New Custom Faction: Wheeler Raiders

[Trenacker]

My sense was that Yang's read of the situation would have led him to conclude that the Chinese people longed for a throwback to an earlier, more orderly era following whatever chaos attended the collapse of the Communist regime (his bio refers to the Second Golden Revolution). He would therefore want to use a specific bloodline rather than claim the throne through force.

Do you see his personality as absolutely demanding titular leadership? He's an awful narcissist, obviously, and that doesn't jive well with his (supposed) emphasis on patient scheming as the Mad Philosopher King.

Factions

Let's take a moment to talk briefly about faction design for my simulation, which you may find interesting.

The New Two Thousand are an homage to the British and Dutch East India Companies and the Spanish approach to colonizing New World. During the colonization of the Americas, European governments frequently awarded large grants of land to men of means who could organize, equip, and lead new settlement. The system, while initially useful in attracting colonists, could also have unintended consequences inasmuch as it introduced independent actors to frontier environments where practical checks on their behavior were few and far between. The empresario – the Spanish word for entrepreneur – most remembered today is Samuel F. Austin, who would later go on to become the “Father of Texas.”

Oscar Harrison van de Graaf began life as heir to multiple industrial fortunes and went on to enhance his wealth as one of the earliest entrepreneurs to provide private military contracting services to the Federal government as it moved to restore central authority west of the Mississippi after the Second Civil War. In this capacity, his men were essentially auxiliaries fighting alongside the United States Armed Forces. Their most frequent opponents were Holnists, members of The Tribe, and competitors, whom he frequently accused of breaking the law. Van de Graaf often browbeat junior officers of the Army and Marines into turning over Holnist prisoners or deploying their troops in support of what amounted to private wars.

Van de Graaf was later appointed Chief Executive Officer of the American Reclamation Corporation (ARC), a federal corporation established by an act of Congress to organize and oversee subscription settlement of extraterrestrial bodies. (The intent was to create a quasi-governmental agency that complemented the work of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Department of Defense.) The United States Government reserved some of its allotted berths aboard Unity for settlers participating in the subscription program and effectively pledged that they would be permitted to homestead apart from the larger United Nations expedition after a designated period of service in which the colony would employ the investors’ resources, including their settlers and equipment. His time in the ARC was dogged by accusations that they endorsed debt peonage and other forms of human slavery. He later settled a government law suit for more than $400 billion.

Van de Graaf himself is a venture capitalist and sportsman who spent the vast majority of his personal fortune on outfitting his expedition. He hand-picked the settlers, who were required to “buy in,” but also permitted to bring their families. Each member signed a contract that effectively suborned them to van de Graaf’s leadership and compelled them to pay for supplies from his share of the stores abroad Unity. Larger investors were promised plots of land superior in size and quality. Although the terms of his original contract proscribed slavery or the use of nerve staples, it did not outlaw indentured servitude, and Van de Graff permitted paying settlers to include such persons in their entourages. Later, during the chaos of Planetfall, Van de Graff’s people took prisoner several dozen members of the Unity crew and expedition. These individuals have apparently been held against their will ever since.

Think Gene Hackman’s character in The Quick and the Dead. He is kind of a subversion of Louis L’Amour’s idea, expressed in Last Stand at Papago Wells, that hard men were required to make the West and could be forgiven some crimes along the way. I’ve had trouble distinguishing him from Morgan. I think the trick is to play The New Two Thousand more meritocratic than Morgan’s, even though decisions are made by a board of landholders (maybe even smallholders), and then to make Morgan’s faction an oligarchic plutocracy. The Hunters of Chiron, who are also meritocratic, would focus on direct democracy and be averse to permanent settlement.

Van de Graaf eventually goes nuts when the Unity splits and much of his investment is either stolen or intentionally destroyed by the other factions. His militia, the “Regulators,” then try to reclaim those people and goods by force.

The Beneath, a replacement for the Nautilus Pirates, which I thought were too silly, were an experimental faction led by Chiron Interstellar Probe aquanauts. (Since growth was always going to be an issue, I had planned for this faction to benefit from subsequent absorption of the Unity’s own set of maritimers.)

The futurist literature of the 1970s and ‘80s was full of imaginative excursions to the ocean depths. Abyssal seas represent some of the last unexplored wilderness on Planet Earth, and yet have proven more difficult to access than the lunar surface. This faction is about that vision of a future civilization.

The faction leader was Raoul André St. Germaine, an officer of the Marine Nationale who later became a naturalist while on convalescence in Guyana. St. Germaine, a former Capitaine de fregaté (Commander equivalent), was responsible for the mission’s small Aquatic Operations Section. As the second son of minor French aristocracy, he enrolled in the École Navale in continuance of family tradition and graduated with a degree in nuclear engineering. Graduating on the cusp of the Saharan Burst Wars, St. Germaine’s career coincided with more than two decades of French intervention on behalf of local military commanders in its former African colonies. Following an allegation of war crimes (and an acquittal), he was reassigned to French Guiana, where he spent most of his time facilitating scientific expeditions into the department’s interior.

St. Germaine advancement was ultimately stalled by repeated disciplinary issues affecting personnel under his command. Famous for the grudges he both pursued and inspired, St. Germaine was liked only by the men who served under him, for whom he regularly exploited his personal wealth and political connections. St. Germaine also took a dim view of the political restrictions on his forces, which meant that he became a favorite of the African leaders whose regimes he was tasked with establishing or protecting. A psych profile would indicate that he is extremely paternalistic, regarding himself as the natural leader of those less able – but, in the style of the Roman paterfamilias or the Danish bread-giver, who is expected to provide his men with food, shelter, wealth, and protection in return for their fealty. The war crimes in question related to his crews’ slaughter of prisoners. The idea is that St. Germaine shielded them reflexively, caring not a whit about their behavior, but only that they were “his” men.

