Spoiler Warning 3×5:
The Flame War Plasmid!

By Shamus Posted Thursday Sep 2, 2010

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 225 comments

In this episode we talk about both Objectivism and religion. I notice there have been a few skirmishes over this stuff in earlier episodes, so let’s get this out in the open. And over with.

Hello, person from the future. This space used to have an embed from the video hosting site Viddler. The video is gone now. If you want to find out why and laugh at Viddler in the process, you can read the entire silly story for yourself.

At any rate, the video is gone. Sorry. On the upside, we're gradually re-posting these old videos to YouTube. Check the Spoiler Warning page to see the full index.

About a year and a half ago we had a thread where an Objectivist weighed in on Objectivism in BioShock. It made for an interesting thread and was surprisingly civil, given the subject matter. I usually discourage or shut down discussions about politics and religion here on the blog because they generate anger without really contributing anything. But we can’t very well discuss a game that supposedly features this philosophy as a central theme and not talk about the philosophy.

And now that I’ve played the game I’ll pose this question: In the game, Andrew Ryan sets up this place with a certain degree of totalitarian thugishness that runs antithetical to Objectivism. Specifically, banning certain types of trade and religion. The idea of regulating thought and trade are about as counter to Ayn Rand’s philosophy as you can get, even if you’re dealing with ideas and trading in things she would have disagreed with.

So… is this showing that Andrew Ryan wasn’t really an Objectivist? Or did the author of BioShock just not understand Objectivism?

Before we get started I’ll repeat my earlier warning:

Please remember that this is a geek blog. We have a nice community here. We get along well enough, and I’d hate to see bitter feuds appear over previously obscured fault lines in the group. Keep it civil and don’t make it personal. Don’t post angry. I’d rather get along and talk about gaming than have a fight which will cause division without changing anyone’s mind.

 


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225 thoughts on “Spoiler Warning 3×5:
The Flame War Plasmid!

  1. RPharazon says:

    Well, what I gathered is that Andrew Ryan was first and foremost an Objectivist with plans of grandeur that resulted in Rapture. He apparently hated government control enough that, before he created Rapture, he burned down an entire forest that he owned, just so the government couldn’t make it a national park.

    From what I can tell in the audio diaries, in the days before ADAM, Rapture was very lasseiz-faire capitalist (with a ban on religion because Ryan thought it would prevent true Objectivism due to its morality), with very few restrictions and consumer protection, that led to the rise of a societal underworld, which led to smugglers. Smugglers that dealt in illicit communication between the outside world and Rapture, including dealing in bibles.

    A bit silly, but Ryan semi-tolerated those elements since, again, they were somewhat legitimate businesses. His main beef with the smugglers was that they introduced elements of the outside world that he specifically got rid of by his creation of Rapture.

    Enter Fontaine and ADAM. ADAM was a substance, that due to its very nature, created power and attracted the corruptible. At first, from what I can gather, ADAM was largely unrestricted, and distributed by those who could have access to it. The problem is that Fontaine, that subversive without an invitation, gained power through dealing in this substance. Power enough to think about toppling Ryan from his lofty post.

    Ryan, being powerful as he was, tried to prevent this at all costs. He instituted the Big Daddy/Little Sister program under the guise of preventing the overharvesting of the ADAM slugs (which suspiciously happened anyways), had a fight with Fontaine (who ‘died’ and became Atlas, who would then institute the Little Sister Orphanages in an attempt to wrest ADAM from Ryan), and grew mad with the power afforded to him.

    From here on it gets a bit muddled, so I won’t blither on further.

    Long story short, I do believe that Ryan and Rapture followed the Objectivist credo at first, albeit with a ban on outside contact and religion, but the introduction of two elements, Fontaine and ADAM, led to power struggles between Ryan and Fontaine, which led to the decay of the principles that founded Rapture. By the time Fontaine turns into Atlas, Rapture is decidedly not Objectivist.

    1. PAK says:

      By the end, as this commenter has noted, Rapture is not Objectivist, but is not so due largely to Levine’s thesis that ideologically polarized systems, including Objectivism, are instrinsically unsustainable.

    2. Shamus says:

      “Long story short, I do believe that Ryan and Rapture followed the Objectivist credo at first, albeit with a ban on outside contact and religion,”

      But that’s a contradiction. That’s like saying, “They were Christian, except that they didn’t believe in God.”

      Perhaps an Objectivist will correct me if I’m wrong, but I see this as a complete betrayal of the idea right from the start, before anyone even moves in.

      1. SolkaTruesilver says:

        Not that hard to believe, Shamus. Even if you take away the concept of God, you can still have an adaptation of Christianity about a man who sacrificed himself and resurrected for our sins. It’s not that hard to find adaptation of an organisation centered around a concept while at the same time without that very concept.

        Ultimately, pure Objectivism, in the way you seem to think should represent Objectivism, cannot really be enforced on a society. The very word “enforced” point out the lie of such Objectivism. You end up with a society where the Objectivism of a ruling elite will be enforced of the plebes, and that’s hardly objectivism.

        Ryan was tired of having religious folks telling what’s right and what’s not. So he created Rapture based on Objectivism, where you could decide for yourself what’s right and what’s not. If he hadn’t forbidden religion, he’d have ended up with some of his citizen to follow religions and telling others what’s right and what’s not. You can’t prevent them, because if that’s what they feel is right, and if they have the capacity to enforce their behavior, they are acting in accordance to your philosophy, even if they are preaching the exact opposite.

        I think it brings back to a very sore element currently present in our western society, about people abusing the liberties that were granted to them in order to actively trying to destroy them.

      2. Lord of Rapture says:

        I think that’s the point. You can’t follow philosophy, no matter how idealistic or realistic it seems, right down to the letter. It’s just impossible for any human being to stick to what they say 100%. Ryan may be a hypocrite, but he’s not special in this regard.

        1. Deoxy says:

          It can be and has been done. It depends on the philosophy, of course, but most philosophies have been followed to the letter by at least a few people at some point, even some of the more extreme ones. The problem is that, for most philosophies, “grabbing power” is against the philosophy, so they end up being LED by people who are NOT following it, and that’s who we hear about.

      3. Robyrt says:

        That raises a separate interesting question: Is it appropriate to ban people from your group if you believe they are actively working to subvert or destroy the group? Even if your group is built around individual freedom? And if so, where do you draw the line between Fontaine and Bible smugglers?

      4. Eddie says:

        Although I don’t classify myself as an Objectivist, I’ve definetly been heavily influenced by it and other people might well label me as one; I certainly wouldn’t be offended.

        Anyway, here’s my take on Ryan and his motivations:

        I’m not sure whether or not to call him an Objectivist but I would definetly call him a very, very bad Objectivist society-builder. From the very beginning he builds a society that has laws which encourage or enforce Objectivist actions but pay no heed to what the people actually think or believe. The banning of religious materials is one example of this; if the people actually held Objectivist values there would be no need to ban them as there would be no market for them. The people would have no desire for the spiritualistic, altruistic message, but it’s pretty clear from the smuggling that’s going on that there is a huge market for them. In fact, as far as I can remember, Ryan is the only character that actually expresses any Objectivist principles; I may be wrong, but the evidence certainly suggests that it’s not a prevalent philosophy among the general population. This seems to be Ryan’s big failing; he builds a society for Objectivists and then fills it with people who aren’t, then compromises his own beliefs in an effort to maintain the appearance of an Objectivist society.

        As to why he does this, well I could come up with a number of theories…and I think I will! It could be, as you said, that the writers don’t really fully understand Objectivism and they’ve naturally created a character whose understanding of the philosophy is as shallow as their’s. It could be that they do fully understand Objectivism and they’ve purposefully created a character whose understaning is shallow. It could be that Ryan is a poor judge of other people and he just assumes that if they want to live in Rapture then they must already be Objectivists. It could be that he is more interested in power than anything else and he’s just co-opted Objectivism as a means to justify building a place where he can do whatever the hell he wants. It could be that he’s paranoid and doesn’t trust other people to hold to Objectivism, so he tries to force them to do Objectivist things and thinks that’ll do. It could be many of these things and certainly by the time the player gets to Rapture he’s paranoid and power-hungry.

        Whether or not you consider him as an “Objectivist” will probably vary depending on how you personally define the word. His actions definetly contradict Objectivist ideals throughout the story, but you could probably argue that he’s just an Objectivist that fails to build an Objectivist society. Personally, I think his understanding of Objectivism is too shallow too call him an Objectivist; he seems too focused on his society appearing Objectivist than actually being Objectivist and is too interested in power.

        After all, “the worst second-hander of all [is] the man who goes after power.” Why, yes, I did just end my post by quoting The Fountainhead :)

        P.S. I haven’t actually played Bioshock in quite some time now, so if I’ve misrembered or misinterpreted anything about it, please do correct me.

        1. PhoenixUltima says:

          There’s an audio log in Arcadia that I think sums up Andrew Ryan rather nicely: he talks about how he owned a plot of forest at one point, but the government stepped in and told him he had to make it available to the public, or something (I don’t clearly remember, I haven’t played in a while). Rather than go along with it, though, he instead burns the whole forest to the ground.

          The point is that Ryan doesn’t really give a shit about individual freedoms or the right to choose. At his core, Ryan is simply a 5-year-old who doesn’t want to share his toys. “It’s mine! MINE! YOU CAN’T HAVE IT! IF YOU MAKE ME SHARE I’LL JUST BREAK IT SO THERE!! AND I’LL RUN AWAY AND MAKE MY OWN CITY WHERE NOBODY MAKES ME SHARE! SO NYAH-NYAH-NYAH!!”

          1. glassdirigible says:

            I don’t see how you can conclusively state that Andrew Ryan doesn’t care about individual freedoms. While it is possible that he doesn’t, it is also possible that he is both immature and an Objectivist.

            He can be a five year old that hates others stealing his property and wants vengeance (or he can just believe the government has no right to his forest and wants to make a political point). He can still be a true Objectivist in either case, the destruction of his property can be used to illustrate the strength and severity of his conviction, rather than immaturity.

            1. PhoenixUltima says:

              Except there’s an audio log later on (or possibly near the end of the video? I must admit, I didn’t watch the whole thing, as I’ve played Bioshock and have no desire to watch other people play it. This is why I confused Ryan speaking over the PA for an audio log. The audio log I’m referring to is in the second half of Arcadia) where Ryan talks about how he and Suchong modified the plasmids so that whoever uses them can be controlled by pumping a certain pheromone into the air. Granted, he does mention that he’s loathe to use such a tactic. But this means that at best, he superficially believes in the rights and freedoms of others but is willing to discard them when he’s put to the test. At worst, he really doesn’t care at all and just tells himself he does so he can sleep at night. I don’t think he could really be called a true objectivist, in either case. Though my understanding of Objectivism is cursory at best, so I could be wrong.

              1. arron says:

                There’s also audio logs in how he knows that Rapture is slipping away from him – he invested in mundane things, when all the action was in Fontaine’s control of plasmids. He’d effectively gone from being the leader of a city which worshipped the free market, to a person who was sliding out of power due to the same free market.

                And he did the same thing that any plutocrat monopolist would do when they start to lose control..they rig the market to maintain their position.

                He confiscated Fontaine Futuristics and kept it for himself..he locked up Sofia Lamb when her message started to resonate with the disaffected masses..and shanked legitimate businessmen like Prentice Mill were sacrificed to keep Rapture from sliding into the Abyss. He believed in the Free Market when it worked for him, but when it went against him, he did everything that his personal philosophy despised in the beginning.

                The only character that I think actually embodied Objectivism was Augustus Sinclair. When Rapture was on the up..he made money. When it was falling apart, he made money. He turned every situation he could to profit. He didn’t believe in charity, but rather in ways to either partner with or scam people in need of what he could offer. He was a corrupt character, but he only really cared about free markets..rather than ruling people or any form of ideology that bound him to a place or an philosophy. An old style capitalist who always knew what to do to survive.

        2. Sleeping Dragon says:

          This sums my views on the topic pretty nicely. I also don’t remember many (or, in fact, any) logs or characters other than Ryan who’d actively pronounce the objectivist ideology. In fact I think a couple of times we get this “yeah, yeah Ryan, whatever. Just let us live in your neat underwater city and do whatever we want”, which, from the objectivist point of view isn’t all that bad as long as those people don’t try to actively sabotage the entire system. The example with smuggling of bibles is perfect and I’ve been thinking of it myself, obviously there is demand for those despite the ban so Ryan didn’t really do a good job of instilling the objectivist thought into the people of Rapture.

          I know it’s always a cheap shot to say “well, the character is simply delusional” and attribute the problem to somebody being slightly out of the rational train of thought but I do believe in this case Ryan simply assumed that other people are, deep down, perfectly the same as him, they just didn’t have the good luck of seeing through the entire parasite thing. So, as soon as he takes the church, the state and all that away they will immediately have this “it’s so obvious now!” revelation.

          What Ryan should have done was build a decent community on the surface and only then move it to his dream city, though I can see how his paranoia about the agents of the parasite would make this endeavour difficult. He might have tried that, I think there are a few audiologs about him having dealing with various characters pre-Rapture but he didn’t go quite far enough and didn’t have a community ready. Even if a few Fontaine-like characters snuck in if the community was like-minded and sound they would probably be reduced to the Rapture’s equivalent of a guy going around with “the end is nigh” sign and would pose little threat even if left to their own devices.

