Is slavery realistic?

[Chthon]

Only in Stellaris people reproduce faster than robots are built, realistically it would be faster to produce robots.

How many robots has modern society actually built that are technically proficient and able to function autonomously? We haven't even achieved one.

We aren't talking factory robots that are specialized to one task, we are talking about general purpose robots with AGI or advanced general intelligence which can be applied to multiple situations. You can take a Stellaris robot and put it in one job or another job without reformatting it's programming or reconfiguring it's hardware. You can't possibly do that with our robots, and without that a robot cannot function by itself, our robots need people to monitor and maintain them as they will not otherwise recover from faults.

 

[Tisifoni12]

Well I've done my best to identify that I'm writing of AI controlled robotic systems as an alternative to muscle labour rather than androids (or whatever the insectoid, reptilian, etc. equivalents of android are).

And as noted earlier slavery in Stellaris specifically relates to enslavement of alien species. Your species may have a caste system, inequalities and/or legal or illegal enslavement, but the wiki is specific; it's your species' option to put the conquered in labour camps or sell them rather than integrating or displacing them.

 

[Arcvalons]

How many robots has modern society actually built that are technically proficient and able to function autonomously? We haven't even achieved one.

We aren't talking factory robots that are specialized to one task, we are talking about general purpose robots with AGI or advanced general intelligence which can be applied to multiple situations. You can take a Stellaris robot and put it in one job or another job without reformatting it's programming or reconfiguring it's hardware. You can't possibly do that with our robots, and without that a robot cannot function by itself, our robots need people to monitor and maintain them as they will not otherwise recover from faults.

But Stellaris is set in the future. Robots will eventually be able to be mass produced, while producing one productive human would take 9 months + 18-ish years

 

[Chthon]

But Stellaris is set in the future. Robots will eventually be able to be mass produced, while producing one productive human would take 9 months + 18-ish years

But Stellaris is set in the future. By that point the number of populations around to build robots, will have grown drastically, and that means they will be able to reproduce much faster as well.

 

[Surimi]

Honestly, the entire Stellaris economy isn't realistic. You can reach the point where you're building dyson spheres and using super-science to rip matter from black holes, and yet robots require huge effort to produce and basic primary industries like farming still require billions of people working in them. These are supposed to be incredibly advanced economies from centuries into the future, but they behave like 19th century industrial economies (right down to exponential population growth, because apparently everyone in this timeline forgot to invent birth control).

It's not really even a question of having access to general purpose labour robots so much as not modelling the broader effects of labour efficiency. Modern commercial farming, for example, is incredibly labour efficient. It didn't take artificially intelligent robots to make that happen, it just took tractors and combine harvesters (and a lot of horrendous animal cruelty, but let's keep this lighthearted). Economic automation is a process that has already begun and is ongoing even today in a huge range of sectors.

I probably sound like I'm complaining but I'm actually not. Stellaris isn't really an accurate model of a plausible future, it's a mashup of science fiction tropes, and alien slave societies are a science fiction trope so they deserve a place in Stellaris, and because they deserve a place in Stellaris they need to be balanced. If you try to think about it realistically, it is silly but it's also probably more fun this way and that's kind of the golden rule as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Chthon]

There seems to be a mixture of 4 kinds of people in these debates:

Those who can't see or don't want to believe in the worst of society so they think you can't have advanced styles of slavery.

Those who understand that humanity is ever inventive of new ways to be horrible to others.

Those who think that this is just a game, so realism isn't necessary.

And those who think this is just a game, so realism wasn't focused on, but we need to bring it in line with reality.

Sorry if I'm being over generalizing, as you individually might fall into more than one category to certain degrees. I personally feel that humanity can be horrible, simply because people blind themselves to the fact that humanity can be horrible, and that the game tries to model this is kind of great. It means that debates like this can start.

I also feel that this is a game, so ultimately it doesn't have to be totally realistic if it gets it's point across. If it was too realistic, that means I as a person would have to invent ways to be horrible, and I don't want to have to lower myself to doing that.

My friends all seem to reduce these arguments to two kinds of people, those who believe in Star Trek and those who believe in Battlestar Gallactica. To some degree they are right, but it is an oversimplification of what is really happening.

I guess what I am rambling on about is I may not agree with every side in these threads, but I do appreciate the ideas you all bring to the table.

 

[Lord Hoosier]

This is Sci Fi, not real life. In real life absolutely not. In Stellaris, which is supposed to a an amalgamation of all Sci Fi, yes. The Idea of slavery in Sci Fi, be it Cpt. Kirk's green skinned space babe or the Wookiees of Star Wars, is so deeply ingrained in the zeitgeist of the genre it was a must in this game. Even the idea of settling planets, not living in habitats in orbit is arguably unrealistic, but it too is so ingrained in the genre that it had to be in the game. Hell, the same can be said for the whole idea of FTL drives of any sort!

 

[Acheron]

Again, when thinking slavery in science-fiction, think less "pickaxes in tunnels" and more "handling NBC-wastes with worn out protection suites" or "dismantling old facilities and ships mostly with hand-tools and no safety devices". Think less "sowing fields from cloth bags and harvesting them with scythes" think more "maintain oversize combine-harvesters which definitely won't stop their tour just because you got in the way" or "work on fields positively glowing with deadly pesticides".

 

[Avian Overlord]

At lot of Stellaris's economic polices do seem to have the assumption baked in that being an asshole creates resources ex nihlo.