ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: DEUS EX

[sullygass95]

So the amount that candidates are funded is not the direct cause of their election, but due to many other factors that start a cycle of funding. Funding and election certainly correlate, but the election is also largely due to other factors. The way Ross said it, it seemed that he was saying it was causal. He might not've meant it that way, but since this fact was a part of an aside, it might've been oversimplified for time.

 

While I've not looked up sources for Ross's claim that ~91% (10/11 times) of successful political candidates were the most well-funded, even if it is true it is not necessarily telling of the election process's corruption, or that election results are affected "by the number of ads Joe Voter sees" alone. A candidate can win over another for a number of reasons, and funding levels will usually fluctuate as the candidate's appeal rises or falls. I'm sure those that donate and fund these political hopefuls want a return on their investment and won't burn more money on the fallacious premise that money is 91% of what wins elections. There will be a point where one candidate becomes more popular than another due to a gaff, scandal, a position becoming more clear, a cleansweep debate, etc. and more or less funding will surely follow that.

 

I'm sure there could be a massive debate over which factors correlate with actual election the most, and money would be way up there, but money is used to pay for those other factors, so....

 

91% is not telling? Do you even understand how elections work? Hillary is one of the most disliked candidate ever and yet she's the nominee, you don't think money and related propaganda is related? It seems to me that nothing will change your mind at this point.

 

Funny thing though, if you look at overall money raised (individual contributions, Super PACs, etc), Sanders actually raised more money, through a surge of individual donations, than Clinton during the primaries; http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/21/politics/2016-bernie-sanders-fundraising-hillary-clinton/

Also, Clinton's popularity/favorability was far higher before the Comey FBI announcement regarding her use of a private email server, which occured after she had already effectively won the Democratic Nomination, and Sanders refused to go after her for that issue in the first place; http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/hillary-clinton-favorable-rating

[spooky scary skeleton]

embrace communism, friends

[Steve the Pocket]

You are a really scary person. Please don't ever run for office.

What exactly was so 'scary' in his post? There is nothing whatsoever inherently bad in autocracy, it is a perfectly normal system which emerges naturally in big heterogeneous countries - otherwise they are torn apart by infighting (see e.g. ancient Rome starting from Caesar, Russia starting from Peter I etc). If you actually believe that Stalin/Kim Jong-il/ were man eating monsters loathed by their own people then you've watched too much American propaganda.

You're right — they were man eating monsters beloved by their own people. Because all those people who got sent to the gulag, or whatever the Chinese and Korean equivalents of that are, were just dissidents who were endangering the Almighty State; who wouldn't be supportive of that? I'm sure the average Trump voter would be in favor of the same thing happening to the people they don't agree with. (And, truth be told, if there were a proposal to do it to them, I wouldn't be able to drum up the willpower to lead a campaign against it.) Doesn't mean it's the right way to run a country.

[Forgot_My_Account]

You're right — they were man eating monsters beloved by their own people. Because all those people who got sent to the gulag, or whatever the Chinese and Korean equivalents of that are, were just dissidents who were endangering the Almighty State; who wouldn't be supportive of that? I'm sure the average Trump voter would be in favor of the same thing happening to the people they don't agree with. (And, truth be told, if there were a proposal to do it to them, I wouldn't be able to drum up the willpower to lead a campaign against it.) Doesn't mean it's the right way to run a country.

 

Please don't equate Donald Trump with despots and tyrants - he is many things. He is untrustworthy, ignorant, the center of many scams and a media whore - but there is no proof he plans on becoming the king of the USA, or that he is malicious towards it. If you're willing to demonize him you're just creating a situation where lies are accepted as reality, and the demonization of his opponent, Hillary, is far worse - at least when compared to reality.

 

Also, say what you will about the Soviet and Communist rules, they were brutally efficient. You're also correct of them employing a secret police so any criticism was muted, therefore leading to a bias towards them by those objected by that rule.

