Author Topic: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained  (Read 9583 times)

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Offline Leeko

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[SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
Overview
After an ill-advised replay of War in Heaven which has taken place when I should have been working on my cognitive science senior thesis, I believe I've finally pieced together meaningful answers to the questions, "What?" and "Why?". I intended to produce something more formal, full of references and diagrams, which was more along the lines of "here's everything we know about everything, and the conclusions or interpretations that can be drawn from them", and I still may. But for now, I want to get my thoughts out before I forget them.

A caveat, before we begin: Suffice it to say, if Universal Truth 2 isn't fresh in your mind then you may have trouble following my logic. I intend to come back to this project and fix that, but unless someone has a script of UT2 and, well, all of Tenebra and every reference to the Vishnans and Nagari handy, it's too much of an undertaking for me right now. And so, without further ado, here is my understanding of the universe.

Darwinian Destroyers
What are the Shivans? The mathematical structure of existence. Life itself as cognition. The perfect genetic algorithm. Ruthless survival instinct given form - and the galaxy's real preservers.

In order to even begin to think about the Shivans, you first need to get the scale right. In order to explain how they work, I will draw a perhaps imperfect metaphor. The social structure of a beehive exists because it has provided a distinct evolutionary fitness benefit for bees. Its precise nature has probably changed over time, responding to selective pressures to move towards greater efficiency and better fitness to the environment. It can be productive to think of the beehive as a gestalt organism, and indeed many fascinating emergent behaviors can be observed when the actions of the entire hive are taken as a whole. You could write a fascinating (if not entirely correct) treatise on the gestalt behavior of the hive, where it would appear to have intentionality and problem-solving skills, despite being composed entirely of dumb parts. Humans, on the other hand, have a global social structure which is shared between innumerable social units on the same organizational level as a beehive, which form larger units with no handy metaphor available. Now, apply the gestalt point of view to human civilization and you can think of it as a couple hundred gestalt organisms (nation-states) made of many interconnected hive structures (cities or large territories), competing for resources and territory in the same way as any other organism. Different modes of organizing society and access to resources - feudalism, capitalism, socialism, fascism - are different strategies that these gestalt organisms use to out-compete one another.

The world itself, then, can be thought of as metacognitively computing the question: how can humans best organize themselves? Darwinian selective processes can be used as computational processes, as any expert in genetic programming will tell you. However, in this case, I am merely drawing a conceptual metaphor. Imagine instead, physical processes on the same scale as I have just outlined, intentionally designed to carry out computation. This is how Shivan thought works.

We know that Shivan vessels are full of pseudo-organisms on the physical scale of human beings, and we know from the new tech room entries and the leaked NEM.NOW document that these organisms somehow carry a semiotic payload, and violently interact with one another in an in-ship ecosystem. As each Shivan body is optimized for computation at the molecular level, it seems plausible that each body may be performing simulations of some ship function, eventually settling on something it "believes" is the best heuristic. The behaviors represented by the body types which are the most successful competitors in the ecosystem are the ones which are carried out at ship-level. The ecosystem itself forms a neural net for the ship, where Shivan bodies are nodes, and processing is operationalized as a literal fight for survival where only the fittest ideas win. One might draw metaphors between population density of Shivan organisms and action potentials in a neuron.

Now again, take this processor design an organizational step higher. Entire fleets of Shivan vessels might contain different behavioral trends, different strategic priorities, different modes of organizing resources, and they may compete in the same way as their constituent components. It is unclear where the recursive nature of the Shivans finally ends, that we might point to a level of complexity where central organization comparable to a mind might exist. It seems likely that there is a mechanism to allow metacognitive processes at the inter-ship or inter-fleet level (and higher?) to feed back into lower-level networks; this is how centrally planned "orders" might be given to Shivan fleets (and further disseminated to ships) in this type of system. The phrase "external heuristic injection" comes to mind. For now, and by the presentation of Shivan-Vishnan dialogue in Universal Truth, it behooves us to assume there is a highest level of cognition at which central planning and agency may be found - a unified "Shivan mind" - or if not, we speak merely of the emergent behavior of the Shivans taken as a whole.

