WH40K coming to Amazon stream

[-D-]

Which is to be constrasted with the Imperium which places absolutely no values on even the lives of their own. If the commanders of the Imperial Guard have to sacrifice a billion men to kill a few Eldars, they'll do it.

Do you cry for dandruff as well?

Let's put things in perspective. The human body has about 37.2 trillion cells and daily you shed 500 million of skin cells.

Imperium has about one quadrilion people and since GW is British the quadrilion is probably 10^24 (or 10^15 in metric). If we do simple scaling we end up with 1.34*10^19 (10^10).

Even if Imperium lost billions of billion of people (or billions in the case of metric quadrillion), it would still be more comparably efficient than your own body.

It's always funny to me when people argue that the Xenos are jsut as bad as the Imperium because they do to other people less than a tenth of what the Imperium does to its own.

First, Imperium isn't just Hivecities and Forge Worlds. There is everything from Paradise worlds to just some outpost in bum**** nowhere.

Xenos are just as bad although it depends on Xenos.

• Tyranids - will eat you and turn you into more Tyranids
• Leagues - would probably kill you for not being Kin
• Necrons - some would flay you, others would use you as cattle for body parts, and some would vaporize you because you aren't made of necrodermis.
• Tau - forced sterilization and draft, maybe they will send you to cultural exchange with a Demon world
• Eldar - you are essentially Monkey to them, so killing you all to postpone their inevitable decay a few years is great
• Drukhari - will kill you if they are merciful. If not, I hope you like being sentient furniture for several hundred years
• Ork - will gleefully exterminate you
• Chaos - will spread memetic, mind-destroying hazards, and being on their Demon worlds isn't much better. Each of these will destroy you over time, both physically and mentally.
  - Nurgle - Hope you like eternal despair and letting flies live in your eyes
  - Tzeentch - Are you tired of waking up as a sentient being? Mutations are fun.
  - Khorne - Fight all day, for the sake of fighting another day.
  - Slaanesh - Have you ever considered being used as a joytoy for a demon? Then ground to cocaine and snorted/eaten?
  

[Rynjin]

Do you cry for dandruff as well?

I'm not sure if this is really convincing Warhammer RP, or you really think there's some intelligent equivalency to be made between sapient beings and dead skin cells.

Sentences like this are why a lot of people associate the Warhammer crowd with other unsavory stereotypes and groups.

- Khorne - Fight all day, for the sake of fighting another day.

Genuinely, I've never been clear on how, exactly, this is different from the life of an average Guardsman. Except that maybe the Khorne Flakes get superpowers out of the deal and seem to really enjoy themselves.

(As evidenced by my favorite voiceline from Darktide, the Zealot Preacher's "Blood for the Emperor, skulls for the Golden Throne!" warcry on activating your class skill.)

[Psyren]

really convincing Warhammer RP

I still know barely anything about the property and I laughed out loud

[Fyraltari]

Do you cry for dandruff as well?

Let's put things in perspective. The human body has about 37.2 trillion cells and daily you shed 500 million of skin cells.

Imperium has about one quadrilion people and since GW is British the quadrilion is probably 10^24 (or 10^15 in metric). If we do simple scaling we end up with 1.34*10^19 (10^10).

Even if Imperium lost billions of billion of people (or billions in the case of metric quadrillion), it would still be more comparably efficient than your own body.

Brushing aside how incredibly callous this is.

My own body doesn't strive to make each and every single cell in it a miserable and barely functionnal wreck.

First, Imperium isn't just Hivecities and Forge Worlds. There is everything from Paradise worlds to just some outpost in bum**** nowhere.

More than 90% of the population lives there though.
But it's true there are other types of worlds. Let's see:
Death Worlds, Feral Worlds and Feudal Worlds: I think it's clear why living there is bad, now remember that the Imperium actively refuses to better the living conditions on them to get stronger recruits for the Guard or the Space Marines. Nevermind that 75% of babies on Catachan don't live past ten.

Agri-World: You're a farming slave!

Fortess World: You're a war slave!

Paradise World: If you're lucky you spend all day scrubbing the casino floor, if you're unlucky you're a sex slave! Remember, these are paradise for the elite (meaning nobles or very rich) of the Imperium, not the natives. But I guess you get to live on one of the few worlds the Imperium hasn't polluted to the point of near-unhinability.

Mining world: You're a mining slave!

The list goes on, but these are the main one, and in every case there isn't a single world type that doesn't suck ass for everyone but the ruling elite.

Xenos are just as bad although it depends on Xenos.

Oh this is gonna be fun.

• Tyranids - will eat you and turn you into more Tyranids

  Unlike the Imperium, who kills everybody else but prefers to eat its own people (corpse stach).

• Leagues - would probably kill you for not being Kin

  No, that's the Imperium. The Leagues' whole deal is that they're willing to trade with other people.

• Necrons - some would flay you, others would use you as cattle for body parts, and some would vaporize you because you aren't made of necrodermis.

