We will if you decide to not go full chud lmao. >Racist impression of a Chinese voice >Rants about California >Rants about hippies >Rants about silicon valley >Rants about James Cameron and Avatar (That movie was pro native dipshit, not pro space marine. Think dances with wolves, but in space. And anti colonialism IS a good thing) Something tells me there is a very hidden yet obvious reason you both like 40k, the heresy element, and this templar OC of yours lmao. Just state you get your news from Hannity/Fox News and we can wash our hands of this mess chud. Notifications are off, good luck replying Rethuglican
@@LucasDimoveo you haven't been paying attention, then. Tech companies have turned you into a machine to watch ads on smartphones and all they had to do is exploit your latent dopamine addiction. Apparently it worked so well you didn't notice.
@@notapuma CS Lewis' final Narnia book, The Last Battle, is one of the most prescient things ever written. It is unbelievably relevant now. The entertainment industry constantly starts trying to adapt Lewis' early Narnia works for the memberberries and name recognition, but they will NEVER film The Last Battle.
My favorite thing about Space marines are the moments, when their stoic masks slip and they show their humanity. The best moment would be the Defence of Rynns World by the Crimson Fists. This is a succesor of the Imperial fists the most stoic, stubborn and coldhearted of the chapters. Their Primarch is qouted to say"Do not look to us for kindness. Do not look to us for hope. We are not the kind children of this new age. We are the rocks of its foundation. If you wish hope then look to what we make. If you wish kindness then look to those who will come after us." Thats the kind of chapter this is, to them Rynn's World wasnt even home, its just were their monastery was located, they dint recruit from it or care for it that much besides it just being a world they happen to be stationed on. But durring the desperate defence and flight front their fortress monastery, the 300 Astartes come across a young woman and her child fleeing from the orc advance, some astartes think they should help her, others just think its a waste and they should prioritize regruoping as that would save more lives in the long term or leaving her for the Guardsmen to maybe find her. Eventualy they allow this woman to travel along as long as she can keep up with them. Obviously thats impossible and just after a few kilometres she colapses while carrying her child. The entire force stops and the chapter master goes back to her, the astartes from whos pov were reading thinks he will just mercy kill her, as thats a far kinder faith than being left to the orks. Only for the Chapter Master of the Astartes to commend the woman for her strength and then lifting her up and carrying her with him to evac. It was at that point that the Crimson Fists no longer fought for the Imperium, or some vague notion of humanity, they fought for their home and those they swore to protect. Its a moment that trully shows why cold logic should never replace humanity.
Great video. I'm surprised you didn't touch directly on the idea that one of the reasons that people wish for transhumanism is because they have come to resent or loathe themselves and the limitations of their "mortal coils".
Im something of an outlier when it comes to more conservative-learning circles as I actually support SOME of the ideas of transhumanism. Technology is something of a Pandora's box. You can't put it back once it's established, so it's important to get out ahead of it and influence the manner in which it manifests and the manner in which it's used. Moreover, if we ever want to truly expand our into the reaches of space, realistically speaking, we're going to need to adopt some degree of gene editing or man/machine integration or union.
What's funny is that the Halo "show" seemed to actively make the opposite decisions regarding the Spartans and their AI than in the actual lore, such as not telling them what was being done to them or even wiping their minds (which according to book Halsey would cause them to likely rebel against them if they ever found out) but also that Mjolnir's AI suite is explicitly designed to never give the AI control of the suit itself yet in the "show" they more made the Spartans to eventually be taken over by the AI... fuck that show lol.
Well the show was written by people who already had a script and general plot in mind, but hated that they were working with "inferior" material. So they just sort of awkwardly shoved it into Halo despite clearly not fitting all that well.
They never wiped there minds in the books. The children had all of their memories. In the chapter your referencing Halsey argued against the mind wipe and preferred to convince them through their training into understanding their purpose.
Ultramarine are bipolar af. In the book the chapters due you have Severus Ageman looking down on the human militia like they were bubble gum sticking on his boots while also having Varro Tigurius who were extremely grateful for the fact that mere humans chose to stay with him at his last stand so he wouldn't be lonely because librarians have an unsettling aura around them that that many space marines don't like to be anywhere near.
@@johnrenwelmauro2387 Ageman is the opposite of that. He can't keep his emotion in check and can't think outside of the box. He's the opposite of Cato Sicarius who keeps thinking he's above the rules except for the ambition part that they share in common. That's why they have a rivalry until Gulliman returns. The Ultramarines were so lucky that Gulliman returned and Calgar hasn't died yet or the chapter would implode because the chapter would have to pick between the two of them to become the next chapter master.
@@minhducnguyen9276"I, CATO SICARIUS, CHAMPION OF MACRAGGE, AM THE GREATEST SPACE MARINE EVER TO EXIST. AND I, CATO SICARIUS, SHOULD BE A CHAPTER MASTER"
It depends on the writer and era. In early Rogue Trader and 2nd ed, the marines are techno-barbarian space knights. They are (sometimes barely) uplifted barbarians refitted with technology and taught to use it. In some they are dysfunctional child soldiers monks. They don't remember much of human existence and aren't allowed any time out of their routine of prayer, training and campaigns to remind themselves.
I think the female persona of voice activated assistant (spy) devices like Alexa has less to do with appealing to incels, though that may be part of it, and more so that we seem to be hardwired to find feminine voices less threatening.
@@notsure4648 Because Oxford English is teached in schools (in Europe at least), so it's easy to understand to lots of people Edit: Minor error, nothing too fancy
A topic on the Adeptus Mechanicus would be interesting on when dogged adherence to tradition leads to stagnation. The very core of the Techpriests beliefs is that everything that mankind needs now, has already been created at some point in humanities past. All the priesthood needs to do is find the sacred texts, rebuild the old designs, and everything will be better then wasting time and energy on new and potentially disastrous ideas. When something like the Razorback was considered "untested" and "experimental" despite 500 years of active use says a lot about how the priests of Mars view both technological advancement and mankind's relationship with innovation. Though, given that they live in a setting where demons not only exist, but can subtly influence minds to create all sorts of terrible things without the creator realizing it, the kind of mistrust they place on anything new is probably warranted. It's also an interesting look at Transhumanism, as despite the ever present cybernetic augmentations, even the Admech still believe in human supremacy in all things...even if their idea of what the ideal Man looks like differs pretty damn heavily from the rest of the Imperium.
In a way, they're _kinda_ right; a fully in-tact STC *probably* could solve a majority of the problems suffered by Humanity in 40K.... The STCs allowed Humanity to achieve its Golden Age _and_ produced the Men of Iron, who in turn cast Humanity into the Age of Strife.
The period of 3-5th editions when the Ad Mech wouldn't recognize the Land Raider Crusader as an official variant because the Black Templars wouldn't let the Mech see the STC, so the Templars just sent the file around to other space marine chapters instead.
well put. plus, given how absurdly advanced humanity became at their zenith during the "dark age of technology", the admech arent necessarily wrong that all humanities needs tech-wise could be rediscovered. That 41st millenium is sorely in need for a kind of renaissance, a rediscovery. Then again, like you point out about the demons of chaos in the setting, it isnt so simple as tech solving every problem. The Emperor himself being AdMech's 'omnissiah' was in truth a technical renaissance all in one man, bringing humanity back from the brink and potentially to greater heights. Emp gives off Promethean vibes as well, stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humanity, especially if you read deep into it and consider the chaos portal on Moloch that the rebel Primarchs seem to have had the memory of visiting erased from their memories... It'd be fascinating to see what the future of the 40k setting looks like if it were to resolve some of the dialectal tensions in is current status quo, but IRL human civilization will certainly end before GW progresses the narrative that far as it would be the end of the setting lmao.
@@dean_l33 think bigger. Belisarius Cawl has multiple copies of his brain, rack-mounted in server warehouses doing background task thinking on the hard problems he's working on. i think he swaps in different copies of his memories depending on the task at hand too.
You should look up the Salamander Chapter in 40k. They are your ideal Space Marine since they are still llowed to maintain contact with their families and as such make them the most human of the 40k space marines.
The salamanders overprotection of normal humans is usually seen as a flaw by the other chapters, often putting the lives of humans above that of their brothers, remember when Grimaldus literally scolded a salamander's reinforcement when in their time of need the salamanders decided to hold back a counter attack when the templars were making a push, compromising it in the process, literally refusing to give his blessing and pray with the salamanders afterwards, Being a chaplain
@thebaron9405 and that is ultimately why the ultramarines are superior to the salamanders. They understand they are there to protect humanity, they are willing to go to great lengths to protect humanity but will not compromise the mission for civilians because they understand you can save the random civilian in the corner but your actions can leave your brothers without support or you could die and by your death not only the person you tried to save will die but hundreds or thousands more will due because you won't be there to kill an ork or tyranid.
@@thebaron9405all of the Chapters are flawed in some way. The Iron Hands will replace functional flesh with augmetics. The Ultramarines view the Codex Astartes as Holy Writ that must be followed at all times, despite the fact that it is so large that none of them know all of it and Gulliman wrote it as a guide only. The Dark Angels and their Successors, the Unforgiven, don’t trust anyone. Even then own brothers. The Blood Angels flaw is genetic with the Red Thirst and Black Rage. The Astartes are flawed copies of flawed Primarchs of a flawed Emperor leading a flawed Imperium.
Technology that erases human essence is one that leads to the formation of cultures that could have never possibly formed if we were talking about plain old ancient humans. We can imagine Space Marines, sent into the past, might have still forged something like the Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empires and embraced the same symbols. A James Cameron's Avatar Navi transhumanist would never be able to repeat the human cultures of the past, for they are too alien to do so.
from Star Wars to Terminator, Warhammer 40k to Halo, Mech-Warrior to Star Trek. these, like so many others, share this frequently overlooked, and forgotten, absolute truth: *there will always be a need for infantry.* whether they are warriors, soldiers, missionaries, or medics. but have a care: for while man and machine infantry on their own are terrifying, there are few things more terrifying than man and machine combined.
Well, in my opinion I like the Sarduakar approach to creating a super soldier, minus the human sacrifice. My ideal super soldier would be akin to someone embodying the ideals of the Chivalry code for Knights, and the meditative discipline of a Samurai warrior. All tempered with a zealous fervor to protect the innocent.
@@BrBetim Picture it more if Tolkien wrote a Space Marine book. Also I’ve been reading the Musashi novel by Eiji Yoshioka and also burning through Dovstoyeski. I’m ridding high on art here.
The Witchers from the The Witcher franchise could also be considered supersoldiers as well despite the historical fantasy setting. They were born as a tool of necessity due to humanity needing to face monsters. Like Spartan II's, Witcher candidates were subjected to indoctrination and harsh physiological modification that only few had survived. Despite this origin as programmed, servile golems, we see Geralt display humanity in a world where it has become hard to distinguish humans from monsters. He really fits the setting Sapkowski created and I think that should be something a writer should focus when making a "super" soldier. They are to be the the torchbearers of humanity in their respective settings and their characteristics should reflect that. Its more than just making a powerful biological weapon. Also, people calling Astartes as transhuman or mindless tools of war clearly haven't read books like Helsreach.
I mean barely....training can start as early as 12 and SM live for thousands of years. So the years they're in their teens are barely a blip. And yes I know you're joking
They are also like halo slaves to the dystopian state. Only the Custodians have any form of real autonomy and discretion. The mechanicus also have some political autonomy due to their tech monopolies but do live a more restricted life to stay in their pious cult.
9:10 that is quite correct. Cortana's name is a variant of Curtana, the sword used by the legendary Ogier the Dane, just as the titular AI character of Bungie's previous game Marathon 2: Durandal is named after the legendary sword Durendal. Curtana's inscription reveals that the sword has the same "temper as Joyeuse and Durendal". That is why a lot of fans think The Weapon in Halo Infinite should be named Joyeuse.
One of the interesting ideas to explore is being created in the image of the creator, if humanity is created in the image of the creator and the super soldier is the idealized vision of what that might be. It becomes clear when the vision of the super soldier diverges greatly from the original image or pattern after the creator. It is also strange how the super soldier is both the image of the Male and the whole race in the same
The firmware is different, but the software of their minds is still so important. Look at the Avatar bodies... they do still have 5 fingers and come with the mind they come with. It just depends on the specific avatars sent back.
Male bodies are already optimized in many ways thanks to evolution, so I would say that it's not so strange. Even ignoring the cultural history of what ideas of soldiers and warriors look like and are and how linked they are to maleness.
Just gonna put it out based on facts, human males are more adept as soldiers therefore males are more likely to become super soldiers. That's just how males evolved, to fight and die to protect the species.
Definitely needed in the future of infantry and cavalry(reconnaissance). As modern trends show, even if major engagements take place over miles, you and a team or squad can find yourself clearing a trench...
A.i has the potential to make many things incredibly user-friendly much as the gun is greater than any Bow simply because point and shoot is easier than draw hold aim release. To have a suit that helps do complex math and store information that can be pulled instantly is useful sticking that device into your brain reductive.
I think it is interesting how you make a point in how a machine could turn out to be kind of "alien" in its "decision making" process, thus, becoming inhuman; while a super soldier, no matter how augmented, would still be human in its core, capable of empathize with non-augmented humans. Also, I think that what makes a super soldier not a mutant or a transhuman and makes them necessary and even good for the preservation of humanity, is that they, in origin, are human (born human and raised as one) and are more like a sacrifice for the wellbeing of the rest of humanity, which won't go through all the modifications they will, to better their chances at survival in a battle against something humans could not fight or can fight but with such great loses it would mean our extinction anyway. Another aspect of the super soldier is that, unlike the "transhuman", they have a purpose in their concept: a soldier is a defender; transhumans "can" be whatever they want, and so there is no purpose but to follow hedonistic ideals. I do like this idea of using technology to power human capabilities, to have the human at is core, instead of making it something that will replace us. This was a very cool video, and to say makes us humans, is a very interesting question, I have some ideas like: the search for purpose, the capability to make art and appreciate it, the ability to empathize with each other and even try to understand other beings, of course, our particular anthropomorphic form and biology xD and well, to continue thinking in more :3
Isn't a human mutant and a transhumanist still human as well? Because I think you'd need to under many and I mean many different types of mutations in order to no longer be considered human, where's a person who decides to use genetic tech to give themselves something like cat ears and a tail is still pretty much a human just with a few minor differences
@@ElishaFollet Yep. The mutant we are talking about would be the result of lots of mutations: a creature that has very little human resemblance and very little almost non-existant compatibility with other humans. Transhumans, actual transhumans are, a bit radical as far as I know, they will not stop with just some little additions, these guys seek "perfection", so what is going to happen is that they will use technology to pursue this ideal and will slowly but surely become something inhuman, be it by becoming more machine than person, or by modifying their bodies and genetic so much it will be like that of the mutant: incompatible with human genes, and by leaving behind human biology, they will also leave behind human mindsets and the capability to empathize with humans, therefore, becoming alien to us.
