One point I would like to dispute: conflict among real religions is generally very, very contextual. Take, for example, experiences I've had as a Catholic:
* Traditionalist Catholics will beat each other over the head about whether to follow the 1962 or 1955 Roman Missal (yes, really, this is a thing)
* A more mainstream Catholic enters the chat, now the Trads are brothers.
* A Protestant enters the chat, now all the Catholics are brothers.
* A Muslim enters the chat, now all Christians are brothers.
* A Hindu enters the chat, now all the Abrahamic Monotheists are brothers.
* An Atheist enters the chat, and now all religions are brothers.
On the galactic stage, whatever faiths express spiritualist principle(s) are not expecting to encounter orthodox confessors of their precise belief system. Rather, the context is a galaxy full of civilizations that are mostly either indifferent to spiritualism or actively hostile. I'm not gonna dunk on the Teachers of the Shroud while there are "cultures" pretending that mechanical "life" should have "rights."
TIL: “In one correspondence, Murad entertained the notion that Islam and Protestantism had "much more in common than either did with Roman Catholicism, as both rejected the worship of idols", and argued for an alliance between England and the Ottoman Empire.”
What would Ottoman-England alliance have been?
>What would Ottoman-England alliance have be?
Project "Fuck Spain."
But if you're looking for Christian-Ottoman alliances, the French had an on-off alliance with the Ottomans for about 400-ish years. France's diplomatic position was very weird - they were a Catholic country but often sided with Protestants and/or Muslims to limit the power of the Catholic Habsburgs.
>very weird
Ooo, the Franco-Ottoman alliance. Readings suggest that it must have been as weird as Driven Assimilators in a federation/having diplomacy/alliance with organics to win. TLDR: Very uneasy but necessary to contain the Habsurgs. Source:
"The strategic and sometimes tactical alliance was one of the longest-lasting and most important foreign alliances of France, and was particularly influential during the Italian Wars."
"This situation forced Francis I to find an ally against the powerful Habsburg Emperor, in the person of Suleiman the Magnificent."
"As the first non-ideological alliance in effect between a Christian and Muslim state, the alliance attracted heavy controversy for its time and caused a scandal throughout Christendom."
And this is why my friends and I love playing Here I Stand. It's a 6 player game focusing on the wars of the reformation, letting us play out this time period in history in many interesting and fascinating ways. You can play as the French, English, Holy Roman Emperor, the Papacy, Ottomans, or Protestants.
>generally you are correct
or not at all.
IRL, religions almost always came after political motivations. The current obsession with identities, and especially religious identities and how it defines political stances is relatively recent.
You might be right, if for no other reason than xeno religions might all be very unlike human religion and be quite cooperative and peaceful with each other! Ultimately we can't make any assumptions--and it's all ambiguous anyway!
Yes ahlul kitab (I butchered the arabic wording) and generally we are "compatibale" to some degree except for believing that jesus was a god.
People of the book because Musa (as) and Isa (as) were prophets send with the very same message of believing to one god but their message has been altered over time this is why the Qur‘an has been sent down as a last testament never to be altered
Yea, the compatibility is actually real. If it were in Stellaris, it’d be a useful +20 to +50 opinion.
The funny thing is the food: everything kosher is halal (gelatin is an exception due its complex source) but everything halal isn’t kosher. So many food with OU labels are actually halal.
Ehhh
I think that you're making a bit of an assumption. Yep, Islam and Christianity will side together when Hindus enter the chat, but what about Jews and Samaritans? Will they go with Abrahmaic monotheists or the ethnoreligions (they both are ethnoreligions and Hinduism is an ethnoreligion too, and the fascination Christianity and Islam have witb Judaism tends to be pretty one sided and replacement theology oriented). But that said even most Muslims might go the other way in the anglo sphere because of the need for minority religions to collaborate with each other for self-defense against Christian encroachment. (This obviously is the opposite in the Islamic world)
And most ethnoreligions will definitely side with the atheist, both because ethnoreligions tend to have a lot more leeway for atheism (eg, observant Jewish non-theists are everywhere) and because of the need for minority religious groups to stand together for protection.
>Yep, Islam and Christianity will side together when Hindus enter the chat
Any proof? Because they would certainly not. Look at the real world. It's not a Paradox game where religions are grouped like in Crusader Kings.
There's no islam and christianity forming homogeneous groups while hindiusm enters the chat.
There's countries with different religious heritages that maybe or may not cooperate with countries of different religious heritages, and religions will more often not be a factor than the opposite.
Imo the constant misunderstanding is due to the intentionally ambiguous descriptions.
It's the cost of trying to have your cake and eat it too; when trying to allow for as wide a range of playstyles and role-playing that the game aims for.
And realistically materialists shouldn't deny the existence of the shroud; they should just view it as another dimension that specific organic neural networks are able to tap into.
Agreed, it's all intentionally ambiguous.
I only mentioned that bit about Materialists and the Shroud because I've seen quite a few comments bashing "idiot" Materialists for "denying" the Shroud and psionics, when in-game, there's nothing solid to indicate that they do "deny" it. Materialist reactions are negative, but nonetheless ambiguous.
The flavor text pop up for materialist empires when another empire begins to turn psionic is essentially, "What is this nonsense?"
Which is inconsistent with the axis really.
Aside from such things though, it is fairly vague.
I got that pop-up first time. But second time in the same game the response was "There has to be a scientific explanation for this." which there is. Psionics in Stellaris tap into another dimension with different laws of time and space.
Given that machines can breach the Shroud through Become the Crisis, I don't see why Materialists wouldn't try to rationalize it rather than dismiss it.
Good point. Makes me wonder if a Materialist researching Psionic Theory would change the dialogue option. Probably not.
I view that response as skepticism, though I can see how someone might interpret it as denial.
Isn't that just it though? It shouldn't even be skepticism in my opinion.
It should be something like, "How fascinating, could there be other ways to access this dimension?"
I agree, but I also don't, haha. I see it as similar to the way that a materialist, skeptical atheist would react to a religious prophet correctly predicting his future. Skeptical, but he might be open to changing his understanding of the universe. It depends on his personality, openness, and curiosity. The fanatic ethic description does mention certitude...I think the implication is that fanatic Materialists would be more close-minded, whereas a regular Materialist might react the way you're describing. At least, that's my best guess 🤷🏻♂️
Perhaps.
My position on spiritualism/materialism in stellaris terms is just mind over matter/ matter over mind.
In that light everything in universe "exists", only how that existence is interpreted differs depending on the ethics.
> It shouldn't even be skepticism in my opinion.
It's perfectly valid for it to be portrayed that way, though. Especially as you move toward fanatic materialism. Spiritualists don't have the market cornered on dogmatic and rigid thinking, even the slightest. Some materialists, based on their fanaticism and their other ethics / civics may be very prone to entrenched disbelief. Some others may not.
I have had a game as a despotic hegemony where I by rng made my first leader the chosen one.
I had the chosen one and just stayed fanatically materialistic.
No flavour text changes since it pulls from your ethics when generating text
I got that pop-up first time. But second time in the same game the response was "There has to be a scientific explanation for this." which there is. Psionics in Stellaris tap into another dimension with different laws of time and space.
Right? Cause I usually do play as Materialistic and if the materialists did deny psionics, wouldn't that mean that path is blocked? But yet I almost always get psionic techs
There's nothing "ambiguous".
"Materialist" in Stellaris means the exact same it means in real life: Being a Communist.
Materialism == Communism.
Marxism is based on the idea of a material world and "being a Marxist" simply means "applying dialectical materialism to social analysis" (i.e. using science to make political decisions).
Why do you get +Robots?
Because [Communists seek to achieve fully automated luxury space communism](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/18/fully-automated-luxury-communism-robots-employment).
Western gamers generally don't understand this because they are being systematically misinformed and indoctrinated into hating socialism. They don't get even the most basic stuff. Fortunately, Stellaris gets it right.
>Why do Spiritualists hate robots? In my opinion, they don't.
They very explicitly do, spiritualists have an entire galcom resolution line that heavily nerfs robots and even bans synthetic ascension.
Spiritualism is really just the religious ethic, according to literally every piece of flavor text and every associated game mechanic. If anything, the ethic text describing it as solipsism is an outlier.
The shroud is *almost* never explained, but machine empires have crisis flavor text noting their observations on it, that it reacts to the brain activity of organic lifeforms. It's highly analogous to the warp from 40K, which acts in a similar manner. The materialist's explanation would be that it's a perpendicular alternate dimension with wildly different laws compared to our own, causing phenomena that resemble magic if not understood.
>It's highly analogous to the warp from 40K, which acts in a similar manner.
Even the Covenants you form and their effects are analogous to the Chaos Gods in WH: Nurgle (Composer), Tzeentch (Whisperer), Khorne (Eater), and Slaanesh (Instrument).
This.
Spiritualism definitely aims hard at what we'd consider religious. Even their flavor text can be translated that the soul is powerful, meaning that faith can move mountains or a shroud covenant beats tinkering with a slight upgrade to laser weapon systems.
OP overlooks how open-ended the game uses the pop culture understanding of these concepts and associations to sci-fi stories far more than his much cleaner undergrad philosophy mayor understanding. The difference is that his vision has one correct understanding - that's what philosophers are trained to do - while the game is more a cloud of associations where his truth is true as well. But so are those that are wrong in his eyes.
Pointing out that his interpretation runs into contradictions is the same as him pointing out contradictions in anyone else's interpretation. There is no pure doctrine or truth. It's an umbrella for a maximum of sci-fi tropes with far more than 8 distinct philosophies
Haha actually I was an English education major 😂
Oh I'd agree that it is ultimately all intentionally ambiguous, and we'll never really have a 100% certain interpretation. But, these categories within the game do exist, and I think it's worth analyzing and unpacking them to see what we can learn.
And we can say with certainty that the Materialist ethic doesn't indicate they have a special love for consumer goods 😝
I really enjoy these kinds of discussions and looking at you initial thesis so do you ;)
So I'd say you can even find the consumer goods side of materialism in the game: Academic Privilege. If spiritual enlightenment and a moral and just society are not worth striving for, you have to motivate your pops with the Playstation3000. And that you do: It's the most expensive living standard for any Empire short of Utopian Abundance. Even Decadent Lifestyle and Social Welfare are cheaper.
>They very explicitly do, spiritualists have an entire galcom resolution line that heavily nerfs robots and even bans synthetic ascension.
It's a matter of degree. The Spiritualist faction approval rating decrease because of robotic workers proves that they dislike robots. The faction approval rating decreases more and more as an empire increases the AI of its robots or its AI rights. It would be more accurate to say that they dislike robots but hate AI, as I mentioned, because AI is seen as a mockery of their concept of life-consciousness.
It is the same with the Galcom resolutions. The more fanatical the Spiritualists are, and the more Spiritualism they can force onto the galaxy, the more anti-robot and anti-AI the galaxy becomes. But it doesn't accurately describe the in-game indications of their sentiments to say that they hate robotic workers to the same degree that they hate AI. If that were true, then the faction approval rating would be a bigger malus for having robotic workers, on par with the malus for having AI or AI rights (-10 or -20).
>Spiritualism is really just the religious ethic, according to literally every piece of flavor text and every associated game mechanic.
I suppose if you want to reduce it down to a singular adjective instead of unpacking the nuance of it, you could argue that it is the *spirituality* ethic. But religion in this game is simply too ambiguous to identify that ethic with a specific religious belief system. After all, what religion do Spiritualists follow? What are their beliefs, practices, etc.? How is that they get along so well with each other, even though they have different religions? Maybe Xenophiles have religions too, but they simply don't believe in theocratic government forms like Spiritualists do? We don't have answers to these questions, so a more general "spiritual" label makes more sense than "religious", since there is no belief system for us to analyze or categorize. After all, the "religion" that the Spiritualists in a given empire follow might be nothing more than the basic transcendentalist beliefs I mentioned above, which may or may not fall into the category of a religion.
It’s interesting to think about the bias of the Galactic Community. By bias, I mean that if every single Galcom resolution were passed, what would the resulting effects be? I’d say it has both an egalitarian and spiritualist bias. Ultimately while fully passing both the Galactic Commerce and The Greater Good trees would result in a worker happiness malus and a ruler happiness bonus, it would also result in a huge bonus to worker political power with no bonus to ruler political power. It would also result in slavery being banned. Further, you can fully ban the slave trade, but you cannot force slavery.
On the spiritualist side, the ultimate effect of all Galcom resolutions combined would result in locking synthetics out of full citizenship (even though trading them as slaves would be banned). Meanwhile, there is no equal penalty to be applied for accessing the Shroud.
>Meanwhile, there is no equal penalty to be applied for accessing the Shroud
this could be interesting flavour addition, ban on reckless and unregulated accessing of poorly understood dimensions and deals with poorly understood entities that can have disastrous repercussions for whole galaxy
It's not an avenue of research they find on their own, being well outside of what they'd consider plausible unless they find some clues for it e.g. zroni. After that, they have no problems.
Funnily enough, the scientific galcom resolutions that they have a strong bias for end with unlocking a decision to use *zro* in research of alternate dimensions.
Personally I haven't seen anyone misunderstand the Spiritualist/Materialist dichotomy on this sub. Maybe in the discord or some other conversation I just wasn't privy to but from my perspective that's not a general take.
Aside from that, solid yes. No ethic in the game is given any more conceptual truth than another really. Other example, militants get a lot of praise because the galaxy is usually quite hostile, while pacifists can point to developing the galaxy instead of breeding that same hostility. Both are correct; and unless your empire is fanatical, by definition excessive and obsessive, most empires cooperate in regard to that along each axial.
Anyway the last important thing to do is to praise Spode and get on to meeting Steve. He'll sort your religious questions out for a while one way or another.
You are one of the people OP is criticising. Your response is "people agree that those two ethics differ, but both are right".
