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Paths of Civilization

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Sivantic said:
Just because the first iterations of pattern recognition seem silly to us now, does not mean they should be tossed out of hand. This is both looking at the stars and our own history. Just like with our traits, if we want it to be move beyond that, we need to take the first step.
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This is entirely counterproductive. We already have a trait for pattern recognition and scientific investigation.

You're basically saying that we should throw that out the window in favor of basing our people's lives on the movements of stars. This is literally opposite to what you seem to say you want.
 
[X] Yes (Forfeits the CB against the Highlanders, declares war against the Thunder Horse, brings Yenyna out of retirement, ???)
 
notgreat said:
I consider this a major reason to vote for yes. If we do no and things go wrong, we effectively have significant evidence towards that. If we do yes, we can purposefully push as hard as possible and see if things go wrong (likely) and then we've disproved the superstition.

Yeah, Balanced can only double Expand Economy. Which is why I disagree with our admin guy choosing Balanced, we've still got the Population Explosion going and more megaprojects are still viable.
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I for one am thrilled he went on Balanced; I think the thread's obsession with rushing megaprojects is bad for our civ, and a ton of valuable actions (new trails, study stars, and sailing mission are all great for the advancement of our society) got done on Balanced. Plus, not spending so many stats got us overflow into Tech, which has an impact on innovation and is hard to come by.
 
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pbluekan said:
Yes: Yes we accept this prediction and what at will entail for our future administrative choices and the position of the stars has measurable, significant effect on all mortal matters. We accept that we will change our entire course based upon a change in the stars. In the future, before making critical choices, we will consult the priests and the stars to divine any possible outcome.
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This is not reading what is happening here too thoroughly. What we are doing is measuring the stars and relating it to history of what we know has happened in the past.

Astrology is, by our people's minds, the most accurate form of science in seeing how things work. By incorporating it into our government we are encouraging people to take observational methods, apply them to the real world to see if they can make sense out of anything, and figuring where and when they discovered things wrong.

It separates religion and study by another order of magnitude, because the priests are no longer basing their observations and arguments just on conjecture and stories of the past, but upon hard historical databases and more thoroughly tested reasoning.

This is not incorporating religion into our government. This is what our people currently consider science and study. This is about pushing our government down the path of meritocracy, in which those skilled and able to understand how things work have a large say in the government and how it functions. Saying no says that these predictions, which everyone believes to be accurate, have no place in government and has a significant likelyhood to encourage people to not put faith in the educated classes, and instead in the inherent rightness of their position.

Don't be fooled because we know it is inaccurate. This is a systematic study and prediction of how the world works. This is a form of science, all be it incredibly inaccurate due to how primitive it is.
 
DragonParadox said:
Historical determinism is nonsense, as shown by the abject failure of soviet style communism.
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Even if historical determinism is bunk, learning from the past and having it inform your actions is not. We don't really know exactly what these calculations entail, and arguing as if we do doesn't seem very convincing.


Thinking about potential narrative effects, there's a chance that this will lead us on a more superstitious path, but there's also a chance that this will lead us onto an arguably more scientific one. Additionally, we may be able to deal with Nemesis Fashion via forgiving the HK (as much as this bothers me.)

Either way, I think we're rolling the dice on both picks, and this is clearly a big choice based on the title of the update. I am going to cautiously side with our Genius Mystic and hope for the best, fully knowing that the results of these actions will be extensive and difficult to predict.

[X] Yes (Forfeits the CB against the Highlanders, declares war against the Thunder Horse, brings Yenyna out of retirement, ???)
 
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[X] Yes (Forfeits the CB against the Highlanders, declares war against the Thunder Horse, brings Yenyna out of retirement, ???)
Came here from lurking to vote for this.
Not employing an untested, tainted by pseudoscience method means a safer, more rational choice.
But doing means testing.
And frankly, I have a craving to see this little OP empire burn.
Just for FUN. ;)
 
Andres110 said:
We're testing superstition to see if it's true.
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If we vote Yes and somehow trigger 100 years of prosperity, the superstition was correct.
If we vote Yes and nothing is gained from that pointless war, we obviously failed to correctly interpret the signs.


You can't "test" the belief into phrophetic hogwash. The conman is winning the game no matter what move you make.
The only way to win is to stand up to him and tell him that you know that the game is rigged.
 
