). While I cannot give a counterexample relevant to CN due to my relative inexperience, in previous browser games I have partaken of, I've experienced quite a number of lulls in the game, where there isn't any real tension. This state, in my opinion, is the worst to ever happen in a politics game (but more on this later). Thus, anecdotally, I'd disagree with the naive assertion that peace can never happen. (Furthermore, your absolutist assertion would apply also to all points in the future. I don't see how this could possibly be reasonably expected, let alone proven, given the operative definition of peace.) However, a different interpretation of your argument is that peace cannot be lasting. I think that this is a very good argument, but needs a minor addition of time-frame or state of CN. I would be welcome to consider "current peace is no indicator of peace lasting more than X time" for some arbitrary X. While this is obviously a much weaker assertion, I think it might be the only one reasonably expected to hold. As I mentioned above, peace in political games is no fun and people love drama. Thus, while peace is the least active time of the game for many people, for others it is the time to get to work -- and start the next war! From experience in at least one prior browser game, I can say that when there was a prolonged period of peace (a month or two), people got antsy and very easily aggrieved. In my opinion, most politically active players are not in CN to buy infrastructure and sign treaties. Since it is those people that escalate a relatively minor dispute to the point of universal war, the intentions of the player are obviously quite tied into the world state. Thus, assuming that CN retains a decent portion of these people through a time of peace, I think that it is completely unrealistic to assume that they will all fail to start a war over something that would be relatively unnoticed immediately after a war ends. For these reasons, I must say that peace cannot last. However, as you pointed out in the OP, if we are both wrong (and peace does prevail somehow), no one wins. I mean "win" here in the sense that a player at CN wins only when he derives satisfaction from playing. I can be ZI'd and still be "winning" the game by this definition. When logging in gets too tedious to be worth it, then I lose, and the community loses (not only because I'm super self-important, but also because a large community lends itself to more drama, ergo more "win" on the whole). If everyone just chills out and doesn't go to war, then we have a bunch of people playing dumbed down eSimCity. While some people might enjoy logging in every day simply to buy more infra/tech, I reckon such a player would get a lot more satisfaction out of a more realistic game. So, in order for the cyberverse to continue continuing, peace absolutely cannot persist. (Sorry for the long segment of text, and the very cursory treatment given to the final assertion. The former is due to interest, and the latter due to having to get back to work.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ModusOperandi Posted April 13, 2009 Report Share Posted April 13, 2009 There is only one peace; one which cannot be impacted by anything on Bob at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ttaagg Posted April 13, 2009 Report Share Posted April 13, 2009 There is only one peace; one which cannot be impacted by anything on Bob at all. Don't leave me hanging like that! If you know of the solitary peace, do tell! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heft Posted April 13, 2009 Report Share Posted April 13, 2009 This sort of absolutist reasoning seems flawed merely because it is absolutist (i.e. "Always the case that there is no peace."). OOC: "Only the Sith deal in absolutes." IC - I think we can agree that peace is a little more complicated than a mere lack of war, or of tension. It is indeed possible for there to be periods with little significant tension. But these are always built and maintained by lies and facades, as various factions and individuals insist on getting along without friction, and insist on maintaining a false peace that has no right to exist. It is a state of perpetual dishonesty, and it is a denial of desires and passions. In that sense, it is all a lie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ttaagg Posted April 13, 2009 Report Share Posted April 13, 2009 IC - I think we can agree that peace is a little more complicated than a mere lack of war, or of tension. It is indeed possible for there to be periods with little significant tension. But these are always built and maintained by lies and facades, as various factions and individuals insist on getting along without friction, and insist on maintaining a false peace that has no right to exist. It is a state of perpetual dishonesty, and it is a denial of desires and passions. In that sense, it is all a lie. Such a philosophy seems melancholy to say the least! You seem to assume only the worst of man as being possible, and good to occur only as means to a more self-serving end. Thus, a person would only desire peace to