  Hey, you know the Book of Judgement? The legal code of the Imperium that forbids pretty much everything and is too big tonbe read in a single lifespan? It's written on human skin. Again, the Imperium does to its own people what the fanbase accuse Xenos of doing to others. Likewise using humans as cattle. The Imperium's main resource is living human bodies. And for killing everyone who isn't one of them... Really? ****, most Necrons are fine with everyone who hasn't colonized one of their Tomb Worlds.

• Tau - forced sterilization and draft, maybe they will send you to cultural exchange with a Demon world

  I think it's pretty telling that you could find so little to bad mouth the Tau that you resorted to something that is only rumored to happen (and only in one of the non-canon ending of a single video game) and a thing that never happened. The cultural exchange thing wasn't with demons, it was with some Dark Eldars that had just rescued a Tau world. It was their first contact with DE, and theve never done anything like this again. Unlike the Imperium wherein Planetary governors doing backroom deals with Drukhari is a recurring problem.

• Eldar - you are essentially Monkey to them, so killing you all to postpone their inevitable decay a few years is great

  Again, the Craftworlders would sacrifice humans to save their own, the Imperium would sacrifice their own to kill Craftworlders. Honestly, I don't understand how people can seriously say "wanting to exterminate everyone else in the universe is no worse than prioritising your own survival".

• Drukhari - will kill you if they are merciful. If not, I hope you like being sentient furniture for several hundred years

  You know what servitors are, right?

• Ork - will gleefully exterminate you

  From a third party perspective, the main difference between an Orkish WAAAGH! and an Imperial Crusade is the dominant color.

• Chaos - will spread memetic, mind-destroying hazards, and being on their Demon worlds isn't much better. Each of these will destroy you over time, both physically and mentally.

  Just like the Imperium! Funny that!
  Also, Chaos isn't a Xeno faction. They're just the Imperium but even less organized.
  

  - Nurgle - Hope you like eternal despair and letting flies live in your eyes

  Like I quoted upthread, the Imperium straight-up orders its people to reject happiness.
  

  - Tzeentch - Are you tired of waking up as a sentient being? Mutations are fun.

  Servitors again.
  

  - Khorne - Fight all day, for the sake of fighting another day.

  How is that any different from any of the Imperium's armies?
  

  - Slaanesh - Have you ever considered being used as a joytoy for a demon? Then ground to cocaine and snorted/eaten?

  Which is pretty much what Imperial nobles get up to to pass the time.

And again most of the Xeno crimes you listed are directed towards outsiders while the Imperium does it to its own. Orks, Necrons, Eldars, Tyrannids, Kroots? They give their population exactly what they want. The Imperium brutally oppresses its own.

Hey you know what's considered tasteful interior decoration in the Imperium? Cherubim. That is taking a dead baby and stuffing it with metal wing so that the adorable little corpse can flying around your living room.

Why does anyone defend this faction?

You know how most 40k factions have parallels in Fantasy? The Imperium's parallel isn't the Empire of Man. It's the Skaven. The only difference is that the skaven's visual design is more honest about what their society is like.

[Eldan]

A few of those points have been reduced to the level of not quite as bad.

Corpse starch is an interesting tidbit. At least two recent books about the Imperial Guard, by different authors, have mentioned that it's not really made of corpses, or not mainly. It's disgusting and made of the cheapest materials (yeast, algae, undefined "starch") and the name is said to mainly come from rumours among the soldiers and the horrible taste. Makes sense, really: you can't feed humans just on corpses, that's not sustainable.

Of course, other sources claim that corpse starch is very real and a main food source for hivers, but that's 40k for you. Always disagrees with itself.

Anyway, in addition to the various feudal and slave worlds, there's also less immediately horrible worlds. Warhammer Crime and Warhammer Horror are actually interesting sources in that regard: they are set mainly on worlds far from the front lines with decent levels of development. For example, in Flesh and Steel, the main character is a son of a rich family, who partially made their money producing consumer goods like cars for the world's inhabitants. So private industry still exists on at least some planets, as well as consumers who actually have enough money to buy things. It also mentions people having private appartments or at least rooms, even if those of the workers are horribly cramped and in bad repair. They also have breathable air and some form of nature outside the cities.

Not that it's not still horrible, of course. This is also the book that introduced the idea of the "not properly wiped" servitor, who is still aware what is being done to them.

[pendell]

Do you cry for dandruff as well?

Let's put things in perspective. The human body has about 37.2 trillion cells and daily you shed 500 million of skin cells.

Imperium has about one quadrilion people and since GW is British the quadrilion is probably 10^24 (or 10^15 in metric). If we do simple scaling we end up with 1.34*10^19 (10^10).

Even if Imperium lost billions of billion of people (or billions in the case of metric quadrillion), it would still be more comparably efficient than your own body.

