So I guess literally everyone in the entire Fanatic Egalitarian empire is just fine becoming a robot

[Sportsmaster]

But why? Why would fanatic egalitarians be inherently opposed to this? If ascension occurs according to the ruling ethics of an empire (democratic or otherwise), and through the accumulation of unity—which represents the cultural cohesiveness and national identity of an empire, and which unlocks new cultural values and traditions that that empire has developed post-earth / post-homeworld... can we not say that the vast majority of its citizens (consciously or not) have been actively supporting the outcome of ascension?

The authoritarian-egalitarian axis only determines who has the political power to impose empire-level changes (like that of leadership, for example). Any empire, regardless of its ethics composition, should contain a minority population which does not conform to the aims of the ruling government—and this includes the aim of ascension. Clearly, as per Wiz, this will already occur through the faction system. This is old news. Why discuss this non-issue across two different platforms? There is no "WE DID IT!" because we did not do anything. It has already been done.

 

[Sinister2202]

This is why, I think, it's better to have ascension be tied to ethics to a certain extent, but not entirely. Not entirely, because there are more ethics than ascension types. But spiritualists already hate synthetics in the game, so it wouldn't hurt to have the spiritual pops be against synthetic ascension and materialists be for it. Still, this doesn't explain which ascension belongs to which ethics. That part is very foggy. It sort of makes sense to have psionics be spiritualists while synthetics be materialist, but that's still not entirely a sure thing... so tying them with ethics could turn out to be a mess. Besides, it'd still leave out biological ascension. Some could argue it matches with xenophobic vs xenophile ethics, with xenophobes against engineering and xenophiles for it. But that argument could cause problem because there would be no ascension for xenophobes if that were the case. Unless this whole asension thing is spiritualist vs materialist war, and biological ascension is just some middle ground favored by species with middle ground ethics (like hive mind).

Psionic ascension got the special treatment because it's not very special as synthetics in the current state of the game. Synthetic ascension could get the similar special treatment by tying it with spiritualist vs materialist ethics and have a whole political and moral debacle over it (psionics get the shroud events), that debates the very stability of the society. But like I said before... relating ascension with ethics may have its own conflicts... Still, it makes no sense to not have some sort of resistance against such radical change as synthetic evolution... especially in egalitarian society. So yes... to a certain extent, ethics should come into play.

 

[The Founder]

Are the psionic/synthetic locked to their ethos? If so, i find no problems even in the current climate. Pops now have one ethos, so they either value materialsm XOR egalitarianism. As for a government with both? Am egalitarian government may simply provide economic incentives for pops to become synthetic, and thus do so.

One thing to consider is Societal Engineering. Politics is supposed to plan the long game. They are supposed to consider what happens in 10 years, 20 or even 50.

Using Slaves increases Authoritarian Atraction to non-Slaves.
We know that living with free aliens increases Xenophile atraction.
It would be logical for (free or enslaved) Robots to increase Materialist atraction.
It would be even more logical for the 1st Step of Ascension to do that too.

Having living proof that it works, will over time let your empire drift towars a associated Ethos. That "Fanatic Egalitarin" Soceity will ever so slowly transform into a "Fanatic Materialist" Soceity, simply by going the path. Wich was the plan of the original decider all along. The power for it was given to him or her demoractically. And democratically nobody afterwards decided to fully undo the path. Maybe pause a while.

 

[scaper12123]

I imagine different groups will have very different opinions on the subject. My assumption is that ascension will be especially difficult in egalitarian empires, since they're primarily based around divergent ethics

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

3) Even if there are people not doing it, they will only acount for a minority far below what one pop represents. Whatever holdovers of the fleshy world are left, will be insignificant next to a population that did go this way at large.

Spoiler: Picture of a conscientious objector to the Synthetic Ascension

Useful to remember that in the abstraction of this game, these ascension perks are paid for indirectly via a resource called 'unity.

Or, in essence, the two ascension perks that allow you to become a full synthetic population are the result of years of dedicating your empire towards a singular unified purpose.

I imagine different groups will have very different opinions on the subject. My assumption is that ascension will be especially difficult in egalitarian empires, since they're primarily based around divergent ethics

Actually, I think egalitarians will have an easier time. The cost of traditions, the precursor for ascension traits, is increased by unhappy factions, slaves ad minority species. Egalitarians have an easier time keeping their factions content, don't have slaves and, well, minority species is a wash.

The biggest variable is supposedly empire size, so Tall gets a bonus to this over Wide, but Egalitarian is looking to have an easier time in this arena than Authoritarian.

 

[The Founder]

I imagine different groups will have very different opinions on the subject. My assumption is that ascension will be especially difficult in egalitarian empires, since they're primarily based around divergent ethics

You are thinking in 1.0 and 1.4 Terms of Individualist, in a discussion about 1.5 Egalitarian.

As I see it one core point of the Ethos rework was to give everyone* a interest and tool to control Ethics divergence, especially the Egalitarians. Making Ethos divergence based on playstyle/choices seems a very good idea to do that.
The 1.4 route of giving Individualsits lots of "ignore policy unhappiness" is not a future proof design. It lead to a meta that either doubles down or ignores ethics divergence. Making all other ethos combinations rather useless. It is one of the big faults of 1.4.


*With the exception of Hive Minds, of course.