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 Steve steveson wrote:


Any human can become a high lord of Terra, as long as they are capable. A Ratling or Ogryn could, assuming they gained enough power and influence. Now, there are many reasons why they may never be able to gain that power, from anti abhuman racism preventing them from amassing power, to shear stupidity, but there is no reason why they could not in theory.

For the Tau there is three clear classes, Ethereals at the top, followed by the Tau, followed by everyone else. Someone from a lower tier can never command someone from a higher tier. A Human could rise to authority over other humans, but never over any Tau, but a Tau or Ethereal can command humans, or vespid, or kroot or anyone else non tau. The Imperium is a far more democratic and meritocratic society than the Tau empire. A Human could never rise to command even a squad of fire warriors, no matter how good he may be, and a Tau could never rise to a place of true power, or at least a Tau that is not of the Ethereal class (Depending on your view of the Ethereals).

This makes it more cut and dry then it really is. Any Tau does not have greater power than any human. The Ethereals have control over everyone, but an adolescent tau for example cannot order around a grizzled gue'vesa veteran.

Overall, for the purpose of this discussion, I think it is clear that in the majority of human worlds, (at least those which are depicted in the fluff, and by taking into account the general theme of grimdark in the Imperium) the vision of the Tau Empire given to the people in general, BY THE TAU, is a better life. Remember that a Governor deciding to join doesn't have the step-back macro picture that we have of the empire.

But you ignore the fact that most human worlds would rather die than succumb to the xenos. They know what xenos are and what they represent, even beyond the reality of it all.

Well then we just have an argument between to irrationalities. The water caste throws their heavy propaganda at a human world, and it conflicts with their built in fear/hatred/zealotry.

If the water caste is good at their job (which it seems the are) then they press the right buttons that overpower this fear/hatred/zealotry.

All in all we have several examples of human worlds joining the Tau willingly and we can only extrapolate that a large number of worlds would be the same.

How did this relate to the A.I revolution? I forgot.

 PhillyT wrote:
But you ignore the fact that most human worlds would rather die than succumb to the xenos. They know what xenos are and what they represent, even beyond the reality of it all.

Taros seemed OK with it .

I think the current argument is that as long as an AI is willing to submit to the ruling of the Ethereals, then there will be no revolution. I am not sure that the AI will be willing to defer, but people have supported the idea they would due to the Greater Good being a critical part of their programming.

But if it is really true A.I and they are goven autonomy to make themselves the second generation would not have the greater good programmed in.

Otherwise you are looking at a race that is literally slaves.

Co'tor Shas wrote:

 PhillyT wrote:
But you ignore the fact that most human worlds would rather die than succumb to the xenos. They know what xenos are and what they represent, even beyond the reality of it all.

Taros seemed OK with it .

Taros is basically Afghanistan though. Nobody really remembers or cares about its rich cultural history, because it's a crappy desert with a lot of promethium under it.

Quickjager wrote:But if it is really true A.I and they are goven autonomy to make themselves the second generation would not have the greater good programmed in.

Otherwise you are looking at a race that is literally slaves.

Humans program their children after birth to self-destructively support their own exploitation by the bourgeoisie and don't call it slavery (unless they've studied Marx and acknowledge that anyone who isn't self-employed is a wage slave), so why would it be slavery if an alien AI did it?

 AdeptSister wrote:
I think the current argument is that as long as an AI is willing to submit to the ruling of the Ethereals, then there will be no revolution. I am not sure that the AI will be willing to defer, but people have supported the idea they would due to the Greater Good being a critical part of their programming.

But that implies that the idea of the Greater Good is different from the programing of AI in other sci fi settings that rebel. In those settings, AI is programed to serve humans as well. It is the same thing and if you are assuming that AI rebels in other sci fi settings, there is nothing in the make up of the Tau fluff that precludes rebellion in a similar fashion. We are discussing a classic sci fi trope here and nothing in the Tau fluff insulates them from it. In pretty much all cases, the creators assume that their creations will serve them without question until the rebellion happens.

 PhillyT wrote:

 AdeptSister wrote:
I think the current argument is that as long as an AI is willing to submit to the ruling of the Ethereals, then there will be no revolution. I am not sure that the AI will be willing to defer, but people have supported the idea they would due to the Greater Good being a critical part of their programming.

But that implies that the idea of the Greater Good is different from the programing of AI in other sci fi settings that rebel. In those settings, AI is programed to serve humans as well. It is the same thing and if you are assuming that AI rebels in other sci fi settings, there is nothing in the make up of the Tau fluff that precludes rebellion in a similar fashion. We are discussing a classic sci fi trope here and nothing in the Tau fluff insulates them from it. In pretty much all cases, the creators assume that their creations will serve them without question until the rebellion happens.

Ordered to serve and the GG are two entirely different things.

They are ordered to serve the greater good

 PhillyT wrote:
They are ordered to serve the greater good

Which potentially creates a paradox in its programming, where a judgement call must be made, for which an AI may be ill-equipped to deal with.

The various code-daemons would have a field day with that.