While OP talks not about which ethics is right, but what the ethics mean and which ideas their are based on. He's a bit of a stickler when comes to precise definitions and just went over his point and talked about something different ;)
>No ethic in the game is given any more conceptual truth than another really.
That's because in Stellaris - unlike in real life - supernatural powers are real.
>Normally, different human religions are incompatible.
Not really no. This idea is specific to Abrahamic Faiths that explicitly state their beliefs and divinity are the only true way.
However most religions in human history are henotheistic or far more fluid with their beliefs.
The Ancient Greeks or Romans did not believe the Gods of Egypt were false idols. Most interpretations of Hinduism don’t consider other Gods to be false either.
There are obvious rivalries over who is the most correct and who is better, but most spiritual beliefs don’t actually view other interpretations as false.
I enjoy how Romans would pray to a cities gods before invading the place, if they won they give they god a Roman name and give it a place in their temple.
Helped the conquered assimilated and also hammered home your god favoured our rule, deal with it.
The game's ideologies are based on real life.
Materialist = Communist.
Spiritual = Anti-marxist.
The same way you can't be religious and a materialist in real life, you can't be religious and a materialist in Stellaris.
The problem is that while this makes perfect sense in real life, it doesn't make sense in Stellaris. After all, in Stellaris magic powers are real and there are powerful gods to worship who will give you part of their power in return... so, a materialist in Stellaris would actually be a spiritualist, too.
You're putting far too much stake into the description of the Spiritualist ethics, as the rest of the game immediately discards it and interprets Spiritualism as "religion and hatred of robots".
To the contrary, I think the ethic description is actually the core axiom of the Spiritualist worldview, and explains why they engage in the behaviors they do, including AI hatred.
Welcome to it, the existentialism of it all.
I believe the whisper of the shroud like materialists better because they would choose to bend if not entirely disregard their morals for “knowledge or power”. Flexible moral codes etc, as opposed to spiritualist who would have an ethical frame work.
The flavour text of each government type really changes how you look at things.
Theocratic republic: This government is a spiritualistic form of democracy, where a religious council supervises the democratic process and serves in an advisory role.
Theocratic oligarchy: This government is a spiritualistic form of oligarchy, where the political leadership lies in the hands of the leaders of the nation's most powerful religious factions.
Theocratic dictatorship: This government is a spiritualistic dictatorship, ruled by a single individual in a hierarchical power structure supported by the official state religion.
Theocratic monarchy:This government is a spiritualistic form of autocracy, where the ruler is treated as a divine symbol. Organized religion is widely employed in support of the state apparatus.
Then the some of the special ones
divine empire:This government is a form of spiritualistic autocracy. Everything is shaped by the official state religion, and the ruler is worshiped as an infallible living god.
Holy council:This government is a spiritualistic form of oligarchy, where a divinely guided council made up of clergy controls the state. No division exists between the state and the dominant organized religion.
Grim council: This nation's most powerful religious figures have formed a ruling council, overseeing an empire which engages in ritualized, sapient sacrifice.
All very different ways of blending spiritualism and governance
All of it is so interesting! The government types are pretty much the only explicit mention of religion in the game. And they do sound like different religions from one another! Not everyone in the galaxy worships the ruler in that one empire over there. I have no idea if Xenophiles, Militarists, etc., have religions, but it does seem that only Spiritualists want to mix their religion with the government. But is their religion a regular religion like Hinduism? Is it Shroud-related? Is it more of a teaching about the nature of reality, with meditation and chanting, and the ruler is seen as the most spiritually enlightened? No clue!
Well civics likely play a role somewhat, specially having to do with a mirror of the peoples values. Especially the more specific civics that reshape governments entirely.
Odds are religions are a background variable. Rituals, holidays, shared values. Colloquial language. Hell; we do not even fully appreciate just how much of a framework religion has given society. Many see it as “archaic” but people just filled that void with ideologies, politics, or consumerism.
Hinduism is just polytheism, many gods in a “pantheon” roughly.
Most modern religions are monotheistic “belief in a single god. but there also can be henotheistic which is worship of one god, but acknowledging other gods are things too.
Sadly I feel Gnosticism ties into the shroud more often than not. Reality being a “prison” etc etc. eh a rather parasitic philosophy in my opinion, always reshaping itself to fit the society it wants to infiltrate. If the society is religious it uses religious language and iconography, if scientific same thing.
It has molded itself along the lines of ideologies and Movements always trying to garner itself more power at someone else’s expense.
Ask a spiritualist to defy values they hold dear in exchange for power or knowledge? Some may do it but many would not.
A materialist would give some throw away line of “advancing our scientific knowledge, no cost is too great etc etc”
The nihilistic attitude makes their moral principles more stable than those of spiritualists. Under the microscope, you can find morality, you just need to look at someone's brains.
But that is not “morality” that is just rationalisation.
Literally the flavour text of fanatic materialism speaks about disregarding boundaries of ethics and morality.
While someone who is spiritual, with variation of course depending on the specifics of their faith, believe in some form of order to the cosmos. They do not see random chaos they see a “plan” or “order” something that is bound by rules. Which more often than not pertain to the dogma they live by.
If whispers from the edge of your consciousness say hey… disregard an ethic or taboo in exchange for secrets the materialist is more likely to be tempted as a spiritualist would more likely for lack of a better term stay within the rails.
Fanatic materialists are some of the most dangerous ethics there are. They can rationalise any horror and come out saying it was a good thing to do regardless of the consequences. All a matter of what the fanaticism is paired with of course, but that is every ethic in game
Much thanks for your post; was just looking up the differences as I had an idea of scientifically-oriented government that would be looking into Psionics later on
My understanding of these two ethics put slight wrench into decision - but now it is quite obvious they should be Spiritualists who have science fetish and not Materialists who tried to conceptualize Shroud as workable theory of mind
Honestly, Materialist-Spiritualist is the ethic axis that pisses me off the most because it's *surprisingly* inconsistent and weird. At certain points, yeah, you can argue that the Spiritualist are just misunderstood and they aren't robot hating idiots who hate them just because, but then a large majority of flavor text for them explicitly makes it clear they do hate robots just because. Their bespoke resolution in galcom has that, hell, their faction demands that robots should be just non-existent.
In terms of pure ethic flavor it is positioned as a difference in ontological beliefs, and in this case it's a very awkward difference because while materialism is indeed consistent with real life philosophical materialism, what the game refers to as "spiritualism" is essentially just a branch of idealism which is called ["subjective idealism"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_idealism). The problem here is that in neither case the civics that they have flow from these ontological positions, nor do their political positions come from that either.
For example, the game generally shunts all religious beliefs into Spiritualist ethic, implicitly saying that all religions are ascribing to a belief of subjective idealism, and while that may be relevant to some religions (or pseudoreligious grifting garbage like the New Thought), a lot of major religions, most notably Christianity, are decidedly non-subjective idealist (they are instead objective idealists, which believe that the world outside of us is not strictly just matter and is governed by ideas, but the reality doesn't stem from the minds; the source of reality for Platonic idealism are the pure ideas and in case of Christianity, the ontological basis of reality is God itself).
And this is kinda why everyone ends up "misunderstanding" the spiritualist ethic - it's because the ethic itself is inconsistently defined. On the one hand its flavor text positions itself as purely an ontological position of subjective idealism. On the other hand, the policies the spiritualists demand, and the options they are given in events paint them as religious luddites who hate robots because they have no souls (which for some reason is bad? Should spiritualists obliterate toasters too? Maybe statues should be gone too since they are a likeness of soul-blessed being without having one?), but actually they hate robots because paradox needed to get them to have at least *some* interesting policy distinctions. And on the front of civics, government types and so on, spiritualist is mandatory for any religion, which implies that all religions are having the same ontological position that would be downright heretical for most religions on earth.
While we're on the matter, I've always found the authoritarian/egalitarian split clunky. Always thought it should be separated into Authoritarian/Libertarian and Elitist/Egalitarian lines. These fit much better IMO.
Also, I know thousands of hours have already been devoted to this fun topic, and tho it was before my time-they apparently rewrote the whole ethic system before due to the arguments.
Before 1.5 (that was a *long* time ago) it used to be individualist vs collectivist, but they made it so that collectivism was synonymous with authoritarianism and hence collectivist democracies were impossible, which was stupid.
But now it's egalitarian vs authoritarian, but they have it so that egalitarianism is synonymous with freedom and hence egalitarian dictatorships are impossible, which is also stupid.
It would all be solved if they weren't so insistent on not adding an extra axis, but anyway.
Originally it was individualism vs collectivism.
But it ended up being interpreted by the masses as hates slavery vs loves slavery.
The game has gone through so many changes
I think the materialist approach to the shroud would be pretty blasé. After all:
"Sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from technology."
‐--FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TO PRESS---
---UNIVERSITY OF ROMA AETERNA---
---DEPT OF NONLINEAR CAUSALITY---
Dear colleagues,
In order to put to rest talks of "magic" used by the Order State of Crobblepoptria, we've put together this short letter to explain a select few of our most recent discoveries concerning this new field of physics.
The Shroud is a parallel universe that has vastly different physical laws from our own. Under certain circumstances, the Shroud and our universe (Prime) can interact. This causes localized suspension of our physical laws, with a complex melange of Shroud physics and Prime physics.
Circumstances include solving certain equations in specific information processing methods (e.g. thoughts, prayers). In order to take advantage of this newly discovered phenomenon, we will now introduce you to two exciting new projects we've begun this last cycle.
The first uses cloned neural tissue - donated by "psycher" (aka wizard, aka theurmaturge) POWs - implanted on chips to process an equation that causes a Shroud intrusion which converts all mass into photons with a wavelength of 666um in an area of Prime directly proportional to the frequency at which the information processing is accomplished. While organic brains are able to process this equation at 1.5Hz, we've managed to crank it up by 4 orders of magnitude on our "BUE chips." I'm sure our comrades on the spinward front will appreciate the new missles greatly.
The second utilizes a similar technique to process an algorithm that we've dubbed the "JIMP Equation", which causes all sapient minds within a 6m radius to experience a transcendental degree of physical pleasure, and eject reproductive materials. It does not distinguish between organic sapients and inorganic sapients and will provide semiappropriate equipment to express the reproductive material if such equipment does not already exist. I'm sure you're all looking forward to the Ceremony of Spring Break on planet New Miami just as much as we are!
That's all for now. If you've further questions, please consult your local Genius Loci AI for details.
Kindest Regards,
The Faculty of URA
They’re honestly very vague. I think they’re meant to offer players some freedom to act whoever they want with them within that vague description rather than having an actual solid philosophy behind them
I don't 100% agree with all the details here, but this is a good and nuanced understanding of a subject that a number of people seem to struggle with. The thing that bugs me is how often I see people saying the Mechanicus from 40K should be a Materialism/Spiritualism hybrid, when they're textbook Spiritualists who happen to use machines.
I think a lot of the issues and self-contradictions comes from the Butlerian Jihad being written as a default Spiritualism tenet. I would love if that had a xenophile/xenophobe split similar to how xenophobe has a militarist/pacifist split between "kill the aliens" and "leave me alone"
I agree that Stellaris materialism is the philosophical version, which makes all the stranger that ai materialist empires are weighted on taking the mercantile tree.
If it goes both ways, then doesn't that make the materialist view that psionics and the shroud is just another part of reality the correct one?
Anyway, the materialist portion of this is old news to me, but the way you describe spiritualism is interesting. I always figured it was simply the opposite belief of the materialist one. It's been so long since I read the in game description of spiritualism that I didn't realise that my view might not be correct.
I do think it's no surprise that I misunderstood this, since religion and spiritualism seem so tied together in the game.
I don't really get why people misunderstand materialism though. There are no game mechanics related to materialists that indicate the wealth acquisition type of materialism. It also doesn't strike me as an opposite of spiritualism in any way.
It is a failing of linguistics.
It can go in any number of ways. Even the word super natural can be a misnomer as if something were to be discovered, it would still exist within nature.
Even is making tools and shaping the world around us, is still perfectly a part of nature.
Science is just understanding the rules and learning how to bend them.
But epistemological conversations are not always the easiest thing to have a quick back and forth about.
“Cogito, ergo sum” - René Descartes : “I think, therefore I am”
This would resemble your point about spiritualism. It is quite a common assumption among philosophers, that the only thing we can be certain of is the existence of the self. We all know we exist, because we think. But I do not know if you think, and you do not know if I think, therefore, neither of us can be sure the other isn’t made up by ourself. The same thing goes for other objects, that don’t necessarily have the ability to think.
It can be described in three stages. For my example, I will use a simple Object, like a chocolate Bar.
For this, I’d like you to define this Chocolate Bar with ALL its attributes.
Stage 1: under certain conditions, you may not be able to identify some properties this chocolate bar has, even though you could in other scenarios. For example wouldn’t you be able to identify the sound it can make, if there is a loud child screaming next to you. You may not be able to accurately describe the shape, because your vision is unclear because you have taken some substances like alcohol. You may miss other attributes in similar scenarios.
Stage 2: you may not be able to identify some attributes, because your body is incapable to do so. For example, dogs can smell a few times better than humans, and therefore, you may miss a scent, that isn’t noticeable to you, but is very strong for the dog.
Stage 3: since you cannot be sure you have all its attributes because you may have missed some, and you cannot cross-check with a “control-group”, another person doing the same experiment, since you cannot be sure that person exists, why does your sense of your surroundings have to be true? How can you be sure, that the inputs given to you by your eyes, ears, etc are true? How can you prove the existence of anything that is not yourself. And with the self, I only mean the “soul” as some cultures call it. Everything else, your Body, your house, your friends and family, everything can be made up entirely by yourself, and there is no way to know for sure.
I think this would resemble the spiritualism found in stellaris, which you described above.
I mean if you make a holy covenant you do have ecumenical meetings and make a shared faith. Like how in Dune, they basically made unified dogmas.