Also, those ruling system as they were implemented were deeply corrupt. The Soviet Union's higher ups' corruption is well documented, while China and North Korea say corruption doesn't exist and they fight it diligently - although evidence suggests otherwise.

So, what can we gather from that? Corruption + Communism = bad? We also know that Corruption + Capitalism = bad, as evidenced by the civil war in Ukraine before it was taken over by Russia.

 

I think that neither communism nor capitalism is inherently bad - they were just different approaches to dealing with the same situation, and capitalism lead to more growth that masked the corruption of those in power. Capitalism just leads to more growth due to incentivizing more people to succeed. I think that communism is a good end-of-life plan, though - when most of are jobs will be done by robots and most of the people won't have steady jobs, not because they lack the effort - but because the demand will be lower. Corruption can topple both of these things, whether it's malicious or just in pure self-interest of the corrupt, and it should be the priority of most people to get the power and money away from plutocrats before they stifle the growth towards a futuristic society, or ruin the implementation of a "perfect socialist state" when money is essentially meaningless.

[Descriptor]

You're right — they were man eating monsters beloved by their own people. Because all those people who got sent to the gulag, or whatever the Chinese and Korean equivalents of that are, were just dissidents who were endangering the Almighty State; who wouldn't be supportive of that? I'm sure the average Trump voter would be in favor of the same thing happening to the people they don't agree with. (And, truth be told, if there were a proposal to do it to them, I wouldn't be able to drum up the willpower to lead a campaign against it.) Doesn't mean it's the right way to run a country.

 

Please don't equate Donald Trump with despots and tyrants - he is many things. He is untrustworthy, ignorant, the center of many scams and a media whore - but there is no proof he plans on becoming the king of the USA, or that he is malicious towards it. If you're willing to demonize him you're just creating a situation where lies are accepted as reality, and the demonization of his opponent, Hillary, is far worse - at least when compared to reality.

 

Also, say what you will about the Soviet and Communist rules, they were brutally efficient. You're also correct of them employing a secret police so any criticism was muted, therefore leading to a bias towards them by those objected by that rule.

Also, those ruling system as they were implemented were deeply corrupt. The Soviet Union's higher ups' corruption is well documented, while China and North Korea say corruption doesn't exist and they fight it diligently - although evidence suggests otherwise.

So, what can we gather from that? Corruption + Communism = bad? We also know that Corruption + Capitalism = bad, as evidenced by the civil war in Ukraine before it was taken over by Russia.

 

I think that neither communism nor capitalism is inherently bad - they were just different approaches to dealing with the same situation, and capitalism lead to more growth that masked the corruption of those in power. Capitalism just leads to more growth due to incentivizing more people to succeed. I think that communism is a good end-of-life plan, though - when most of are jobs will be done by robots and most of the people won't have steady jobs, not because they lack the effort - but because the demand will be lower. Corruption can topple both of these things, whether it's malicious or just in pure self-interest of the corrupt, and it should be the priority of most people to get the power and money away from plutocrats before they stifle the growth towards a futuristic society, or ruin the implementation of a "perfect socialist state" when money is essentially meaningless.

 

The problem with Communism is that it's inherently hostile to human behavior. Since any contribution by a single person becomes little more than a drop in a giant bucket, it completely decentiveses people, since they don't get the constant reward cycle of seeing the direct effect of their work (albeit only in cold dollars, for better or worse). Communism is something that works fine in a small, well-knit community (a commune, if you will) because everybody's efforts directly contribute to that community. This also yields motivation in terms of social capital, since other people will be impressed by your contribution, pushing you to want to do even better. But as the society in question gets too big, your contribution is suddenly going to some dude you'll never meet on the other side of the country, so it starts to seem futile. In that case, your only motivation would be some larger authority getting on your case about not being good enough, which sucks. The biggest sign of failure of a government or a society is when it ends up relying only on negative reinforcement to keep things running, because then people just end up feeling burdened by the threat of persecution, which is hell on productivity. Basically, like you kinda allude to, Communism on a massive scale only really works for a society of robots (like the Borg).