@@ElishaFollet ever heard of racism or xenophobia? Natural next step of thinking that others are inferior is: people think that they are better than others. What do you think would happen if they would actually be different than the rest of us?
That makes me think of the episode of love death and eobots where the farmers have to decend their land from some alien species that swarms their farms.
This issue was covered wonderfully in the 12 episodes of Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. Humanity is humanity because we have weak bodies. We created weapons, formed communities, to protect us from dangers. The moment we start to try and adapt to an environment via bodily augmentations, is the moment we begin treading on a knife's edge.
Comparatively we aren't all that weak, we are actually rather large for land animals. It's just that we tend to compare ourselves to bears, rhinos, and lions and not rabbits, beetles and field mice.
Thoughtful and interesting video. I’m used to a little bit of braindead-ness in TH-cam essays that you just have to ignore by default but there’s none of that here
9:24 I would think of cortana as a shield maiden, a woman willing to fight at your side and risk her life for you as you would for her would be much more romantic than a man loving a weapon.
@@MALICEM12in Fall of Reach (the novel written as a canon companion piece to Combat Evolved back in the day) Cortana was created specifically to be the technology and cyber warfare specialist assigned to the Spartan 2s for Operation Red Flag. It was only thanks to the Covenant invading Reach and the events of the mainline game trilogy that caused Chief and her to bond as closely as they did. Not to mention gamers really liking the witty lady voice riding shotgun with you as you shoot, grenade, and melee your way through unending hordes of aliens and lovecraftian horrors
@@MALICEM12 because her original purpose was as what essentially the first guy suggested, a shield maiden or fellow soldier, just one that has a different purpose on the team, she wasn't just "sexy assistant lady" like you said
@@johndunn1625 you misunderstand, I was speaking of her design. She's literally naked. She IS the sexy assistant. She just makes witty banter and does tech support. Also I was speaking in meta not lore. Lore wise sure she was meant to ASSIST the Spartans. But that's still key word, an assistant, not a "soldier fighting side by side". She's tech support, not a soldier. But more importantly, meta wise, back in the olden times of the far flung past of 2001....yeah come the fuck on man, we know why she's there.
21:51 the whole thing about the Emperor-designed post-humans in Warhammer (Astartes, Custodes and Primarchs) still being a valid aspect of humanity is explored many times in the lore, but most recently in the book The End and the Death,Volume 1, In a very poetic and psychedelic mind conversation between Sanguinius and The Emperor, which starts by Sanguinius asking a child-like question to Emps "Why do we suffer, knowing the trials and pains we face, why did you make us to suffer?". Great video man, good work.
The halo AIs chose their own avatars, and some didn’t even choose a human form (though that’s rare). And I don’t think the UNSC wanted the Spartans connecting to humans since they were originally made to put down human rebellions thought to risk destroying human civilization… somehow. The later Sparta in 4s could probably better fit that, being upgraded adults with lives back home. And given the nature of Halo AI, sort of impossible to not make it humanized, unless you do a nonsapient one like we have now.
@@LocalDiscordCatgirlaccording to the "Halsey's Journal" collectible included with one of the limited edition versions of Halo: Reach, Halsey repeatedly (and illegally) cloned herself about half a dozen times in order to ultimately produce Cortana, with the last clone being killed by the brain-uploading process and her predecessors being killed by Halsey for displaying developmental abnormalities. Quite the Doctor Frankenstein, that woman...😐
@@CanadianPaletrue, but ONI did hire her to make the Spartan program so.... who is worse, Dr. Frankenstein or the dude (or organization) who hired him to make abominations?
@@crocidile90 it's not a question of which is worse. Most fans are, I think, aware that ONI is a very shady organization at the best of times, but remaining curiously defensive about Halsey, despite her cold willingness to murder children in the name of a nebulous greater good (the SPARTAN-II program having been initiated years before anyone even knew the Covenant existed), use her murdered clone's digital ghost to try and destroy her rivals in the NAVSPECWAR division, and attempt to abscond with some of the military's most valuable assets later on, when she'd given in to despair and decided that the war couldn't be won.
@@crocidile90 Halsey is absolutely worse. One person vs the money funding them. You can't blame corporations for doing what iorps do, only the individuals that support them.
The thing Pilgrim gets wrong here is that soldiers are not becoming irrelevant through innovations in physical warfare, but instead innovations in psychological warfare. The modern battlefield is not one of bombs, jets, and tanks, but instead subtle acts of increasingly personal psychological manipulation, social engineering, and misinformation. The real "super solider" is an over-worked NSA analyst who can only function on his 16 hour shift through drug use, who spends his whole day harvesting scraps of useful intel from the world's most comprehensive surveillance state. This is why AI both scares me and doesn't scare me; there is no way an AI can make on-the-ground decisions like a human can in fields like navigation, targeting, and weapons operation, but it doesn't need to if it can convince humans to do those things for it. Psychological manipulation on a case-by-case scale would be the PERFECT deployment for an AI. At the same time an AI could never truly get rid of us, because the marginal utility of humanity is too high.
Gotta stop you there.... Where's Robocop? He's the cyberpunk take on the western gunslinger lawman which in itself is just the USA's mythos take on the knight archetype.
Civ beyond earth is criminally underrated. In the game there is hybrid idealogy between the three. Would clone troopers be a super soldiers since there are various types of clone troopers. Examples being clone commandos and clone force 99(bad batch). Also the DNA of the clone trooper was based on near super human Jango Fett. Jango Fett Mandalorian's warrior and history made him a ideal choice of DNA. A clone army of soliders breed to kill Jedi. The clone even adopted their "father's warrior culture".
Section 9 from Ghost in the Shell is also an interesting take. They used to be super soldiers (to varying degrees), but they still work for the government because no one else would be able to fund the upkeep of their military-grade implants. But even though they are transhumans within a transhuman society, they get tasked with investigating the bleeding edge technological threats to both humans and humanity in general. They also are not so regimented as Spartans or Astartes, and the humanity of their individual personalities is more readily apparent.
"I just cant get enough of the fact that they even gave her toes. What? In case her Spartan had a foot fetish I guess?" "The one good thing about Halo 5 is that Cortana can make hard light body , she can now step on me" - PancreasNoWork Self-procleimed Halo fanboy randomly on video about Adeptus Mechanicus
I loved his videos on Halo factions in WH40k (wish he did humans but, would probably be boring) with my favorite being the Flood episode where yes, this is the one faction that can be stopped easily by the other factions IF caught in early stages (i.e. before key mind) and I love the idea of a key mind trolling all psychers especially the Emperor in Iambic pentameter.
Yeah, one of the things I was thinking of was for the nanotech enhancements have a mesh net that is self-contained. It would contain all the info it needs to help the guy without compromising autonomy. Not to mention, AI that fully developed will likely have its own factions and might see allying with humans as a way to test various methods or otherwise fulfill different purposes. Even robots can disagree on what to do.
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call the temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal… Even in death I serve the Omnissiah.
This is a literal quotation of Warhammer 40K lore for the Adeptus Mechanicus and it sounds just as creepy as it was intended to. Metal may be stronger and more certain than flesh, but thinking the mechanism is purer than its maker is a dangerous type of heresy.
@@alsatusmd1A13 that's the thing with the mechanicus, they are very tranhumanist but even they understand that the machine without it's human is heresy, is an abomination because you threw away the human spirit. True still the mechanicus see humans as cheap, because that's just true, that said if there aren't any humans that knowledge they strive for is useless, this again is shown in how they do 'research', while mostly re-engineering old human tech they are trying to figure out the principals of that tech with a human mind and human understanding, that's why anything not made by humans is heresy.
The Adeptus Astartes as far as i'm aware were created by The Emperor for the purpose of re-conquering the Galaxy after the Fall of Humanity in the Dark/Golden Age of Technology, in which AI (Men of Iron) did rebel and wiped 3/4's of the galactic floor with the collective face of humanity in The Cybernetic Revolt. Love your video aswell dude ❤
The emperor created them because he needed a powerful force of dedicated soldiers at a time when he didn’t have a true empire to draw on millions of forces of common humans.
Technically the space marines from warhammer 40K were considered the average foot soldier during the gray crusade where entire legions of space marines would be used to invade a single planet where a single space marine legion could hold anywhere upwards of up to ten thousand active troops and again I mean foot soldiers not pilots or engineers or any other form of support or logistics but actual foot soldiers and again that’s excluding those trained in the uses of aircraft and heavy equipment like the sicaran battle tank or the astraius super heavy tank, which comes with shields and can fly to boot, not to mention that whilst space marines were the common foot soldiers, as time passed and the theater of war expanded to a point in which even the space marines were spread so thin, in which the imperial army was formed as a support system meant to help with conquering a world in which space marines aren’t entirely needed but a single squad of marines can oversee a planetary invasion against say a medieval or a modern day earth, not to mention that some space marine legions were utterly massive like the iron warriors which relied more on siege warfare and attrition meaning that their numbers would have to be sizable to accommodate the staggering losses and considering the horrors the imperium had to deal with, ranging from advanced human empires who are more machine than humans and can one shot a space marine, to literal giants and demons, when you consider how bad the arachnids from star ship troopers were, the megarachnids can grow to the size of a skyscraper and can easily cut the largest tanks in the imperium in half, hell one time there was a world which was so hard to invade, the space wolves simply captured a space station and yeeted it at the planet and then when the dust had settled then invaded the planet.
You should talk about Ghost In the Shell's take on humanism with respect to this subject: Where the full cyborg protagonist (just a brain in a cybernetic body) is one of the most human characters in the show, while many of the villains are relatively unaugmented humans (some are augmented of course as well) There is also a quite non-doom-y AI plotline with the Tachikomas, and a slightly more doom-y plotline with the Puppet Master
There are villians in GitS? Since when? Puppet Master was a sentient AI slave to a government using it for war who escaped and merged with the Major so they could make AI babies. Laughing Man was an activist who was personally harmed by the micromachine plot that he exposed. He was also a genius hacker who was close to being locked-in due to his overuse of net access. N was a post-human who just wanted to live in peace with his hivemind of other post-humans. The only 'bad guys' in GitS are the nameless terrorists who die immediately after Major gives them some philosophical lecture as part of the overall background plot. Reality isn't black and white and neither is Ghost in the Shell.
19:20 This is actually quite similar to how the Flood work in Halo. They not only infect a host and take over their body, but they also possess the ability to connect to the hosts memories to gain whatever information they need. This information is then shared with any nearby Flood once a colony has been established. The host is also physically and mentally aware of what's going on around them, including any brutal mutations the Flood does to their body.
How about the Republic Clones from star wars? Their not as effective as all the super soldiers you mentioned but they still fill in the same category, Created and bred to fight and serve while still maintaining their own individuality or at least finding it in process. It also asks the question of what to do with all these soldiers once the fighting is done and their place in society that they protected.
i think clone troopers are more akin to the sort of 20th century infantryman with pew-pew laser gun and armor that cant protect v well a'la the space marines in Avatar, rather than the kind shown in wh40k or Halo. Not to say star wars doesnt have an equivalent, which isnt necessarily Jedi / Sith as thats a different kind of uber-human combatant leaning in the spiritual development path sort of like the Bene Gesserate and Paul Atrates in Dune. Maybe one of the Star Wars Emperors super soldier programs like one of the generations of the DarkTroopers would be more at par with 40k / Halo.
@@weaselhack What about Republic Commandos & ARC Troopers? I think it'd be accurate to separate them from the grunt. In the opening to Republic Commando the Kaminoan said to the Commando, "You will be superior to your more common brethren."
@@weaselhack The Idea of the space marine / Super soldier was what future soldiers might be like and I think the clones fit this nicely. The problem with the avatar space marines is that their just modern soldiers in space. I think there's alot to explore with the Idea of using clones as soldiers or at least artificially created soldiers whose only purpose is to fight wars. Also they fight killer robots which seems to be a theme in this video.
Clone Commandos and ARC troopers and the Death and Dark troopers of the Empire are all super soldiers to a degree just not as enhanced as Spartans and Astartes
One aspect of the real world tech gives me hope: neural links to control your cool weapons and armor don't require any modification of the the soldier. It just requires tuning the equipment to the individual and then wearing a hat full of electrodes.
In Warhammer 40K there is literally a knight class, a nobility piloting armour whose lineage dates way back before the Imperium. Their origins stem from the need for immediate protection in humanity's most remote colonies. Interestingly, these armours have an artificial intelligence with more or less its own will, which stores the memories of all these pilots. In contact with the armour, a new compatible pilot will develop a moral code very close to chivalry. I don't have any direct proof of this, but from what's been suggested it could be that the armour's artificial intelligences have learned over time to shape the mentality of their pilots in the most effective way possible to ensure their primary mission, which is to protect the worlds they've been entrusted with. Honestly, I find it hard to see the point of applying biological transhumanism to supersoldiers other than to increase their cognitive abilities and survivability. Admittedly, it's easier to sell miniatures of 3-metre-high guys firing big guns, but I don't think that's really practical, basically a tank does everything these little guys can do, only better, and it only takes a few months to build it. On the other hand, the skills of the personnel are the real limiting human factor. Modern warfare is characterised above all by the lack of qualified personnel, well before the lack of ammunition or equipment. And the more things go on, the more firepower and technical skills drop down the ranks, which means recruiting ever more qualified, ever more trained and ever more specialised personnel. And in fact we may already have our super soldier. Many of today's military disasters and breakdowns are due to the lack of consideration given to increasing the quality of the troops, particularly the infantry, who are always the 5th wheel when it comes to funding, even though they are the ones who plant the flags. Ironically, modern republics have to take far better care of their soldiers than the replaceable pawns of the armies of Louis XIV. A soldier in logistics today is better equipped than a soldier in the infantry in the 90s. As far as transhumanism in general is concerned, I think it will be a Darwinian confrontation of societal models, as is always the case. If we get the impression that all the civilisations born in Eurasia seem to follow a homogeneous development plan, it's not because there's a tree of technologies as in Age of Empire, but simply a huge survivor bias.
Saying that super soldiers would be pointless because of tanks is like saying infantry is pointless because of drones. They don't do and are not meant for the same purposes.
