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Puzzling lack of Galton system deterrence

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Re: Puzzling lack of Galton system deterrence
Post by tlb   » Tue Aug 23, 2022 9:41 am

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Joat42 wrote:As I said, the whole point of Galton was to get the GA off MAlign's back so they could hide in the shadows for a couple of centuries while spreading their influence, and the above reasoning then means the book was totally unnecessary because the MAlign never intended to hide - which directly contravenes what is said in the book.

Certainly not wanting to put words into someone else's mouth, it might be that he is only talking about what can happen when attacking one of the Malign's key nodes (such as Darius) and not about a campaign of random violence while trying to hide. Remember that the author did carve out a loophole:
runsforcelery wrote:There's no way anyone like the Detweilers would be foolish enough — or desperate enough, certainly short of their own discovery and imminent defeat/demise — to try anything like it. Adolf Hitler may have asked "Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians," but the Detweilers are smart enough to have learned from his example.
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Re: Puzzling lack of Galton system deterrence
Post by Joat42   » Tue Aug 23, 2022 11:45 am

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cthia wrote:The Malign's whole point of Galton was to get the GA off their back. That was never Galton's plan. Galton's inhabitants were simply pawns. Scapegoats.

A distinction without meaning.

cthia wrote:As far as never meaning to hide, you are going to have to explain that a bit further. The MAlign came into existence hiding, they are still hiding, they will continue to hide until or if found. Hiding is the best strategy for system defense ever deployed in the HV. It is part of that whole "you can't hit what you can't see" defense.

If your intention is to keep to the shadows and you have set up an event to make your pursuers think they won, you don't do it in a fashion that makes everyone else also start looking at what you where up to, because somewhere there may be a person or a piece of information that can be used to unravel the whole thing and many eyes makes that more probable.

---
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Re: Puzzling lack of Galton system deterrence
Post by tlb   » Tue Aug 23, 2022 12:26 pm

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cthia wrote:The Malign's whole point of Galton was to get the GA off their back. That was never Galton's plan. Galton's inhabitants were simply pawns. Scapegoats.

Joat42 wrote:A distinction without meaning.

Actually it WAS part of the plan by those people in charge at Galton; but certainly you can say that anyone not at the highest level were pawns in the overall plan.

However they were not scapegoats; because they had done things that were included in the counts against them by the Grand Alliance. It is true that they were not guilty of everything alleged. However it was one of those things (supplying Cataphract missiles to the People's Navy in Exile to attack Torch) that lead to the discovery of Galton.
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Re: Puzzling lack of Galton system deterrence
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Tue Aug 23, 2022 4:27 pm

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tlb wrote:The current Mesan Alignment message is that we are superior beings; Nietzsche's "Supermen" created to guide and control normal beings. On Darius this is something something they will know from childhood, not something they learn about in college and decide "that sounds cool", and so join. Yes, there are people that are disillusioned; but there is no reason to suppose that they will be more successful than the Enlightenment was for all those centuries back on Mesa. Mainly they are people that came in direct contact with the seamier side of the Malign operations and that should not reoccur after the move to Darius. Besides they will not be able to help the Alliance unless they can open a communication channel.


That was the message to the Inner Onion, definitely. Those are being raised to consider themselves Nietzschean "supermen" and being groomed to lead humanity. But I don't think it's the message for the masses. Gail and Zack, for example, don't seem to be in on this part of the plan, where they are being ruled by a hidden cadre. It was after their involvement with the Fifth Column that the discussion of "speciation" turned up.

So I don't think that this is the message given to the full population of Darius. I don't think it's even the message given to most members of the LRPB, to be frank. They are probably being told that they are superior by way of their genetics and that the rest of the Galaxy is spurning them, but not that they are born to rule. You can't have 3 billion people ruling anyway.

And it's definitely not the message that the Benign Alignment had been fed for centuries. Those believed on their own genetic uplift but were neither trying to impose it on others nor rule others by virtue of having that genetic modification.