I'm going to assume this was a joke but even so it needs rebutting. As Heinlein would say, "men are not potatoes". Which is to say, human life is of transcendent value and can't be weighed in an accounting spreadsheet in the same way you could balance out sacks of wheat versus oranges in a commodity exchange. One of the cruelties of war is it does force us to weigh human lives against other human lives, and even then it's a bad idea although it's necessary.

We see a glimpse of this in Star Wars where Force Sensitives are the fulcrum on which everything turns. That's why Vader is willing to take Death Squadron into an asteroid field in pursuit of the Falcon, allowing other rebel ships to escape. They aren't important. He wins if he subverts or kills Luke; the small fry who aren't force sensitive don't count at all. The life of a force sensitive is of transcendent value.

Take that idea and apply it to a universe where there's no such thing as a force sensitive; ALL human lives need to be treated with that degree of care if at all possible. You never know which seemingly useless squalling infant is going to be the next Einstein, the next Beethoven, the next Susan B. Anthony. That's why it's such a crime that we as humans can often think of nothing better to do with our young than give them guns and have them kill each other. Although even there my argument smacks of utilitarian thinking and misses the larger point that every human life has value even if it can't be of "benefit", at least as a market or Imperial planner would categorize as "useful".

It's not a hard leap to make; most parents feel that way about their children. The next step is to realize everyone you meet is someone's child and means as much to someone as your own kids mean to you.

Getting back to the WH40K universe, I see this as the only possible justification for the Imperium: That for all its cruelties and faults, by design the worst human government ever to exist, it still allows human life to continue as humans, not as chaos corrupted or Tyrannid food. To paraphrase Churchill, from the human perspective the Imperium is the worst government and the worst faction except for all the others.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Eldan]

Human lives are put into spreadsheets and given values every day, even if we build up a layer of language around it to mask it. Simple example?

There's a path where an expert estimates there's a 10% chance that, a walker might slip and fall to their death. Putting up a railing is difficult and would cost almost a million dollars. Do we put up the railings? If no, a human life is worth less than 10 million dollars.

There's calculus like this every day, everywhere. Insurance. Deciding where emergency services go. Healthcare and disease prevention. Deciding how long we extend life saving measures for. There is no such things as a transcendent value as long as resources are limited.

[Rynjin]

There's calculus like this every day, everywhere.

Done by awful people who should never have been given authority over another human being's life. Next argument?

[Eldan]

Done by awful people who should never have been given authority over another human being's life. Next argument?

The next argument is that we have limited resources and we need to make decisions on how to use them. That's the entire point. Call it awful, but it is necessary.

(Also kind of personally offended at being called awful.)

[pendell]

Human lives are put into spreadsheets and given values every day, even if we build up a layer of language around it to mask it. Simple example?

There's a path where an expert estimates there's a 10% chance that, a walker might slip and fall to their death. Putting up a railing is difficult and would cost almost a million dollars. Do we put up the railings? If no, a human life is worth less than 10 million dollars.

That doesn't sound right. Is that 10% chance per year? And how many walkers? If 100 walkers walk that path in a year, you're going to have 10 people on average, falling. So yeah, you'd better put those guard rails up. You'll be paying more for the medical expenses (which is NOT quite the same thing as evaluating a human being's "worth", only the medical expenses you have to pay for them) than you would for the railings.

There's calculus like this every day, everywhere. Insurance. Deciding where emergency services go. Healthcare and disease prevention. Deciding how long we extend life saving measures for. There is no such things as a transcendent value as long as resources are limited.

"Transcendental", like "infinite" , is a word that has a hard time fitting into a world where we are allocating finite resources. But just because we can't afford to have an emergency hospital on every corner doesn't mean you can simply trade human lives on a cash basis -- say, sell 10 humans for their organs in exchange for $100 million dollars. They're not potatoes, and treating them as such leads to all manner of evils we're trying to move away from.

If I can indulge a bit of philosophy for a second, this is one of the pose points where the ideal form -- the infinite worth of every human life -- comes into contact with the real -- which is, that we don't have infinite resources and thereby cannot give every human the infinite treatment they deserve. And to my mind there are two extremes when approaching this conumdrum, and both are errors: The first is to attempt to fulfill the ideal in this world literally, and that will break you; there is simply no way you can meet infinite requirements with finite resources; no matter how big the second pile is , the requirements will always be infinitely larger.

The second error is to assume that just because we live in a real world where the ideal is not possible, that therefore we should disregard it entirely ; to treat humans as if they are of no more worth than a single dandruff cell, as the poster up above jokingly suggested. That way lies involuntary medical experimentation, slavery, and all the rest of it.

