Mage: The Ascension, Technocracy and science

[Don Strudel]

Any criticisms of how the Technocracy tackles science?

[Username17]

Any criticisms of how the Technocracy tackles science?

Well, the authors of the books seem to think that manipulating fire until lightning is so tame that ordinary people can flick a lightswitch and have the lights come on just about every time is some sort of brutal repression. It's very weird.

The Technocracy overthrew the Celestial Fucking Chorus, giving people freedom of religion, clean drinking water, and electric light. And despite bringing in more freedom and longer, happier lives... they are the villains. For no adequately explained reason.

-Username17

[Don Strudel]

Do you think the scientific method is applicable in Ascension, or that the Technocracy used it as opposed to making up technobabble?

[sake]

To be fair, the opening of the Guide to the Technocracy book pretty much says that . "We're the reason you have cars, air conditioning and medicine, instead of shitting in the woods, terrified of your own shadow. You're welcome."

But yeah, besides that one awesome book, most of the WoD metaplot crap for them was pretty stupid. Apparently they were somehow killing magic-ness and making cold static reality stronger... by making laser shooting cyborgs, genetic mutants, super science, and motherfucking plane jumping spaceships? How the hell does that even work?

[FatR]

The Technocracy is basically mix of various distopian regimes, with the Party from 1984 being their self-admitted role model. Per Guide to Technocracy they still are. Just with their "Villain" badge removed. They promote technology because they want replicable tools for totalitarian control. Of the two supernatural groups in WoD with highest day-to-day human bodycount, one they, as the standard policy, ignore, and with the second a faction within the Technocracy is allied. So their claim to protecting humanity is pretty false, even if they wouldn't have failed at it so bad in most endgame scenarios.
And their science IS technobabbled magic. It's just that they have thought police that will ruin your day if you try to admit it.

[K]

I think the basic idea behind the Technocracy is that they were solidifying reality into a form where power was invested in machines rather than people, so evil regimes could reign without worrying about plucky peasant heroes.

So the Traditions have a problem that power is being invested in groups who own machines rather than individuals who wield magic. I mean, the Traditions aren't really organizations because no one actually follows orders.... they are at best loose collections of like-minded individuals, basically a game forum.

The Technocrats basically look at individual abuses of mages and want power invested in machines because it's better than getting mind-raped by psychic pervs even if that means you lose things like actual miracle workers. I think that's pretty understandable to want power..... you know.... under some form of control that than subject to the whims of individuals. The fact that there are actual evil organizations and just wildly destructive ones like the Marauders means that the whole "people should follow order to prevent giant abuses" makes a lot of sense.

Basically, the whole Ascension War is the gun control debate. There are groups that want to stop it because of the harm to the public, and those that think that their individual rights are more important than the public welfare.

[TheFlatline]

WOD was always about playing the villain in a setting. So I always kind of felt that the Technocracy *was* the "good" faction as much as there was a "good" faction in Mage.

I approached them in a sort of Jurassic Park sort of way. The Technocracy gets so excited as to whether or not they *can* do something they don't stop to think if they *should* do something. Which means they fuck up from time to time *really* badly. Their "enlightened science" also works better when they've codified reality, so they're going about doing just that. The side effects are unfortunate but the benefits to the Technocracy outweigh the bad stuff.

They aren't intentionally evil. They're simply amoral in the purest sense at an organization level (ie: they attempt to strip morality out of their decision making process). That means that 99% of the time, the ends justify their means (which I personally disagree with, but hey, that's part of what makes RPGs fun).

[K]

The Technocracy is evil in the way Google is evil. I mean, they help repressive regimes, but they provide... you know... Google.

[CCarter]

Do you think the scientific method is applicable in Ascension, or that the Technocracy used it as opposed to making up technobabble?

No.
Mage runs off the idea that belief shapes reality - there is no objective reality and if you believe stuff really hard you can reshape whats out there. The universe is a communal dream, basically.

