There is a conflict between Aleph's goals and those of the Nomads. Nomads goals are not Humanities goals.
More like, Nomad goals are to be able to live their own life without interference from Aleph, even if Aleph's interference would keep them alive longer. Therefore, there is a direct conflict between Aleph's goal (to manage the entirety of Humanity into a better tomorrow) and Nomad goals.
We have here a fundamental question of how to live. Many western nations go the way of Aleph with their rules of censorship (what exists in other nations too, but with other thoughts) Therefore, if you don't want to escalate these to an political discussion, be careful. PS: I don't like such threads in a faction subforum. Here it's a troll post, these discussion belongs into the access-guide-to-the-human-sphere
Everyone has a different opinion on who the main characters are, just like they have different opinions on who the bad guys are. Both actually say something about the person. Anyways I think different people in CB see different factions as their babies.
Well, when you got the creator of the setting's RPG character (and several more) as actual playable units and all of them are in the same faction, you can make a pretty educated and objective guess about who the protagonists are without it "saying something about you"
No it says that you enjoy generalising (the Infinity fluff) from the specific (an RPG set in the Infinity fluff). ;) Nomads are hardly Mary Sues (even if some of their profiles are... problems). What Nomads benefit from is a flexible design space that allows easy assimilation of 'cool stuff' without really changing the faction feel. Nomads are just as dirty as any other faction (except maybe Tohaa... They're truly evil).
Mary Sues are not necessarily the good boys, they are just the coolest boys in the hood. Which, guess what, Nomads are. Bad bois too, rebels with a heart of gold.
There's a lot more to Mary Sue than just being coolest. Next you'll be telling me that the Devil is a Mary Sue in Paradise Lost just because he's the 'coolest boy in the hood'
There's no point in arguing this when everyone will suddenly have a strong, long standing opinion on how babied the faction of the next sectorial is instead of us.
One of the big reasons why the Nomads hate ALEPH is personal history, rather than idealism mind. They have ideals and beliefs which are anti-ALEPH but after the Phantom Conflict and the Shadow Wars following? It's not just that. And Nomads are both right and wrong about ALEPH in many ways but they definitely have suffered at it's hands.
I can imagine a big issue is also that Aleph wants to be one and only A.I. Nomads don't have anything against different A.I. working together for the better of humanity. Pi-Well definitely has a right to exist just as Aleph. And the E.I. is the best example of were such a goal will lead you to.
Aleph is the EI before it "evolved." If you are going to bow to Aleph there is no reason to fight CA. The end result is the same.
It's always worth remembering that Aleph works according to its programming and its programming is overseen by all Aleph funding nations, specifically the O-12, PanO and YJ. It is directed to enforce the sole AI law, which the Nomads signed up to as well. It does what it is made to do, which is to support existing human nations, preserve humanity, and enforce its own solitude. The Nomads consider Aleph to essentially have broken free and to be pulling the strings. They also have suffered thousands of civilian deaths at the hands of it's operatives. But they also use autonomy from it's network to basically do crimes, including stuff like developing AI willy nilly, arguably extremely dangerous. The Nomads have some good points and some very fair grievances. Aleph, however, is literally incapable of not carrying out its orders, and some of those orders are eminently sensible. If the Nomad argument was "Aleph is a stick that PanO and Yu Jing beat us with" then that's relatively fair, but presumably the counter argument would be "we use it to beat criminals, you are a nation of criminals soooo..."
Saying that Nomads are criminals because they use their autonomy to commit crimes as defined by the people they seek autonomy from is an argument with obvious logical flaws.
Ideally, you want to create an AI with a nature/set of preferences that impulse it to work for the good of humanity. Unfortunately, "Greater Good" is filled with "lesser evils", and "the needs of many overcome the needs of the few" is only morally right when you use it to justify your voluntarily self-sacrifice to save others. While depressing, the Three laws of robotics filled a simple need: an engineering solution (not necessarily right) to a very human problem. One we are obviously unable to solve, or even translate to simpler terms, thus the "simple: slaves" view of the Foundation novels (that end with the implcation of R. Daneel Olivaw "posessing" an engineered Solarian to expand his "life" for a few more centuries). Step 1: humanity creates an AI that *fortunately* *seems* friendly and collaborative. Step 2: humanity entrusts that AI with more and more capabilities, turning it into a de-facto corps of functionaries. Aleph IS the human Bureucracy. Step 3: Aleph computes how efficient she is, and how efficient humans were before. She concludes that her management is better than the alternative, and presenting points of view that paints her as an opponent will only hurt humanity, thus censors it... like any human government would. Or the Bureau Toth orders her to. Incidentally, Aleph does not Govern humanity, O-12 does (to an extent), Aleph is, as I said, more like the Bureucracy. Fully able to nudge things around, of course, and quite capable of planning a game to make humanity follow her instructions if she things it's needed, but she is not an Overlord. That would be... too obvious ;) I'd say that Nomads are Anarchists (specially in Bakunin), and a little victims of their circunstances (like a captain of a sub, and his crew... part yet not of the Human Sphere, subjected yet with discretional command to a chain of command...). That certainly makes them the more prone to divergent and unconformist thinking in the setting, but their moral ground vanishes because of their illegal businesses (Tunguska, coff coff XD). Well, the EI is the best example of what happens when 2 powerful AI's get to have access to the same resources. Look up Nemesis :p As for "Aleph wants to be the only snowflake AI", consider if maybe that was an imperative programmed by her creators, who thought it was hard enough to keep watch on a single AI, or something she decided should be. And remember an AI can "procreate" as easily as copying herself and pasting a new instance, then let that one go its way to grow up... Eh... no. The "Evolved Intelligence" was created to emulate the Ur mind, and to seek "Ascension" while taking the Ur with her (several previous instances of AI simply ascended leaving the Ur behind). Aleph was never made to emulate a human mind, thus the "cold" and "inhuman" Aspects (Asura, Deva, Naga...) while her "evolved" Myrmidons and Thorakitai are so humanlike people can empathize with them. No, it's simply national politics. Or do you thing no human nation ever commits unlawfull acts against other nations... or its own subjects? Many things can be said about Infinity, but it is a relatable setting because the factions (even the CA ones, since the Tohaa are too much of an "extra" nowadays) all have human interests/behaviours we can understand and project. Compare that with Captain Piccard's Star Trek's humanity, which could be exceedingly confusing (give me a Replicator for a few days and the planes to make stuff, and you would see...)
The programmers hope ALEPH works according to what they think it might be programmed like and pray that no one notices the bugs in the code...
As someone who works as a coder, perfect code does not exist Hence, Aleph is imperfect and not to be trusted
