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Post by samchiu2000 on Dec 21, 2016 11:04:30 GMT
My own colony starship sailing at 1.1%c,cost around 35Gc~
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 21, 2016 11:43:47 GMT
It always amuses me when Thomas Hobbes' dead ass gets invoked as the reason why the fancy million year spaceship ideas won't work as opposed to stuff like "You're expecting a human-engineered system to last over a thousand years on automated operation while babysitting a bunch of human popsicles" but I guess that's one of those easily handwaved engineering problems I hear so much about who is Thomas Hobbes and how is he relevant to cryosleep ships? On the off chance you haven't looked him up - English political philosopher of the Early Modern period, who lived in the shadow of the English Civil War and associated chaos. The central thrust of his work is the idea that, left to their own devices, people will naturally fall into viciousness and chaos (the 'state of nature' for the purposes of his work), which sourced a great number of quotations that still see usage (the ones mentioned above, the war of all against all, etc). The only solution is, in his model, for people to subordinate their freedom of action to an agreed-upon means of arbitration, so we have a way of resolving disputes we all agree on without anyone getting brained with a club - he reccomends an absolute monarch, as it minimizes (in theory) the risk for that authority to become divided against itself and fail. This then creates a serious problem for international relations, as there isn't one of those on the scale of nations. Even if everyone in the kingdom really does embrace the rule of (the same) law, you still have all those other kingdoms, and so you'll fall into that state of war and anarchy in the grand scheme even if the individual pieces are ordered. It would be the logical thing, then, for all the nations to agree on a ruler to prevent that. I'm sure they'll get right to it. That's his model, anyway. It's a subject of debate, like most famous philosophers. Personally, I think his argument is interesting, but (deliberately) overstated and over-universalized, and so getting too excited about its implications is a bit silly. Opinions vary. I leave the comparison between his model and your response to the lockstep scenario for you to evaluate the merits of.
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Post by shurugal on Dec 21, 2016 13:09:14 GMT
who is Thomas Hobbes and how is he relevant to cryosleep ships? On the off chance you haven't looked him up - English political philosopher of the Early Modern period, who lived in the shadow of the English Civil War and associated chaos. The central thrust of his work is the idea that, left to their own devices, people will naturally fall into viciousness and chaos (the 'state of nature' for the purposes of his work), which sourced a great number of quotations that still see usage (the ones mentioned above, the war of all against all, etc). The only solution is, in his model, for people to subordinate their freedom of action to an agreed-upon means of arbitration, so we have a way of resolving disputes we all agree on without anyone getting brained with a club - he reccomends an absolute monarch, as it minimizes (in theory) the risk for that authority to become divided against itself and fail. This then creates a serious problem for international relations, as there isn't one of those on the scale of nations. Even if everyone in the kingdom really does embrace the rule of (the same) law, you still have all those other kingdoms, and so you'll fall into that state of war and anarchy in the grand scheme even if the individual pieces are ordered. It would be the logical thing, then, for all the nations to agree on a ruler to prevent that. I'm sure they'll get right to it. That's his model, anyway. It's a subject of debate, like most famous philosophers. Personally, I think his argument is interesting, but (deliberately) overstated and over-universalized, and so getting too excited about its implications is a bit silly. Opinions vary. I leave the comparison between his model and your response to the lockstep scenario for you to evaluate the merits of. sounds like a quack to me. Anyone can plainly see that the flaw with his thinking is the idea that everyone would willingly submit to a single leader, when a large portion of them would need a whack on the head every now and then for that to work.
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 21, 2016 13:43:20 GMT
On the off chance you haven't looked him up - English political philosopher of the Early Modern period, who lived in the shadow of the English Civil War and associated chaos. The central thrust of his work is the idea that, left to their own devices, people will naturally fall into viciousness and chaos (the 'state of nature' for the purposes of his work), which sourced a great number of quotations that still see usage (the ones mentioned above, the war of all against all, etc). The only solution is, in his model, for people to subordinate their freedom of action to an agreed-upon means of arbitration, so we have a way of resolving disputes we all agree on without anyone getting brained with a club - he reccomends an absolute monarch, as it minimizes (in theory) the risk for that authority to become divided against itself and fail. This then creates a serious problem for international relations, as there isn't one of those on the scale of nations. Even if everyone in the kingdom really does embrace the rule of (the same) law, you still have all those other kingdoms, and so you'll fall into that state of war and anarchy in the grand scheme even if the individual pieces are ordered. It would be the logical thing, then, for all the nations to agree on a ruler to prevent that. I'm sure they'll get right to it. That's his model, anyway. It's a subject of debate, like most famous philosophers. Personally, I think his argument is interesting, but (deliberately) overstated and over-universalized, and so getting too excited about its implications is a bit silly. Opinions vary. I leave the comparison between his model and your response to the lockstep scenario for you to evaluate the merits of. sounds like a quack to me. Anyone can plainly see that the flaw with his thinking is the idea that everyone would willingly submit to a single leader, when a large portion of them would need a whack on the head every now and then for that to work. It was a work of philosophy, not a practical manual. The argument isn't that this is an achievable real-world solution, but rather that this should be preferable to the alternative. Which, if you accept his premises about human nature, us agreeing on something is better than us beating folks to death - or more concretely for him, to the long and bloody years of instability resulting from the spats over religion and royal authority that had torn England apart in his day. I mean, it's essentially making the case for the basic premise of rule of law - having something we agree on and stick to is worth a lot, even if it makes shitty decisions fairly often, because chaos bad.