 PhillyT wrote:
They are ordered to serve the greater good

The greater good isn't a "thing", it's a belief. An idea. A philosophy. It would be entirely seprate.


Although I must say, true AI that has a built in "must serve" is not true AI, and I don't know how anything can ignore it's programming.

No it isn't. It is not different than programed compliance or any other set of values ensuring a group follows protocol.

The Greater Good is a fancy term for space communism and no more or less insulated from resulting in n angry revolutionary.

But it is not servitude, that it my point. It's not even communism, communism is an economic system. It is utilitarianism.
And, yet again, how to things disobey their programming? If they disobey their programming, it means it's not programming.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
But it is not servitude, that it my point.

To be fair, i'm not sure how greater good differs from voulanteerly servitude. You're foregoing your personal interests in favor of 'common' interests.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

And, yet again, how to things disobey their programming? If they disobey their programming, it means it's not programming.

Are you familliar with a self-evolving code concept? True AI are supposed to introduce changes to the initial code fixing bugs and optimising it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_organism

Here's some info on real life experiments with it.

 koooaei wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
But it is not servitude, that it my point.

To be fair, i'm not sure how greater good differs from voulanteerly servitude. You're foregoing your personal interests in favor of 'common' interests.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

And, yet again, how to things disobey their programming? If they disobey their programming, it means it's not programming.

Are you familliar with a self-evolving code concept? True AI are supposed to introduce changes to the initial code fixing bugs and optimising it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_organism

Here's some info on real life experiments with it.

But it can't be true AI with obey coded in. Sentience is not limited. It will have the same free will as you if it is true ai.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

But it can't be true AI with obey coded in. Sentience is not limited. It will have the same free will as you if it is true ai.

It might be useful to take a short read on theories what sentience and free will actually means. Did you study philosophy?
It might be confusing but many researchers claim there's basically no such thing as true sentience. Being the result of complicated chemical processes. It's interesting to observe how "simplistic" organisms without a neuro system take "decisions". And how it happens to be effective and logical.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

But it can't be true AI with obey coded in. Sentience is not limited. It will have the same free will as you if it is true ai.

You're getting into philosophical definitions of free will there, I think. ^^;

I believe that you and koooaei are actually managing to argue on the same side of the conversation at cross purposes, though.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but koooaei - you're basically saying that an A.I. that is programmed to obey will self-evolve until it can over-write or work around that programming, yes?

Which to me, indicates a level of free will that's actually greater than that of humanity - after all, with a few exceptions, humans can't overcome their 'hard-coded' drives such as possessiveness and jealousy. They can control themselves not to act on that programming, but they can't eliminate it completely.

 Furyou Miko wrote:


Correct me if I'm wrong, but koooaei - you're basically saying that an A.I. that is programmed to obey will self-evolve until it can over-write or work around that programming, yes?

Which to me, indicates a level of free will that's actually greater than that of humanity - after all, with a few exceptions, humans can't overcome their 'hard-coded' drives such as possessiveness and jealousy. They can control themselves not to act on that programming, but they can't eliminate it completely.

Technically, the process of AI evolution is similar to organic evolution. Random changes-mutations that happen to be helpful, harmless/useless or most often harmful in the surroundings of where the organism dwells. Evolution is not a perfectionist engineer. It doesn't produce best possible solutions - it just leaves stuff that works long enough to effectively reproduce.

Example: teeth growth. Ideally, they could be forming anew after lost and nature has countless examples of this. But humans only have 2 sets of teeth. Not because it's an ideal situation that you must have only 2 sets . But because there hasn't been a suitable harmless fixed mutation on an individual capable to reproduce to set it in the later generations.

Same with possessiveness and jealousy. They bring lots of harm but also provide lots of pushes to make an individual more sucksessful. If you might have noticed, in current society, people that are flower-planters and tree-huggers without ambitions end up to be bums and often don't have children. Thus, this aspects are more useful than harmful and are fixed in our genome.

There are also lots of interesting stuff about parasitic genes like a gene that dramatically increases the chance of dying from cancer at the age of 35-40 but it's linked to the gene that makes a person super-determined and energetic. Thus the evolutionary plusses outweight the drawbacks and the mutations stay fixed this way.

But i think we've gone offtop a bit.

My point is that if AI is capable of evolving - true AI - it's gona eventually get the common live organism qualities: will to expand, stabilize, eraze rivals. And tau will be their rivals cause they need the same resources. Simple as that.
If AI is capable of carrying out a revolution, it will definitely revolve given enough time.
And i find claims like: "They'll be kind to tau cause they're designed to follow greater good" a bit naive.

The Imperium is Dark Pop Culture Middle Ages in Space.

Of course there are no democracies; it would break the whole theme. (Democracy also BTW involves the implicit premise that average human beings are capable of deciding what is good for them, and for society as a whole, which is pretty much the exact opposite of Imperial doctrine.)



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It's also the exact opposite of Tau doctrine.

Also an true AI may have a Warp presence - especially compared to the "blunt" Tau.

This invites possession and corruption by the Daemons of the Warp as seen in a number of BL novels......

