#prokhor Zakharov

[jacksquib]

[every1sno1fangirl]

something i neglected to mention about zakharov and miriam is that nothing about their beliefs really fundamentally changes even!!! they're very much still Themselves at the end of it all, who believe (mostly) the same things they started with. Engaging with The Planet (and how that happens is beautiful. The world itself being its own character and the way that is expressed both figuratively and literally is fantastic) has just changed them irrevocably. Earth has been left behind. Everything they have ever known is well and truly gone and buried in the dust of time. Society and the world around them has fundamentally become alien and increasingly less grounded in prior human experience and when they stand at the precipice of what (just) humans can still even perceive and understand is when they hit the heights of their arcs.

Zakharov prostrates himself before an Alien God and expends his and his followers' remaining humanity to burn himself into being but one part of the consciousnesses of it's True Apotheosis. If you don't know anything about SMAC, without getting into too much detail, The Planet would die without his (and others. Canonically, it's implied Lal and Deidre joined) decision to do it. The God would blossom but would be unable to sustain itself and fade into no consciousness once more for another millions of years. All humans would die in this event—but by taking this action, he and all humans have chosen to kill themselves as well.

“Imagine the entire contents of the planetary datalinks, the sum total of human knowledge, blasted into the Planetmind’s fragile neural network with the full power of every reactor on the planet. Thousands of years of civilization compressed into a single searing burst of revelation. That is our last-ditch attempt to win humanity a reprieve from extinction at the hands of an awakening alien god.”

Miriam, seeing what is about to become before even he does, chooses instead to walk into a Psi-Gate (think like a Stargate or Transporter from Star Trek). This is what she thought about something similar, the Bulk Matter Transmitter:

“And what of the immortal soul in such transactions? Can this machine transmit and reattach it as well? Or is it lost forever, leaving a soulless body to wander the world in despair?”

She wasn't sure whether or not you were still yourself at the end of it.

“Go through, my children! The time of miracles is upon us. Let us cast off sin and walk together to the Garden of the Lord. With God’s mercy we shall meet again on the other side.”

In the face of what is to come—before even the realization of the Gaian's beliefs proving correct (I won't get sidetracked here but SMAC's take on religion in the future and how genuinely it is portrayed is also fascinating)—Miriam knows that her ideas are well and truly dead. There is no more Dissent from the Horrors. Only an embrace to grow beyond them.

“Go through, my children! The time of miracles is upon us. Let us cast off sin and walk together to the Garden of the Lord. With God’s mercy we shall meet again on the other side.”

These are her last words. Her and her followers step into a Psi-Gate with no destination. She doesn't even know for sure if the soul is preserved by this action and her physical form is being utterly annihilated at the atomic level. Her actions are that of defeat—a mass suicide in the face of what she knows is the end of her one way or another. She just has her faith (and a nuanced one at that).

And she's completely and totally right. From a ludonarrative standpoint, the player knows that the game is about to end. We're at the end of the tech tree—we're at the end of things humans can identify with and even conceptualize. She is the last, pure human. She could have chosen to eat from the fruit of life and join the others in immortality as a new alien god. It would have cost her her very soul. It would have meant she was no longer human.

Both Zakharov and Miriam choose suicide in the end.

Zakharov (and others, and I'll talk about them eventually probably Zakharov and Miriam are just the easiest and most important parallels IMO) commit suicide via total subsumption into the world. He discards the last of his humanity and kills himself in the hopes that enough of his being will leave enough an impression on the Alien God he is hoping to truly manifest into the world and become something greater than he is.

Miriam commits suicide by embracing the last thing that could truly be said to be of humanity; a form of transportation used so one person can go from one place to another. She doesn't even know for sure what will happen to her soul if she destroys the rest of her being. But she knew it would be complete; she has opted for what is well and truly a final death, trusting in the promise of Heaven to the very last to hold onto the humanity she had left.

And I think both choices are beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. I condemn neither one—I love and sympathize with Zakharov and Miriam.