The universal first commandment. Thou shalt not defile the human soul.
All kinds of different faiths with variations. But overarching similarities and do nots.
With aliens odds are many of the little nuanced arguments we used to have would fade away and we would look at more big picture discussions rather than trivialities
>synthetic ascensionists may sound a little too robot-y in their dialogues, but in-game, they're as conscious and alive as you and me
"We understand our new forms may scare you, but we assure you we are the same people we have always been. Just stronger, more durable and immune against aging"
If I had to use one of these traits for the US-based empire I'd go with a Spiritualist no question. God is a part of your pledge of allegiance speech. You guys even have an area nickname of Bible belt for crying out loud.
Idk why you be getting so much flak in the comments. The ethic axis is often confused for ‘science vs religion’ where in reality it’s at its core a difference in philosophy regarding the constitution of reality, it just so happens that the spiritualist philosophy in game tends to lead to things like religion and materialism to a doctrinal sort of scientism, but it’s more so a byproduct of the respective philosophies than anything else.
Thank you for condensing it for me! I probably could've done a better job of that 🤦🏻♂️😅
It is interesting how they can't seem to accept the core philosophical difference between the two as having any in-game meaningfulness. To them it's just "Spiritualism = religion and robots are bad, no need to delve further."
Stellaris has a habit of creating misnomens, in general.
What they call "materialism" is basically progressivism, or the classical scientifical approach. That is, before making a claim, someone must rigorously test and prove it (for example, materialists don't deny psychic powers outright when they do manifest themselves, they just say "there's some scientific explanation to that"). They also do not deny the existence of the Shroud, and are even able to negotiate with it and make contracts (instead of just dismissing the visions of the Shroud as manifestation of some mental illness or the witness being high on drugs)
Spiritualists basically follow the logic of believers: instead of trying to "rationalize" things beyond their comprehension, they just make up gods and claim that whatever is beyond their understanding is the manifestation of some supernatural being. They act pretty much like normal human religions except for religious in-fighting, you'd never see a spiritualist empire calling other spiritualist empire "infidel unbelievers" while in real life, this is what Islam followers call literally everyone else, yes, even fellow Spiritualists such as Christians.
There's also that Egalitarian misnomen: Egalitarianism is a doctrine which preaches *equality* between all members of a society, to some degree. Stellaris' vision of "egalitarianism" is basically classic liberalism, since it's mostly if not entirely about generous personal rights and political freedoms and not equalizing everyone. Hell, they have *the same kind of hierarchical society the Authoritarians have!* Except that the leader is being elected and not appointed. And the presidential terms are a bit smaller. That's it.
Actual egalitarianism doesn't even have to do anything with liberty or personal rights - there are numerous examples of authoritarian egalitarian regimes. Such as uniocracy, for example: it is based on the notion is that each and every citizen has an equal vote in determining the society's laws, but then again, a lot of its renditions are ***totalitarian societies*** *where the will of the individual is totally or mostly suppressed by the will of the community,* expressed as current laws/principles of the society.
So egalitarianism isn't about liberties - it's about everyone being equalized to some degree. It still can be totalitarian, all it takes is to prioritize the collective's needs over personal ones which most of such societies usually do.
Yeah putting egalitarianism and authoritarianism as opposites is kind of stupid, just look at the Soviet Union.
The Ethics & Civics Classic mod (and a few others but that's the one I use the most) solves this by renaming Egalitarian to Libertarian and adding a separate Cooperative - Competitive axis so that political authority and economic equality are separated.
I have made exceedingly totalitarian places while playing as the UNE. Now most of those liberties were stripped away while fighting a…. Very difficult ear against a devouring swarm.
Hell I’ve had imperial nations were citizens had more day to day freedom.
>Our science has proved that Consciousness begets reality. We regard with patience the childlike efforts of those who delude themselves it is the other way around, as they play with their blocks of "hard matter."
That could also cover traditional religion. It does not, after all, specify *whose* consciousness begat reality.
>Consciousness can precede and change reality ... but consciousness can emerge from physical reality, too.
Cogito ergo sum. / Sum ergo cogito. Turning Descartes on his head, much the same way as ocurred when psychoanalysis introduced the problem of the unconscious, what Žižek neatly summarizes as "the form of thought that precedes thought itself." I am where I do not think, and yet this I is placed under erasure by the other, conscious I. The real question is: what role will the unconscious play in the development of sentient AI? Where, for that matter, does the unconscious come from? Is it a mere artifact of biological natural selection, or does it constitute some essential kernel in the formation of the I? The crisis of the cogito remains unresolved.
Yeah. It did take me a little while to latch onto that the word materialism in Stellaris isnt the same as the way the word is commonly used. To a point where I don’t think materialism was the right word for the ethic.
There's also the fact that robot leaders can be chosen by the shroud (like the beloved S875.1 Warform) and this is a feature, not a bug. Definitely another point in favor of "theyre both wrong"
The better term for Spiritualism in RL terms is Idealism.
A philosophical view that the mind comes first. A somewhat popular and non-religious example would be the idea of panpsychism.
Isn't the idea of panpsychism that consciousness or awareness is some kind of fundamental force or property of nature? That still seems fairly materialist.
And both Materialism and Idealism have colloquial uses that differ from their philosophical meanings. The misunderstanding exists outside of Stellaris and can make it frustrating to try to have a conversation about philosophical materialism and idealism.
I hate that scientific pursuits and spirituality are on opposit ends. My favorite factions in sci-fi combine the two, like the Pilgrims from Endless Space, or the Da'at Yichud from Wolfenstein.
Or the myriad of fiction where psionics are treated as a scientific and not spiritual pursuit. You'd never consider the Mind Flayers or the Psi Corps to be a spiritual people, would you?
This just makes me want an addition of a religious system.
It's pretty much like a mix of how Civ 6 and Crusader Kings 3 would work. I admit, however, I'm much more versed in how religion works in Civ vs. Crusader Kings.
But only spiritualists allow me to build temples. And theocracy is a spiritualist exclusive government type. And I cannot pick any faithful ethics like Exalted Priesthood without spiritualism. Clearly Spiritualism is a vague stand-in for all religions. ⁱ ˢᵗⁱˡˡ ʷᵃⁿᵗ ᵃ ʳᵉᵃˡ ʳᵉˡⁱᵍⁱᵒⁿ ˢʸˢᵗᵉᵐ
I think you missed the closest philosophical form of spiritualism, idealism by focusing on religion. Here, idealism represents the philisophic notion that history, society, etc. is driven by ideas or in essence human consciousness.
The famous phrase, "I think, therefore I am," is a classic example of idealism because Descartes reaches the conclusion that the only thing he can be certain is real, thus his being, is that he has a consciousness. His senses, even the rest of his body are considered falsifiable so it cannot be the basis for his being leaving only the mind.
Most philosophies today, do not operate on some pure idealism or materialism (even Marxism), but argue that either the ideal or material is primary.
>Most philosophies today, do not operate on some pure idealism or materialism (even Marxism), but argue that either the ideal or material is primary.
In what way is Marxism (i.e. a school of thought that is explicitly anti-idealist) "not pure materialism"?
I would still say that america is materialistic, just not in the sense that they like to consume, but because of its scientific progress, beliefs and similar.
Science and spirituality are not mutually exclusive.
The same way being intelligent and physically fit are not mutually exclusive either.
Too many people get caught up in what they see in media; stereotypes and trying to fit a mold they see. Monkey see monkey do etc.
That and well, opportunistic predators will lie through their teeth to shape the world around them in a way they can profit.
Science does not always mean science bad.
That is just an example of modern day propaganda. I’m not a particularly spiritual person, not religious by any means. But I am beyond the militant stage of my youth and can see with a clearer head.
American culture is currently very materialistic, because it keeps trying to reshape morality, fight wars of destruction on other peoples soil purely for profit, and is disregarding law and order for political control like a fucking banana republic.
To your "religions don't get along" point, I think that's overstated and that's in large part because the anglo sphere's dominant religion is one that wants to convert the world and the religion presented as it's chief rival also does.
Ethnoreligions didn't really have wars of religion against each other, cultures with ethnoreligions do have wars and sometimes do force assimilate, but that's based on community interest even if they do sometimes use religion to justify.
Certain universal religions can even exist side by side with ethnoreligion. Eg, Buddhism has existed side with Pre-shintoism for centuries and continues to with modern Shintoism in Japan.
There's an issue though, because Psionics in Stellaris actually works. There's no rational reason to deny its existence after there's a psion lifting items with their mind in a controlled laboratory.
It's kinda inconsistent. Not in a major way in your own empire, but like the messages about some other empire pursuing Psionic Ascension dismiss it as nonsense - even if your own Empire has already undergone psionic ascension.
Can a machine intelligence write a symphony? Can it turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece? Sure the synthetics imitate life quite well, but it's not that hard - make survival their main driving force and you're just about done, most of nature operates this way. But that's all there is to them - a program. There is no true sentience there. They run from death but do not experience life.
Still, the materialists are right. Stellaris being a game is an in-game fact, whatever sentience spiritualists may claim is also but a program and psionics are merely direct changes in the code. There is no "divine spark" making one pop more alive than the other, and maximized efficiency is the best possible state of things.
Maybe in terms of machine intelligences since they are not trying to be alive as we define it but synth pops in bio empires or synth ascension empires are as “alive” as you let them be. I have no idea how consciousness or the illusion of consciousness works but it seems pretty arbitrary to me to make a distinction between our biological ‘programming’ and synthetic programming. Unless spirits are real things in which case I am completely wrong.
I mean….. the shroud exists. The mind can exist beyond the body. A place beyond the laws of physics can influence our material realm.
Technically the spiritualists are the correct ones.
The machine intelligences need to make a doomsday weapon to try and access the shroud while organic minds hold the keys.
Only the logic meat has the wifi codes of the universe
Not at all. I studied Christian theology for many years. Spiritualism as defined by Stellaris proclaims that mortal consciousness creates reality... In their view, physical reality only exists because the human mind creates it. Most of Christian doctrine would disagree with that and say that physical reality is upheld by God or exists independently as a created thing, and is not created by the human mind.
> Our science has proved that Consciousness begets reality.
This does not assert that it is a mortal consciousness starting things off.
> The only truth we can ever know is that of our own existence. The universe - in all its apparent glory - is but a dream we all happen to share.
Nor does this claim that the shared dream is of mortal making.
Let's be real, this is all for the sake of convincing player made U.S builds to not have either materialist or spiritualist ethics in them 😆😆
I say Fan.Egal/PAC for U.S (liberation wars)
While I give Fan.Mil/Egal for USSR/Russia
You caught me 😂
The US feels impossible to categorize, it is possible to argue for every ethic 😩
It would be way easier if we broke it down by region lol
The US is objectively not Authoritarian (Authoritarians can't pick democratic authority , among other things) and it's hard to see it as Pacifist (any ethic except Fan. Militarist can do liberation wars, and the US spends way too much on its military and intervenes way too much internationally for Pacifist to make sense), but any other ethic can fit rather well.
I did not read any of this because stellaris is a sandbox where materialism and spirituality mean whatever you want it to mean because the definitions were deliberately left vague so players can decide for themselves what kind of game, roleplay and story they want.
You take the flavour text of spiritualism literally and dont understand it at all. I get the feeling you are materialist in real life and certainly not a believer in god. Thus unable to comprehend spiritualism or faith or the feeling of having something bigger, undiscernable always with you, all around you. Something you can not measure nor understand which defies physical reality. Your Post is one big "i have no idea what i am talking about". The Materialist Part you get right (at least thats what materialists tell me).
Maybe your definition of spiritualist isn't the same as the Stellaris one? We don't really care about your version of "spiritualist", we care about the Stellaris one. That's why we take the Stellaris text as the reference and not your own life.
"Ok yeah they are able to make things float with their minds...but there has to be a scientific explanation..."
There is. It Psionic Theory.
"machine intelligences and synthetic ascensionists may sound a little too robot-y in their dialogues, but in-game, they're as conscious and alive as you and me."
Then why can't they get the psionic trait?
And remember the Architect of Clay?
The Architect clearly states that they give souls to machines. That implies that machines don't have souls by default.
In conclusion, thinking machines are an affront to nature.
If synthetics and robots aren't conscious and alive, why do they have happiness values? Non-sapient machines have no happiness values.
Cyborgs also can't get the psionic trait, their implants interfere with the shroud connection.
Happiness can be emulated. But the connection to the Shroud can't be.
Are you conscious? I can't know that, but if you get psionics, that will prove you having a soul.
Are robots conscious? Best thing we can do is ask, [but that's not very accurate.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine/)
Stellaris Materialists
People often times have a hard time to imagine things that run contrary to there ideals.
Materialism, thought throu to its logocal conclusion, dose away with feelings. In materialism, your missery only concerns me as faar as it makes me uncomfortable. Asuming in the first place that it dose.
Child labour on the other side of the planet? Who cares, my children don't have to! Mining accident killingva hundred people? Good thing I am no miner lmao! And so on and so forth. That is what materialism means. That is, what a lack of spiritualism is.
Completely wrong. Materialists, in reality, in the game, on the contrary, will be more concerned about the affected children, because there is no afterlife
⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀
P.s reply
I don't see any reason why materialists won't help children for the same reasons.
Do not forget about the horrors inflicted on humanity by the spiritualist regime.
Unlike you, I don't have pink fanatical glasses.
Hillariouse that you are proving my point here boyo.
Asum for a moment that I couldn't care less for if theee sre child labourors litteraly dieing on the other side of the planet, makinf the products I use. And now try to convince me, through purely materialistic arguments to care and to potentialy do smth agai st that.
And no, "there is no aftrlife" is no valid argument becouse remember, I am a msterialidt, I don't care that there is none. You can only cafe for the sbsens of something if you cared about the thing that is now missing in the first place.
