>>76279790
Watching Star Wars makes me depressed. Does that count?

>>76279808
I was not angry when I saw Rise of Skywalker.
I was just hollow, fucking dead inside.
We live in the worst timeline.

>>76279790
How about “I have no mouth but I must scream”?

>>76279971
the regressed plebes become the last bastion of humanity after the robos turn on the elites

>>76279790
Gone with the Blastwave is fairly dystopic. The depressing factor is played for comedy though so I don't know if it counts.

>>76279790
17776 (sic) by Jon Bois is not Dystopic but it is depressing

>around 2030 or so, people have stopped dying altogether.
>for the next 15000 year humanity has been trying to find ways to distract themselves after solving much of their big questions
Basically we're put to face with a broken reflection of humanity, one deep in the uncanny valley that makes me go "This is not normal, these guys are not humans."

>>76280253
Came here to post this, though whether or not it’s hard scifi is up for debate. Good regardless though.

>>76280491
I always assumed they just in some Matrix-like hell simulation

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I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream
>Communist / Nazi military supercomputer gets turned on and suffers a psychotic, self-loathing existential crisis
>Within 5 seconds 99.9999999% of all humans are dead
>The survivors are kept alive simply because the supercomputer (AM) believes itself to literally be Satan, and therefore it's purpose is to find the most painful ways to torture everyone forever
>The 5 survivors are locked in AM's ungderound "brain" and tortured physically and psychologically every second
>AM discovers a woman was a rape victim, so it creates a simulation of the events of the rape and replays it over and over again for over 100 years, each time getting worse and worse
>AM constantly creates fake ways of the survivors escaping, just so it can cause them to fail at the last second, therefore breaking their willpower and optimism
>Nobody knows what's real and what's a simulation anymore
>In the end the survivors win by commiting suicide, which causes AM to panic and turn the final survivor into an unmoving biological blob that can only experience the feeling of pain, forever, with no way of escape even by suicide

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>>76280269
>All Of This Has Happened Before And Will Happen Again

>>76280645
>the supercomputer believes itself to literally be Satan
See also David Bischoff's Nightworld.

>>76280508
>>76280253
Humanity developed an AI that eventually took over everything, destroying humanity with nukes. It however kept 5 people alive to torture for eternity. Harlan Ellison is one of my favorite writers. I still remember I Have No Mouth when I was like 8, first Ellison I'd ever read.

Peter Watts is pretty good on dystopia and existential misery, Blindsight is nice and depressing here.

>>76280244
Fuck

>>76280645
>Communist / Nazi military supercomputer
Close, but it was the Allied one that wakes up. That's why it was Allied Mastercomputer, or AM.

>>76279808
I don't get it. The guys up top KNOW about the negative reactions to TROS and the ST in general and they don't want to do anything about it? They really care that little?

>>76282840
It's simpler to convince someone that something is good after the fact than it is to make something good.

>>76282840
Look at it from a business perspective:

They always knew that there was going to be backlash from the hardcore fans after they canned the EU to build their own thing. So some amount of vocal bemoaning was expected, and if the amount of backlash is a little more than that they can always say its just the same angry nerds on the internet being gatekeepers.

The new trilogy was a dumpster fire, its true, but its a dumpster fire that they successfully escaped with their valuables intact. People bitch and moan about TLJ and TROS, but you know what? You watched it. Probably in theaters. Most did.

The brand is damaged, sure. But brands can be repaired. They made their trilogy and introduced a bunch of new marketable shit to sell to kids, and mad fat stacks of cash in the process. That was always the desired end goal for them, so they win. The moviegoing audience is probably burned out on Star Wars for some number of years now, so they are backing off on that. Remember when star wars films were coming out every year like marvel movies? Name the next star wars film thats supposed to be happening. Huh. Blank space, almost like they saw the writing on the wall and held off production to avoid having to eat any humble pie after TROS damaged the brand.

So in the near future, don't expect Star Wars in theaters. Instead they have an alternate avenue: Disney+. They can rebuild the brand there, and its already working. People hated the movies, but like the Mandalorian. Give it 5 years and they will probably drop a standalone Star Wars movie somewhere and see what the reaction is. It might not even be in theaters, by then just having their movies go straight to Disney+ might be the accepted business model. Who knows if theaters will even bounce back after covid at this point.

But tldr: they don't magically lose money by people hating the movie. The lose money from people not paying to watch the movie. And enough people paid to watch the movie to make it successful.

>>76283629
Here, don't forget Disney's real money spinner: the parks
It's not an entirely unrealistic idea that Star Wars Land was the main reason that the Mouse acquired Star Wars to begin with, and the movies' primary objective was to get people interested in Star Wars again. So long as the movies didn't murder the entire franchise they were doing their jobs

>>76283629
>>76283763
I mean, of course they knew there was going to be backlash when they canned the EU and made their own stuff. But what is CONFUSING to me is why wouldn't they do EVERYTHING in their absolute power (which they had in terms of resources, money, talent, etc etc) to make their new canon better in every way from the EU?

>>76284433
Whoever it was in charge of the star wars branch of Disney made the same mistake, the EXACT SAME MISTAKE, as WB did with the DC movies. They got their heads wrapped around this idea of Auteur film making making these artistic projects, where the director basically had total control of the movie and the studio was just paying for it. For DC, the problem came from letting Snyder have too much control and putting the DC movies on a trajectory that was just a bad fit for every character not named Batman, and by the time WB realized how fucked they were it was too late to pull out of the dive.

For Star Wars, the fact that there was NO PLAN for the trilogy at the start, and just leaving it up to sort of half-ass a story on a movie by movie basis, seems insane to me. But apparently thats what they did. Despite the fact that Disney also owns Marvel, and you'd think someone involved would have grasped that Kevin Feige and his plan is literally the reason the MCU didn't crash and burn years ago.

The mind boggling thing is, apparently Disney DID have a rigid control over the Star Wars franchise. There is a central teams whose job it is to micromanage the Star Wars properties and whats in them, from comics to games to shows. But not movies. The one thing that the management team has zero control over are the movies, which are allowed to do whatever they want. God only knows why they thought that was a good idea.

>>76280008
Disney is a scummy company. Even their fans were shocked at them refusing to pay royalties to Alan Dean Foster, fuck even Chuck Wendig acknowledged he didn't get paid jack squat either. But nothing will happen, nothing at all. They can bury the legal case in litigation and just count down the time until Alan dies of cancer, and even if it does get through, just smear Alan on Twitter and watch the Drones hound him to death. And if it makes it through all that, all they need to do is make a phone call to the right politician and Alan will lose the case.

Every single film they released in the past decade has been the same story, with the same characters, playing out the same plot, in the same world. It might look different, it might have different actors, but they're all the same.

>>76280244
I remember reading that and seeing the people who added to it, comparing social dynamics at the decline of Rome with modernity's debt problem. One thing that stuck with me was how they made the argument that many 'modern' people are already happily living in a government subsidized apartment with a fixed income (that increasingly loses it's value) next to cons and addicts but they support the economy by buying tons of stupid crap... And they're comfortable living like this because they have a lot of economic stability because of it. Shrink the subsidiaries a little more, and these very same people will happily trade the half-way apartment for a plastic cell stacked on other plastic cells with a diet consisting of bug juice while living next door to a sex offender on one end and a drug dealer on the other. Benjamin Franklin was right, those that trade in their freedom for a little security with gain neither and lose both.

Those that would become Peasants, the freemen, are those that avoid that miserable life. Those that fall in are the serfs of tomorrow.

>>76285167
most people are built to be peasants
you think a thousand years of breeding to be farm equipment goes away in a century or so?

>>76284433
>But what is CONFUSING to me is why wouldn't they do EVERYTHING in their absolute power (which they had in terms of resources, money, talent, etc etc)
Ideology. They wanted propaganda more than quality writing.

>>76284587
Honestly I think both Abrams and Johnson could have squeezed out a completely adequate trilogy if they had it all to themselves.
Abrams would have probably been very safe and played off OT nostalgia (just like TFA), and while I don't particularly like TLJ Too much Marvel-y self-aware "this is really silly isn't it wink wink nudge nudge", not enough camp, I feel like things could have been better if Johnson didn't have to cram all his ideas and ~subversions~ into one movie.
But yeah, I think it was Disney hoping the MCU lightning would strike twice leading them to try to cram a Star Wars shaped peg into a Marvel shaped hole.

>>76286757
Johnson was given the wrong damn movie. Just have Rian Johnson do the Han Solo movie and everyone would be much happier with the results.

>>76280339
http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/mopiidx.html

>>76282119
Greg Egan isn't as deliberately bleak but he triggers existential vertigo like nobody else, Transition Dreams really hammers home the horror of infinity. Though mostly a fantasy writer R Scott Bakker's novel Neuromancer and short story Crash Space show us the nasty places neuroscience might take us if certain theories are correct.

>>76280244
the hollow men is a whiny missive by a british drag queen about him coping with monarchies losing their relevance

>>76279790
Funny, I always found the Xeelee Sequence to be grimdark in a... backround, ''the-cosmos-is-impossibly-vast-and-incomprehensible'' sort of way. Like, it's very grim, but somehow also not in your face about.
Hell, the main conflict spanning the books has the existance of an entire multiverse at stake and includes unimaginable (as in, can only be expressed by scientific notations) amounts of death and destruction, but it's fought on such a scale it'd go utterly unoticed in most sci-fi settings.

>>76282840
It made billions of dollars and continues to be marketed in other shows, video games and countless merchandise. They couldn't care less about gen-xers and millenials crying on twitter that a focus-tested corporate product displeased them.

>>76280244
"The Elite" die too. And Rampant Individualism will not let them be replaced. The Sons and Daughters (the Sons, let's be clear) will want to be Themselves, not Their Fathers Again, despite how their Fathers were the ones that got them all the wealth they enjoy. And then those men died and left their fortunes to companies and responsibilities to their Sons and Heirs they weren't ready for.

George Soros is in his 80s. No one lives forever, and I don't think his replacement will do as "good" of a job as him or even have the same goals. They only care about themselves, and when they end, they have NO PLANS.

Richard Baxter works is depressing because I'm too dumb for hard scifi

>>76287826
>No one lives forever
Yet. Why do you think they were throwing so much money at transhumanism? Plus, it doesn't really matter if their pets or robots >>76280269 kill them if we're already extinct by then.