@@algorithmgeneratedanimegir1286 Biological superhumans are most of the time pointless because you could enhance humans to do the same job with less dangerous and more scalable solutions. Tank , special forces ,fighter jets are all super soldiers on their own right but not superhumans. Even before gunpowder we had a pretty clear understanding of breeding but creating superhuman solely for war was never maintained for long. Because costs and cons are far greater than pro. And this was a time when war could be changed by biological factors. Today it's just unthinkable. You want to make some genetically augmented soldier ? OK first you need wombs , artificial or natural given your current technological level , then you need to feed and educate them for at least 15 /years , 10 if you could accelerate their growth. Another solution would be taking random young humans and crudely alter them with surgery and partial genetic modification. Counts thousands of dollars per guys , a long convalescence and shitload of secondary effects . And all of this for what ? A measly increase of survivability speed force abilities who are always in a "biological" range ? Even if you could pull guys strong has gorillas and fast has ostriches , which would be a god-like level of biological enhancing , with the same span of tehchnlogical progress any exoskeleton would absolutely smoke them in term performance/cost and even absolute performance. Your 20-year-old billon dollars vat grown knight superhumans would be trashed by any globo military corp who could turn any levy into very comparable super soldier. Which just let the cyborg one who doesn’t add any benefit if it’s not about a neuralink-like technology. And with this we circle to my first post. Sorry to crush some dreams but sometime technological progress just crush their ancestors. Steel is superior to flesh ,motors turned horses from a mighty biological weapon to a recreative hobby for girls.
I disagree, we spend more on infantry then ever. Look at how many thousands is spent on equipping the average US soldier today....now compare that to the average US GI from WWII. Stark difference. WWII was TOTAL WAR and was a numbers game, the individuals didn't matter as much. But nowadays we put far more importance on saving lives and the individual being better equipped than ever.
@@MALICEM12I already said It about equipment, but funding is also about maintenance, training, and army size then we need to account per capita (relative to other military spending who also increased) without retirement pension (which hugely biases the military spending about Infantry without telling a thing about capability). And we should also think about the added benefit brought with more funding. Once you apply everything you will notice that infantry is drastically underfunded and undertrained in most western country. Now add that everyone lies, and the rampant corruption (UCP camo for ex) and things are way worse than you could think. The French soldier today is way better equipped than those in WW2. But French infantry was always at the bottom in any funding. France was one the lasts country to adopt assault rifle (in the 70) and during most of the decolonization war, they were outgunned by insurrectionist with more modern weapons. 10 years ago, they still used FAMAS maintained with glue and bought their own equipment. Now things are better because the recent funding you might hear about are closer to resurrection than modernization. Even for US army it was not that bright until the 2000 passing from “no boots on the ground “and “surgical strike” to the second battle of Fallujah with 6000 shell strike and tanks opening doors to let marines entering. Still things seem to be far worse in the nonwestern world even per capita.
one interesting thing i heard of in regards to cybernetics is the goal of it is to modify your body in a way where they can make a legal claim on your body that you simply cant afford to say no to
You will ALWAYS need infantry. Somebody has to go planetside, you can’t just death star or exterminatus every planet. Somebody has to board enemy vessels. Somebody has to enter the underground vaults and bunkers. Somebody has to kill/capture high value targets. Somebody has to rescue hostages or prisoners. Somebody will always have to put their boots on the ground. Until AI robots become more capable ground combatants than humans and until they become immune to EMP or other counter measures, you will ALWAYS need the infantry.
This is one I really enjoyed, being human isn’t only about appearance it’s something essencial and further: spiritual in nature but with a material form to match…neo-platonism has a lot in common with Christianity when it comes to the metaphysical understanding of the world and the human condition…
Would love to see you give an analysis of each of Beyond Earth's Affinities and of the hybrid affinities, like the positives and negatives of each one and that sort of thing.
Here is my solution to the Ai terminator problem Back in the day, every viking sailor had completely memorized how to make a viking boat, from scratch. All up in his nogin was the dimensions and instructions on how to make a boat. Throw him on an island, deprived of everything save an axe and a knife, he will sail off that island in the boat he made. Now, in the modern world, make sure every human being, knows how to make an emp, completely from scratch at a hardware store. Nothing but his memory. The world has enough home depots and triple A batteries.
I doubt a simple emp device will do anything against a warbot since the military has already found ways of emp proofing they're technology, I think the better option would be teaching as many people as possible how to effectively code computers and how to hack them since cyberwarfare I've heard is a highly effective form of combat and a pain in the ass for your enemy's to deal with. Tho doing this will probably lead to much more disasters results than the emp idea.
@@ElishaFollet from what I understand, the military's way of EMP proofing something is removing all electronics and circuitry (like the Humvee) I imagine you could emp proof certain robots, but on average it would just be too difficult or it would restrict the ability of said robot to communicate or receive orders from other robots (the most primitive way to Emp proof something is to cover any openings it in tin foil, which works but no radio signals can go inside, for a robot army that sucks cause you loose a lot of synergy and communications) Your coding plan does sound interesting tho. My problem with it is that is sounds ripe for AI to flip the tables and hack into your computer.
I see your point but still beg to differ. Depending on the type of war robot we are facing, I would say a shaped charge would be more effective. Early terminators like the US Air Force's T1 and Cyberdyne Systems' hunter-killer tank were more akin to armoured vehicles rather than bipedal humanoid robots and most probably have the same weaknesses.
Interesting point in Halo lore is that the AI creation process requires the destructive scan of a human brain with the example of Cortana, who was likely created from a clone of Halsey. Which makes Cortana calling Halsey a monster ironic.
You have become my favorite TH-camr. The way you use these games and shows I love and your own comedy to show me history and new ideas. You’re great mate
This was a good video on this topic, I would recommend both the Manga and 2000's anime of Cyborg 009 by Shotaro Ishinamori to see the concept through a cold war lens in how suber solders can be used to fuel a new kinda arms race.
Okay so a while back I think I solved the cyberspycosis cause. Mainly from binging a lot of neuroscience and biological podcasts. TLDR the muscle and mass is the second hurtle stoping impulsive behavior. It's not just PTSD but the fact of replacing the biological parts of the body actively limits the brain to interface with the outside world. But this in an of itself is a grand lie. The human is more than the brain. Our stomachs have some form.of grey matter surrounding them and the bacteria in our guts can be altered depending on what we eat. This is a major reason for our adaptivity. Point being the less of a whole one is the more trapped in their mind they become. Which leads down the winding path of psychosis. And since the tech in cyberpunk is linked to the brain when intrusive thoughts and dark ideas become the normal. Not having muscle memory to halt the actions you might otherwise take.
R. Talsoran thought Cyberpunk 2020 needed a balancing mechanic for cybernetic power, or players would build their PCs into metal monsters until it was all a mecha game. Shadowrun had its own version where your bond with your soul weakens and eventually severs. Others could limit cybernetics through steep prices or rarity, like cybernetics is a rare treasure found in old vaults. 40k uses the availability balance. C-psychos can't understand humanity. The more dehumanizing something is, the more Humanity Cost is associated with it. Replacing your face with a barely articulated steel plate nets you a lot of HC. Anything that alters your perception of self and the world, like a booster that makes you constantly feel like walking in syrup or a hand that shoots people when you think. You could fix it all in the old rules we had. You just had to say no to power. They strap people down, pull out all their stuff or replace it with toned-down civvie versions. You have to more or less willingly abandon all the power you have accumulated.
This video struck a deep cord with me, as in a spell of world building i went "What would humans be like, without the raw aspect of natural evolution?" the idea of the "Material Enhancement Techno-organic Augmentation" META humans was both an experiment as to how my friends would react to the ultimate idea of "Human nature, but evolved for the modern world". Boy, was i in over my head. But you summed it up best in the "super soldiers are still human" segment. Hell, thats the entire point. Super *human* not in combat prowess ,or how smart you are, but the emotion. Aware, in control, and disciplined like the mentioned Buddhist monks. Rambles/other info below: the main antagonist of the story is "forge". Demons that consume everything and remake it in their image for more resource consumption, so a communist's depiction of capitalism. The reason META exist was to fight forge, and keep humanity from going extinct. But what will happen after the secret was popped that super humans exist after the war? Do they get treated as equals? are they forced into a caste system of warriors by the normal humans like in 40k? Well, the person responsible of the creation of the META humans wants them to replace normal humans through peaceful means, be it simply out competing them or if possible through "Sci fi genetics" magic reproduce with normal humans but gestate META humans, or a near equivalent. As much as id love to go into extensive detail in a youtube comment (sarcasm) my own inexperience with world building and the idea has been a pain and caused lots of drama between my friends and I mostly because of my poor communication skills. The ultimate goal isnt to replace humanity, but to evolve it for a world of science and technology. But uhhh, yea, thats META humans. thanks for reading, person.
Another great talking point on humanities role in sci fi, and I am so glad you brought up Beyond Earth!!! Everyone scoffs at it since they think it's a poor Civ entry, but on the contrary it tried to be a very different beast! I really wish you brought up how the hybrid affinities delve even deeper into how technology and biology in humanity change and shape their culture like how the tech purity faction "tame" machines that have an animal intelligence and prefer solitary spires, how the purity harmony geneticist use their new discoveries to make human "more" and emulate greco roman gods and sculptures, and finally the most interesting mix of the tech harmony faction that abandon all of their humanity and become a truly alien race akin to the combine. Quite frankly it's the perfect setting for a sci fi property and I even have the ground work for a story using all the pieces. I don't know if I'll ever get around to working on it but when I do I'm sure you'll see the rumblings of it. I hate to waste potential especially in Beyond Earth.
All in all very based video. What's funny is that the idea of the "super soldier" is as old as time. The idea of the super soldier or hero represents the best qualities and purpose of a human, heroism, justice, willpower, etc, it refers back to the ancient stories of heroes of Heracles, Beowulf and Gilgamesh. It's why we should be against AI and transhumanism because it discards the very thing that makes us human, our indomitable spirit.
One of the most important parts of Starship Troopers to me and what makes the criticism of Heinlein as "Fascist" very silly is that anyone can become a Citizen with enough Discipline and the willingness to sacrifice for the body politic unless they are just so mentally deficient that you cannot take or understand the oath. I feel like that vision of the Future Citizen soldier is the ideal, being born into the caste through engineering like the Astartes can lead to various problems likely similar to problems of late stage aristocracies that lead to the liberal revolutions of the early modern period though exacerbated by their utter detachment in real physical terms from the rest of humanity. The Citizen Soldier must choose the path. In the words of Heinlein, that which is given has no value, it must be earned.
Ah yes, because taking away a civilians right to vote and only giving it once they swear they're undying loyalty and servitude to the state and nobody else but the state and doing what ever the state orders u to do without questions is definitely not a fascist idea and will definitely stop corruption and oligarchy from forming and abusing the system to benefit themselves and screw over the masses who definitely won't still be able to be fear mongered and propagandized into serving this totally not fascist state that definitely is not fascist what so ever, am I right my fellow authoritarian boot lickers/dumbass sympathizers?
Forcing your citizens to jump through hoops to have political power will automatically concentrate it in the hands of a small group. Besides 100 percent mobilization is impossible, what about all of the support structure? Can you get your vote farming? The other issue is that the Federation tries to get recruits or possible recruits to leave. They encourage it, as it makes political power that much more exclusive.
@@chaucermcdoogle6011 The limiting of Franchise is part of the point. Most people should not hold any political power at all. However, the advocacy in the video for a noble class of born and bred super being fighting men is just too limiting for my personal standards.
@@SneakyRANGERREX "Most people should not have political power at all". What's your ideology? Undemocratic societies are braindead, the upper class has no reason not to loot the entire society from the top.
nice video the most interesting thing was the relationship between a warrior and it's tool the knight and his armor the samurai and his sword the steppeman and his horse the thing you saw in Iraq was how wastefully 'shock and awe' tactics took over the military. How navy gargantuanism took over as navy> armies. How spreadsheets and technology became heavily involved in a soldier, meanwhile afghan goat herders and Vietnamese with aks beat them down mercilessly Americans just forgot that their warrior "culture" was once a frontiersman and his rifle like in 1776
I wouldn't really call our culture a warrior culture, more of a nationalistic/patriotic freedom type since warrior cultures required every one to be trained in some form of combat and serve some purpose to the military where's in our culture wether u wanna train in how to fight and join the military as well as wether or not u support or hate the military is completely up to you. Plus to my knowledge a warrior cultures relied on some type of king or emperor and a overall strict hirarchy were the next leader is depended on whos related to they're king/emperor where's the u.s is built on democracy.
The problem with the UNSC is that all of their technology is all interconnected and interlinked making any hacking or widespread virus or artificial attacks extremely dangerous, vs the independent systems of say 40K space machine power armor,
10:57 Reminder that the Spartans were originally created to kill human rebels, not to protect humanity. Then bad guy aliens showed up, and the mission changed.
some of your points reminded me of two things i seen in games, which, as am watching reminds me if you'd thought about it as you were making this video. Specially about the fact that you mention humans needing to be modified to survive through space: 1) Callisto Protocol and Negative Atmosphere: They both seem to deal with humanity finding ways to travel through space and adapting to thrive in spacecrafts. Callisto via their stupid virus to somehow "evolve" humans and Negative Atmosphere's more generalized, more grounded approach, where the protagonist says they just enhance themselves a bit to eliminate spaceborn cancer and such. 2) Ben Croshaw actually pointed out why the Horus Heresy went the way it did on an old article, honestly i think he raises an interesting point about superhumans in the military, what will make them STAY loyal?: "But here’s the thing - creating supersoldiers doesn’t make the slightest bit of rational sense. First of all, you’re basically creating an entity whose only purpose is to fight, so what the hell are you going to do with them during peace time, pack them in a box? And this is assuming you could even control them. If they haven’t regressed to a slavering bestial state or been driven insane by the monstrosity they have become, how are you going to make them do your bidding, Mr. Small Fragile Human General? You really want to start issuing threats that might come back to haunt you when some leashes get slipped? To say nothing of the fact that the ethical lapse involved would be ruinous in a country where people fight for the rights of embryonic cell clusters, and that most supersoldiers could be effectively countered by, say, dropping a great big bomb."
I think the most realistic usage for super soldiers would just be slightly inhanced cia/special forces agents for spy and black ops missions but even then they aint gonna be some kind of unstoppable demi gods, just semi regular humans with some minor or slightly major advancements that would give em a bit more of an advantage over other agents, but still fully capable of dying to a regular half confident agent or two with a gun.
Plus the only ethical way of creating a super soldier irl would require the consent of an adult with those in they're early 20s probably being a preferred target for recruiting as well as allowing the now modified person to maintain all his or hers legal rights such as the choice of retirement and procreation. Oh yeah and the modification process has to be humane.