People may argue for that second category, but precious few of them actually mean it. Many of those willing to sacrifice strangers will balk at putting their own children on the treadmill to the slaughterhouse. And when they are the ones subject to the same experiments they designed for others they will no doubt scream "it's not fair!". As a rule, humans are more than willing to give transcendent value to people they care about, while treating everyone else like an NPC in a murderhobo campaign. That is the reality of the world we live in, and I think it's something we need to rise above, to aim for better, not sink down to the lowest common denominator.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Fyraltari]

Getting back to the WH40K universe, I see this as the only possible justification for the Imperium: That for all its cruelties and faults, by design the worst human government ever to exist, it still allows human life to continue as humans, not as chaos corrupted or Tyrannid food. To paraphrase Churchill, from the human perspective the Imperium is the worst government and the worst faction except for all the others.

You know who lets human life continue as human life? The Tau, the Votanns and the countless civilizations the Imperium destroyed.


You know who doesn't let human life continue as human life? The Imperium. The Imperium takes children puts them through a wringer tht kills most and leaves the other with additional organs, acid spit and a stunted psyche that cannot feel fear and lives for violence and they call poor souls "angels". The Imperium takes ordinary people and hollows out their skull to serve as menial workers. The Imperium takes a 365, 000 children a year and tortures each of them for a month to feed their undead cruel god. The Imperium takes billions upon billions of people and sends them to die in poorly planned battles to conquer worlds that pose no threat so that their generals can add another medal to their collection. Half the time, the Imperium is fighting itself.

But what of everybody else? The quadrillions of people this is alledgedly for? What life do they have? They work mindlessly from beofre dawn to after dusk to keep going a machine too big for anyone to comprehend for no benefit to themselves. They live in squalor, they are taught nothing but what little they need to complete their task and to hate everything else. Beauty, joy, happiness, love, pride, thoughtfulness, humor, contentment, hope, curiosity, peace? These are the hallmarks of the Enemy, they must excise them from their minds. Their existence is to be spent in abject servitude, despising the very thought that there could be more to life than being a cog in the machine that is the Imperium, while yearning for the ultimate reward: to die in service to the system. Because the Imperium does not see their people as humans, they hate the very notion. If the High-Lords of Terra, the Inquisition and the planetary governors had their way, every single human but the nobility would be a unthinking machine pouring evermore wealth into their manors. They take away everything that makes life worth living and say people should be thankful for being alive.

A government's legitimacy is measure in its service to its people. The Imperium does not exist to serve Mankind, Mankind exists to serve the Imperium. If the Imperium's purpose were to protect human life from Xenos and Chaos, then shouldn't human life under the Imperium be better than it is under Xenos and Chaos?

Human lives are put into spreadsheets and given values every day, even if we build up a layer of language around it to mask it. Simple example?

There's a path where an expert estimates there's a 10% chance that, a walker might slip and fall to their death. Putting up a railing is difficult and would cost almost a million dollars. Do we put up the railings? If no, a human life is worth less than 10 million dollars.

There's calculus like this every day, everywhere. Insurance. Deciding where emergency services go. Healthcare and disease prevention. Deciding how long we extend life saving measures for. There is no such things as a transcendent value as long as resources are limited.

But we measure the quality of these things by the number of human lives they save and how much they improve them. They're not perfect but we're trying. The Imperium does not try, does not save, does not improve. It is a parasite, nothing more.

[Rynjin]

The next argument is that we have limited resources and we need to make decisions on how to use them. That's the entire point. Call it awful, but it is necessary.

(Also kind of personally offended at being called awful.)

Are you outing yourself as someone who deliberately violated OSHA regulations to save a corporation money? If not, I didn't call you awful.

If so, please report yourself immediately.

[Eldan]

No, I worked several years in a government statistical office and we did a lot of risk assessment and resource distribution.

[Rynjin]

No, I worked several years in a government statistical office and we did a lot of risk assessment and resource distribution.

I think the miscommunication we have here is that I don't consider risk assessment to be the same thing as the example you were giving.

In risk assessment you simply...assess a risk. How likely is success or failure? Partial success or failure? What is the worst case scenario, best? Etc.

The example given is not a risk assessment. Or, at the least, it does not stay one. The risk is assessed as "high" (a 10% chance of failure is a ludicrously high number for a high volume/traffic device or pathway) and then that risk is deliberately ignored in the pursuit of profit.

That is not assigning an objective value to human life. That is assigning a price that you personally are willing to pay for a human life. It is entirely selfishly motivated and does nothing to change the fact that a human life is not disposable.

[Psyren]

No, I worked several years in a government statistical office and we did a lot of risk assessment and resource distribution.

Assessing risk isn't the problem; the guy ultimately deciding not to help people based on that assessment so they can afford their second yacht is. The only attack was directed at the systems we take for granted.

Dystopian fiction like Warhammer is intended to shine a light on such things by exaggerating them to bloated extremes.

[Rynjin]

Assessing risk isn't the problem; the guy ultimately deciding not to help people based on that assessment so they can afford their second yacht is. The only attack was directed at the systems we take for granted.

Dystopian fiction like Warhammer is intended to shine a light on such things by exaggerating them to bloated extremes.

Exactly; this says it a lot more succinctly than I did.