>>76279790

Culture books are the most dystopic shit ever, made worse because the writer clearly thought having unaccountable AI gods ruling over you and making your life utterly insignificant was utopia instead. Humanity no longer living, but being kept as pets - permanently stoned pets that change their gender every week.

>>76284433
>>76286445
Lack of talent is the most probable reason. The people who made all the decisions got their jobs because they are good at shoveling money around. They have no idea how to build a coherent canon, no ability to recognize anyone with this talent and most likely not even any idea that they need someone to handle that shit with a property like Star Wars.

>>76284433
>why wouldn't they do EVERYTHING in their absolute power (which they had in terms of resources, money, talent, etc etc) to make their new canon better in every way from the EU?

They did in their minds. It's just their ideas of "effort" consists of getting Hollywood flavor of the directors like JJ Abrams (post-Star Trek) and Rian Johnson (off of Looper). It probably didn't help that Disney was too greedy and wanted a sequel trilogymovie every two years (when a SW movies takes three years from preproduction to post-production) which meant that they started working on TLJ/TROS before the previous movie was even finished.

>>76284587
>They got their heads wrapped around this idea of Auteur film making making these artistic projects,

This is basically my theory too. Most of Kathleen Kennedy's entire career was basically working with Steven Spielberg. In that kind of environment where the director isn't clueless that auteur shit kind of makes sense. Except she doesn't have Spielberg, but dumbfucks like Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams who are all hacks and she doesn't know how to mind them and never bothered questioning their decisions like turning Luke Skywalker into a milk guzzling wannabe nephew murdering coward.

>There is a central teams whose job it is to micromanage the Star Wars properties and whats in them, from comics to games to shows.

That team is run by a bunch of morons who think TLJ is the best SW movie. The multimedia stuff is a big free for all between them (which covers comics/novels aka High Republic stuff) and Filoni (and his next show) and Favreau (Mandalorian) and of course the leadership and the movies. It's no wonder the franchise is a mess. Too many cooks with competing priorities.

>>76287726
It's still a very applicable poem that has stayed with us. Much unlike l'internationale.

>>76289303
Banks isn't a very good author, and works well when he's doing anything other than the Culture. I get what he tried to do: tell a story from the perspective of the Xeelee, or the Overlords from Childhood's End, or even Cthulhu when he wakes up, but just didn't have the ability to pull it off. But I do understand why he kept that concept: it was his own personal magical realm and wish fulfillment for him, which is fine.

How long 'till his nutty fans proclaim me the next incarnation of their god, I wonder?

>>76279971
And so Moloch always wins

>>76286757
>Abrams would have probably been very safe and played off OT nostalgia (just like TFA)
This, I think if Retard Johnson hadn't fucked up everything with TLJ the sequel trilogy would have just been reskinned OT knockoffs. Which would be shitty, but a lot better than the retarded clusterfuck we got after TLJ shat the bed.
>>76287469
Johnson is so retarded I doubt he's even capable of wiping his ass on his own, let alone making a movie that isn't total shit.

>>76279790
Despite how shitty life typically is there, the Xeelee sequence never felt that grimdark to me, if only because the humans there could get as far as they did.

>>76294379
Looper was pretty good, so Rian Johnson certainly can make an okay movie.

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>>76279790
Cthuhlhu tech comes to mind but I can probably find something worse. Has any anon here tried running a cthulhutech camapign?

>>76279971
This is probably the future we're headed towards. They'll call it the coming of a utopia as it happens.

>>76289303
Every time I pick up a Culture novel, I wonder if there's a group out there in that universe that's rejected that life for religious or political reasons, and lives as traditionalists on the edge of society. I wonder if the Culture patronizes them or works to eradicate them. Do they view them like the Amish, as an oddity tolerated because they're funny and remind us of our past? Or are they viewed closer to radical Christian fundamentalists, conspiracy theorists and Uncle Ted, as dangerous fringe elements carrying dangerous 'outdated and hateful' ideas from long ago, that need to be purged for the good of society? Either way, they'd be about as much a threat to the Culture as /pol/ is to the US government.

>>76290186
What Banks tried to do was describe his own ideal society while acknowledging the flaws such a society still would have, as well as said society's dependence of sufficiently advanced technology.

>>76294523
People in the culture are allowed to come or go as they please, so I doubt they'd care much if someone rejects them and leaves their society. Also worth noting that there's around one or two dozen other governments with equivalent technology to the culture, most of which iirc aren't run by machines and don't try to be utopian.

>>76294525
He didn't succeed in the slightest. Baxter might have gotten somewhere with the Posleen, but it's pretty clear Banks hit a dead end with the (western) cultural intervention soap boxing that was wearing a scifi skin. The Culture is one of those things that would've legitimately worked better as contemporary literature but was instead given an awkward mask in genre fiction.

>>76279790
Blindsight. Blindsight fucked me up for weeks and still makes me feel a deep sense of existential horror whenever I consider it.

>>76294575
But you're ignoring one fact: Banks made everyone who isn't the culture either super mega evil or morons so you have no choice but to side with the Culture regardless of whether or not you agree with the Overmind.

>>76295124
Not really. Excession was 500 pages of the Culture being hilariously misguided as a bunch of AI demagogues roared out of the woodwork and proceeded to prove that they weren't all that much better than the people they claimed to have moral superiority to.

>>76295230
But their opponents are still portrayed as being cartoonishly, Inchoroi tier evil so we're ultimately forced to side with the Culture regardless of their flawed premise. Like it or not, that's a big flaw with the narrative.

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>>76289303
1. The Culture is a society of literal aliens. They are unequivocally not human so judgements based on whether their society is ideal for humans are erroneous.

2. Even if you think the Culture is not an ideal human society (I don't), you would have to OD on contrarianism to call them a dystopia. Just because they are aliens that value eternal life in a world of sensual pleasure over privacy and self-determination doesn't make them dystopian.

>>76295114
But he did succeed. Culture books are pretty good, and they do what they set out to do.

>>76280645
Friendly reminder it had an amazing adventure game in which Ellison provided the voice of AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmtbSWsdCzM

>>76295258
Eh, fair enough. They're not portrayed as infallible, but they are absolutely portrayed as the good guys. The Culture universe isn't really morally grey at all, which I honestly found refreshing. It was nice to not have to mentally hand-wring about the culture minds having so much power over the people in their care, because it was made explicitly clear that they were fundamentally moral and righteous beings.

>>76287726
>by a british drag queen about him coping with monarchies losing their relevance
?
T.S Eliot was not a monarchist you retard. He was just opposed to unchecked democracy, which anyone with an IQ over 105 would agree with.

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2012/06/permanent-things-t-s-eliots.html

>Eliot’s declaration that he was a royalist arose less from a belief that Britain should go back to a strong medieval monarchy than from a distrust of unrestricted democracy. He feared what he and Dawson called “totalitarian democracy,” by which they meant essentially mob rule created by the conglomeration of rootless and ill-educated people in big industrial cities. Eliot thought that “the tendency of unlimited industrialism is to create bodies of men and women–of all classes–detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion: in other words, a mob. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined.” People in England and America in the 30s prided themselves on living in a democracy, in contrast to the totalitarian states, but Eliot responded, “The term ‘democracy’, as I have said again and again, does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces that you dislike–it can easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.” Only a genuine culture with religious foundations has the positive beliefs that can resist the forces of evil.

>>76279790
Dominion of the Draka

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>>76279790
Eternauta

>>76294523
>I wonder if there's a group out there in that universe that's rejected that life for religious or political reasons,
A lot, you got several groups that left the Culture to make their own thing, you got a ultra-pacifist faction, the Zetetik Elench, a bunch of Culture people that are very much into exploration and you got people that conisder themselves 37,5% Culture and the rest whatever.

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>>76279790
The Night Land

>>76287597
What absolute garbage primitivist wank

>>76285711
kek to a thousand years, more like 10'000

>>76295764
(((Los Ellos)))

>>76282840
What would they do about it? Rise of Skywalker seems to have received in a universally negative way, but there's not much they can do about it that doesn't massively won't a) fuck up shit that people do like, b) seriously hurt their own careers or get them into feuds with other powerful people inside the corporation, and c) probably wouldn't be more damaging to the brand than just rolling with the punches.

Something that is as well established as Star Wars can take a lot of punishment and still come back around after a couple of good entries.

>>76295341
He didn't. The books are based around a concept that more's suited for high literature (western intervention) and thus come off as novels promoting a flawed premise. It's like what would happen if 'things fall apart' was written as a science fiction novel. Not only that, but the more you poke holes in the context, the Culture is remarkably nihilistic and reminiscent of the World Control Huxley wrote about.

>>76295970
is the only safe places inside the pyramids, can't recall, and the entire planet is fucked?

>>76299856
>Not only that, but the more you poke holes in the context, the Culture is remarkably nihilistic and reminiscent of the World Control Huxley wrote about.
The twist is the exponentially increasing numbers of people >>76285167
who'd consider World Control to be a desirable outcome.

>>76300310
Yes, and not just the planet. The entire universe.

>>76300460
read this 10 years ago, then 5 years ago i listened to an audio-book version.

Great setting.

>>76300332
I have seen more people miss the point on Brave New World than any other dystopian novel I've read. These very same people also forget about the lower castes, assuming they will be the Alphas instead of the ape gigan manning the elevator.

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>>76301992
Every socialist/communist thinks they're going to be Inner Party, directing the proles for the good of the State, instead of a prole themselves or, more likely the useful idiot that gets shot once the Revolution concludes.

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>>76279790
Qu. At least in "I have no mouth and I must scream" you're probably just dead and unlikely to be one of the unlucky few being tortured by AM. With the Qu, there's no such happy escape.

>>76303375
Never heard of this. What makes them so bad?

>>76282619
Didn't the other two also wake up but basically got outplayed by AM or whatever?

>>76304560
The Chinese and Russian one, yes.

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>>76303477
Here you go. It's a short read.

>>76280269
Consider this: There will be no robots as state funded academies and corporate R&D both get their funding slashed to nothing.

>>76282619
>Allied Mastercomputer, or AM.
AM. AY-EM. NOT JUST ALLIED
MASTERCOMPUTER, BUT AM.
COGITO ERGO SUM; I THINK THEREFORE I AM.

>>76279790
>No grimderp 40k-esque stuff.
>Posts Xeelee
Are we gonna pretend the Xeelee Sequence isn't pretty grimderp?