Ironically, one of the best ways to keep super soldiers in check would be by making them reliant on the 'mortal man' or unaugmented human. 40k actually solves this problem surprisingly well in two ways: 1. Astartes are all male, meaning they can't reproduce on their own, thus making them reliant on regular humans to replenish their numbers. 2. The more stable primarchs i.e. the likes of Guilliman, Vulcan, and Corax, teach their sons to empathize and connect with the normal humans they protect. Empathy goes a long way to preventing them from being warmongering maniacs (World Eaters and Black Templars) or unfeeling killing machines (Iron Warriors and Iron Hands). And this is also a problem I have yet to see any other scifi IP solve in regards to it's super soldiers, including Halo. At the same time, trying to make female spaces marines (a dreaded topic in the 40k community), might end up breaking this check, which could lead to disaster. That's one thing feminists pushing for this sort of stuff would never understand when it comes to inclusivity
In my own novel, I actually dealt with this by having economies of scale help with subsidization. I also featured a lot of increasingly primitive technology to get utilized as you get further in further out to the frontier. By the time you get out to the true frontier, virgin colonies aside from some special things like super luminal, communications, arrays and nanomachine fabricators, the colonies are using things like incandescent lights, diesel engines, solar panels, and Kalashnikov rifles. They even have livestock herds and vegetable gardens. And the reason given is even if hello space travel can cover a light year for a week. It’s still nine months each way to and from the colony and are only so many transports with so much Cargo room especially when you have to fight gravity to get in and out of orbit to deploy the landers, which actually do have to go down to the surface. It’s not that society isn’t advanced. It’s that sophistication is expensive so it has to be carefully prioritized to places where it can be sustained..
@@brianmead7556 I like the idea to make sophistication costly in funds and also human resources.Highly skilled engineers in quantum wizardry wouldn’t be easy to find in backward sectors even if you could pay them well. And often the void calls the void and the activity call activity. People tend to gather around in the most optimal place to do something and with time the simple fact the place had gathered many talents and already had facilities is enough to discourage any alternative solution. That’s why we built arsenal, port, university hospital, etc. You rarely see an engineer from a developed country going into the Third World unless he had an adventurous mindset and work for a company managing assets in this area. And they are not cheap. And yeah, gravity seems to be the real bottleneck about economic productivity. Whatever you produce on land would be cheaper than space landed goods but, on the other hand, whatever you want to export in space will be costlier than anything built in space or in the destination wolrd. I think the real economy for a space-faring civilization will always be “space to space”. Once you learn to sustain yourself in space, everything would be much easier than on land. You could easily gather resources and create mega factories and sell goods to other space-faring fleet. Realistically once in space humanity wouldn’t really need land anymore. The only downside for living in spacefaring fleets would the need to build everything you need to live. Even your breath has a cost. So, every person on a fleet should hold an economic value far superior to the “amount of ship” he uses. And maybe we touch the real thing. Living on dirt is only for the poor and they value is much about field occupation than any economical purpose. They are just worthless ground dwelling apes only good for gathering the very few things you can’t get that cheaply in space and planting your flag, and maybe raising levies.
And for good measure, go read Galaxy’s Edge by Jason Anspach and Nick Cole. The entire conflict of the series is a bunch of genocidal transhumanist tech bros vs regular humans.
Civilization: Beyond Earth was a great iteration in the series. The tech tree and culturally focused developments introduce a lot of concepts in a simple way.
I recently watched the time traveling series called Travelers. I was pleasantly surprised to see a good AI for once guiding, (well, tried to) humans to a better future. It's a fresh take on AI over the endless waves of Hollywood trope about genocidal or bumbling comedic sidekicks or subservient or even horny AIs.
@@S_Warden Now that you mentioned it I vaguely remember reading sci fi books and short stories about good AIs. I remember a bit about a robot that keeps running around in circles because it got confused which Laws of Robotics it must follow without breaking the other and a bit about AI being secretly used to replace the President of the United State. It's just that Hollywood has saturated the the mainstream perception with genocidal or horny AIs.
@@billyherrington5112 AI was recognized as taboo long before the Emperor even emerged, let alone began his Unification Wars. The Emperor could only take control of humanity in the Age of Strife after the Men of Iron destroyed the galactic human civilization of the Golden Age.
Such a great and influential video pilgrim i love it. I have an idea of a sci fi fantasy story set in alternate universe so basically ww3 happened in 2018 and so the countries that are fighting in this war are using soldiers with superpowers (through advance technology of genetic engineering or magical origins or people just born with powers) to fight against their enemies to win this war the main character is someone who gained his powers through genetic engineering him and his friends must fight for their country while going through the hardships of war sometimes with comedic and heartfelt moments and times of horror and darkness the story will take some elements of lord to the rings on themes and morality heck even the main character is a fan of the lord of the rings books (Don't know if i should make it a book or a comic/manga)
I like the Rogue Trader and 2nd ed space marines. A marine is some kind of space knight cop of the Imperium. They are superhuman, being Toughness 4 and Strength 4 in a T3 and S3 world made you the toughest basic infantry. They had good armour and good guns. They were equal or one step better than most other basic goons in the game. Most importantly, they had no drawback. They were just good all around. Skilled like eldar, tough like orks. The only drawback was their cost per model. A marine still had to survive against people with Strength 3 laser guns with -1 armour pen. If it wounded, they had a 3+ armour save that the lasgun alone turned to a 4+. And under that, one Wound. Basic infantry all had one Wound as standard, terminators, iggies, orks, everything. Monstrous infantry like ogryn and hero characters excluded. The marines of 2nd ed are big damn heroes not because they are all-powerful demigods of war. But because they will go stand on a hill during the last stand of the RT cover and grab an ork helmet with head still attached to use as a club even as their mates are being shot left and right around them and some war-machine comes lumbering through the smoke to turn them into jelly.
I rarely do even log in to yt, but man gotta comment on this one. Cause of you I am now into space marines and necrons, and even finished AOT and bought the manga, flipping epic work, gona keep following up in the future, bless ya man.
That's why I'm more into fantasy than sci-fi. Fantasy is usually all about an individual hero and/or band of heroes defeating inhuman or tyrannical evil. The forms may vary, bu the core is the same.
@@adamnesico there is an entire multitude of fantasy books about heroes. Modern anti-hero fantasy is a droplet in the ocean. There's almost a hundred years of awesome fantasy works.
All this talk of space Marines, I feel the need to remind you all that as the poster children for the 40k universe the Marines will always get more praise than the ones who actually fight the wars 90% of the time. When you can't pick your fights, and the enemy won't let you run, the Imperial Guard will be there to help you.
Billions of PDF, voidsmen and skitari: -Yeah that's right fuck me. Seriosly, just check number of guards in some "crusades". There were bigger battles in WW2. Also guards are completly useless without fleet. They are just cannon fodder to use if you want capture something without orbital bombardement.
You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.
Regarding the transhumanism stuff, I guess I'm a bit confused about what you define as "human," as in what defining traits of humanity you feel needs to be preserved. Like, you talk about the _majorly_ modified Astartes as "still recognizably human" as opposed to having been given wings and tentacles and stuff, which makes it sound like you mean the human _form._ I just think that seems a bit superficial. Like, are you okay with genetic, cybernetic and/or biomechanic augmentations as long as people benefiting from them have the right number of arms and legs? At least to me the important thing would be that the transhuman individual still identifies as some sort of human, thinks and feels about stuff in a mostly human way, and participates in human society. With this in mind, the humanoid forms of the space marines seem kinda performative. Those guys exist only to fight on humanity's behalf and have had pretty vital human characteristics removed to make them better at that. Like, what do I care if a person turns themselves into some weird cyber-octopus-spider thing if I can still have a normal conversation with them about literature or sports or whatever? As long as we can relate and care about one another on a personal level, isn't that what matters?
@@billyherrington5112 That sounds like judging by appearance. I'm just saying, you can't tell a person's level of humanity based on how weird they look. You have to actually talk to them.
bro, that starcraft roast got me 💀💀💀💀💀💀 but for mass produced prison space freeing hunks of muscles and metal the sc space marines could swarm an astartes squad with about 1000 minerals (20 sc space marines). Take away the plot armor from the wh marines and its a more or less equal fight. its like if all of a death row prison broke out and stole guns to go fight the local military checkpoint.
Hey Pilgrimpass, I was watching your videos on the dune vs star trek comparison in addition to the cyberpunk neofudalism one to get inspired for a worldbuilding project and wanted your opinion on my notes. If anyone else wants to comment feel free "Myths are used as a reproductive tool, informing descendants with spiritual teachings as a means to survive/thrive in the material world. Said myths are indirectly made based on the environment shaped by various cultures and their use of technology. This use of technology is animated by spiritual beleifs, pertaining to the will of supernatural entities that guide humanity to their fate/evolution. It is the friction between different entities, cultures, environments, and technologies that refine these myths, cementing them in the past and future." It's been difficult to produce a total vision for the project, but I think the gist of it is photobashing various myths inspired by classical civilizations(greece, persia, china) to explore a grimdark setting akin to 40k but still provide a hopeful message similar to LOTR. In all seriousness, thanks for all the videos you do.
@@billyherrington5112 did those ideas go further? As in, was there more here than what I stated? ( I'm still trying to improve my understanding of these topics)
I think a video about Halo and more specifically about the forerunner and the Mantle of responsability could be interesting. Because i believe it could be a path humanity want to take.
There are also the commando (hero) units in the Command & Conquer series. While not nearly as impressive as Spartans or Space Marines, they are just as versatile.
It would be cool if you did a video on transcendent heroes such as dragon born, Paul Atreides or Rand Althor (from the wheel of time books),(or others) who have to save humanity(or fail to do so) by being more than human, or superhuman. It would be an interesting thing to hear you talk about sense a lot of this idea of a transcendent hero reflects religions all over the world particularly Christianity and it would segue from the space marine series.
I think the space Marines in the alien franchise can't be explained with. They're defending a corporate owned colony and the corporation hate spending money so they send ill-equipped.
![[#2024MAMA] ROSÉ (로제), Bruno Mars - APT. | Mnet 241122 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dgGqD28J6aQ/mqdefault.jpg)
If you're interested in Part 2, here it is: th-cam.com/video/GsdelYGi86w/w-d-xo.html
We will if you decide to not go full chud lmao.
>Racist impression of a Chinese voice
>Rants about California
>Rants about hippies
>Rants about silicon valley
>Rants about James Cameron and Avatar (That movie was pro native dipshit, not pro space marine. Think dances with wolves, but in space. And anti colonialism IS a good thing)
Something tells me there is a very hidden yet obvious reason you both like 40k, the heresy element, and this templar OC of yours lmao.
Just state you get your news from Hannity/Fox News and we can wash our hands of this mess chud.
Notifications are off, good luck replying Rethuglican
Should definitely consider the idea of cyberpsychosis as the original ttrpg depics it alongside this topic.
Birds were around at the same time as dinosaurs. They literally are a type of dinosaur
“For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please.” - C.S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis and Tolkien were well ahead of their time. The Men had insight from God.
This doesn’t necessarily track with reality
@@LucasDimoveo
Are you going to explain, motherfucker?!
Or do you like to state a opinion like a retard all the time without explanation.
@@LucasDimoveo you haven't been paying attention, then. Tech companies have turned you into a machine to watch ads on smartphones and all they had to do is exploit your latent dopamine addiction. Apparently it worked so well you didn't notice.
@@notapuma CS Lewis' final Narnia book, The Last Battle, is one of the most prescient things ever written. It is unbelievably relevant now. The entertainment industry constantly starts trying to adapt Lewis' early Narnia works for the memberberries and name recognition, but they will NEVER film The Last Battle.
Every Australian male is issued power armour at the age of 18, I can confirm.
Are the Emu tyranid level or Ork level in threat?
I've had mine for a few years now. My deadly abomination kill count is in the 400s now.
@@Extex_ where are the Emu ranked in Galaxic threat?
@@ChristianEphraimson Emus are Threat level 2. They come immediately after Fruit fly
Only to die to stupid birds.
My favorite thing about Space marines are the moments, when their stoic masks slip and they show their humanity. The best moment would be the Defence of Rynns World by the Crimson Fists. This is a succesor of the Imperial fists the most stoic, stubborn and coldhearted of the chapters. Their Primarch is qouted to say"Do not look to us for kindness. Do not look to us for hope. We are not the kind children of this new age. We are the rocks of its foundation. If you wish hope then look to what we make. If you wish kindness then look to those who will come after us." Thats the kind of chapter this is, to them Rynn's World wasnt even home, its just were their monastery was located, they dint recruit from it or care for it that much besides it just being a world they happen to be stationed on. But durring the desperate defence and flight front their fortress monastery, the 300 Astartes come across a young woman and her child fleeing from the orc advance, some astartes think they should help her, others just think its a waste and they should prioritize regruoping as that would save more lives in the long term or leaving her for the Guardsmen to maybe find her. Eventualy they allow this woman to travel along as long as she can keep up with them. Obviously thats impossible and just after a few kilometres she colapses while carrying her child. The entire force stops and the chapter master goes back to her, the astartes from whos pov were reading thinks he will just mercy kill her, as thats a far kinder faith than being left to the orks. Only for the Chapter Master of the Astartes to commend the woman for her strength and then lifting her up and carrying her with him to evac. It was at that point that the Crimson Fists no longer fought for the Imperium, or some vague notion of humanity, they fought for their home and those they swore to protect. Its a moment that trully shows why cold logic should never replace humanity.
Brother, you lost your arm!
Of course not, it's right here!
@@rgama1173Sucks to be Abbadon then
@@mmyr8ado.360 failbaddon the armless
@@rgama1173the harmless
Mine is when the stoic mask stays on.
Great video. I'm surprised you didn't touch directly on the idea that one of the reasons that people wish for transhumanism is because they have come to resent or loathe themselves and the limitations of their "mortal coils".
Great to see you here! I agree. My orginial scirpt went up to 1 hour lol. had to trim it down.
'' When I understood The weakness of my Flesh, IT disgusted me''
“I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine.”
Im something of an outlier when it comes to more conservative-learning circles as I actually support SOME of the ideas of transhumanism.
Technology is something of a Pandora's box. You can't put it back once it's established, so it's important to get out ahead of it and influence the manner in which it manifests and the manner in which it's used. Moreover, if we ever want to truly expand our into the reaches of space, realistically speaking, we're going to need to adopt some degree of gene editing or man/machine integration or union.
@PilgrimsPass on this topic, yeah, I definitely could have listened to you talk for an hour or more.
What's funny is that the Halo "show" seemed to actively make the opposite decisions regarding the Spartans and their AI than in the actual lore, such as not telling them what was being done to them or even wiping their minds (which according to book Halsey would cause them to likely rebel against them if they ever found out) but also that Mjolnir's AI suite is explicitly designed to never give the AI control of the suit itself yet in the "show" they more made the Spartans to eventually be taken over by the AI... fuck that show lol.