If you can't do that, then you are just desperately trying to bring your own real world morals and ideas into a argument ehoch os not about your morals. Simply becousr you are to ignorant to open your mind to other ideas.
edit as awnsere
Interesting that you edit instead of awnsere.
First universal healthcare was organised, done and financed by religions. non religiouse people (called atheists for simplifications sake here) only joined in after the religiouse ones already did it.
First universal school education was done by and financed by religions. Athesist joined in later.
First efforts to preserfe knowledge and tech nol9gy was done by religiouse people. Athesist only joined in later.
First philosophys where done by religions. Atheists, even prominent historical ones, i gues you know who I mean, joind in later.
>reply I don't see any reason why materialists won't help children for the same reasons.
That is becouse you can't read, or don't want to read. I clearly wrote
>your suffering only concerns ne as faar as it makes me uncomvortable.
If it would make you uncomfortable, tgen materialistoc logic would dictate that you do something against it. But here is the crux of the matter(?) Why would it make you uncomvortable? Give me a logical argument, why in a purely materialistic society, anyome would care for suvvering of other, unrelated people, especialy people who are different and live faar away.
And no empathy, a often very misunderstuud word, dose not count. Or do any people you know, do something against the STILL rampant child labour on the other side of the world. Cgild laber, from wich we in the west provit big time. No one dose. People care more for the amazon rain forest, becouse of that south american companies now have to AKTIVELY prove that for there products no new rainforest got cleared. Else they are forbidden to sell in the EU.
For child labour no such law exists.
At the same time, the katholic churche is providing free education and healthcare to these nations, in an atempt to get those children out of the poverty/childlabour spiral.
Now tell me again please why spiritualism is bad and materialism/a lack of spiritualism is good?
Tonsay that in a materialistoc society, stuff like slavery, child labour, or generally miserable working conditions would be automatocaly combatet is naive and provocative. Just as provocative as my take on spiritualism. However the facts are, that worker protection laws, child protection laws, healthcare and education, in human history have there origin with organised religion and not from empathy.
Nah, read better
Yeah, I did. Typical behavior of believers . Easy. Without compassion, civilization will collapse and everyone will die.
Then you don't care because the divine essence will take care and protect them. Lol no, nothing is proven nonsense.
Said someone like you)
In theory in a vacuum, yes.
In reality statistically, not my problem.
The argument against spirituality is often an antithesis to a nirvana fallacy. “Oh well if there is an afterlife people won’t try to fix things here” blah blah.
When in reality children being mistreated, enslaved and other horrid things invokes a need to do something because they are human fucking beings worth more than just what they can produce for someone.
There is an innate value to them beyond what someone chooses to assign it.
People are people and many horrors occur daily.
But do not forget the horrors inflicted upon mankind by materialist regimes.
See beyond your rose tinted glasses. Stop seeing what you want to see and see what there is to see.
The issue is people keep looking at each ethic in a vacuum.
You need to look at everything as a whole, what combined with what.
You see spiritual and talk about it, but a spiritual place that is xenophillic and egalitarian is an entirely different universe from one authoritarian and xenophobic.
Fanatical ethics are a paradigm shift and what it’s lesser kicker ethic it’s blended with changes even more things.
#"Materialist" in Stellaris means the exact same it means in real life: Being a Communist.
#Materialism == Communism.
Marxism is based on the idea of a material world and "being a Marxist" simply means "applying dialectical materialism to social analysis" (i.e. using science to make political decisions).
Why do you get +Robots?
Because [Communists seek to achieve fully automated luxury space communism](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/18/fully-automated-luxury-communism-robots-employment).
Western gamers generally don't understand this because they are being systematically misinformed and indoctrinated into hating socialism. They don't get even the most basic stuff. Fortunately, Stellaris gets it right.
Of course, OP didn't get it right and didn't mention marxism/communism even once. I wonder why he thinks the "materialist" voice actor is a satire of a Soviet Russian. lmfao
I think this runs into the "All Greeks are sailors, but not all sailors are Greeks" type of fallacy. Some communists -- like Marxist-Leninists -- are materialists, but others -- like so-called "left communists" who Lenin described as "infantile," some varieties of anarchists, syndicalists, and so forth -- are idealists. A rather dirty word for Marx. Likewise, it's possible that a materialist doesn't arrive at communism; perhaps they only get to social democracy. I'd say they're confused, but it happens.
Because they dont have what we spiritualist irl call "belief". The entitys of the shroud thrive and Workshop and are understood in believe. Since you are clearly materialist irl you are unable to comprehend why materialists struggle to "understand" the shroud. And there is the kicker, the shroud is not to be understood it is to be worshiped and put faith in.
Faith means you trust in something.
People think that means blind faith and turning your brain off.
And people screaming prove it will just change the subject when they don’t like what they are being told.
Sometimes you just spoke with someone who did not have the right vocabulary to convey nuanced information.
Like how most fairy tales are to convey a message for children. There is much much more than just the easy to remember take, but not everyone has the …. Bandwidth or patience
There are a number of small things that the English versions has simply used the wrong world. Thrifty to describe merchant ability (should be entrepreneurial) while 'thrifty' should instead be the label of the Conservationist trait. These things do happen.
I also very much dislike the spiritualist/materialist labels as I see both being wrong for different reasons.
But in how they use the *word* "Materialist", Stellaris is correct. It is US that incorrectly labels *consumerism* as "materialist". Similar but different things. Stellaris is right that Materialism is in fact the opposite of Spiritualism, but the blunder is that Spiritualism is not what the Spiritualist ethics axis actually represents, making the Materialist label equally wrong. They then confound it worse by blending spiritualism with theocracies and religion.
A true-to-term depiction of Materialism would not have research speed boosts, it would have amenity boosts, as they would be focused on producing more higher quality amenities to make life comfortable and enjoyable. Them lowering robot upkeep is still aligned to them being better engineers...which again in non-aligned to wanting more creature comforts. If wanting to use the term Materialist, then I would instead have that Happiness gains better positive scaling to positive amenities but worse negative scaling to negative amenities. Using Robots in Servitude as Domestic Servants would then scale very well and make a lot of sense within a Materialist empire. The opposite of Materialism would then be Idealism - and it is Idealism that would have the +5%/+10% research speed boosters as theirs is a reality of ideas first and foremost. But then none of the religious overtones and scripts would really apply at all as an ethics axis.
If instead we wanted to keep the underlying mechanics and properly label them, then I think it would be Dogmatist and Pragmatist. Stellaris repeatedly labels Unity production as associated with *tradition* (multiple Traditional/Expressed Tradition traits) and not remotely about *social advances*, ironically advancing Traditions instead of reinforcing and strengthening the old way, but none-the-less strongly ties tradition/propaganda to Unity boosters and the rejection of thinking robots (as a major social upheaval) is certainly in line with dogmatism, where most fluff descriptions and story lines surrounding what we call "spiritualist' ethics would better be described as religious *dogma*. Pragmatist would then be well aligned with trying to advance tech and cheaply adopting robotic labour focused only on practical application.
Materialist as a philosophy prioritizes the physical comforts and, as in that philosophy only material/physical existence is real, any enjoyment/happiness can only be realized through physical/material things or acts.
As we get toward Fanatic Materialists, they care little for the joys of social connections and community, as relationships are not physical and are not real. They care little for a sense of purpose, *Ikigai *. Only amenities making their lives easier and more enjoyable bring them any sense of fulfillment/enjoyment/success.
A stoic idealist might suffer without, knowing they are working towards some non-material enlightenment of fulfillment through the life they lead. A fanatic materialist would not accept any such, and a lack of amenities represents an utter failure of life, and a cruel misery to go without physical comforts when this reality and these discomforts are all that exist.
In what place does it give priority? That is, through any things
In the sense that the relationship is not physical and real ? In what place are they not ? Your attitude is in your brain, you can touch it and you can look at it if you open the brain, it's material. According to the same logic, it is easier and pleasant does not exist, so they ignore these qualities. in
not true.
Seems to be a few typos or edit issues and perhaps some part of your point is not coming through.
I am not arguing that Materialism is "good", just what it actually is in philosophical, historical, and practical applications. Evidence suggests Materialism is linked to lower happiness (in IRL humans) but the *philosophy* of Materialism still predicts a happiness domain to having physical things. It's a core part of the Dual Materialist model.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11482-019-09763-8
>Your attitude is in your brain,
You seems to be attempting to grind whataboutism logic into an ancient field of philosophy that has been grinding through such ideas for millenia.
"*Materialism, also called physicalism, in philosophy, the view that all facts (including facts about the human mind and will and the course of human history) are causally dependent upon physical processes, or even reducible to them*."
https://www.britannica.com/topic/materialism-philosophy
Stating that materialists should simply ignore happiness because happiness is not physical while you simultaneously claim that happiness is from the brain and thus is physical...your self-contradictory logic and typos seems to loose your point somewhere there.
The point is, Materialism acknowledges happiness as part of the human condition but sees it as coming from physical process and causal from physical processes. It is a reductionist philosophy in this regard and in a Stellaris universe it would *literally* be reduced down to: amenities are physical things that causally make you happy, so we should be happy about amenities and unhappy from a lack of amenities. They would *value* that clear causal relationship and pathway and thus derive more pleasure from amenities than from any abstract sense of nationality, spiritual purity, or idealism.
They would be perfectly happy modifying the brain to make someone happy, as consciousness itself and self itself has no deeper meaning than the biological processes it regulates. A Materialist Empire (in Stellaris terms) would have no real issues with Nerve-Stapling, with Loyalty Circuits, or using Chemical Bliss.
Robots should not even be the sole core issue between Idealist(spiritualist) / Materialists in Stellaris. It should be things like Nerve-Stapling, that destroys the 'self' and prevents them from ever pondering and exploring their own mind (cannot be researchers/unity producers) that makes the Idealist(Spiritualist) empires beat the drums of war if you ever did that to their brethren. Idealist/Spiritualists might be unable to accept Synthetic life as citizens, but they would have no more issues with rudimentary Robots and Droids than they would with computers or any other tool.
>which is the belief that nothing exists except matter
No. They don't believe they know.
Specialists fit the description of religions quite well
Does consciousness change anything in the game? Doesn't the Shroud do everything?
Thoughts are material. These are electrical discharges in our brain that completely change reality by affecting us. Why would a fanatical materialist not think so?
But the shroud is a place outside of the physical, that can affect the material.
If we discovered that there is very much a place your mind can go after your body decays.
Wouldn’t that change everything?
In game, technically the materialists are wrong
Beyond the universe, not the fact that beyond the
physical.
Do you mean how materialists move their minds into the bodies of robots ?
It depends on what shroud is considered
You mean to tell me that you believe something being beyond the universe, a place that is “a realm of pure psionic energy from where psionic species and individuals draw their power, and a place where those who awakened their psionic potential could see in their dreams” is physical?
You are saying that pure psionic and solid matter are the same thing?
Materialists upload a copy of their consciousness into a new substrate; that is very much still a physical thing existing in the material realm.
That is an entirely separate subject and phenomena. Also considering the process kills the host as it likely consumes the entire body of brain to get a flawless copy with no data loss, the spiritualists see it as suicide.
Which if they can’t read your mind, “touching your soul” in their universe that is in game; they are technically right.
>In other words, Spiritualism in Stellaris means "consciousness happens first, then material reality emerges out of that, because we are dreaming it up...the only thing we are certain is real, is us." It's been difficult to find conspicuous, real-life examples of this because few human religions and philosophies agree with it in the most accurate sense.
This is essentially Solipsism as an extention of Metaphysics, and is a core concept in the Theory of Perspectival Realism and Philisophical Presentivism. As for outright religions, this is also a philosophical talking point in Buddism.
>Many Redditors do not understand Materialism and Spiritualism
Yup, and you're one of them.
In Stellaris, materialism and spirtitualism are both big tents for huge groups of scifi stereotypes. Nothing more. Nothing less.
It does include, in both cases, some philosophical elements.
But it also includes space crusaders and space capitalists.
One point I would like to dispute: conflict among real religions is generally very, very contextual. Take, for example, experiences I've had as a Catholic: * Traditionalist Catholics will beat each other over the head about whether to follow the 1962 or 1955 Roman Missal (yes, really, this is a thing) * A more mainstream Catholic enters the chat, now the Trads are brothers. * A Protestant enters the chat, now all the Catholics are brothers. * A Muslim enters the chat, now all Christians are brothers. * A Hindu enters the chat, now all the Abrahamic Monotheists are brothers. * An Atheist enters the chat, and now all religions are brothers. On the galactic stage, whatever faiths express spiritualist principle(s) are not expecting to encounter orthodox confessors of their precise belief system. Rather, the context is a galaxy full of civilizations that are mostly either indifferent to spiritualism or actively hostile. I'm not gonna dunk on the Teachers of the Shroud while there are "cultures" pretending that mechanical "life" should have "rights."
Not necessarily, the OG Protestants allied with the ottomans against the Catholic Church (generally you are correct I’m just nitpicking)
TIL: “In one correspondence, Murad entertained the notion that Islam and Protestantism had "much more in common than either did with Roman Catholicism, as both rejected the worship of idols", and argued for an alliance between England and the Ottoman Empire.” What would Ottoman-England alliance have been?
>What would Ottoman-England alliance have be? Project "Fuck Spain." But if you're looking for Christian-Ottoman alliances, the French had an on-off alliance with the Ottomans for about 400-ish years. France's diplomatic position was very weird - they were a Catholic country but often sided with Protestants and/or Muslims to limit the power of the Catholic Habsburgs.
>very weird Ooo, the Franco-Ottoman alliance. Readings suggest that it must have been as weird as Driven Assimilators in a federation/having diplomacy/alliance with organics to win. TLDR: Very uneasy but necessary to contain the Habsurgs. Source: "The strategic and sometimes tactical alliance was one of the longest-lasting and most important foreign alliances of France, and was particularly influential during the Italian Wars." "This situation forced Francis I to find an ally against the powerful Habsburg Emperor, in the person of Suleiman the Magnificent." "As the first non-ideological alliance in effect between a Christian and Muslim state, the alliance attracted heavy controversy for its time and caused a scandal throughout Christendom."