If you're following me, you should be starting to grasp the almost Lovecraftian vastness of the Shivans. The entities that exist in bodies on a scale we can comprehend are almost meaningless - if the Shivans have anything that is comparable to a central mind or intellect as we understand these concepts, its cognition involves physical processes on a cosmic scale. An entity like the GTVA that moves enormous amounts of resources around, has billions of living beings which reproduce and die, reshapes entire planets, and builds massive space ships, is but a single node in the Shivan mind. Entities like them surpass biological life as humanity surpasses a protein chain. Perhaps they are not best understood as discrete beings, but as forces of nature. Perhaps attributing a mind to them at all is a desperate anthropomorphization. The Shivans seem only to exist because they must - more on that in the next section.

Fully grasping the nature of the Shivans means understanding that their approach to warfare is borne out through every aspect of their existence. Everything is controlled by selective pressures, everything is a response to environmental stimuli. The Shivans are the way they are because they are the only kind of thing that can keep existing no matter what happens, and possibly the only thing that can keep the universe safe. Formless, adaptive, ruthless; willing and able to do anything for their prime directive. Their prime directive, after all, is nothing less than the prevention of the Great Darkness.

The Coming Apocalypse
There is a distinct possibility that humanity is on a course to trigger an apocalypse on the grandest scale imaginable. Shambhala can be nothing other than a device which simultaneously induces Nagari capability in every living human, creating a cognitive entity on the scale of Vishnans and Shivans (Nagari effects are nonlocal, after all; networking beings across a galaxy's worth of space is no issue). The debriefing from UT2 blatantly suggests the possibility that the result of its use will be humanity joining the Vishnan summed psyche. "Summed psyche" are very provocative words to describe the Vishnans, suggesting that they were once biological beings like us, and that they used a Shambhala of their own. Perhaps they were once the Brahmans, and something went wrong. The precise nature of the Vishnans eludes me, but it is unimportant to my investigations here.

So what is the Great Darkness? What will cause the apocalypse? It has one essential feature, from which we can make further inferences: the Great Darkness is an ontovore. Which is to say, it gobbles up existence. The Great Darkness is something with the unimaginable power of the Shivans and the Vishnans, bent on consuming reality.

The precise nature of the Great Darkness isn't important - all we need to know is that it exists on or above the scale of the Vishnans and Shivans (hereafter, for the sake of ease: noospheric entities), entities whose minds span galaxies and cross between layers of reality. We can infer as much because they are threatened by it. Here we find the Terminal Protocol begins to make sense, if ascension to a noospheric form of life is the eventual endpoint of evolution for any advanced species. The Shivans, after all, are a convincing proof of such a natural law. They are the embodiment of it.

So what, exactly, is the end result when your species builds a Shambhala and creates a noospheric being? It probably depends heavily upon what you put into it. An organized, enlightened species might turn out a lot like the Vishnans. That certainly seems to have been the goal of Vishnan tampering on Earth (the perfect, sealed environment in which to create the ideal candidate for ascension; this answers a "why Earth? why humanity?" line of questioning). The GTVA was probably right in its prediction that Ubuntu would virulently spread from Earth, uniting humanity in pacifistic enlightenment. If that happened, when Shambhala came online they'd make a benevolent superbeing.

The Terminal Protocol comes in here: any species which can manage to build a Shambhala without turning on itself is worthy of joining the noosphere. Because a species divided, which is short-sighted and warlike enough to reach the Shivans' trigger threshold, is one that will create something very much unlike the Vishnans. It will create the Great Darkness. The Shivans do what they do and are what they are because it is necessary for the survival of... everything. Their cosmic culling continues because the stakes are unimaginable.

Why should it be necessary that the GTVA be totally annihilated? Because now that everything's been ****ed up, they will not reach enlightenment - or at least not before the Elders complete Shambhala. The Elders see it only as an "end state contingency" for the war and are likely blissfully unaware of the danger it poses (recall the Vishnans' insistence that revelation demands necessity).

Imagine, then, that the forethought of the Shivan mind sees Shambhala being activated very soon in every possible future. And would not the simulations of such a godlike mind be prophecy?

There is only one way to avert the apocalypse: the Shivan alternative.

The complete destruction of the GTVA, leaving the enlightened as the only remaining representatives of the human race.

