this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
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cybernetics makes you evil. No, fuck you Pondsmith, there is no way to make cybernetics mechanically reduce your humanity that is not inexcusable ableist bs. Let it die.
any kind of bioconservative/biotrad reactionary anti-transhumanism. Radical bodily autonomy is based and cool and that holds whether you want to be a fish, grow boobs, live forever, or encode your conscious mind in to the magnetic flux of Jupiter's orbital system. I don't care that you lack the imagination and joy for life to live forever. I don't care that you think inhabiting a giant metal deathrobot would be self-alienating. I don't care that you think merging your flesh with six billion other people to form a new gestalt god mind is icky. Work out your own issues, we're going to be over here disfugirng The face of man and woman and having a great time
basically all military sci fi. If i never read another book that is just some fascist freak masturbating about murdering immigrants or being the victim of the imperialism they gleefully inflict on others it will be too soon.
also if you try to give me a book/show/game where the ai's are evil and want to destroy and enslave all humans but they're only like that because that's literally the only relationship you can imagine between people with any kind of power disparity i will scream until i pass out. A single, high pitched wail. Dogs will bark and a wine glass will shatter in close up to emphasize how loud it is. I will literally turn purple and fall over.
now my guy is a flaming
but he does seem to give that choice to the dm. Within universe there's at least three explanations for cyberpsychosis;
AI takeover (there's also the idea that the AIs beyond the Blackwall are actually demons and that a secret cabal has been upholding the wall since Babylonian times), planned obsolescence by the companies(checks out tbh), and then the one that you referenced, which is loss of humanity and not seeing other people as humans anymore.
overall it's just a balancing mechanic, Shadowrun does it better though
At the end of the day you have a stat called humanity and you lose it when you get cyberware. He could have dropped it entirely. He could have come up with a different balance point - you've got limited neural thruoughput and too much ware can cause an overload resulting in seizures, or you run an escalating risk of software incompatibility, or just create a totally arbitrary cyberware capacity stat. But he's kept humanity, he's kept cyberware mechanically reducing your empathy, and he's kept cyberpsychosis as something represented in core game mechanics. He's had every chance to stop over many decades and many editions. I've heard his attempts to exuse this, and attempts made on his behalf, and i reject them all. He could have removed humanity. He could have removed cyperpsychosis as a game mechanic. He could have found a different way to balance the mechanical benefits of cyberware. He could, but he has not. "Wheelchairs make you evil" remains one of the most fundamental and recognizable features of the setting.
Fix your shit Mike!
i guess theres an argument that the corporation provided tech doesnt actually want you to maintain your identity and would prefer to make you a complacent and productive little piggy, so lowering empathy would be good. though that should really only be for central nervous system tech, not any tech
regardless, yeah, the people i know with missing parts and surgical implants are some of the nicest people youll ever meet