[X] Yes (Forfeits the CB against the Highlanders, declares war against the Thunder Horse, brings Yenyna out of retirement, ???)
 
Guys, this is GOING TO WORK! We have FOUR stats in the red, with another one about to pop! We have 2 Stability, and have just insulated ourselves against anything but the most massive of Stability drops! In fact, we may have a Stability yet to pop because I don't think that the Main Enforce Justice has taken effect yet! Either way, it's incredibly likely that our ADMINISTRATION hero will take a Stability action! This is like testing if wine is deadly by giving a person with cancer a drink! Every last condition is biased towards fulfilling the prophecy if we vote Yes! The real test would be if we vote No and something bad enough comes to overcome all of those factors!

Correlation does not equal causation!
 
[X] Yes (Forfeits the CB against the Highlanders, declares war against the Thunder Horse, brings Yenyna out of retirement, ???)
 
Please just keep in mind that these predictions are based on following equation:
Event = Historical Prediction + Celestial Movements + Math
Don't just say "it's based on history and math." Always remember that astrology is fuzzing the historical data and thus likely renders non-meteorological predictions random.
 
pbluekan said:
Ok, a lot of people are voting for this based on the results of the prediction: war/peace/whatever.

This doesn't matter. This choice isn't about war or who we go to war with in the end. It isn't about any of that.

Think of this choice narratively. What does it mean?

Yes: Yes we accept this prediction and what at will entail for our future administrative choices and the position of the stars has measurable, significant effect on all mortal matters. We accept that we will change our entire course based upon a change in the stars. In the future, before making critical choices, we will consult the priests and the stars to divine any possible outcome.

No: We have never consulted the stars to divine the future before and have made both good and bad choices. We will continue as before. This information is interesting and certainly bears study, but we will not make a decision based solely upon this information. Ere must be other factors present.

There is a reason astrology developed so readily in ancient cultures. Correlating harvests to planetary movements is both easy and actually correct. Good harvests almost invariably leads to prosperity and happiness, and the motion of the planets and stars falls on a regular clock that can and should be used to align planting seasons. This is what our priests were studying. There is literally no logical basis to base predictions for wars, and events on stellar and planetary movements.

If this is a resurgence of the magic debate I will again remind you guys that we have exactly as much proof of magic here as we have of the fact that my Cancer horoscope says I'm going to have a shitty week, and I'm sitting here drinking margaritas on the beach.

I know a lot of you are choosing this action because the TH snubbed us or you don't want to attack the HK, but this choice will radically reshape how the people make big choices. We will likely see severe repercussions for avoiding the astrological choice in the future. Do you guys recall the metal is cursed malus? Please reconsider.
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I argue that by saying no, you risk just as much of this. Assuming the autistic girl is accurately predicting a major shortfall period, we will see evidence of the shortfall, enough that even if it has no appreciable statistical effect, it will still have significant narrative effect. "Look and see how the king ignored the warning in the stars, and here we are with all the shitty stuff the stars said there'd be! Harvests are short and small, you have to do backbreaking labor even in the good fields! Oh woe, if only he listened!"

Comparatively, if we bust out with yes, do everything required of us, and bad things still happen (which, according to you and pretty much everybody else including me, is all but guaranteed to be the case), then maybe they will consider that, perhaps, they were wrong.

Compared to something bad will happen for sure in a hundred years, validating the belief, something bad happening despite acting in tune with the belief is far superior a situation to be in.
 
pbluekan said:
This is entirely counterproductive. We already have a trait for pattern recognition and scientific investigation.

You're basically saying that we should throw that out the window in favor of basing our people's lives on the movements of stars. This is literally opposite to what you seem to say you want.
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It's not throwing out our methods of testing and understanding the world, it's applying that to a new and untested method.

Seeing what happens when we follow the predictions of the stars now in no way means that we are obligated to follow them later if the predictions turn out to be incorrect.

Put another way, we do not want society to disregard methods and sources of information if they don't make sense, because not everything on the technological path will make sense. It is the epitome of Love of Wisdom to, even if we feel like they make perfect sense or no sense at all, to test them out and base our predictions on evidence. Our society has done no tests for this method, and Love of Wisdom demands we test it rigorously.
 
Hmm, looking at the narative of the update I'm betting that the ??? of the yes option is a stab drop.

Also should yes be chosen and then proven wrong (like by the highlanders attacking us) I think there will be a greater backlash against our priests (los of RA) than if we pick No right away.
 
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