I envisioned The Beneath as a faction of submariners whose social structure was distinctly hierarchical, reflecting both their primary origins as military men and also St. Germaine’s pronounced aristocratic sentiments. I also supposed that there would be a natural inclination toward both green development and enforcing freedom of navigation for themselves, at the expense of others.

I used this faction during the simulation but never did much with them, partly because they pose a major problem. All of the other factions focus on ideology, not preferred terrain type. The Nautilus Pirates, at least, were in a position to sell their raiding as a lifestyle choice – an exploration of masculinity, if you will – but The Beneath were closer in disposition to the Gaians, differing primarily in their choice of leader rather than guiding principle. I suppose, in some ways, the Gaians are more interested in symbiosis, whereas The Beneath are about preservation, but the distinction seems academic. Dierdre felt strongly that man had destroyed his homeworld by failing to respect it, while St. Germaine feels simply that we missed the opportunity to harness the living seas (which requires a high measure of stewardship). Dierdre meditated about how society failed. I don’t think St. Germaine did that.

I had an idea for another faction, as yet unnamed, led by an obsessive prison architect. I had in mind a Sikh from Jodhpur, India named Sardul Singh, a Supervising Engineer aboard The Unity. Singh, a graduate of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology, was notable for designing numerous maximum security detention facilities in India, Soviet Russia, and Golden China. His faction would have reflected his strong belief in the power of planned communities to affect behavior.

The Hunters of Chiron are a nomadic faction led by J.T. Marsh, a former Special Air Service soldier born in Kenya. Following honorable discharge, Marsh became a safari guide, private security consultant, and (briefly) game warden at a theme park venture for a company called International Genetic Technologies, Inc. (InGEN) of Palo Alto, California. He was later recommended for The Chiron Interstellar Probe by a Colonel Derek Hacker, British Secret Intelligence Service.

Marsh is an Olympic-level athlete who preaches self-reliance. He is a figure straight out of the adventure books of Wilbur Smith: a hyper-masculine, kinetic guy who is all about independence, self-discipline, and risk-taking. Like St. Germaine, he is critical of the weakness of others, but also tends to assume responsibility for them.

After the Red Flu forces the dissolution of the CIP colony, Marsh and his people, who served outside the settlement perimeter as ‘Former crews, long-range scouts, wildland firefighters, and game wardens, are left adrift. Marsh consolidates their operations around a mobile command center, institutes direct democracy, and offers their services to settled factions prepared to pay in goods and services. They have low-impact settlements that do little to disturb the natural ecology and are excellent at combating the Mind Worm menace, but lack for industry and population.

The Dreamers of Chiron are a motley collection of chemists and convicts – all survivors of the CIP. They are led by a pair of leaders, Roshann Cobb and Aleigha Cohen. Cobb is a nod to the Straun characters created by author James Clavell. He is a British entrepreneur in Hong Kong who turns out to be a spy. He later parleyed his skills into the basis of a drug-smuggling operation, working with regime dissidents. He shrewdly positions his trading house to invest in the fields of mnemonics, oneirology, memory manipulation, and, most importantly, “resocialization.” Straun’s later secures him a berth about Unity to evaluate the potential of Chiron’s biological resources for potential pharmaceutical application. Instead of bringing along biologists and engineers, he takes his personal security contingent and several fellow spooks. A pre-flight tox screen indicates that he uses Stimpaks.

Aleigha Cohen, born to Baghdadi Jewish parents in Myanmar, is a Harvard-educated researcher who published groundbreaking research on stem cell applications for regenerating nerve tissue. She later performed post-graduate research on brain-computer interfaces for the American Reclamation Corporation. A speculative paper on neutral transplantation as a behavioral corrective for social deviance got her blackballed in the West. She subsequently worked on behalf of Struan’s in Hong Kong, pursuing projects in Communist (later Golden) China and Soviet Russia. She became Head of Neurosurgery for the CIP at the urging of both those nations. When the colony broke down, she was in charge of a number of convict laborers, whom she and Cobb brought with them when they abandoned the landing site.

The Dreamers are intended to be focused on the use of synthetic drugs to explore human consciousness – for which they require an army of laborers who can do the physical work of keeping the settlement going while their “betters” indulge.

The Human Ascendancy are a geniocracy led by Tahmineh Pahlavi, an Iranian descendant of the last Shah. Pahlavi is a molecular biologist and proponent of eugenics. She earned a Nobel Prize at age 30 for breakthroughs in gene therapy related to suppression of autoimmune disorders. She later found employment with the ARC working on programs analogous to the Fallout universe’s Vault projects, which focused on selective breeding. She was assigned to the CIP with the task of evaluating the long-term effects of the environment on the human genome. She then proposed to purpose-breed colonists uniquely suited to achieve mission objectives and was denied. When the CIP colony was ravaged by disease, Pahlavi was able to gather to her a set of like-minded researchers.