Before even it being the best 4X game, Brian Reynolds made the best Sci-Fi game of all time.

resisting the urge to Post about SMAC because I will become utterly and completely insufferable with my infodumping about how it is by far the best 4X game of all time and it isn't even close

[ronqueesha]

"The popular stereotype of the researcher is that of a skeptic and a pessimist. Nothing could be further from the truth! Scientists must be optimists at heart, in order to block out the incessant chorus of those who say "It cannot be done." - Academician Prokhor Zakharov, University Commencement

[hoiist]

Its 2021 and im back playing my favourtie game and taking all my allies down with mE

[light4chiron]

Poisoned Aid

I posted an Alpha Centauri one shot on fanfiction.net:

Poisoned Aid (Link)

Summary: The University responds to the Peacekeepers' request for aid against the Spartans with a shipment of nerve gas. Lal is not impressed.

Ration: T

It’s loosely inspired by the first of the Alpha Centauri novels, but should be readable without any knowledge of it.

[warsofasoiaf]

Speaking of Zakharov, do you think could explain or theorize what his form of government on Planet even is? Everyone else's political ideology and government seemed pretty obvious analogues for real-world governments, theoretical or otherwise, but Zakharov's always confused me. Is he and his followers just a bunch of university professors who also happen to run a state? Is it a weird form of technocracy?

Certainly. We’ll start with what we know, and extrapolate out what we don’t. Remember of course, that it will be different depending on your social engineering choices.

Zakharov was formerly the Chief Science Officer of the Unity, which suggests that Zakharov had both scientific and leadership ability, which makes perfect sense given his position as a faction chief. Foundationally, the University of Planet is based on Western academia, a university mobilized as think tank and government. Economically, no choice is forbidden to Zakharov, which suggests that property rights are of lesser concern to Zak. Given the wide-ranging research in both physical and social sciences, a strong degree of control is necessary for controlling variables for experiments, so there is probably moderate property rights with an academic caveat, property can be requisitioned for experimentation (or is handled covertly, depending on the nature of the experiment), with certain enclaves given more or less economic freedom based on the needs of the Department of Economics, who would undoubtedly practice their own experiments on the population.

Remember Zakharov’s problems with drones stemming from unethical experimentation, so this encompasses all forms of science, physical, medical, social, it doesn’t matter. Being a member of the University of Planet means you are examined at all times, lab rats both willingly and unwillingly, in the interest of promoting greater understanding. In this sense, Zakharov is the good and bad parts of scientific understanding in all its glory and banality. There is a genuine promotion of education, intelligence, and free thinking necessary to be conducive to the previous two, there is no question that even if Zakharov uses a police state, there is freedom in experimentation. But this also means that everyone is a vessel for the next hypothesis, there is no UN charter of rights like the Peacekeepers or guarantee of private property like Morgan.  

We know that Zakharov’s preferred social ethic is knowledge value and his aversion is fundamentalist government. So for this we can predict that Zakharov’s laboratories are the preferred path for social advancement, with perks enjoyed by scientists, engineers, and other academic subjects. Individuals of less cerebral mindsets work in the labs as research assistants, orderlies, as well as providing the raw human labor for experiments when robots are incapable or not cost-effective to provide it (or when experimentation is needed). So we see that it’s clearly a technocracy with political advancement tied directly to experiments, the caste of leaders are clearly scientists. Now that we understand what Zakharov is about, we can see how the University of Planet is run.

So with that, we can see Zakharov running his government depending on the social engineering choices of the player. If the player runs Democratic, the different colleges likely have elections of tenured professors to an academic council led by Zakharov as Academician, with the greatest governmental concern being the allocation of resources to different experiments, the nitty-gritty of running the government delegated to lesser administrators like deans or presidents while the true masters of power are busy doing research and giving broad direction. A police state would likely have far more centralized state, giving greater control over experiments with dissenting citizens serving prison sentences as guinea pigs for the more dangerous experiments. Colleges would have their own security forces directly answerable to Zakharov and the head researcher (in that order). Economically, a planned economy Zakharov has centralized ownership of resources by the University Supply Board with the economy tightly run according to the College of Economics. A free market Zakharov would have a wide degree of private property permitting individual citizens to invest in experiments that they find particularly fruitful or rewarding, with large portions of the colleges devoted to applying research to desirable consumer goods and other creature comforts to both citizens and foreign customers. A green Zakharov would devote dormitories to ecological studies and recycling techniques seen as the best interest of long-term research, both as a survival technique for the alien planet, a survival technique for when the fungus get too agitated, and a fascinating field of study for psychic phenomena made necessary ever since the first mind worm attack.

