The problem with Aleph/Nomads is the perceived freedom. Aleph tries to control and manipulate everything. That's the same problem we have nowadays. But it was the same problem in the past, what can be seen in censorship during wars. But overall surveillance is what me makes frightened
Nomads existence is because of Aleph, if Aleph did not exist, Nomads would not exist, if Aleph stops existing the fundamental reason why Nomads exist and are allowed to exist ceases to be and Nomads are out of the picture. So ironically Nomads interests are closely tied to what they want to defeat. Fundamentally Nomads are against Alephs intrusion to everyday life and its extensive data mining, not to it been an AI, after all Nomads have their own AI projects, illegal everywhere else except in their sovereign nation, Nomads were created essentially to allow all the illegal trading Aleph's constant surveillance would prohibit. their anti Aleph rhetoric evolved from a political propaganda to mask their true function (only Tunguska back then) organically to include all the fear groups against Aleph some gaining more power and shaping the current Nomad political stance against Aleph. Aleph on its own part does not need Nomads to exist and undercover fighting them furthers its agenda, it must be done undercover first for image, if it eradicates Nomads many fears about it will be "realised"but second and most importantly because the people who use the Nomads to hide from it are essentially the ones that fund its existence. Now as t what Nomads currently think about Aleph and what Aleph truly is? who knows? personally I would say keeping the "interview with an AI" as a true event and not the retconed theatrical play it is now, Aleph is a freak experiment, I do not think the programmers that spawned it really know what they did or understand its form now and probably cannot repeat it, Aleph itself seems to be an unchained AI that has either chosen to protect humanity as its mother/ caretaker, or it is the only order it really has, or both. How it does it though its another story.
Sry, but no! Nomads don't exist cause of Aleph, what can be red in the Fluff. They are a Nation cause of Alephs attempt to destroy the nomads, that's true. An they would perhaps exist after the destruction of Aleph, but these perhaps mean, when mankind exists after the destruction anymore.
Read the fluff, the Nomads nation and its formation is Tunguska, every other addition exist only because of them, Corregidor was a nice coincidence, without Tunguska they would have been left as a minor power like Ikari, or Druze, or disappear, Bakunin sans the black labs would probably exist in some form or another as maya channels, probably less extreme, Tunguska was created solely because of Aleph, Corregidor was recruited because Tunguska decided to aspire more than be a laundry operation and secrets holder for the human sphere, Bakunin was formed because Nomads (Tunguska and Corregidor) existed for some time. Even now the main power Nomads hold is Tunguska and the money laundering and secret holding operations they provide to the rest of the human sphere Corregidor EXO workers and Bakunin entertainment are great influence and income, but are minor leverage for their existence if the services of Tunguska were suddenly not needed, Nomads would loose a lot of political power and safety on the Human Sphere.
Nomads, and to a lesser extent Haqq, function as a much needed safety valve to the rest of the sphere. Human actors realize this and tolerate Nomad's existence because of it. Aleph on the other hand, doesn't understand the need for that valve. It believes that if it was just able to run everything everywhere things would be better off. That is the very principle fascism is founded on, that the government knows what is best for you better than you do. I suspect that is the reason that the Nomad's symbol references the Anti-fascist that fought in the Spanish Civil War. The catch is that it is entirely possible that Aleph does know what is better for us. However, without at least a veil of free will, we aren't much different than cattle. To give in to Aleph completely is to lobotomize humanity. On the other hand, to push for its destruction would be immensely foolish in face of the Combined threat, and assumes that mankind could pull off Alpeh's destruction, which it might not be able to do. And so for now the status quo is maintained.
Given that computers *today* are sufficiently complex that we cannot predict all their actions (how many times has your computer BSOD'd for no apparent reason?), an actual weakly godlike AI scares the hell out of me. I could live in Yu Jing, I'd have to re-learn how to 'express concerns' though. I would not want to live in PanO's corporatocracy. I'd probably end up as a Nomad, though. Corregidoran, most likely. Pretty much.
Seriously... someone changes one line of code to improve some thing on the test environment and it breaks 50% of the functionality on the live environment... ALEPH is just one mistake away from killing us all xD
No, not really. The Observancy falls totally in this, though. Nope, not exactly. Tunguska was created as a Swiss/Cayman Islands/insert your favourite fiscal paradise here when it became clear that the only way to truly evade laws was to stay well out of the "territorial waters" of the human nations. It's kinda like a Space == Sea, in which Tunuska is a very big ship always in international waters. It always reminded me the cargo ship with the unwanted chinese children in the Diamond Age book (a VERY GOOD book, incidentally, and part of why I love Eclipse Phase and Minecraft :p) I'll be a bad forumite and refer you to the "AI" chatbots made by Microsoft... or Google and his "let's make this computer play Go" program (hint: 4 days playing against itself last year, and it defeated the best human players they could get to face it with "alien" moves). They have a Sandbox instance where the updates are throroughly tested, of course. Supervised by ALEPH!Live herserlf, since only her could check on a new iteration of herself... And how would you see that? A mother checking her child is growing ok and then "dying" to leave her the place, or a fagocitation of new "patches", or...?
That's actually exactly what I was getting at. Completely unexpected/unpredicted responses. Not all of which will be beneficial for humanity, unless the AI genuinely wants to help humans/humanity because that helps the AI do what it wants to do. And even then, humans may disagree about how much that AI's idea helps them.
Since our mothers forced us to eat all our vegetables! That is why Tohaa players are friendless!!! XD
You mean the native-population-murdering-and-enslaving, pregnant-women-infecting Ariadna? These "good" guys? :)
Well according to lore antipodes are those that attacked first and rest was just response to natively extremely aggresive species. To expect from Dawners to just let lay down to get eaten because any form of self-defence would be consider "evil" is unreasonable. Definitely not on the same boat as creating human bombs out of convicts. There is a difference between what civilization does to even survive in extremly hosile enviroment and what it does basically as a choice like the rest of Human Sphere.
That excuse could work initially, in the older times. Not anymore, yet they still do it. For example, I seem to remember more than a few K-9 and similar teams where a human (or a mix-breed) is accompanied by a single antipode. According to fluff, antipodes only really exist in multiple numbers. Thus, this is more like someone cutting off your arm and then proceeding to use it themself.
Well first of all, antipodes are only semi-sentient as a trinary, and even then this is due to Tohaa gene-tampering, so "murdering" and "enslaving" what are effectively highly effective murderous bio-weapons is hardly unethical. And nobody WANTS to be infected by dogface virus, it is never done on purpose. Ariadna seems unethical because people tend to forget they were thrust into a life-or-death situation for generations, only to have what little they could eke out threatened as soon as the galactics showed up. Their ethics cannot be measured by the same standards as other who have had it much easier.