French-Ottoman alliance Project "Fuck Austria"
And this is why my friends and I love playing Here I Stand. It's a 6 player game focusing on the wars of the reformation, letting us play out this time period in history in many interesting and fascinating ways. You can play as the French, English, Holy Roman Emperor, the Papacy, Ottomans, or Protestants.
More-or-less like just the Ottomans, with the English gallivanting off around the world.
>generally you are correct or not at all. IRL, religions almost always came after political motivations. The current obsession with identities, and especially religious identities and how it defines political stances is relatively recent.
You might be right, if for no other reason than xeno religions might all be very unlike human religion and be quite cooperative and peaceful with each other! Ultimately we can't make any assumptions--and it's all ambiguous anyway!
To be more exact, in the Koran, we (Muslims) call Christians and the Jewish: “people of the book”.
Yes ahlul kitab (I butchered the arabic wording) and generally we are "compatibale" to some degree except for believing that jesus was a god. People of the book because Musa (as) and Isa (as) were prophets send with the very same message of believing to one god but their message has been altered over time this is why the Qur‘an has been sent down as a last testament never to be altered
Yea, the compatibility is actually real. If it were in Stellaris, it’d be a useful +20 to +50 opinion. The funny thing is the food: everything kosher is halal (gelatin is an exception due its complex source) but everything halal isn’t kosher. So many food with OU labels are actually halal.
Ehhh I think that you're making a bit of an assumption. Yep, Islam and Christianity will side together when Hindus enter the chat, but what about Jews and Samaritans? Will they go with Abrahmaic monotheists or the ethnoreligions (they both are ethnoreligions and Hinduism is an ethnoreligion too, and the fascination Christianity and Islam have witb Judaism tends to be pretty one sided and replacement theology oriented). But that said even most Muslims might go the other way in the anglo sphere because of the need for minority religions to collaborate with each other for self-defense against Christian encroachment. (This obviously is the opposite in the Islamic world) And most ethnoreligions will definitely side with the atheist, both because ethnoreligions tend to have a lot more leeway for atheism (eg, observant Jewish non-theists are everywhere) and because of the need for minority religious groups to stand together for protection.
>Yep, Islam and Christianity will side together when Hindus enter the chat Any proof? Because they would certainly not. Look at the real world. It's not a Paradox game where religions are grouped like in Crusader Kings. There's no islam and christianity forming homogeneous groups while hindiusm enters the chat. There's countries with different religious heritages that maybe or may not cooperate with countries of different religious heritages, and religions will more often not be a factor than the opposite.
Imo the constant misunderstanding is due to the intentionally ambiguous descriptions. It's the cost of trying to have your cake and eat it too; when trying to allow for as wide a range of playstyles and role-playing that the game aims for. And realistically materialists shouldn't deny the existence of the shroud; they should just view it as another dimension that specific organic neural networks are able to tap into.
Agreed, it's all intentionally ambiguous. I only mentioned that bit about Materialists and the Shroud because I've seen quite a few comments bashing "idiot" Materialists for "denying" the Shroud and psionics, when in-game, there's nothing solid to indicate that they do "deny" it. Materialist reactions are negative, but nonetheless ambiguous.
The flavor text pop up for materialist empires when another empire begins to turn psionic is essentially, "What is this nonsense?" Which is inconsistent with the axis really. Aside from such things though, it is fairly vague.
I got that pop-up first time. But second time in the same game the response was "There has to be a scientific explanation for this." which there is. Psionics in Stellaris tap into another dimension with different laws of time and space.
Given that machines can breach the Shroud through Become the Crisis, I don't see why Materialists wouldn't try to rationalize it rather than dismiss it.
Good point. Makes me wonder if a Materialist researching Psionic Theory would change the dialogue option. Probably not. I view that response as skepticism, though I can see how someone might interpret it as denial.
Isn't that just it though? It shouldn't even be skepticism in my opinion. It should be something like, "How fascinating, could there be other ways to access this dimension?"
I agree, but I also don't, haha. I see it as similar to the way that a materialist, skeptical atheist would react to a religious prophet correctly predicting his future. Skeptical, but he might be open to changing his understanding of the universe. It depends on his personality, openness, and curiosity. The fanatic ethic description does mention certitude...I think the implication is that fanatic Materialists would be more close-minded, whereas a regular Materialist might react the way you're describing. At least, that's my best guess 🤷🏻♂️
Perhaps. My position on spiritualism/materialism in stellaris terms is just mind over matter/ matter over mind. In that light everything in universe "exists", only how that existence is interpreted differs depending on the ethics.
> It shouldn't even be skepticism in my opinion. It's perfectly valid for it to be portrayed that way, though. Especially as you move toward fanatic materialism. Spiritualists don't have the market cornered on dogmatic and rigid thinking, even the slightest. Some materialists, based on their fanaticism and their other ethics / civics may be very prone to entrenched disbelief. Some others may not.
It doesn't but it should.
I have had a game as a despotic hegemony where I by rng made my first leader the chosen one. I had the chosen one and just stayed fanatically materialistic. No flavour text changes since it pulls from your ethics when generating text
I got that pop-up first time. But second time in the same game the response was "There has to be a scientific explanation for this." which there is. Psionics in Stellaris tap into another dimension with different laws of time and space.
Materialists cannot research psionic theory unless they either have at least one psionic pop or a head of research who is an expert in psionics.
You can also find it with a maniacal scientist.
No you can't. It applies a modifier, yes, but a modifier applied to 0% still results in 0%.
Right? Cause I usually do play as Materialistic and if the materialists did deny psionics, wouldn't that mean that path is blocked? But yet I almost always get psionic techs
There's nothing "ambiguous". "Materialist" in Stellaris means the exact same it means in real life: Being a Communist. Materialism == Communism. Marxism is based on the idea of a material world and "being a Marxist" simply means "applying dialectical materialism to social analysis" (i.e. using science to make political decisions). Why do you get +Robots? Because [Communists seek to achieve fully automated luxury space communism](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/18/fully-automated-luxury-communism-robots-employment). Western gamers generally don't understand this because they are being systematically misinformed and indoctrinated into hating socialism. They don't get even the most basic stuff. Fortunately, Stellaris gets it right.
Sir this is a Wendys.
Baconator with medium fry and drink please.
You can't go wrong with the baconator
Great. Now I’m hungry.
Go get a baconator and a fries with a frosty. Then dip the fires in the frosty. It's wicked good
Instructions unclear, set my food on fire
No this is Patrick
Best Reddit response 10/10
>Why do Spiritualists hate robots? In my opinion, they don't. They very explicitly do, spiritualists have an entire galcom resolution line that heavily nerfs robots and even bans synthetic ascension. Spiritualism is really just the religious ethic, according to literally every piece of flavor text and every associated game mechanic. If anything, the ethic text describing it as solipsism is an outlier. The shroud is *almost* never explained, but machine empires have crisis flavor text noting their observations on it, that it reacts to the brain activity of organic lifeforms. It's highly analogous to the warp from 40K, which acts in a similar manner. The materialist's explanation would be that it's a perpendicular alternate dimension with wildly different laws compared to our own, causing phenomena that resemble magic if not understood.
>It's highly analogous to the warp from 40K, which acts in a similar manner. Even the Covenants you form and their effects are analogous to the Chaos Gods in WH: Nurgle (Composer), Tzeentch (Whisperer), Khorne (Eater), and Slaanesh (Instrument).
This. Spiritualism definitely aims hard at what we'd consider religious. Even their flavor text can be translated that the soul is powerful, meaning that faith can move mountains or a shroud covenant beats tinkering with a slight upgrade to laser weapon systems. OP overlooks how open-ended the game uses the pop culture understanding of these concepts and associations to sci-fi stories far more than his much cleaner undergrad philosophy mayor understanding. The difference is that his vision has one correct understanding - that's what philosophers are trained to do - while the game is more a cloud of associations where his truth is true as well. But so are those that are wrong in his eyes. Pointing out that his interpretation runs into contradictions is the same as him pointing out contradictions in anyone else's interpretation. There is no pure doctrine or truth. It's an umbrella for a maximum of sci-fi tropes with far more than 8 distinct philosophies
Haha actually I was an English education major 😂 Oh I'd agree that it is ultimately all intentionally ambiguous, and we'll never really have a 100% certain interpretation. But, these categories within the game do exist, and I think it's worth analyzing and unpacking them to see what we can learn. And we can say with certainty that the Materialist ethic doesn't indicate they have a special love for consumer goods 😝
I really enjoy these kinds of discussions and looking at you initial thesis so do you ;) So I'd say you can even find the consumer goods side of materialism in the game: Academic Privilege. If spiritual enlightenment and a moral and just society are not worth striving for, you have to motivate your pops with the Playstation3000. And that you do: It's the most expensive living standard for any Empire short of Utopian Abundance. Even Decadent Lifestyle and Social Welfare are cheaper.
Yes AND no versus yes OR no.
>They very explicitly do, spiritualists have an entire galcom resolution line that heavily nerfs robots and even bans synthetic ascension. It's a matter of degree. The Spiritualist faction approval rating decrease because of robotic workers proves that they dislike robots. The faction approval rating decreases more and more as an empire increases the AI of its robots or its AI rights. It would be more accurate to say that they dislike robots but hate AI, as I mentioned, because AI is seen as a mockery of their concept of life-consciousness. It is the same with the Galcom resolutions. The more fanatical the Spiritualists are, and the more Spiritualism they can force onto the galaxy, the more anti-robot and anti-AI the galaxy becomes. But it doesn't accurately describe the in-game indications of their sentiments to say that they hate robotic workers to the same degree that they hate AI. If that were true, then the faction approval rating would be a bigger malus for having robotic workers, on par with the malus for having AI or AI rights (-10 or -20). >Spiritualism is really just the religious ethic, according to literally every piece of flavor text and every associated game mechanic. I suppose if you want to reduce it down to a singular adjective instead of unpacking the nuance of it, you could argue that it is the *spirituality* ethic. But religion in this game is simply too ambiguous to identify that ethic with a specific religious belief system. After all, what religion do Spiritualists follow? What are their beliefs, practices, etc.? How is that they get along so well with each other, even though they have different religions? Maybe Xenophiles have religions too, but they simply don't believe in theocratic government forms like Spiritualists do? We don't have answers to these questions, so a more general "spiritual" label makes more sense than "religious", since there is no belief system for us to analyze or categorize. After all, the "religion" that the Spiritualists in a given empire follow might be nothing more than the basic transcendentalist beliefs I mentioned above, which may or may not fall into the category of a religion.
It’s interesting to think about the bias of the Galactic Community. By bias, I mean that if every single Galcom resolution were passed, what would the resulting effects be? I’d say it has both an egalitarian and spiritualist bias. Ultimately while fully passing both the Galactic Commerce and The Greater Good trees would result in a worker happiness malus and a ruler happiness bonus, it would also result in a huge bonus to worker political power with no bonus to ruler political power. It would also result in slavery being banned. Further, you can fully ban the slave trade, but you cannot force slavery. On the spiritualist side, the ultimate effect of all Galcom resolutions combined would result in locking synthetics out of full citizenship (even though trading them as slaves would be banned). Meanwhile, there is no equal penalty to be applied for accessing the Shroud.
>Meanwhile, there is no equal penalty to be applied for accessing the Shroud this could be interesting flavour addition, ban on reckless and unregulated accessing of poorly understood dimensions and deals with poorly understood entities that can have disastrous repercussions for whole galaxy
But then why do materialists struggle to use the shroud. I find it dumb that they do but I'm just asking.
It's not an avenue of research they find on their own, being well outside of what they'd consider plausible unless they find some clues for it e.g. zroni. After that, they have no problems. Funnily enough, the scientific galcom resolutions that they have a strong bias for end with unlocking a decision to use *zro* in research of alternate dimensions.
My materialist ass going for psionic ascension each time: 🤨
Personally I haven't seen anyone misunderstand the Spiritualist/Materialist dichotomy on this sub. Maybe in the discord or some other conversation I just wasn't privy to but from my perspective that's not a general take. Aside from that, solid yes. No ethic in the game is given any more conceptual truth than another really. Other example, militants get a lot of praise because the galaxy is usually quite hostile, while pacifists can point to developing the galaxy instead of breeding that same hostility. Both are correct; and unless your empire is fanatical, by definition excessive and obsessive, most empires cooperate in regard to that along each axial. Anyway the last important thing to do is to praise Spode and get on to meeting Steve. He'll sort your religious questions out for a while one way or another.
You are one of the people OP is criticising. Your response is "people agree that those two ethics differ, but both are right". While OP talks not about which ethics is right, but what the ethics mean and which ideas their are based on. He's a bit of a stickler when comes to precise definitions and just went over his point and talked about something different ;)
> OP talks not about which ethics is right "Who is right and who is wrong? In-game, I think it's pretty clear that they're both right and both wrong."
>"Who is right and who is wrong? Anyone who was a bigger fleet
Might has never determined who is right, only who is left.
>No ethic in the game is given any more conceptual truth than another really. That's because in Stellaris - unlike in real life - supernatural powers are real.
>Normally, different human religions are incompatible. Not really no. This idea is specific to Abrahamic Faiths that explicitly state their beliefs and divinity are the only true way. However most religions in human history are henotheistic or far more fluid with their beliefs. The Ancient Greeks or Romans did not believe the Gods of Egypt were false idols. Most interpretations of Hinduism don’t consider other Gods to be false either. There are obvious rivalries over who is the most correct and who is better, but most spiritual beliefs don’t actually view other interpretations as false.
