Lets talk Spiritualism, Religion, and Ethics.

[TheAtreides84]

The problem with the Materialist/Spiritualist divide is that, due to Psionics, it is scientifically provable that souls exist. So how do Materialist empires justify their ideology?

Also "soul" is an extremely ill-defined term. What psionics prove is that mind can affect matter. We actually know for a fact that it can, in phenomena like the placebo effect and neuroplasticity. Psionics is mind affecting matter outside of physiology. It's something very difficult for a materialistic ontology to explain, but not really impossible. Some of the founders of quantum mechanics held similar believes. Recently the cosmologist Andrei Linde and the biologist Robert Lanza proposed to some degree the idea of consciousness as fundamental. Also Wheeler toward the end of his life shifted toward a somewhat contiguous idea he called participatory universe. And obviously there are the simulation hypothesis guys, but those are a tiny bit nuts even if they got the endorsement of DeGrasse Tyson. So it's not like the idea is outside modern science, just marginal.

That's why materialistic civilizations have difficulties with studying psionics, I think: it's not like they can't understand the thing, it's that they must overcome an entrenched kuhnian "paradigm" opposing research in the field.

 

[Spaceception]

I'm a big advocate for all empires having access to a "culture" mechanic, with religion being one manifestation of it.

Yeah, there could be multiple civics like this. They would be free, and there could be one for each ethic (You can only choose one though), this affects gameplay, and yeah, spiritualists should get a major religious mechanic as part of theirs. Which plays a much higher role in internal politics, and is much more prominent, than say, in an egalitarian empire.

 

[Highlordelliot]

Spiritualism in the game feels hollow until you get psionics but then it feels railroaded into shroud veneration.

 

[Secret Master]

Spiritualism in the game feels hollow until you get psionics but then it feels railroaded into shroud veneration.

That's only because of the chance to grab a really nice pact.

The irony, though, is that it's doesn't even have to be veneration. The Ferengi would see it as a simple contract for goods and services. We will provide X, and you will provide Y.

Accepting the Worm-in-Waiting is more akin to veneration than the Shroud has to be. The entities in the Shroud don't have to even care about you; the Worm does.

Most folks also don't bother to read the tooltips for spiritualism in the game. Spiritualists don't have to venerate or worship anything. They are all about accepting the rather quaint notion that the mind shapes the universe.

Perhaps renaming Spiritualism to Solipsism would make sense.

 

[Ikael]

I agree with the general sentiment expressed here. Culture (and soft power in general) needs to be a thing, and religion a major part of it. Religions needs to be more distinct, it doesn't make sense that my spiritual enlightened pacifist empire gets along well with the death cultists just because they are "spiritual" too.

That being said, the current ethics system can work as a proper representation of culture and add flavour to religions by tie-ing into them. I mean, it wouldn't make any sense to have a pacifist ethos only to follow a religion focused in holy wars.

For example, something like this:

Militarist + spiritualist = Temples provides one extra "warrior monk" job (two if you have a "fanatic" ethic)
Xenophile + spiritualist = Temples provide one extra "social worker" job (two if you have a fanatic ethic)

And so forth.

 

[Zenopath]

I think the TL,DR explaination here is that spiritualists believe in a "spirit" or "soul" unique to themselves, or at least to organic intelligent life (depending on level of xenophobia/xenophilia).

This leads them to consider machines to be "soulless" and thus worth less than living sentience.

Materialists believe only in what can be measured, and thus are better scientists and do not have a problem with granting rights to AI because they fail to see any substancial difference between a purely organic and purely artificial intelligence.

A Naturalist believes in nature as a force with a will of its own. "Mother nature never intended for robots to replace organics," doesn't quite seem logical for a species that has left the mother nature of their home world behind. It is the soul or lack thereof, that would drive objections to robots, not consideration of what is or is not "natural".