        3. glassdirigible says:

          He doesn’t have to be shallow and neither do they (assuming my lack of depth in reading about Objectivism doesn’t betray me here).

          It’s entirely possible that he thinks he’s protecting his mostly Objectivist society by banning religion and outside contact. He has no misconceptions about these people being pure Objectivists (they were raised outside of Rapture, and so have already suffered outside influences) and so by banning religion and outside contact wants to prevent the next generation of Rapture residents from growing up with the same outside influences. In this scenario he thinks it’s a relatively safe way to allow Rapture to stay alive long enough to stabilize and become a true Objectivist society.

          Perhaps he intends to repeal (or have repealed in a will or by a sucessor) the bans and turn it into a truly Objectivist society once outside influences have been brought to a minimum. Perhaps he has a propaganda plan to make it unattractive to go to the surface (the Journey to the Surface ride seems to be exactly this propaganda).

          Or maybe he thinks religion is such a corrosive concept and is entirely incompatible with Objectivism that banning it will anger people slightly, but prevent them from getting it. The ban on outside contact is there merely to ensure this goal works. He thinks that the truly Objectivist citizens won’t mind the banning of religion because it is so incompatible with religion, and being so wholly self-interested, they won’t be altruistic enough to fight for freedom of religion for their friends.

          It looks like he could have just as easily miscalculated as been a shallow character. Do you perhaps have more evidence that he was shallow, or that my arguments are flawed enough (not unlikely) that they are no longer as plausible? Otherwise it seems we might have to agree we have three (roughly equally?) plausible situations and no real way to test or prove it.

      5. Kdansky says:

        Actually, your idea of “They were Christian, except they didn’t believe in God.” isn’t as improbable on second thought. I am sure you can pick any single detail in any religious book and find a splinter group that does not accept it for some reason. Such as (most) modern Christians not wanting to stone women to death anymore for cheating.

        I would go so far as to say that modern Christians (those that get along with people outside their own church) ignore pretty much everything in the first half of the bible. The old testament is just not current anymore.

        And from the point where you ignore half your holy scriptures to begin with, it’s not hard to imagine that the part with God is arbitrarily discarded too. Hard to imagine? Possibly, but for a 5th century Christian, the world was flat and 6000 years old, and he would have thought: “You’re Christian, how can you not believe that?”

        1. Shamus says:

          Small nitpick: I wouldn’t say Christians “ignore” the OT. They don’t live under the Torah, but the books are still studied.

          The important thing isn’t if it were improbable or not, the important thing is: Is this really a meaningful representative of the group? I’ve never heard of an atheist Christian, so if someone made a game about a group of Christians and their leader was was atheist then I’d think it was really odd. Ryan is some kind of totalitarian objectivist. Which brings us back to the original question: Did the writers make Ryan a hypocrite on purpose, or did they just not wrap their heads around Objectivism?

          1. Steve C says:

            Ryan is some kind of totalitarian objectivist. Which brings us back to the original question

            A totalitarian regime is the natural result of testing out a society built on a political philosophy. If a society is run and a working philosophy comes out of it then the society is robust enough to be open. But if it’s this huge experiment in a biodome (literally in Bioshock) then it’s too fragile to support outside influences that can alter the grand vision.

            For example there are small tribes in Africa and South America that have communist societies. Researchers say they seem to function and they are not closed off societies because they interact with other tribes and to a limited extent with westerners.

            When USSR and China were Communist they instantly became closed societies. Fascist regimes like the Axis in WWII couldn’t tolerate dealing with non-fascists and war ensued.

            The only way to create a closed society is for it to be totalitarian. It’s the ultimate catch 22 for Ryan. It’s also why every society structured around a philosophy (any philosophy) rather than around people is doomed to fail in the long term.

          2. Felblood says:

            I don’t think Ryan’s story is as simplistic as you guys make it out to be. He’s a dynamic character, who experiences a considerable degree of change over the course of the story.

            Late in the game, it’s possible to find an audiolog, where Ryan argues with himself about compromising his ideals.

            It seems that for a long time, he let Fontaine deal Adam without any sort of government regulation, and his smuggling operation was left alone, as there were no prisons or courts to deal with people who broke the few laws they had (this leads to a system of summary hanging and torture, once things turn nasty).

            Even after Fontaine built his army of splicers and started killing people in the streets, Ryan is arguing with himself about whether he should compromise his ideals, and take regulatory action against him.

            It seems there was a lot of political pressure to prevent people from splicing irresponsibly, and to regulate the use of combat plasmids (Just look at the way some of these things are advertised, and you can see why).

            The next log you find basically explains what decision he made, and how it played out.

            His faith in the free market was put to the test, and eventually he caved.

            He does seize Fontaine’s company, for the sake of the public interest. The other Objectivists called him out on this hypocrisy (see the bit where he burns down the forest), and he loses their support.

            Then Ryan builds his own splicer army, and burns out Fontaine Fisheries. Fontaine fakes his death, and goes into hiding, and calls in his trump card–the assassin.

            By the time the player arrives in Rapture, both sides are paranoid and entrenched in isolated fortresses, shooting at anyone or anything that might be a new enemy agent. Atlas deliberately pits the player against the part of Fontaine’s gang holed up in the fisheries, apparently sure that the player will win, before he asks you to kill Ryan for him.

            Sidenote: It’s never explicitly stated that the bibles were contraband, and if you look under them, you can find weapons components. Also, the evidence lockers in the police station are stuffed with Tommy gun rounds, while most of the bibles there are left in the crates. Maybe Fontaine just wanted you to jump to that conclusion, to lend credence to his painting Ryan as a villainous dictator.

            1. Shamus says:

              Actually, this is the answer to the question I posed in the original post. Everyone else has talked about what they thought SHOULD happen (I guess if they were writing it?) but you’ve commented on the game proper and made a good case for the writers knowing what they were doing.

              Thanks.

            2. Ciuacoatl says:

              Felblood
              September 3, 2010 at 2:39 pm

              . . . as there were no prisons or courts to deal with people who broke the few laws they had. . .

              Wait — were there seriously no prisons and courts in Rapture? I didn't read that. Not being sarcastic here: did the writers say or imply this?

              1. Felblood says:

                They have an “advisory council,” but that seems to be the extent of civilian involvement in legal affairs.

                Ryan is a dictator. His word is law, and the only clear word we have from him is, “Hang all smugglers.” The police station has one interrogation room, and no holding cells to store suspects or convicts waiting to be transferred.

                I’m sure he worked his way up through some system of fines and beatings, until he hit on hanging them and dumping the bodies in the sewer(You can find some of them, with the rope around their neck).

                It actually makes a lot of sense, to not have a prison in an underwater city (and I’ve noodled this idea about quite a lot over the years). You’re taking the people least likely to make up the expense of keeping them alive down there, and then making them even less useful. Better to flush them out the airlock for the sharks (Blood! You could charge people to watch.).

                I do have to retract/moderate my statement about him not banning religion though. I was listening to some of the logs in the early game again, and it does seem that he was sold on the idea that, “Any contact with the outside world risks compromising our vision here, to the very parasites we fled from!” Seems he never realized that is was always just his vision, and everyone else was just along for the ride.

            3. Josh R says:

              In Ayn Rands novel, the objectivists did believe in courts and policing, mostly due to the enforcement of property law.

              [Spoiler warning for Atlas Shrugged]

              Judge naragansett was a judge, and in the 60 page speech given by John Galt, he declares these are the only two functions of government.
              However, he does not describe how these could possibly be paid for, after saying that there will be no taxes. That killed the theory for me.
              Well, that and the fact that I completely do not think there are as many incompetent people in the world as Ayn Rand does, and that I’ve taken a module of economics based around market failure, and how if there is no regulation, things end up fucked.

              Maybe it’s the benefit of reading Atlas Shrugged over the summer, but it seems a lot of people have incorrectly remembered, or perhaps never read the book in question.

          3. Zaghadka says:

            I’m going to make the simplistic commentary that I think the developers/writers of this game didn’t understand System Shock 2, let alone Ayn Rand or Objectivism.

            It’s a superficial treatment at best, and it seems to make the editorial comment that Objectivist philosophy leads to a total breakdown of society, intrinsically.

            The rest of what’s going on here is what’s known as exegesis. Everybody’s trying to justify the artistic merit of something that made no attempt at artistic merit. They’re doing so with their own ideas, which are far more clever than anything you can find in the game.

            Don’t buy into the idea that the writers understood Rand, and it’s easy to see this.

            Even the choice of setting is entirely based on what looked cool in DirectX 9.0c at the time. There isn’t a whole lot of substance here. Just water and lighting effects, based upon a really well done game (System Shock 2), and clubbed over the head with Ayn Rand.

            I think your readership is more clever than the writers.

      6. Adeon says:

        He betrayed his ideals by trying to protect them. That’s what happens too often in life. Quite philosophical, I think. He tried to ban the outside so that his Objectivism would be untouched by those who don’t want it and don’t understand it, and thus already doomed it.

      7. Deadpool says:

        “But that's a contradiction. That's like saying, “They were Christian, except that they didn't believe in God.””

        You mean, like Catholic church circa 15th century? Wouldn’t be the first time that a group, in its zeal to preserve an ideal, went completely against that ideal…

    3. swimon says:

      Was religion banned from day one? If so then that really is a complete misunderstanding of objectivism you can’t ban things that only affect yourself, that’s sort of the point. I always figured that banning religion was Ryan’s response to him feeling like the whole city was slipping through his fingers but if religion was banned from the beginning then I think that’s a huge strike against the writers.

      The whole Adam drug analogy is pretty interesting though. Since drugs would be legal in a objectivist society that’s an interesting point, even if they had to invent super monster drugs to make the point but then again what story is without hyperbole.

      1. Meredith says:

        I think religion and outside trade were both banned from the start; I’m pretty sure that’s how Fontaine got started (with the smuggling).

        It seems to me that Objectivism isn’t really something one can enforce on others, which is what Ryan tried to do. The Inspector made a very good point about other citizens of Rapture probably not being Objectivists and I think that’s the whole problem right there.

        Ryan just expected everyone to share his grand vision when really they only wanted to get away from whatever problems they had on the surface. Then when it started to go poorly he tried to use force to make them live by his principles, which just never works.

      2. RPharazon says:

        Well, I think Ryan’s main beef with religion is that it had the potential to bring everything down and corrupt the entire concept of Rapture as a seperate society.

        I can think of two points off-the-bat: During the intro, he rejects the notion of organized religion, saying that the money will be unjustly taken from the people and given to the church. Given the fact that many church organizations are in many ways essential to the religion itself (Catholicism, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses to name but a few), he is sort of justified in banning organized religion.
        The second point deals with the morality associated with all religions, be they organized or not. Many audio diaries, especially related to doctors and scientists, point out that the lack of any religion-style moral systems or government-mandated morality allowed them to perform various scientific and medical experiments that they could not on the surface. This does, of course, lead to even more issues, especially with the morality of turning little girls into the creatures that are Little Sisters, and you can’t ignore the parallels (blatant or otherwise) between ADAM and modern stem-cell research controversies.

        1. swimon says:

          It doesn’t really matter though I hear what you’re saying but the point of objectivism as a political philosophy is to leave it all up to the individual (I feel compelled to state that I myself am not an objectivist but I do think the philosophy has some points). As a political system it’s all about not imposing a belief on others. The argument he makes in the beginning about science not being constricted by petty moralities does not mean that he is against morality but rather that close to no laws should regulate the experiments and that it would be all up to the researcher and the test subjects.

          And that money would be taken from the people by a religion is only true if the religion is funded by involuntary taxes, which they obviously wouldn’t. “What you create is your own” is sort of a central theme in all Ayn Rand’s books meaning that you can do whatever you want with your money like give it away if that’s what you want. Really Andrew Ryan banning religion makes no sense which is unfortunate because other than that the game is pretty balanced and fair in it’s portrayal IMO.

        2. glassdirigible says:

          In regards to the potential stem cell analogies, that’s not super clear. Stem cells have the ability to become specific cells. Sperm and eggs are the relevant ones here if you’re talking about the morality of performing research with them. Keep in mind that neither a sperm nor an egg is usually considered a human (the Catholic prohibition on condoms/masturbation is the only moral or religious principle I know of that cares that sperm or eggs die without fertilization occurring).

          Stem cells are a step removed from sperm and eggs, so the morality should only come into play if someone believes that condoms/masturbation are morally wrong. Even then the link is tenuous, considering that these are things that could potentially become things that probably won’t become babies.

          This is of course assuming the issue lies in the stem cells being used at all. If their method of acquisition is the problem, it may still potentially be resolved by removing it from a blastocyst from a naturally ocurring pregnancy, if it wouldn’t disrupt it. From my research it appears that this is technically difficult to the point of becoming impractical, rather than being impossible. In this case it would not be a moral issue to use stem cells, provided the earlier potential moral qualms don’t arise.

          It also appears that the issue with potentially killing a fertilized egg disappears (again with what are probably more technical difficulties) if we perform research on less valuable unipotent cells, which look like there may be more spares of than pluripotent cells.

          There are also potential moral issues for some people with using stem cells to give people antlers or something else dumb, but I kind of doubt that’s what you’re talking about with stem cell research.