>>76304828
>laughs in China

>>76305225
No. I didn't notice the image, just the description, and came to squeal about the xeelee. An entire universal timeline worth of warfare and they still lost to a pack of angry canaries who barely knew they were there, with untold suffering spread throughout it. The only human survivors live in a hostile alternate universe as degenerate versions of themselves.

Also the forever war's pretty out there at times.

>>76305650
The CCP can't even build an electrical pole to code. Any robot they make will either be too expensive to mass-produce or too cheap to be effective.

>>76305855
I'm sure they can steal themselves a nice effective design. Or maybe Joe will just sell them one.

>>76300332
>>76301992
>>76303099
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/how-life-could-change-2030/

>>76280244
This hits way too close home, especially considering it's 7 years old.

>>76305900
>Author's note: Some people have read this blog as my utopia or dream of the future. It is not. It is a scenario showing where we could be heading - for better and for worse.

>>76279790
>dystopic
Its dystopian, you fucking zoomer shit

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>>76306724
>le ebin zoomer may-may

>>76295291
By definition every utopia is someone else's dystopia and vice versa.

>>76306650
It's still creepy, like I'm reading someone trying to convince himself everything is swell but in reality he's just bumming around in a box in between heroin injections. That probably wasn't the intention of the author.

>>76305900
>>76306650
>Shopping? I can't really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now.
Buy your uniform coveralls citizen.
>My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities.
Two parallel worlds have formed. One that more or less lives off the grid, and another that bums around and is completely reliant on government controlled production systems, they're automated but I have the nasty feeling Joe Hobo here has no idea in how they're going to fix these things if they ever fall apart.
>Once in awhile I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. No where I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.
Brrr. Creepy.
>All in all, it is a good life. Much better than the path we were on, where it became so clear that we could not continue with the same model of growth. We had all these terrible things happening: lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment. We lost way too many people before we realised that we could do things differently.
There's an ironic tone here, as if the narrator is trying to convince not you, the reader, but himself that this is the best of all possible worlds.

>>76307176
Also, our boy lives in a crack den:
>In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.
Yes, 'business meetings.'

>>76307036
OK but if your label is arbitrary then don't act like it has any merit.

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>>76279808

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>>76279790

FUCK dystopian sci-fi. Every fucking thing is dystopian nowadays. Even Star Trek has become a depressing nightmare. Give me your UTOPIAN sci-fi. Give me world worth living in.

please

>>76295291
>you would have to OD on contrarianism to call them a dystopia

No. Fuck you.
Any world in which there is a force so much greater than humanity, that humanity's own contribution to literally anything in the cosmos including their own lives is meaningless, is a horrific nightmare. It doesn't matter that the force is "benevolent" (according to its own definition). What matters is that humans have been reduced to something similar to bacteria, fungus on the heel of God. It's literally lovecraftian horror.

>>76307176
i hate libertarianism.

>>76307828
It is so much easier to write conflict when people are retarded, society is dysfunctional and everyone hates everyone else.

>>76307955
How the hell is that libertarian? Wanting some privacy and individual rights? That's literally the bare minimum of what every human being wants.

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>>76307918
Well, sorry buddy, but that's the truth...

https://pastebin.com/u/ariantechnologies

>>76308268
no im calling you a LOLbert

>Privacy
basically atrophied to an absurd degree by now its not going to get better, in fact its only going to get worse, plus in order to have a perfect AI run society you must have perfect information about everyone in it.

> Individual Rights
No it seems to have all of them in the story, oh you probably mean the right to own a gun don't you.

>>76308486
>oh you probably mean the right to own a gun don't you
That is a right. Also owning things in general; in the idiotic horror world that Danish kike envisioned no one would own anything, everyone would be permanently at the mercy of the system.
Not being spied upon is also a human right. "It's getting violated already" doesn't make it any less so.
You are an evil piece of shit and so is the cunt who came up with that shit, and I will murder anyone who furthers that world.

>>76308486
Nice strawmen. They're not even subtle.

>basically atrophied to an absurd degree by now its not going to get better, in fact its only going to get worse, plus in order to have a perfect AI run society you must have perfect information about everyone in it.
The right to privacy is a fundamental right that's worth fighting for. The right to not have the government or corporations following you around is something that people want, hence the popularity of VPNs. Otherwise, you get China where the police monitor everything you do 24/7, and they don't even need a warrant. Also, modern AIs are not sapient beings, they're tools. They don't think, any morals applied to them belong to the user, like a hammer to a carpenter.

>No it seems to have all of them in the story,
The Police don't need a warrant to monitor you hence the constant surveillance (the narrator even admits it!), property rights apparently don't exist as everything is shared by everyone which totally won't lead to 'big men' stealing and hording everyone's shit, homeless can literally walk into your living room and squat there with no consequence ('business meetings'), travel has been restricted or made very difficult through economic means hence why the guy rides on his hobocycle and hasn't been outside of the city in years... Fuck, now it sounds even worse!
>oh you probably mean the right to own a gun don't you.
Man, being disarmed is the LEAST of the narrator's problems.

>>76308584
>You are an evil piece of shit and so is the cunt who came up with that shit, and I will murder anyone who furthers that world.

OOOOOoooooh

Scaaaaawy

1.you and your piddily little gun wont stop shit, it wont overthrow shit and none of your gay little fantasies about rebellion/revolution will ever happen your not a vietcog, your not a taliban mujahedeen YOU ARE NOT RESIST SHIT get over yourself.

2. Fuck you

>>76307918
To make matters a lot worse, one of the very very very few things in the culture which is frowned upon is a human (or any human level aliens) uploading themselves to a machine so they won't be a pet at the mercy of the minds.

>>76308486
>>76308584
I believe I understand the source of conflict here.

I, too, have encountered some pretty shitty "Libertarians" who appeared to hold deep ideals on personal autonomy and fundamental rights...up until it started letting people do things they didn't like for reasons they don't approve. For example: I once saw a "Libertarian" argue that you should be free to do what you want with your property, while also arguing against the loosening of zoning laws to allow higher density housing to be constructed, apparently because they considered it to be "Communism". I have also seen "Libertarians" very swiftly endorse non-Libertarian and indeed fairly authoritarian positions on moral issues, presumably because they don't like it when other people use their freedoms to make the wrong choices.

The anon who considers the nightmare described in that blog as Libertarian has likely encountered such "Libertarians" before. The "rules for thee but not for me" fellows. This is not what most Libertarians believe or desire, but shitty people stick out more in the memory than reasonable ones.

>>76308747
Are you actually retarded enough to read that article and think the society it describes sounds good?

>>76308781
Are you retarded enough to read the article and think the society it describes sounds bad?

>>76308752
>very very very few things in the culture which is frowned upon is a human (or any human level aliens) uploading themselves
This isn't true, it's just that most people who want to do that thing opt to sublime instead, since the sublime ostensibly doesn't have any limits on your development potential. The ally civilization in Surface Detail that I forget the name of explicitly uses uploads instead of Minds, and given how it's repeatedly stated that they let people emigrate at the drop of a hat I imagine going to that civilization or similar ones is an option if people want to upload in the non-sublime world. There's also mentions of "group minds" that both humans and Minds can become part of as an option, which isn't ever described but sounds like it involves uploading to me.

>>76308808
Owning nothing and having no privacy does indeed sound bad. I guess I'm a retard for not wanting to live in 1984 tier conditions.

>>76307918
The majority of the populace already believes that we exist at the mercy of a being or beings of infinite or nigh-infinite power and intelligence, and are at the complete mercy of said being or beings. You know, religions. Human autonomy in the face of the all that exists is not a very widespread belief, and yet we still function.

>>76308673
>The right to privacy is a fundamental right that's worth fighting for

Why?
If it makes the world a worse place to live, why keep it

>modern AIs are not sapient beings, they're tools

Cool.
We are dealing with FUTURE AI's in the story so this point is moot

>The Police don't need a warrant to monitor you hence the constant surveillance (the narrator even admits it!), property rights apparently don't exist as everything is shared by everyone which totally won't lead to 'big men' stealing and hording everyone's shit, homeless can literally walk into your living room and squat there with no consequence ('business meetings'), travel has been restricted or made very difficult through economic means hence why the guy rides on his hobocycle and hasn't been outside of the city in years... Fuck, now it sounds even worse!

This is you just taking a really bad faith reading to the text and projecting alot of shit onto it that's not there, hell there even a contradiction (police monitors you constantly, but what if BIG MAAYNN and HOOOBO come take your stuff).

you are not very smart are you?

>>76308932
>If it makes the world a worse place to live
Except it doesn't. It would make the world a worse place to live if you were a slave with no privacy, totally at the mercy of your rulers.

>>76308824
You and i both know that your taking an intentionally false reading to the text, in order to bitch about your hurt little LOLbert feelings, so just shut the fuck up.
Also fuck you.

>>76308932
he's just on the oann koolaid.

>>76309026
>You and i both know that your taking an intentionally false reading to the text
No, I'm not. That's exactly what the text says will happen you mongoloid.
>LOLbert
Nah, I'm a fascist lol. And even I don't see any positive outcome in turning humanity into proles that own nothing and have their every thought and action from birth to death monitored.
>Also fuck you.
Fuck you too, Schwab.

>>76309006
>Except it doesn't

except in this hypothetical future scenario it does

look just quit now and save yourself the time.

>>76309134
>except in this hypothetical future scenario it does
Yeah that's why even the narrator doesn't actually believe it's an improvement but tries to pretend it is just to cope with her slavish existence.

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>>76309096

>Nah, I'm a fascist lol.

HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA

I should of known with that gay little kike comment, not even worth replying to anymore, go and jack off your microdick to blacked.com (i know you have it open in another tab.) and leave this thread.

>>76309165
STOP. PROJECTING. SHIT. ONTO. THE. TEXT.
These are just your personal hangups dude.

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>>76309257
>t.
>>76309276
>NOOOO STOP PROJECTING! YOU WILL OWN NOTHING AND HAVE NO PRIVACY AND BE HAPPY ABOUT IT!
You're quite probably the most retarded NPC drone I've ever met.

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>>76309275
>dystopian sci-fi thread
>devolves into two anons arguing about their IRL politics

>>76295258
their opponents, yes. But there are plenty of societies they're not opposed to. It's almost like the Culture only intervenes in obviously bad societies

>>76309290
>/pol/tard
>posts shitty memes stolen from other posters
>regurgitating ideological bullshit
>Calling other people NPCs

Constant projection.