 

[Adolf - Finite War]

I am opposed to the whole Materialism V Spiritualism that leads to things like spiritualists prefering not to even have robots around.
Which to me should only be a subsection of spiritualism something that a single shroud pact could represent. Stellaris' model right now denies us sci-fi staples like Futurama's Robotology and Battlestar Galactica's Cylons.

Furthermore even if souls are only limited to organics it doesn't mean that you'd hate having synthetics around. You'd also have to consider clones, organic supercomputers, hive minds, gas beings and the like. In the end everyone that doesn't develop psionic powers with the usually necessary guidance soon would be suspect.

Naturalism that still works with societies that travel the stars would be enviromentalism which we have in the game though it deserves some expansion beyond consumer good reduction - holy worlds are a nice concept towards that end.

 

[zukodark]

Aye, spiritualism is not the clearest and most sensible ethics imaginable. But when you look at its alternatives, they are always either have the exact same problem or is so wide that no flavour can be gained through it.

Let's say you take a less religious word, like dogmatist or naturalist or whatever. What sort of flavour can you really put to that? Priests, temples and psionics have no reason to be bound to these sort of terms. What would the faction demands even be? Just the boring "homogenity" one? Do they still dislike robots? If so they would just be a disability, spiritualism is mediocre enough as it is.

 

[Nakkivene]

You'd think many religions would be opposed to psionics, being that it's so much like magic.

 

[Ikael]

Nah, psiconics being viewed favourabily by religion is completely logical. Many religions claims the existance of saints / bodhisattvas / gurus with divine powers that trascend mere mortal logic, and planes of existance beyond the material one. The Shroud fits very nicely into that as well.

As for the whole "but if science can explaining psiconics and prove their existance then it's not supernatural", while factually true, doesn't takes into account how us humans proccess these type of scientific breaktroughts that are counter-intuitive to linear logic. See also: How quantum theory and its scientifically proven claims about entanglement and "teleportation" were viewed by the new age crowd.

 

[Novacat]

You'd think many religions would be opposed to psionics, being that it's so much like magic.

It is kind of 50/50, while there are religions who viewed magic favorably, there were many others who either viewed it with superstition or outright persecuted it. Medieval-era Christianity held a surprisingly materialist view, in that anything supernatural was largely labeled as witchcraft.

Which is also one of the many reasons why Spiritualist =/= Religion.

 

[Adolf - Finite War]

Yeah the first psionics would probably be treated as angels by some but also like X-Man Mutants by others.

One thing to improve the ascension paths would be to make them evolve in more steps and have decision to flesh them out than the literally couple of clicks it takes now. Right now if you unlocked 4 Slots you can make all your pops latent psionics and on the same day unlock their whole psi-potential and issue the shroud project. Things like establishing a psi-corps, dealing with the first criminal mutants, leaders (who can now have a corrupt trait) abusing such powers, new possible interactions with space-borne aliens and anomalies...

Same thing with the bio and synth paths you'd assume that encountering things like living metal, nanites, species on heavy/light gravity worlds, space-borne aliens, enigmatic tube, speed demon anomaly etc. would mean more to them and allow them to gain new insights. Right now the ascensions are too much click reward instead of click more game (and reward but also problems & dangers to solve = more game)

 

[OrigamiPhoenix]

A "Belief" traits screen that's coupled with the physical traits you choose for your population. These traits don't give specific bonus's or anything but they play a key role in the game itself and strategies. Two types of populations even from different empires entirely could have a similar spiritual belief, however, maybe they dont.

Since the idea of "spiritualism ≠ naturalism ≠ religion" has been established, I have to say the "beliefs" system would have too much overlap with the faction system. Religious beliefs would be a good determinator of potential faction attractiveness already and otherwise would have no gameplay impact.

 

[Pootino]

The problem with the Materialist/Spiritualist divide is that, due to Psionics, it is scientifically provable that souls exist. So how do Materialist empires justify their ideology?