[-D-]

I'm not sure if this is really convincing Warhammer RP, or you really think there's some intelligent equivalency to be made between sapient beings and dead skin cells.

Think of it this way, you are an emergent property of your cells reacting and sensing each other. You can't notice 500+ million of your own cells dying, why would Imperium, a much messier system?

Sentences like this are why a lot of people associate the Warhammer crowd with other unsavory stereotypes and groups.

I'm not a parf of Warhammer 40k crowd, I just like some of the lore and some of the 'puter games.

Genuinely, I've never been clear on how, exactly, this is different from the life of an average Guardsman.

The same difference between being near fire (Imperium battlefield), and being on fire (Khornate World). The thing about Guardsmen is they are allowed a time to sleep, eat, drink, (if only occasionally) etc. For a follower of Khorne, the daily routine is very simple - "Are there enemies? Yes (good). No (make some enemies by attacking whatever is closest."

Brushing aside how incredibly callous this is.

I disagree, it's not callous, it's practical, and not too different from what we as humans did or do. And for the record, things can get more grimdark. See Xeelee Sequence.

My own body doesn't strive to make each and every single cell in it a miserable and barely functionnal wreck.

Then you don't know how your body works. Suicidal cells, cells created with only one purpose to devour everything, and with only off switch is their brief expiration date, ancient virus DNA that awakens to cause horrible illnesses, chemical warfare, full on nuclear self-destruction in presence of an irritant (cytokinin storm or deadly allergy) etc.

Death Worlds, Feral Worlds and Feudal Worlds: I think it's clear why living there is bad, now remember that the Imperium actively refuses to better the living conditions on them to get stronger recruits for the Guard or the Space Marines.

Eh, it's neofeudalism, so not everyone is just a slave, there are probably guards, feudal lords and their lackeys, etc.

Unlike the Imperium, who kills everybody else but prefers to eat its own people (corpse stach).

It says corpse starch not HUMAN corpse starch. So not just humans. Anything that survives sterilization is fair game. Usually animal and biomass. I think that's kinda like a parallel to Dune, where Freemen drain all fluids from anything with any left.

No, that's the Imperium. The Leagues' whole deal is that they're willing to trade with other people.

Pretty sure Leagues are highly secretive and hyper-capitalists with their AIs going crazy from thousands of years of service. It's least grimdank faction, but they are new kids on the block. Give em time

Hey, you know the Book of Judgement? The legal code of the Imperium that forbids pretty much everything and is too big tonbe read in a single lifespan? It's written on human skin. Again, the Imperium does to its own people what the fanbase accuse Xenos of doing to others. Likewise using humans as cattle. The Imperium's main resource is living human bodies. And for killing everyone who isn't one of them... Really? ****, most Necrons are fine with everyone who hasn't colonized one of their Tomb Worlds.

I did hear that once on If Emperor had Text to Speech Device. Tome is impregnated leather, i.e. not likely to fall off and need constant replacement.

It's gruesome, but Flayers are worse, much worse. They wear their skins, skin rots away, Flayers go crazy, raid a human/Xeno world and harvest the skins, then go back to chillin' and wearing their skin.

Also, source on living human bodies as resources? They are resources in battle, doing anything questionable would see you branded as a heretic.

Some Necrons dynasties see life as a disease. I.e. they see bacteria as a threat and sterilize planets. They all used to be like that before lore change.

I think it's pretty telling that you could find so little to bad mouth the Tau that you resorted to something that is only rumored to happen (and only in one of the non-canon ending of a single video game) and a thing that never happened. The cultural exchange thing wasn't with demons, it was with some Dark Eldars that had just rescued a Tau world. It was their first contact with DE, and theve never done anything like this again. Unlike the Imperium wherein Planetary governors doing backroom deals with Drukhari is a recurring problem.

That's the issue, Tau are the naive enough that a well-disguised Demon could trick them. If BDSM and spike enthusiast on meth managed to convince them for a "cultural exchange", so can a Demon with Disguise Self skill.

Plus you are omitting the reeducation, pheromone control or the curious fact humans are a non-existent faction in Tau roster.

Again, the Craftworlders would sacrifice humans to save their own, the Imperium would sacrifice their own to kill Craftworlders.

You're forgetting the scale. Billions of humans to save like 23 eldars, or hell postpone their deaths for like a month? Attack the hive fleet and redirect them to a human world.

Humans would attack Eldar if they thought they had a substantial advantage to gain (like resources, STC, easier trade routes). Eldar would attack humans if they thought they have any advantage.

You know what servitors are, right?

You know what Drukhari do, right? People don't kill themselves prematurely to avoid becoming servitors. They do when Drukhari come.

The point of servitors is punishment and showing what happens if you disobey. Point of a Drukhari slave is suffering to prolong Drukhari lives. So while servitor is sometimes sentient, Drukhari slave is always sentient and always suffering.