In this scenario you can't go and go research and find out whats going on through testing and analysis, because the universe is basically unreal unless you believe in it. The Technocracy's modus operanti can't be to discover new ideas or applications of physical laws, but to invent these into existence plausibly to the common people, in such a way that the common man's beliefs reinforce their magic system and deprive "reality deviants" (other mages) of their power source.

[Xenologer]

In this scenario you can't go and go research and find out whats going on through testing and analysis, because the universe is basically unreal unless you believe in it. The Technocracy's modus operanti can't be to discover new ideas or applications of physical laws, but to invent these into existence plausibly to the common people, in such a way that the common man's beliefs reinforce their magic system and deprive "reality deviants" (other mages) of their power source.

And that is why natural selection only works half the time. So the technocracy invented natural selection which means they invented antibiotic resistance but which also means they have been perpetually tweaking us so that we seem to be evolving so that we will actually do so and arrgggh.

[TheFlatline]

In this scenario you can't go and go research and find out whats going on through testing and analysis, because the universe is basically unreal unless you believe in it. The Technocracy's modus operanti can't be to discover new ideas or applications of physical laws, but to invent these into existence plausibly to the common people, in such a way that the common man's beliefs reinforce their magic system and deprive "reality deviants" (other mages) of their power source.

Not quite.

Magic is expressed through a paradigm. Dreamspeakers believe they commune with spirits, Virtual Adepts believe that they hack the code of reality, Celestial Chorus believes that they pray to the supreme being and miracles happen, etc etc.

You absolutely positively *believe* this to be true, and reality bends to this belief. I wont' go into the idea that the traditions all work together, and all visibly work, which shoots the whole fucking paradigm thing in the foot to begin with.

The Technocracy believes that science works (bitches). Their "enlightened" scientists are doing magic, but they believe so feverently in the scientific method that their research and experimentation pays off dividends. Science is the paradigm of Technocracy "mages". Since the public by and large accepts science and the scientific method these days, their paradigm is reinforced by reality and their magic becomes easier.

But the Technocracy really doesn't believe it's magic. They believe it's zero-point energy physics, quantum mechanics, and other things that just *seem* like magic because the underlying principles aren't understood yet. As they shape those underlying principles, they feed this knowledge down to sleepers in prominent places and get *them* to believe it and filter it down to the masses, and boom, that magic is now a normal part of reality.

So in reality the Ascension war may be about magical paradigm, but it's almost entirely fought as a cultural war. Mages break reality to achieve their ends, while the Technocracy simply changes the underlying rules of reality to make their ends the natural course of the universe. Small wonder that the Technocracy is winning.

It's important to realize that probably 95% of the Technocracy believes what it's doing is pure science and nothing else. Only the very upper echelons of the Technocracy realizes that they're doing magic, and is coordinating the Ascension War to make reality more friendly to the technology paradigm.

[CCarter]

OK I'll pay that...The Technocracy may actually believe they're using the scientific method, as you say. However, I'd still maintain that despite this the scientific method (research and experimentation etc ) does not technically work in the Mage universe - given that any new discovery only works because someone believes it does.
e.g. in Mage, you don't discover that the earth is round - you convince people it isn't flat until that becomes true.

[magnuskn]

"The Technocrat waves her hand dismissively

TECHNOCRAT
Ya sure keep talkin' but have no chance
Full of big words but just no stance
'Crats pack the heat, yo, 'Crats make the plans
Ain't havin' no reality de-vi-ance!
Cross us, Wyrm, ya stupid mook
And we will use our spirit nuke!"

From the brilliant "Gehenna - The Musical" ( http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1677764/2/G ... he_Musical )

Quite honestly, the Technocracy is only playing into the hands of the Weaver, by calcifying reality.

[Lago PARANOIA]

OK I'll pay that...The Technocracy may actually believe they're using the scientific method, as you say. However, I'd still maintain that despite this the scientific method (research and experimentation etc ) does not technically work in the Mage universe - given that any new discovery only works because someone believes it does.