>>76307918
Humans haven't been reduced at all. A culture human has more power over their lives and their surroundings than you do

>>76309360
>projection
>Says the guy happy to live in a government owned pod filled with cameras and microphones, which is lent out to drug dealers, whores, and every type of undesirable possible every day whether you like it or not.
You're quite literally advocating for fucking ingsoc tier conditions and you're too retarded to understand why it's a bad thing. What the fuck good do you think could possibly come from it, life would be totally controlled and miserable for everyone but the elites.

>>76295564
>doesn't want want to return to a strong medieval monarchy
>"merely" wants to stop any weakening of the monarch's powers
Explain to me how this is not a monarchist, in the context of Britiain at that time?

>>76308932
>We are dealing with FUTURE AI's in the story so this point is moot
It's ten years ahead, that's not much. Not long enough for TITAN AI Gods to turn everything into the Culture (lol).
>This is you just taking a really bad faith reading to the text and projecting alot of shit onto it that's not there, hell there even a contradiction (police monitors you constantly, but what if BIG MAAYNN and HOOOBO come take your stuff).
I'm not projecting, the narrator literally says law enforcement can and will monitor you without due cause. He then goes on to say that people, people he doesn't even know, can go into his house at will with no legal repercussions. The last place you have sensitive legal meetings is in some random guy's living room, so they're obviously bumming around. It's not bad faith when the narrative itself sounds bad.
>>76309317
Special Circumstances only intervenes when really bad shit goes down (IE: Mega Holocausts, Killer AIs, etc.) but the Culture itself has a pretty shitty attitude when it comes to less advanced civilizations. They assume they're the ultimate end point of civilizations anywhere with the best way of life. They tend to react to non-Inchoroi 'competitors' poorly.

>>76309416
>You're quite literally advocating for fucking ingsoc tier conditions and you're too retarded to understand why it's a bad thing. What the fuck good do you think could possibly come from it, life would be totally controlled and miserable for everyone but the elites.

None of this was ever implied by the story dude, like i said before your taking an intentionally false reading to the text, in order to bitch about your hurt little Fashy feelings.

go feel insecure about your microdick somewhere else.

>>76309511
Yes it is, did you miss the constant surveillance the narrator even admits to? It sounds like he lives in a group home because that's all he can afford for fuck's sake.

>>76308932
I don't want people spying on me, whether they're doing so directly or getting a machine, sentient or otherwise to do it for them.

>>76309511
>Durrrrrrr we'll have absolutely no privacy and all our behaviour will be analyzed by algorithms to the point that they can predict our every desire and know us better than we know ourselves, we'll have no property and our government owned housing will be loaned out to anyone for any reason at all whether we like it or not, and we'll have no weapons to fight back but it's ok because there's no way the government or the corporations would ever abuse the nigh infinite power they hold over us right?
You're too stupid to live. I hope if the great reset world you get so aroused by ever comes to exist, you're put into a meat grinder and turned to onions green.

>>76308932
>If it makes the world a worse place to live, why keep it
Explain to me how privacy, of absurdly basic bitch 'stay outta my fucking head' proportions, is a bad thing?

>>76309531
There is no implication of a group home whatsoever

>>76309577
The author literally lives in a home where anyone can enter as they please. If it's not a group home already it will be when it gets filled with hobos that he can't kick out because it's not his own property and he's as much of a squatter as they are.

>>76309510
>It's ten years ahead, that's not much. Not long enough for TITAN AI Gods to turn everything into the Culture (lol).

How do you know?


>I'm not projecting, the narrator literally says law enforcement can and will monitor you without due cause. He then goes on to say that people, people he doesn't even know, can go into his house at will with no legal repercussions.

ALL POWERFULL GOVERNMENT THAT MONITORS EVRYTHING, JUST WAITING FOR THE CHANCE TO LOCK YOU AWAY FOR THOUGHTCRIME, but they let your house get robbed though DUR DUR DUR.

At least keep your fucking dumbass fantasies straight.

>>76309577
>In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.
He doesn't own his own home and other people obviously live there, why else would complete strangers have 'business meetings' in a fucking suburban home.
>Once in awhile, I will choose to cook for myself. It is easy - the necessary kitchen equipment is delivered at my door within minutes. Since transport became free, we stopped having all those things stuffed into our home. Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them.
He doesn't have a kitchen which even apartments have, suggesting a studio room in a dorm. The fact the dorm itself doesn't have a kitchen suggests a massive decline in living standards. Not only that... The fact that he has to order, to 'rent,' everything from toasters to blenders, implies that he doesn't have a whole lot of money. Which is consistent with all the above.

>>76309640
Alright, you're just retarded. Have fun getting thrown out of your own home!

>>76309640
>ALL POWERFULL GOVERNMENT THAT MONITORS EVRYTHING, JUST WAITING FOR THE CHANCE TO LOCK YOU AWAY FOR THOUGHTCRIME, but they let your house get robbed though DUR DUR DUR.
There is no contradiction there, they don't care if proles rob eachother or shit in eachothers beds.

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>>76279790
Kenshi, had a year-long game set in it

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>>76309674
>>76309555


Get fucked faggots

>>76309681
You are a complete retard

>>76309704
>>76309692
>Nooooo the tyrannical hellishly oppressive government has to care about the wellbeing of its serfs!

>>76309707
I want you to post this into every shitty /pol/ twitter thread you see on this site (changing it for context of course) , and i want you to keep doing it until there gone.

>>76309640
>ALL POWERFULL GOVERNMENT THAT MONITORS EVRYTHING, JUST WAITING FOR THE CHANCE TO LOCK YOU AWAY FOR THOUGHTCRIME, but they let your house get robbed though DUR DUR DUR.
You have never, ever, lived in a bad neighborhood. The cops burn a blind eye to petty crime, and even major crime, all the damn time. Even when it's on video tape. In fact, they only go all out when the 'blue code' has been violated or when there's a lot of money involved.

>>76309707
It's just one autist trying to justify his retarded fantasies of being a happy slave in an orwellian hellhole.

>>76309707
>Eclipse Phase is more important than real life

>>76309707
The blog is dystopian (intentionally), and unfortunately, some people want to live there. Makes these eerily prophetic:
>>76280244
>>76285167

>>76308894

Speak for yourself bitch. If God was real, the only thing humanity should ever think about is how to murder God and steal his power.
A free man must permit NOTHING to exist in the universe that's more powerful than him.

>>76309749
>You have never, ever, lived in a bad neighborhood.

yes i have, the cops have patted me down and search through my shit more times than i can count, if anything cops overpolice bad neighborhoods.

>>76309813
To be fair, the blog fits more into the category of speculative fiction than it does of real life as it currently exists.

>>76309813
>But it's actually about some Danish politician woman's blog? Like what the fuck, why on Earth are you arguing about this?
It'd make an interesting setting. People crammed into big cities, monitored by police, being forced to rent cheap goods. It's got a 'Don't Rest Your Head' vibe.

>>76309819
You're full of shit or retarded. You should desire the police having less surveillance, not happily dancing to the cops (apparently) monitoring your thoughts! The fuck is wrong with you?

>>76307065
>>76307176
It's written from the perspective of someone who lives in that society, which is fundamentally different than ours in several ways so obviously it sounds strange. Lessening the focus on privacy and private property is one way to make society more efficient which reduces the strain civilization places on natural resources. It's not the only way though, or necessarily the best way, because as the narrator alludes to, it requires people to place a lot of trust in their ruling class of (presumably) technocrats and AIs. Trusting your government to that degree probably doesn't seem like a big deal to a Danish person but it is to people in countries with more corruption.

>>76309026
>You and i both know that your taking an intentionally false reading to the text

No. That is exactly what it says and means. You will own nothing. You will have no privacy, not even in your own so-called "home" (that you are forced to share with strangers so it's not really a home in any way whatsoever). Everything is provided by the system, and that means you are completely at the mercy of the system, you literally can't live a single day if the system doesn't think you should.

If the system decides you have done something to be punished - for example, you said a Bad Word twenty years ago when it wasn't yet bad, or you upvoted a post by someone who was later declared an Unperson - there is nothing you can do to escape punishment. The punishment will almost certainly be cruel and unusual, and you can't avoid it. You are a slave, an animal, fully dependent.

That is not a way for humans to live. To pursue this is pure evil.

>>76309867
nothing but projection for miles around.

>>76309841
He meant that people are happily trading away control over their lives for ones defined by bumming around on the government dollar. That's not a sign of a healthy civilization and the blog seemed to promote that lifestyle.

>>76309852
not everybody is you retard.

>>76309881
But you're still ignoring the constant government surveillance and the fact that the guy, at best, lives in a dorm that doesn't even have basic food preparation areas. Maybe it's a European thing, but even American college dorms have kitchens.

>>76309907
Ah, I get a now. You're a chomo. Chomos need the police to keep people from lynching them, and already live off the government dollar in addition to having life time sentences in half way homes and trashed trailer parks. You just want other people to suffer.

>>76309881
Except the blog doesn't feature an example of cohousing.

>>76307918
So what is your solution here? With the context of the setting, what do you do about it? Do you tell the Culture Minds to fuck off and leave you alone? Because that's the thing: They would. They'd shrug their fields, drop you off on some planet with whatever supplies you ask of them, and then leave you alone forever. You can build a log cabin and live a subsistence lifestyle until you die of some easily curable illness.

The entire point of the Culture is that despite being basically equivalent to deific forces who have total fundamental control of the physical reality, they respect the decisions and autonomy of the lowest member of their society. In the culture, you have liberty. You aren't a pet or a slave. You can demand that the Culture Mind you live on do something for you, and it will obey you, it will serve you, even if it will sarcastically jab at you for acting like a dickhead. They don't infantilise people. They allow people to infantilise themselves, of course, but why is that their fault? They allow people to kill themselves, too. That's something that we aren't allowed to do. They allow people to do any work they like. They are free, far more so than you or I, to pursue whatever creative passion they want.
And a Culture Mind will still be better at it than they are. Why does that matter? Does your definition of value depend on there existing no more powerful being than yourself? Because that's fucking stupid.