      3. AMRIV says:

        In Bioshock 2 there is a audio log where Ryan is having a debate with Professor Lamb and he mentions that people are allowed to worship whatever they want in their own home, but not to bring it up in public.

      4. wtrmute says:

        But you see, religion isn’t something that “only affects yourself”. Religions are only religions, as opposed to mysticisms, because they spread a doctrine, which is a set of rules or moral imperatives all its adherents must follow. Objectivism, as a humanist philosophy, seeks to replace religions as a source of moral judgement and guidance.

        On the other hand, religions in general have something in common with Objectivism that they both posit that there is an objective reality which does not depend on the thoughts of the individual, and that one can use one’s senses to perceive and understand that reality. On the contrary, modern Relativism teaches that there is no objective reality and every action is moral based on consensus of the majority (or an opinion-forming minority).

        1. Nidokoenig says:

          This is, I think, the perfect reason to justify a ban under what I understand of Objectivism from the other thread. If you have religion as a set of moral imperatives(e.g. the Commandments, etc) associated with an untestable and inherently unchosen belief(e.g. God exists and handed morals down to Abraham et al), preaching those moral imperatives becomes an act of coercion on those who hold the belief, whether they are fortunate or unfortunate to hold it.
          As it is either God’s, if he exists, or the religion’s, if he doesn’t, initiation of coercion by holding a person’s eternal happiness to ransom or fraudulently claiming it is respectively, surely Ryan’s government is justified in neutralising that coercion? Remember, biblically, default eternal life is denied to us because of Eve and Adam’s actions, which is us being forced to atone for their crimes, similar in kind to and far more reprehensbile than forced payment into a public work we have no need of, interest in or consent to.

          Of course, the premise that belief in a supernatural element is not based on rational thought and cannot be changed by force of will is very much contestable, but it’s an easy enough one to hold and remain Objectivist, from what I gather.

  2. guy says:

    Heh, I’m like your players when I do video games sometimes. It’s amazing how much your power goes up in FO1 and 2 when you chug one of every drug in your inventory. I don’t do that so much in NWN2 because the devs suck at inventory, so it’s not worth the bother,

    1. eri says:

      I never use drugs in Fallout because I fear the side-effects. I only ever use Mentats in case I need an Intelligence boost when playing as a stupid character. That said, they do make a great weightless form of alternative currency.

      1. guy says:

        You should take a hit of psycho for the final two dungeons and the oil platform in the first two games. I tried it without psycho, but even with hardened power armor I died far too easily. Then I took some psycho and managed to get through in something like two tries, and the only death was caused by the master. Admittedly the side-effects were harsh, but it didn’t hit my shooting people stats until after I was done.

        1. McNutcase says:

          Meanwhile, I always get through without drugs. I munchkin the heck out of my shooty stats, and always go for the crit-stacking called shots, but I find drugs really don’t help.

          1. Nidokoenig says:

            Personally, as a HtH specialist, I found drugs to be a paradigm shift in combat effectiveness. The fact that high damage threshold armour and Psycho made me immune to submachine gun and minigun fire outside of crits was spectacular, and the agility and AP boosts from drugs let me go from 5 AG and thus 7AP to 14AP didn’t hurt. All I had to do was trade in a handful of the guns I never use and look after at least one or two dealers. It also allowed me to put less into strength, endurance and agility, letting me do more with “interesting” stats like charisma and luck. There’s a lot to be said for carrying a bag of instant specialisation.

            Yes, guns do make Fallout games a lot easier, and a lot duller to me. The HtH skills, though, force you to answer difficult questions about how to close the distance to your target, how to meet your stimpak, drug and weapon needs and whether you have any chance of solving a quest in your preferred way.
            I’m typically a good karma junkie, but even Fallout 3 manages to present compelling arguments for taking evil actions to acquire Deathclaw Gauntlet schematics and drugs, simply because I need those weapons and supplies if I take guns off the table. In the originals, I’d spare little thought for innocent and grey civilians who could supply me with the means to accomplish my good karma-based goals. So I guess evil always won in my games :)

    2. Felblood says:

      As to Neverwinter: Even in tabletop 3.5, it isn’t worth it to down more than a handful of potions, for a given encounter.

      The rules are pretty clear (ignoring certain items, in certain 3.0 splatbooks, that were explicitly designed to get around this) that you can’t drink more than one potion in a single round.

      Due to 3.5 shortening most buff durations to 10 rounds, any more than that, and you’re using up time on all your current buffs, to add just one more. It very quickly reaches a balance point were adding a new buff isn’t worth it. (Especially if you have a lot of scattered units to get through, before you get to the “real” part of the encounter, as those guys are just there to consume your actions.)

      You can avert this a bit, by having casters focus on buffing a guy, while he drinks potions, but that means teamwork, planning, and selflessness. The ultimate tactical advantage is still a group of team mates, who can deliver these three things; the buffs are just a new way to use them.

      That said, an action que of some sort would have been nice, so you didn’t have to wait for your character to drink one potion, just to order the next one down the hatch.

  3. Quicksilver_502 says:

    i believe that as ryan’s power got wobblier, he became more and more hypocritical, although that isn’t to say he wasn’t to begin with. its really rather rare for any society based on a philosophy to be completely in sync with every part of it.

  4. TSED says:

    Spoiler Warning cast:

    Give us personalized and changing titles at the end! Come on! It was one of those little tidbits that added personality and flavour. A cinnamon topper to the apple cider, if you would.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      Seconded! I loved those in previous seasons, they had a nice personal touch and actually made me watch the credits every time which is something I rarely do no matter what I’m actually watching.

    2. Matthew says:

      Yes, especially since I’m totally OCD and have to watch the credits just to see if anything changed.

      1. Nidokoenig says:

        Did you notice the Vitrol Machine to Vitriol Machine change a couple of episodes ago? I could just imagine Josh starting to rotate typos to fulfil the lowest technical requirements for changing titles.

        I liked the changing titles, too. They were usually callbacks to something that happened in the episode, though, so maybe the enlarged cast and the settling in means there’s less chance of each person saying something that stands above the rest of what they say enough for those kind of references, since they get a smaller share of air time.

        I need sleep, I’m not even sure if that made sense.

    3. Adam says:

      These are reruns of an older season (season 3, IIRC) being reposted to Youtube because the old video site they hosted them on is now bupkis. They go back to rotating them by recording session as of ME2. ^_^

  5. PurePareidolia says:

    The whole Houdini tree cult thing seemed like they just wanted the new enemy to be thematic. The only hypothesis I can think of as to why a tree cult lives in an exclusive, pay-per-stroll park is that Adam again is messing with their heads, making them somewhat delusional and more importantly, keeping them permanently high as kites. From the point at which the otherwise normal people are constantly downing plasmids and throwing fire at things, it’s no stretch to begin ritualizing the magical super technology none of them understand at about the same rate a non-high person would go “wow, these plasmids are really something, huh”.

    Of course that’s a bit of a stretch – with most cults you need some form of charismatic leader or at least someone to provide the suggestions in the first place that lead to the tree masks. It makes me think that at least some of it is a kind of social thing where once they’re sold on this whole “brotherhood of the trees” idea they see everyone playing along and of course they want to fit in so they kind of play up the whole cult aspect because “oh look how edgy and pagan we are now, I bet Ryan’s stomping on his hat in disgust at our bold rejection of the norms he ordained”.

    I dunno – there’s barely enough information to speculate on aside from the fact I highly doubt religions are usually formed that way when not under the influence of brain-addling gene tonics.

    Now, what little I know about Objectivism indicates it’s a wholly rationalist philosophy, hence the name. Ryan, I think wanted only like minded individuals living down there so naturally religion is a major threat to his state philosophy, hence banning it. Though again I think it stemmed from his one rule of “no contact with the outside world” and of course some people are going to want their holy books, but how do they get that without breaching “quarantine” so it may not even be banning religion per se, merely having a nonreligious environment and where the only way to get religious materials is illegal.

    It’s been a while since I played.

    1. swimon says:

      individual choice is pretty integral to objectivism so you can’t ban religion and claim to be an objectivist. You also can’t ban drugs or prostitution because that limits individual choice. Ayn Rand even argued that you should be allowed to deny people service because of skin colour if you wanted because that’s your choice to make (she also argued that doing so was stupid since you would lose business, but still).

      Also while Ayn Rand seemed to adore rationality (personally I think she took that too far it almost became irrational, although I guess that could’ve been symbolism more than actual opinions) it’s not a fully rationalistic philosophy. It’s partly empirical and partly rational in a mix that honestly went above my head but I’m pretty sure it’s not entirely of either (could be wrong though).

      1. Deoxy says:

        Ayn Rand even argued that you should be allowed to deny people service because of skin colour if you wanted because that's your choice to make (she also argued that doing so was stupid since you would lose business, but still).

        It generally is stupid (though in some markets it might be valuable enough to a large enough group who would patronize you to make it worthwhile), and I don’t like it… but I think the government solution is worse than the disease (but then, I think that about a great many government things).

          1. Shamus says:

            I’m sure you can find a way to make your point without dropping a flame-bomb like that. I don’t actually care to moderate a referendum on the USA itself.

            Crimey.

            1. Ciuacoatl says:

              I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. I don’t at all see what was flameworthy about that, especially since the INITIAL statement was, in effect, that there shouldn’t be laws punishing discrimination. Pointing out that the U.S. — like every country on earth — became powerful by taking stuff wouldn’t be controversial in a 6th grade classroom. But hey, by all means, the argument that it’s immoral to stop discrimination without reflection upon non-controversial history is completely not a flame. I mean, no one who could be targeted by discrimination or has ever read a history book plays video games, right?

              1. Shamus says:

                The tone of your comment was inflammatory and not germane to the discussion. And instead of backing off you’re pressing the point and getting snarky about it. If you have any sense in your head, you’ll see EXACTLY where that conversation would go, and it’s got nothing to do with Objectivism in BioShock.

                Last warning.

                1. Ciuacoatl says:

                  No snark, no sarcasm. The notion that antidiscriminatory laws are unnecessary is a) extremely controversial — no political party has taken up that banner in the U.S. since the sixties — and b) the notion that they serve some kind of purpose due to past history is uncontroversial — staid, conservative law professors and staid, conservative schoolteachers in the South have no problem saying as much. The original post has just as much to do with BioShock as my response did, and as much to do with BioShock as this response does.

                  If you want to say this is all off-topic, that’s fine, but you didn’t delete the original off-topic post — which, if posted most places on the net would result in howls and would be considered flamebait.

                  With respect Shamus (despite the insulting “If you have any sense in your head” line), I believe you are being unfair — since the original post was off-topic (by your definition — I didn’t think it was else I wouldn’t have responded), why do I have to “back off” from responding to what is an inflammatory opinion?

                  1. Shamus says:

                    It’s true that there are other posts here that are borderline. But the line has to be drawn someplace. When? When someone responds to you? Or you to them? Your post stuck me as the spot where the thing really went off the rails. Other people may evaluate the individual posts differently, but that’s how I see it. This is one of many reasons why I only allow these sorts of discussions once every couple of years. I hate moderating these things. Nothing ever gets accomplished, and very rarely do any of us read something we haven’t seen 1,000 times before. And nobody is ever happy with the moderator.

                    Sorry about the insulting tone last time around. I was pretty irritated that I had smacked down that discussion and you simply re-worded it and put it back up.

      2. J says:

        Wait if, according to Objectivism, you can choose to not let people into your restaurant based on their skin colour, are you then not also allowed to choose to not let people into your submerged utopia based on their religion?

        1. John says:

          The key here is context: it is perfectly okay for a BUSINESS to decide whom they wish to do business with–it is not okay for a GOVERNMENT, who by definition is the representative of all people in a country, to discriminate on the basis of skin-color or etc. The only thing the government should be worried about (According to Objectivist thought) is whether or not you are respecting the individual rights of others.

          1. J says:

            But Ryan built Rapture using his own money. It is his property. Is he, therefore, not entitled to choose who to let into his property and who to exclude?

            Or was Rapture financed with the funds of many and was therefore a co-operative venture from the start?

  6. jdaubenb says:

    My experience with BioShock is rather limited, but I always assumed that the plot was meant as a “take that..” towards Objectivism as a whole.
    Ryan startet out with grandiose ideas of a free society, but clamped down almost immediately to make Rapture fit his fancy.
    Things went downhill from there.

    1. PurePareidolia says:

      The thought of Ryan yelling “you’re not being free enough!” at people who deviate even a little from his standards and passing laws to keep them “doing it right” amuses me greatly.

      1. jdaubenb says:

        “If you can’t free yourself I make you be free!”

      2. Meredith says:

        I’m picturing Ryan having an actual toddler-style meltdown and screaming at people to be more free. Too funny.

        1. Matt K says:

          I do love the little audio journal from the lady who designed the park and she was like “way are you closing it” and Ryan went off on this tirade about peoople being free and what not and she’s like “whatever at least I’m getting paid”.

          Seemed to me like it was common for Ryan to start ranting and raving at the drop of a hat.

  7. KremlinLaptop says:

    Oh hey! I finally figured out who it is that Mumbles reminds me of — right when she said ‘Whacha making Josh?’ — I realized she just sort of reminds of Ash from Hey Ash, Whatcha Playing?

