Supermath said:
Right. That's what I was saying.
And it's why you're wrong. Who the hell argues over xenobiology while totally ignoring and refusing to comment on the fact that World War IV was breaking out? Because that's what was happening, thats why I made that remark.
Again, what I said. The SF is able to accelerate the production of colonies, but that doesn't mean it wasn't happening at a good pace beforehand.
Your opinion is noted and promptly discarded.
That's what I didn't get -- how was there so little internal dissent to the SF?
Maybe because there was no reason for it? Dissent isn't some random variable that just happens. Most people aren't rebellious and angry when you promise to vastly improve their quality of life and then actually deliver on that promise.
Again -- the fact that there were no objections made no sense.
I guess it never occurred to you that there were objections, and many other things that happened, and they were never significant enough to make it into updates like all nations. The reason they weren't, is because the SF's political institutions were tailor-made to induct as many countries as possible. After a certain critical mass was reached (ie: most of the world's industrial powers), there was no reason for poor countries to remain on the periphery. They had less and less bargaining power and no benefits. The industrial countries ran the show through coalitions, and while they had to shell out money to the more impoverished states, they themselves got political capital out of it and their own unique sets of improvements -- like yet more advanced infrastructure, privileged trade access and colonies. That argument should sound vaguely similar, its the same one used by Eastern European states to justify membership in the European Union, and I dont see anything update worthy emanating out of Brussels!
PS: The occasional economic questions I got from Chandrasekhar about the SF almost always ended with just look at the EU
I am not sure what you're trying to get across here.
Continuing from the above: that you don't know what the hell you're talking about, because the American political system is full of semi-sovereign entities with competing interests who are all forced to cough up money which is then sometimes reallocated elsewhere, and often have disputes with each other over a wide variety of issues, and yet the system doesn't collapse one night. According to your logic, it should, and should have, and indeed never should have formed in the first place, yet it did. Fathom that.
You can't completely control data. All it really takes is one or two disgruntled people with sufficient hard evidence.
And it takes 41 muscles to frown, 17 to smile, and 4 to pull the trigger on a high powered sniper rifle. People have to get disgruntled in the first place, which is not a given, especially if the system is designed to prevent that, and designed to prevent such a defection and cover it up as and when necessary.
I would have said essentially the same thing without the quotes. If you aren't to reveal the weapon until it's being used, you either have to have a preemptive strike (and people love that!) or as retaliation, at which point it's too late. It would be better suited as a deterrent. Also, it would be pointless to have an arms race with the SF, as there's no doubt as to who would win.
And you plan nuclear strategy, do you? You see, unlike Dr. Strangelove, nuclear war is not viewed by militaries as a "game over" affair. It's viewed just like any other military operation. That's why one has reserves, and strategies, such as counterforce or countervalue, and policies, such as first strike or second strike, and escalation. One does not simply fire everything they have at the first provocation, because the goal of nuclear war is not genocide. Mutually assured destruction is only a consequence of both sides having similar numbers of weapons. The goal is victory. Victory tends to result most often from an unfair fight. Smashing somebody's planet before the fleet shows up to ensure a counterstrike's success is about as unfair as it gets. Also, yes, nobody would ever try an arms race. Except TerrisH or Matt0088 trying to develop antimatter or similar weapons, as revealed a few pages ago, the former with the intent to use them against earth.
World War III wiped out all the suicide bombers in the world?
Because religious fanaticism isn't symptomatic of poor education, which is in turn symptomatic of poor economics and living standards. Things that the SF was explicitly allocating the bulk of its funding to improving, globally. Furthermore space pirates, which the SF was giving money to, aren't religiously motivated terrorists. They suicide, if at all, to avoid capture, not to randomly kill civilians. The two are not at all alike, as even real world examples in the Indian Ocean and Middle East will clearly demonstrate. Once again, you don't know what you're talking about.
Yet people do it all the tim, given the opportunity. Look at the Scramble for Africa, for example.
You take over a market for two reasons, in order to export things into it or import things out of it, particularly when you make all the things it needs. Youve already noted that it isnt economically feasible to import resources to earth and a cursory examination of the population of the colonies reveals that the scope for exports is tiny. Why then is the scrabble for Africa at all relevant to the situation at hand? There is no market to race for: on the one hand you have unlimited resources which cant be exported and on the other you have limited scope for imports. Scarcity? What the hell is that!
According to some nation-states, yes. Also, the colonies are generally small and more isolated, which means that they will be more likely to adapt more extreme views (also, people fleeing persecution or intolerance, anyone?)
According to some nation-states which are archaic, ostracized, and despised by the majority of their own people for their theocratic leanings, yes, it is a priority. The damage these states suffer in economic development tends to indicates they are relics of the 20th century and before, not enduring features of the human landscape. Furthermore, even if there is a theorcatic state floating out in the void, it's one thing for it to sit there and exist and impose its values on that system, and another entirely for it to launch some kind of religious crusade across the galaxy--which would take untold trillions if not quadrillions of dollars and industrial resources un-possessed by anyone but the SF. So, again, this wouldn't be happening.
I never said that it would be set on Earth. I could easily see that happen on independent planets, especially where the SF would be more reluctant to intervene.
Although Symphony used the fracturing of multicultural systems into nation states as propaganda, it was neither happening, nor does it make sense to do so, as it'd be complete economic, political, and military suicide as compared to a system that managed to remain integrated. It's like advocating that some area of Earth today become a vast cluster of city-states with a hard-on for autarky, because surely theyll be able to compete with the United States or Fiji.
Chandrasekhar? You know, that guy running the game.
FWIW, I'm talking long-term here, where planets aren't necessarily dependent on the SF.
So in 500 to 1000 years. Its not like theyll be able to compete with it but whatever -hyperpower anyone?
At least those places had things like a breathable atmosphere, vegetation, and the like. Also, Symphony himself stated that the point of those colonies were to become independent in themselves, as it would be very infeasible to try to protect several dozen star systems using the resources of just one.
Symphony said it would be inconvenient, not infeasible. Furthermore, you keep making the implicit assumption that these capabilities would develop overnight, or on some reasonable timescale, when in fact no such thing is necessarily the case at all. All one has to do is look at the state of third world countries today, which have all the basic elements of life, and project how long it will take them to reach first world standards by themselves. It's a long time--if ever.
Now imagine the US if the rest of the world were to shrink to about a million people and it took a huge amount of resources to enter or leave the country.
I was definitely talking about in-colony strife, which is supremely interesting, not intercolony strife, which is boring as all get out! Sorry, sarcasm doesn't translate well into text. Smaller populations are more easily controlled than larger ones as the ratio of security to civilians is much easier. Try again maybe?
Y'know, if I were to run a realistic NES and all of a sudden Saxe-Coburg-Gotha were to conquer all of Greater Germany, I don't think that's what people would do.
Maybe because that isn't at all a realistic or even applicable analogy, given both time, scale, reasoning, motive, method, or possessing of any common features whatsoever at all.
Which is different from withering and dying.
Implicit ending qualifier "if at all." See previous remark about the timeframe of the game, and factor in realtime requirements to possibly reach such a stage even with BTs.
Seeing as how I wasn't playing, my participation was not really affected by the presence of the SF.
For the worse, apparently, as you have even less of an idea what the hell was going on or what you're talking about.
Chandrasekhar, I think the epitaph for this game should be:
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