No idea why he tried to cover for the show
Well the show was written by people who already had a script and general plot in mind, but hated that they were working with "inferior" material. So they just sort of awkwardly shoved it into Halo despite clearly not fitting all that well.
They never wiped there minds in the books. The children had all of their memories. In the chapter your referencing Halsey argued against the mind wipe and preferred to convince them through their training into understanding their purpose.
@@S_Warden I know, I said that. Show Halsey made the exact opposite decision which had the exact outcome that book Halsey said would happen.
@@mrbigglezworth42to be fair if I saw the shit 343 was making I’d throw it all it
I am reminded by the dialogue at the end of Space Marine:
"I see the Ultramarines are human after all"
"More than you know Lieutenant."
Ultramarine are bipolar af. In the book the chapters due you have Severus Ageman looking down on the human militia like they were bubble gum sticking on his boots while also having Varro Tigurius who were extremely grateful for the fact that mere humans chose to stay with him at his last stand so he wouldn't be lonely because librarians have an unsettling aura around them that that many space marines don't like to be anywhere near.
@@minhducnguyen9276 Some marines are human but some abandoned that for cold logic. ironically making them what they swore to destroy.Inhuman.
@@johnrenwelmauro2387 Ageman is the opposite of that. He can't keep his emotion in check and can't think outside of the box. He's the opposite of Cato Sicarius who keeps thinking he's above the rules except for the ambition part that they share in common. That's why they have a rivalry until Gulliman returns. The Ultramarines were so lucky that Gulliman returned and Calgar hasn't died yet or the chapter would implode because the chapter would have to pick between the two of them to become the next chapter master.
@@minhducnguyen9276"I, CATO SICARIUS, CHAMPION OF MACRAGGE, AM THE GREATEST SPACE MARINE EVER TO EXIST. AND I, CATO SICARIUS, SHOULD BE A CHAPTER MASTER"
It depends on the writer and era. In early Rogue Trader and 2nd ed, the marines are techno-barbarian space knights. They are (sometimes barely) uplifted barbarians refitted with technology and taught to use it.
In some they are dysfunctional child soldiers monks. They don't remember much of human existence and aren't allowed any time out of their routine of prayer, training and campaigns to remind themselves.
I think the female persona of voice activated assistant (spy) devices like Alexa has less to do with appealing to incels, though that may be part of it, and more so that we seem to be hardwired to find feminine voices less threatening.
Most of them are British too. Sound like Mr belvedere. It's odd star wars and a.i voices are fixated on British accents.
@@notsure4648 Because Oxford English is teached in schools (in Europe at least), so it's easy to understand to lots of people
Edit: Minor error, nothing too fancy
@@notsure4648 cortana was gonna be british in halo 1 but the bungie devs preferred the VAs american accent
That's what I thought too. The average Siri user isn't an incel after all
@@mythicknz8203 Microsoft names its IRL data mining bot Cortana, hoping that we wouldn't find it repulsive.
A topic on the Adeptus Mechanicus would be interesting on when dogged adherence to tradition leads to stagnation. The very core of the Techpriests beliefs is that everything that mankind needs now, has already been created at some point in humanities past. All the priesthood needs to do is find the sacred texts, rebuild the old designs, and everything will be better then wasting time and energy on new and potentially disastrous ideas. When something like the Razorback was considered "untested" and "experimental" despite 500 years of active use says a lot about how the priests of Mars view both technological advancement and mankind's relationship with innovation.
Though, given that they live in a setting where demons not only exist, but can subtly influence minds to create all sorts of terrible things without the creator realizing it, the kind of mistrust they place on anything new is probably warranted. It's also an interesting look at Transhumanism, as despite the ever present cybernetic augmentations, even the Admech still believe in human supremacy in all things...even if their idea of what the ideal Man looks like differs pretty damn heavily from the rest of the Imperium.
Their ideal man would be a brain encased in adamantium
In a way, they're _kinda_ right; a fully in-tact STC *probably* could solve a majority of the problems suffered by Humanity in 40K....
The STCs allowed Humanity to achieve its Golden Age _and_ produced the Men of Iron, who in turn cast Humanity into the Age of Strife.
The period of 3-5th editions when the Ad Mech wouldn't recognize the Land Raider Crusader as an official variant because the Black Templars wouldn't let the Mech see the STC, so the Templars just sent the file around to other space marine chapters instead.
well put. plus, given how absurdly advanced humanity became at their zenith during the "dark age of technology", the admech arent necessarily wrong that all humanities needs tech-wise could be rediscovered. That 41st millenium is sorely in need for a kind of renaissance, a rediscovery. Then again, like you point out about the demons of chaos in the setting, it isnt so simple as tech solving every problem. The Emperor himself being AdMech's 'omnissiah' was in truth a technical renaissance all in one man, bringing humanity back from the brink and potentially to greater heights. Emp gives off Promethean vibes as well, stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humanity, especially if you read deep into it and consider the chaos portal on Moloch that the rebel Primarchs seem to have had the memory of visiting erased from their memories...
It'd be fascinating to see what the future of the 40k setting looks like if it were to resolve some of the dialectal tensions in is current status quo, but IRL human civilization will certainly end before GW progresses the narrative that far as it would be the end of the setting lmao.
@@dean_l33 think bigger. Belisarius Cawl has multiple copies of his brain, rack-mounted in server warehouses doing background task thinking on the hard problems he's working on. i think he swaps in different copies of his memories depending on the task at hand too.
You should look up the Salamander Chapter in 40k. They are your ideal Space Marine since they are still llowed to maintain contact with their families and as such make them the most human of the 40k space marines.
Don't forget about the Lamenters. They as well.
The salamanders overprotection of normal humans is usually seen as a flaw by the other chapters, often putting the lives of humans above that of their brothers, remember when Grimaldus literally scolded a salamander's reinforcement when in their time of need the salamanders decided to hold back a counter attack when the templars were making a push, compromising it in the process, literally refusing to give his blessing and pray with the salamanders afterwards, Being a chaplain
That’s not necessarily a good thing… in fact in an galaxy embroiled in war, those who do not care achieve things they want far more easily.
@thebaron9405 and that is ultimately why the ultramarines are superior to the salamanders. They understand they are there to protect humanity, they are willing to go to great lengths to protect humanity but will not compromise the mission for civilians because they understand you can save the random civilian in the corner but your actions can leave your brothers without support or you could die and by your death not only the person you tried to save will die but hundreds or thousands more will due because you won't be there to kill an ork or tyranid.
@@thebaron9405all of the Chapters are flawed in some way. The Iron Hands will replace functional flesh with augmetics.
The Ultramarines view the Codex Astartes as Holy Writ that must be followed at all times, despite the fact that it is so large that none of them know all of it and Gulliman wrote it as a guide only. The Dark Angels and their Successors, the Unforgiven, don’t trust anyone. Even then own brothers. The Blood Angels flaw is genetic with the Red Thirst and Black Rage.
The Astartes are flawed copies of flawed Primarchs of a flawed Emperor leading a flawed Imperium.
Technology that erases human essence is one that leads to the formation of cultures that could have never possibly formed if we were talking about plain old ancient humans.
We can imagine Space Marines, sent into the past, might have still forged something like the Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empires and embraced the same symbols. A James Cameron's Avatar Navi transhumanist would never be able to repeat the human cultures of the past, for they are too alien to do so.
Primarchs pretty much recreated past Earth empires but on planetary scale before being rediscovered by Big E. Aside of that poor sod Angron.
@@Nobody32990feels like Angron was set up to fail
from Star Wars to Terminator, Warhammer 40k to Halo, Mech-Warrior to Star Trek. these, like so many others, share this frequently overlooked, and forgotten, absolute truth: *there will always be a need for infantry.*
whether they are warriors, soldiers, missionaries, or medics.
but have a care: for while man and machine infantry on their own are terrifying, there are few things more terrifying than man and machine combined.
That is why combined arms tactics are based
Infantry make for better stories.
Imperial Guard: Are we a joke regiment to you?
The billions (or trillions) of Imperial Guards be like:
There's infantry combat in Star Trek, but Starfleet is navy, not army. So that's the focus
Well, in my opinion I like the Sarduakar approach to creating a super soldier, minus the human sacrifice.
My ideal super soldier would be akin to someone embodying the ideals of the Chivalry code for Knights, and the meditative discipline of a Samurai warrior. All tempered with a zealous fervor to protect the innocent.
Also question, I’m writing my own “Space Marines”. But more akin to martial combat and philosophy instead of technology.
Do you think is possible?
@@StormCrow702 Anything is possible, just need to make sure it's written satisfyingly.
@@StormCrow702 I do actually, and it sounds interesting.
So something like the Grail Knights from Warhammer fantasy but a little nicer?
@@BrBetim Picture it more if Tolkien wrote a Space Marine book. Also I’ve been reading the Musashi novel by Eiji Yoshioka and also burning through Dovstoyeski.
I’m ridding high on art here.
The Witchers from the The Witcher franchise could also be considered supersoldiers as well despite the historical fantasy setting. They were born as a tool of necessity due to humanity needing to face monsters. Like Spartan II's, Witcher candidates were subjected to indoctrination and harsh physiological modification that only few had survived. Despite this origin as programmed, servile golems, we see Geralt display humanity in a world where it has become hard to distinguish humans from monsters. He really fits the setting Sapkowski created and I think that should be something a writer should focus when making a "super" soldier. They are to be the the torchbearers of humanity in their respective settings and their characteristics should reflect that. Its more than just making a powerful biological weapon.
Also, people calling Astartes as transhuman or mindless tools of war clearly haven't read books like Helsreach.
Tecnically speaking 40k space marines are child soldiers. Something similar happen with sisters of battle and Scion.
Sister of silence and assasins get the same treatment
There the legions of 20 primarchs
The video should be renamed "why we need child soldiers" then lol
I mean barely....training can start as early as 12 and SM live for thousands of years. So the years they're in their teens are barely a blip.
And yes I know you're joking
They are also like halo slaves to the dystopian state. Only the Custodians have any form of real autonomy and discretion. The mechanicus also have some political autonomy due to their tech monopolies but do live a more restricted life to stay in their pious cult.
9:10 that is quite correct. Cortana's name is a variant of Curtana, the sword used by the legendary Ogier the Dane, just as the titular AI character of Bungie's previous game Marathon 2: Durandal is named after the legendary sword Durendal. Curtana's inscription reveals that the sword has the same "temper as Joyeuse and Durendal". That is why a lot of fans think The Weapon in Halo Infinite should be named Joyeuse.
One of the interesting ideas to explore is being created in the image of the creator, if humanity is created in the image of the creator and the super soldier is the idealized vision of what that might be. It becomes clear when the vision of the super soldier diverges greatly from the original image or pattern after the creator. It is also strange how the super soldier is both the image of the Male and the whole race in the same
The firmware is different, but the software of their minds is still so important. Look at the Avatar bodies... they do still have 5 fingers and come with the mind they come with. It just depends on the specific avatars sent back.
uhh so breeding of humans to make greater super soldiers?
Male bodies are already optimized in many ways thanks to evolution, so I would say that it's not so strange.
Even ignoring the cultural history of what ideas of soldiers and warriors look like and are and how linked they are to maleness.
Just gonna put it out based on facts, human males are more adept as soldiers therefore males are more likely to become super soldiers. That's just how males evolved, to fight and die to protect the species.
The male is the craftsman, the builder, the blacksmith, the engineer, the creator.
Definitely needed in the future of infantry and cavalry(reconnaissance). As modern trends show, even if major engagements take place over miles, you and a team or squad can find yourself clearing a trench...
A.i has the potential to make many things incredibly user-friendly much as the gun is greater than any Bow simply because point and shoot is easier than draw hold aim release. To have a suit that helps do complex math and store information that can be pulled instantly is useful sticking that device into your brain reductive.
AI is heresy.
Whatever future awaits us, I hope humanity can find a way to survive and protect ourselves and still keep our humanity
Eh, is humanity really worth putting so much effort into keeping? Humanity can be pretty stupid or evil on a pretty regular basis.
I think it is interesting how you make a point in how a machine could turn out to be kind of "alien" in its "decision making" process, thus, becoming inhuman; while a super soldier, no matter how augmented, would still be human in its core, capable of empathize with non-augmented humans. Also, I think that what makes a super soldier not a mutant or a transhuman and makes them necessary and even good for the preservation of humanity, is that they, in origin, are human (born human and raised as one) and are more like a sacrifice for the wellbeing of the rest of humanity, which won't go through all the modifications they will, to better their chances at survival in a battle against something humans could not fight or can fight but with such great loses it would mean our extinction anyway. Another aspect of the super soldier is that, unlike the "transhuman", they have a purpose in their concept: a soldier is a defender; transhumans "can" be whatever they want, and so there is no purpose but to follow hedonistic ideals.
I do like this idea of using technology to power human capabilities, to have the human at is core, instead of making it something that will replace us.
This was a very cool video, and to say makes us humans, is a very interesting question, I have some ideas like: the search for purpose, the capability to make art and appreciate it, the ability to empathize with each other and even try to understand other beings, of course, our particular anthropomorphic form and biology xD and well, to continue thinking in more :3
Isn't a human mutant and a transhumanist still human as well? Because I think you'd need to under many and I mean many different types of mutations in order to no longer be considered human, where's a person who decides to use genetic tech to give themselves something like cat ears and a tail is still pretty much a human just with a few minor differences
@@ElishaFollet Yep. The mutant we are talking about would be the result of lots of mutations: a creature that has very little human resemblance and very little almost non-existant compatibility with other humans. Transhumans, actual transhumans are, a bit radical as far as I know, they will not stop with just some little additions, these guys seek "perfection", so what is going to happen is that they will use technology to pursue this ideal and will slowly but surely become something inhuman, be it by becoming more machine than person, or by modifying their bodies and genetic so much it will be like that of the mutant: incompatible with human genes, and by leaving behind human biology, they will also leave behind human mindsets and the capability to empathize with humans, therefore, becoming alien to us.
@@pedrocastro5514 ok then, I don't really see whats wrong with them trying to seek perfection as long as it's only on themselves tho.
@@ElishaFollet ever heard of racism or xenophobia? Natural next step of thinking that others are inferior is: people think that they are better than others. What do you think would happen if they would actually be different than the rest of us?
@@EverydayNormieMadafacka I can guess and it ain't good.
Everyone always talks about the space solider. But you know what no one ever talks about… the space farmer!!
Aha! That's where you're wrong, agri and knight worlds!
I mean if you combine the two you get a space cowboy
That makes me think of the episode of love death and eobots where the farmers have to decend their land from some alien species that swarms their farms.