This is what I am saying: make genetic uplift available to those billions of people who've wanted it for centuries, and to trillions more, and there's no need to subscribe to the Alignment's version of genetic uplift in order to get any uplift at all. Heck, you may end up with better changes (fewer side-effects, more cost-effective, enhanced attributes, whatever) once more labs are on-board with this, so supporting the Alignment becomes counter-productive.

That will not remove the Inner Onion's motivation, because that motivation was ulterior anyway. But then you have at best a couple hundred people who are trying to do this, with no support elsewhere. A few hundred people can't do all the genetic work that is required, nor build ships to execute the Detweiler Plan, nor the agents to subvert governments, and so on. So it removes the Inner Onion's ability to effect change and, with that, it might disillusion some of its members from supporting those goals in the first place, which further draws down on their manpower.

In line with the lack of communication, there will be no way to realize that "the official reason for the Alignment's existence" is being removed. But that was the reason put forward by Leonard Detweiler and friends to initiate Mesa and Manpower and is not what currently goes by the name of the "Detweiler Plan" anyway.


If you mean this before Darius is discovered, yes. I agree. The communication is entirely locked down there and propaganda is definitely not going to praise the advancements of what was the Alignment on Mesa after the occupation.

But once it is discovered, you can do that. You must do that, actually. Without it, the three billion people living on Darius Gamma and thinking that it's their god-given right to be genetically-improved will resent the MAlign's demise. They need to be brought back in to mainstream society. Do to them what was done to the Benign Alignment on Mesa. (I don't expect this reconstruction to ever appear in the books, though; the series will end before it)

As for removing their financial support; moving away from Mesa removes some of their operating expenses and they have the whole economy of the star system to finance their plans. Obviously the system is not mechanized as as fully as Galton, so initially they might have to concentrate their efforts on that; but they were going to lie low for a decade or two anyway.


I agree that in the Darius system, they can do it all. Their economy does not even need to be healthy. If it's a central planning, all sorts of un-economical solutions or trickery can be applied. If they need material to build ships, they can simply appropriate it from the asteroid belts or mining pits on the surface; there's no need to pay someone for it. If they need to pay their workers, they can simply print money -- that generates inflation, but only if the economy is not a sham in the first place.

And that economy is disconnected from the Galaxy's economy. What is the exchange rate of the Darius scrip to a Solarian credit or a Manticoran Dollar? This information is impossible, because of the lack of communication. It's also what permits them having whatever sham economy they may want, since it doesn't have to be real to compete with a real economy. But it also makes effecting change outside of the Darius system hard.

Right now, they have a second source of finance, which is the RF. But unlike Manpower and Jessyk, they may not be able to cook the books as effectively to hide all the huge expenses diverted into the secret budget.

Once Darius is discovered and militarily defeated, the GA can remove both the Darius and the RF source of financing to the Onion. That further limits their ability to accomplish anything.

PS: in terms of what the author might do, you are probably right that the internal opposition will be important. But I want to be surprised, so I will stick to doubting their effectiveness.


And well you should, because this is the author we've known to misdirect us. Quod vide Esther McQueen.
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Re: Puzzling lack of Galton system deterrence
Post by tlb   » Tue Aug 23, 2022 6:30 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:If you mean this before Darius is discovered, yes. I agree. The communication is entirely locked down there and propaganda is definitely not going to praise the advancements of what was the Alignment on Mesa after the occupation.

But once it is discovered, you can do that. You must do that, actually. Without it, the three billion people living on Darius Gamma and thinking that it's their god-given right to be genetically-improved will resent the MAlign's demise. They need to be brought back in to mainstream society. Do to them what was done to the Benign Alignment on Mesa. (I don't expect this reconstruction to ever appear in the books, though; the series will end before it)

I did not realize that you were mostly talking about what comes after Darius is defeated. At Galton the problem was easier, because the overlords blew themselves up.

However I do not expect a conquered Darius will be much worse, certainly not as bad as Masada; since it is very hard to present yourself as a superman after being defeated by the hoi polloi.
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Re: Puzzling lack of Galton system deterrence
Post by kzt   » Tue Aug 23, 2022 6:53 pm

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tlb wrote:since it is very hard to present yourself as a superman after being defeated by the hoi polloi.