Something only a Shivanlike mind would consider, one vast enough to see that at a certain scale human morality and the lives of millions become meaningless. Opting for genocide over the end of everything. The Shivans themselves possibly only averted the Great Darkness in a time before time by becoming what they are now. Laporte's musing at something like the Fedayeen being a predecessor to the Shivans may be spot-on.

The Remaining Mysteries, Other Idle Thoughts
Had the Vishnans never displaced the 14th Battlegroup, the GTVA would not have independently discovered them. No Contingency Morpheus, possibly even no war. Recall that the missteps that led to the UEF-GTVA war mainly happened because the 14th BG disappeared for days with no explanation. I am left to wonder what the Vishnans' motives are - this is too large a misstep for them to make unintentionally, risking the Great Darkness for... what? What was accomplished by displacing the Bei family and their whole fleet, other than humanity's culling? Even the Shivans, with their incomprehensibly vast cognitive power, cannot see what their true intent is.

We simply do not know enough about the Vishnans. What happened to the Brahmans that the Terminal Protocol became their dying design? Did they cause a Great Darkness of their own, or perhaps come into being in the wake of one? What was the Dawn War, an Ancients-style conquering of the entire galaxy?

Reference was made to a Shivan "cognicide contingency". I interpret this to mean the final plan for the worst possible outcome: destruction of the Shivan mega-mind by severing and scattering its constituent parts, ready to survive the apocalypse by laying dormant for as long as it takes.

You may recall I attributed to the Shivans that they are the only kind of thing that might survive no matter what happens - this is what I alluded to. If a Great Darkness event happened in eons past, they'd be the only survivors. The universe at large has inherited them from a time when they "slept beneath the waves". This would go a long way towards explaining the Shivans' assurances of being eternal, made as jabs at the Vishnans in Universal Truth.

I have a lot of inarticulate thoughts about things that reassure me with regard to my interpretation of Shambhala. Pay close attention to the way Laporte talks about Falcata Wing bleeding together into one person: acting as a whole, in perfect unison, even sneezing simultaneously and reading one another's body language as if it was their own.

Oh and the Vasudans are headed for extinction. I am unsure as to why, and the only guesses I can come up with contradict some inferences I've made about how things work, but I have no doubt that they will be annihilated. The gods have given their prophecy.

Edit: I forgot to comment on my blind guess as to what an anima is. If I had to guess, animae are somewhere near the top level of noospheric cognitive organization - the parts of the Shivan and Vishnan entities that "do the talking". Appropriate analogies might be lobes of the brain, or individual persons, or something in that vein. The emergent system dynamics that arise when you link all that cognitive power together, similarly to how consciousness arises from the interaction of the parts of the brain.

Edit2: It bears mentioning that at the end of the new credits sequence for Tenebra, Steele appears to launch the decisive battle of the war a week early. If ALL OF EVERYTHING FOREVER gets consumed by the Great Darkness it's probably because of him. That magnificent bastard.

What a mean cliffhanger! :lol:
« Last Edit: November 16, 2015, 06:35:35 pm by Leeko »

 

Offline Shivan Hunter

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Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
This is mostly an awesome post that I'm still contemplating, but having replayed AoA recently I want to correct a couple factual points --

Quote
The Remaining Mysteries, Other Idle Thoughts
Had the Vishnans never displaced the 14th Battlegroup, the GTVA would not have independently discovered them. No Contingency Morpheus, possibly even no war. Recall that the missteps that led to the UEF-GTVA war mainly happened because the 14th BG disappeared for days with no explanation.

As some of the rewrites to AoA make it clear, MORPHEUS was the reason for the invasion in the first place. "The pacifism in Sol is dangerous to us should another threat arise" may have been a party line the GTVA used, but the real threat was always that this pacifism was induced by an unknown and unpredictable actor (the Vishnans), and this was known to the GTVA for a while pre-AoA. It was mentioned in the ARG thingy as well as a few tech entries IIRC. The GTVA probably didn't know too much about their nature or capabilities, but the existence of the Vishnans and their influence in Sol was definitely known to the GTVA.