 

Conversely, while the same is true for Capitalism (in that the stuff you do doesn't directly benefit you, but the more anomalous broader society), you do get the motivation of sweet sweet cash. The only problem there is that cash doesn't always correspond to real production. I'd argue that the biggest issue with the modern economy, for instance, is that it's all tied up in just credit and information, which isn't nearly as tangible. That and, naturally, a capitalistic economy isn't as controlled, which can end up leaving people on the lurch when opportunity isn't available. Now, the idealist would say that a responsible person would be able to make their own opportunity and "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", but therein lies the problem with Capitalism and the human condition. See, most basic economic theory operates under the assumption that a well informed producer/consumer will make the best decision (for themselves) when presented with some manner of choice, and that the aggregate of all these self-directed decisions among all actors will lead to posterity on a societal scale. The only problem is that I'm not sure that a truly "well informed producer/consumer" has actually ever existed, so the assumptions break down. Otherwise, there wouldn't be much need for marketing departments.

 

So, for instance, if you assume that people making decisions are, in fact, well informed, then ultimately, if a bunch of people are out buying and selling widgets, they will likely find the cheapest (and therefore, ideally, the most efficient) way to do so. That is, they would find the best way to make it that perfectly balances quality, production, and affordability. The only problem is that the economy and society are so complicated that the best choice is never apparent, or even worse, the best choice for an individual doesn't produce true prosperity for society, since other people don't have the information to be able counteract the effects. It might turn out that making really crappy products makes the most money in the short term, but the person making them doesn't think long term, and thus goes out of business. Or even more worse, the person making them does see this coming, but jumps ship while riding high. Ideally, other people will be able to counteract this, either through making a better widget and succeeding where the first company failed, or recognizing just how crappy the first company's widgets were to begin with, and never buying them in the first place. But like I said, people aren't as rational as the economic models would hope. Just look at the stock market. A company's stock does better when companies make short sighted decisions (like laying off a bunch of people), but less well when companies make smart, long term decisions (like R&D). This only gets compounded when executive pay is tied heavily to stock price (which has gotten even worse ever since CEO pay caps were introduced, as now CEOs tend to be compensated directly with stock options), meaning that an executive makes more money by doing something like just buying back shares or setting large dividends, rather than develop the company (and if they're smart, they'll cash out before it all hits that fan). So, greed is good in that it drives people to do things better (to make more money), but it's bad in that it tends to be really short sighted and not always balanced with intelligent decision making.

 

So yeah, we generally end up meeting in the middle. Where in the middle is the ultimate question, though, isn't it?

 

And ultimately, yes, if we do reach a post-scarcity society where robots do everything and people don't need to contribute to begin with, something like Socialism would work, since why the hell not? Work isn't needed anymore. But then we have a new problem. Wide, large scale apathy and indifference. People need challenges, as otherwise, life starts to seem meaningless. I mean, yeah, we could have hobbies, or we could explore the stars or whatever. But personally, I think we would just end up spending all our time in holodecks. Which is a pretty lame future, if you think about it.

 

But I guess we're jumping the gun a bit if we're worrying about that now....

[Ross Scott]

Just quick message, I've been spending all my time on the next episode, I'll try and go through all the comments a little later. Also I was playing the original CD copy of the game with a DX10 renderer.

[ScottD.Betson]

great episode Ross

[danielsangeo]

Phew! I'm done typing the subtitles for this episode. The next step is to place markers down for when to show each 'screen'. But I'm going to hold off syncing the subtitles with the markers because I have a couple questions I asked Ross about with regards to certain words used. When I hear back from him on that (Ross is busy with the next Deus Ex stuff), I'll input that and sync the subtitles up with the markers and the subtitles will be available a couple hours after that.

 

Thanks for your patience, everyone!

[ywyak]

Phew! I'm done typing the subtitles for this episode. The next step is to place markers down for when to show each 'screen'. But I'm going to hold off syncing the subtitles with the markers because I have a couple questions I asked Ross about with regards to certain words used. When I hear back from him on that (Ross is busy with the next Deus Ex stuff), I'll input that and sync the subtitles up with the markers and the subtitles will be available a couple hours after that.