This issue was covered wonderfully in the 12 episodes of Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. Humanity is humanity because we have weak bodies. We created weapons, formed communities, to protect us from dangers. The moment we start to try and adapt to an environment via bodily augmentations, is the moment we begin treading on a knife's edge.
Comparatively we aren't all that weak, we are actually rather large for land animals. It's just that we tend to compare ourselves to bears, rhinos, and lions and not rabbits, beetles and field mice.
Thoughtful and interesting video. I’m used to a little bit of braindead-ness in TH-cam essays that you just have to ignore by default but there’s none of that here
Y’know your channel is low key the Space Catholic’s Manifesto and I’m here for it.
9:24 I would think of cortana as a shield maiden, a woman willing to fight at your side and risk her life for you as you would for her would be much more romantic than a man loving a weapon.
I don't know how you get that impression, she was always the "sexy assistant" lady
@@MALICEM12in Fall of Reach (the novel written as a canon companion piece to Combat Evolved back in the day) Cortana was created specifically to be the technology and cyber warfare specialist assigned to the Spartan 2s for Operation Red Flag. It was only thanks to the Covenant invading Reach and the events of the mainline game trilogy that caused Chief and her to bond as closely as they did. Not to mention gamers really liking the witty lady voice riding shotgun with you as you shoot, grenade, and melee your way through unending hordes of aliens and lovecraftian horrors
@@johndunn1625 not sure what that has to add to my comment
@@MALICEM12 because her original purpose was as what essentially the first guy suggested, a shield maiden or fellow soldier, just one that has a different purpose on the team, she wasn't just "sexy assistant lady" like you said
@@johndunn1625 you misunderstand, I was speaking of her design. She's literally naked. She IS the sexy assistant. She just makes witty banter and does tech support. Also I was speaking in meta not lore. Lore wise sure she was meant to ASSIST the Spartans. But that's still key word, an assistant, not a "soldier fighting side by side". She's tech support, not a soldier.
But more importantly, meta wise, back in the olden times of the far flung past of 2001....yeah come the fuck on man, we know why she's there.
21:51 the whole thing about the Emperor-designed post-humans in Warhammer (Astartes, Custodes and Primarchs) still being a valid aspect of humanity is explored many times in the lore, but most recently in the book The End and the Death,Volume 1, In a very poetic and psychedelic mind conversation between Sanguinius and The Emperor, which starts by Sanguinius asking a child-like question to Emps "Why do we suffer, knowing the trials and pains we face, why did you make us to suffer?".
Great video man, good work.
The halo AIs chose their own avatars, and some didn’t even choose a human form (though that’s rare).
And I don’t think the UNSC wanted the Spartans connecting to humans since they were originally made to put down human rebellions thought to risk destroying human civilization… somehow.
The later Sparta in 4s could probably better fit that, being upgraded adults with lives back home.
And given the nature of Halo AI, sort of impossible to not make it humanized, unless you do a nonsapient one like we have now.
Even Cortana’s theorised to be scanned from a clone of Halsey, likely even a non-flash clone.
@@LocalDiscordCatgirlaccording to the "Halsey's Journal" collectible included with one of the limited edition versions of Halo: Reach, Halsey repeatedly (and illegally) cloned herself about half a dozen times in order to ultimately produce Cortana, with the last clone being killed by the brain-uploading process and her predecessors being killed by Halsey for displaying developmental abnormalities. Quite the Doctor Frankenstein, that woman...😐
@@CanadianPaletrue, but ONI did hire her to make the Spartan program so.... who is worse, Dr. Frankenstein or the dude (or organization) who hired him to make abominations?
@@crocidile90 it's not a question of which is worse. Most fans are, I think, aware that ONI is a very shady organization at the best of times, but remaining curiously defensive about Halsey, despite her cold willingness to murder children in the name of a nebulous greater good (the SPARTAN-II program having been initiated years before anyone even knew the Covenant existed), use her murdered clone's digital ghost to try and destroy her rivals in the NAVSPECWAR division, and attempt to abscond with some of the military's most valuable assets later on, when she'd given in to despair and decided that the war couldn't be won.
@@crocidile90 Halsey is absolutely worse.
One person vs the money funding them.
You can't blame corporations for doing what iorps do, only the individuals that support them.
The thing Pilgrim gets wrong here is that soldiers are not becoming irrelevant through innovations in physical warfare, but instead innovations in psychological warfare. The modern battlefield is not one of bombs, jets, and tanks, but instead subtle acts of increasingly personal psychological manipulation, social engineering, and misinformation. The real "super solider" is an over-worked NSA analyst who can only function on his 16 hour shift through drug use, who spends his whole day harvesting scraps of useful intel from the world's most comprehensive surveillance state. This is why AI both scares me and doesn't scare me; there is no way an AI can make on-the-ground decisions like a human can in fields like navigation, targeting, and weapons operation, but it doesn't need to if it can convince humans to do those things for it. Psychological manipulation on a case-by-case scale would be the PERFECT deployment for an AI. At the same time an AI could never truly get rid of us, because the marginal utility of humanity is too high.
Gotta stop you there.... Where's Robocop? He's the cyberpunk take on the western gunslinger lawman which in itself is just the USA's mythos take on the knight archetype.
Civ beyond earth is criminally underrated. In the game there is hybrid idealogy between the three. Would clone troopers be a super soldiers since there are various types of clone troopers. Examples being clone commandos and clone force 99(bad batch). Also the DNA of the clone trooper was based on near super human Jango Fett. Jango Fett Mandalorian's warrior and history made him a ideal choice of DNA. A clone army of soliders breed to kill Jedi. The clone even adopted their "father's warrior culture".
beyond earth feels like a civ5 clone or mod rather than a breathe of fresh air
The hybrid affinities were also under rated. I for one imagine minors and majors when you begin blending affinities. Purity for the win!
@@bellphorusnknight true, but I don't mind it.
It feels hollow in a world where alpha centauri exists, some of that games cutscenes are haunting even with the dated game graphics
Section 9 from Ghost in the Shell is also an interesting take. They used to be super soldiers (to varying degrees), but they still work for the government because no one else would be able to fund the upkeep of their military-grade implants. But even though they are transhumans within a transhuman society, they get tasked with investigating the bleeding edge technological threats to both humans and humanity in general. They also are not so regimented as Spartans or Astartes, and the humanity of their individual personalities is more readily apparent.
"I just cant get enough of the fact that they even gave her toes. What? In case her Spartan had a foot fetish I guess?"
"The one good thing about Halo 5 is that Cortana can make hard light body , she can now step on me" - PancreasNoWork Self-procleimed Halo fanboy randomly on video about Adeptus Mechanicus
I loved his videos on Halo factions in WH40k (wish he did humans but, would probably be boring) with my favorite being the Flood episode where yes, this is the one faction that can be stopped easily by the other factions IF caught in early stages (i.e. before key mind) and I love the idea of a key mind trolling all psychers especially the Emperor in Iambic pentameter.
Yeah, one of the things I was thinking of was for the nanotech enhancements have a mesh net that is self-contained. It would contain all the info it needs to help the guy without compromising autonomy. Not to mention, AI that fully developed will likely have its own factions and might see allying with humans as a way to test various methods or otherwise fulfill different purposes. Even robots can disagree on what to do.
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call the temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal… Even in death I serve the Omnissiah.
This is a literal quotation of Warhammer 40K lore for the Adeptus Mechanicus and it sounds just as creepy as it was intended to. Metal may be stronger and more certain than flesh, but thinking the mechanism is purer than its maker is a dangerous type of heresy.
@@alsatusmd1A13 that's the thing with the mechanicus, they are very tranhumanist but even they understand that the machine without it's human is heresy, is an abomination because you threw away the human spirit. True still the mechanicus see humans as cheap, because that's just true, that said if there aren't any humans that knowledge they strive for is useless, this again is shown in how they do 'research', while mostly re-engineering old human tech they are trying to figure out the principals of that tech with a human mind and human understanding, that's why anything not made by humans is heresy.
The Adeptus Astartes as far as i'm aware were created by The Emperor for the purpose of re-conquering the Galaxy after the Fall of Humanity in the Dark/Golden Age of Technology, in which AI (Men of Iron) did rebel and wiped 3/4's of the galactic floor with the collective face of humanity in The Cybernetic Revolt.
Love your video aswell dude ❤
Correct
The emperor created them because he needed a powerful force of dedicated soldiers at a time when he didn’t have a true empire to draw on millions of forces of common humans.
Technically the space marines from warhammer 40K were considered the average foot soldier during the gray crusade where entire legions of space marines would be used to invade a single planet where a single space marine legion could hold anywhere upwards of up to ten thousand active troops and again I mean foot soldiers not pilots or engineers or any other form of support or logistics but actual foot soldiers and again that’s excluding those trained in the uses of aircraft and heavy equipment like the sicaran battle tank or the astraius super heavy tank, which comes with shields and can fly to boot, not to mention that whilst space marines were the common foot soldiers, as time passed and the theater of war expanded to a point in which even the space marines were spread so thin, in which the imperial army was formed as a support system meant to help with conquering a world in which space marines aren’t entirely needed but a single squad of marines can oversee a planetary invasion against say a medieval or a modern day earth, not to mention that some space marine legions were utterly massive like the iron warriors which relied more on siege warfare and attrition meaning that their numbers would have to be sizable to accommodate the staggering losses and considering the horrors the imperium had to deal with, ranging from advanced human empires who are more machine than humans and can one shot a space marine, to literal giants and demons, when you consider how bad the arachnids from star ship troopers were, the megarachnids can grow to the size of a skyscraper and can easily cut the largest tanks in the imperium in half, hell one time there was a world which was so hard to invade, the space wolves simply captured a space station and yeeted it at the planet and then when the dust had settled then invaded the planet.
You should talk about Ghost In the Shell's take on humanism with respect to this subject: Where the full cyborg protagonist (just a brain in a cybernetic body) is one of the most human characters in the show, while many of the villains are relatively unaugmented humans (some are augmented of course as well)
There is also a quite non-doom-y AI plotline with the Tachikomas, and a slightly more doom-y plotline with the Puppet Master
There are villians in GitS?
Since when?
Puppet Master was a sentient AI slave to a government using it for war who escaped and merged with the Major so they could make AI babies.
Laughing Man was an activist who was personally harmed by the micromachine plot that he exposed. He was also a genius hacker who was close to being locked-in due to his overuse of net access.
N was a post-human who just wanted to live in peace with his hivemind of other post-humans.
The only 'bad guys' in GitS are the nameless terrorists who die immediately after Major gives them some philosophical lecture as part of the overall background plot.
Reality isn't black and white and neither is Ghost in the Shell.
@@jeffbrownstain the ends dont justify the means though.
Thats what i was thinking. Something fully cybernetic like batou has so much more potential.
19:20 This is actually quite similar to how the Flood work in Halo. They not only infect a host and take over their body, but they also possess the ability to connect to the hosts memories to gain whatever information they need. This information is then shared with any nearby Flood once a colony has been established. The host is also physically and mentally aware of what's going on around them, including any brutal mutations the Flood does to their body.
How about the Republic Clones from star wars? Their not as effective as all the super soldiers you mentioned but they still fill in the same category, Created and bred to fight and serve while still maintaining their own individuality or at least finding it in process. It also asks the question of what to do with all these soldiers once the fighting is done and their place in society that they protected.
Republic Commandos are Based.
i think clone troopers are more akin to the sort of 20th century infantryman with pew-pew laser gun and armor that cant protect v well a'la the space marines in Avatar, rather than the kind shown in wh40k or Halo. Not to say star wars doesnt have an equivalent, which isnt necessarily Jedi / Sith as thats a different kind of uber-human combatant leaning in the spiritual development path sort of like the Bene Gesserate and Paul Atrates in Dune. Maybe one of the Star Wars Emperors super soldier programs like one of the generations of the DarkTroopers would be more at par with 40k / Halo.
@@weaselhack What about Republic Commandos & ARC Troopers? I think it'd be accurate to separate them from the grunt.
In the opening to Republic Commando the Kaminoan said to the Commando, "You will be superior to your more common brethren."
@@weaselhack The Idea of the space marine / Super soldier was what future soldiers might be like and I think the clones fit this nicely. The problem with the avatar space marines is that their just modern soldiers in space. I think there's alot to explore with the Idea of using clones as soldiers or at least artificially created soldiers whose only purpose is to fight wars. Also they fight killer robots which seems to be a theme in this video.
Clone Commandos and ARC troopers and the Death and Dark troopers of the Empire are all super soldiers to a degree just not as enhanced as Spartans and Astartes
One aspect of the real world tech gives me hope: neural links to control your cool weapons and armor don't require any modification of the the soldier. It just requires tuning the equipment to the individual and then wearing a hat full of electrodes.
In Warhammer 40K there is literally a knight class, a nobility piloting armour whose lineage dates way back before the Imperium. Their origins stem from the need for immediate protection in humanity's most remote colonies. Interestingly, these armours have an artificial intelligence with more or less its own will, which stores the memories of all these pilots. In contact with the armour, a new compatible pilot will develop a moral code very close to chivalry.
I don't have any direct proof of this, but from what's been suggested it could be that the armour's artificial intelligences have learned over time to shape the mentality of their pilots in the most effective way possible to ensure their primary mission, which is to protect the worlds they've been entrusted with.
Honestly, I find it hard to see the point of applying biological transhumanism to supersoldiers other than to increase their cognitive abilities and survivability. Admittedly, it's easier to sell miniatures of 3-metre-high guys firing big guns, but I don't think that's really practical, basically a tank does everything these little guys can do, only better, and it only takes a few months to build it. On the other hand, the skills of the personnel are the real limiting human factor. Modern warfare is characterised above all by the lack of qualified personnel, well before the lack of ammunition or equipment. And the more things go on, the more firepower and technical skills drop down the ranks, which means recruiting ever more qualified, ever more trained and ever more specialised personnel. And in fact we may already have our super soldier.
Many of today's military disasters and breakdowns are due to the lack of consideration given to increasing the quality of the troops, particularly the infantry, who are always the 5th wheel when it comes to funding, even though they are the ones who plant the flags. Ironically, modern republics have to take far better care of their soldiers than the replaceable pawns of the armies of Louis XIV.
A soldier in logistics today is better equipped than a soldier in the infantry in the 90s.
As far as transhumanism in general is concerned, I think it will be a Darwinian confrontation of societal models, as is always the case.
If we get the impression that all the civilisations born in Eurasia seem to follow a homogeneous development plan, it's not because there's a tree of technologies as in Age of Empire, but simply a huge survivor bias.
Imperial Knights are truly a wonder to behold, even more so if you attach one, particularly a Pryphrion into a Dark Angel Terminator list.
