Should Safeholdians say NO to Gbaba war?

cralkhi wrote:

Icarium wrote:Pretty much this. Gunpowder is a major game changer, and it's said it was allowed simply due to a bribe. Father Paityr implies this sort of bribe is _COMMON_.

Right but gunpowder by itself, or even primitive guns, isn't really a game changer. It isn't a power source, it doesn't really lead to much else. Gunpowder was an anomaly on Earth too, and it took centuries -- and a much more scientific mindset than Safehold would ever be likely to develop -- before it outcompeted other

Gunpowder is only one example of the things that have slipped through the cracks of the Proscriptions, not a game-changer in itself. Gunpowder is not the only thing that has been approved that Langhorne did not want. But as an example, it is illustrative. The Proscriptions were already weakening before Merlin showed up.

SWM wrote:The Brethren did not influence the development of gunpowder--they didn't even have the formula for gunpowder, or designs for guns.

Oh, sure they didn't invent it. I find it hard to believe they didn't have a hand in Charisian naval gun development though. Not "we have blueprints" just "this is a new development and should be studied to see how useful it is".

I seriously doubt this. There is no text evidence to support this, and as far as I can tell from the text the Brethren severely restricted any meddling with things. Remember also that gunpowder was introduced in Harchong of all places. The fact that the most conservative nation on Safehold would be willing to propose and study something which is clearly against the intent of the Proscriptions says quite a lot about how far the cracks had spread already. The Proscriptions were already beginning to fail, hundreds of years ago.

It is clear that we disagree fundamentally on the probability that Safehold would eventually discover technology without Merlin's intervention. You think that there was a low probability of it. Shan-Wei, Merlin, and I disagree. There isn't any way of knowing, of course. I would say that, even if you were right that the probability is low, the possibility that it might happen and that it might endanger the race is enough to condemn Langhorne's plan (aside from any moral arguments about his methods).

Weird Harold wrote:

n7axw wrote:I'm not sure about the wildfire analogy... More like rust on a car in South Dakota...slow but inevitable.

Rust can be stopped. Wildfires can only be contained and then only if they choose to be contained. Almost anyone who has ever worked a fireline would tell you the same.

This last year I have been watching a body man at work.. To be truly stopped, rust has to be cut out and a new piece welded in.

Same with corruption whether COGA or in other situations. Has to be cut out or it just keeps eating away...

Don

I will have to join in with the posters who don't think that Safehold would have triggered an industrial revolution spontaneously.

As mentioned, the Roman Empire had a large collection of machines, from very simple steam engines to atmospheric engines (often used as automatic door openers in temples). The crank and waterwheel were known, and there are "factory" sites where multiple waterwheels turned mill wheels, stonecutting saws and other machinery. The Romans even had devices that we would recognize as primitive clockwork, but there was no Roman industrial revolution.

Similarly, Venice had a very enlightened form of Republican government, modern accounting and investing practices and even a form of assembly line in the Arsenal. At the same time, other Italian city states were experimenting with all manner of arts and science (Leonardo da Vinci lived just down the road in Milan, for example), yet that didn't kick start the Industrial revolution either.

Charis seems clearly modelled after Venice, with some Elizabethan England or the Hanse thrown in , all very enlightened European polities for the time, yet the Industrial revolution was still 200 years in the future for Elizabeth Gloriana.

So there is still something that historiography still hasn't fully explained. Other civilizations have reached some pretty impressive peaks, yet never moved into the Industrial revolution, so there really is no certainty that Safehold could have done it either.

Thucydides wrote:I will have to join in with the posters who don't think that Safehold would have triggered an industrial revolution spontaneously.

As mentioned, the Roman Empire had a large collection of machines, from very simple steam engines to atmospheric engines (often used as automatic door openers in temples). The crank and waterwheel were known, and there are "factory" sites where multiple waterwheels turned mill wheels, stonecutting saws and other machinery. The Romans even had devices that we would recognize as primitive clockwork, but there was no Roman industrial revolution.

Similarly, Venice had a very enlightened form of Republican government, modern accounting and investing practices and even a form of assembly line in the Arsenal. At the same time, other Italian city states were experimenting with all manner of arts and science (Leonardo da Vinci lived just down the road in Milan, for example), yet that didn't kick start the Industrial revolution either.