Quote
Edit: I forgot to comment on my blind guess as to what an anima is. If I had to guess, animae are somewhere near the top level of noospheric cognitive organization - the parts of the Shivan and Vishnan entities that "do the talking". Appropriate analogies might be lobes of the brain, or individual persons, or something in that vein. The emergent system dynamics that arise when you link all that cognitive power together, similarly to how consciousness arises from the interaction of the parts of the brain.

You might be conflating Shivans and Vishnan cognition a bit here - from what I know from tech entries and old IRC discussions, Shivans use animae which each have a specific purpose and each network togethr a specific "cell" of Shivan assets. The Lucifer housed a "holocide anima", whose purpose was to threaten the Terrans and Vasudans and either eliminate them, or induce a level of cooperation that would defeat the Lucifer itself. Reference is also made to an "apatic anima" in UT2, whose purpose is deceit of some kind - probably of the Vishnans.

Vishnans do not use animae or similar structures as far as I can tell. I know a lot less about how the Vishnan Great Psyche is organized (and idk how much info on it actually publically exists, I'm sure BP internal has more stuff on it but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯), but based on hints and context clues from what we do know, I think the Vishnan Great Psyche is much more of a single monolithic entity than the hierarchical chaos that is Shivan cognition.

That said though, this is an awesome post and I'm eagerly awaiting any plot that the BP devs let slip in the discussion here!

the real question is whether the nagari network has dank memes

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
The Great Darkness is the dankest meme.

 
Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
Apologies for being obnoxious, but in the OP, could you change "adieu" to "ado"? I wouldn't care if your post weren't so insightful and well-written.  :D

Best theory I've read so far. Red ants, black ants. But it's not clear to me why a divided species could give rise to the Great Darkness.

 
Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
We've learnt a decent amount about what an anima is, let's see what I remember:

They're the goal-oriented component of Shivan cognition: there's a top-level heuristic that determines which general actions to take (e.g. the 'local diversity threatened' stuff in UT2) and this then promotes the selection of behaviour conducive to that goal. What are these goals? We know, roughly, of two: holocide animas, bred for the cull, and apatic animas, used for something perplexingly analogous to black ops.

The holocide anima is what you fought in FS1 (and AoA, at least up until the Kalki at which point **** knows), acting to eradicate any species which deviates too far from the parameters laid out in the Terminal Protocol. In FS2 there's no anima at first; the GTVA and NTF got the jump on the Shivans and they escalate aimlessly up until they ram several dozen Sathanai into Capella. This doesn't seem to be the work of a holocide anima (cf. NEMESIS NOW's mention that using a Great War model of Shivan strategy with Second Incursion resources predicts total annihilation) and it coincides very closely with Bosch's contact and integration with the Shivans, so the most likely explanation is that it's the first strategic action of an apatic anima.

That's what Ken is, explicitly (sort of; personally I think it's the Shivan 'handler' that converted and interfaced with him), and it seems to exist as a loophole to get around the puzzling and suggestive limitations in Shivan cognition. If you need to model and manipulate humanity, much safer to use an actual human as your model than to start imprinting foreign intelligences into yourself. The name is derived from the Greek for 'deceit', and in NEM.NOW the suggestion is made that its actions are covert. Quite who this is meant to fool is an interesting question but my money's on the Vishnans. I have a lot more to say about them but my posting endurance is not up to the task right now.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline Leeko

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Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
This is mostly an awesome post that I'm still contemplating, but having replayed AoA recently I want to correct a couple factual points --

Thanks for pointing out the things I missed out on by not replaying AoA first - I was under the impression that the 14th BG was the reason why the GTVA knew about the Vishnans. Their motives remain a mystery, though. Did they move the Sanctuary to our layer on purpose? To what end? What is Sam Bei supposed to be doing for them, if he's a human tool analogous to Laporte?

Apologies for being obnoxious, but in the OP, could you change "adieu" to "ado"? I wouldn't care if your post weren't so insightful and well-written.  :D

oh my goodness thank you, I don't know how that happened ._.

Best theory I've read so far. Red ants, black ants. But it's not clear to me why a divided species could give rise to the Great Darkness.

Imagine suddenly fusing all of humanity into a gestalt entity like Al-Da'wa, possibly with power on a scale normally reserved for the Shivans. The GTVA and the UEF's ideologies might clash in the cosmic arena in much the same way that Shivan organisms compete to dictate a ship's behavior. Imagine this struggle swallowing up all the resources it can find, never ending, annihilating everything. Maybe that's what the Great Darkness is.