avoid being curbstomped or to build up in order to demolish another group of people. Even under this assumption, however, I'm not sure that we can claim this is a "false peace that has no right to exist". There is obviously a point to the peace, and thus I presume it has a "right" (though I'm not sure how to accurately define "right" in this context). Even though, the peace would not be "false" under my previously stated definition. Possibly, we are working off of slightly different conceptions of peace. If I had to guess, you would call a peace with no internal or secret grudges a "true peace". Any state of peace with any sense of dislike would then be "false peace". Working from this modified definition set, I think I will agree that it is, in fact, a false peace, but peace nonetheless. Though, it invites the question of whether "true peace" is ever achievable, or if it is merely an ideal never realized. The biggest problem with this notion of true peace is that knowing the self is incredibly hard! I have some friends that are really smart, and I am a little envious of that quality. Does that mean that our friendship relies on a "false peace" between us? What about someone who I don't consciously envy at all? Is it possible that there is a subconscious envy involved, and thus true peace is not possible? And how would we classify situational feelings? (For example, on Tuesdays I am envious of alliance X since they all get free pizza, but every other day I have no desire to be among them, other than when I am hungry.) Though, maybe I am trying too hard to pull peace out of the realm wherein it is primarily involved. It may be that it makes no sense to talk about peace other than between groups of people. Working from the same true/false definitions, how do we adapt them for the use by a group? Is it false if any member has an unstated grudge, or maybe it needs to be a leader? What about explicit grudges that stay within the confidence of the alliance? Is there a distinction of classes of grudges? Such as, I can be envious of NPO's sexy flag all I want and wish that my alliance had it? Or maybe I cannot stand the leadership of IRON but love a majority of the membership? (Apologies for the undefined nature of grudges and the fuzzy definition of false peace. I'll put some more thought into it and see if I can come up with a better definition with justifications for either one.) --- You also mentioned that peace is a "state of perpetual dishonesty" and "a denial of desires and passions". While I can agree that this applies to the CN world in the general case, I'm reconsidering whether we can make such a blanket statement. For example, what if someone plays the game in order to annoy other players because they find this annoyance personally gratifying. For such a person, avoiding widescale war for all of CN would be the fulfillment of desire, as I think we are safe to assume a large portion of the playerbase enjoys war. Based on previous experiences (I'm looking at you, Artemis of !@#$%*), I reckon that there is another class of people that care not for war, but only for the friendships/social outlet that the game provides. I do agree, however, that for a majority of players, peace is denying the pleasure of war. --- I'm quietly considering whether any of these points we've raised has direct implications or relationships to "real world" life. (I.e. is there a disjunction between the nature of CN players and that of real people, or does the same set of rules govern both?) The issue of anonymity and perceived lack of personal consequences makes me ponder whether the internet is carte blanche to drop portions of the facade we use in real life and reveal a more disturbing part of ourselves. However, there is an alternative in that the internet is a venue for more intimate introspection into ourselves and our considerations of humanity in general. (I'm sure there are countless other variations, such as whether the internet is merely a way we seek pleasure, but I feel that these are too unsophisticated to accurately describe interactions done via anonymity.) For instance, I've never been a fan of confrontation in reality. On the internet, I don't go out of my way to engage in confrontations, but I won't back away either. Now, does this suggest that I secretly desire to get into barfights or shouting matches with coworkers? Or is it merely a desire to learn more about the way my mind works* and more general facts about "life"? *Maybe I'm the only one that thinks about how I think, and often think about why I think about thinking. That would simplify a lot of things, actually. But I think that you are all a bit more complicated than that (plus, I can promise you I'm not a unique little snowflake). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wad of Lint Posted April 14, 2009 Report Share Posted April 14, 2009 Ttaagg, you make an awful lot of assumptions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heft Posted April 14, 2009 Report Share Posted April 14, 2009 Out of Character: Keep in mind that this is all supposed to be an "in character" discussion, and what Heft believes to be true about the cyberverse is not necessarily what I believe to be true about the real world, and I generally try to have Heft's beliefs be informed by CN and not RL as much as possible (I'm sure a good bit of myself bleeds into him as well, but there is still a distinction). IC: I haven't really responded here because it's a whole lot to respond to and I really haven't been able to sit here and stare at it long enough to really respond to everything. Also, there are a lot of assumptions, and there seems to be a variety of threads intermingling, entering and leaving the argument and I'm not certain where the central thrust is for me to adress it without getting mired down in all these different strings. But you do bring up a number of interesting things that could be discussed or expounded upon later. Keep in mind that this is largely all still a provisional philosophy and open to change as we continue to develop it. For now, I'll just try and address it in a rather summarized and probably unsatisfying way. As the philosophy is continually developed and refined, a clearer definition of "peace" and "not peace" will surely arise. Peace is a lack of conflict, whether it be war or personal grievances or whatever. All friends have some conflict, some competing interests, and all relationships are built on, at best, compromise and reconciliation. At worst, and much more common in our world today, they are built on falsehoods and daggers. There's a difference between a genuine friendship and a relationship where neither party much cares for the other and are both simply attempting to create the image of a friendship. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Janova Posted April 15, 2009 Report Share Posted April 15, 2009 In such a factional world, true peace is forever out of reach. Everyone has a different vision of a perfect, peaceful world, and implementing that vision would infringe upon the practices of other factions in the present, causing conflict. There is never peace, only truces – or if one faction becomes large enough to dominate, oppression (as they enforce their vision on the now small dissenting factions). For example, in my personal peaceful world there would be no tech raiding. But as there is a large faction that supports tech raiding, either I will come into conflict with that group, or if I succeed in besting them and dominate the world, I will constantly be fighting 'police wars' in order to keep them from raiding. Neither of these situations is truly peaceful. On another note, relativity is important. If my alliance gains 10% extra strength in 3 months, but every other alliance has gained 20%, I have not prospered – and in fact I would have done better in a chaotic world where the other alliances fought a large war and lost 20% of their strength and my alliance only lost 10%. Because there is always a baseline of uninvolved nations and alliances which continue their growth through wartime (although even those are not guaranteed, both GPA and NADC learnt that the hard way), you will lose out to them if you are constantly at war, but when the major factions are war-active then the balance between them is more important than absolute numbers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ttaagg Posted April 15, 2009 Report Share Posted April 15, 2009 Ttaagg, you make an awful lot of assumptions.I suppose I do. Are there any in specific that you think ridiculous or unjustifiable? Perhaps I did some hand-waving to get the result that I desired.Peace is a lack of conflict, whether it be war or personal grievances or whatever. All friends have some conflict, some competing interests, and all relationships are built on, at best, compromise and reconciliation. At worst, and much more common in our world today, they are built on falsehoods and daggers. There's a difference between a genuine friendship and a relationship where neither party much cares for the other and are both simply attempting to create the image of a friendship. I'm having a hard time conceptualizing peace under your definition of stably existing, but I suppose that is precisely your point. And I'm not sure my friendship derail was relevant to our discussion of peace, but I must ask whether you think the nature of a friendship is perspective-relational or there is an absolute descriptor. (So if I consider X to be a genuine friend, but X just chills with me because its politically convenient, does that make the friendship genuine from my side, or absolutely 'fake' friendship, or possibly something else?)Out of Character: Keep in mind that this is all supposed to be an "in character" discussionOOC: Oops, thanks for the reminder. OOC2: Apparently the name of another browser game I referenced in my previous post is censored. Heh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justinian A Posted April 16, 2009 Report Share Posted April 16, 2009 Absolutely excellent reading. As usual, it takes Ivan to make Planet Bob seem to have the promise of being an interesting place to be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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