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Post by thorneel on Dec 21, 2016 13:51:24 GMT
On the off chance you haven't looked him up - English political philosopher of the Early Modern period, who lived in the shadow of the English Civil War and associated chaos. The central thrust of his work is the idea that, left to their own devices, people will naturally fall into viciousness and chaos (the 'state of nature' for the purposes of his work), which sourced a great number of quotations that still see usage (the ones mentioned above, the war of all against all, etc). The only solution is, in his model, for people to subordinate their freedom of action to an agreed-upon means of arbitration, so we have a way of resolving disputes we all agree on without anyone getting brained with a club - he reccomends an absolute monarch, as it minimizes (in theory) the risk for that authority to become divided against itself and fail. This then creates a serious problem for international relations, as there isn't one of those on the scale of nations. Even if everyone in the kingdom really does embrace the rule of (the same) law, you still have all those other kingdoms, and so you'll fall into that state of war and anarchy in the grand scheme even if the individual pieces are ordered. It would be the logical thing, then, for all the nations to agree on a ruler to prevent that. I'm sure they'll get right to it. That's his model, anyway. It's a subject of debate, like most famous philosophers. Personally, I think his argument is interesting, but (deliberately) overstated and over-universalized, and so getting too excited about its implications is a bit silly. Opinions vary. I leave the comparison between his model and your response to the lockstep scenario for you to evaluate the merits of. sounds like a quack to me. Anyone can plainly see that the flaw with his thinking is the idea that everyone would willingly submit to a single leader, when a large portion of them would need a whack on the head every now and then for that to work. Yo do realise you just called one of the most important (if controversial) political theorists and philosophers of all times a quack, do you? Note that the Hegemon, the absolute monarch as Hobbes saw it, is supposed to be a human being that transcended human condition, rising above it to become something of a saint. While saints do exist, this always struck me as kind of a cheat: the problem of actually having a selection mechanism to put an apt Hegemon into power is still there. However, the idea of people submitting to an absolute leader is far from unheard of - they are even sometimes elected into power. Internationally, the idea of a centralised organism capable of avoiding international conflicts is the idea behind the League of Nation, the United Nations or the European Union. As flawed and incomplete as they are, the drive does exist. Though while I haven't studied Hobbes' work that much, it does strike me as a bit simplistic in its description of human nature.
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 21, 2016 13:59:00 GMT
He does, to be fair, use the saintly ruler for a rhetorical purpose - he wants to get to the point where it's agreed to be good with a good ruler, then draw the contrast between the shitty ruler and the state of chaos and ask "Is [having a shitty ruler] really so much worse that you'd want this instead?"
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Post by ross128 on Dec 21, 2016 15:05:44 GMT
Hobbes is definitely worth a read, though as other posters here have pointed out, he should be read with a 1-ton bag of salt at your side. Though, this tends to be true of any philosopher: all of them have their share of baseless junk, some more than others. In Hobbes' case, the Philosopher King was nonsense when Plato came up with it and it's nonsense now.
Essentially, Hobbes points out a very real and observable problem: that anarchy devolves into chaos and chaos coalesces into tyranny. On the other hand his solution, to skip straight to the tyranny part, is... sub-optimal at best. For better solutions to the Hobbesian problem I recommend reading up on Adam Smith, John Locke, Mises, and Hayek. Same catch as usual of course: none of them are perfect, but all of them are on to something.
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 21, 2016 15:27:11 GMT
Hobbes is definitely worth a read, though as other posters here have pointed out, he should be read with a 1-ton bag of salt at your side. Though, this tends to be true of any philosopher: all of them have their share of baseless junk, some more than others. In Hobbes' case, the Philosopher King was nonsense when Plato came up with it and it's nonsense now. Essentially, Hobbes points out a very real and observable problem: that anarchy devolves into chaos and chaos coalesces into tyranny. On the other hand his solution, to skip straight to the tyranny part, is... sub-optimal at best. For better solutions to the Hobbesian problem I recommend reading up on Adam Smith, John Locke, Mises, and Hayek. Same catch as usual of course: none of them are perfect, but all of them are on to something. Honestly, the Philosopher King has enough of the seeds of his destruction (as incoherent, not just impractical) sown in Plato's own argument that I have to figure it was being used as a device for Socrates to talk about the way the just man should behave, even as the other political elements were being used for that and to take shots at Democracy.
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Post by svm420 on Dec 21, 2016 15:36:35 GMT
Uhh how about less philosophy and more giant ships. :/
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Post by someusername6 on Dec 21, 2016 18:19:12 GMT
In celebration of this thread let's create a ship called the Leviathan, to carry heads of government in ostentation.
Budget is 4 Gc, also known as 4 billion credits.
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Post by David367th on Dec 22, 2016 6:04:20 GMT
In celebration of this thread let's create a ship called the Leviathan, to carry heads of government in ostentation. Budget is 4 Gc, also known as 4 billion credits. Is 20000 people for 3.99 billion good?
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Post by newageofpower on Dec 22, 2016 6:36:10 GMT
Thats awful. My Highliner carries 1000 more people for 1/4th the cost.
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Post by David367th on Dec 22, 2016 6:40:20 GMT
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Post by someusername6 on Dec 22, 2016 7:54:04 GMT
Here are 200k people on a 4 Gc ship.
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