Pacem Appellant - General - The Eldraeverse

November 2024

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MirrorField <mirrorfield@gmail.com> on 2018-08-30 04:53:06 wrote:

Which, I suspect, is one of the points hampering diplomacy with the Empire: The Extreme version of “Fiat justitia ruat caelum”. It’s a good thing as long as you win, but there is a significant danger of “Galaxy on Fire” with tit-for-tat escalation somehow, somewhere, having made peace impossible (“We can’t agree to peace treaty, the blood of fallen calls for balance.”)

Basically the inverse of why the Culture cannot be trusted to keep it’s bargains (to paraphrase “somewhere there is a Mind running calculations and if those calculations predict more people will be saved by breaking diplomatic agreement, the agreement goes down the drain that millisecond”).

Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2018-08-30 08:35:23 wrote:

On the one hand, that’s certainly true to an extent, although while the resolution must be balanced, there’s no requirement that it be balanced in any particular way. (Why “weregeld” exists in the legal system, for example.)

On the other hand, the Ministry of State and Outlands would point out that one of the chief causes of trouble in international relations, as in domestic law, is uncertainty - and while democracies change their minds with every election, and pragmatists are only as reliable as their self-interest, the Empire’s foreign policy is highly predictable and constant as the northern star. You are very unlikely to get into trouble that you couldn’t have known you were getting into.

(On the gripping hand, the biggest thing hampering diplomacy with the Empire remains the lack of any there, there. When your entire trade and immigration policies can be summed up as “Sure, go ahead, why are you asking us?” and many types of treaties we’d be familiar with off-limits as ultra vires, there’s not all that much non-routine diplomacy left.)

((On the other gripping hand, in this particular area, the MoSaO would point out that the Empire’s peacekeeping policy is exquisitely crafted to deliver one thing: almost never having to do it.

One of the problems of being a Great Power, as history on Earth demonstrates more than adequately, is that everyone who isn’t wants to drag you into their local squabbles one way or another. Unlike the waserai, the Empire likes to counter this with a healthy dose of “don’t make us come over there”, in the form of making Imperial interventions about as desirable as having Black Surtr and his army of fire giants stop by your planet on the way to Ragnarok.))

Specialist290 <carpentereli@outlook.com> on 2018-09-16 09:31:43 wrote:

And this line of thinking is precisely why I question the eldrae’s claim to hold the moral high ground – or, indeed, their claim to themselves being sane.

(Given that discussions along this theme have tended to get… explosive in the past, that’s all I’m going to say.)

Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2018-09-16 12:59:37 wrote:

The trope you are looking for is here.

Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2018-10-03 01:56:16 wrote:

To reply less irritably:

The other line of thinking here which General Politeran does not point out is that the soft approach produces false positives.

Everyone’s nice to, and in the presence of, an external force with a velvet glove of +5 empathy and a big stick. Obvious example: pretty much any of the many domestic abusers who seemed like such nice, quiet people who would never dream of doing such a thing. Doesn’t tell you a damn thing about who they are when you’re not standing over 'em or what they’re going to do when you leave.

The Imperial approach, on the other hand, is that if they don’t behave like civilized chaps in the dark, when [they think] no-one’s watching, and without anyone praising them for doing it, then they haven’t learned a gorramn thing. You’re supposed to do the right thing even when it hurts, and/or it costs you, and/or it won’t ultimately matter, and/or when no-one will ever know, and the closer you get to that scenario, the more reliable your test cases are.

When the former enemies are spontaneously helping each other with no external reward save a continuing lack of being exploded by a passing Murderbot 9000, then you can call it.