Argument for making Materialism go the way of the Individualist

[Sergei Andropov]

I think a lot of the trouble comes from the fact that those two ethics are so closely linked to gameplay mechanics that don't actually exist in the real world. It makes sense for Egalitarianism to be linked with democracy, because that matches our actual experiences, and it makes sense for Militarism to be linked to combat ability, for obvious reasons. But we don't actually have psionics or AI, so it's harder to tell how different ethical camps will deal with them.

It might be interesting to refocus those ethics on some of the new mechanics. Spiritualists already have access to Temples that boost amenities and unity. It would be cool if Materialists had access to a special building that gives them easy access to merchants, something like a reskinned Shrine of Numa (which, weirdly, is very Spiritualist in flavor). If you want to make a lot of money, you'd go Materialist. If you care more about intangible things like happiness and social cohesion, then you'd go Spiritualist.

 

[Kravoka]

@Kravoka Those descriptions are for government forms, of course they're going to discuss religion in the context of power and societal organization. They don't describe how the individuals carry themselves in day-to-day life.

Traditionalist Factions desire a return to traditional values that may or may not have existed at some point before the Empire took to the stars. They like austerity and dislike certain technological advancements and non-spiritualist values.

 

[The Exile]

Yeah, this is something I've thought about since I started playing, and I've definitely role-played both ethics differently when set in different cultures. But we seem to be circling something I'd like to try to crystallize: how about getting away from the "spiritualist" question and redefining these ethics as Traditionalist and Innovative?

Traditionalists would still be focused on stability and social cohesion, and so would still provide unity, amenity buffs, etc. Innovators would be much more willing to take big risks and disrupt the status quo, and so you would still have their advantages in research and perhaps other types of progress.

BUT Traditionalists would be further defined by their civics, whether they were more religious, social conservatives, conservationist, prosperity-focused, or some combination. Even "religious" still has its divisions: ceremonial? mystical? dogmatic? Some might fear and hate robots (for maybe more obvious reasons, now) while still leaving room for your odd machine cults (or heck, why not amoeba cults?) here and there. Meanwhile, Innovators' civics could give them a special focus on one type of science (more social disruptors, or mad scientists?) or unique advantages to exploration (give us back our anomaly-finding buffs!) or colonization.

A more diverse array of civics, factions, and policy options would allow a very wide range of role-play within this framework.

 

[Fox McCloud]

The fact you can't outlaw AI as a materialist empire is a bit perplexing.

Just because your ethic means you acknowledge that fully sentient machines are possible (and deserve rights), doesn't mean that your society will inherently have it happen; it could be that it's still viewed as such an existential crisis, that it shouldn't be allowed.

Likewise, regardless of AI policy, I do believe you should be able to build non-sentient synthetics; just because you can build sentient ones doesn't necessarily mean you will. Perhaps you want an eternal servant, but want to avoid the ethical quandries of having a synthetic that is enslaved to you.

 

[Riftwalker]

I've been irked by spiritualist since I started. It's an attractive ethic for unity, but I consider myself a spiritual person and I'm like actually* offended that roboracism is somehow considered essential to spiritualism. I have kinda high hopes for the implications of machine intelligence for our social and political development on the basis of my spiritual beliefs (+ too much Aristotle: all action aims at the Good, and more information = more accurate perception of the Good), so to see spiritualists depicted as necessarily anti-AI is... well, like I said, it's offensive to me. I know there's abundant sci-fi precedent of religious movements against AI but I also think it's very possible to build a spiritual tradition that is prepared for integration with AI entities, and I want to play spiritualist xenophiles who would be chill with Lt. Cmdr. Data.

in the current patch, it's only anti-AI should be considered a person, as you can have synths who serve with a complete AI and the spiritualist faction didn't bat an eye in my kingdom. but their just fancy machines with no rights.

edit: wait is there a limit on robots in the gov ethic?

edit edit: just checked there isn't.

 

[Little Red]

I think both are in a good spot. As previously mentioned, it's the battle between soul and cold hard matter.

Materialists and the Shroud? They dismiss it as absurd. A total crock. When there's an event for another species unlocking true transcendence, your materialist ethos will remark that there is surely a rational explanation for that.

I also think spiritualists' opposition to robots is perfectly justified, for with increasing automation comes the risk of mass unemployment of organics and when organics are unemployed they produce unrest and such, that is, dividing the community. Which of course is intolerable. And the refusal to give AI full rights again falls into their soul argument. A crafted machine might have synthetic intelligence, but it is just that, synthetic, imitated but not replicated. At least in their minds. Only organics can have a true soul.