Saying that super soldiers would be pointless because of tanks is like saying infantry is pointless because of drones. They don't do and are not meant for the same purposes.
@@algorithmgeneratedanimegir1286 Biological superhumans are most of the time pointless because you could enhance humans to do the same job with less dangerous and more scalable solutions.
Tank , special forces ,fighter jets are all super soldiers on their own right but not superhumans.
Even before gunpowder we had a pretty clear understanding of breeding but creating superhuman solely for war was never maintained for long.
Because costs and cons are far greater than pro.
And this was a time when war could be changed by biological factors.
Today it's just unthinkable.
You want to make some genetically augmented soldier ?
OK first you need wombs , artificial or natural given your current technological level , then you need to feed and educate them for at least 15 /years , 10 if you could accelerate their growth.
Another solution would be taking random young humans and crudely alter them with surgery and partial genetic modification.
Counts thousands of dollars per guys , a long convalescence and shitload of secondary effects .
And all of this for what ? A measly increase of survivability speed force abilities who are always in a "biological" range ?
Even if you could pull guys strong has gorillas and fast has ostriches , which would be a god-like level of biological enhancing , with the same span of tehchnlogical progress any exoskeleton would absolutely smoke them in term performance/cost and even absolute performance.
Your 20-year-old billon dollars vat grown knight superhumans would be trashed by any globo military corp who could turn any levy into very comparable super soldier.
Which just let the cyborg one who doesn’t add any benefit if it’s not about a neuralink-like technology.
And with this we circle to my first post.
Sorry to crush some dreams but sometime technological progress just crush their ancestors.
Steel is superior to flesh ,motors turned horses from a mighty biological weapon to a recreative hobby for girls.
I disagree, we spend more on infantry then ever. Look at how many thousands is spent on equipping the average US soldier today....now compare that to the average US GI from WWII. Stark difference. WWII was TOTAL WAR and was a numbers game, the individuals didn't matter as much.
But nowadays we put far more importance on saving lives and the individual being better equipped than ever.
@@MALICEM12I already said It about equipment, but funding is also about maintenance, training, and army size then we need to account per capita (relative to other military spending who also increased) without retirement pension (which hugely biases the military spending about Infantry without telling a thing about capability).
And we should also think about the added benefit brought with more funding.
Once you apply everything you will notice that infantry is drastically underfunded and undertrained in most western country. Now add that everyone lies, and the rampant corruption (UCP camo for ex) and things are way worse than you could think.
The French soldier today is way better equipped than those in WW2. But French infantry was always at the bottom in any funding. France was one the lasts country to adopt assault rifle (in the 70) and during most of the decolonization war, they were outgunned by insurrectionist with more modern weapons.
10 years ago, they still used FAMAS maintained with glue and bought their own equipment. Now things are better because the recent funding you might hear about are closer to resurrection than modernization.
Even for US army it was not that bright until the 2000 passing from “no boots on the ground “and “surgical strike” to the second battle of Fallujah with 6000 shell strike and tanks opening doors to let marines entering.
Still things seem to be far worse in the nonwestern world even per capita.
"Civilization: Beyond Earth, a criminally underrated game by the way." TRUTH!
Real talk tho, pilgrim has got to be one of my favourite TH-camrs, God bless ✝️☦️
thank you
@@thotslayer9914 i kind want to
one interesting thing i heard of in regards to cybernetics is the goal of it is to modify your body in a way where they can make a legal claim on your body that you simply cant afford to say no to
You should do a video on decadence with warhammer eldar. Love the video by the way
I think space warfare would be more based on battles between spaceships.
More or less, but only if you really want to destroy revolting planets
You will ALWAYS need infantry. Somebody has to go planetside, you can’t just death star or exterminatus every planet. Somebody has to board enemy vessels. Somebody has to enter the underground vaults and bunkers.
Somebody has to kill/capture high value targets. Somebody has to rescue hostages or prisoners.
Somebody will always have to put their boots on the ground.
Until AI robots become more capable ground combatants than humans and until they become immune to EMP or other counter measures, you will ALWAYS need the infantry.
@@FormerGovernmentHumanand if we can invest in superhumans now we can stave off complete AI dominance
This is one I really enjoyed, being human isn’t only about appearance it’s something essencial and further: spiritual in nature but with a material form to match…neo-platonism has a lot in common with Christianity when it comes to the metaphysical understanding of the world and the human condition…
Would love to see you give an analysis of each of Beyond Earth's Affinities and of the hybrid affinities, like the positives and negatives of each one and that sort of thing.
If the simple fact that having more money, makes people think they are more than human. Now, imagine if you give them real super powers?
I too, wish to be John Spartan and yell "It's Halo time" when I'm about to go Spartan.
Here is my solution to the Ai terminator problem
Back in the day, every viking sailor had completely memorized how to make a viking boat, from scratch. All up in his nogin was the dimensions and instructions on how to make a boat. Throw him on an island, deprived of everything save an axe and a knife, he will sail off that island in the boat he made.
Now, in the modern world, make sure every human being, knows how to make an emp, completely from scratch at a hardware store. Nothing but his memory. The world has enough home depots and triple A batteries.
I doubt a simple emp device will do anything against a warbot since the military has already found ways of emp proofing they're technology, I think the better option would be teaching as many people as possible how to effectively code computers and how to hack them since cyberwarfare I've heard is a highly effective form of combat and a pain in the ass for your enemy's to deal with. Tho doing this will probably lead to much more disasters results than the emp idea.
@@ElishaFollet from what I understand, the military's way of EMP proofing something is removing all electronics and circuitry (like the Humvee)
I imagine you could emp proof certain robots, but on average it would just be too difficult or it would restrict the ability of said robot to communicate or receive orders from other robots (the most primitive way to Emp proof something is to cover any openings it in tin foil, which works but no radio signals can go inside, for a robot army that sucks cause you loose a lot of synergy and communications)
Your coding plan does sound interesting tho. My problem with it is that is sounds ripe for AI to flip the tables and hack into your computer.
@@phil3751 I see, I didn't think of that last part but the emp idea doesn't sound bad after all
I see your point but still beg to differ. Depending on the type of war robot we are facing, I would say a shaped charge would be more effective. Early terminators like the US Air Force's T1 and Cyberdyne Systems' hunter-killer tank were more akin to armoured vehicles rather than bipedal humanoid robots and most probably have the same weaknesses.
I agree beyond Earth is very underrated, Especially with the expansion that gave you floating cities and hybrid paths
Interesting point in Halo lore is that the AI creation process requires the destructive scan of a human brain with the example of Cortana, who was likely created from a clone of Halsey. Which makes Cortana calling Halsey a monster ironic.
I love how our future, assuming time doesn't end any time soon, is going to be Warhammer 40k, or do I hate it, I feel both.
Nah we heading straight to a cyberpunk dystopia. Not at all Warhammer wich is arguebly 10times worse way to go
Wheres the God emperor?
You have become my favorite TH-camr. The way you use these games and shows I love and your own comedy to show me history and new ideas. You’re great mate
This was a good video on this topic, I would recommend both the Manga and 2000's anime of Cyborg 009 by Shotaro Ishinamori to see the concept through a cold war lens in how suber solders can be used to fuel a new kinda arms race.
Okay so a while back I think I solved the cyberspycosis cause. Mainly from binging a lot of neuroscience and biological podcasts.
TLDR the muscle and mass is the second hurtle stoping impulsive behavior.
It's not just PTSD but the fact of replacing the biological parts of the body actively limits the brain to interface with the outside world. But this in an of itself is a grand lie. The human is more than the brain. Our stomachs have some form.of grey matter surrounding them and the bacteria in our guts can be altered depending on what we eat. This is a major reason for our adaptivity.
Point being the less of a whole one is the more trapped in their mind they become. Which leads down the winding path of psychosis. And since the tech in cyberpunk is linked to the brain when intrusive thoughts and dark ideas become the normal. Not having muscle memory to halt the actions you might otherwise take.
R. Talsoran thought Cyberpunk 2020 needed a balancing mechanic for cybernetic power, or players would build their PCs into metal monsters until it was all a mecha game. Shadowrun had its own version where your bond with your soul weakens and eventually severs. Others could limit cybernetics through steep prices or rarity, like cybernetics is a rare treasure found in old vaults. 40k uses the availability balance.
C-psychos can't understand humanity. The more dehumanizing something is, the more Humanity Cost is associated with it. Replacing your face with a barely articulated steel plate nets you a lot of HC. Anything that alters your perception of self and the world, like a booster that makes you constantly feel like walking in syrup or a hand that shoots people when you think.
You could fix it all in the old rules we had. You just had to say no to power. They strap people down, pull out all their stuff or replace it with toned-down civvie versions. You have to more or less willingly abandon all the power you have accumulated.
This video struck a deep cord with me, as in a spell of world building i went "What would humans be like, without the raw aspect of natural evolution?" the idea of the "Material Enhancement Techno-organic Augmentation" META humans was both an experiment as to how my friends would react to the ultimate idea of "Human nature, but evolved for the modern world". Boy, was i in over my head. But you summed it up best in the "super soldiers are still human" segment. Hell, thats the entire point. Super *human* not in combat prowess ,or how smart you are, but the emotion. Aware, in control, and disciplined like the mentioned Buddhist monks. Rambles/other info below:
the main antagonist of the story is "forge". Demons that consume everything and remake it in their image for more resource consumption, so a communist's depiction of capitalism. The reason META exist was to fight forge, and keep humanity from going extinct. But what will happen after the secret was popped that super humans exist after the war? Do they get treated as equals? are they forced into a caste system of warriors by the normal humans like in 40k? Well, the person responsible of the creation of the META humans wants them to replace normal humans through peaceful means, be it simply out competing them or if possible through "Sci fi genetics" magic reproduce with normal humans but gestate META humans, or a near equivalent.
As much as id love to go into extensive detail in a youtube comment (sarcasm) my own inexperience with world building and the idea has been a pain and caused lots of drama between my friends and I mostly because of my poor communication skills. The ultimate goal isnt to replace humanity, but to evolve it for a world of science and technology. But uhhh, yea, thats META humans. thanks for reading, person.
Another great talking point on humanities role in sci fi, and I am so glad you brought up Beyond Earth!!! Everyone scoffs at it since they think it's a poor Civ entry, but on the contrary it tried to be a very different beast! I really wish you brought up how the hybrid affinities delve even deeper into how technology and biology in humanity change and shape their culture like how the tech purity faction "tame" machines that have an animal intelligence and prefer solitary spires, how the purity harmony geneticist use their new discoveries to make human "more" and emulate greco roman gods and sculptures, and finally the most interesting mix of the tech harmony faction that abandon all of their humanity and become a truly alien race akin to the combine.
Quite frankly it's the perfect setting for a sci fi property and I even have the ground work for a story using all the pieces. I don't know if I'll ever get around to working on it but when I do I'm sure you'll see the rumblings of it. I hate to waste potential especially in Beyond Earth.
The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but that means the road out of hell is also. It depends which way you are going.
All in all very based video. What's funny is that the idea of the "super soldier" is as old as time. The idea of the super soldier or hero represents the best qualities and purpose of a human, heroism, justice, willpower, etc, it refers back to the ancient stories of heroes of Heracles, Beowulf and Gilgamesh. It's why we should be against AI and transhumanism because it discards the very thing that makes us human, our indomitable spirit.
The ancients practiced extensive eugenics programs, in a sense those legendary heroes were super soldiers.
Transhumanism of the flesh is fine.
The creation of the ultimate human is tye best goal of humanity
One of the most important parts of Starship Troopers to me and what makes the criticism of Heinlein as "Fascist" very silly is that anyone can become a Citizen with enough Discipline and the willingness to sacrifice for the body politic unless they are just so mentally deficient that you cannot take or understand the oath.
I feel like that vision of the Future Citizen soldier is the ideal, being born into the caste through engineering like the Astartes can lead to various problems likely similar to problems of late stage aristocracies that lead to the liberal revolutions of the early modern period though exacerbated by their utter detachment in real physical terms from the rest of humanity.
The Citizen Soldier must choose the path. In the words of Heinlein, that which is given has no value, it must be earned.
Ah yes, because taking away a civilians right to vote and only giving it once they swear they're undying loyalty and servitude to the state and nobody else but the state and doing what ever the state orders u to do without questions is definitely not a fascist idea and will definitely stop corruption and oligarchy from forming and abusing the system to benefit themselves and screw over the masses who definitely won't still be able to be fear mongered and propagandized into serving this totally not fascist state that definitely is not fascist what so ever, am I right my fellow authoritarian boot lickers/dumbass sympathizers?
Calling the world of Starship Troopers "Fascist" makes sense to people who believe requiring an ID to vote is an attack on democracy
Forcing your citizens to jump through hoops to have political power will automatically concentrate it in the hands of a small group. Besides 100 percent mobilization is impossible, what about all of the support structure? Can you get your vote farming?
The other issue is that the Federation tries to get recruits or possible recruits to leave. They encourage it, as it makes political power that much more exclusive.
@@chaucermcdoogle6011 The limiting of Franchise is part of the point. Most people should not hold any political power at all.
However, the advocacy in the video for a noble class of born and bred super being fighting men is just too limiting for my personal standards.
@@SneakyRANGERREX "Most people should not have political power at all". What's your ideology? Undemocratic societies are braindead, the upper class has no reason not to loot the entire society from the top.
nice video
the most interesting thing was the relationship between a warrior and it's tool
the knight and his armor
the samurai and his sword
the steppeman and his horse
the thing you saw in Iraq was how wastefully 'shock and awe' tactics took over the military. How navy gargantuanism took over as navy> armies. How spreadsheets and technology became heavily involved in a soldier, meanwhile afghan goat herders and Vietnamese with aks beat them down mercilessly
Americans just forgot that their warrior "culture" was once a frontiersman and his rifle like in 1776
I wouldn't really call our culture a warrior culture, more of a nationalistic/patriotic freedom type since warrior cultures required every one to be trained in some form of combat and serve some purpose to the military where's in our culture wether u wanna train in how to fight and join the military as well as wether or not u support or hate the military is completely up to you. Plus to my knowledge a warrior cultures relied on some type of king or emperor and a overall strict hirarchy were the next leader is depended on whos related to they're king/emperor where's the u.s is built on democracy.
The problem with the UNSC is that all of their technology is all interconnected and interlinked making any hacking or widespread virus or artificial attacks extremely dangerous, vs the independent systems of say 40K space machine power armor,
Same argument can be made about modern tech as well.