From a third party perspective, the main difference between an Orkish WAAAGH! and an Imperial Crusade is the dominant color.

Not really. Humans don't grow back if you defeat them. An Orkish WAAGH can resprout if not cleansed enough.

Also, Chaos isn't a Xeno faction. They're just the Imperium but even less organized.

They existed before Humans, and their goals conflict with Humans. Humans will attack them on sight. The fact that some Space Marines got recruited to be Chaos' latest toy doesn't change that fact.

Like I quoted upthread, the Imperium straight-up orders its people to reject happiness.

Because it feeds the Chaos gods. They also promote not giving into despair either. "Hope is the first step on a road to disappointment."

Servitors again.

Servitors don't wake up in different body/state of matter every day. Again the matter is of degree. Imperium is cruel but alternatives are far, far crueler.

How is that any different from any of the Imperium's armies?

I said so above the same as being near a fire and being on fire. In Deamon world the point is you feed your Demon God with hypercharged emotion. You being functional is non-important. Imperium can't let all their warriors die, Chaos can stuff you with more warp and you're good as warp-rain.

I'm going to assume this was a joke but even so it needs rebutting. As Heinlein would say, "men are not potatoes".

Heinlein didn't have 10^24 men. Or potatoes. At those scales, minor ****ups can become, "whoops we lost a star system".
Like for example having 10^24 potatoes, forming a small planet and destroying the balance of orbits in a star system.

As a small note: Humanity didn't choose to become a xenophobic, psyker hating, oligarchic theocracy.

It evolved into this role. Any world that allows Xenos was likely destroyed by Xenos. So the few xenophobic ones destroyed the remaining good xenophilic worlds.

If you had psykers that weren't killed or weren't God-Tier, congratulations your planet is a Daemon World. I hope you like infinite Pain/Backstabbing/Fights/Diseases/Preaching.

Few good men that were placed to keep the peace after Horus heresy were replaced by more and more corrupted people.

[Psyren]

Think of it this way, you are an emergent property of your cells reacting and sensing each other. You can't notice 500+ million of your own cells dying, why would Imperium, a much messier system?

I get your point (somewhat) but it's still callous. A system that treats its sapients like replaceable cells, no matter how many of them there are, is a morally reprehensible system - and I think that was Rynjin's underlying point. Regardless of whether the Imperium is the "least bad" faction in WH40k (are they, even? Genuinely don't know), "least bad" is still bad.

[KorvinStarmast]

Balancing "grim dark" with "appealing to normies" will be difficult.

Indeed. My wife won't watch it if it's too grim and too dark.

I still know barely anything about the property and I laughed out loud

Likewise.

Human lives are put into spreadsheets and given values every day, even if we build up a layer of language around it to mask it. Simple example?

The airline industry.

Done by awful people who should never have been given authority over another human being's life. Next argument?

It would appear that you need to boycott the airline industry.

The next argument is that we have limited resources and we need to make decisions on how to use them. That's the entire point.

Correct.

No, I worked several years in a government statistical office and we did a lot of risk assessment and resource distribution.

Won't comment on my experiences beyond I have been on the investigation team for a number of fatal accidents, some involving aircraft.

As to the matter of orders of magnitude discussion at hand:
a. Let us presume to use the American version of one Quadrillion, so the Imperium's Quadrillion people looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000
b. Let us round the current population of China (or India) to 1 billion (1,000,000,000) people purely for purposes of illustration.
(1) If the Imperium sacrifices / loses 1,000,000,000 people in a battle to achieve "X" it would be as though China or India were in a war and lost 1,000 people in a battle to achieve {whatever goal/aim that battle/war had}

I won't take that any further as I am sure that the edges of proper forum rules stuff are getting close.

[-D-]

I get your point (somewhat) but it's still callous. A system that treats its sapients like replaceable cells, no matter how many of them there are, is a morally reprehensible system - and I think that was Rynjin's underlying point. Regardless of whether the Imperium is the "least bad" faction in WH40k (are they, even? Genuinely don't know), "least bad" is still bad.

That's basically any military system ever. Without ruthless pragmatism you will get nowhere.

I think it points to you growing in different environment than one Warhammer 40k.

Constraints put upon humanity made the ****house it is today. Any better part has been annihilated by Iron Men, Psykers, Chaos, Xenos, (or Imperium that tried to prevent former from appearing) etc.

There is no least bad faction. But there might be some least bad fraction. Like Exodites, Cawl and his retinue, some Necrons.

[Rynjin]

The airline industry.
It would appear that you need to boycott the airline industry.
Correct.
Won't comment on my experiences beyond I have been on the investigation team for a number of fatal accidents, some involving aircraft.

While I wouldn't be surprised that some actors in the airline industry are frequently breaking laws and making planes deliberately more unsafe to increase their profits, that is not a rebuttal to my statement, but a reinforcement.