    Edit: Also electricity for me in the setting the lack of it makes sense because, well they are in a rather damp environment, and I’ve seen the wiring in big buildings that’s still all sixties. I’d be trying to keep electronics to a minimum too…

  8. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Bioshock may be bad in that it has all the gimmicks,but none of them is important,but wolfenstein(the remake)is absolutely worst in that regard.

    And really,you dont need an oxygen factory underwater.Just drill holes in the floors and youll have all the oxygen you ever need.Its not outer space,its still earth.Sure,a park would be nice to keep the sanity of the inhabitants,but seeing who inhabits this city,Id say its a lost cause.

    1. swimon says:

      Is there enough oxygen in the water at that depth though? I’m really curious here because I haven’t a clue myself.

      It would make sense to me at least that they do take some oxygen from the water but that that’s not enough on its own so they need the trees. Because as Rutskarn noted there is nowhere near enough trees there to give oxygen to all of Rapture.

      1. Pickly says:

        They’d also need a way to keep the water from seeping in while allowing the oxygen in. There would also need to be enough oxygen in the water that it could evaporate at enough of a partial pressure for people to stay alive.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          You just need to increase the pressure,and therell be no water coming in.And because CO2 is heavier,it will eventually go down in the water,pushing free oxygen inside.Because of that,I think theyd have enough oxygen:You cannot build a city a kilometer under the sea,no matter how advanced your technology is(well,you can with magic like technology,but thats bordering on fantasy),so rapture is 1000 meters below sea level max.In fact,considering that you see light from outside,Id say its much more shallower.And theres plenty of life at that depth,meaning theres plenty of loose oxygen in the water.

          1. swimon says:

            Ok thanks for clearing that up ^^

          2. Pickly says:

            Still doesn’t work:

            If a system like you described were to be used it would have to:

            1. Not let water flow in. If the water holes were all at one level, this might be possible by equalizing the air and water pressure at those levels, though a system like that would have ot be maintained very well to keep accidents from happening. If the water holes were at different levels, the pressure change between in the water and air between those levels would cause water to flow in.

            2. Move carbon dioxide to the water at an equal rate to how quickly it is produced by people in the city, while preventing toxic amounts from occurring anywhere in the city. This would be very, very difficult to do, since the fraction of carbon dioxide needed to be toxic is quite low at atmospheric pressure, and would likely be even lower with the air in the city pressurized. The city would also have to be designed in an open enough way that carbon dioxide rich air could flow quickly to the water surfaces, and and other sources of air movement reduced so that it did not simply mix back into the city.

            (This mixing point is a big issue: Since most gases won’t actually settle as you describe unless the air is otherwise very still, and contained in some way, and these conditions are the opposite if what would be wanted in the sort of system you are suggesting. If you look at videos where people pour gases over things, it normally takes a very short time for the gas to mix with the rest of the air, and for the flow to pretty much stop.)

            3. It would have to produce a large amount amount of oxygen: Just because fish have enough oxygen in the water to breathe does not mean that the oxygen in the water could produce enough oxygen in the air for people to breathe.

            The amount of oxygen that dissolves in a particular volume of water is actually quite small, so keeping the air filled would require moving large amounts of water past the openings, which would be very difficult to actually do. (The same problems is also likely with carbon dioxide)

            Moving oxygen through the system would have the same problems as moving carbon dioxide.

            As mentioned above, there’s the issue of dissolved oxygen possibly not supporting a breathable atmosphere. This is an equilibrium/solubility issue. Under particular conditions (Temperature, other materials dissolved, for instance) a particular partial pressure of a gas will correspond to a particular solubility of that gas in the liquid. If the dissolved gas, or the pressure, is different, the gas will dissolve in, or come out of, the liquid until the equilibrium is reached. It may be that seawater could not support a breathable amount of oxygen. Even if it could, the rate that the oxygen left the seawater might not be enough to actually replace the oxygen used.

            Carbon dioxide sinking will not necessarily push oxygen upwards. (It might if the system were shut, but that’s not the situation being talked about here). Since carbon dioxide is more soluble in water than oxygen, while being less common in air, what would likely happen is that more carbon dioxide would dissolve than oxygen would be released, and the total amount of air would decrease, pulling some water into the city. Meanwhile, the amount of oxygen would continue to decrease, eventually suffocating people inside.

            4. No actual submarines, submersibles, or other undersea equipment uses, or has used, such a system.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Right,its a multilevel city,I forgot that.It actually does work for one level installations.We arent using it because we dont have underwater stationary objects,but it is a viable system for shallow buildings.For multilevel buildings,I think clever ventilation might solve the problem,but Im not sure.

              1. Pickly says:

                Have you actually done any work for something like this?

                (I ask because the diffusion problems, and the problem with seawater not having much oxygen in it, are still there.)

                1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                  Practical,no I admit.My knowledge is purely theoretical from a few projects I did years back.And I know that seawater doesnt have much free oxygen past a certain point,and that that point is just a few hundred meters.But you wouldnt build an installation very deep either.An automated oil rig,yes,but a manned installation,not very likely.

                2. Pickly says:

                  (This is a reply to the above post):

                  What did these projects involve anyway, out of curiosity?

                  (Everything I know about the processes you suggest says that that this method would be imporssible, or extremely difficult and unsafe, to do well.)

  9. Kdansky says:

    Interestingly, I never realized that religion was banned in Rapture, despite taking a very firm stance on these topics. You could put it the other way:

    Can an objectivist be religious? I don’t think so, after all, believing in a higher power goes very much contrary. Therefore banning religion increases the chance of someone being objectivist significantly.

    so:
    An Atheist could be Objectivist (or not).
    An Objectivist will always be an Atheist.

    If I delete all mails with “Viagra” in the title, I have less spam afterwards (and won’t lose anything important by mistake), but I still get the Cialis ones.

  10. Marlowe says:

    I think ‘totalitarian thuggishness’ does capture the general aspect of Rand’s thought which, although she despised Rousseau, postulates a society where one will be “forced to be free” as he famously stated, although not, as he proposed, the outcome of the general will of the people but instead as that of a set of rules governing an abstract conception of man, arrived at by exercise of pure reason.

    In John Galt’s speech at the end of Atlas Shrugged he says:

    That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call “free will” is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.

    This means the only choice you get lies in whether you utilize your reason. If you do, all the truths of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy necessarily follow and you cannot disagree with them, without ceasing to be rational. So, you don’t really possess free will in the conventional sense where you can choose how to act at any point and even do so inconsistently – Rand calls it ‘whim worship’. Everything one does, all one’s actions, emotions and beliefs must be rationally demonstrable as the correct ones. So Rand permits no real disagreement between persons.

    Absence of disagreement in this way is totalitarian because everyone in society will think, believe and even feel in the same manner, as dictated by the principles of Rand’s philosophy.

    1. wtrmute says:

      That would be… unfortunate, if true. It would show that Mrs. Rand didn’t know the difference between a valid statement and a true one.

      From your description, it sounds like Rand sets up a Straw Vulcan (warning: TV Tropes link, &c.) by forgetting that Rationality A.K.A. Logic is merely a tool for obtaining a consequence statement from a set of assumptions, and that different people will have naturally different assumptions. Thus different people may arrive at diametrically-opposed conclusions about the same situation and both be “rational”.

      1. Sydney says:

        If your view of rationality is both strictly classical (by which term I refer specifically to the Classical Conception of Rationality) and purely a priori, you can conflate “being rational” with holding one particular belief-set. The general form of that sort of argument runs roughly thus:

        1) “Believe only that which is rationally justified.” – The basic tenet of critical philosophy.
        2) Outline a system of justification (which, for a classical rationalist, will have deductive logic as its skeleton).
        3) Wipe the slate of experience clean, starting again from pure reason.
        4) Make some argument for a First Principle which is justified, but not by virtue of a yet-higher principle (to head off the infinite regress).
        5) From this first principle, derive (via the system outlined above) the entire rest of your belief-set.

        On a rationalistic account of this sort (i.e. Descartes; Kant; Boghossian; some positivists), any disagreement about principles indicates that one or both parties has made an error in step 5.

        “We started from the same First Principle, but our deductions led to different endpoints. One or both of us has erred in our deductions.”

        Because of the truth-preserving (or question-begging, if we’re being less than charitable) nature of deductive arguments, two classical rationalists deriving from the same First Principle should never disagree about the lesser principles. If such a disagreement arises, it means at least one party has made an error in deduction, accepting a conclusion whose truth was not guaranteed by the premises, and has thereby been (classically) irrational.

        It still looks like it would be possible to reasonably disagree if you start from different First Principles. The trouble is, almost every classically-rationalist school I’ve encountered believes that their First Principle grows out of their system of justification, and further, that their system of justification is rationality simpliciter. Disputing the First Principle is therefore already symptomatic of irrationality, so the derived belief-set fails the dogmatic rationalist’s test as well.

        So, to bring it back:

        If Rand is a classical rationalist (and it’s hard to believe she could be otherwise if you’ve read her later work), she would indeed equate validity with truth: Since the First Principle (in her case the Objectivist thesis) is true, and since we derive our belief-set from truth by (the one and only) rational means as outlined in her “Step 2”, the belief-set is necessarily true.

        Which raises the question of how we justify the First Principle without obviously begging the question. And further, how one could justify one’s “Step 2”. I’ve written…quite a lot…on exactly that issue, and never quite satisfied myself there.

    2. Josh R says:

      Reading through that inexorably long speech in Atlas Shrugged was harder then any level of bioshock

  11. swimon says:

    Rapture having no electricity makes even less sense when you consider Andrew Ryan’s funding. The reason he’s so rich that he could build rapture is because he’s a genius electrical engineer. He mentions this when you find the electrically locked door later in the game and it makes no goddamn sense. I mean are we to believe that an electrical engineer in the 60s who is so smart that he’s considered a genius in a city where they can build turrets out of hydraulics that differentiate between friend and foe and the only electricity in the whole city is the lighting and 1 door? That makes no sense.

    That said I still think that Bioshock is a great game and I don’t really care about a few plot holes mood building and such is more important but that still makes no sense.

    1. PurePareidolia says:

      The thing is you’re often using things like electric buck, zapping electric switches with electro-bolt, eventually you build an EMP to disable rapture’s geothermal generators so there is clearly electricity in rapture it’s just used for utilities and lighting. It’s just not used for much else. Which I can kind of understand – it’s constantly leaking so you want as little as possible in danger of short circuiting.

  12. Fat Tony says:

    It’s suposidly as their minds warped with the plasmid powers they started to belsive that the trees were talking to them (It’s in a audio log somewhere)

    1. Matt K says:

      The problem I’m running into is where are all the people who actually have plasmids. The one enemy who seems to is the Hodinis. No one seems to be using TK (which was free btw) or Electricity or Fire or whatever.

      How come our character is the only one with these plasmids?

      Also, I’m about where the video is but how did everyone afford plasmids as you need ADAM to get them?

      1. Internet Kraken says:

        This is one of the things I didn’t like about Bioshock. With plasmids basically being the equivalent of magic (shooting bees out of your arms), it presents the opportunity to have the enemies use a large amount of powers rather than just resorting to the standard FPS mooks (guy with gun, guy with explosives, guy with bigger gun). But Houdini Splicers are the only ones that actually appear to be using plasmids. The rest of the Splicers are probably using ones that don’t result in clearly visible destructive powers (such as the plasmids that might be used for everyday life, as mentioned in the video. Though we don’t really get an opportunity to see those either).

        If they had more Splicers with plasmid attacks the game would have been more interesting and challenging. It might have given you a reason to use your own plasmids more often, since they could have served as a way to negate Splicer’s powers.

        1. Sleeping Dragon says:

          Wouldn’t it be hilarious if you could find those “everyday use” plasmids (or at least more of them as I suppose TK, for example, could be useful in everyday life)? I know a bunch of people would complain that they’re useless and they do not contribute to the FPS game but still, plasmids along the lines of “spot dirty surfaces”, “have a perfect sense of time” or “always look like you’re wearing a fresh suit” (I’m totally making those up) would be at the very least funny to have.

          1. Robyrt says:

            Bioshock 2 advises you to use Incinerate as a cigarette lighter. Of course, the area has an oil slick, so it sets the entire room on fire.

          2. Sydney says:

            I don’t see how TK could ever be used in a domestic setting. The damn thing only has two uses:

            – Pull an object toward me, and
            – Fire it like a cannonball.

            “Mum! Pass me an orange?”
            “Alright, dear.”
            [POW][splat][dustbins rattle][cat yowls][screech of tires]

            Telekinetically grabbing something off the top shelf would be neat. But at some point you’d have to launch it fifty feet down the hallway or smack it into the far wall.

  13. Lawton says:

    An Atheist could be Objectivist (or not).
    True,

    An Objectivist will always be an Atheist.
    False.

    Objectivism prevents certain beliefs: The idea of one correct morality, or original sin. (In fact, Rand stated that the reason she questioned her Christian upbringing was the concept of original sin, IIRC.) The problem is with organized religions that advocate preaching, because that implies the superiority of the belief.

    However, Deism is totally valid, and there are religions that could exist in an objectivist.

    I suppose for example, that you can believe that there is a heaven and hell, and you are placed in one based on how true to self you were during your life. The belief would suggest that each should act in an objectivist manner.

    1. Kdansky says:

      Not exactly correct either. If you act selfish because you think you will be rewarded by a Heaven/Hell thingy after death (which you have zero evidence for!), you’re just following orders. You’re doing the “right” thing (purely by chance?) for the wrong reasons, so to speak. After all, you’re supposed to act selfish for yourself, not because someone else (in this case the arbitrary judicator at the gate) wants you to.