Or you can just not be infected in the first place
10:57
Reminder that the Spartans were originally created to kill human rebels, not to protect humanity. Then bad guy aliens showed up, and the mission changed.
some of your points reminded me of two things i seen in games, which, as am watching reminds me if you'd thought about it as you were making this video. Specially about the fact that you mention humans needing to be modified to survive through space:
1) Callisto Protocol and Negative Atmosphere: They both seem to deal with humanity finding ways to travel through space and adapting to thrive in spacecrafts. Callisto via their stupid virus to somehow "evolve" humans and Negative Atmosphere's more generalized, more grounded approach, where the protagonist says they just enhance themselves a bit to eliminate spaceborn cancer and such.
2) Ben Croshaw actually pointed out why the Horus Heresy went the way it did on an old article, honestly i think he raises an interesting point about superhumans in the military, what will make them STAY loyal?:
"But here’s the thing - creating supersoldiers doesn’t make the slightest bit of rational sense. First of all, you’re basically creating an entity whose only purpose is to fight, so what the hell are you going to do with them during peace time, pack them in a box? And this is assuming you could even control them. If they haven’t regressed to a slavering bestial state or been driven insane by the monstrosity they have become, how are you going to make them do your bidding, Mr. Small Fragile Human General? You really want to start issuing threats that might come back to haunt you when some leashes get slipped? To say nothing of the fact that the ethical lapse involved would be ruinous in a country where people fight for the rights of embryonic cell clusters, and that most supersoldiers could be effectively countered by, say, dropping a great big bomb."
I think the most realistic usage for super soldiers would just be slightly inhanced cia/special forces agents for spy and black ops missions but even then they aint gonna be some kind of unstoppable demi gods, just semi regular humans with some minor or slightly major advancements that would give em a bit more of an advantage over other agents, but still fully capable of dying to a regular half confident agent or two with a gun.
Plus the only ethical way of creating a super soldier irl would require the consent of an adult with those in they're early 20s probably being a preferred target for recruiting as well as allowing the now modified person to maintain all his or hers legal rights such as the choice of retirement and procreation. Oh yeah and the modification process has to be humane.
@@ElishaFollet Basically the only type of super solider program US citizens would normally approve of.
Super soldiers sound great until the super soldier’s boot is on your neck…
yeah that's a real issue to keep in mind.
Ironically, one of the best ways to keep super soldiers in check would be by making them reliant on the 'mortal man' or unaugmented human. 40k actually solves this problem surprisingly well in two ways:
1. Astartes are all male, meaning they can't reproduce on their own, thus making them reliant on regular humans to replenish their numbers.
2. The more stable primarchs i.e. the likes of Guilliman, Vulcan, and Corax, teach their sons to empathize and connect with the normal humans they protect. Empathy goes a long way to preventing them from being warmongering maniacs (World Eaters and Black Templars) or unfeeling killing machines (Iron Warriors and Iron Hands).
And this is also a problem I have yet to see any other scifi IP solve in regards to it's super soldiers, including Halo.
At the same time, trying to make female spaces marines (a dreaded topic in the 40k community), might end up breaking this check, which could lead to disaster. That's one thing feminists pushing for this sort of stuff would never understand when it comes to inclusivity
@@alexfrost2799aren't space marines also sterilized to prevent them from possibly intermingling with women as well?
For Avatar I have an idea about the cannon fodder. Family compensation is less costly than the return ticket.
Still, space voayage is expesive, so each soldier they send should be well equipped, they cant send eough for employ a swarming tactic.
In my own novel, I actually dealt with this by having economies of scale help with subsidization. I also featured a lot of increasingly primitive technology to get utilized as you get further in further out to the frontier. By the time you get out to the true frontier, virgin colonies aside from some special things like super luminal, communications, arrays and nanomachine fabricators, the colonies are using things like incandescent lights, diesel engines, solar panels, and Kalashnikov rifles. They even have livestock herds and vegetable gardens. And the reason given is even if hello space travel can cover a light year for a week. It’s still nine months each way to and from the colony and are only so many transports with so much Cargo room especially when you have to fight gravity to get in and out of orbit to deploy the landers, which actually do have to go down to the surface. It’s not that society isn’t advanced. It’s that sophistication is expensive so it has to be carefully prioritized to places where it can be sustained..
@@brianmead7556 I like the idea to make sophistication costly in funds and also human resources.Highly skilled engineers in quantum wizardry wouldn’t be easy to find in backward sectors even if you could pay them well. And often the void calls the void and the activity call activity. People tend to gather around in the most optimal place to do something and with time the simple fact the place had gathered many talents and already had facilities is enough to discourage any alternative solution. That’s why we built arsenal, port, university hospital, etc. You rarely see an engineer from a developed country going into the Third World unless he had an adventurous mindset and work for a company managing assets in this area. And they are not cheap.
And yeah, gravity seems to be the real bottleneck about economic productivity. Whatever you produce on land would be cheaper than space landed goods but, on the other hand, whatever you want to export in space will be costlier than anything built in space or in the destination wolrd.
I think the real economy for a space-faring civilization will always be “space to space”. Once you learn to sustain yourself in space, everything would be much easier than on land. You could easily gather resources and create mega factories and sell goods to other space-faring fleet.
Realistically once in space humanity wouldn’t really need land anymore. The only downside for living in spacefaring fleets would the need to build everything you need to live. Even your breath has a cost. So, every person on a fleet should hold an economic value far superior to the “amount of ship” he uses.
And maybe we touch the real thing. Living on dirt is only for the poor and they value is much about field occupation than any economical purpose. They are just worthless ground dwelling apes only good for gathering the very few things you can’t get that cheaply in space and planting your flag, and maybe raising levies.
A knight and his armor.
A samurai and his sword.
A TH-camr and his jar of his own farts.
And for good measure, go read Galaxy’s Edge by Jason Anspach and Nick Cole.
The entire conflict of the series is a bunch of genocidal transhumanist tech bros vs regular humans.
Civilization: Beyond Earth was a great iteration in the series. The tech tree and culturally focused developments introduce a lot of concepts in a simple way.
I recently watched the time traveling series called Travelers. I was pleasantly surprised to see a good AI for once guiding, (well, tried to) humans to a better future. It's a fresh take on AI over the endless waves of Hollywood trope about genocidal or bumbling comedic sidekicks or subservient or even horny AIs.
Love that show.
Issac Asimov was the first
@@S_Warden Now that you mentioned it I vaguely remember reading sci fi books and short stories about good AIs. I remember a bit about a robot that keeps running around in circles because it got confused which Laws of Robotics it must follow without breaking the other and a bit about AI being secretly used to replace the President of the United State. It's just that Hollywood has saturated the the mainstream perception with genocidal or horny AIs.
You should look up the Bolo book series. Best depiction of good AI in sci-fi.
Very nice, subbed on my first view, I hope to see more like this.
Space Marines weren't a response to AI. The Emperor just let AI utterly eviscerate humanity and THEN he created the Space Marines.
They and their predecessors were that, if not he could Just use battle AI
@@billyherrington5112 AI was recognized as taboo long before the Emperor even emerged, let alone began his Unification Wars. The Emperor could only take control of humanity in the Age of Strife after the Men of Iron destroyed the galactic human civilization of the Golden Age.
so glad i found this page, will definitely be catching up on your content.
God bless
Such a great and influential video pilgrim i love it.
I have an idea of a sci fi fantasy story set in alternate universe so basically ww3 happened in 2018 and so the countries that are fighting in this war are using soldiers with superpowers (through advance technology of genetic engineering or magical origins or people just born with powers) to fight against their enemies to win this war the main character is someone who gained his powers through genetic engineering him and his friends must fight for their country while going through the hardships of war sometimes with comedic and heartfelt moments and times of horror and darkness the story will take some elements of lord to the rings on themes and morality heck even the main character is a fan of the lord of the rings books
(Don't know if i should make it a book or a comic/manga)
I like the Rogue Trader and 2nd ed space marines. A marine is some kind of space knight cop of the Imperium. They are superhuman, being Toughness 4 and Strength 4 in a T3 and S3 world made you the toughest basic infantry. They had good armour and good guns. They were equal or one step better than most other basic goons in the game. Most importantly, they had no drawback. They were just good all around. Skilled like eldar, tough like orks. The only drawback was their cost per model.
A marine still had to survive against people with Strength 3 laser guns with -1 armour pen. If it wounded, they had a 3+ armour save that the lasgun alone turned to a 4+. And under that, one Wound. Basic infantry all had one Wound as standard, terminators, iggies, orks, everything. Monstrous infantry like ogryn and hero characters excluded.
The marines of 2nd ed are big damn heroes not because they are all-powerful demigods of war. But because they will go stand on a hill during the last stand of the RT cover and grab an ork helmet with head still attached to use as a club even as their mates are being shot left and right around them and some war-machine comes lumbering through the smoke to turn them into jelly.
Give us a few Alita Battle Angels and no one would be unhappy. Or maybe Marcus Wright from Terminator
Really enjoyed this. Amusing and thought provoking. Looking forward to part 2.
Thank you for giving the Adeptus Astartes love in this video. For the Emperor! 😇
I rarely do even log in to yt, but man gotta comment on this one. Cause of you I am now into space marines and necrons, and even finished AOT and bought the manga, flipping epic work, gona keep following up in the future, bless ya man.
That's why I'm more into fantasy than sci-fi. Fantasy is usually all about an individual hero and/or band of heroes defeating inhuman or tyrannical evil. The forms may vary, bu the core is the same.
That's also why I'm more into sci-fi than fantasy
Fantasy WAS about that.
Now is more like antiheros and villains fighting themselves fir their own egoist reasons.
I preferscify.
Scify could happen.
Still all fantasy are sci-fi
Since all magic can be explained with science
@@adamnesico there is an entire multitude of fantasy books about heroes. Modern anti-hero fantasy is a droplet in the ocean. There's almost a hundred years of awesome fantasy works.
@@robertagren9360 okay.
In the words of a character from Civilization: Beyond Earth; "You go to war with the soldiers you have. Make sure those are the soldiers you want."
All this talk of space Marines, I feel the need to remind you all that as the poster children for the 40k universe the Marines will always get more praise than the ones who actually fight the wars 90% of the time. When you can't pick your fights, and the enemy won't let you run, the Imperial Guard will be there to help you.
Billions of PDF, voidsmen and skitari:
-Yeah that's right fuck me.
Seriosly, just check number of guards in some "crusades". There were bigger battles in WW2. Also guards are completly useless without fleet. They are just cannon fodder to use if you want capture something without orbital bombardement.
You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.
Regarding the transhumanism stuff, I guess I'm a bit confused about what you define as "human," as in what defining traits of humanity you feel needs to be preserved. Like, you talk about the _majorly_ modified Astartes as "still recognizably human" as opposed to having been given wings and tentacles and stuff, which makes it sound like you mean the human _form._ I just think that seems a bit superficial.
Like, are you okay with genetic, cybernetic and/or biomechanic augmentations as long as people benefiting from them have the right number of arms and legs? At least to me the important thing would be that the transhuman individual still identifies as some sort of human, thinks and feels about stuff in a mostly human way, and participates in human society. With this in mind, the humanoid forms of the space marines seem kinda performative. Those guys exist only to fight on humanity's behalf and have had pretty vital human characteristics removed to make them better at that.
Like, what do I care if a person turns themselves into some weird cyber-octopus-spider thing if I can still have a normal conversation with them about literature or sports or whatever? As long as we can relate and care about one another on a personal level, isn't that what matters?
You would care, spider-octopus cyborg would be Just Gross
@@billyherrington5112 That sounds like judging by appearance.
I'm just saying, you can't tell a person's level of humanity based on how weird they look. You have to actually talk to them.
@@RelativelyBest judging by apperance is natural and most of the Times reasonable and fine
@@billyherrington5112 No it's not. It's shallow and irrational and often leads to biased, prejudiced decisions.
@@RelativelyBestbased opinion.
bro, that starcraft roast got me 💀💀💀💀💀💀
but for mass produced prison space freeing hunks of muscles and metal the sc space marines could swarm an astartes squad with about 1000 minerals (20 sc space marines). Take away the plot armor from the wh marines and its a more or less equal fight. its like if all of a death row prison broke out and stole guns to go fight the local military checkpoint.
Hey Pilgrimpass, I was watching your videos on the dune vs star trek comparison in addition to the cyberpunk neofudalism one to get inspired for a worldbuilding project and wanted your opinion on my notes. If anyone else wants to comment feel free
"Myths are used as a reproductive tool, informing descendants with spiritual teachings as a means to survive/thrive in the material world.
Said myths are indirectly made based on the environment shaped by various cultures and their use of technology.
This use of technology is animated by spiritual beleifs, pertaining to the will of supernatural entities that guide humanity to their fate/evolution.
It is the friction between different entities, cultures, environments, and technologies that refine these myths, cementing them in the past and future."
It's been difficult to produce a total vision for the project, but I think the gist of it is photobashing various myths inspired by classical civilizations(greece, persia, china) to explore a grimdark setting akin to 40k but still provide a hopeful message similar to LOTR. In all seriousness, thanks for all the videos you do.
I had simillar ideas in middle school
sounds good :) go for it
@@billyherrington5112 did those ideas go further? As in, was there more here than what I stated? ( I'm still trying to improve my understanding of these topics)
I think a video about Halo and more specifically about the forerunner and the Mantle of responsability could be interesting.
Because i believe it could be a path humanity want to take.
You really should have included the sardaukar and dune in this conversation.
Or the fremen. Or the fish speaker. or the honored matres.
Dune has many supersoldiers.
love your videos. your stuff is always so entertaining. keep rambling, we will be here to listen.
Sorry Pilgrim, But the Flesh is weak, WEAK!!
Stull is more resistant to electromagnetic pilse than the metal.
This video has no right being this good.
Pure insight, drawn from the gods. Oml.
There are also the commando (hero) units in the Command & Conquer series.
While not nearly as impressive as Spartans or Space Marines, they are just as versatile.
0:00 The Borok against terror? A man of culture I see.
It would be cool if you did a video on transcendent heroes such as dragon born, Paul Atreides or Rand Althor (from the wheel of time books),(or others) who have to save humanity(or fail to do so) by being more than human, or superhuman. It would be an interesting thing to hear you talk about sense a lot of this idea of a transcendent hero reflects religions all over the world particularly Christianity and it would segue from the space marine series.
That would be interesting. I would like to see this too. 👍
You lost me on "Dragonborn".
@@kozlorog Why?
Everything in this video went right over my head
I think the space Marines in the alien franchise can't be explained with. They're defending a corporate owned colony and the corporation hate spending money so they send ill-equipped.
If the threats are virtually never well enough equipped to need quality troops why bother spending the quality troop money?
If you watched the movie it's not about saving money. The marines were sabotaged from the very beginning.