The Glory of Chiron claimed that civilization was a question of storytelling. I put this idea aside because it didn’t appeal to any of the players and we had more than enough non-player factions, but Donald [Sleezebag]’s unexpected victory in the recent election led me to revisit the idea. Has [Sleezebag] introduced a new philosophical paradigm? We might talk about “Trumpian speech,” for example. The most intriguing commentary this election cycle said it best: [Sleezebag] supporters take him seriously, but not literally, while his opponents do the opposite. [Sleezebag] has realized that, when you say something that apparently violates norms, it is assumed to be genuine. He also realized that people are happy to forgive you for lack of mastery over details so long as you signal general intent. Voters could “map” their own particularized sentiments onto [Sleezebag]’s general statements and were thrilled enough just to hear somebody speak to their issues – even though [Sleezebag] rarely provided details and frequently flip-flopped on the specifics of policy execution. We can also talk about Trumpian reality. In four years, even if objective indicators tell us that [Sleezebag] is a failure, will his voters care so long as they feel relevant again? A lot of political analysis focuses on whether politicians provide tangible value to voters. What about those, like Obama and [Sleezebag], who provide intangible value? This faction was predicated on leadership by flashy media moguls, emphasis on feeling over fact, and a willingness to tell people anything they want to hear. I assumed that blood sport would be a major feature of their society and had planned to set them up as slave merchants, hoping that they would provoke ethical conflict.

[bvanevery]

Do you see his personality as absolutely demanding titular leadership?

Yes.  He's the cult leader of the most obvious cult in the game.  Cults revolve around their leaders.  Cha Dawn is also a cult leader, but he/she doesn't get a bunch of quotes / talk / philosophy / storytime the way Yang does.  Cha is a generic cult leader.  Yang is one of the main characters, a big chunk of what makes Alpha Centauri the game that it is.

Really hard to see him as something other than the guy who knocks you on your ass, then throws you "Into the tanks!"  And I don't mean the kind with treads.  Why would he ever play second fiddle to anybody?  Not seeing it.  He's not subtle, he's not crafty, he has no need to hide his power.

[Trenacker]

Of course he's crafty: he manipulated his way into he ship and command staff in the first place.

I don't see the tension between playing a behind-the-scenes role in which he is still the power behind the Chinese throne and then assuming direct leadership of a faction only once he is on Chiron. It might work better if we knew that China didn't have an imperial tradition, but they do, and there was presumably no way for Yang to masquerade. His strong willpower would not be an asset there; he'd have had to defer to an actual blood claimant.

Yang is narcissistic, but I sense that he wants to be obeyed more than worshipped. Remember that he nerve staples people; the drones would scarcely know who he is.

[bvanevery]

As for characters and factions, there's a basic problem of trying to put additional characters into a fiction, where the fiction already had a suite of strongly differentiated characters taking up various niches.  You are noticing this when trying to do an "entrepreneurial" faction.  The answer is obvious: get rid of Morgan from the story.  Your story becomes a story about "Westward expansion in space" rather than "Silicon Valley in space", which is what all the Morgan jokes were about.  They were intimately familiar with the antics of monopolistic Microsoft in the 1990s and blasted them ruthlessly in the game for it. 

You can't fit everything under the same tent, and expect people to pay attention.  Attention is a limited resource.

Game of Thrones doesn't need, like, 5 more factions on top of the 7 or 8 it already has.  It has enough to be just on the threshold of me not being able to remember exactly how many there are.

Vikings doesn't need more characters and subplots than it already has.  It has a good number.  Only so much audiences can keep track of, or have time to watch.  Only need so many actors in an ensemble.

I too have thought about a game dealing with the question of "[Sleezebag] realities".  However, such a game can't really be SMAC.  There's nothing about the game that gives a framework for the stuff he has pulled.  It could comment on [Sleezebag], the same way Morgan comments on Microsoft and the tech industry, but there's no way to play [Sleezebag].  You'd need to be making a lot of game influencing decisions about how to lie, how to bend the truth, how to make stuff up, how to not know things, etc.  And most important, how to distract.  [Sleezebag] is a master at that.

[bvanevery]

It might work better if we knew that China didn't have an imperial tradition, but they do, and there was presumably no way for Yang to masquerade.

Why do you keep saying that?  China hasn't had an imperial tradition since 1912.  It's like going on about Russia having an imperial tradition.  So what?  20th century Russians and Chinese were Communist most of that time.  There's no such thing as people in that part of the world thinking they gotta have a monarch, with bloodlines.  Vastly more people have been alive in that part of the world in the 20th century, than any previous century.

What you could expect, following the Russian model, is a "strong man" will rule.  That's what Vladimir Putin is.  That's what every Russian ruler has been, including the occasional woman, with possibly rare exception for part of 1917.  Russia has never really known democracy and doesn't operate that way.  I'm less familiar with Chinese history but expect it to be similarly undemocratic.

A "strong man" doesn't care about blood lines and inheritance.  A "strong man" rules by force.  That's Yang.

There's a very simple solution to any problem you pose about bloodlines.  Denounce and/or murder all the people who keep complaining about bloodlines.  Worked for Stalin, worked for Mao.  "Running dogs of the capitalist class."  I'm not sure what part of "I can kill you to get my way, so you'd better say what I want you to say!" you're not understanding here.

[bvanevery]

I just realized a problem with the SMAC fiction in general.  Why are there no "heads of government" on this expedition?  Like, let's say Yang ruled China, or a big chunk of China, or commanded the army of China, back home.  I have no doubt that, at a minimum, he was China's most powerful warlord.  Then he decides to go into space, because that's how you keep living when the world is falling apart.  Yang surely wouldn't have been the only one to think this way.  I'm the leader, why would I be staying home while Earth dies?  Some would feel a sense of responsibility to lead, even amidst chaos.  Others would be like, screw dat, I'm in this for me!