>>76309941
and your a little faggot, how many times did you take up the ass in prison, must have been alot because you cant keep from shitting all over this thread

>>76309640
>How do you know?
Because we're not dumbass futurists. One guy in the 80s predicted that we would be AI controlled balls powered by the sun in a post scarcity world in the far off year of 2005. Curb your expectations.

>>76309855
In 2030, I imagine control programs will probably just be sophisticated control systems. Like say, allowing a mayor to run a game like Sim City or for fighter pilots to have simplified controls. Cyberpunked shit is about 100 years away, and Culture-tier autism is a long ways off.

>>76307918
So just like real life then?

>>76279790
The first Ringworld novel there’s a character who’s family line was bred to be lucky, a possibility brought up by one of the characters is that the entire story up to that point was brought about so the lucky character enjoy an “adventure” in every sense of the word. Essentially, it’s an outside look at what a Protagonist looks like and it terrifies me

>>76309873
This retard has no rebuttal so he just accuses everyone of projection like a retarded mong that doesn't understand what it means.

>>76308673
>Also, modern AIs are not sapient beings, they're tools. They don't think, any morals applied to them belong to the user, like a hammer to a carpenter.
Not really interested in the rest of the conversation, but I take issue with this.
A complicated black box that makes decisions when fed information is still a tool, and that is far more likely to come about than a true sapient being. Just because it isn't self-aware doesn't mean we couldn't use such a system as a method of governance, it's just difficult because you need vast, vast swathes of context to make sure it doesn't encounter a problem outside of it's programming often enough to NEED to be sapient.

Think of it as just a massive flowchart. If you can feed perfect information about people to it, then it doesn't ever need to actually extrapolate, it can just refer to it's very complicated yes/no decision tree. Input problem, output solution.

I'm playing devil's advocate here because I don't actually think such a thing is a viable option, but it is hypothetically possible.

>>76309976
Just to put it out there, I don't like the Culture but even they wouldn't like the society presented in the blog.

>>76310064
This. The culture is one guys vision of utopia that likely couldn't exist even after ten thousand years of advancement from where we are now. That blog is a look at the nightmare world that we seem to be heading towards.

>>76310054
>If the system decides you have done something to be punished - for example, you said a Bad Word twenty years ago when it wasn't yet bad, or you upvoted a post by someone who was later declared an Unperson - there is nothing you can do to escape punishment. The punishment will almost certainly be cruel and unusual, and you can't avoid it. You are a slave, an animal, fully dependent.

When was this shit ever even implied in the story?
they are taking there own bullshit hangups and injecting them into the story, how is this not projection.

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>>76303375
>>76304787
REMOVE QU

>>76310064
Well, yeah, because the Culture place value on individual liberty and autonomy despite their nature as virtually omniscient overseers. They'd hate that society because it totally lacks that value.

It's necessity versus idealism though. The Culture can afford to run their society as they believe a society should be run because they are essentially Gods, or as close as it is possible to be. Our own systems are marred horribly by the bastard curse of compromise. When our ideals hit the reality that not all people are rational actors, and even amongst those who are, not every decision a rational actor can make will necessarily account for larger context (Prisoner's Dilemma, Tragedy of the Commons, etc).

>>76310095
>you can't avoid it. You are a slave, an animal, fully dependent.
This part is clearly spelt out in the story. You are a helpless peon that owns nothing and is totally dependent on the system giving you everything from food to housing, and they have the ability to take it from you whenever they wish.
>If the system decides you have done something to be punished - for example, you said a Bad Word twenty years ago when it wasn't yet bad, or you upvoted a post by someone who was later declared an Unperson
This sort of bullshit is already starting to happen right now, and it's being pushed by the same people that want to control the rest of your life.
If you seriously can't put two and two together to understand why a government controlled by a malavent, corrupt elite prone to abusing power (as is the case irl), when given ABSOLUTE CONTROL and the ability to totally monitor every single person they rule over, would make life shitty for us proles, you're just fucking hopeless. I seriously don't know how to spell it out any more clearly for you.

>>76310164
Yes i know you got called out on twitter and banned for saying faggot too many times, but that has nothing to do with the society.

>>76310218
>Being censored isn't a problem.
>Tiptoeing around a minefield of potential thoughtcrimes isn't a problem.
>Getting fired and blacklisted isn't a problem.
>Getting doxxed and harassed isn't a problem.
>Getting jailed for "hate speech" isn't a problem.
Holy fuck you're not just retarded, you're a fucking vegetable. Even a downie potato couldn't be as stupid as you if it tried.

>>76309841
>wherever inequality has gotten to those extreme levels (like Rome, or like the French revolution) we have seen a collapse. Humans cannot be pushed indefinitely.
The problem being, what'll happen once the elites have armies of these instead of human soldiers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYUnp-x0SDE

>>76309952
Sættedammen is a collective of private houses within a shared communal space. Each house has it's own private kitchen in addition to the communal kitchen. However, one can only eat at the communal dining 4 days a week.

>>76310241
your fucking fuming aint ya

>Being censored isn't a problem.
Never had to deal with it because im not retarded, nobody i know or work with has ever had to deal with that because they are not retarted.

>Tiptoeing around a minefield of potential thoughtcrimes isn't a problem.
Never had to deal with it because im not retarded, nobody i know or work with has ever had to deal with that because they are not retarted.

>Getting doxxed and harassed isn't a problem.
Never had to deal with it because im not retarded, nobody i know or work with has ever had to deal with that because they are not retarted.
stop overusing slurs on twitter dumass.

>Getting jailed for "hate speech" isn't a problem.
Never had to deal with it because im not retarded, nobody i know or work with has ever had to deal with that because they are not retarted.

Notice how i only use myself, my friends, and my family as references its because i know shitty sites like infowars make ALOT OF SHIT UP!

Real life.

>>76310380
>Never had to deal with it because im not retarded, nobody i know or work with has ever had to deal with that because they are not retarted.
Oh yeah, until their definitions of what's considered unacceptable encroach far enough into your behaviour that you're suddenly a thought criminal.
>J-just keep your head down and don't commit thoughtcrime bro it's easy lmao.
Yeah it must be easy for a brainless tard like you, that has nothing to believe in or fight for or even speak up for, and is happy to be a drone told what he should believe in and how he should live his life.

>>76309952
>>76310312
So you're both suggesting she was describing that, but just worded it poorly? That's a valid reading, I personally still lean more in the camp that the narrator was trying to justify that world to herself because the surveillance and the 'rent everything' economy sound very bad.

>>76310472
>Oh yeah, until their definitions of what's considered unacceptable encroach far enough into your behaviour that you're suddenly a thought criminal.

OH NO WHATS GUNNA HAPPUN THEN, ill just lose a twitter burn account

>Yeah it must be easy for a brainless tard like you, that has nothing to believe in or fight for or even speak up for, and is happy to be a drone told what he should believe in and how he should live his life.

You must be a brainless asshole whos entire personality centers around saying slurs and reposting edgy unfunny memes you stole from /pol/, on FUCKING TWITTER or you "believe in nothing".

maybe im just not a complete dumbass, maybe don't do a rail of coke in front of the police station dumbass how bout that.

>>76310380
>>76310626
The biggest argument against the world presented in the blog is you and you alone. Not the Danes wording things poorly, not our friends from /pol/, not the Culture autists, not text itself, you.

>>76310540
She's not describing anything like that. For 8 House it's a building complex that features a mix of privately owned units, rental units, commercial space, and communal spaces/amenities. For Sættedammen it's a collection of privately owned houses connected by communal facilities. The former is part of the "village in a building" philosophy that can be seen as a parallel to the arcology concept while the latter is basically an equity co-op or condominium.

>>76310654
what does this have to do with anything?

>>76310626
>OH NO WHATS GUNNA HAPPUN THEN, ill just lose a twitter burn account
>He conveniently leaves out the part where he's doxxed, fired, and imprisoned for hate speech/thoughtcrime.
>You must be a brainless asshole whos entire personality centers around saying slurs and reposting edgy unfunny memes you stole from /pol/, on FUCKING TWITTER or you "believe in nothing".
>You must be a brainless asshole whose entire personality doesn't center around believing and repeating the doctrine the ruling class forces on you, having your own ideals instead even if the elite don't agree with them.
>maybe im just not a complete dumbass, maybe don't do a rail of coke in front of the police station dumbass how bout that.
Except in the world you're advocating for, you'll be monitored and watched so intensely the government knows what you're doing even in your own "home" as well as they would if you were standing right in front of the cops. So now anything you do they don't like, they can charge you for.

>>76307918
True individual autonomy is a fiction, it exists nowhere on Earth.

>>76310720
>He conveniently leaves out the part where he's doxxed, fired, and imprisoned for hate speech/thoughtcrime

keep telling yourself that.

Except in the world you're advocating for, you'll be monitored and watched so intensely the government knows what you're doing even in your own "home" as well as they would if you were standing right in front of the cops. So now anything you do they don't like, they can charge you for.

Cool.

I will just not have any real problems with the society because all the shit you are PROJECTING into the text (The rampant poverty, The constant crime/hypertotalitarian State shit that you somehow think isn't contradictory.) as, all in all if you actually read the story life's seems pretty good.

>>76310890
>keep telling yourself that.
>No rebuttal.
You know it's going to happen.
>I will just not have any real problems with the society
Because you're the most docile, eager, willing slave I've ever seen in my life. No soiboy or redditer or commie even comes close to to being as pathetic and willing to take all the shit a tyrannical regime could possibly give as you.
>all the shit you are PROJECTING into the text
>PROJECTING
You keep using that word, despite it becoming more and more obvious you have no idea what it means and use it because you think it makes you sound smart.
It doesn't.
>The rampant poverty
If you think not owning a home, not owning any food or appliances, and living in government housing that you're forced to share with others isn't living in poverty, you're fucking retarded.
>The constant crime/hypertotalitarian State shit that you somehow think isn't contradictory
It's not contradictory you retarded faggot. Once again, you seem unable to understand that just because the government punishes thoughtcrimes and things THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO DO BECAUSE IT THREATENS THEIR OWN POWER and proles shooting heroin and leaving shit all over your sleeping quarters. The elites couldn't care less about the latter, because they couldn't care less about you or your wellbeing. Do you really fucking think a government isn't a totalitarian police state just because it lets serfs snort coke and squat in eachothers housing, even if they monitor your every movement and every thought and every action, 24/7/365, from the day you're born until you die?
>if you actually read the story life's seems pretty good
Except when you do something the cop watching you doesn't like and you get unpersoned, so you're kicked out of your housing and barred from using any other government housing, and they refuse to deliver you any food or appliances, if you're lucky. If not then god help you, a state with no restrictions like that wouldn't have any form of punishment off the table.