The Future Society too, has implications for Zakharov’s government. Cybernetic is probably the most likely choice, as it commits more and more powerful digital sentience to research and disregards the loss of work to automation as illogical concerns for individuals who couldn’t hack it in the academic fields, hardly the first time intellectuals have looked down on people in the trades as the academics upload their brains to become transcendi. A Eudaimoniac Zakharov frees the shackles even further, allowing for great discovery and transformation, blending of art and science. A Thought Control Zakharov finally has the population of docile lab rats to discover the final frontiers of singularity mechanics.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[there-isnofate-but-whatwemake]

Ahh, another one of my favorite SMAC quotes.

RAVENCLAW: “Begin with a function of arbitrary complexity. Feed it values, ‘sense data.’ Then, take your result, square it, and feed it back into your original function, adding a new set of sense data. Continue to feed your results back into the original function ad infinitum. What do you have? The fundamental principle of human consciousness.” –Sid Meier (Academician Prokhor Zakharov: Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri)

[ampazourvskomodino]

Time travel in the classic sense has no place in rational theory, but temporal distortion does exist on the quantum level, and more importantly it can be controlled.

Prokhor Zakharov

[there-isnofate-but-whatwemake]

Begin with a function of arbitrary complexity. Feed it values, "sense data". Then, take your result, square it, and feed it back into your original function, adding a new set of sense data. Continue to feed your results back into the original function ad infinitum. What do you have? The fundamental principle of human consciousness.

--Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "The Feedback Principle" (accompanies the discovery of "Pre-Sentient Algorithms" in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri)

[lobo7922]

La subestructura del universo regresa infinitamente hacia componentes cada vez mas pequeños. Tras los átomos encontramos electrones, y tras los electrones quarks. Cada capa removida revela nuevos secretos, pero también nuevos misterios.

Academico Prokhor Zakharov “Porque He Probado La Fruta”

[ofermod]

"Remember, genes are NOT blueprints. This means you can't, for example, insert "the genes for an elephant's trunk" into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There are no genes for trunks. What you CAN do with genes is chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals."

Academician Prokhor Zakharov

Scientists have discovered how to make glow-in-the-dark cats by inserting the jellyfish genes that create fluorescent proteins into feline eggs.

[ronqueesha]

"There are two kinds of scientific progress: the methodical experimentation and categorization which gradually extend the boundaries of knowledge, and the revolutionary leap of genius which redefines and transcends those boundaries. Acknowledging our debt to the former, we yearn, nonetheless, for the latter." Academician Prokhor Zakharov

[bukbot]

"According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible." -- Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "For I Have Tasted The Fruit"

I Have To Pay Attention To You, Girl On Your 16th Birthday Pay Attention To You, Girl Everyone Has To Do Just What You Say You Get Your Very Own Spotlight Tonight 'cause It's All About Pearl You're The Birthday Girl Yeah!

[light4chiron]

University of Planet Diplomacy Pictures

The images from the univ.flc file.

[neosilverthorn]

“There are two kinds of scientific progress: the methodical experimentation and categorization which gradually extend the boundaries of knowledge, and the revolutionary leap of genius which redefines and transcends those boundaries. Acknowledging our debt to the former, we yearn, nonetheless, for the latter.”

-Academcian Prokhor Zakharov, “Address to the Faculty”, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri

Culture is so obsessed with the idea of lone geniuses that it doesn't really appreciate that most of the progress of science (and likely every other discipline) occurs collaboratively, in babysteps, and usually through a lot very tedious, utterly unsexy, work.

[harrypotterhousequotes]

RAVENCLAW: “The popular stereotype of the researcher is that of a skeptic and a pessimist. Nothing could be further from the truth! Scientists must be optimists at heart, in order to block out the incessant chorus of those who say 'It cannot be done.” –Sid Meier (Prokhor Zakharov: Alpha Centauri)