The main game-external explanation would be, Firaxis didn't want to make a game about nations, but about the clash of ideologies.  Understandable.  It doesn't actually fit with rational explanatory fictions about Earth's demise, but understandable.  A thematic choice, in which we're perhaps required not to stare too hard.

Lal is a governmental entity, "The United Nations".  Of course, not a particularly important person in the UN, prior to mission disaster.  Morgan makes sense as a self-centered and self-funded entity.

Santiago may have not been anything particularly important on Earth; she just got a chance to go "right wing nutjob" when the crisis happened.  I think she's a weak character anyways.  She's gratuitously a woman just to claim gender balance.  Most of her dialogue / quotes aren't convincing, they feel more like Firaxis needed to give something to someone somewhere. 

Zhakarov is plausible on the expedition as "a prominent and needed scientist."  Deirdre is another kind of needed scientist.  Miriam gets lucky, takes advantage of the crisis.  Otherwise she would have just been "a ship's chaplain".

So, where are all the world leaders?  Was Earth wildly optimistic about Earth's future at the time they launched the thing?  Were they gravely pessimistic about the expedition's chances?

[Trenacker]

You are correct that the original seven factions cover so much ground so well that they make many custom factions seem excessively narrow or inherently duplicative by comparison. That’s a huge testament to the design work of Brian Reynolds, which clearly stood the test of time.

At the risk of repeating myself, part of the reason that I so love SMAC is that it captures well the unique problems facing the global community (at least from a Western perspective) on the cusp of the Second Millennium: the tensions between human development and conservation of the natural environment, exploitation of new technologies and respect for ethical boundaries, the balance between haves and have-nots and all the social justice questions that emergence, whether technocracy is inherently illiberal, the proper place for violence and struggle in the modern world, dangers posed by cults of personality and the surveillance state, and faith versus empiricism. In terms of which new factions might possibly fit best – that is, without overlap – my sense is that the Dreamers, the Hunters, and the Glory are the three best candidates. The Dreamers touch on the modern recent change in attitudes toward synthetic drugs and anxiety over pharmaceutical management of health issues. The Hunters tackle some of the same fundamental questions as Santiago when it comes to the place of physical action in mankind’s journey toward apotheosis, but are more explicitly doing so in dialogue with the natural environment. They also add a direct democracy component that is missing even from Lal’s avowedly democratic faction, which was under-developed and ought to have been more focused on bureaucracy, its strengths and weaknesses. The Glory deal in post-truthiness. And I agree, by the way, that a Trumpesque faction would be difficult to handle in a simulation.

All of the factions get better and more distinct if small adjustments are made. For example, I made The Human Ascendancy a geniocracy that rejected cybernetics, including the nerve-staple.

Miriam’s Conclave is a kritarky (government by judge – in this case, religious judges à la the Bible). They believe that man was exiled from Earth after breaking his covenant with God, or basically, that the end of the world is a punishment for the wicked. Borrowing from Frank Herbert, their faith’s supreme commandment is considered to be, “Thou shalt not disfigure the soul.” Allophilus Zeander, an early leader in the Evangelical Fire, provided the landmark exposition on this subject, arguing that attempts to modify man’s morality or abridge his singular mastery of the Universe through science – that is, to employ genetic engineering or to develop “thinking machines” – constituted explicit rejection of God’s Word. A substantial number of the Conclave’s population practice asceticism, renouncing material possessions and devoting themselves to pastoral lifestyles. The result is to substantially retard the faction’s scientific and industrial progress. They do, however, use machines and computers – just uncomfortably, always worried that it could develop “true” intelligence.

I also had a faction called The Estado Novo, which was kind of a latter-day caste society modeled on medieval feudalism. The idea was that a number of personnel basically traded away personal liberty for a guarantee of security, resulting in a government by priests, warriors, and a landed aristocracy that heavily controlled access to information and tried to micromanage public morality.

The Human Labyrinth is an absolute despotism. Their preference is order, their aversion is liberty. Their affinity is Supremacy, or the achievement by man of dominion over his environment, through whatever means are available. Their goal relative to the other factions is anocracy, which they believe will serve to prevent coordinated action against them. They are closed, hostile, and strongly opposed to contact with Earth. They typically operate a command economy. Chairman Sheng-ji Yang is a male from Great China. His rank was Political Officer. (He was assigned to the Unity to ensure the loyalty of the Chinese national contingent.) Yang propounds a philosophy emphasizing three pillars: 法 (Fa), or law, meaning that the law is known, and obeyed because systematically enforced; 術 (Shu), or method, whereby the ruler holds himself apart from society and "special tactics and secrets" to obscure his motivations, reducing the opportunity for confidants to influence him except through their obeisance of the law; and 勢 (Shi), or legitimacy, which focuses on drawing distinctions between the ruler and the man. This agenda is rendered substantially more effective by surveillance and compliance enforcement technologies. It is also problematized by Yang's rejection of a consistent set of ethics. Yang can be played straight as a philosopher-king who attempts to surround himself with loyal, efficacious ministers, or else as a hermit king who is nothing more than a latter-day Pol Pot.

The faction number is a question of personal preference. Honestly, it’s the multiplicity of factions that makes Game of Thrones interesting to me. I regretted the small roles of the Martells (Dorne) and the Tyrells (the Reach) in the television adaption of A Song of Ice and Fire, as well as the absence of the Young Griff and his Golden Company. I also think Vikings became a better show starting with the invasion of Frankia.