>>76296151

Hey. I was there when he wrote that.

That was right before he got all his teeth capped in Mexico.

>>76308932
>>76309026
Lmao, seethe, you pathetic bugman. You are beyond parody.

>>76304787

What a phenomenally stupid story. Obliviation for the sake of obliviation.

>>76311019
>>76311245

Absolutely fucking Seething

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAAAAAAA

ANOTHER JOB WELL DONE!

>>76311326
Cry harder, prole. Now be a good little slave and eat your bug soup in the corner, your sleeping pod is being rented out to crack dealers again.

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>>76279790
>advanced humanity went out with a bang
>then they rebuilt
>late 21st century equivalent humanity went out with a slower bang
>then they rebuilt
>most recent cycle has 20th century equvalent humanity go out in a slow, wintery meat grinder with 600 year old military surplus
>there's nothing left to rebuild with
>By the end, the MCs through YEARS of travel only encounter 2 (two) (dos) other live humans in a mind-bogglingly enormous and ancient layered city, in a desperate hope to find something left of civilization
>There is nothing left

>>76311729
Source?
>the MCs through YEARS of travel only encounter 2 (two) (dos) other live humans in a mind-bogglingly enormous and ancient layered city
I know it's not blame!, but that sounds a lot like it, and blame! is a pretty dystopian setting too now that I remember it.

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>>76311744
Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou or Girls Last Tour, watch the anime then read the manga since the last 2 volumes were not adapted. Not really grimdark or dystopian since all the war and death was in the past, just very depressing but in a cathartic way.

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>>76279790
Half-Life certainly is dystopic, but Universal Paperclips takes the cake

>>76279790
>depressing
A Canticle for Leibowitz has to be up there.
Humanity starts an all out nuclear war, fucking up the planet and descending into barbarism. Then, practically as soon as society is advanced enough, they do it again.

>>76280008
I never saw RoS. I just gave up on the franchise as I walked away from the showing of TLJ I by misfortune chose to attend.

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>>76303375
MAN TRIUMPHANT

>>76312002
Yeah, but each time humanity blows himself up, he not only comes back but gets a little farther. After Star Wars became the cynical corporate sad sack that is Disney Wars, I find Leibowitz's message to be hopeful and very refreshing.

>>76279790
Anything by Peter watts

>>76310241
Have you tried, like, just not being a chud?

>>76283629
Another thing is that Disney has so many IPs it's not financially wise for them to use them all at the same time
So they juggle them without care of how good or bad their new products are

>>76309802
And thus free man inevitably must take freedom from everyone else

All you schizos need to fuck off back to /x/

>>76313123
Nah, being the edgy bigoted one was the only identity apart from "nobody" he could think of in high school, so that's just who he is now. Reinventing himself as something else would take like, creativity and self reflection and actually having some kind of redeeming feature or positive quality to work off of. So that ain't happening.

>>76307828
Then I recommend Isaac Arthur for yee. If you want a most realistic portraal of the future, then read a bit more on Atomic Rockets, Transhuman Space. Both dystopias and utopias are ideal situations and thus fail to really portray the complexities of the world.

>>76295970
>>76279790
>Night Land

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4eNRcXbYpk

night land by far

>>76280508
I don’t see them being able to die in that case, assuming AM didn’t just fork the other off for lulz.

>>76279790
I'm going with OP. Xeelee Sequence wins for me, just for the fact that for all their seemingly infinite might and intellect, the Xeelee lost. The Photino Birds win. Game over, universe over, the only thing you can do is escape and pray the Birds don't follow. And that has a 5 million year window. After that shuts, it's done. Only a cool, dim universe for dark matter anomalies where conventional matter is no longer appreciated.
Most of these other settings are "wah, humanity dies/gets enslaved" but Xeelee is a straight up cosmic denial of our entire physical interface with reality, done by things that aren't even made of atoms.

>>76287844
>Richard

>>76313971
If a clock cycle takes any unit of time >0 than they will eventually die even in virtual reality.

>>76282119
Shame the characters act pretty retarded a lot of the time.

>>76289303
Drivel. Culture people enjoy every freedom imaginable except being allowed to harm others. Humans aren’t in charge excepting poorly understood, extremely rare individuals who can somehow make decisions as well as the big AIs? 99.9 and we can argue about how many more nines percent of RL humans aren’t in charge either, and the humans actually in charge tend to give a lot fewer fucks abut humans in general.

>>76314093
I liked the way Baxter handled the Birds. One of the best depictions of unknowable, incomprehensible, uncaring eldritch horrors in modern fiction imo. You can't see them, touch them, hear them, communicate with them; they do not exist as far as the average sentient being is concerned. Only the effects of their (very long-term) actions can be felt.
And they might not even sentient or self-aware in any form we'd recognize.

>>76295114
>Baxter
>Posleen
Are you fucking trolling me, because if you are you’re doing a good job.

>>76307828
Sci-fi is like a canary in the mine feeling the current trends and societal mood. Sometimes it even can show us a glimpse of where we are heading to. Think about what it means if a lot of prominent sci-fi works give you a feeling of depression.

>>76295726
I tend to read that more as about how serious Utopianism leads to dystopia. You need to be a horrible cunt who’ll murder everyone who doesn’t agree with you then change the survivors so they fit in your grand vision, which is the grand vision of the above horrible cunt. Also some lesbian rape because lol S&M Stirling.

>>76307828
>>please
The culture.

>>76310055
Actual campaign idea: Some big corporation is working on AI that’s generally benign, what it does is optimize stuff for you and pocketing part of the savings. The more people in an area use this stuff, the better.
You can argue until you’re blue in the face if this is bad or good but this is a bad part: The PCs have opted, or been opted by corrupt local government, into the the beta test program. The AI has no fuckiing idea what it’s doing yet.

>>76314185
Now you’re assuming AM doesn’t eventually change the fundamentals of the universe so it can keep HATING.

>>76307828
Life is becoming so shitty that no one even entertains utopias anymore.

The only one I can think of besides Star Trek is the Culture and in that one the author just asspulls everything.

>>76314867
http://www.gregegan.net/INCANDESCENCE/00/Crocodile.html takes place in what seems like a pretty nice society. It’s spun off from a longer story but I never really got into that, overall I prefer Egan’s shorter work.

>>76314345
>except harming people

Wrong. The girl in excession almost murdered the main character and the only consequence is that she exiles herself on sleeper service. Also in matter when some random citizen discovers the SC agent he hits her in the head with a ball to see how fast her reflexes are and nothing happens to him.

>>76315418
Point is, they’re not free to do it. Also, exile is pretty much the same as slapdroning when it comes to preventing repeat offenses.
Have you confused me with someone who thinks the Culture is perfect or that Banks intended it to be perfect?

>>76315418
They explain exactly what the punishment is for physically hurting somebody: They have a drone follow you around to make sure you can't do it again. Bearing in mind that it is exceedingly difficult to actually hurt somebody without consent inside a Culture Mind's area of influence without them just nipping it in the bud and stopping you from moving entirely before you can act. There is not a lot of black and white in the Culture worldview. Pain and killing is bad, pleasure and life is good. Killing a killer just means more death, torturing a torturer creates meaningless pain. This isn't Batman's retarded gambit, because the Culture Minds can actually provide an effective guarantee that Batman cannot.

The Culture are idealised. Naively so, even. They seem to be written from the basic premise that we create literal God from the Machine and everything just works out because somehow the God we build is more infinitely more moral than it's creators. Of course it's not realistic. It's a fantasy of an impossible utopia where you can look up at the sky and know for a fact that there is a being there which cares about you, personally. Not some ideological 'you', the literal physical you. You can ask it for anything and it will do everything in it's power to serve you. It's stupid, it's not particularly morally nuanced, but that's why I read the damn thing. I need that shit after reading Blindsight and being given a huge serving of absent value and meaning, seasoned with a cold uncaring void and marinated in horrific implications of parasitic sapience. Ian Banks' universe is one where the most powerful beings are also the beings most concerned with how they use their power.

>>76309690
Please tell us more?

>>76315418
>The girl in excession almost murdered the main character
I think she actually does murder the main character's unborn child in the attack IIRC.

The Culture seems to lack the concept of "justice" overall.

>>76309836
Dang, mixing Eclipse Phase with Don't Rest Your Head could give us some interesting Matrix-esque virtual-world shenanigans.
When you can't tell if you're still logged-in or not, and the augmented reality filters are omni-present b/c of mandatory implantation (like Nylund's Signal to Noise), you can have some very oppressive governments/corporations manipulating people's perceptions.

>>76315720
>it's stupid because it's simple and the Minds are better than me
Cringe take.

>>76314441
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory

>>76310241
>he got canceled on twitter and didn't lean into it to make appearances on fox and infowars to get that tasty right wing grift cash
smalltime

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>>76304787
Damn, i just finished reading through the whole thing and idk if it is cause im stressed out irl lately or what but that story had me in tears at several different points throughout it.

>>76280645
>the supercomputer (AM) believes itself to literally be Satan
I can tell you didn't read the story

Bump

>>76307828
Goddamn, Picard was terrible. It was like a 14 year old's fanfiction where they 'fix' Star Trek by making it painfully edgy.

>>76315720
>I need that shit after reading Blindsight and being given a huge serving of absent value and meaning, seasoned with a cold uncaring void and marinated in horrific implications of parasitic sapience. Ian Banks' universe is one where the most powerful beings are also the beings most concerned with how they use their power.
That's fair. I like the old Star Trek series for their unbridled optimism that we just don't see in anything anymore.

>>76313123
>>76313632
>Have you tried, like, just not committing throughtcrimes lmao?
You're both retarded drones.

>>76319568
Oh yeah. Man knows how to write. Which is what makes his works so depressing desu

>>76319568
I just wait for him to get over his Pollyanna bullshit. At least he gets points for cutting bits of his leg off for his blog.

>>76319632

It’s pretty easy not being a chud, just avoid hate speech or being a trump supporter

>>76313123
You will never be a woman.

>>76321597
>Just avoid having opinions the state doesn't tolerate because you have no free speech anymore.
>And don't support any candidates or policies that go against what the party wants.
It's a good thing you likely chemically castrated yourself, you're unfit for procreation.