More generally, if my interpretation of Shambhala is correct, I wouldn't want to create a gestalt superbeing out of a species that was engaged in self-destructing. Recall Laporte's waxing poetic about how the final stages of the war will see more raw megatonnage of human-on-human violence than any other conflict in history.

 
Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
Quote
This may be my own rathole, nootropes and anxiety driving me into a mirage, but I keep thinking about their limitations. I see them trying to WORK AROUND A PROBLEM. Like they're trying to exploit a loophole. Or influence events with just one tiny scalpel or set of forceps. Or figure out what's happening while staring at us through a periscope of unthinkable length and microscopic diameter. Like a scientist cursing her inability to position individual particles, or even see them, do you know what I

Quote
Among the ways and the walls there was a path of fire. But that path has gone out. This is known to us by the faculty that is ours alone, the forbidden sight, that which in its totality devoured the silver panontos but which in fraction grants us our sight.

This is wrong. This is not as it should be. It shall be corrected.

Quote
Nagari as a provably safe protocol for computation in a noetically dense rechnender raum. Keller, Menes, Djehuti. In The Gauntlet 9(3).
Subjects: Nagari, noospheres, computational physics

The researchers use first principles to derive safe operations in a range of noetically dense ontos, including stack configurations commonly derived in analysis of failsafe swarm redoubts. Difficulties of low bleed exchanges across physical domains are discussed. Structural rhyme analysis cannot inform model dependent invasiveness in violations of claim space inequalities, suggesting that available resources should be redistributed towards Djehuti projects. The work introduces a foundation for bottom-up reasoning about nonlocal encoding and retrieval events across involuted topologies in the subspace laminae. Speculation about end state rechnender raum resource allocation occupies no more than one paragraph.

Nagari as a provably unsafe protocol for computation in a noetically dense rechnender raum. Keller, Menes, Irike. In The Gauntlet 9(14)
Subjects: Nagari, noospheres, computational physics, efficient allocation of resources, humor, not funny

The researchers construct a rechnender raum in which the protocols derived by Keller, Menes, Djehuti (2385) can be exploited by Think About Mes to recruit arbitrary claim space. A proof of the insecurity of these protocols is proposed, including an estimate of the required dumb crunch for a brute force proof. A petition is advanced for the construction of an ontos which can perform this proof using resources efficiently reallocated from Djehuti projects. As a side effect, strong godlike control over conventional spacetime could be obtained. Speculation about end state rechnender raum resource allocation occupies no less than one paragraph.

Contemplation of these may induce enlightenment.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 
Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
One thing I think you're wrong about is your references to a Shivan hierarchy that directs and exploits all their capabilities up to the highest level. The dynamics of Shivan behaviour are immensely corrosive to organised structure, another adaptation towards ensuring that their function can be carried out with total certainty. There's an immense pressure towards the unorganised, totipotent ground state, ready to rise and swallow any deviation from the unambiguous parameters of the Terminal Protocol with the inevitability of an ordinal infinity. A galaxy-spanning mind can perhaps be outsmarted or subverted, or it could just **** up. Whoever designed the Terminal Protocol desperately wanted to avoid that; they needed to write a new law of nature, and ensure that the only way to exist is by its consent.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline QuakeIV

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Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
Your mention that the Vasudans will be wiped out reminded me of some thoughts I had.

The Vasudans have been described as relatively highly 'optimal'.  I think it was Battuta who said: in order to transport birds we would shove birds into numbered cages and load them onto a cargo ship, whereas the Vasuadans would study bird migratory behavior in order to induce them to fly themselves to their destination.  (paraphrased off of memory)

The humans take a more mutable and quickly implemented approach where they can, whereas the Vasudans are optimization par excellence.  The Vasudans seem to tend towards exactly the sort of optimization Shivans eat for breakfast.