 

Thanks for your patience, everyone!

Much appreciated Daniel <3

[Roygbiv]

So, haven't been reading all of the comments in this topic, therefore I might have missed if someone else already provided this input, but since we're discussing Deus Ex I thought I'd might share some photos I took a few years ago. Not the best quality/resolution, since I had to do it quick before security approached me at the exhibition, but hey, better than nothing.

 

After a quick Google-run I can tell that this has been more or less available since way back to the public, but anyway... here are my photos! It at least felt cool to stand infront of those papers!

 

ONE

 

TWO

 

THREE

 

FOUR

 

Just zoom out a bit and you'll have a better view. Enjoy!

[danielsangeo]

Subs up!

[ScumCoder]

Subs up!

Thanks a bunch man.

[ScumCoder]

Enjoy!

I couldn't for the life of me save these pictures on my desktop, how do I even do this on this site? Maybe you could upload those to some (more widely used) hosting like imgur?

[Roygbiv]

I couldn't for the life of me save these pictures on my desktop, how do I even do this on this site? Maybe you could upload those to some (more widely used) hosting like imgur?

 

Sure, forgot that I had an account there.

 

ONE

 

TWO

 

THREE

 

FOUR

 

Better luck this time!

[ScumCoder]

Sure

Domo arigato.

[ThatWhichNeverWas]

Hi all, first time poster here

 

I'll admit right now I'm a DE fanboy - I got the original the day it was available on my local store, and played it so much I literally wore the disk out.

 

There are a couple of points about the plot from the video I'd like to clarify;

 

Edit - I'm an idiot.

 

About Hong Kong: VersaLife doesn't manufacture the dragon tooth sword. They stole it to foster conflict between the Triads, in order to Tong's resources, because Tong is one of their enemies who can screw up their plans. "Just So Happens" doesn't come into it.

 

About "Blowing Up the Internet": That's not exactly what happens - what you blow up is the hub of the Aquinas system, which governs communications routing. It does the heavy lifting to reduce the amount of bandwidth used for 'logistical' data, making internet connections faster.

When you blow it up... well, imagine what would happen if TCP/IP and all phone lines suddenly stopped working. You can plug your computers directly into each other to make a network no problem, but everything else stops because they simple don't know how to talk to each other any more.

T fix it, you basically have to write new networking protocols from scratch, with only the resources you have directly at hand because you can't access any computers or call someone for help.

 

 

I hope I don't sound condescending, I simply love the story of this game to an embarrassing degree - I live for that kind of multilayered, complex storyline. The sheer amount of detail and interlocking story elements means that even today I'm still finding new details and elements that I've previously missed.

Edited September 16, 2016 by Guest (see edit history)

[NightNord]

The problem with Communism is that it's inherently hostile to human behavior...

 

Sorry, I just can't walk past that.

 

Warning! A huge wall of text about politics, social concepts and philosophy ahead.

 

Your main misconception is that you think that cash is a motivation (for everybody). It's not. There are things you can't buy. Like interstellar travels. There is no such thing and, no matter how smart you are, you won't be able to invent such a thing on your own. Scientists in fundamental areas are working on themes that will see practical implementation far beyond their lifespan. Artists...

 

I mean - Ross himself. He clearly stated that he would rather put things out for free (and hey, he's doing that!). Ross is a creative person and he's making cool things with no particular commercial interest in mind. And, you know, in totally capitalistic world he would have a very hard time with such bad skills of "selling himself".

 

If you'll consider our history, you'll see that most of our advances (I mean real advances, not a new phone model or pc videocard, though these are also advances, but not that much game-changing) were made by people who pursued things far beyond their reach. People who only wanted "a car, a house and whatelse"™ never had a lead role in history, though their input en-masse what significant, those were mere tools and followers, not the leaders.