I fucking hate the shit out of WoD now. That goes a step further into anti-intellectual bullshit than, well, almost anything. I don't even think FATAL is that bad.

But after what we saw in Exalted, is anyone really surprised?

[fectin]

Believing in the scientific method makes it work. Believing that the universe is knowable forces it to be. Maybe the next lower level (atomic->quantum->string theories) doesn't exist until noise at the higher level forces investigation, but the underlying belief that the world is knowable and observable makes the scientific method work just fine.

[Username17]

oMage is the most offensive anti-intellectual screed I have ever read, yeah. That is a fair assessment. The World of Darkness had stuff in it that was really offensive. Masquerade is a game where you are supposed to play politics where you have to worry about "the cannibal rapist vote" (as opposed to the more moderate factions, such as the "child molesters" and "serial killers"). And it seriously does not rate on the scale of how sickeningly offensive the core conceits of Mage, Werewolf, or Changeling are.

-Username17

[Fucks]

What? Explain the underlying offensive concept of oWoD: Mage, please.

[LR]

The Technocracy believes that science works (bitches). Their "enlightened" scientists are doing magic, but they believe so feverently in the scientific method that their research and experimentation pays off dividends. Science is the paradigm of Technocracy "mages". Since the public by and large accepts science and the scientific method these days, their paradigm is reinforced by reality and their magic becomes easier.

So, what happened to the luminiferous aether?

[Gnyahaha]

There was nothing offensive about Mage. The idea that reality is shaped according to belief is a philosophical concept and one that is kinda cool at that.

What kind of pro-intellectual idea could you come up that would be just as cool as the paradigm idea?

Also, it is my personal belief that thopught the game hardly explains it, technocratic and sleeper science cant coexist. That is, technocratic sceince wont work if enough people dont believe in it and might break down. Thats why technocrats have teleporting limos and mankind has regular cars.

[Don Strudel]

So, what happened to the luminiferous aether?

I thought that was rather arbitrary myself. If they were rewriting reality to suit themselves, then why would they abandon a perfectly serviceable concept like that?

In the real world, the ether was discredited because it was later found to be false. But in Mage, it was discredited because... actually I don't know why, except that the Technocracy didn't like it anymore for some reason, even though it was just as valid as any later concept they came up with.

[sabs]

The reason the Technocrats are 'evil' is because they want to not just stamp out bad magic. But they fundementally understand that belief=reality and they want to stamp out any belief that does not mesh with their own.

They are 'Order' taken to it's extreme.

[virgil]

So, what happened to the luminiferous aether?

I thought that was rather arbitrary myself. If they were rewriting reality to suit themselves, then why would they abandon a perfectly serviceable concept like that?

I was under the impression that the aether concept was removed because one of the Technocracy's departments used it more than the others, and that department went rogue, becoming the Sons of Ether.

[LR]

So, what happened to the luminiferous aether?

I thought that was rather arbitrary myself. If they were rewriting reality to suit themselves, then why would they abandon a perfectly serviceable concept like that?

I was under the impression that the aether concept was removed because one of the Technocracy's departments used it more than the others, and that department went rogue, becoming the Sons of Ether.

That happened in 1904. The Michelson–Morley experiment was performed in 1887. Apparently, actual scientists are faster on the draw than the Technocracy.

[fectin]

Michelson-Morley was looking for Aethral current. It was the nail in Aether's coffin, but wasn't used for that until much later. There were still ether experiments going on until at least the 1930s.

Phlogiston might be a better question, because it replaced a good explanation with uncertainty.

[LR]

Michelson-Morley was looking for Aethral current. It was the nail in Aether's coffin, but wasn't used for that until much later. There were still ether experiments going on until at least the 1930s.

The Technocracy was supposed to have removed the aether from reality, but reality was already giving results consistent with a world that lacked the aether before that. That's the problem.