It took 3 trillion degenerates to defeat us!
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Re: Puzzling lack of Galton system deterrence
Post by Brigade XO   » Tue Aug 23, 2022 7:02 pm

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The RF has it's marching orders and that mostly boils down to spreading and incubating the -in general- uplift the Alignment wants along with breaking down Beowulf's place as beacon of morality in genetics. Sure, the Mannheim SDF (or whatever they are calling it now) is being used as guardians of access to Darius and doing the shepherding/assisting other systems that want a place for cover and protecting as the League is struggling.
But how many of the MSDF actually know the Alignment connection?

The Alignment still wants to hide in the shadows. It must hide, it must control from afar by politics, economics, brutality as needed and destruction of things that will rip away all of its cover.

Sure, they want to UPLIFT humanity but just exactly what do they mean when they say that? Star Lines controlling everything and using the products of their research and labs to do it in the forms of myriad "other" lines which have a disturbing history of being some variation of -well- various lines of servants or henchmen or "upper level" lower level management and employees. The Alignment doesn't do Employees well, they breed lines of useful humans and conform them into various jobs and functions. Have we yet seen any of the "senior" level autonomous staff being promoted to Star Line....no. And we won't, you have to be born (post a lot a manipulation within your line and individuals including yourself to have been UPLIFTED to Star Line.

The Detweilers aren't going to rule from some throne, they are going to deploy legions of augmented minions who are literally born and then nurtured to believe the level of reality (varies with differnt segments) they need to believe to get the jobs done. But you have to think more Wizard of Oz than Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin. The Wizard (the whole clan of them and their senior uplifts) have to be far enough out of view that nobody can go hunting them.
How do you find, let alone kill, a set of demi-gods that are at least two steps removed in the physical universe and provide really juicy alternative targets in terms of the people who can be seen as being in some portion of the actual control.

Like, how many of the RF leadership, and hundreds of thousands of lower lever people in the RF have already been fitted with the nanites? These things are insidious and both the triggers and what activates to kill individuals can be very carefully scripted. You have to wonder what would happen to anybody at the below-the-Detweilers-level who thought about a coup?

So many questions, not enough books :)
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Re: Puzzling lack of Galton system deterrence
Post by Joat42   » Tue Aug 23, 2022 7:19 pm

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cthia wrote:The Malign's whole point of Galton was to get the GA off their back. That was never Galton's plan. Galton's inhabitants were simply pawns. Scapegoats.

Joat42 wrote:A distinction without meaning.

tlb wrote:Actually it WAS part of the plan by those people in charge at Galton; but certainly you can say that anyone not at the highest level were pawns in the overall plan.

However they were not scapegoats; because they had done things that were included in the counts against them by the Grand Alliance. It is true that they were not guilty of everything alleged. However it was one of those things (supplying Cataphract missiles to the People's Navy in Exile to attack Torch) that lead to the discovery of Galton.

For the discussion at hand, it doesn't matter one bit if everyone on Galton was in on the plan or not.

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Re: Puzzling lack of Galton system deterrence
Post by tlb   » Tue Aug 23, 2022 8:17 pm

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tlb wrote:since it is very hard to present yourself as a superman after being defeated by the hoi polloi.

kzt wrote:It took 3 trillion degenerates to defeat us!

But a truly superior being would have foreseen that eventuality and had a plan for it; even it was "let's forget about conquering the galaxy, since it does not deserve our care and instead build a secular paradise here at Darius". In the process they would overcome the lie told to Audrey O'Hanrahan about a secretive Benign Alignment.
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Re: Puzzling lack of Galton system deterrence
Post by kzt   » Tue Aug 23, 2022 8:19 pm

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tlb wrote:
kzt wrote:It took 3 trillion degenerates to defeat us!

But a truly superior being would have foreseen that eventuality and had a plan for it; even it was "let's forget about conquering the galaxy, since it does not deserve our care and instead build a secular paradise here at Darius". In the process they would overcome the lie told to Audrey O'Hanrahan about a secretive Benign Alignment.

They wee led by Traitors! Like Harrington!
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