What do you guys think

 

Offline Doko

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Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
I see the GD as a failed experiment to fuse intelligent life with shivan godlike computational ability. The old ones could only calculate for a certain area of space/subspace but they wanted more, they tried to "hack" the shivans and in part, it worked, they created the vishnan, but the shivans had an alergic reaction to this as they are the perfect organism to counter all threats, the result is an anima designed to exterminate intelligent life forms (the origin of its mutation) or re-write it for this purpose, if the outcomes of going insane in UT2 are any indication.

With that said though, for me, the most important part of the GD... is that it doesn't actually matter. It's just there to add mystery to the story but we have not seen anything that could not be explained as the dark side of the vishnans when things don't go their way or the gatekeeper of the summed psyche or hell simply another form of shivan behaviour we don't understand.

------------

Shambala seems to have to started very early after the isolation of Sol, I don't see it as a vishnan directive or influence, but rather something humanity planned to construct and after the vishnans started directly influencing humanity via elders was repurposed for something else. I speculated about it on another thread, but I believe there is no way of knowing without more BP cannon information.

------------

Shivans are the perfect enemy, made to counter the very way you think and have a very clear purpose of not allowing any life form to take over the entire universe and thus let it become homogenous, something I suspect they see as the ultimate sin considering their chaotic/formless nature.
I imagine a shivan ship as a huge number of personalities trying to voice their opinion all at once, random ones are selected, if the ship survives the components that voiced the oposite opinion are culled, and the process repeats itself with every new encounter of adversity.
Your theory of the shivan mind sounds wrong to me, a "race" that can communicate over nagari doesn't really need any type of centralization, the process is instantaneous across distances and universes, there is no benefit on setting the nodes closer if that is what you are implying.

--------------

I love the fact you mentioned that the Vasudans are also going to be culled, considering than in their history it is mentioned that an ancient civilization had contact with them in their youth, they could be the original experiment and the great war was simply a way to try to correct the course of BOTH humanity and vasudans. How that affects the rest of the story... beats me.

« Last Edit: November 17, 2015, 09:03:04 am by Doko »

 

Offline Doko

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Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
Your mention that the Vasudans will be wiped out reminded me of some thoughts I had.

The Vasudans have been described as relatively highly 'optimal'.  I think it was Battuta who said: in order to transport birds we would shove birds into numbered cages and load them onto a cargo ship, whereas the Vasuadans would study bird migratory behavior in order to induce them to fly themselves to their destination.  (paraphrased off of memory)

The humans take a more mutable and quickly implemented approach where they can, whereas the Vasudans are optimization par excellence.  The Vasudans seem to tend towards exactly the sort of optimization Shivans eat for breakfast.

What do you guys think

The vasudans seem more centralized than humanity, answering to an emperor who appears to be the ultimate voice of the whole race. But if anything that would fit more with a vishnan theme. Bringing up the question of why are the vishnans trying to engineer humanity over them? they already have the infrastructure in place, all they need is a little push in the "right" direction.

Maybe that makes some sense... ken/shivans are trying to save humanity, and after the experiment failed the vishnans will try to work on them?

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
Your mention that the Vasudans will be wiped out reminded me of some thoughts I had.

The Vasudans have been described as relatively highly 'optimal'.  I think it was Battuta who said: in order to transport birds we would shove birds into numbered cages and load them onto a cargo ship, whereas the Vasuadans would study bird migratory behavior in order to induce them to fly themselves to their destination.  (paraphrased off of memory)

The humans take a more mutable and quickly implemented approach where they can, whereas the Vasudans are optimization par excellence.  The Vasudans seem to tend towards exactly the sort of optimization Shivans eat for breakfast.

What do you guys think

The vasudans seem more centralized than humanity, answering to an emperor who appears to be the ultimate voice of the whole race. But if anything that would fit more with a vishnan theme. Bringing up the question of why are the vishnans trying to engineer humanity over them? they already have the infrastructure in place, all they need is a little push in the "right" direction.

Maybe that makes some sense... ken/shivans are trying to save humanity, and after the experiment failed the vishnans will try to work on them?
How do you know the Vishnans aren't working on the Vasudans right now?
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

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<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

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* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 
Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
The thing about birds comes from this IRC conversation which has a lot of interesting information about BP's take on the Vasudans.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline Doko

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Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
Your mention that the Vasudans will be wiped out reminded me of some thoughts I had.