      And secondly, Deism is as much religion as Atheism or Agnosticism is. The belief that there once was a being that created everything, but does not partake anymore in our destinies leads to the exact same conclusions in any argument as the belief that there was no such being at all.

      So technically, that’s not forbidden, is it?

      1. wumpus says:

        Howdy,

        “And secondly, Deism is as much religion as Atheism or Agnosticism is.”

        Agnosticism (doubt about religious claims) is not properly a religion in any sense; it is properly neither theism or atheism. Atheism (a term used for a variety of positions from agnosticism to belief in the non-existence of [all or specific] god or gods) while sometimes involving faith, doesn’t usually involve ‘religion’ per se. Deism (generally non-specific beliefs in the existence of a god or godliness) is ‘much’ more of a religion than either.

        A while back I was listening to a program on public radio (I think it was ‘To the Best of Our Knowledge”) which was somehow involved in a discussion of comparative religion. The host pointed out that some of the ‘religions’ the guest (Karen Armstrong) was talking about were not what ‘we’ would consider to be religions, but rather ‘philosophies’ (Buddhism, Confucianism). To which Ms. Armstrong responded that it was a Western concept that religion was about belief in (external) God; a more general view of religion is that it is about transcendence, about striving towards (external) god or (internal) godliness. I found her insight to be very valuable.

        So, yeah, I’m currently more or less a Christian (and Buddhist) who doesn’t believe in god. Sort of a deist, though I like the term transcendentalist, personally, despite finding Thoreau and Emerson insufferably boring when I tried to read them in high school.

        Hope that helps,
        Alex

    2. Josh R says:

      Her take on original sin was that if you had no input over the matter, it wasn’t immoral, whatever the outcome. It’s all in JG’s speech

  14. David Webb says:

    Contradicting oneself is a cherished tradition in Objectivist thought.

    1. Shamus says:

      When I was talking about having a friendly discussion, I was talking about not saying stuff like this, which is the conversational equivalent of chucking a brick through the window and running off.

      1. David Webb says:

        You’re right. It was careless to post something like that without taking a step back and considering it.

        So yes, “thought” should have been surrounded by quotation marks.

        1. KremlinLaptop says:

          Oh god, on the one hand that’s a mighty fine hole you’re excavating for yourself… on the other hand the utter dry sarcastic deadpan I imagined with that last line made me chuckle.

          Basil Fawlty would tip his hat to you.

      2. swimon says:

        nice simile ^^, or is it a metaphor?

        1. winter says:

          I think it was a reference to Josh trying to get out of Rapture.

      3. Yahzi says:

        To shed a little historical light: Ayn Rand’s actions in her last years were not particularly easy to square with the philosophy of her earlier years.

        Indeed, the story of Andrew Ryan’s noble beginnings ending in absurd tyranny could have been cribbed straight from Rand’s biography. So… kudos to Bioshock for sneaking in a biography?

        Next they’ll be stuffing our video games with math and history! OH NOES!

        1. Veloxyll says:

          Games could use more maths though – one of my favourite trade trolls in WoW while I’m waiting for bgs/instance queues is 6 – 6 x 6 = ?
          The variety of answers is great fun

          1. Syal says:

            I’m going to have to say negative 30.

          2. Shamus says:

            Following proper order of operators should yield -30.

            Following left-to right (a common mistake, I think) should yield zero.

            I hesitate to ask what other answers people gave, or what contortions they might get through to get there.

            1. Pickly says:

              My guesses:

              42

              Chuck Norris

              Noob

              (You get the idea)

            2. SKD says:

              Unless they changed math while I wasn’t looking, and I wouldn’t put it past them, it is always done left to right unless a portion of the equation is bracketed.

              1. Syal says:

                They did; now you have PEMDAS, which states that multiplication and division always happen before addition or subtraction.

              2. Shamus says:

                The rules I was talking about are these:

                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations

                I don’t know where this was established or how widespread their use is outside of the fields of programming and mathematics.

                1. mousetrap says:

                  I was taught order of operations (exponents then multiplication/division then add/subtract) when I was back in middle school, and I’m 42 now. As far as I know; left to right has never been the correct way.

                2. 8th_Pacifist says:

                  Hey, an opportunity to put my high school mathematics to good use.

                  Multiplications and divisions always get done before additions and subtractions, regardless of the order, unless the addition or subtraction is bracketed.

                  I think that’s right.

                3. Yahzi says:

                  Arg… I’ve been a programmer so long I can’t remember if operator precedence is math or just programming.

                  Oh, wew: wiki to the rescue: “From the earliest use of mathematical notation multiplication took precedence over addition, whichever side of a number it appeared on.”

                  Of course, that was probably written by a programmer.

            3. Newbie says:

              Shamus you should be ashamed… you treated this commenter as if he was a human rather than the maths troll he is. MATHS IS THERE TO PREVENT CONFUSION… HE HAS BLASPHEMED UNCLEAN UNCLEAN!!!

              e^(i x (pi)) + 1 = 0

              (Oh god what is wrong with me?)

          3. Josh R says:

            Following Bidmas – Brackets, Indices, Division, Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction yields -30.
            At least, that’s what they taught us in college level maths.

  15. Cyanide says:

    The way I saw Andrew Ryan was as someone who initially did create a real Objectivist society, but as things got tougher, he didn’t stick to his principles. He let the need for power consume him, and he started cracking down on religion and other things he didn’t agree with. He reaches a breaking point when, as McDonagh describes in an audiolog, he actually nationalizes Fontaine Futuristics. The guy ends up betraying everything he stood for, so the whole religion ban was just a part of that.

    Then again, I don’t know for sure. Maybe it was illegal from the start? The timeline isn’t particularly clear.

  16. Fat Tony says:

    Also somewhere there a audio log that kinda explains how they use the trees and vents etc. to regulate oxygen/carbon dioxide levels.

  17. Lawton says:

    The way I viewed Bioshock is a criticism of the concept of a John Galt, a human being who can transcend vice in order to release power, once acquiring it. John Galt can exist (See George Washington), but he cannot gain and then relinquish power unless society demands it. In other words, Galt could not create a working Rapture because society was not Objectivist.

    Basically, someone who wants power will not relinquish it, and someone who does not want power will not take it unless forced to by society. However, Galt takes and then relinquishes power as an individual, a phenomenon that will never occur.

    I thought the whole no electricity thing was a parody of how the people in Galt’s Gulch develop ridiculously effective technology in months, totally rendering everything else obsolete. I think there was a tractor that was 25 * more effective than other tractors, produced in a couple of months, as an example for the reader.

    1. winter says:

      Well, the basic problem that we’re running into here is that this sort of philosophy doesn’t have much in the way of ability to handle argument between people. Basically everyone should be on the same page because everyone is “rational”, but obviously that doesn’t happen. (Some people are more rational than others, perhaps?) So how do you deal with that? You could take the “academic anarchist” approach and try to “improve” people without them noticing, or you could bite the bullet and just go for it even if it’s not “pure”.

      Then again, i’m not sure Ryan really had motives beyond “people are telling me what to do and I don’t like that!”–the whole burning down a forest rather than letting someone else use it thing, for instance.

      1. Sydney says:

        Well, the basic problem that we're running into here is that this sort of philosophy doesn't have much in the way of ability to handle argument between people. Basically everyone should be on the same page because everyone is “rational”, but obviously that doesn't happen.

        The standard move to make there is a non-committal “One or both parties is being irrational” response. I do it myself above.

        (Some people are more rational than others, perhaps?)

        While “rational” as a term has to be defined before we use it, classical rationalists (who are still the majority in Western critical philosophy) would claim that rationality does not admit of degrees. Once you leave the tracks, you are no longer being rational. You couldn’t have a branch which diverges partway along the journey and is “rational if we allow for [x]”; you’re either all-the-way rational, or you fell off the wagon and are now irrational.

  18. Lawton says:

    Alternatively, bioshock can serve as a anarchist interpretation of Objectivism, because objectivism allows for a government to maintain itsself. The existence of even a very limited government in Rapture eventually leads to its downfall through government expansionism and corruption.

    1. winter says:

      Interesting way to look at it.

  19. Vladius says:

    Well, I think that
    [provocative statement that everyone agrees with anyway]

    1. Robyrt says:

      Nuh uh! What about [obscure exception that proves the rule]?

    2. Someone says:

      Im sick of your foolish provocative statements! Has it ever occured to you that [obvious trolling which everyone bite nonetheless]

      1. MCM says:

        I’m shocked that you’d disregard the above evidence! You obviously don’t understand that [same information stated more emphatically]

        1. acronix says:

          Nonsense! It is clear that [clear attempt to take control of the previous troll statement.]!

          1. SatansBestBuddy says:

            GUYS! Why don’t we all just [honest attempt to stop fight that will ultimately fail].

            1. Syal says:

              [grammar correction that helps to undermine attempt at peace]

            2. Low-Level DM says:

              You’re just siding with those [caustic description of opposite opinion-group’s ignorance]!

              1. Someone says:

                Yeah, well you are a bunch of [the Hitler Card]

                1. Vladius says:

                  Oh, man, I [eye rolling, sarcastic statement working in the phrase “Godwin’s Law”]

                  1. Shamus says:

                    Sigh. It always comes down to [threat to close the thread if people don’t calm down.]

  20. Ooh. 2-3 Spoiler Warnings a week? I could get used to this indeed.
    That’s like a 2hrs+ or so recording session per week or?

    Hope you guys can keep this up because once a week between each episode in a Spoiler Warning “season” is just too long of a wait, 2-3 (depending on running time) seems just about right.

    And I can’t believe that The Escapist hasn’t picked this up yet, as Spoiler Warning is way better that most the stuff out there. (sorry Yahtzee :P maybe you could “beg” to be a guest on Spoiler Warning Season 3 *laughs* )

    1. X2-Eliah says:

      Anything but Yahtzee on here. His stream of cussing is already too popularised. Put that in spoiler warning and you will lose all insightful stuff that makes the show.

      1. NeilD says:

        I agree, but I wouldn’t mind Ben Croshaw, as opposed to Yahtzee Croshaw, if you get my meaning. I think he’s got good insights into game design, and as much as I enjoy ZP, I would be interested to hear him discuss things without trying to make it hilarious as well.

        But I have no complaints about the current roster, just commenting on the comment.

        1. PurePareidolia says:

          Agreed. There’s also the difficulty of attempting to do this with five people to be taken into account.

        2. Klay F. says:

          I agree with you one this. The Yahtzee that I saw on his TV show Game Damage, was much less of an expletive machine, and he had plenty of insights on the adventure game genre.

        3. KremlinLaptop says:

          àt’s weird, over time I’ve stopped caring about Zero Punctuation — though I do appreciate it for the break-out hit it was and probably the thing the Escapist is best known for — at the same time though I’ve gotten far more interested in reading stuff like Extra Punctuation and hell even betfore that his website.

          It’s sort of a pity the man had to “dumb down” to reach a wider audience, since his insights into game design and ideas for it are really interesting to read on their own. At least for huge nerds.

    2. eri says:

      The farther Twenty Sided states away from that cesspit known as The Escapist, the better. It’s bad enough as it is, I don’t want their sordid, poor excuses for writers seeping into this bastion of intellect. Twenty Sided is, for me, one of the few places where I can go and not have my brain rendered a smouldering wreck, and I hope it stays that way.

      1. Sekundaari says:

        Did you know they share a writer in common? True story! (Sorry.)

      2. Vladius says:

        I take it that your opinion of the Escapist is negative.

      3. KremlinLaptop says:

        Don’t hold back, tell us how you really feel.

        Not to worry, I agree. I think I might be falling into a cliche’d role of the old-fan but I’m going to say that the Escapist was better before it got so popular.

  21. Meredith says:

    The maps! So completely useless. I’m really glad you mentioned it, because now I can stop feeling inadequate about my inability to make sense of them.

    I hated the tree lady. She was superior and rude.

  22. Someone says:

    I dont think the game explicitly states that everything in Rapture runs on steam. The electric locks and the lightning bolt traps seem to suggest otherwise.

    The non-combat plasmids do exist in Rapture, and there are probably more of them than the combat ones. Doctor Steinman used plasmids to enahance his surgical abilities (even before he went crazy), if you examine the advertisements seen thruought Rapture you can see them selling plasmids that can cure diseases, enchance your immune system and do other things that dont have a (direct) use in combat. They are probably also sold in the Garden machines but your character just isnt interested in them.

    1. swimon says:

      But that’s the thing though, you hear about surgical plasmids or plasmids that make you “smarter than Einstein” but you never get to see any which makes it a little weird. I guess they wanted to streamline it so you don’t have to look through a lot of plasmids that are useless and they didn’t want to waste resources on making these plasmids but never seeing them hurts the setting. Even if we hear about these other plasmids, never seeing them enforces the view that they at least were very uncommon compared to the combat plasmids which shatters the idea that Rapture was a nice place gone wrong and makes it seem like they all came to Rapture to fight or something.

      1. pneuma08 says:

        It’s true, even if they had a few non-combat plasmids not available and stamped with a “Sold Out” sign, that definitely would have been enriched the setting, and with very little dev investment.