I keep returning to the question of blood legitimation because, even today, royalist narratives in places like Russia turn on actual pretenders, not just anyone who seems fit to rule. Why bring back the imperial tradition at all if his goal is simply to install himself as an authoritarian leader? Sun Yat-Sen did that without reference to previous dynasties. And traditionally, strong men have cared very much about the rituals that conveyed both their political and spiritual legitimacy. It’s why Charlemagne sought the mantle of Holy Roman Emperor and rightist dictators in Europe repeatedly positioned themselves as monarchists during the 1930s.

I’m making precisely the argument that Yang can dictate terms to a puppet emperor. I don’t agree with your conclusion that his personality type is necessarily so advanced in its narcissism that there would be no alternative but for him to have pursued titular as well as de facto leadership, especially if he perceived that human society on Earth was doomed and needed to get aboard Unity.
It’s worth asking whether a lot of people on Earth believed in the viability of the Unity mission. They might have agreed that the Earth was dying, but not about precisely when it would die, what it would mean for their own physical well-being, or whether Unity was all but guaranteed to burn up on leaving orbit.

In my fiction, national sponsors come and go, providing yet another reason why particular leaders might not have made it to the final cut of the crew.

Yang was the Golden Emperor’s security chief. Probably equivalent to a People’s Liberation Army general, which means that he wielded a great deal of political power. Santiago was a member of Yang’s security staff on Unity but the head of her own survivalist gang. It was clear that she was already a right-wing nutjob well ahead of time. In my fiction, she plays a role in the Second Civil War. Later, she gradually realizes that there is a growing rift between people like herself, who consider survivalism to have genuine philosophical dimensions, and Holnists, who are basically immoral epicureans living out a Viking fantasy.

Santiago’s dialogue is bad because, at times, it is not good English. The writers absolutely did stumble there.

Zhakarov becomes more interesting if his faction determines to organize itself as an academic institution and his backstory is larded to include serious conflict with anti-science types.

Roshann Cobb, like Oscar van de Graaf, pays his way aboard. Aleigha Cohen and Tamineh Pahlavi are medical prodigies who would logically have been selected for that reason, not to mention their youth and fitness. J.T. Marsh is effectively a mid-level manager, but makes sense given his skill set and the particular role assigned to him, which amounts to scout.

[bvanevery]

You are correct that the original seven factions cover so much ground so well that they make many custom factions seem excessively narrow or inherently duplicative by comparison. That’s a huge testament to the design work of Brian Reynolds, which clearly stood the test of time.

I guess.  Do you happen to have any sources for how much of the design work he personally did?  Sure he gets the top title credit, and I'm sure he did way more than Sid Meier, who is just the ongoing franchise name.  But that doesn't imply to me, that Brian Reynolds single handedly designed the 7 factions and did the work to bring them to life.  I'd have to read some accounts that he actually did the heavy lifting, as opposed to having a team dream it up.

Issues of crediting and team dynamics were a big deal back then.

And traditionally, strong men have cared very much about the rituals that conveyed both their political and spiritual legitimacy.

Sure you can care about rituals, as expressions of your power, when you control the rituals.  Stalin, Hitler, Mao, they all did it.  Big banners of the leader, portraits of the leader in homes and businesses, public pageants, etc.  Heck maybe it's the fun of being that kind of leader.  [Sleezebag] would love it!

I’m making precisely the argument that Yang can dictate terms to a puppet emperor. I don’t agree with your conclusion that his personality type is necessarily so advanced in its narcissism that there would be no alternative but for him to have pursued titular as well as de facto leadership, especially if he perceived that human society on Earth was doomed and needed to get aboard Unity.

I don't buy it because looking at Mao in The Cultural Revolution, he nearly had anyone killed who disagreed with him on economic policy.  You are assuming the titular leader is weak and can have terms dictated to.  I don't think running a country like China selects for weak titular leaders.  The actual historical examples are people like Mao, or imperial dynasties being summarily deposed because they are irrelevant to modern concerns.  If Yang is not top dog, then who was so strong as to have power over him?  And why did that person not choose to step onto the Unity?

Reminds me very much of arguments about God making the universe.  Well who made that God?  Who is the final authority, where does the buck stop?

Why would Yang need to hide his power, at all?  Only if someone is more powerful than him.  In real life, Deng Xiaoping did a good job surviving Mao's regime.  Mao was the ultimate force that had to be survived.  You don't puppet Mao; you find a way to stay out of Mao's crosshairs, to outlast him.

It’s worth asking whether a lot of people on Earth believed in the viability of the Unity mission. They might have agreed that the Earth was dying, but not about precisely when it would die, what it would mean for their own physical well-being, or whether Unity was all but guaranteed to burn up on leaving orbit.

I think we get to the point where if we stare at it, the whole thing falls apart.  The solar system has resources, Alpha Centauri is awfully far away.  If you can build the Unity, surely you have some experience with flight around the solar system.  So things like whether rockets blow up on launch pads are known.

I could see not wanting to "go cryo" for a long journey.  Might give some leaders the heebie jeebies, and over such a long haul, things definitely could go wrong.  But I suspect that other world leaders would be more daring and want to take the chance, thinking that Earth is likely finished.

Later, she gradually realizes that there is a growing rift between people like herself, who consider survivalism to have genuine philosophical dimensions, and Holnists, who are basically immoral epicureans living out a Viking fantasy.

Sounds like the South Park episode where 3 factions of Atheists are fighting each other in the far future.  Cartman has to save them all.  I think it may have involved a PlayStation.