Charis seems clearly modelled after Venice, with some Elizabethan England or the Hanse thrown in , all very enlightened European polities for the time, yet the Industrial revolution was still 200 years in the future for Elizabeth Gloriana.

So there is still something that historiography still hasn't fully explained. Other civilizations have reached some pretty impressive peaks, yet never moved into the Industrial revolution, so there really is no certainty that Safehold could have done it either.

Sure, the Romans didn't have an industrial revolution. But notice two things. A) 1500 years later, there was an industrial revolution. We are talking about developments over thousands of years, not mere centuries. B) The Romans didn't start out with the level of technology that Safehold did. Safehold already knows that many things are possible which the Romans didn't know about. They have many more possible starting points which could lead to industrial revolution.

Yes, I agree that many cultures have a strong inertia against change. It can take centuries or even millennia for cracks to start in that culture, cracks which slowly widen eventually to break the inertia. My point has been that those cracks were already showing in Safehold. Gunpowder is only one obvious example of those cracks; it is not the only example. It is inevitable that those cracks would continue to grow. Eventually, in hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of years, it would break.

Unless the mean time between failures for Federation tech is infinity, eventually the Rakurai system is going to fail. Without that, the corruption of the church will inevitably lead to a technological resurgence on Safehold, which will lead eventually to space exploration.

As soon as they find obvious high-tech systems that are advanced but not miraculous or incomprehensible - which might even happen before Safehold expands into space - the church will be discredited.

In both cases, Langhorne's plan has a fatal flaw - it relies on federation tech to give the church an insurmountable advantage. Given how badly the proscriptions were decaying, that advantage was needed, and was doomed to fail.

Once the church is unable to suppress technology and the Rakurai is no longer able to keep humanity locked to the surface of Safehold, the question is not if but when humanity encounters the Gbaba again, what should they do?

There are two real possibilities, ignore or attack.

Ignore sounds unsafe and insane, but if the Gbaba expand and progress very slowly, it may make sense. After all, modern societies have little to fear from the Mongol Horde expanding across Asia. Their technology could threaten civilizations hundreds of years ago, but today they would be harmless. If humanity can achieve a similar level of superiority over the Gbaba, they could be safely ignored. Just develop technology and infrastructure until they are irrelevant.

Attacking the Gbaba would have a higher immediate cost, but would also be far less of a long term gamble. Deal with the threat now and it won't be a threat later.

Either way, the threat has to be handled, and should be handled from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance. Humanity has to figure out just how bit the Gbaba empire is. Is it like the Arachnids from the Starfire universe, where an enemy with apparently unlimited resources turns out to be eminently vincible because it actually has very little territory and just stockpiles war resources in enormous quantities between attacks? Or is it a truly galactic threat? Without knowing, we can't know for sure what answer is correct.

SWM wrote:

Thucydides wrote:I will have to join in with the posters who don't think that Safehold would have triggered an industrial revolution spontaneously.

As mentioned, the Roman Empire had a large collection of machines, from very simple steam engines to atmospheric engines (often used as automatic door openers in temples). The crank and waterwheel were known, and there are "factory" sites where multiple waterwheels turned mill wheels, stonecutting saws and other machinery. The Romans even had devices that we would recognize as primitive clockwork, but there was no Roman industrial revolution.

Similarly, Venice had a very enlightened form of Republican government, modern accounting and investing practices and even a form of assembly line in the Arsenal. At the same time, other Italian city states were experimenting with all manner of arts and science (Leonardo da Vinci lived just down the road in Milan, for example), yet that didn't kick start the Industrial revolution either.

Charis seems clearly modelled after Venice, with some Elizabethan England or the Hanse thrown in , all very enlightened European polities for the time, yet the Industrial revolution was still 200 years in the future for Elizabeth Gloriana.

So there is still something that historiography still hasn't fully explained. Other civilizations have reached some pretty impressive peaks, yet never moved into the Industrial revolution, so there really is no certainty that Safehold could have done it either.

Sure, the Romans didn't have an industrial revolution. But notice two things. A) 1500 years later, there was an industrial revolution. We are talking about developments over thousands of years, not mere centuries. B) The Romans didn't start out with the level of technology that Safehold did. Safehold already knows that many things are possible which the Romans didn't know about. They have many more possible starting points which could lead to industrial revolution.