      2. eri says:

        Or they could have just made the game an actual RPG, where things like intelligence, resistance to disease, stealth, etc. actually mattered.

        1. acronix says:

          Now, where´s the fun in that? We want FPS which don´t require much brain usage beyond instict responses! Thinking is no fun, man! No fun!

        2. Lord of Rapture says:

          According to an article, the devs actually made something a lot like an RPG, a la System Shock.

          Testers hated it.

          So you can’t really lay all the blame on the devs for this.

        3. Robyrt says:

          To be fair, there is a stealth system in the game, it’s just turned off by default. Wrench Lurker + Natural Camouflage lets you score sneak attack criticals on most enemies in the game.

  23. Picador says:

    I think the answer to Shamus’ question is pretty succinct:

    The story of Andrew Ryan and Rapture isn’t about “Objectivism” in some abstract, philosophical sense: instead, it mirrors the story of Ayn Rand and the movement she headed.

    Regardless of the content of Rand’s writings, it’s hardly a controversial proposition based on the historical record to say that Rand herself was a totalitarian thug in the way she led her life and used her power. The irony of a woman who preaches individualism and free thought while running a dogmatic cult of personality premised on petty vendettas, arbitrary authority, and absolute conformity is the same irony at the heart of Ryan’s utopia turned dystopia.

    1. Peter H. Coffin says:

      I like this one. It’s probably wrong on a variety of levels, but it’s the most fun idea to think about.

  24. Wolfwood says:

    M&B Warband is an addictive game!

    1. SolkaTruesilver says:

      …?

      I am sorry, I don’t get why you said that obvious truth.

      1. Nidokoenig says:

        Josh made a passing reference to Warband, somewhere towards the end, I think.

  25. ps238principal says:

    I think Ryan’s biggest mistake was having vending machines that spat out weapons, ammo, and genome-altering substances whose only non-homicidal use would be in the production of honey nobody would want to eat and particularly destructive attempts at cooking.

  26. Preston says:

    Again with the what with “Sounds like you want to play Metroid Prime,” Shamus, is that the MP series has I think the hands down best in-game maps ever. You get a full 3D, rotatable outline of all the rooms in the area, perfect for taking a look at it for thirty seconds and going, “Okay, I head to the up and right-ish to get to the next unopened door.” It gets a little tricky when you’re trying to view maps of areas with multiple vertical levels, but only when you’re looking down at too steep an angle. Love those maps.

    Off topic? Decidedly.

    1. Andy_Panthro says:

      For in-game map madness, surely Daggerfall is the best example. Fully 3D maps, allowing for crazy looking multi-level procedurally developed dungeons.

      Of course the maps were rather difficult to use, and the interface was not friendly…

      On my only play-through of Bioshock, I looked at the map once. It took me about ten seconds to be baffled by it and just follow the left hand wall around until I reached my objective. Success! Besides, they even give you a pointer at the top of the screen to see where you’re supposed to be going.

      1. Friend of Dragons says:

        I’d have to say that my favorite example of maps and confusing levels would be in the game Descent. That entire game was an exercise in getting utterly lost and then flying around choosing directions at random hoping to find something. Large mazelike levels + 6 degrees of freedom = getting nowhere fast. And the poorly detailed confusing jumble of lines that was its 3d map rarely helped at all.

      2. Viktor says:

        LoZ:OoT had almost perfect maps 15 years ago, I don’t see why designers can’t just copy them now. 2D map with a z-axis selector. Toss in a legend that includes staircases and you’re good to go. If it’s a heavy 3-d game, display each level, in it’s entirety, on a grid, then place the grids next to each other. If it’s pure 3D, go Metroid. The Bioshock insanity should never happen in this day and age.

        1. swimon says:

          Those maps only really work on flat rooms though. I don’t really know how big of a problem this is but if the floor in one room isn’t flat so that the room stretches across multiple floors then that sort of map would get really hard to use fast. The reason it worked for OoT (or a link to the past for that matter) is because with n64 technology it was really hard to make terrain anything but flat.

          That said there’s no excuse for the madness of Bioshock.

  27. Mattias42 says:

    I don’t remember the distinction being made in the first game, but number two contains the following audio log that states that only organized religion was outlawed in Rapture. But it’s also clear as day that Ryan didn’t care the slightest about religion in ANY form.

    (Spoiler tag because the link contains the name of the main antagonist of the second game, otherwise it’s kinda minor spoiler wise.)

    http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Ryan_vs_Lamb:_Religious_Rights

    1. Newbie says:

      That didn’t block the spoiler whatsoever for me… I demand compensation! It removed my right to not know the story as it unfolds…

  28. sebcw1204 says:

    i know this post isn’t part of the argument, but i would like to see josh save the game before “activating” a little sister and “activate” her the evil way, just to assuage my curiosity.
    because it seems to me that the sisters carry around a giant syringe, and you shouldn’t need to do horrible things to them, just take that syringe away. or did i miss the part where the game tells us the little sisters drink it or something.
    and i still don’t understand why the little sisters are even needed, if the big daddies are bio-engineered, couldnt THEY have adam extracters? it seems needless to say “you can have power, but only if you are immoral child killers”

    1. acronix says:

      There´s a part, if I remember correctly, in that it is explained that Little Sisters have that ADAM ameba (or whatever it is) inside their bodies, which is responsible for their near-immunity. “Harvesting” little sisters is called so because the player extracts the ameba-thingie from them. The animation pretty much shows that; a fade to psycho-background and when it´s finished you have a weird jelly-thing that moves in your hand instead of a little girl. Unfortunate Implications arise.
      Curiously, this is the exact same thing that appears to happen if you “rescue” them (except for the no-girl thing, of course). I don´t think they mention what is the difference or what the heck that tonic Tenenbaum throws at you does to the ameba, but my guess is that it disolves it, and with it most of the ADAM the girl had. But I´m just speculating on that one.

  29. By the way, one way to look at the issue with the collapse of Andrew Ryan’s dream is that it very clearly shows many of the flaws in Libertarian politics, which are NOT the same thing as Objectivist politics. What Andrew Ryan attempted to do was to set up a libertarian-style “private government” where you don’t have a *government* per se. A *private* individual should have the right to forbid certain kinds of conduct (say, religions and trade) on his or her property, so from that perspective an Objectivist would indeed say that Mr. Ryan had the right to lay down whatever conditions he wanted for the use of HIS property.

    But that’s where it breaks down, because he wasn’t just acting as a private individual exercising his personal property rights over his OWN property. He was acting as the de facto government for Rapture as well and dictating to others what they could do with THEIR property.

    So the problem here is that for a civilization to function there must be a clear definition of and delimitation of government. So basically what Ryan did was take SOME Objectivist ideas (the ones that libertarians most often pick up about the freedom that the individual ought to possess) and forget about their necessary context (the existence of a specific delimited government that isn’t run by the whims of one individual), try to enforce them, and end up with a disaster.

    Which, actually, Objectivist academics have been saying for years. Read Peter Schwartz’s essay “Libertarianism: the Perversion of Liberty” if you are interested.

    1. ps238principal says:

      Lissin: Strange men, lyin’ about in ocean cities is no basis for a system o’ govahment. Supreme executive powah derives from a mandate from th’ masses, not from some farcical aquatic video game! If went ’round sayin’ I was an emperor, jus’ cause some moistened objectivist threw some Adam at me, they’d put me away!

    2. Viktor says:

      Libertarianism wants a specific government with a very concrete list of powers, divided among several people. It’s not anarchy, just a very long list of personal freedoms. Without some sort of governing body, people will be greedy short-sighted dicks. Any philosophy needs to take that into account. Watch any news program where some guy steals $50 from a 7-11 when the guy behind the counter making minimum wage earns more per night. Expecting them to be rational will fail.

      Rapture fell because Ryan was a bit nuts, and the people on his property couldn’t leave(from what I can tell without playing the game). That’s not Libertarianism, that’s a fief.

    3. Vladius says:

      I agree with most of this (speaking as a Libertarian,) but it’s never actually specified what Andrew Ryan has created. Since he cut off all contact with any other government or organization on the surface, he was in effect creating his own country. It’s technically a “city,” but no one has built a completely isolated underwater city before, so you can’t really define it in terms of private property (especially given how if they didn’t have indestructible glass, someone like Josh could easily ruin it.)

      1. Shamus says:

        And as someone pointed out elsewhere – it’s not even defined what Ryan owns. If he owns all of Rapture, then he didn’t build an Objectivist society. He built an Objectivist house and invited a bunch of assholes to live with him.

        1. Ciuacoatl says:

          Actually, I think this gets to a conceptual problem with the game itself: it really isn’t clear how the science fiction aspects of it work. By science fiction aspects I mean both the technical and social results of a new technology.

          If I write a story with the characters on a spaceship, years of science fiction and real-world physics conventions will, unbidden, rush in from the psyches of the readers and buoy up the story so long as I string together some convenient explanations of how this spaceship came to be. We are familiar with not only this nonexistent technology, but the nonexistent spacefaring culture. We “know” that each crewman has separate quarters (unless I write otherwise) and “know” that there is a central computer, and so on.

          Bioshock says, “hey, it’s a city in the 50’s!” Except it’s not. It’s freakn’ underwater and the logistics of that would shape every single aspect of its existence — and they don’t. They’re irrelevant. They aren’t even tactically important. People are trying to kill each other and the fact that everyone is underwater doesn’t even figure into it. Remember in Total Recall when the bad guy who was less awesome than Michael Ironside turned off the air on the mutants? That was a nod to the science fiction setting more substantive than what we’ve seen so far in Bioshock (except for good lighting) and Total Recall is a bad movie. How bad? If the people posting messages were to be possessed by a bizarre compulsion to create several hours worth of media featuring people with three titties, there would be absolutely no point of Total Recall even existing. It would be totally redundant and could be safely erased from human existence. Bioshock doesn’t even have three titties going for it. Not. Even. Three. Titties.

          I forgot where I was going with this.

          Oh yeah, go it now. Bioshock doesn’t give us any culture to rely on. We get the 50's and. . . what? We can't let our Generic Science Fiction Culture conventions fill the void because Bioshock picked an obscure genre. We don't know how Generic SciFi Underwater City works because it really isn't that generic. Real creative there, Irrational, “˜cept for the part where you forgot to explain the genre. So we don't know what Ryan owns, we don't know how the government is run, we don't know how these people got food (seriously, wtf?) and so on. The fact that we don't know how objectivism fits in is actually only academic.

          Consider: if the game was set in a democracy resembling the U.S. structure of government as strictly as possible, would we, even then, have any idea what was going on?

          1. Shamus says:

            All really good points. I’m glad you brought up the food thing. I know this is stuff we’re “not supposed to think about”. I hate when I’m not supposed to think about things. I suppose the fisheries were a nod to food, but man cannot live by tuna alone. Details like this aren’t hard to hand-wave, and science nerds and detail fetishists (like me) eat it up. I’m always sad when writers pass on stuff like this and ask us to simply not care.

          2. swimon says:

            Come on Cohagen you got what you want give these people air!

            Seriously Total Recall is awesome :D. It’s dumb but it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger hamming it up for about 90min what more do you want?^^

            Valid points about Bioshock though. I don’t really think the food problem is that big of a problem though I mean they have fish they have seaweed if they need anything else they can grow it I mean they have plantations (you can find grown pumpkins in Arcadia if I remember correctly). Really the food is nothing compared to how they can have an underwater city with 50s technology that leaks without just completely rupturing due to the pressure.

          3. Sydney says:

            This. This was my biggest disappointment with Bioshock.

            My personal favorite part of storytelling is the world-building. I don’t care as much about plots; what does it for me is the universe in which plots are set. I read the entire Mass Effect Codex. I read horribly-written Star Wars EU novels* because I love the world-building that goes into them. I devoured Rutskarn’s World Creation series; I obsessively check GitP’s RPG system-building series for updates.

            And Bioshock completely missed the opportunity to give us that sort of fascinating look behind the curtain of how a novel, different society would have worked.

            *[I’m not saying all Star Wars EU novels are horribly-written; I’m saying I even read the horribly-written ones]

        2. Jennifer Snow says:

          Yes, which is still a problem–because you can’t have an “Objectivist House” without that house existing under some kind of government. As I said, he tried to do both–be the government and be private. It doesn’t work.

        3. Josh R says:

          This comment is so full of win.

        4. Shamus, you just won comments. You are the winner of comments.

          Seriously, though, you’re right and Jennifer’s above comment pretty much parallels my thoughts on the matter.

  30. SatansBestBuddy says:

    If you don’t mind me getting a little meta here, Objectivism was never part of the picture, it was merely justification for having a city be ruined.

    If Bioshock was about Objectivism, then it would have began with Ryan as he built the city, and the game would have been about trying to keep the city following the ideas of Objectivism.

    It’s clearly not about that, it’s about a city that was once a place of prosperity that had fallen from grace and turned into a great big drug shack under the sea while the only sane people left fought amongst themselves.

    Sure, Objectivism itself had a huge impact on the backstory for the city, can’t deny that, but it’s impact on the story we’re told in this game is one of corruption and control, a great big game of chess between two men bidding for complete power and control over everything, even the very decisions an individual can make; Objectivism was merely the starting point, one which had long since disappeared from sight when we entered the city.

    1. X2-Eliah says:

      I thought Bioshock was about shooting enemies and repetitive bosses.

