Well, to answer your question, first we must -THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN TH- And that’s why it’s illegal to lick doorknobs on other planets.
There is a huge problem with your post, mate!
You haven’t written and praised THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN enough!
You probably mean “UN THE SUN THE SUN THE S”.
Gonna put aside the free will debate, and instead focus on a different answer.
The Dawn Machine is not your friend. What it seeks to do is become powerful, and overthrow the Judgements, via the process of ending the Great Chain that dictates our place in the universe (Chain isn’t quite inviolable, but it’s pretty close). Now, while I’m all for ending the Chain, here’s what you need to consider: Do you want the Dawn Machine to be the new boss? All it really cares about is getting to the top, not bringing everyone else along. Sure, it speaks of ending the chain, but much like other demagogues throughout history, especially given how the thing behaves, it is pretty likely it would institute something far worse.
Hell, even the process of ending the Chain could be catastrophic. Though not indicative of what will happen in every attempt to end the Chain, when the Red Science was used to break part of it, Time itself was scarred. Now, maybe there are ways to end the Chain without catastrophic destruction. The Dawn Machine likely just would not care.
To sum things up, the Dawn Machine is an artificial Judgement, reviled by the actual Judgements, and is willing to do anything to tear them down. We (humans) are mere tools. I may not like the Judgements, and would prefer to overthrow them as well, but even I wouldn’t turn to the Dawn Machine. It takes over, it is unlikely that we will survive, let alone benefit from its war against everything.
Some may hate the Dawn Machine for what it is, I hate the Dawn Machine for what it is willing to do.
edited by Kyron The Wise on 9/21/2016
[quote=Passionario]The Dawn Machine is an equivalent of a feral child raised by swamp frogs.
It is not a fully functioning Judgment, it will probably never become one without contact with others of its kind, and it certainly doesn’t have the best interests of the frogs in mind.[/quote]
Well that explains everything…I happen to have a fondness for feral children raised in strange places, being a former suppressedly feral child raised in a strange place reading about children in stranger places.
[quote=Kyron The Wise]Gonna put aside the free will debate, and instead focus on a different answer.
…shortened for thread readability…
Some may hate the Dawn Machine for what it is, I hate the Dawn Machine for what it is willing to do.
edited by Kyron The Wise on 9/21/2016[/quote]
I am not saying you are wrong, i’m just genuinely asking, where in the game(s) is all of this related? I brought New Sequence / Dawn Machine supremacy up high enough to kick the admiral out of London and pursued every associated storyline I could find other than the end of the Carnelian Exile which seemed relevant. The only other source of info I have heard is the Last Dog Society and Wry Functionary content in FL which I intend to buy ASAP. Is there anything else I am missing outside of those?
It’s hard for me to believe that a machine that’s so beautiful could be so cold and heartless to the ones who perceive it as beautiful (me and other humans, presumably, I’m pretty sure I’m not THAT alone). But appearances can be deceiving of course.
edited by Morgan Joylighter on 9/22/2016
[quote=Morgan Joylighter]The only other source of info I have heard is the Last Dog Society and Wry Functionary content in FL which I intend to buy ASAP. Is there anything else I am missing outside of those?[/quote]Nope, that’s it.
[quote=Morgan Joylighter]It’s hard for me to believe that a machine that’s so beautiful could be so cold and heartless to the ones who perceive it as beautiful (me and other humans, presumably, I’m pretty sure I’m not THAT alone). But appearances can be deceiving of course.[/quote]Indeed. As much as we’d all like to pretend otherwise, beauty is no reliable indicator of well-meaning/quality of character/etc… ;)
You are so right, phryne. The Devils of London are a perfect example. Beautiful, smart, charming, interesting. And they want but one thing : your soul. Anything else (including yourself) doesn’t interest them.
As for the Dawn Machine… is there any text saying that it cares about the well-being of the humans it took control of ? That would be a way to support Morgan Joylighter’s sentiment.
edited by Emain Ablach on 9/22/2016
Perhaps one is unhappy with the manner by which the Judgements run the world. Perhaps the Liberation does not seem so appealing. Perhaps what one desires is not an abolition of the Chain, but a change in its order. A Chain, perhaps, that is more permissive, or less permissive, or places ants above alligators, or so on. Perhaps one wants a voice of one’s own among the judgements, which speaks for the needs and desires of its creators (and how could it do anything else? it’s a machine, after all. everything it does expresses the intention of the engineer. made in the image, as it were). Perhaps one wants to hedge one’s bets, so to speak, against the chaos of Liberation. Perhaps one is attracted by the fawning love and devotion it inspires in its supplicants? Stranger things have happened.[li]
"Worm-fates crawl on your skin. The Machine is sick. Its hatred threads your veins. Time will die. The Chain will end. "
This sounds less like something with a conscious goal of ascending to godhood and caring for its servants on the way, and more like an abomination that should never have been born lashing out at the rest of existence for its own constant suffering.