It's also implied that both parties are somewhat incorrect during synthetic ascension as some aspect of the "soul" remains in synthetically ascended pops shown by their total immunity to the whims of the Contingency.

 

[Kravoka]

The fact you can't outlaw AI as a materialist empire is a bit perplexing.

Just because your ethic means you acknowledge that fully sentient machines are possible (and deserve rights), doesn't mean that your society will inherently have it happen; it could be that it's still viewed as such an existential crisis, that it shouldn't be allowed.

You basically can though. Just don't build any, don't give them rights and purge any AI pops who end up on your territory. So, in other words, Mat doesn't have a meaningful restriction in the same way that Spi does.

 

[SirL]

Can we not bring religion into a sci-fi game, please? It was actually unlogical to me, that in 2200 somebody even believed in such things, having all those spiritual empires and such, and you want to bring religion mechanics? What

 

[Typee]

Can we not bring religion into a sci-fi game, please? It was actually unlogical to me, that in 2200 somebody even believed in such things, having all those spiritual empires and such, and you want to bring religion mechanics? What

Somebody should tell Frank Herbert religion doesn't belong in sci-fi.

 

[Secret Master]

It was actually unlogical to me, that in 2200 somebody even believed in such things, having all those spiritual empires and such, and you want to bring religion mechanics? What

Somebody should tell Frank Herbert religion doesn't belong in sci-fi.

And...

Bonus points for Yoda literally rejecting materialism as a philosophy in a sci-fi setting, and for the God-Emperor of Dune being an entity that can see the future via spiritualist means while ingesting a substance that is more or less Zro in Stellaris.

 

[Delthor]

Somebody should tell Frank Herbert religion doesn't belong in sci-fi.

Just because someone has written sci fi like that doesn't mean everyone has to like it or want to see it in Stellaris.

I think these two ethics are fine where they're at.

Materialists think that the material world exists independent from consciousness, and that there's no special divine spark in sentience. This manifests itself with better science, since understanding the material world is of utmost importance, and in robot improvements, since there's far less divide between synthetic and organic sentient life to materialists. Civics can take this farther in either direction, with mechanist and technocracy.

Spiritualists are the opposite. They think consciousness is first, and there is no material world independent of it. This manifests itself in a more unified society with unity and better edicts. This is expressed mainly through civics that involve religion of some sort, and I think it's reasonable that a society that doesn't have some fundamental spiritualism would likely have lost most religious belief by the time they're using FTL travel.

Psionics is something that can be more easily accessed by spiritualists, but materialists can encounter them and even ascend in certain circumstances. Spiritualists can use robots, but in a society that is skeptical of the material world, they would object to the idea of creating this special spark of consciousness and claim that it's just a fabrication, not true life. So spiritualists are upset by robots, even if their society can make use of them. Either one ends up with strong attractions to the opposite ethic if they ascend in a way that's against the grain, but it is possible.

The existence of the shroud doesn't prove spiritualists right any more than the existence of machine empires and true AI proves materialists right. Who is right is largely left to your interpretation. As someone who almost always plays some flavor of materialist or a machine empire, my head canon is that psionics and the shroud are perfectly capable of being explained by science, but that the methods of establishing initial access come more naturally to someone with a spiritual mindset. I imagine the spiritualist head canon is that machine empires and those who synthetically ascend are just immitations of life, and have actually destroyed themselves, replaced by an artificial shadow.

Yes, there are certain combinations of things like robot cults or religious technophiles that can't be represented very well at the moment. However, there are a ton of different empire configurations that aren't really represented in Stellaris. I do hope that we can eventually see some civics that can allow some of these other alternatives to exist.

 

[Little Red]

Don't forget about the God-Emperor of Mankind, who despite not wanting to be worshipped as a god was inevitably worshipped as a god.

 

[FuzzyLogic]

The problem for me lies less with Materialism than with Spiritualism. I understand it's a necessary abstraction to make for different gameplay styles, but it still feels kind of odd when your Space Catholics start summoning Cthulhu and killing people with their minds.

Also worthy of note is that all spiritualist empires quickly find common ground and generally get on well with each other, when both in reality and in scifi religious groups are known to disagree -often violently- over the slightest doctrinal difference. While I'm firmly against putting too much of this "reality" thing into Stellaris, I'm not quite pleased with the notion that, in this game, the Imperium of Man and the Forces of Chaos would most likely be best pals.

Maybe someday we'll get more granular ideology/religion mechanics that allow for a more indepth Spiritualist gameplay.