As to the matter of orders of magnitude discussion at hand:
a. Let us presume to use the American version of one Quadrillion, so the Imperium's Quadrillion people looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000
b. Let us round the current population of China (or India) to 1 billion (1,000,000,000) people purely for purposes of illustration.
(1) If the Imperium sacrifices / loses 1,000,000,000 people in a battle to achieve "X" it would be as though China or India were in a war and lost 1,000 people in a battle to achieve {whatever goal/aim that battle/war had}

And if those people are not combatants, but civilians (as is often the case in 40k), that would be a war crime. Circle back to "awful people".

I think it points to you growing in different environment than one Warhammer 40k.

...Did you not? Are you a time traveler from the 41st Millenium? =p

[-D-]

Did you not? Are you a time traveler from the 41st Millenium? =p

I recognize how my own upbringing and environment has biased my morality. I won't claim it's the be all, end all.

Here is a hypothetical. Is eating your own children good or bad? What if tomorrow we discover an alien race that greets us with (perfect English) "We wish for peace and that you eat your children". Upon inspection the translation isn't faulty. They do in fact eat most of their children. Are they evil?

[Rynjin]

Easy answer, yes. And to forestall any of the information you've "hidden" from me or made up on the spot that contextualizes the hypothetical in such a way as to make me wrong: I do not care. It's a meaningless conversation to have, and is only going to serve to piss people off as we get dragged down into the mud to argue BS hypothetical after BS hypothetical cherrypicked to make one side sound unreasonable or closeminded and the other side sound unhinged.

If you want to continue the discussion, leave it to contexts that are already established.

[-D-]

Easy answer, yes. And to forestall any of the information you've "hidden" from me or made up on the spot that contextualizes the hypothetical in such a way as to make me wrong: I do not care.

Easy. And wrong. Less wrong ;)

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n5Tq...ing-aliens-1-8

They just pursue a different survival strategy. World peace, no wars, almost perfect logic, and for low low price of eating some of your 10000 brood.

[InvisibleBison]

Easy. And wrong. Less wrong ;)

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n5Tq...ing-aliens-1-8

They just pursue a different survival strategy. World peace, no wars, almost perfect logic, and for low low price of eating some of your 10000 brood.

Moral axioms don't become false just because following them would result in your species going extinct.

[Rynjin]

They just pursue a different survival strategy. World peace, no wars, almost perfect logic, and for low low price of eating some of your 10000 brood.

See above. I'll give you double bonus points for taking your BS hypothetical from a guy who's best known for his edgy Harry Potter fanfic though.

[-D-]

Moral axioms don't become false just because following them would result in your species going extinct.

You do know how axioms work, right?

You pick your axioms, then construct a framework on them. You can't prove Pythagorean theorem in non-Euclidian space. Does that mean Pythagora was wrong? No. He had different set of axioms.

I.e. they are relative and depend on problem's environment. Same as morality.

That said let's circle back to this:

If you want to continue the discussion, leave it to contexts that are already established.

Ok. But different context like Warhammer 40k will lead to different outcomes. What is moral in one context won't be in another.

If you take something like Kant's categorical imperative as a measuring stick (Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law).

In context of Earth it's not moral to kill another.
Basic Axiom goes something like this: I don't want to kill because I don't want others to kill, and each life is considered sacred.

In Warhammer 40k axioms goes like this:
Killing an unregistered Psyker in Warhammer 40k is a moral thing, because letting free Psykers live would mean complete devastation of the human species.
-----
The horrible realization is that so far Imperium despite being a miserable, inhuman, oligarchic theocracy, they still managed to survive and it seems to be working i.e. Emperor is slowly becoming a Warp God.

[pendell]

Moral axioms don't become false just because following them would result in your species going extinct.

???

I don't follow this at all. I would argue that morality is not a goal in and of itself. It exists for a reason-- to improve the length and quality of lives of everyone. I think it Heinlein who said the purpose of morality is group survival. If your "morality" is leading to the extinction of the species, it ain't moral.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[InvisibleBison]

You do know how axioms work, right?

You pick your axioms, then construct a framework on them. You can't prove Pythagorean theorem in non-Euclidian space. Does that mean Pythagora was wrong? No. He had different set of axioms.

I.e. they are relative and depend on problem's environment. Same as morality.

The thing is, all moral questions exist in the same environment. There's no difference between a situation where you benefit from killing someone and one where you don't that would affect whether or not it's acceptable to do so.

If your "morality" is leading to the extinction of the species, it ain't moral.

Only if you decide that survival of the species is a moral axiom.

[Lord Raziere]

Look here is the real problem with the Imperium: no matter what anyone says, they don't actually do what say they do, or at least what people think they do.

like looking at the Imperium from a utilitarian-consequentialist perspective, which y'know, is the grounds people like to argue for the Imperium on, they fail at accomplishing their goals from this perspective. A utilitarian accepts that some lives will be lost for a greater good, but doesn't mean any amount of lives is acceptable. If you can sacrifice ten people rather than 100 people to accomplish your objective, you take the 10 because that is 90 manpower resources saved. Minimum losses for maximum gain. Furthermore, a utilitarian can recognize when something is no longer worth pouring sacrifices/resources into and can y'know, give up and do something else when its most cost-effective and gainful to do another thing that will be better in the long run.