The Vasudans have been described as relatively highly 'optimal'.  I think it was Battuta who said: in order to transport birds we would shove birds into numbered cages and load them onto a cargo ship, whereas the Vasuadans would study bird migratory behavior in order to induce them to fly themselves to their destination.  (paraphrased off of memory)

The humans take a more mutable and quickly implemented approach where they can, whereas the Vasudans are optimization par excellence.  The Vasudans seem to tend towards exactly the sort of optimization Shivans eat for breakfast.

What do you guys think

The vasudans seem more centralized than humanity, answering to an emperor who appears to be the ultimate voice of the whole race. But if anything that would fit more with a vishnan theme. Bringing up the question of why are the vishnans trying to engineer humanity over them? they already have the infrastructure in place, all they need is a little push in the "right" direction.

Maybe that makes some sense... ken/shivans are trying to save humanity, and after the experiment failed the vishnans will try to work on them?
How do you know the Vishnans aren't working on the Vasudans right now?

My bad, worded that horribly, I didn't mean to imply something in the future, AFAIK the vishnan cull has been ordered already, thus why all the nagari sensitives have stopped getting messages. So the vishnans might have started to work on the Vasudans already. But I wouldn't know if that has been going on for a long time.


 

Offline Doko

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Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
Quote
There is a distinct possibility that humanity is on a course to trigger an apocalypse on the grandest scale imaginable. Shambhala can be nothing other than a device which simultaneously induces Nagari capability in every living human, creating a cognitive entity on the scale of Vishnans and Shivans (Nagari effects are nonlocal, after all; networking beings across a galaxy's worth of space is no issue). The debriefing from UT2 blatantly suggests the possibility that the result of its use will be humanity joining the Vishnan summed psyche. "Summed psyche" are very provocative words to describe the Vishnans, suggesting that they were once biological beings like us, and that they used a Shambhala of their own. Perhaps they were once the Brahmans, and something went wrong. The precise nature of the Vishnans eludes me, but it is unimportant to my investigations here.

I find the idea that the vishnans would let a race so far from their standards of enlightment enter their billion year old sanctuary of the mind ridiculous. It would be like letting 4chan/b/ run the U.S. and be surprised when the next day the white house publishes a statement reading the following "WE NUKED THE ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD BECAUSE REASONS, U M.A.D. BRO?"
I see their efforts as a way to acomplish enlightment much later on, maybe a thousand years later when they've had enough time to pull all the strings and sculpt the human mind to their needs while letting a select few ascend as a public display for everyone else to follow.

I could see the elders doing something like what you are describing but merging into their own, separate entity from the vishnan psyche, which could leave the shivans with no other choice but to complete their cull as now the danger would simply be too great.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2015, 10:24:10 pm by Doko »

 

Offline Damage

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Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
In two years, I went from "wild guess" to "convinced" but Leeko has put it into far better words than I could.


Edit:  I'm not saying I had all the ideas he had--far from it.  If I had, I would've written them down.  Leeko has put forward an amazing theory that holds up under scrutiny.  All I knew was that Shambhala was a potential threat to Vishnans and Shivans alike and that Humans Are Special applies somehow.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2015, 11:53:36 am by Damage »
I didn't feel like putting anything here.  Then I did it anyway just to be contrary.

 

Offline The Dagger

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Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
It is said in the truth/Granite Hunter documents that Vishnans are willingly working only with local information. I believe it is a way to avoid contact with the Great Darkness.

The Vasudan approach (knowing -> optimizing) requires aggregating knowledge, which looks like a bad idea if the species were to get incorporated into the noosphere. Their holistic view of history is another way of linking things together, as well as their clear will against abandoning old ideas (the new BP data on their ships explicitly say they are not keen on dumping ship designs even if they are suboptimal, finding them new uses).

I have a theory regarding the Vishnan objectives. Vishnans are using the UEF as a way of making a controlled input into the Great Darkness. The GD must be able to assimilate characteristics from what it consumes (since otherwise trying to make an input would be useless), which makes species with Nagari capabilities really dangerous, since it could provide it with the means to reach Vishnan elements and affect them. The isolation of Earth made it easier to create the required controlled input with limited influence and to reduce the consequences of the interactions between UEF and GD to the rest. Hence, the Vishnans stopped talking to prevent interaction with the GD, which is coming. I don't know what the Vishnans are trying to input, maybe the strong introspective philosophy of the UEF in an intent to cause the GD to consume itself. After all, the UEF approach doesn't take into account anything outside Sol. In this case, whatever it is, Shambala is also a big "eat me" sign for the GD, since uncontrolled Nagari processes seem to attract it.