In real life, I have a conservative friend of mine who voted for [Sleezebag].  Not because he likes [Sleezebag]; he saw it as   analogous to allying with Stalin in order to defeat Hitler.  For him, Hillary was Hitler.  Whatever; even if I don't share his politics, he had better reasoning for that than most.  For instance he's a committed anti-abortion protester, so there were planks of Hillary's platform that he absolutely couldn't abide.

The point of bringing this up, is I think the "hair splitting" falls by the wayside, when the field of action has limited options upon it.  A democratic election process is artificial, I admit.  But I wonder if real life freeform alliances may have analogues.  You can only have so many friends and enemies in a theater of combat, then you have to choose sides.

On the other hand, the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches often hated each other more than other non-Christian religions.  'Cuz they were the inheritors of the poles of the Roman empire.  What you can get in a spat about, depends on how many resources you're controlling.  How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

[Trenacker]

I recall a podcast some years ago by a group called Three Moves Ahead. Episode 134, unless my Google-fu has failed me. Reynolds discusses coming up with the factions while listening to the soundtrack for Les Miserables.

Your remarks on ritual imply that you believe these things are done for their own sake. They are not. They are performed for the benefit of the audience.

There have been many cases in history where leaders with theoretically absolute power are weak enough to be made puppets. Tsar Nicholas is among the best examples. He responded to the suggestions of his wife, who in turn was influenced by the monk Rasputin. During the Second World War, a case can be made that Emperor Hirohito was also at the mercy of certain officers. For procedural reasons, Putin stepped back from the Russian presidency for a number of years before resuming that post, mostly for the benefit of outside observers of Russian politics. In practice, he was considered never to have given up his hold on power.

Yang would need to hide his power to sustain the impression that the emperor is the true power behind the throne. The idea here is that Yang could stymie potential adversaries by using the symbolism of imperial patronage to his advantage. Remember that the situation in Golden China was unstable, so it is possible that Yang cannot directly eliminate all of his opponents. The man is crafty, yes, but not omnipotent.

I address the depletion of the resources in our solar system in my fiction. War is a simple answer.

I think the likelihood of world leaders appearing on the Unity depends a good deal on how many countries are left standing when the smoke clears. Remember that global leaders wouldn’t necessarily be in a good spot for selection as crew.

[bvanevery]

Your remarks on ritual imply that you believe these things are done for their own sake.

Not really, that would just be your interpretation of whatever I said.  I don't have time to unpack everything I know about human cultures.  Let's put it this way, I have a B.A. in Sociocultural Anthropology.

There have been many cases in history where leaders with theoretically absolute power are weak enough to be made puppets. Tsar Nicholas is among the best examples.

Hereditary monarchies don't put the best people in charge.  Growing political power out of the barrel of a gun, does, at least as far as making others obey is concerned.  Can be pretty crap for administrating the country though.  The 20th century is pretty much that model.  I see no reason why anyone would ever return to antiquated notions of bloodline monarchies.  What you'd really have is ruthless people seizing power.  If there are too many strong leaders, some die.  Like Trotsky.

During the Second World War, a case can be made that Emperor Hirohito was also at the mercy of certain officers.

As I said above, the existence of an Emperor at all, is a throwback to a time that was long gone.  Hardly shocking that he had no real power.  What you'd need to explain, is why on an apocalyptic Earth, anyone would newly constitute this sort of ridiculous hereditary tomfoolery.  "Our ancestors were stupid" explains a lot of the past, but it doesn't hold up when we've got a century of leaders doing things other ways.  Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ida Amin, Fidel Castro, Suharto, Saddam Hussein... what's not clear about the pattern?

For procedural reasons, Putin stepped back from the Russian presidency for a number of years before resuming that post, mostly for the benefit of outside observers of Russian politics. In practice, he was considered never to have given up his hold on power.

I'm not aware of anyone who was fooled.  Maybe ignorant people who don't know anything about politics or history and would be fooled by anything.  Certainly not Russians!

Yang would need to hide his power to sustain the impression that the emperor is the true power behind the throne. The idea here is that Yang could stymie potential adversaries by using the symbolism of imperial patronage to his advantage. Remember that the situation in Golden China was unstable, so it is possible that Yang cannot directly eliminate all of his opponents. The man is crafty, yes, but not omnipotent.

Stalin directly eliminated all of his opponents.  Mao came very close to that model, although he used denunciation and reprogramming extensively as well.  The Nazis had The Night of the Long Knives.  Hey, in Roman times if half the Senate didn't like the other half, they murdered them.  This is an old thing!  I just am not seeing the world where Yang has any incentive to hold back.  He comes from a class of persons who are not squeamish about such things, and who are awfully successful at carrying them out.  Yang is a known security spook; why wouldn't he throw his opponents into the back of a gas van and call it a day?


I think it is worth quoting one section of that Wikipedia article about the Nazis.  Just to show how unvarnished these men were about killing the opposition.

No one in the SA spoke more loudly for "a continuation of the German revolution", as one prominent stormtrooper put it, than Röhm. Röhm, as one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, had participated in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, an attempt by Hitler to seize power by force in 1923. A combat veteran of World War I, Röhm had recently boasted that he would execute 12 men in retaliation for the killing of any stormtrooper.[12] Röhm saw violence as a means to political ends. He took seriously the socialist promise of National Socialism, and demanded that Hitler and the other party leaders initiate wide-ranging socialist reform in Germany.

This is from the guy who lost, who got purged / murdered.  His claim to fame was beating up Communists in the street.  It was useful to the Nazis until it wasn't useful to Hitler anymore.

Remember that global leaders wouldn’t necessarily be in a good spot for selection as crew.