      1. winter says:

        You’re thinking 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.

        1. Ciuacoatl says:

          It is doubtful that anyone willing thinks about 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.

          1. Vladius says:

            B**** took my gem-encrusted skull. I need it.

  31. Galad says:

    About the frozen splicer in mid air – I managed to do that in Dragon Age using Stone Fist on the Archdemon at the right time, unintentionally. I wonder what any circus would give for a petrified levitating evil dragon :D

  32. ProudCynic says:

    About turning frozen enemies into physics objects–using the second level of Winter Blast in the second game does turn them into projectiles you can throw around with telekinesis. Might be fun to watch if you ever decide to go through with #2 (although I still want to see you guys run through one of the original System Shock titles.)

  33. Kaeltik says:

    Maybe someone could clear up a question I’ve had rattling around my brain pan since the last Objectivism discussion on this blog:

    How does Objectivism avoid Tragedy of the Commons situations?

    The closest I’ve come to an Objectivist answer is privatization of all resources, but I can’t seem to jive that with any sort of stable society, since it will eventually become the rational recourse of the have-nots to seize those resources rather than stay subject to eventual privation.

    Even that counter-argument ignores the frailties humanity that challenge any practical application of Objectivism.

    What am I missing?

    1. Bill says:

      Well, not really missing anything. It’s really just that any pure -ism doesn’t really work. Objectivism, socialism, capitalism, communism, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc; all fail when you try to apply them purely.

      Functional societies throughout history operate as a messy mix of several different -isms at the same time. Befitting the messy truth of human nature.

      Ferris: Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism’s in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, “I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.” Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I’d still have to bum rides off people.

      1. Ciuacoatl says:

        “-isms,” if by that you mean any and all philosophies of anything, are not homogeneous, and, as such, it is an error to say that they shouldn’t all be believed in. It would be just as erroneous to say that you don’t believe in water because water doesn’t always work. It’s possible to observe a phenomenon, call it a word with “-ism” at the end, and attempt to reproduce that phenomenon. If it doesn’t work out the way you planned it, it means the implementation was bad, not that the phenomenon doesn’t exist. As an aside, though, what Lennon said there was kinda dumb. Assuming for a moment that I believed in Lennon, which I see no reason to do.

    2. Sydney says:

      The theory is that an Objectivist society would be filled with like-minded Objectivists.

      “I could increase my standing by taking [destructive action], but that would be detrimental to society. This society allows me to be maximally free. Since I do not wish to limit my freedom, my foremost interest is the maintenance of this society. [destructive action] would damage society, ergo freedom, ergo my foremost interest. [destructive action] would harm me more than it helped me. I shall not undertake [destructive action].”

      Of course, nobody talks like that, but that’s how the thinking is supposed to work. The delicate balance between a million unleashed, but like-minded, ethical egoists with the same society-first ethos produces a sort of de facto commune mindset.

      In practice, all it takes is one person to break from Objectivism and take a wrench to his neighbour to disrupt the balance, at which point the game theories all go ballistic and predict different things mostly based on theorists talking past each other.

      EDIT: Having seen the Monkeysphere link below, I can put this another way.

      As long as everybody gets their own bananas and shares with the few in their Monkeysphere, the system will thrive even though nobody is even trying to make the system thrive. This is perhaps how Ayn Rand would have put it, had she not been such a hateful bitch.

      [me talking again]

      But if one monkey goes bananas (sorry), the system stands a chance of flying apart.

  34. Roivas says:

    It would seem that objectivism and totalitarianism would contradict each other… until you read about Ayn Rands life. Suffice to say, at its height, Rand’s band of objectivists were a proper cult, with only Rand approved thought allowed, complete with banned book list. Ayn Rand and Andrew Ryan are really two peas in a pod.

    More here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html

  35. Avatar says:

    Science fiction authors who’ve examined objectivism usually conclude pretty quickly that it has absolutely no place in a hostile environment. If your life is dependent on the air plant working, you can’t allow someone else to have “freedom to muck around with the air plant”. If you decide you want to open up windows in the pressure hull for their aesthetic qualities, you’re going to die; either the formal rules will kill you, or your fellow ship-mates will lynch you, or you’ll succeed and die in the ensuing disaster.

    (Possibly that’s more of a comment on the nature of hostile-environment living than it is of objectivism. Things that are absolutely essential to your survival are not properly in the realm of political debate. We don’t see a whole lot of this in real life because there aren’t a lot of things that are absolutely essential and, by and large, they aren’t part of political debate here either. People protest by marching, not by cutting down power lines or attempting to dump chemicals in the water supply. It’s also allowed to respond to apparent violence with actual violence; if you pull a gun on someone, and they draw and shoot you, even if it turns out later that you only had a toy gun, they’ve got a valid argument for self-defense.)

    This is why Rapture never made sense in the first place. The entire place is one big disaster waiting to happen; anyone intelligent enough to design it is by definition smart enough NOT TO.

    Honestly, I never thought that the objectivism in the game was anything more than an excuse to brutalize Little Sisters.

    1. ps238principal says:

      You’re discounting the possibility that Ryan may have decided to use his wealth and power to create the most ideologically charged and extravagant suicide method ever constructed on Earth.

      1. Someone says:

        Wasnt that the atomic bomb?

        1. ps238principal says:

          Where’s the extravagance in that? Push button, receive death.

    2. SKD says:

      “This is why Rapture never made sense in the first place. The entire place is one big disaster waiting to happen; anyone intelligent enough to design it is by definition smart enough NOT TO.”

      Intelligence does not inherently imply Wisdom nor vice versa.

      1. Rutskarn says:

        They told me I was daft to build a city underwater, but I did it anyway, just to show ’em! It flooded completely. But then I built another city, just like it! It flooded completely. So I built a third one. That ruptured, overheated, and then flooded completely, but the FOURTH ONE stayed dry!

        1. Sekundaari says:

          Don’t like her? What’s wrong with her? She’s beautiful, she’s rich, she’s got huge… domes of air.

          1. Newbie says:

            You killed the bride’s father for goodness sake… Camalot you say? Big Underwater city Camalot? Good fish country up there isn’t it?

        2. Sydney says:

          I love you, Rutskarn.

  36. scowdich says:

    For future reference: the best way to take care of the electric tripwires is Telekinesis. You can just grab the arrow out of the wall and chuck it somewhere else so it’s out of the way.
    Trap bolts are also one of the easiest ways to kill Big Daddies, especially the Bouncers, if you feel like preparing an “arena” ahead of time.

  37. Gndwyn says:

    My take on Bioshock was that Andrew Ryan was an Objectivist in the same way that Joseph Stalin was a Communist. In other words, he was a typical dictator using the rhetoric of an ideology to seize and wield power.

    And I think that the extent of Bioshock’s political message is to say that in practice, an Objectivist utopia would end up the same way all the attempts at Communist and other utopian societies (arguably all societies) have ended up: men seeking power, amassing it, and fighting over it, all the while trying to justify themselves with their chosen ideology.

    1. Lalaland says:

      That was always my take on the philosophy, yes Ryan talks a good game about Objectivism but at the end of the day it’s merely the window dressing for his megalomania. This argument over whether or when Ryan forsook his Objectivism reminds of debates between hard lefties over when the Soviet Union ‘went wrong’ in it’s quest for the Socialist paradise. Amusing and a great way to waste thousands of litres of breath but ultimately fruitless especially when the game world contradicts the philosophy over and over (the banning of religion, smuggling, etc).

  38. John Lopez says:

    Long ago, in high school, I was convinced I could write well. So I wrote a series of science fiction stories about a man who tried to create his version of Utopia.

    The main character of my stories vision was to create a society built on scientific foundations, logic and capitalism. I had not read anything by Ayn Rand at the time, but I effectively reinvented most of Objectivism as his world view.

    (Aside)
    Objectivism is easy to recreate when you are, objectively, better than your peers at surviving your environment. School was a breeze, honors classes and all. My friends were an odd but “popular” crowd.

    Only later did I learn I was in a horribly underachieving school district and my fortunate habit of being a voracious reader and self learner put me in that position. College was not kind to my ego.

    Still, objectivism made all kinds of sense to my overinflated high-school self importance.
    (End Aside)

    My main character did many of the things that Ryan does in Bioshock: he bans religions as “unfalsifiable, therefore unscientific”. The children on the colony ship are educated in isolation from parents to avoid “overly emotional upbringings”. Dissent is not tolerated if it threatens the societies artificial charter.

    In the end he is brought down by the increasingly “normal” members of the colony. While in flight to their new planet it was (fairly) easy to control with an iron grip… but new generations brought up on the new world had little but indoctrination to tie them to the charter for their world.

    My point is much as one of the earliest comments made: extreme mono-culture societies are unstable. Even a punk kid who thought he was better than everyone else could see (through fiction) that a meritocracy is only as strong as its ability to prevent the weak (or non-conformists) from overthrowing it.

    Add in a tincture of the lust for power than anyone mad enough to attempt to create a “Utopia” built on “pure ideals” and that instability is only magnified. Thus the downfall of rapture was as preordained as the downfall of any Utopian society larger than a tribe’s worth of people.

    All hail the monkey sphere.

  39. Glazius says:

    The market is not an infant? It does not wail at the slightest disruption?

    I guess Andrew Ryan was just as good a capitalist as he was an objectivist, otherwise he’d know that markets only exist in textbooks and in the real world all you get are giant crowds of people with fistfuls of money.

    That aside, “save us, potted plant!” was the best line.

  40. Preston says:

    You know what really kills my suspension of disbelief here? Rapturenald Cuftbert’s sweater sleeves. If I was playing Bioshock, seeing the end of that ugly woven sweater would pull me right out of the game each and every time, because no one would ever wear that. I just can’t suspend my disbelief far enough to accept that a person would put that on.

  41. Ciuacoatl says:

    I suspect that some people forgetting that objectivists have had positions of serious, world-shaping power in real life and have proceeded to cause a vast amount of death and destruction as a direct result of following their philosophy — and further, in doing so, have undermined the truth claim of said philosophy.

    The best example of this is Greenspan, a devotee of Rand, whose economic policies were little more than smoke and mirrors dedicated to making rich rent-collectors even richer. Greenspan had the power and freedom to be a true objectivist, to follow the philosophy without compromise, and the end result was a massive transfer of wealth from those who create wealth (including both small business owners and laborers) to those who merely own property, where most of said owners objectively (no pun intended) hold property due to political influence and inheritance as opposed to skill or ability. Hell, after years of propaganda to home owners telling them to mortgage their houses and encouraging the housing bubble, even he pathetically admitted to error a few years ago.

    The basic problem with the “is Ryan objectivist?” question is that it assumes that objectivism is a legitimate system of thought in the first place; that is, a philosophy that is internally sound and made out in good faith. It is neither of those things. To be blunt, it's simply another example of selfishness given romantic excuses. If you do not assume that objectivism is consistent, then you have no problem with Ryan's “objectivism.” He was as “objectivist” as Greenspan: a selfish prick with delusions of intellectual gravitas.

    Rand herself was an excellent example of this phenomenon. Once she had developed a cult following, she carried on a torrid and nasty affair with one of her acolytes — much to his wife's consternation. The couple sent messages to their significant others explaining that their nookie was, in fact, Good for their well-being and, as such, the only rational conclusion was that it should be allowed.

    Objectivism can and will justify whatever an objectivist wants. Ryan was as objectivist as his nonfictional counterparts. By the same token, and with the same intellectual sophistication, people you didn't like in first grade had cooties.

    1. Steve C says:

      Ciuacoatl, not sure who your audience is with your comment. Your post is contrary to what Shamus has asked of this discussion.

      1. Ciuacoatl says:

        Steve C, I have no idea why you are confused, since a blog's audience is its readers, and I think you may be putting words in Shamus' mouth if you're claiming that mentioning Ayn Rand's own take of her philosophy is off-limits.

        1. Shamus says:

          Actually, I see where the confusion came from. I said, roughly, “We can’t talk about this game without discussing Objectivism.” Which I intended to mean, “Let’s talk about it as it applies to this game”. But reading what I wrote, it looks a lot more like I said, “Let’s just talk about it in general.”

          So, my bad. Steve C was technically right, but the thread hasn’t become a problem yet so I’m just going to live dangerously and let things go.

          1. Ciuacoatl says:

            Well, thinking about this last night I had crafted a 3-paragraph-long clarification but in retrospect, since Shamus has clarified and I’ve already written way more than enough, I’ll sum up the thesis:

            You can’t define objectivism without looking at Rand and her favorites. At all. Objectivism is unmoored and varies from person to person unless we say it’s basically what Rand says it is. And if objectivism is what Rand says it is, then, due to what she said and did, it does not amount to a good faith philosophical system. If your best friend is objectivist and says objectivism is X and X is not in keeping with what Rand said/did or substantially expands upon what Rand said/did, then we can’t agree that he’s objectivist. If he has the authority to say what objectivism is, who doesn’t? We have a serious definition problem. That’s why Irrational didn’t go wrong, necessarily, with Ryan, because he has as much claim to the objectivist mantle as anyone else.

  42. daveNYC says:

    While I’m not exactly qualified to comment on whether or not Ryan was truely an Objectivist, I believe it is important to note that the environment in which Objectivism was developed is very different than the setting of Rapture. The surface is a much more forgiving place than however many feet under the sea that Rapture is. I think it is quite possible that Objectivism, even if workable on the surface, might not be workable under the sea due to the extreme risks that letting everyone do what they want would create for the safety of the entire city.