At the same time I think they are trying to use Shambala to create a separate Nagari network for humanity (after all Shambala is a hidden kingdom). The strong UEF introspective view of the world would help to restrain their thoughts. Moreover, that's why the GTVA, with their constant vigilant approach would be dangerous, they're constantly looking outside for dangers to come and inevitably providing the GD a in/out link.

Or maybe this is simply nonsense.

 

Offline Scotty

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Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
The Shivans projected the imperative to Laporte: the GTVA must be destroyed.  The OP suggests this is to avoid creating a Great Darkness.  I submit another theory: the completion of Shambhala (with the assumption that it is what the OP suggests as well) is an existential threat to the Shivan cosmic niche.  If the GTVA is not destroyed before the activation of Shambhala, the Shivans will, perhaps for the first time in their existence, experience competition for their role.  Existence of multiple cosmic destroyers is irreconcilable.  One will succeed and continue to exist, one will not.  The mere possibility of such a base existential conflict is anathema to Shivan processes, and must not be allowed to happen.

 

Offline Leeko

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Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
I find the idea that the vishnans would let a race so far from their standards of enlightment enter their billion year old sanctuary of the mind ridiculous.

I see their efforts as a way to acomplish enlightment much later on, maybe a thousand years later when they've had enough time to pull all the strings and sculpt the human mind to their needs while letting a select few ascend as a public display for everyone else to follow.

I could see the elders doing something like what you are describing but merging into their own, separate entity from the vishnan psyche, which could leave the shivans with no other choice but to complete their cull as now the danger would simply be too great.

I'm going off of UT2's debriefing, which directly suggests that the Elders' efforts will culminate in humanity merging with the Vishnan "subspace psyche" (I believe that's what Al-Da'wa called it). Given that Shambhala has also been described as an "end-state contingency" and "conditional victory" for the war, at a time when the war was weeks/days away from its decisive battle, I don't see how the Vishnans' efforts could have been planned for thousands of years in the future.

Along a similar line of thought, however, it seems likely to me that it may have taken humanity MUCH longer to accomplish ascension if not for the Vishnans' interference. Or rather, Shambhala would never have been re-purposed into the transhumanist-type thing it is now. There was some line of prose (somewhere in Tenebra?) that suggested its original purpose was different, and that really makes me think that the Vishnans were for some reason trying to hurry the project along. I could see it originally being some sort of big general-purpose Nagari transmitter, or something like that.

At the same time I think they are trying to use Shambala to create a separate Nagari network for humanity (after all Shambala is a hidden kingdom). The strong UEF introspective view of the world would help to restrain their thoughts. Moreover, that's why the GTVA, with their constant vigilant approach would be dangerous, they're constantly looking outside for dangers to come and inevitably providing the GD a in/out link.

A thought in a similar vein: does it bug anyone else that the 14th BG defectors and the captured Anemoi were chilling out in Sam Bei's Nagari dreamscape? Or am I misremembering which ships were there?

There was reference made to Shambhala "working whether it was in stage one or two", or something along those lines. Maybe they're creating an Al-Da'wa-like gestalt entity by networking the people from those ships together, perhaps carefully controlling its formation before sticking everyone else inside it, and that's the first phase? We've heard that there's more and more fleet assets being diverted for Byrne's big secret project. There's something fishy going on there.



Unrelated: I sometimes wonder if the GTVA has its own CASSANDRA. If I am interpreting the Act 3 credits sequence correctly, Steele is launching his decisive attack almost a week early. I can't imagine he was able to completely get the drop on the Fedayeen with his wits alone. It would certainly go a long way to explaining how he is able to Xanatos Gambit the hell out of the UEF.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: [SPOILERS] Shivans, Shambhala, & Great Darkness Explained
There's a very, very simple explanation for why Steele's going in early. Imagine that you've realized your opponent has a masterclass supercomputer that can predict every optimal move you make.