Huh, I’m starting to like the little clockwork.
Welp, guess I need to get on that before expressing any further theories…
[/li][li]I missed this post earlier but this is probably the best summation of why I feel that, in the face of a Chain that’s too knotted up to reasonably persist, but a world that still contains too much love and beauty to just super-nuke it to death with reckless abandon, the Dawn Machine seems like the lesser of several evils… sort of like the cosmically philosophical version of "no taxation without representation"…an ideal that I’m surprised more people are not on board with considering how much Western culture glorifies the ideal of the free-spirited revolutionary, and by that I do not mean the anarchist kind but the "build a better society" kind.[/li][li]
[/li][li]Speaking of fawning love, I keep following all the New Sequence / Dawn Machine plot threads just hoping I will find out why I instantly felt so drawn to the damn thing as soon as I happened to discover it in the southwestern corner of the map. I can’t think of another more enchanting moment of discovery in a video game. Everything about it from the artwork to the sound design to the name to the concept is just utterly alluring I’m obsessed with figuring out the non-obvious reason for that.
[/li]
edited by Morgan Joylighter on 9/23/2016
[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]"Worm-fates crawl on your skin. The Machine is sick. Its hatred threads your veins. Time will die. The Chain will end. " <— John Moose quoted this bit of text about the Machine. Still thinking that a godlike Machine filled with hatred is a "lesser evil" ?
[/color]
@Gul al-Ahlaam On the topic of a machine doing what is was designed to do, the Dawn Machine is exactly the opposite of that. It got free from what its creators intended. Kind of like a Singularity. What it does and wants is now its own, and is no longer bound to the intent of its makers.
I find it interesting and troubling how you seem, Morgan Joylighter, to consider the Judgements are utterly evil when they are linked to law and harmony (forced upon you without your consent, it’s true), while the Machine is linked to mind-control and hatred.
I’m very interested in reading your thoughts about each of the "bad" aspects of the Machine that some of us talked about. :)
edited by Emain Ablach on 9/23/2016
I’m pretty sure the Dawn Machine literally eats souls. You know, like the normal Judgements. I’m not sure it’s even polite enough to wait for true death first.
Can I just state for the record that you can not use predeterminism as an argument in favour of the Dawn Machine? Free will is an intricate concept and there’s no singular correct answer to seal the argument with. Claiming that we’re solely chemical compounds doesn’t defend your point that the tyranny of an insane god-machine imposing its mind-rape on people results in an equal amount of free will. I could argue with the same basic facts that you’d be taking away our illusion of free will which is just as bad, or that just because we have free will doesn’t mean we don’t feel like we have it and that feeling like you have free will is equal to actually having it.
edited by Infinity Simulacrum on 9/26/2016
SUN=LAWS OF NATURE=DEATH IN 60-100 YEARS, AND NO IMMORTALITY.
Even if the Dawn Machine did entirely what the New Sequence wanted it to do, I would still oppose it, because the New Sequence are a bunch of reactionaries who are willing to swindle London for massive sums for a vanity project with no greater benefit than pretending they’re still living in the glory days of bloody colonialism.
So… politics as usual, then?
Change without progress sounds kind of nice. And pretty sure one of the benefits of the Dawn Machine is wind; at least, I may assume it is. And think how smoothly things will run!
I like the Dawn Machine precisely because I dislike the Anarchists and all they stand for; supporting the Dawn Machine and building a star in their own backyard seems like a pretty solid way of tweaking them. Soon all of them will be dancing to the New Sequence’s tune, and if selling the entire Neath into servitude to a human-made mad, blind god for the purpose of annoying Liberationists is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
I’m mostly joking, but I don’t see it as too far distant a comparison actually. Taking the position of Devil’s Advocate (heh), Anarchists are out there trying to get rid of all light and laws in the universe, (which, even if it works, is still stupid), despite the fact that a good deal of us would very much rather continue to have both of these! If they insist on continuing to try and enforce their "liberation" on the unwilling people of the Neath because ‘they know better than us what is good for us’, I don’t see why the New Sequence shouldn’t get a shot at trying to rewrite the rules themselves. At least the New Sequence is a lot more honest about trying to rewrite the world to their will; the Liberation has the audacity to claim it speaks for all of us (it doesn’t speak for me least), while the Dawn Machine at least has the honesty to admit that it wants what it wants and not what you want.
Vote the Dawn Machine for a New Tomorrow! (Literally; without the sun there is by definition no "day" in the Neath, and thus, no "tomorrow" either. No faction in the Neath other than the New Sequence can claim to bring about any sort of tomorrow, let alone a new one!)
Ok. So you saw an argument where one side was the devil, and you were like "man, that guy could use an advocate."