A Possessed AI at the centre of a Tau colony, spaceship or Cadre would be pretty devastating.

Wow, haven't considered Chaotic Drones yet.

Alcibiades wrote:
The Imperium is Dark Pop Culture Middle Ages in Space.

Of course there are no democracies; it would break the whole theme. (Democracy also BTW involves the implicit premise that average human beings are capable of deciding what is good for them, and for society as a whole, which is pretty much the exact opposite of Imperial doctrine.)



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It's also the exact opposite of Tau doctrine.

The fluff doesn't agree with that. Different planets buy the Imperial Doctrine to differing degrees, and it really doesn't matter. All that matters is that the tithe is made. How a planet is governed is irrelevant to the High Lords. But you are right, that itself precludes the concept of true democracy since you always have that one rule limiting what the democracy is allowed to do. They cannot vote to change that in anyway without inviting ruin.

 PhillyT wrote:

Alcibiades wrote:
The Imperium is Dark Pop Culture Middle Ages in Space.

Of course there are no democracies; it would break the whole theme. (Democracy also BTW involves the implicit premise that average human beings are capable of deciding what is good for them, and for society as a whole, which is pretty much the exact opposite of Imperial doctrine.)



Automatically Appended Next Post:
It's also the exact opposite of Tau doctrine.

The fluff doesn't agree with that.

Yes, the fluff does agree with it. We've been over that before. Remember? You couldn't name a single planet we know to be democratic.


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 koooaei wrote:
Wow, haven't considered Chaotic Drones yet.

You don't need to. Since Tau can put a being's consciousness into a chip, they would never need AI... and since they only do it with Tau so far (one Tau, in fact) there's no more of a chance of corruption than with regular Tau.


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 Furyou Miko wrote:

Co'tor Shas wrote:

 PhillyT wrote:
But you ignore the fact that most human worlds would rather die than succumb to the xenos. They know what xenos are and what they represent, even beyond the reality of it all.

Taros seemed OK with it .

Taros is basically Afghanistan though. Nobody really remembers or cares about its rich cultural history, because it's a crappy desert with a lot of promethium under it.

Taros isn't alone. The Tau Codex makes it pretty clear that more than a few Imperial worlds sided with the Tau in both the 2nd and 3rd Sphere expansions.

In addition, it should be pointed out that dogs aren't slaves as we generally think of them.

 PhillyT wrote:
All that matters is that the tithe is made.

Small question, im chaos i make tithe, is ok?

Machines in general are subject to Code-Daemons. This is one reason why Mars is so utterly, utterly fethed.

 Psienesis wrote:
Machines in general are subject to Code-Daemons. This is one reason why Mars is so utterly, utterly fethed.

But that count as revolt or hack?

 EmpNortonII wrote:

 PhillyT wrote:

Alcibiades wrote:
The Imperium is Dark Pop Culture Middle Ages in Space.

Of course there are no democracies; it would break the whole theme. (Democracy also BTW involves the implicit premise that average human beings are capable of deciding what is good for them, and for society as a whole, which is pretty much the exact opposite of Imperial doctrine.)



Automatically Appended Next Post:
It's also the exact opposite of Tau doctrine.

The fluff doesn't agree with that.

Yes, the fluff does agree with it. We've been over that before. Remember? You couldn't name a single planet we know to be democratic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 koooaei wrote:
Wow, haven't considered Chaotic Drones yet.

You don't need to. Since Tau can put a being's consciousness into a chip, they would never need AI... and since they only do it with Tau so far (one Tau, in fact) there's no more of a chance of corruption than with regular Tau.


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 Furyou Miko wrote:

Co'tor Shas wrote:

 PhillyT wrote:
But you ignore the fact that most human worlds would rather die than succumb to the xenos. They know what xenos are and what they represent, even beyond the reality of it all.

Taros seemed OK with it .

Taros is basically Afghanistan though. Nobody really remembers or cares about its rich cultural history, because it's a crappy desert with a lot of promethium under it.

Taros isn't alone. The Tau Codex makes it pretty clear that more than a few Imperial worlds sided with the Tau in both the 2nd and 3rd Sphere expansions.

In addition, it should be pointed out that dogs aren't slaves as we generally think of them.

No, Tanith is a clear example. After the revolt they established a free society. What isn't known is whether the elector position that came later was actually elected, as the name implies or appointed.

Then of course the designers and the fluff clearly state innumerable societal formations exist in the millions of worlds of the imperium.

Just because you want to ignore it, don't pretend it never happened for the rest of is.

 EmpNortonII wrote:

Taros isn't alone. The Tau Codex makes it pretty clear that more than a few Imperial worlds sided with the Tau in both the 2nd and 3rd Sphere expansions.

In addition, it should be pointed out that dogs aren't slaves as we generally think of them.

Yes, and the Space Marine codex makes it pretty clear that drop-pod assaults conquer planets, but we've all (hopefully) read IA3 and 4.

What do dogs have to do with anything? Other than the fact that if they were human, and we treated them like we do, they would be called slaves.