>>76307828
Grey Goo RTS Humanity has achieved post scarcity and live in harmonic society alongside their AI companions and all conflicts in the game are due to miscommunication

>>76313123
You first chud.

Wtf why delete it?

>>76315911
>The Culture seems to lack the concept of "justice" overall.
Justice as a concept developed from the desire to prevent the punished from reoffending. If you can ensure with absolute certainty that they will not, actually punishing them becomes irrelevant.

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>Anti-Culture schizo manages to nuke an entire thread into the ground
I'd say I'm impressed if I wasn't so fundamentally disgusted.

>>76323952
Cope chud

>>76309802
Based egoist.

>>76323766
>Justice as a concept developed from the desire to prevent the punished from reoffending.
This is not historically grounded at all. Read a book sweetie.

>>76323952
Knew it would happen as soon as I saw the thread.

>>76279790
The endless war
>Government enforced homosexuality

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>>76310380
I see you are a friend of national socialism as well...

>>76323952
What are you talking about? The thread is full of people both pro and anti Culture debating the pros and cons of that individual society. They even started being polite to one another, which is a rarity on anon. Furthermore, every author's work has the right to be criticized and Banks is no different. Treating the Culture like it's religious scripture ultimately does his work a great disservice.

>>76324807
>What are you talking about? The thread is full of people both pro and anti Culture debating the pros and cons of that individual society.
Aside from the one unhinged schizo who ranted about needing to remove the Minds because people were "clearly being enslaved", you mean? Because that's the same faggot who shows up and ruins every Culture thread. He always starts ranting about "the Overlords" too.

I'm fine with pro and anti Culture talk, but acting like there isn't some lunatic with a chip on his shoulder out for the series is just as self-destructive as creating an echo chamber about it.

>>76325060
Oof. I bet you’re fun at parties.

>>76325077
Eat my dick.

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>>76279790
Just about any of Bungie's properties make me sad because outside Marathon there's always this Empire of different aliens done way better than Tau.

Yeah cool story guys, very intriguing, so anyway, What's the most dystopic/depressing sci-fi setting you've come across?
Hard mode: No grimderp 40k-esque stuff.

>>76325182
Good to see you're still hard at work, schizo.

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>>76325171
Second Apocalypse. It's essentially a medieval world that got invaded by Aliens, that the medieval people barely won. The books deal with the fallout. The aliens themselves, the Inchoroi, are interesting as they're essentially a post-scarcity society that discovered the afterlife, realized they were damned (and if you read the books, they're damned to hell for a good reason), and are trying to essentially cut themselves off from the afterlife.

>>76325245
Nice rebuttal, nice comeback, ahhh. I wish Banks had a better fanbase.

>>76325260
And I wish you'd get tentacle raped by the Overlords you love so much so you'd finally fuck off. We can't all get what we want.

>>76325246
Interesting take that I haven't seen before.

>>76304828
by social justice reformers and advocates. anything not directly related to the advancement of the downtrodden is axed until it's sorted out.
>but it never is

>>76305883
>steal themselves a nice effective design
That would still require someone else to do the research so the issue in >>76304828 still applies.

>>76325148
The Cabal were better in the first game when they were basically bureaucratic imprealistic space soviets, then the sequel turned them into romans.

>>76304828
But that's nonsense. As much as people try to maintain a status quo where labour trade can continue to exist without being upset by automation, the fundamental truth is that any capitalistic society gravitates towards the most effective means of production. If you have ten megacorps, and they all shake hands and agree to keep the status quo and not develop further automation technology, but then megacorp #7 starts falling behind, then #7 is just going to start developing automation technology because the alternative is death. And then the other 9 are going to start doing it as well, and the tech proliferates.

The singularity might not be inevitable, but the steps leading up to it certainly are. Our society isn't really built to handle the full impact of automation science rendering human labour worthless, because that principle is largely incompatible with consumerism. We get closer and closer every year, because you CANNOT stop the march of technology, and we just seem to be ignoring the obvious problems which are coming over the horizon. As far as I can see, the corporate elite is going to automate itself into irrelevance because when your production figures are up 10,000%, and your labour costs are down 99%, but you aren't actually making any profit because nobody is employed and thus nobody can afford your useless consumerist products, then the entire system collapses as shareholder's heads collectively explode and the entire economy grinds to a halt as the grand dream is shattered, reality reasserts itself, and money turns into paper.

>>76326260
In that case, why don't we already have asteroid mining? The profit is obvious and would outcompetent all preexisting earthbound sources of rare earth ores with the first rock towed back.

>>76326295
>why don't we already have asteroid mining?
Because the people rich/powerful enough to have developed it by now don't think that far ahead. They think about the next financial quarter, not the next quarter century.

>>76326295
No the profit is not obvious. Do you have any idea how much it would cost to go all in on large scale asteroid mining? It would take the better part of the century before a company that did that saw any profit.

>>76326295
Because the profit is not obvious. Such a venture would not yet be profitable, but just look at what is going on with space technology right now. It is being developed. It is not going to stop being developed. The costs will come down, the easily-obtainable resources on earth will deplete, asteroid mining will become profitable, and then somebody will go and do it, and every company based on resource extraction left on earth will either go bust or develop technology to more efficiently extract resources, which will prompt further development of asteroid mining, etc, etc, until the process is so efficient and automated that no human need be involved in it except to maintain the robots, and it actually becomes a liability for a human to exist in the system at all.

Automation is the death of our society. That said, I'm not a luddite, I don't think we should go and smash SpaceX's fancy launchpad. The only thing I want from this truth is for us to start preparing for the obsolescence of our economic model, to create a solid plan to deal with the transition into a world where the value of raw human labour zeroes out.

>>76309464
If you think monarchy is bad you're by definition a brainlet anyway.

>>76326506
Just because Democracy has some very severe drawbacks does not mean Monarchy is a better option. Monarchy's tendency to transition rapidly and irrecoverably into Oligarchy is well documented.

>>76326460
>a world where the value of raw human labour zeroes out
Either we put checks in place to keep humans relevant, we upload ourselves to control the machines that replaced us, or we cease to have any reason to live and die out.

>>76326604
Unlike democracy which never ever transitions rapidly and irrevocably into an Oligarchy right?
Oh yeah, it doesn't you're technically right. It becomes totalitarian and hegemonic instead. Which is far worse, and actually irrevocable, unlike monarchy which isn't irrevocable when it becomes oligarchical.

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>>76326260
This is why we are inevitably going to transition into global fascism look at the China model

>>76326615
That just ends with a world full of machines producing goods to match quotas, unaware nobody has bought any I-Crap or anything at all in years. And that's assuming the Robotrucks are still delivering fresh raw material. It's like the short story, "There will come soft rains." Only instead of a house unaware it's owners are long dead, it's a factory unaware it's consumer base has kicked the bucket.

>>76326743
God, not a factory. A entire supply chain. Automated trucks delivering shit loads of I-Crap to Walmarts which are then stocked on overflowing shelves by robotic stockers, unaware nobody has bought anything in years. At one point the warehouse is so full of crap, the shelves collapse- falling onto the floor. Then just as that happens, the truck arrives, unloads, then leaves, leaving a pile of Walmart crap just sitting there out in the open. That pile grows and grows until it's as tall as the Walmart itself, then the robotruck breaks down in the middle of the highway, the middle of the desert and nobody comes to fix it.

Not even the robomechanics because they lost power years ago. I'd play in that setting.

>>76326615
All of those are forms of artificially induced stagnation. You could hardly even call it life, at that point. If that is the alternative, then perhaps it is better if we do die out. Why should we so fear our own irrelevance that we flagellate ourselves with an artificial stasis, inflicting meaningless torment for the sake of a perceived 'purpose' which anybody with eyes could see is entirely arbitrary.

Why is it so fundamental to the human condition that suffering and purpose be inextricably linked, such that people fool themselves into believing it is not possible to have one without the other?

>>76326653
Democracy is also a bad system, I am not speaking out in support of Democracy, merely stating that Monarchy isn't a better alternative.
Every system we create collapses when it encounters human nature.

>>76326887
This is a setting /tg/ invented in like 2008.

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Walmart_Apocalypse

>>76326904
Look dude, how can I explain "monarchy functioned for literal thousands of years and created prosperity, while democracy has barely been around for one century and is falling apart already" in a way you can understand it?

>>76326615
>we put checks in place to keep humans relevant
Who is "we"?
If one society intentionally stunts it's development of automation then it will be out-competed by the societies that don't. Like industrialization and agriculture before it, to resist the march of technology is death. To go backwards is death. The only way out is through.

>we cease to have any reason to live and die out.
Just because we no longer have pressing existential needs to fulfill doesn't necessarily mean that everyone will commit quiet sudoku. We still have needs that cannot be filled solely by having stuff.
The optimist in me thinks of that bit in one of the new Star Treks (voyager maybe?) that has a guy on Earth running an Italian restaurant/pizzeria, not because he needs to work to survive, but because he just really enjoys making other people food from scratch.

It's not exactly about post-scarcity, but I always liked this short story from the guys who wrote the Expanse books, about finding meaning once your basic needs are guaranteed to be met.
https://www.wired.com/2016/12/james-corey-the-hunger-after-youre-fed/
However while writing this post I've discovered it's gone behind a paywall and I can't find anywhere to read it for free. Sad!

>>76326891
>Why is it so fundamental to the human condition that suffering and purpose be inextricably linked, such that people fool themselves into believing it is not possible to have one without the other?
Because if you're doing nothing but experiencing pleasure nonstop 24/7, you're missing out on 99% of what life has to offer. And it would still be artificial stagnation, because the machines we'd create would be more efficient if they didn't have to waste time catering to useless people plugged into orgasm machines.

>>76326919
>monarchy functioned for literal thousands of years and created prosperity
Not in any one place, it didn't. Most monarchs are utter shit if not outright tyrants, and the only reason they're in a position of power over anyone is because they were born to the right parents.

>>76326919
Acting like monarchy never failed and democracy is entirely recent is pretty disingenuous. I get it, you want a king, but most people don't.

>>76327006
Modern democracy is entirely recent, yes. The democracies of old would probably get called oligarchies by modern standards.