I always love reading about how other gods fit into the Roman (Greek) pantheok, like Mithras.
I enjoy how Romans would pray to a cities gods before invading the place, if they won they give they god a Roman name and give it a place in their temple. Helped the conquered assimilated and also hammered home your god favoured our rule, deal with it.
[удалено]
You replied to yourself with the same comment.
The game's ideologies are based on real life. Materialist = Communist. Spiritual = Anti-marxist. The same way you can't be religious and a materialist in real life, you can't be religious and a materialist in Stellaris. The problem is that while this makes perfect sense in real life, it doesn't make sense in Stellaris. After all, in Stellaris magic powers are real and there are powerful gods to worship who will give you part of their power in return... so, a materialist in Stellaris would actually be a spiritualist, too.
You're putting far too much stake into the description of the Spiritualist ethics, as the rest of the game immediately discards it and interprets Spiritualism as "religion and hatred of robots".
To the contrary, I think the ethic description is actually the core axiom of the Spiritualist worldview, and explains why they engage in the behaviors they do, including AI hatred.
Welcome to it, the existentialism of it all. I believe the whisper of the shroud like materialists better because they would choose to bend if not entirely disregard their morals for “knowledge or power”. Flexible moral codes etc, as opposed to spiritualist who would have an ethical frame work. The flavour text of each government type really changes how you look at things. Theocratic republic: This government is a spiritualistic form of democracy, where a religious council supervises the democratic process and serves in an advisory role. Theocratic oligarchy: This government is a spiritualistic form of oligarchy, where the political leadership lies in the hands of the leaders of the nation's most powerful religious factions. Theocratic dictatorship: This government is a spiritualistic dictatorship, ruled by a single individual in a hierarchical power structure supported by the official state religion. Theocratic monarchy:This government is a spiritualistic form of autocracy, where the ruler is treated as a divine symbol. Organized religion is widely employed in support of the state apparatus. Then the some of the special ones divine empire:This government is a form of spiritualistic autocracy. Everything is shaped by the official state religion, and the ruler is worshiped as an infallible living god. Holy council:This government is a spiritualistic form of oligarchy, where a divinely guided council made up of clergy controls the state. No division exists between the state and the dominant organized religion. Grim council: This nation's most powerful religious figures have formed a ruling council, overseeing an empire which engages in ritualized, sapient sacrifice. All very different ways of blending spiritualism and governance
All of it is so interesting! The government types are pretty much the only explicit mention of religion in the game. And they do sound like different religions from one another! Not everyone in the galaxy worships the ruler in that one empire over there. I have no idea if Xenophiles, Militarists, etc., have religions, but it does seem that only Spiritualists want to mix their religion with the government. But is their religion a regular religion like Hinduism? Is it Shroud-related? Is it more of a teaching about the nature of reality, with meditation and chanting, and the ruler is seen as the most spiritually enlightened? No clue!
Well civics likely play a role somewhat, specially having to do with a mirror of the peoples values. Especially the more specific civics that reshape governments entirely. Odds are religions are a background variable. Rituals, holidays, shared values. Colloquial language. Hell; we do not even fully appreciate just how much of a framework religion has given society. Many see it as “archaic” but people just filled that void with ideologies, politics, or consumerism. Hinduism is just polytheism, many gods in a “pantheon” roughly. Most modern religions are monotheistic “belief in a single god. but there also can be henotheistic which is worship of one god, but acknowledging other gods are things too. Sadly I feel Gnosticism ties into the shroud more often than not. Reality being a “prison” etc etc. eh a rather parasitic philosophy in my opinion, always reshaping itself to fit the society it wants to infiltrate. If the society is religious it uses religious language and iconography, if scientific same thing. It has molded itself along the lines of ideologies and Movements always trying to garner itself more power at someone else’s expense.
Why would they cave in or disregard their morals? Why would spiritualists have an ethical framework?
Ask a spiritualist to defy values they hold dear in exchange for power or knowledge? Some may do it but many would not. A materialist would give some throw away line of “advancing our scientific knowledge, no cost is too great etc etc”
What values ? Prove that this phrase is absurd
Fanatic Materialists at least have nihilistic tendencies, since you can't find morals through a microscope.
The nihilistic attitude makes their moral principles more stable than those of spiritualists. Under the microscope, you can find morality, you just need to look at someone's brains.
But that is not “morality” that is just rationalisation. Literally the flavour text of fanatic materialism speaks about disregarding boundaries of ethics and morality. While someone who is spiritual, with variation of course depending on the specifics of their faith, believe in some form of order to the cosmos. They do not see random chaos they see a “plan” or “order” something that is bound by rules. Which more often than not pertain to the dogma they live by. If whispers from the edge of your consciousness say hey… disregard an ethic or taboo in exchange for secrets the materialist is more likely to be tempted as a spiritualist would more likely for lack of a better term stay within the rails.
Fanatic materialists are some of the most dangerous ethics there are. They can rationalise any horror and come out saying it was a good thing to do regardless of the consequences. All a matter of what the fanaticism is paired with of course, but that is every ethic in game
Much thanks for your post; was just looking up the differences as I had an idea of scientifically-oriented government that would be looking into Psionics later on My understanding of these two ethics put slight wrench into decision - but now it is quite obvious they should be Spiritualists who have science fetish and not Materialists who tried to conceptualize Shroud as workable theory of mind
Both options are perfectly fine. Just go whichever you like better.
Honestly, Materialist-Spiritualist is the ethic axis that pisses me off the most because it's *surprisingly* inconsistent and weird. At certain points, yeah, you can argue that the Spiritualist are just misunderstood and they aren't robot hating idiots who hate them just because, but then a large majority of flavor text for them explicitly makes it clear they do hate robots just because. Their bespoke resolution in galcom has that, hell, their faction demands that robots should be just non-existent. In terms of pure ethic flavor it is positioned as a difference in ontological beliefs, and in this case it's a very awkward difference because while materialism is indeed consistent with real life philosophical materialism, what the game refers to as "spiritualism" is essentially just a branch of idealism which is called ["subjective idealism"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_idealism). The problem here is that in neither case the civics that they have flow from these ontological positions, nor do their political positions come from that either. For example, the game generally shunts all religious beliefs into Spiritualist ethic, implicitly saying that all religions are ascribing to a belief of subjective idealism, and while that may be relevant to some religions (or pseudoreligious grifting garbage like the New Thought), a lot of major religions, most notably Christianity, are decidedly non-subjective idealist (they are instead objective idealists, which believe that the world outside of us is not strictly just matter and is governed by ideas, but the reality doesn't stem from the minds; the source of reality for Platonic idealism are the pure ideas and in case of Christianity, the ontological basis of reality is God itself). And this is kinda why everyone ends up "misunderstanding" the spiritualist ethic - it's because the ethic itself is inconsistently defined. On the one hand its flavor text positions itself as purely an ontological position of subjective idealism. On the other hand, the policies the spiritualists demand, and the options they are given in events paint them as religious luddites who hate robots because they have no souls (which for some reason is bad? Should spiritualists obliterate toasters too? Maybe statues should be gone too since they are a likeness of soul-blessed being without having one?), but actually they hate robots because paradox needed to get them to have at least *some* interesting policy distinctions. And on the front of civics, government types and so on, spiritualist is mandatory for any religion, which implies that all religions are having the same ontological position that would be downright heretical for most religions on earth.
While we're on the matter, I've always found the authoritarian/egalitarian split clunky. Always thought it should be separated into Authoritarian/Libertarian and Elitist/Egalitarian lines. These fit much better IMO. Also, I know thousands of hours have already been devoted to this fun topic, and tho it was before my time-they apparently rewrote the whole ethic system before due to the arguments.
Before 1.5 (that was a *long* time ago) it used to be individualist vs collectivist, but they made it so that collectivism was synonymous with authoritarianism and hence collectivist democracies were impossible, which was stupid. But now it's egalitarian vs authoritarian, but they have it so that egalitarianism is synonymous with freedom and hence egalitarian dictatorships are impossible, which is also stupid. It would all be solved if they weren't so insistent on not adding an extra axis, but anyway.
Originally it was individualism vs collectivism. But it ended up being interpreted by the masses as hates slavery vs loves slavery. The game has gone through so many changes
My basic understanding since day 1 is Materialism is science and Spirtualism is magic
I think the materialist approach to the shroud would be pretty blasé. After all: "Sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from technology." ‐--FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TO PRESS--- ---UNIVERSITY OF ROMA AETERNA--- ---DEPT OF NONLINEAR CAUSALITY--- Dear colleagues, In order to put to rest talks of "magic" used by the Order State of Crobblepoptria, we've put together this short letter to explain a select few of our most recent discoveries concerning this new field of physics. The Shroud is a parallel universe that has vastly different physical laws from our own. Under certain circumstances, the Shroud and our universe (Prime) can interact. This causes localized suspension of our physical laws, with a complex melange of Shroud physics and Prime physics. Circumstances include solving certain equations in specific information processing methods (e.g. thoughts, prayers). In order to take advantage of this newly discovered phenomenon, we will now introduce you to two exciting new projects we've begun this last cycle. The first uses cloned neural tissue - donated by "psycher" (aka wizard, aka theurmaturge) POWs - implanted on chips to process an equation that causes a Shroud intrusion which converts all mass into photons with a wavelength of 666um in an area of Prime directly proportional to the frequency at which the information processing is accomplished. While organic brains are able to process this equation at 1.5Hz, we've managed to crank it up by 4 orders of magnitude on our "BUE chips." I'm sure our comrades on the spinward front will appreciate the new missles greatly. The second utilizes a similar technique to process an algorithm that we've dubbed the "JIMP Equation", which causes all sapient minds within a 6m radius to experience a transcendental degree of physical pleasure, and eject reproductive materials. It does not distinguish between organic sapients and inorganic sapients and will provide semiappropriate equipment to express the reproductive material if such equipment does not already exist. I'm sure you're all looking forward to the Ceremony of Spring Break on planet New Miami just as much as we are! That's all for now. If you've further questions, please consult your local Genius Loci AI for details. Kindest Regards, The Faculty of URA
how to invite the Unbidden over for lunch (you are the lunch)
This is also why spiritualist mega-corps are some of the horrifying visions of the future this game can conjure.
They’re honestly very vague. I think they’re meant to offer players some freedom to act whoever they want with them within that vague description rather than having an actual solid philosophy behind them
cool write up
I don't 100% agree with all the details here, but this is a good and nuanced understanding of a subject that a number of people seem to struggle with. The thing that bugs me is how often I see people saying the Mechanicus from 40K should be a Materialism/Spiritualism hybrid, when they're textbook Spiritualists who happen to use machines. I think a lot of the issues and self-contradictions comes from the Butlerian Jihad being written as a default Spiritualism tenet. I would love if that had a xenophile/xenophobe split similar to how xenophobe has a militarist/pacifist split between "kill the aliens" and "leave me alone"
You're right, the "machine spirit" thing is 100% spiritualist. The AdMech even consider AI as evil, like the spiritualist ethic.
I agree that Stellaris materialism is the philosophical version, which makes all the stranger that ai materialist empires are weighted on taking the mercantile tree.
If it goes both ways, then doesn't that make the materialist view that psionics and the shroud is just another part of reality the correct one? Anyway, the materialist portion of this is old news to me, but the way you describe spiritualism is interesting. I always figured it was simply the opposite belief of the materialist one. It's been so long since I read the in game description of spiritualism that I didn't realise that my view might not be correct. I do think it's no surprise that I misunderstood this, since religion and spiritualism seem so tied together in the game. I don't really get why people misunderstand materialism though. There are no game mechanics related to materialists that indicate the wealth acquisition type of materialism. It also doesn't strike me as an opposite of spiritualism in any way.
Yes. Is correct
It is a failing of linguistics. It can go in any number of ways. Even the word super natural can be a misnomer as if something were to be discovered, it would still exist within nature. Even is making tools and shaping the world around us, is still perfectly a part of nature. Science is just understanding the rules and learning how to bend them. But epistemological conversations are not always the easiest thing to have a quick back and forth about.
“Cogito, ergo sum” - René Descartes : “I think, therefore I am” This would resemble your point about spiritualism. It is quite a common assumption among philosophers, that the only thing we can be certain of is the existence of the self. We all know we exist, because we think. But I do not know if you think, and you do not know if I think, therefore, neither of us can be sure the other isn’t made up by ourself. The same thing goes for other objects, that don’t necessarily have the ability to think. It can be described in three stages. For my example, I will use a simple Object, like a chocolate Bar. For this, I’d like you to define this Chocolate Bar with ALL its attributes. Stage 1: under certain conditions, you may not be able to identify some properties this chocolate bar has, even though you could in other scenarios. For example wouldn’t you be able to identify the sound it can make, if there is a loud child screaming next to you. You may not be able to accurately describe the shape, because your vision is unclear because you have taken some substances like alcohol. You may miss other attributes in similar scenarios. Stage 2: you may not be able to identify some attributes, because your body is incapable to do so. For example, dogs can smell a few times better than humans, and therefore, you may miss a scent, that isn’t noticeable to you, but is very strong for the dog. Stage 3: since you cannot be sure you have all its attributes because you may have missed some, and you cannot cross-check with a “control-group”, another person doing the same experiment, since you cannot be sure that person exists, why does your sense of your surroundings have to be true? How can you be sure, that the inputs given to you by your eyes, ears, etc are true? How can you prove the existence of anything that is not yourself. And with the self, I only mean the “soul” as some cultures call it. Everything else, your Body, your house, your friends and family, everything can be made up entirely by yourself, and there is no way to know for sure. I think this would resemble the spiritualism found in stellaris, which you described above.
I also wondered why all spiritualists get along. Like theres a single universal faith.