 

And that's the point of communism. You see communism from a capitalistic point of material goods "everyone got everything they want and everyone do what they can" - that's not going to work, you are right. But that's just because this is a terribly butchered interpretation of actual idea. Actual idea is that you'll give society what you can and you won't take more than it can give you. Essentially you need to see (and care) higher goals of society as a whole thing and see how your actions makes this goals closer. If you ever song in chorus - that's the same feeling, but like a magnitude more powerful. Yes, you are just a part, but you are a part of something so much bigger than anything you could ever achieve by yourself, that it all worth it. You may not feel the same way, it is understandable - we probably came from different mindsets (as someone grown up in very much soviet tradition I've quite a collectivist mindset, of course) - the point is that people are different and their motivations are also different. But the one thing stands - only those who can see things beyond their life can do anything good. Communism is a society of such people - a society of highly intelligent and sentient people, who simply don't care about cars, houses and stuff. If you ever read early soviet sci-fi, such as "XXII century noon" cycle, you'll see the appeal.

 

But communism is not the only ideology (and it's not a political system or something - it's purely an ideology, i.e. an idea of bright future and means to achieve it) that based on ideas of highly advanced society. Liberalism is the same thing for individualistic mindset. They are extremely close in so many ways that the difference between the two is very subtle.

 

But the modern world is neither of those. The modern world is mostly neo-liberal and it's very far away from traditional liberalism. Neo-liberalism has many names - superhuman theory, leaderism, recently you may have heard Ilon Musk rebranded it as a game theory... The basic idea is quite similar to Aristotle's (not sure of authenticity) "bright future" idea - "Every man should be free and have at least three slaves". Essentially it's a semi-working mix between collectivistic and individualistic concepts that ensures that there is a number of different approaches (unlike pure collectivism), but each approach is strong and diverse enough to succeed if (when) problems that a slightly out of the area of expertise for that approach are encountered (unlike pure individualism).

 

To ensure that most of humanity will follow these "leaders" without much hesitation you need exactly opposite of liberalism/communism - you need a very primitive society of people who don't care about anything other than "high live standards". There are many ways to ensure those high standards, so leaders are pretty much free to chose any direction as long as their "flock" is more or less happy. And with modern technologies and propaganda - hey, you can always spin the news in your way. And that's exactly what deus ex and similar games are based on. It's not conspiracy theories or such things - it's a natural evolution of ideas you may track yourself. There is no "illuminati" or something, it's just how it came to be, for worse or good.

 

But it shouldn't stay that way as those "leaders" are also part of the society they deliberately tuning down. And with each generations the quality of leaders falls lower and lower. We already see corrupt leaders who only care about money. And rare occurrences of people with power who care about something else are instantly turning to messiah-like figures in people's minds. This will end very-very badly and you can already see the world being on a brink of a new big war.

 

And another common misconception, that was already voiced here - people with money are the most capable one. No. They might be "capable one", but not "the most". Just because there are so much of high-income positions and so many people. There could not be 2 billion of multinational corporation SEO positions. For obvious reasons. Same with everything else. There are tons and tons of very smart and capable people who just were unlucky to be born at a wrong time at a wrong place.

 

 

A totally sidetracked TL;DR: Does Ross makes his movies because he is motivated by material things too? I think the answer is obvious enough.

[SummersetBanjo]

Here's a clip of some unused dialogue where JC stays with UNATCO.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cEg5Xo7VFU

[Alyxx Thorne]

Here's a clip of some unused dialogue where JC stays with UNATCO.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cEg5Xo7VFU

It's technically not unused. There is a way to trigger it in-game.

[Forgot_My_Account]

Here's a clip of some unused dialogue where JC stays with UNATCO.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cEg5Xo7VFU

It's technically not unused. There is a way to trigger it in-game.

 

Technically correct, but it's not something many people do - also, it's completely useless.

When going to the NSF warehouse, you have to find the evidence, and instead of transmitting it - backtrack to Paul. You'd say you aren't defecting but you can't really do that, so you have to go back to the NSF warehouse and transmit the evidence anyway.