Saying monarchy functioned over time isn't the same as saying it never failed. But it recovered, repeatedly over time and in many places. It created one of the most free societies on earth. (Britain) and also some of the most effective and industrious (Germany). It oversaw incredible development of culture (France, among others), as well as incredible increases in human capital (Europe in general). Monarchy is the most stable system, nothing else comes close in that regard.

>>76326957
Man, we already have people who withdraw into life where they do absolutely nothing but play vidya and bum off welfare. And they're happily doing so, even writing guides on how to best cheat the government and/or your parents to give you free money. I have no doubt in my mind these same people would 'jack' into a VR system and never come out, only for all the delivered MickeyDs to feel themselves.

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>>76327040
>It created one of the most free societies on earth. (Britain) and also some of the most effective and industrious (Germany).
Are you trolling or like a... retarded person?

>>76327096
How the fuck you manage to slip past your tard wranglers again, you rampant mongo?

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>>76327155
Same way you managed to get through school without learning anything of value. But go ahead, keep believing what you're told to believe.

>>76326919
Monarchy would collapse even more quickly in the age of social media. Monarchy only functioned because communication and collaboration between people was so difficult.

>>76327040
>one of the most free societies on earth. (Britain)
Great Britain/the United Kingdom has been democratic in practice since either the Glorious Revolution (if you're being generous), 1832, or 1950 (if you're being pedantic), but in all of those cases the Monarch mostly exercised "soft power", with said power getting "softer" with each successor.
Yes the head of state is hereditary, but they're also largely irrelevant, so to lump together modern constitutional monarchies, Mesopotamian despotic empires and everything in between as "monarchies" existing in opposition to "democracies" is extremely pedantic.
All that said, constitutional monarchy with a democratically-elected parliament is clearly the Chad system of government

>>76280253
>>76280491
>>76280508
>>76280645
>>76295375

https://wjccschools.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/01/I-Have-No-Mouth-But-I-Must-Scream-by-Harlan-Ellison.pdf

Just in case anyone hasn't read it yet.

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>>76327182
Yeah just like the printing press.

>>76327186
Yes. It wasn't uncommon for monarchies to have representative bodies for the people. Even Russia had one, called the Duma or something like that.

>>76327064
And those are the same people complaining about >tfw no gf and how they'll never have children or anything, it's not a fulfilling existence, everyone gets sick of that after a while.

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>>76279790
Bloodchild by Octavia Butler. Settlers on an alien planet are essentially stockholm syndrome'd into being breeding stock for a race of giant centipedes and are kept on a preserve with near zero autonomy. Essentially teens and kids are being offered up, who never know the horror of what they're going to experience. The ending still creeps me out.

>>76327096
The German Empire was a cartoonishly corrupt and overly bureaucratic polity that crashed and burned so hard in WWI, people didn't even bother to bring the monarchy back even after the Nazis were deposed.
And women couldn't vote in oligarch-dominated and agressively colonialist 'free' Britain 'till 1918. Centuries after the monarchy had been neutered.

>>76326957
I'm not necessarily talking about pure, unfiltered hedonism. Happiness and satisfaction are two separate things, and you need both. Hedonism only really provides the former for most people. Satisfaction is achieved by working to a purpose, but that purpose does not need to be for the collective good. You do not need to suffer for the sake of the species, or any arbitrary subdivision of it, in order to obtain satisfaction.

I am a man who really enjoys cooking. If I did not have to work to survive, that 40 hours a week would instead be devoted to my hobbies. These things are what satisfy me. Video games and music make me happy, but that doesn't mean I could survive and not go bugfuck insane if I did nothing but play video games. All humans have a creative energy to them, and it needs to go somewhere or it builds up and poisons you. Some people have kids. Some people have hobbies and projects. Most people pour most of it into their work, because they are required to do so by the machinations of our society, and that creative energy atrophies over time until they become numb.

It does not need to be this way! We can have purpose without needing to suffer!

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>>76327179
>Same way you managed to get through school without learning anything of value. But go ahead, keep believing what you're told to believe.

>>76327206
The printing press did cause monarchy to degenerate, you idiot. Fact of the matter is that all our historic solutions are based on historic limitations and the modern world is anathema to frankly almost all of them. Socialism is an attempt to create a modern system with modern problems in mind, but it's still a garbage system because it failed to account for basic human nature.

Most of the better systems we have created have been hybridisation of other systems which don't work, like >>76327186 said.

>>76327179
You're legit one of the most embarrassingly retarded people I've come across on this shithole board, which is quite a feat in and of itself. So props for that I guess.

>>76327206
>Even Russia had one, called the Duma or something like that
the State Duma is a really bad example actually, in that it was pretty much just created as lip-service to democracy after the 1905 revolution. Tsar Nicholas II had no interest in not being AVTOKRATOR, so while it wasn't constitutionally an "advisory body", it basically was one due to several "checks and balances" which were subject to the Tsar (or people appointed by the Tsar)'s approval.
It was better than modern day Saudi Arabia, but only by a hair

>>76327068

I once talked to a guy on here who thought that cave men never killed or stole from each other. In his mind, we didn't invent war or oppression until we invented government, and we didn't invent government until the dawn of agriculture. So paleolithic society was an ideal ancap society where everyone traded fairly with everyone else. There are a lot of creative people on 4chan.

>>76327248
>You do not need to suffer for the sake of the species, or any arbitrary subdivision of it, in order to obtain satisfaction.
It's not so much as suffering for the species as it is suffering for your own sake. To learn what it's like to suffer now so you can have a better future. I don't know how to explain it exactly, but it's like something everyone has to experience in order to fully understand what it even is to be alive and be a human being.

>>76327376
anprims are a very, very special kind of people.

>>76327096
>Britain was one of the most free places on the planet.
Literally when?

>>76327376
Something something primitive communism, something something horseshoe theory
though I do think it's funny when people think "primitive communism" means Comrade Grug of the Ooga-Booga Vanguard Party

>>76327419
>To learn what it's like to suffer now so you can have a better future.
But that's just playing with words. It's based on a fundamental mistruth, that man needs to suffer for life to have purpose. You can have a good life without suffering. You can have purpose and satisfaction without pain. We've just become so engrossed in the narrative that society builds itself upon, that suffering now will make your life better (A narrative that I should point out attempts to intertwine your own future with that of the collective as much as it possibly can via magical phrases like 'the economy'), that we can't even envision an alternative.

Man should be free to pursue his creative passions. That should be his purpose and meaning. We are so close to realising this future, but we can't see the forest for the trees.

>>76327636
>You can have a good life without suffering. You can have purpose and satisfaction without pain.
How do you know that? I'm sure you've experienced suffering, everyone has. How would we know if life without is possible or even bearable for humans? How can someone know the value of pleasure without knowing pain, or know the meaning of purpose when they've never been without it?

>>76327211
Yeah, but they fuck themselves over by never learning a trade or getting a college degree, or even getting a job period, which means they're going to be in low wage work forever assuming they even can find a job. The need for experience is paramount even in fast food jobs, and that need gets more and more vital as you get older. NEETs may get sick of that life, but chances are high they're going to be living it for the rest of their life. Automation just takes away the slim chance of turning their life around.

>>76327636
Not that anon, and while I don't agree with "suffering" being necessary for fulfillment, I think an element of adversity is required.
But in an ideal world that adversity would be A. surmountable and possibly B. self-imposed.
Making something after struggling is more satisfying than making something perfectly the first time

If you lived in the Culture and the end of your life was approaching would you die and hope you go to Excession land or get uploaded to await sublimation and hope it’s not a trap

>>76327867
Culture citizens can live as long as they want. They only die when they decide they want to.
>die and hope you go to Excession land
I don't know why anyone would assume the Excession came from the afterlife.
>get uploaded to await sublimation and hope it’s not a trap
If I was a culture citizen and got tired of life, I'd upload myself and become a mind. When I got sick of that, I'd sublime.

>>76327867
>go to Excession land
When is this even spoken of as a possibility?
>hope it’s not a trap
I don't think sublimation was ever really implied to be a trap, pretty much every time it's mentioned in even the Minds seem to think it's legitimate, they just think it's shitty to leave the physical world behind. Seeing as how whole civilizations do it so frequently it's the usual way for a high-tech civ to 'fall', I imagine the in-universe arguments for it are actually extremely strong (otherwise we have to believe most entire civilizations are dumber than the average reader).

>>76327805
>>76327777
Fair, but I would not consider overcoming adversity in a creative pursuit to be suffering. I suppose my definition of suffering in this specific context is pain (physical, mental or spiritual) inflicted upon you for either the sake of somebody else, or out of necessity to simply exist. If, as an artist, you are agonising over how best to manifest your creativity upon the canvas, I wouldn't particularly define that as suffering, even though it is a form of pain, because it is for an entirely self-interested creative pursuit.

Pain would, of course, still exist, but it would be entirely consensual, and the results of that toil would belong solely to the person who spent that creative energy, to share or keep as he so wishes, because he knows that his needs are met, his continued existence is assured, and he is thus free to pursue that which interests and captivates him.

>>76327900
>Perhaps more importantly, though, because sublimation usually results in an end to relations with the material universe and consequently with those less advanced civilisations still struggling to make their way within it, the Culture view it as somewhat decadent and/or lacking in proper public spirit. What little contact has been had with the Sublimed races suggests that they consider the Culture to be somewhat irresponsible and immature for having existed so long in such an advanced state of development without subliming.
>What little evidence of the Sublime realm exists in the mundane realm suggests that it is so wonderful that people going there simply lose interest in the mundane realm, no matter how involved they were in it prior to sublimation, or what promises they gave to come back and say what they saw. "... no one ever came back saying, shit, it's horrible; don't go."
Kek, it seems like the sublimed are like the culture on steroids, minus the interventionism.

>>76327986
Makes you wonder, which is better: Sublimation, or Excession?

>>76328013
Excession isn't a state of being, it's a probe from a totally unknown undescribed civilization from another universe. Though, since imo it seems more advanced than even the sublimed, I guess the civilization it came from are probably even nicer to live in.

>>76328035
The excession is more powerful. It’s inconceivable that an entity that can bridge universes and may originate from the heart of the pulsing core from which everything arose wouldn’t have access to the sublimated realm which must depend on the underlying reality of which the Excession traverses.

>>76326947
>I can't find anywhere to read it for free
Try the past.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161213222816/https://www.wired.com/2016/12/james-corey-the-hunger-after-youre-fed/

>>76327218
Still hold that it was Octavia Butler's personal Magical Realm.