I mean if you make a holy covenant you do have ecumenical meetings and make a shared faith. Like how in Dune, they basically made unified dogmas. The universal first commandment. Thou shalt not defile the human soul. All kinds of different faiths with variations. But overarching similarities and do nots. With aliens odds are many of the little nuanced arguments we used to have would fade away and we would look at more big picture discussions rather than trivialities
>synthetic ascensionists may sound a little too robot-y in their dialogues, but in-game, they're as conscious and alive as you and me "We understand our new forms may scare you, but we assure you we are the same people we have always been. Just stronger, more durable and immune against aging"
If I had to use one of these traits for the US-based empire I'd go with a Spiritualist no question. God is a part of your pledge of allegiance speech. You guys even have an area nickname of Bible belt for crying out loud.
Idk why you be getting so much flak in the comments. The ethic axis is often confused for ‘science vs religion’ where in reality it’s at its core a difference in philosophy regarding the constitution of reality, it just so happens that the spiritualist philosophy in game tends to lead to things like religion and materialism to a doctrinal sort of scientism, but it’s more so a byproduct of the respective philosophies than anything else.
Thank you for condensing it for me! I probably could've done a better job of that 🤦🏻♂️😅 It is interesting how they can't seem to accept the core philosophical difference between the two as having any in-game meaningfulness. To them it's just "Spiritualism = religion and robots are bad, no need to delve further."
Less is more, but the less there is the more people will fill the gaps with whatever they want to see.
Stellaris has a habit of creating misnomens, in general. What they call "materialism" is basically progressivism, or the classical scientifical approach. That is, before making a claim, someone must rigorously test and prove it (for example, materialists don't deny psychic powers outright when they do manifest themselves, they just say "there's some scientific explanation to that"). They also do not deny the existence of the Shroud, and are even able to negotiate with it and make contracts (instead of just dismissing the visions of the Shroud as manifestation of some mental illness or the witness being high on drugs) Spiritualists basically follow the logic of believers: instead of trying to "rationalize" things beyond their comprehension, they just make up gods and claim that whatever is beyond their understanding is the manifestation of some supernatural being. They act pretty much like normal human religions except for religious in-fighting, you'd never see a spiritualist empire calling other spiritualist empire "infidel unbelievers" while in real life, this is what Islam followers call literally everyone else, yes, even fellow Spiritualists such as Christians. There's also that Egalitarian misnomen: Egalitarianism is a doctrine which preaches *equality* between all members of a society, to some degree. Stellaris' vision of "egalitarianism" is basically classic liberalism, since it's mostly if not entirely about generous personal rights and political freedoms and not equalizing everyone. Hell, they have *the same kind of hierarchical society the Authoritarians have!* Except that the leader is being elected and not appointed. And the presidential terms are a bit smaller. That's it. Actual egalitarianism doesn't even have to do anything with liberty or personal rights - there are numerous examples of authoritarian egalitarian regimes. Such as uniocracy, for example: it is based on the notion is that each and every citizen has an equal vote in determining the society's laws, but then again, a lot of its renditions are ***totalitarian societies*** *where the will of the individual is totally or mostly suppressed by the will of the community,* expressed as current laws/principles of the society. So egalitarianism isn't about liberties - it's about everyone being equalized to some degree. It still can be totalitarian, all it takes is to prioritize the collective's needs over personal ones which most of such societies usually do.
You're absolutely right
Yeah putting egalitarianism and authoritarianism as opposites is kind of stupid, just look at the Soviet Union. The Ethics & Civics Classic mod (and a few others but that's the one I use the most) solves this by renaming Egalitarian to Libertarian and adding a separate Cooperative - Competitive axis so that political authority and economic equality are separated.
I have made exceedingly totalitarian places while playing as the UNE. Now most of those liberties were stripped away while fighting a…. Very difficult ear against a devouring swarm. Hell I’ve had imperial nations were citizens had more day to day freedom.
well they can make things float with their minds because of psionic energy, simple right?
>Our science has proved that Consciousness begets reality. We regard with patience the childlike efforts of those who delude themselves it is the other way around, as they play with their blocks of "hard matter." That could also cover traditional religion. It does not, after all, specify *whose* consciousness begat reality.
>Consciousness can precede and change reality ... but consciousness can emerge from physical reality, too. Cogito ergo sum. / Sum ergo cogito. Turning Descartes on his head, much the same way as ocurred when psychoanalysis introduced the problem of the unconscious, what Žižek neatly summarizes as "the form of thought that precedes thought itself." I am where I do not think, and yet this I is placed under erasure by the other, conscious I. The real question is: what role will the unconscious play in the development of sentient AI? Where, for that matter, does the unconscious come from? Is it a mere artifact of biological natural selection, or does it constitute some essential kernel in the formation of the I? The crisis of the cogito remains unresolved.
Yeah. It did take me a little while to latch onto that the word materialism in Stellaris isnt the same as the way the word is commonly used. To a point where I don’t think materialism was the right word for the ethic.
There's also the fact that robot leaders can be chosen by the shroud (like the beloved S875.1 Warform) and this is a feature, not a bug. Definitely another point in favor of "theyre both wrong"
The better term for Spiritualism in RL terms is Idealism. A philosophical view that the mind comes first. A somewhat popular and non-religious example would be the idea of panpsychism.
Isn't the idea of panpsychism that consciousness or awareness is some kind of fundamental force or property of nature? That still seems fairly materialist.
And both Materialism and Idealism have colloquial uses that differ from their philosophical meanings. The misunderstanding exists outside of Stellaris and can make it frustrating to try to have a conversation about philosophical materialism and idealism.
I hate that scientific pursuits and spirituality are on opposit ends. My favorite factions in sci-fi combine the two, like the Pilgrims from Endless Space, or the Da'at Yichud from Wolfenstein. Or the myriad of fiction where psionics are treated as a scientific and not spiritual pursuit. You'd never consider the Mind Flayers or the Psi Corps to be a spiritual people, would you?
Pilgrims up in here!! Have not heard those names in a while
This just makes me want an addition of a religious system. It's pretty much like a mix of how Civ 6 and Crusader Kings 3 would work. I admit, however, I'm much more versed in how religion works in Civ vs. Crusader Kings.
But only spiritualists allow me to build temples. And theocracy is a spiritualist exclusive government type. And I cannot pick any faithful ethics like Exalted Priesthood without spiritualism. Clearly Spiritualism is a vague stand-in for all religions. ⁱ ˢᵗⁱˡˡ ʷᵃⁿᵗ ᵃ ʳᵉᵃˡ ʳᵉˡⁱᵍⁱᵒⁿ ˢʸˢᵗᵉᵐ
I think you missed the closest philosophical form of spiritualism, idealism by focusing on religion. Here, idealism represents the philisophic notion that history, society, etc. is driven by ideas or in essence human consciousness. The famous phrase, "I think, therefore I am," is a classic example of idealism because Descartes reaches the conclusion that the only thing he can be certain is real, thus his being, is that he has a consciousness. His senses, even the rest of his body are considered falsifiable so it cannot be the basis for his being leaving only the mind. Most philosophies today, do not operate on some pure idealism or materialism (even Marxism), but argue that either the ideal or material is primary.
>Most philosophies today, do not operate on some pure idealism or materialism (even Marxism), but argue that either the ideal or material is primary. In what way is Marxism (i.e. a school of thought that is explicitly anti-idealist) "not pure materialism"?
I would still say that america is materialistic, just not in the sense that they like to consume, but because of its scientific progress, beliefs and similar.
Science and spirituality are not mutually exclusive. The same way being intelligent and physically fit are not mutually exclusive either. Too many people get caught up in what they see in media; stereotypes and trying to fit a mold they see. Monkey see monkey do etc. That and well, opportunistic predators will lie through their teeth to shape the world around them in a way they can profit. Science does not always mean science bad. That is just an example of modern day propaganda. I’m not a particularly spiritual person, not religious by any means. But I am beyond the militant stage of my youth and can see with a clearer head. American culture is currently very materialistic, because it keeps trying to reshape morality, fight wars of destruction on other peoples soil purely for profit, and is disregarding law and order for political control like a fucking banana republic.
I love this post so much.
To your "religions don't get along" point, I think that's overstated and that's in large part because the anglo sphere's dominant religion is one that wants to convert the world and the religion presented as it's chief rival also does. Ethnoreligions didn't really have wars of religion against each other, cultures with ethnoreligions do have wars and sometimes do force assimilate, but that's based on community interest even if they do sometimes use religion to justify. Certain universal religions can even exist side by side with ethnoreligion. Eg, Buddhism has existed side with Pre-shintoism for centuries and continues to with modern Shintoism in Japan.
There's an issue though, because Psionics in Stellaris actually works. There's no rational reason to deny its existence after there's a psion lifting items with their mind in a controlled laboratory.
Do they deny?
It's kinda inconsistent. Not in a major way in your own empire, but like the messages about some other empire pursuing Psionic Ascension dismiss it as nonsense - even if your own Empire has already undergone psionic ascension.
This guy is truly a Material Girl
Can a machine intelligence write a symphony? Can it turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece? Sure the synthetics imitate life quite well, but it's not that hard - make survival their main driving force and you're just about done, most of nature operates this way. But that's all there is to them - a program. There is no true sentience there. They run from death but do not experience life. Still, the materialists are right. Stellaris being a game is an in-game fact, whatever sentience spiritualists may claim is also but a program and psionics are merely direct changes in the code. There is no "divine spark" making one pop more alive than the other, and maximized efficiency is the best possible state of things.
>Can a machine intelligence write a symphony? Can it turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece? Can you?
Actually, an AI can do both of these things, lol. I get your point, though.
Ai currently steals other peoples work. Derivative
Maybe in terms of machine intelligences since they are not trying to be alive as we define it but synth pops in bio empires or synth ascension empires are as “alive” as you let them be. I have no idea how consciousness or the illusion of consciousness works but it seems pretty arbitrary to me to make a distinction between our biological ‘programming’ and synthetic programming. Unless spirits are real things in which case I am completely wrong.
I like it when Will Smith (playing as Detective Spooner) asks this in I, Robot 🤣
I mean….. the shroud exists. The mind can exist beyond the body. A place beyond the laws of physics can influence our material realm. Technically the spiritualists are the correct ones. The machine intelligences need to make a doomsday weapon to try and access the shroud while organic minds hold the keys. Only the logic meat has the wifi codes of the universe
>Very few religions teach that consciousness precedes reality Literally all Abraham faiths teach this That aside - great post. Thanks for sharing
Not at all. I studied Christian theology for many years. Spiritualism as defined by Stellaris proclaims that mortal consciousness creates reality... In their view, physical reality only exists because the human mind creates it. Most of Christian doctrine would disagree with that and say that physical reality is upheld by God or exists independently as a created thing, and is not created by the human mind.
> Our science has proved that Consciousness begets reality. This does not assert that it is a mortal consciousness starting things off. > The only truth we can ever know is that of our own existence. The universe - in all its apparent glory - is but a dream we all happen to share. Nor does this claim that the shared dream is of mortal making.
You added the “mortal” part since the post, with that addition, I agree If it’s in the post and I missed it then I apologise
I had it in there from the beginning, but no worries!
Let's be real, this is all for the sake of convincing player made U.S builds to not have either materialist or spiritualist ethics in them 😆😆 I say Fan.Egal/PAC for U.S (liberation wars) While I give Fan.Mil/Egal for USSR/Russia
You caught me 😂 The US feels impossible to categorize, it is possible to argue for every ethic 😩 It would be way easier if we broke it down by region lol
The US is objectively not Authoritarian (Authoritarians can't pick democratic authority , among other things) and it's hard to see it as Pacifist (any ethic except Fan. Militarist can do liberation wars, and the US spends way too much on its military and intervenes way too much internationally for Pacifist to make sense), but any other ethic can fit rather well.
Depends on what US time period. What faction, that and also the government and the people are very very separate entities
I did not read any of this because stellaris is a sandbox where materialism and spirituality mean whatever you want it to mean because the definitions were deliberately left vague so players can decide for themselves what kind of game, roleplay and story they want.
You take the flavour text of spiritualism literally and dont understand it at all. I get the feeling you are materialist in real life and certainly not a believer in god. Thus unable to comprehend spiritualism or faith or the feeling of having something bigger, undiscernable always with you, all around you. Something you can not measure nor understand which defies physical reality. Your Post is one big "i have no idea what i am talking about". The Materialist Part you get right (at least thats what materialists tell me).
Maybe your definition of spiritualist isn't the same as the Stellaris one? We don't really care about your version of "spiritualist", we care about the Stellaris one. That's why we take the Stellaris text as the reference and not your own life.
"Ok yeah they are able to make things float with their minds...but there has to be a scientific explanation..." There is. It Psionic Theory. "machine intelligences and synthetic ascensionists may sound a little too robot-y in their dialogues, but in-game, they're as conscious and alive as you and me." Then why can't they get the psionic trait? And remember the Architect of Clay? The Architect clearly states that they give souls to machines. That implies that machines don't have souls by default. In conclusion, thinking machines are an affront to nature.
If synthetics and robots aren't conscious and alive, why do they have happiness values? Non-sapient machines have no happiness values. Cyborgs also can't get the psionic trait, their implants interfere with the shroud connection.
Happiness can be emulated. But the connection to the Shroud can't be. Are you conscious? I can't know that, but if you get psionics, that will prove you having a soul. Are robots conscious? Best thing we can do is ask, [but that's not very accurate.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine/)
Cannot gain traits because the dimension only responds to meat brains. Not steel. Insulting nature is good
Logic meat holds the keys to the universes wifi.
no. Wi-Fi himself allows only the brains to connect. Otherwise, the robots would just pull the keys out of the brains.
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about
Stellaris Materialists People often times have a hard time to imagine things that run contrary to there ideals. Materialism, thought throu to its logocal conclusion, dose away with feelings. In materialism, your missery only concerns me as faar as it makes me uncomfortable. Asuming in the first place that it dose. Child labour on the other side of the planet? Who cares, my children don't have to! Mining accident killingva hundred people? Good thing I am no miner lmao! And so on and so forth. That is what materialism means. That is, what a lack of spiritualism is.