The Imperium....does not do this. When a world rebels against it, they send the imperial guard to recapture it no matter how many men they must sacrifice to do so. Problem is, not all worlds are worth the sacrifice and lives to do this:
-If your going to defend some bombed out nuclear wasteland uh....what resources are you supposedly defending? if all the world contributes is something like manpower or something, why bother since you have tons of other worlds that also contribute manpower.
-If your going to fight to defend a hive world, its not actually a smart move since hive worlds rely on other planets in the Imperium to function by food being brought in from agri-worlds, so why even fight them on the ground just cut them off from their food supply and watch them fall into killing each other, but the Imperium fights them anyways, despite being the ones with a navy to quarantine people and the rebels they are fighting.....don't have ships of their own. Meaning they send imperial guard onto rebelling planets they don't NEED to fight on, but just cut off the food supply and wait then sweep in while they're weak.
-if you receive any transmission about tyranids attacking, you might as well not respond because tyranids eat the planet faster than the Imperium can send people to help you. But the Imperium still does this anyways, wasting resources pursuing a xenos threat that has already moved on from the planet and thus now has to figure out how to play catch up when they probably don't know where they went because of the tyranids ability to block transmissions and thus cut off any further distress calls from astropaths coming your way.

if they were truly utilitarian or doing whats necessary, they'd actually like, figure out whether or not the Emperor is dying on this golden throne and actually y'know, try to figure out how to fix that he remains stable oh and whether or not he is going to blow up into being a fifth chaos god, do they do this? No. they just have faith that he will somehow save them all and don't question what his last orders were and thus continue doing them.

if they were truly utilitarian they'd think about what fights they can do something about, problems they have to actually solve and prioritize one thing over another. Eldar and Tau? even if you don't think the Imperium needs to team up with them, they're low priority and low threat. Necrons? real scary advanced tech but they're not really doing anything majorly aggressive, low priority. Orks, Tyranids and Chaos though? those are high priority stuff. but no its "kill all xenos" no matter what they are. just like how its defend all worlds, no matter what they are. the Imperium lacks the ability to prioritize threats and its own assets to focus on what they need to do over things they can get to later or just abandon because they don't have the ability to do anything about it. they try to defend everything and end up defending nothing because their resources are stretched too thin and end up taking horrible losses because they constantly need replacements for the people and commanders they lose, so they are constantly recruiting more newbies to fight in their stead and get killed more with more incompetent commanders and green recruits, which lead to them dying thus starting the cycle all over again.

Now you may say "but Raziere! if they didn't do all this it'd be EVEN WORSE!" but, that doesn't really work. Its easy to claim any number of imagined hypothetical scenarios could be worse than the current situation and say whatever you did made sure those scenarios did not come to pass, especially when your doing something horrible to supposedly negate something more horrible. But you can just as easily say that if they didn't do this horrible thing....that things could be better. an Inquisitor might justify using exterminatus on a planet with heretics on it as something that prevented further heresy, but the possibility that they could've gotten rid of those heretics with a knife rather a hammer also exists, assuming of course that the heretics are actual real chaos cultists rather than some big misunderstanding or you being misinformed by some Tzeentch manipulator tricking you into killing millions of your own dudes at the cost of losing far less cultists:
Inquisitor: "Pity them not and scorn their cries of innocence - it is better that one hundred innocently fall before the wrath of the Emperor than one kneels before the Daemon." (actual Wh40k quote)
Tzeentch Infiltrator: "One hundred loyalists slain for one cultist gone, just as planned."

the Imperium are not doing what is necessary, utilitarian, consequentialist or needed in any way shape or form. they are zealous fanatics mindlessly trying to wipe out all enemies on principle without any overall plan of how to do so, often doing things that are more costly to themselves than it is to their enemies, because each exterminatus they do destroys all the resources on the planet they could've used, every time they slay droves of people in their undercities on the suspicion they're all cultists, the destroy all the non-cultists there they could've gotten more men from. every time they transport a guard regiment of people using primitive weaponry from a feudal world or something, thats wasted time and effort on people that could've been better spent on regiments that could or even standardizing the Imperial Guard so they all fight better, and every time they take ruthless shortcuts and "horrible but necessary" things to be victorious, all the people who are victims of those horrible things still alive remember and get driven into Chaos's waiting arms so they can get their revenge, which is more waste, more enemies, more problems down the line.

the Imperium is not utilitarian at all, but in fact incredibly wasteful and prone to shooting itself in the foot at every opportunity it can without realizing that is what its doing. If humanity is surviving in the 41st millennium, its not because of the Imperium's efforts, but in spite of them.