Why?  For autocratic countries, they'd easily be at the head of the line.  Nor am I seeing the UN enforcing a lot of selection discipline if the Earth is about to be toast.

It would take a lot of warfare to exhaust the resources of the solar system.  Basically WMDs ruining every available surface.

[Bearu]

Of course he's crafty: he manipulated his way into he ship and command staff in the first place.

I don't see the tension between playing a behind-the-scenes role in which he is still the power behind the Chinese throne and then assuming direct leadership of a faction only once he is on Chiron. It might work better if we knew that China didn't have an imperial tradition, but they do, and there was presumably no way for Yang to masquerade. His strong willpower would not be an asset there; he'd have had to defer to an actual blood claimant.

Yang is narcissistic, but I sense that he wants to be obeyed more than worshipped. Remember that he nerve staples people; the drones would scarcely know who he is.

The official psychological profile for Yang indicates he possessed a "near perfect balance" on the psychological axis for the ship manifest. The ability to possess a psychological profile of the same caliber requires a significant level of manipulation unless the tests arise from a casual source.

[bvanevery]

unless the tests arise from a casual source.

"casual source" meaning what?  That the tests are not taken very seriously by those who administrate them?  That they are empty rituals?  That they don't actually have much diagnostic utility?  That the results are not and in practice cannot be objectively verified and enforced, merely interpreted by people who choose what to believe about them?  In my Skeptics group in Asheville we've actually had debates about this sort of thing, for instance when discussing the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and other psychological test inventories.

Anyways Yang hacking a test, yeah totally doable.  We have a guy in our Skeptics group who is trained to make a polygraph say anything he wants it to say.  He has a security background, but he's a lot nicer than Yang.  He's also played SMAC!

[Trenacker]

Hereditary monarchies don't put the best people in charge.  Growing political power out of the barrel of a gun, does, at least as far as making others obey is concerned.  Can be pretty crap for administrating the country though.  The 20th century is pretty much that model.  I see no reason why anyone would ever return to antiquated notions of bloodline monarchies.  What you'd really have is ruthless people seizing power.  If there are too many strong leaders, some die.  Like Trotsky.

As I said above, the existence of an Emperor at all, is a throwback to a time that was long gone.  Hardly shocking that he had no real power.  What you'd need to explain, is why on an apocalyptic Earth, anyone would newly constitute this sort of ridiculous hereditary tomfoolery.  "Our ancestors were stupid" explains a lot of the past, but it doesn't hold up when we've got a century of leaders doing things other ways.  Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ida Amin, Fidel Castro, Suharto, Saddam Hussein... what's not clear about the pattern?

The original point of disagreement was over whether there are historical examples of rulers with great personal power who had weak personalities and were prone to manipulation by others.

By the time Yang comes around, China is presumably in a shambles. People are frightened of the future and nostalgic for the past. They aren’t going to readily identify with just one more strongman, but somebody with an appealing message, packaged in a way that readily evokes a tradition that might associate with a time when their country was strong, might get a lot of traction. This approach wouldn’t forsake the gun – it would just dress it up.

Many of the leaders whom you described used a particular set of values to frame their thuggish behavior in terms that people might find more acceptable. Saddam Hussein in particular regularly compared himself with Saladin because he wanted people to draw a direct line between his current leadership and an era of Arab greatness. Idi Amin festooned himself with various unearned titles for the same reason and even built a massive statue of Hitler.

It seems like you’re asking, “Why wouldn’t Yang just murder every last person who said no?” And my response is, because it’s easier to catch flies with honey and a swatter than it is to catch them with a swatter alone.

I'm not aware of anyone who was fooled.  Maybe ignorant people who don't know anything about politics or history and would be fooled by anything.  Certainly not Russians!

Supporters of those kinds of regimes want to be “in on the ruse,” so to speak. It’s the same reason that [Sleezebag] supporters mined YouTube archives for evidence that our new president gesticulates wildly with his hands – so they could prop up a narrative that [Sleezebag] doesn’t make fun of the disabled. It starts with an old phrase made famous by Fox Mulder: “I want to believe.” So scams like that one flourish. I don’t believe that you would suspect that Putin created such an arrangement for no good reason.

Stalin directly eliminated all of his opponents.  Mao came very close to that model, although he used denunciation and reprogramming extensively as well.  The Nazis had The Night of the Long Knives.  Hey, in Roman times if half the Senate didn't like the other half, they murdered them.  This is an old thing!  I just am not seeing the world where Yang has any incentive to hold back.  He comes from a class of persons who are not squeamish about such things, and who are awfully successful at carrying them out.  Yang is a known security spook; why wouldn't he throw his opponents into the back of a gas van and call it a day?

No, he didn’t. He used organs like the Communist Party to influence the career trajectories of potential competitors. He imprisoned and killed many people, but others were out-maneuvered in the state bureaucracy or in multilateral institutions dominated by the Soviets and their puppets.

The simple answer is, “He would kill everyone he could.” But there are always some people that can’t be killed. So you use other means to deal with them.

We just seem to have very different visions of who Yang is, personally. You see him as an individual who would stop at nothing to hold a very visible position of power. I think he would be content to be remote from people.

I think it is worth quoting one section of that Wikipedia article about the Nazis.  Just to show how unvarnished these men were about killing the opposition.

You’re confusing use of violence with a particular kind of strategy. The idea that Yang suborns the emperor doesn’t presume he gives up assassinating his enemies or imprisoning malcontents. It’s that he considers the emperor a useful front that lets him help people convince themselves that they are participating in virtuous tradition rather than accepting the rule of yet another strongman.