    Edit: Damn you Avatar!

    Well to add something newish then, consider Banks’ Culture series for a different take on what political structures would work in a hostile environment. Unless someone else also posted that.

    1. Steve C says:

      That’s very true. A submerged city would have very particular issues with objectivism. For example, I own this section of the city so I’m going to set fires in it and consume all the oxygen. Alternatively I’m going to knock holes into the walls because they are my walls. Yes this might flood the city.

      If you don’t like it, too bad. I have the right to. You can pay me not to do these things. You can find me in my private submarine.

      1. Shamus says:

        I don’t quite see how it relates to objectivism. Anyone that wants to punch holes in their underwater home or set fire to it is NUTS. Any society would have to account for nutters. I don’t see how an objectivist one would be at any particular disadvantage. If someone is willing to kill themselves and everyone else is a single act of insanity… are they really worried about the legality of it? I’m not an Objectivist, but I’m pretty sure they have some sort of concept of self defense to would prohibit doing things which would hurt others.

        And the private submarine scenario is clearly threat of harm – hostage / ransom thing. No objectivist would argue that you have a right to threaten to kill a city just because you own the weapon, weather it’s a bomb or a window you want to break.

        Now, when it comes to RISK on the other hand, you could probably construct some interesting scenarios there.

        1. Kylroy says:

          Objectivism DOES have more problems dealing with nutters, because the right of people to do whatever they wish is the central idea of the philosophy. Start regulating what a person can do with their own goods, with the “Sweat of (their) own brow”, and you’re accepting that individual self-interest alone is insufficent to run society. And anything that thwarts self-interest is anathema to Objectivists.

          To quote Alan Greenspan, Objectivist extroardinaire, on the irrational (or “nutty”) behavior that caused the current financial collapse:

          “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”

          1. Shamus says:

            You are free to do with your own things, as long as you’re not directly hurting others.

            Otherwise, murder would be fine. “Hey, it’s my gun, I can shoot it where I want.”

            If you are not allowed to take from me (taxes, whatever) then I am not allowed to take from you (your life, theft, etc.)

            This is really quite simple. I’m sure proper objectivist would put it another way, but “you can do whatever you wish” is, I think, a strawman.

        2. Steve C says:

          Objectivism doesn’t allow for direct threats. But it does allow for indirect threats. You touched upon it by mentioning risk. But there is also manipulation.

          I’m referring to extortion over public goods or private goods held by yourself that benefit others. For example the air system that you interact with. Maintenance on your section of the city. Everyone has a vested interest in ensuring the city works. But with an underwater city there are lots of ways it could go wrong. Someone can manipulate events so that it is a direct benefit to themselves but is a detriment to everyone else.

          For example, since environmental laws don’t exist, there are no consequences for removing everyone’s livelihood by killing all the fish with an oil spill. They didn’t own the fish so they can’t claim damages. If you had a side company that imports food you might even have a vested interest in poisoning all the fish.

          You might corner the market in emergency pumps when they are in low demand then purposely allow a key system to fail. It’s not your fault that other people relied on your part of the city. You didn’t owe them a duty of care regarding your own property. If they relied on your property then they should have been paying rent or made arrangements so whatever you did could not affect them. It was their mistake for not having their own private submarine.

          Another example is denying access. Someone could buy up all the space around another and then charge a toll for access across your property. Objectivism doesn’t make allowances for fairness or public benefit. Pollution and being a “good neighbor” are of extreme importance in a biodome under the sea.

          1. Shamus says:

            That makes a lot more sense.

          2. Marlowe says:

            You make a fair point about unowned public goods (the fish in the sea) and the Hardin Tragedy of the Commons scenario. As for your other example – where I let my sub-system (owned and operated by myself or my employees) fail so I can make a killing selling emergency pumps it will come down to contracts (something Rand definitely believed the State had to enforce). If I’ve got a contract with you to provide this service, you will have a means of redress against me legally for my failure to provide it (dependent on the wording of the terms obviously). If you’ve relied on someone else doing something and have no contract with them to provide it – tough luck. In the real world you’d still face this problem e.g. the business next door to mine advertises a lot (I don’t) and attracts a lot of customers – some of whom enter my store so I benefit. The neighbouring business then closes down or stops advertising and I lose custom – I’ve got no redress on its owners as I had no contract with them. Or someone regularly leaves their newspaper discarded on the seat of the train I travel on every day and I read it. He stops doing this – I’ve no redress again. If he’d agreed with me to pass on his paper to me every day I would have grounds to object.

            Relevant Rand quotes:

            In a free society, men are not forced to deal with one another. They do so only by voluntary agreement and, when a time element is involved, by contract. If a contract is broken by the arbitrary decision of one man, it may cause a disastrous financial injury to the other . . . . This leads to one of the most important and most complex functions of the government: to the function of an arbiter who settles disputes among men according to objective laws.

            A unilateral breach of contract involves an indirect use of physical force: it consists, in essence, of one man receiving the material values, goods or services of another, then refusing to pay for them and thus keeping them by force (by mere physical possession), not by right””i.e., keeping them without the consent of their owner. Fraud involves a similarly indirect use of force: it consists of obtaining material values without their owner's consent, under false pretenses or false promises.

            BTW: I’m not a Rand fan, just trying to be fair and give the Devil her due. Her comment regarding a contract broken by ‘the arbitrary decision of one man’ indicates she didn’t advocate a Do What Thou Wilt, anything goes individualist philosophy at all. A Randian would be hemmed in by all sorts of agreements and contracts made with others which would be binding and legally enforced.

            Randworld will probably be full of lawyers. Which reminds me of the old joke: what do you call a 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean?

            1. sebcw1204 says:

              “Randworld”,… seems like the kind of place that you should have to sign a contract just to get in, or; “by entering these borders you agree to….”.
              Come to think of it, that doesn’t seem like a bad idea, but what do you do about children born in randworld? they didn’t choose to live there. how can they be bound by a contract they didn’t enter into of thier own free will. and much of objectivism is about embracing free will (as long as it conforms to logic and reality and doesn’t restrict the free will of others) How do you objectively raise a child, and by that i mean raise them to believe in objectivism without being subjective about objectivism? do they confirm their contract upon reaching maturity? do you arbitrarily indicate adulthood with a particular age, or do you create a test for them to try and pass whenever they feel they can?
              i don’t know how Rand proposed to handle child rearing. because anyone who tries to use logic and reason with children…..well, they have their work cut out for them.

            2. Tzeneth says:

              If I remember right, jokes like that are answered, “A good start.”

      2. DGM says:

        That’s not much different than saying that ownership of a knife gives you the right to wave it wherever you want, even if my body happens to be in the way.

        The proper guiding principle here is: your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins. Above ground, you don’t have the right to start a fire in your yard in such a way that it can spread to mine. The same sort of thing should apply underwater – you don’t have the right to flood your property in such a way that it will end up flooding mine as well.

        1. Steve C says:

          you don't have the right to flood your property in such a way that it will end up flooding mine

          In this case I think you are mistaken. It would be up to each individual to ensure that their property is protected from floods. If I’m mistaken and that’s too direct in terms of harm to another there are examples above which are more indirect. I’m no expert on objectivism. But one thing I do know about objectivism is that it does not allow for collective rights. The right of the individual trumps the right of the group.

          Regardless political framework society really boils down to “We agree to eat here, and shit there.” Objectivism seems to be quite different and says “I agree to nothing. I eat and shit where I want to.” Problematic and doubly so when you all live in the same tiny room under the sea.

          1. Ciuacoatl says:

            . . . which brings me to a critique of objectivism which cropped up the moment I first heard about it as a child. Why are your favorite rights better than my favorite rights? If I love me some collectivism, and the 500 other people like me love me some collectivism, how come we can't all be collectivists together?

            Rand would be straight-up with this and call us irrational and lots and lots of nasty and foul names. In other words, merely wanting to work together and share property would make us bad people, in exactly the same authoritarian format that the religions she despised would have done. This is nasty, but at least it's a consistent rule — just one that undermines her appeal to reason. So it's consistent so long as we don't pretend Rand was arguing in good faith.

            But let's consider the objectivist notions outside of Rand (which is kinda silly for reasons I mention elsewhere, but it's amusing so. . .). Okay, so we throw out Rand's, founder of objectivism, own view of how collectivist desires could be rationally implemented (e.g., never). What results?

            If I create a corporation, objectivists are definately cool with that (because, I submit, they like corporations, and little more than that). If this corporation owns property — well, that's part of the point of the corporation. If all the individuals in a corporation own the corporation in equal shares, that's weird for an objectivist, but perfectly sound. If the corporation owns land that these people live on (again acceptable) and sets rules as to how these people can operate on this land (again acceptable) then the corporation. . . is a country and a government. And if it exists and continues for the sake of it's members, it's socialist (though not necessarily communist).

            And that's supposed to be a no-no.

            Again, objectivism's problem is that it's obssessed with being “rational” and you can fit anything into the “rational” moniker. Rational is just a transformation of the category “stuff I like.” So your favorite rights are not rational because. . . well. . . they're not. So no organizing corporations into de facto socialistic governments. And acknowledge my rational awesomeness when I monopolize grain and rice and create a famine in order to maximize profits.

            So Ryan was objectivist. He had stuff he liked, and stuff he didn't, and he said the stuff he liked was objectivist.

            1. Jennifer Snow says:

              Actually Steve C is mistaken.

              Objectivism is not against agreements or collective actions (this would be stupid–any philosophy that doesn’t account for some method of living with other people cooperatively is stupid). The idea that groups don’t have rights, only individuals do, does not mean that the rights of SOME individuals can then trump the rights of OTHER individuals because those other individuals “belong to a group”. It means that membership in a group does not entitle you to violate the rights of individuals no matter HOW many of you there are.

              Using your flood example: if you cause damage to someone else’s property in the course of messing around with your own property, you are liable for the damages. This is because both you AND your neighbors possess property rights. So you can do whatever you want with your property, *provided* it doesn’t violate the rights of others.

              If you want to go live on a hippie commune somewhere and “share everything equally”, that is your *right* provided you aren’t violating anyone else’s rights by forcing them to belong to that same commune against their will. But it is MY right to say hell no if you try to involve me in this same commune because you want to “share” the efforts of MY work.

  43. RCN says:

    Oh… ooooooh… ooooooooooooooooooooooh…

    Me am stoopid. How come it took me five episodes to understand Shamus’ title in this series? I was always “why is Shamus related to acid? I must be misunderstanding this foreign english word here…”

    Didn’t play Bioshock much, but really don’t care about its spoilers either. System Shock 2 is the game that saved me from joining the Half-Life cult after all (I think).

    But here’s a question: Is Starcraft 2 a better follow-up to its predecessor than Bioshock? I don’t know… standing still in what (well, at least a lot of) people consider to be perfect or trying to step forward but instead give some steps back?

  44. Dude says:

    Crafting items would have been so much fun if the game had a. a weighted inventory system and b. scarcity.

    Kinda like System Shock 2.

  45. I think the very point is that you can’t keep an Objectivist society consistently Objectivist. Unconstrained market behavior requires the nanny state. So to preserve something LIKE an Objectivist rule requires a dictatorship. My impression is that the creators were expressing sympathy for the view but arguing that it ultimately is self-defeating.

    Of course, the same argument can be made against similarly left alternatives, or against any libertarian approaches. So I don’t know how fair the argument is.

  46. Josh R says:

    The best part of objectivism is shooting someone in the leg then sueing them for stealing your bullet

    Andrew Ryan = We’r Ayn Rand

    There are lots of reasons objectivism wouldn’t work, I really can’t be bothered to list them all, but if nothing else the extremely high rates of social discontent would lead to mass riots, assuming anyone was foolish enough to try it on a large scale.

  47. Gauth says:

    I don’t know what Levine wanted to say (though he in his interviews states repeatedly that he agrees with Rand on many points but thinks that believing in something unconditionally is dangerous), but the picture I get is very close to what Shamus says: Ryan bans religion (a type of thought) and religious symbols (a type of goods), thus creating the market for smugglers.
    Black market only exists in a society that bans certain types of trade, where there is no bans there is no smugglers.
    This leads to Fontaine’s rise to power and all the terrible things that happened to the city later – the actions that were inconsistent with the Objectivism from the start were the beginning of Rapture’s destruction.
    And then all the rest – experiments with mind control, “a little bit of capital punishment is a fair price to pay for the safety of our ideals” (isn’t it utterly collectivist?), etc.
    Rand says: “The man is the end in himself”, Ryan says that Rapture is more important than any human being’s life. He isn’t Objectivist from the very beginning, for he tries to *force* people into thinking along the lines he considers right. He does not respect the ones he brought to his city (otherwise he wouldn’t be afraid of them being corrupted by religion and suchlike).
    I can’t say whether it is intentional or not, but that’s what it is like.
    P.S. I am not an Objectivist in every sense of the word. Though I utterly agree with some of Rand’s ideas, she has thoughts that hardly can be more wrong.

  48. Seth Ghatch says:

    When is the next episode comeing? it’s been a long time.

    1. Shamus says:

      They go up Tuesday and Thursday. Except this week we’re covering PAX. So, next week we’ll start back up.

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Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

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