My favourite headcanon is that they're both wrong, the "soul" exists but rather that being a sparkly thing inside you that makes you better than machine is an hook to another dimension full of creepy beings that are trying to brainwashing you into worshipping them. Materialists deny it exists because they can't explain it and spiritualists believe in it because they're bonkers

 

[Zenopath]

well in a universe were actual psionic abilities are proven fact, the idea that materialists would somehow deny thier existence is pretty illogical. How do they explain hive minds if telepathic communication isn´t real?

I guess they could call it an ansible or somesuch like the ¨Ender´s Game¨ universe, but still, I think that it is weird that materialists are opposed to psionic research, and have very little chance of ever getting it as a research option.

 

[eagletrekkie]

My issue with the divide is that the question on whether or not souls exist doesn’t translate well to game mechanics so we wind up with this awkward psionics vs robots debate that just keeps coming back.

The divide is unclear and unintuitively translated into mechanics as science vs religion, which doesn’t match the driving question very well, which is made worse by the robot/psionics issue.

 

[Pootino]

well in a universe were actual psionic abilities are proven fact, the idea that materialists would somehow deny thier existence is pretty illogical. How do they explain hive minds if telepathic communication isn´t real?

I guess they could call it an ansible or somesuch like the ¨Ender´s Game¨ universe, but still, I think that it is weird that materialists are opposed to psionic research, and have very little chance of ever getting it as a research option.

Hive minds may very well communicate with pheromones, radio waves or other types of explainable mean, but psionics and psionic technology seems to be based alot around people own psychic powers, which if a field materialists doesn't even take in consideration.

 

[Adolf - Finite War]

Hive minds may very well communicate with pheromones, radio waves or other types of explainable mean, but psionics and psionic technology seems to be based alot around people own psychic powers, which if a field materialists doesn't even take in consideration.

Well they have to take them into consideration if the encounter things like psionic entities, pops with these kind of powers (Kettlings), Immigrants (if only the AI empires would hurry along) or Zro. A science ship that encounters all sorts of anomalies, I'd expect that someones latent psionic abilities get awoken at some point (Star Trek Voyager). And once you have your research subject it becomes a very hot topic especially for materialists, spiritualists might be happy being awestruck but materialists want it to take things apart and then they want to take the thing itself apart.

As for souls it's a real bad idea to just casually touch that subject either go all in or leave it be else we end up with really trashy explanations like in the Gantz Manga.

 

[TheAtreides84]

Nah, psiconics being viewed favourabily by religion is completely logical. Many religions claims the existance of saints / bodhisattvas / gurus with divine powers that trascend mere mortal logic, and planes of existance beyond the material one. The Shroud fits very nicely into that as well.

As for the whole "but if science can explaining psiconics and prove their existance then it's not supernatural", while factually true, doesn't takes into account how us humans proccess these type of scientific breaktroughts that are counter-intuitive to linear logic. See also: How quantum theory and its scientifically proven claims about entanglement and "teleportation" were viewed by the new age crowd.

To be fair some quantum mechanics phenomena are extremely shocking for everyone, just like Niels Bohr said. I don't think there is a single dude in the world who actually understands all the implications.

 

[TheAtreides84]

well in a universe were actual psionic abilities are proven fact, the idea that materialists would somehow deny thier existence is pretty illogical. How do they explain hive minds if telepathic communication isn´t real?

Nah, it's not illogical, it's actually quite common in the history of science. Those guys refusing to look into Galileo's telescope were, for all intent and purpose, scientists, even if their science was different in methodology from ours. They were also quite smart. It's just that they had been aristotelian all their lives. Wegener encountered similar opposition when he proposed his continental drift theory. Einstein himself couldn't accept entanglement on philosophical grounds ("spooky action at a distance") and went on searching for hidden variables, which we by now have ruled out. Science progress one funeral at a time, as they say. An entire civilization devoted to an idea would find enormously difficult to embrace something contrary to it, even when confronted with evidence. People usually prefer to "not look into the telescope" instead of admitting all their life's work was useless.