Why?  For autocratic countries, they'd easily be at the head of the line.  Nor am I seeing the UN enforcing a lot of selection discipline if the Earth is about to be toast.

I’m guessing that a significant percentage of world leaders today would be poor candidates for the physical rigors of space travel and long-term sedation. I also think the mission’s low odds of success would be factored against them. People may be betting that there will be other, safer ways to flee Earth or avert global catastrophe.

It would take a lot of warfare to exhaust the resources of the solar system.  Basically WMDs ruining every available surface.

That, or the problems on Earth being so urgent that there isn’t time for large-scale terraforming of dead worlds. But yes, my fiction does presuppose that man settled the solar system to a certain extent – especially the inner solar system.

"casual source" meaning what?  That the tests are not taken very seriously by those who administrate them?  That they are empty rituals?  That they don't actually have much diagnostic utility?  That the results are not and in practice cannot be objectively verified and enforced, merely interpreted by people who choose what to believe about them?  In my Skeptics group in Asheville we've actually had debates about this sort of thing, for instance when discussing the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and other psychological test inventories.

I think that’s what he meant, yes. The question is, are the tests to which you and I are ordinarily subjected by prospective employers equivalent to the batteries of evaluation that crew members would be put under by, say, NASA? A polygraph test is only one of several kinds that can be administered.

[bvanevery]

It seems like you’re asking, “Why wouldn’t Yang just murder every last person who said no?” And my response is, because it’s easier to catch flies with honey and a swatter than it is to catch them with a swatter alone.

Why do you think there's anything about his character as portrayed in SMAC that makes him a sweet talker?  Cult leader, philosophical, "sayings of Mao" kind of guy, essayist, sure.  Not seeing the sweet talker.  "What do I care for your suffering?"

We just seem to have very different visions of who Yang is, personally. You see him as an individual who would stop at nothing to hold a very visible position of power. I think he would be content to be remote from people.

And what's more true to the materials actually presented in the game?

You’re confusing use of violence with a particular kind of strategy. The idea that Yang suborns the emperor doesn’t presume he gives up assassinating his enemies or imprisoning malcontents. It’s that he considers the emperor a useful front that lets him help people convince themselves that they are participating in virtuous tradition rather than accepting the rule of yet another strongman.

There's nothing presented in SMAC that portrays him as interested in subterfuge.  You are adding this.  He's clearly into obedience, control, genetic reengineering, and societal programming.  He talks about nihilism and spirituality; it's difficult to know what his sincere views on spirituality actually are.

I also think the mission’s low odds of success would be factored against them.

Not seeing the "low odds of success", frankly.  They built a big ship.  That's predicated on shipping experience in the solar system.

People may be betting that there will be other, safer ways to flee Earth or avert global catastrophe.

How many despots are dumb enough to believe that??  They're causing a lot of the problems, they know how power and wars really work on Earth.  Can't take a genius to say, hey, we're heading for deep doodoo here.

That, or the problems on Earth being so urgent that there isn’t time for large-scale terraforming of dead worlds.

You don't have to terraform dead worlds.  People can live in orbital habs.   Firaxis might not have even thought about "Hey, what about the solar system?" when they designed the game.  Or did and ignored it.

[Trenacker]

Why do you think there's anything about his character as portrayed in SMAC that makes him a sweet talker?  Cult leader, philosophical, "sayings of Mao" kind of guy, essayist, sure.  Not seeing the sweet talker.  "What do I care for your suffering?"

First of all, there’s a huge difference between proposing that Yang will use different tools to achieve his goals and proposing that he isn’t ruthless.

Above all else, Yang is practical. He is quite willing to use mass murder when it suits, but even for a dictator, mass murder is not exactly the best tool for all occasions. No successful dictator in history used murder, bloody murder, and nothing but murder to pursue power. All engaged in various legitimation ceremonies, usually linked to their role as the champion of a certain ideology.

And what's more true to the materials actually presented in the game?

It’s already been pointed out that the materials actually presented in the game are what I am defending. They present Yang as the Emperor’s head of security. He is not the ruler of all China.

There's nothing presented in SMAC that portrays him as interested in subterfuge.  You are adding this.  He's clearly into obedience, control, genetic reengineering, and societal programming.  He talks about nihilism and spirituality; it's difficult to know what his sincere views on spirituality actually are.

Subterfuge is “deceit used in order to achieve one’s goal.” His original psych profile on the game website very clearly indicates that he manipulated his evaluator. Yang is also closely associated with the Chinese philosophy of legalism, which proposes that a ruler should use subterfuge as a tool of governance.

Not seeing the "low odds of success", frankly.  They built a big ship.  That's predicated on shipping experience in the solar system.

For a trip that requires automation to a level until then unprecedented. And that’s before accounting distance, the effects of attendant cold sleep on the crew, and (in my fiction) the known bad end of the previous mission.

How many despots are dumb enough to believe that??  They're causing a lot of the problems, they know how power and wars really work on Earth.  Can't take a genius to say, hey, we're heading for deep doodoo here.

Men of incredible power are unusually good at the game of self-deceit. It’s also not exactly clear how many lifetimes it will take for Earth to fail completely. Leads of whole nations may calculate that they cannot really empathize with imagined future generations enough to risk their own hides for them.

You don't have to terraform dead worlds.  People can live in orbital habs.   Firaxis might not have even thought about "Hey, what about the solar system?" when they designed the game.  Or did and ignored it.

Yes, orbital habs are probably a thing. Yet they are far more easily destroyed than whole worlds.