Yes, I agree that many cultures have a strong inertia against change. It can take centuries or even millennia for cracks to start in that culture, cracks which slowly widen eventually to break the inertia. My point has been that those cracks were already showing in Safehold. Gunpowder is only one obvious example of those cracks; it is not the only example. It is inevitable that those cracks would continue to grow. Eventually, in hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of years, it would break.

The ingredients they went into Western Europe's industrial revolution were the Enlightenment which shattered the notion that the church has an exclusive grip on truth, the Protestant Reformation that taught that we live in an orderly universe and the notion that work is a noble activity worthy of respect and reward. There were other things as well, but those were the biggies.

Don

Not to mention printing that allowed ideas and knowledge to spread much more rapidly. By the 1600s books allowed the spread of ideas, and the first how to books since Roman times were written, the best known was De Re Metallica on mining.

The spark of the industrial was a water powered boring machine that allowed close tolerance cylinders that allowed higher steam pressures leading to smaller steam engines, then the perfection of various machinery that allowed agricultural production with fewer workers that provided the manpower for the factories and unfortunately larger armies. Note RFC also notes the importance a unified measurement standard in the Empire of Charis.

Poker

[quote="rakenan"]

Snip

After all, modern societies have little to fear from the Mongol Horde expanding across Asia. Their technology could threaten civilizations hundreds of years ago, but today they would be harmless.

Snip

While I think I understand the context of your comments in relation to the GABA, I take exception to the above two sentences in your discussion. Barbarians may not be able to design new modern weapon systems. That does not mean that they lack the intelligence to reverse engineer those systems that fall into their hands and use those weapons effectively. See the ongoing problems in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, and many other locations. The wide variety of Islamic radical terrorist groups causing problems for western civilization today are certainly the heirs of the Huns and Mongols. And if western civilization doesn't get its collective act together the inhabitants of that civilization are going to suffer the same fate as the western Roman Empire and other political groups.

rakenan wrote:Unless the mean time between failures for Federation tech is infinity, eventually the Rakurai system is going to fail. Without that, the corruption of the church will inevitably lead to a technological resurgence on Safehold, which will lead eventually to space exploration.

See, I don't agree that it would inevitably lead to technological growth. Depending on the way the corruption goes, it could lead to disregarding some of the useful knowledge in the Writ and thus a 'dark age' (especially given the need to laboriously prepare land for Terran crops, etc.)

Anyway, I tend to think that if you dumped a bunch of people without knowledge of technology on a planet with no modern tech or records of it, no records of scientific method type ideas, etc. you'd be very unlikely to get science and technology to happen again (at least in any reasonable timeframe) even with no effort to suppress it. I just don't read history as showing that sustained progress is at all inevitable or even the normal direction of things.(Which provides a pretty good explanation for the Fermi Paradox, IMO.)

With the Writ to provide a complete explanation of the world... well, then, it's really unlikely.

As soon as they find obvious high-tech systems that are advanced but not miraculous or incomprehensible - which might even happen before Safehold expands into space - the church will be discredited.

I doubt it -- Langhorne and co. wouldn't have missed something that obvious. All the tech left over is stuff that isn't recognizable as tech until you're quite advanced.

Ignore sounds unsafe and insane, but if the Gbaba expand and progress very slowly, it may make sense. A

I believe the Gbaba do not expand or progress at all - slowly or not. OAR says 2000 year old ships were the same as brand new ones, and I believe some of RFC's posts here have said that the Federation had determined/decided the Gbaba were not expanding but just patrolled a certain volume and attacked when humanity entered that.

Thucydides wrote:So there is still something that historiography still hasn't fully explained. Other civilizations have reached some pretty impressive peaks, yet never moved into the Industrial revolution, so there really is no certainty that Safehold could have done it either.

IMO (and I'm not a historian, just interested) the critical things were:

- the presupposition that the universe is rational and comprehensible and that reasoning about things is valuable (derived from medieval scholasticism, Aristotle filtered through Christianity, seeing the universe as the ordered creation of a rational God), as opposed to the conception of the material world as a trap or illusion, as a plaything of capricious gods, etc.

- the university system (and later the printing press) meaning that knowledge was spread to others rather than closely held

- the lack of slavery (and, I've heard, labor shortage after the Black Death) meaning that labor-saving devices were useful to the society.