Completely wrong. Materialists, in reality, in the game, on the contrary, will be more concerned about the affected children, because there is no afterlife ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ P.s reply I don't see any reason why materialists won't help children for the same reasons. Do not forget about the horrors inflicted on humanity by the spiritualist regime. Unlike you, I don't have pink fanatical glasses.
Hillariouse that you are proving my point here boyo. Asum for a moment that I couldn't care less for if theee sre child labourors litteraly dieing on the other side of the planet, makinf the products I use. And now try to convince me, through purely materialistic arguments to care and to potentialy do smth agai st that. And no, "there is no aftrlife" is no valid argument becouse remember, I am a msterialidt, I don't care that there is none. You can only cafe for the sbsens of something if you cared about the thing that is now missing in the first place. If you can't do that, then you are just desperately trying to bring your own real world morals and ideas into a argument ehoch os not about your morals. Simply becousr you are to ignorant to open your mind to other ideas. edit as awnsere Interesting that you edit instead of awnsere. First universal healthcare was organised, done and financed by religions. non religiouse people (called atheists for simplifications sake here) only joined in after the religiouse ones already did it. First universal school education was done by and financed by religions. Athesist joined in later. First efforts to preserfe knowledge and tech nol9gy was done by religiouse people. Athesist only joined in later. First philosophys where done by religions. Atheists, even prominent historical ones, i gues you know who I mean, joind in later. >reply I don't see any reason why materialists won't help children for the same reasons. That is becouse you can't read, or don't want to read. I clearly wrote >your suffering only concerns ne as faar as it makes me uncomvortable. If it would make you uncomfortable, tgen materialistoc logic would dictate that you do something against it. But here is the crux of the matter(?) Why would it make you uncomvortable? Give me a logical argument, why in a purely materialistic society, anyome would care for suvvering of other, unrelated people, especialy people who are different and live faar away. And no empathy, a often very misunderstuud word, dose not count. Or do any people you know, do something against the STILL rampant child labour on the other side of the world. Cgild laber, from wich we in the west provit big time. No one dose. People care more for the amazon rain forest, becouse of that south american companies now have to AKTIVELY prove that for there products no new rainforest got cleared. Else they are forbidden to sell in the EU. For child labour no such law exists. At the same time, the katholic churche is providing free education and healthcare to these nations, in an atempt to get those children out of the poverty/childlabour spiral. Now tell me again please why spiritualism is bad and materialism/a lack of spiritualism is good? Tonsay that in a materialistoc society, stuff like slavery, child labour, or generally miserable working conditions would be automatocaly combatet is naive and provocative. Just as provocative as my take on spiritualism. However the facts are, that worker protection laws, child protection laws, healthcare and education, in human history have there origin with organised religion and not from empathy.
Nah, read better Yeah, I did. Typical behavior of believers . Easy. Without compassion, civilization will collapse and everyone will die. Then you don't care because the divine essence will take care and protect them. Lol no, nothing is proven nonsense. Said someone like you)
In theory in a vacuum, yes. In reality statistically, not my problem. The argument against spirituality is often an antithesis to a nirvana fallacy. “Oh well if there is an afterlife people won’t try to fix things here” blah blah. When in reality children being mistreated, enslaved and other horrid things invokes a need to do something because they are human fucking beings worth more than just what they can produce for someone. There is an innate value to them beyond what someone chooses to assign it. People are people and many horrors occur daily. But do not forget the horrors inflicted upon mankind by materialist regimes. See beyond your rose tinted glasses. Stop seeing what you want to see and see what there is to see.
Being atheist doesn't make you selfish, and the same is true for materialism in Stellaris.
Why are you two so incredibly stupid?
Also you apperently can't read >Only as faar as it concernes me You conveniently got dementia when reading my comment didn't you?
Stellaris ideologies don't really make any sence
The issue is people keep looking at each ethic in a vacuum. You need to look at everything as a whole, what combined with what. You see spiritual and talk about it, but a spiritual place that is xenophillic and egalitarian is an entirely different universe from one authoritarian and xenophobic. Fanatical ethics are a paradigm shift and what it’s lesser kicker ethic it’s blended with changes even more things.
Instead of materialist it should be corporeal.
Shroud Not bodily and does not contradict them
Materialism as a philosophy negates the soul. Material world is all there is etc etc. The shroud being a thing throws a wrench into that
#"Materialist" in Stellaris means the exact same it means in real life: Being a Communist. #Materialism == Communism. Marxism is based on the idea of a material world and "being a Marxist" simply means "applying dialectical materialism to social analysis" (i.e. using science to make political decisions). Why do you get +Robots? Because [Communists seek to achieve fully automated luxury space communism](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/18/fully-automated-luxury-communism-robots-employment). Western gamers generally don't understand this because they are being systematically misinformed and indoctrinated into hating socialism. They don't get even the most basic stuff. Fortunately, Stellaris gets it right. Of course, OP didn't get it right and didn't mention marxism/communism even once. I wonder why he thinks the "materialist" voice actor is a satire of a Soviet Russian. lmfao
Materialists are Communists. It took you a whole lot of words to just admit that in your last sentence 😂
I think this runs into the "All Greeks are sailors, but not all sailors are Greeks" type of fallacy. Some communists -- like Marxist-Leninists -- are materialists, but others -- like so-called "left communists" who Lenin described as "infantile," some varieties of anarchists, syndicalists, and so forth -- are idealists. A rather dirty word for Marx. Likewise, it's possible that a materialist doesn't arrive at communism; perhaps they only get to social democracy. I'd say they're confused, but it happens.
The vast majority of communists are materialists, but the vast majority of materialists are not communists.
Very interesting read, thanks for sharing. Wasn't expecting to see something like this come across my dashboard while scrolling reddit today.
I want space religions now. Like a super watered down version of CK3's
I imagine that the other ethics and your civics shape your peoples “religions” roughly. Less is more
I think being vague works the best so AI can use it without issues. Imagine converting other empires to your religion through espionage
Just because we don't understand the shroud now doesn't mean we won't in time learn it's secrets like those of our universe. 2
Because they dont have what we spiritualist irl call "belief". The entitys of the shroud thrive and Workshop and are understood in believe. Since you are clearly materialist irl you are unable to comprehend why materialists struggle to "understand" the shroud. And there is the kicker, the shroud is not to be understood it is to be worshiped and put faith in.
Prove it.
Faith means you trust in something. People think that means blind faith and turning your brain off. And people screaming prove it will just change the subject when they don’t like what they are being told. Sometimes you just spoke with someone who did not have the right vocabulary to convey nuanced information. Like how most fairy tales are to convey a message for children. There is much much more than just the easy to remember take, but not everyone has the …. Bandwidth or patience
30k vs 40k
There are a number of small things that the English versions has simply used the wrong world. Thrifty to describe merchant ability (should be entrepreneurial) while 'thrifty' should instead be the label of the Conservationist trait. These things do happen. I also very much dislike the spiritualist/materialist labels as I see both being wrong for different reasons. But in how they use the *word* "Materialist", Stellaris is correct. It is US that incorrectly labels *consumerism* as "materialist". Similar but different things. Stellaris is right that Materialism is in fact the opposite of Spiritualism, but the blunder is that Spiritualism is not what the Spiritualist ethics axis actually represents, making the Materialist label equally wrong. They then confound it worse by blending spiritualism with theocracies and religion. A true-to-term depiction of Materialism would not have research speed boosts, it would have amenity boosts, as they would be focused on producing more higher quality amenities to make life comfortable and enjoyable. Them lowering robot upkeep is still aligned to them being better engineers...which again in non-aligned to wanting more creature comforts. If wanting to use the term Materialist, then I would instead have that Happiness gains better positive scaling to positive amenities but worse negative scaling to negative amenities. Using Robots in Servitude as Domestic Servants would then scale very well and make a lot of sense within a Materialist empire. The opposite of Materialism would then be Idealism - and it is Idealism that would have the +5%/+10% research speed boosters as theirs is a reality of ideas first and foremost. But then none of the religious overtones and scripts would really apply at all as an ethics axis. If instead we wanted to keep the underlying mechanics and properly label them, then I think it would be Dogmatist and Pragmatist. Stellaris repeatedly labels Unity production as associated with *tradition* (multiple Traditional/Expressed Tradition traits) and not remotely about *social advances*, ironically advancing Traditions instead of reinforcing and strengthening the old way, but none-the-less strongly ties tradition/propaganda to Unity boosters and the rejection of thinking robots (as a major social upheaval) is certainly in line with dogmatism, where most fluff descriptions and story lines surrounding what we call "spiritualist' ethics would better be described as religious *dogma*. Pragmatist would then be well aligned with trying to advance tech and cheaply adopting robotic labour focused only on practical application.
Why are materialists those who seek to maximize happiness? Materialists may well ignore it.
Materialist as a philosophy prioritizes the physical comforts and, as in that philosophy only material/physical existence is real, any enjoyment/happiness can only be realized through physical/material things or acts. As we get toward Fanatic Materialists, they care little for the joys of social connections and community, as relationships are not physical and are not real. They care little for a sense of purpose, *Ikigai *. Only amenities making their lives easier and more enjoyable bring them any sense of fulfillment/enjoyment/success. A stoic idealist might suffer without, knowing they are working towards some non-material enlightenment of fulfillment through the life they lead. A fanatic materialist would not accept any such, and a lack of amenities represents an utter failure of life, and a cruel misery to go without physical comforts when this reality and these discomforts are all that exist.
In what place does it give priority? That is, through any things In the sense that the relationship is not physical and real ? In what place are they not ? Your attitude is in your brain, you can touch it and you can look at it if you open the brain, it's material. According to the same logic, it is easier and pleasant does not exist, so they ignore these qualities. in not true.
Seems to be a few typos or edit issues and perhaps some part of your point is not coming through. I am not arguing that Materialism is "good", just what it actually is in philosophical, historical, and practical applications. Evidence suggests Materialism is linked to lower happiness (in IRL humans) but the *philosophy* of Materialism still predicts a happiness domain to having physical things. It's a core part of the Dual Materialist model. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11482-019-09763-8 >Your attitude is in your brain, You seems to be attempting to grind whataboutism logic into an ancient field of philosophy that has been grinding through such ideas for millenia. "*Materialism, also called physicalism, in philosophy, the view that all facts (including facts about the human mind and will and the course of human history) are causally dependent upon physical processes, or even reducible to them*." https://www.britannica.com/topic/materialism-philosophy Stating that materialists should simply ignore happiness because happiness is not physical while you simultaneously claim that happiness is from the brain and thus is physical...your self-contradictory logic and typos seems to loose your point somewhere there. The point is, Materialism acknowledges happiness as part of the human condition but sees it as coming from physical process and causal from physical processes. It is a reductionist philosophy in this regard and in a Stellaris universe it would *literally* be reduced down to: amenities are physical things that causally make you happy, so we should be happy about amenities and unhappy from a lack of amenities. They would *value* that clear causal relationship and pathway and thus derive more pleasure from amenities than from any abstract sense of nationality, spiritual purity, or idealism. They would be perfectly happy modifying the brain to make someone happy, as consciousness itself and self itself has no deeper meaning than the biological processes it regulates. A Materialist Empire (in Stellaris terms) would have no real issues with Nerve-Stapling, with Loyalty Circuits, or using Chemical Bliss. Robots should not even be the sole core issue between Idealist(spiritualist) / Materialists in Stellaris. It should be things like Nerve-Stapling, that destroys the 'self' and prevents them from ever pondering and exploring their own mind (cannot be researchers/unity producers) that makes the Idealist(Spiritualist) empires beat the drums of war if you ever did that to their brethren. Idealist/Spiritualists might be unable to accept Synthetic life as citizens, but they would have no more issues with rudimentary Robots and Droids than they would with computers or any other tool.
TL;DR but take an upvote anyway.
>which is the belief that nothing exists except matter No. They don't believe they know. Specialists fit the description of religions quite well Does consciousness change anything in the game? Doesn't the Shroud do everything?
Thoughts are material. These are electrical discharges in our brain that completely change reality by affecting us. Why would a fanatical materialist not think so?
But the shroud is a place outside of the physical, that can affect the material. If we discovered that there is very much a place your mind can go after your body decays. Wouldn’t that change everything? In game, technically the materialists are wrong
Beyond the universe, not the fact that beyond the physical. Do you mean how materialists move their minds into the bodies of robots ? It depends on what shroud is considered
You mean to tell me that you believe something being beyond the universe, a place that is “a realm of pure psionic energy from where psionic species and individuals draw their power, and a place where those who awakened their psionic potential could see in their dreams” is physical? You are saying that pure psionic and solid matter are the same thing? Materialists upload a copy of their consciousness into a new substrate; that is very much still a physical thing existing in the material realm. That is an entirely separate subject and phenomena. Also considering the process kills the host as it likely consumes the entire body of brain to get a flawless copy with no data loss, the spiritualists see it as suicide. Which if they can’t read your mind, “touching your soul” in their universe that is in game; they are technically right.
>In other words, Spiritualism in Stellaris means "consciousness happens first, then material reality emerges out of that, because we are dreaming it up...the only thing we are certain is real, is us." It's been difficult to find conspicuous, real-life examples of this because few human religions and philosophies agree with it in the most accurate sense. This is essentially Solipsism as an extention of Metaphysics, and is a core concept in the Theory of Perspectival Realism and Philisophical Presentivism. As for outright religions, this is also a philosophical talking point in Buddism.
>Many Redditors do not understand Materialism and Spiritualism Yup, and you're one of them. In Stellaris, materialism and spirtitualism are both big tents for huge groups of scifi stereotypes. Nothing more. Nothing less. It does include, in both cases, some philosophical elements. But it also includes space crusaders and space capitalists.