Humans are the Guardian Constructs: Theory

[Sensei Jacksama]

We don’t know that about the Thargoids though.

Rumours are that the conflict with humanity started as a result of us attacking a peaceful delegation they sent.

Ram Tah makes some assertions, but he backs them up with incorrect info, and he’s only giving the Guardian’s official version of things anyway. That’s almost inevitably going to be a very one sided perspective on events.

And why postulate a galaxy-wide sentient-race-exterminating force at all?

It’s not necessarily needed. The supposition seems to be that the Galaxy should be teeming with sentient life. That’s not necessarily the case.

Also, we don’t fully know what the situation is with regard to sentient life in the ED universe. Our info as PF members is limited.

What we do know for sure is that humanity have been responsible for the wiping out of at least one sentient species, the Mudlarks in Achenar.

How sure are we that that was a one-off?

And a big question to throw in - what of the beings that Halsey supposedly encountered? ‘The real caretakers of our galaxy’, ‘the paradox of their existence - tiny yet gargantuan, fleeting yet eternal’.

How do you know rahm tah is giving incorrect information? There is no way to fact check him. We have to assume his information is at least somewhat correct because fdev has no other way to convey that story narrative unless they use RT as a "narrator" to us.

Its reasonable to assume that if the universe evolves sentient life in fairly regular intervals and those life forms are consistently encountering hostility from a certain species then that species is probably killing off other species we arent aware of as they evolve. The guardians fought the thargoids. The soontill were destroyed by them. Humanity is being attacked by them. They probably aren't the only race thats done that though as you stated with the mudlarks.

There is evidence of the caretakers existence so I'm all in favor of that.

 

[Thatchinho]

How do you know rahm tah is giving incorrect information? There is no way to fact check him. We have to assume his information is at least somewhat correct because fdev has no other way to convey that story narrative unless they use RT as a "narrator" to us.

Its reasonable to assume that if the universe evolves sentient life in fairly regular intervals and those life forms are consistently encountering hostility from a certain species then that species is probably killing off other species we arent aware of as they evolve. The guardians fought the thargoids. The soontill were destroyed by them. Humanity is being attacked by them. They probably aren't the only race thats done that though as you stated with the mudlarks.

There is evidence of the caretakers existence so I'm all in favor of that.

It’s Ram Tah’s comparison with modern events where the falsehood is. Specifically he says that the Thargoids attacked humanity and made no attempts whatsoever to communicate. That’s not correct.

Rumours are that the whole conflict started after we attacked a deputation they’d sent to meet us.

That could just be a false rumour of course, but then:

• we learnt of Soontill from the Thargoids
• there’s rumours of that being a result of an illicit taping of a delegation debating whether to ask for our help.
• there’s rumours of various clandestine points of intercivilisation interaction

Some things are potentially just rumours there of course.

The real clincher though is the Thargoid Sensors. They literally broadcast in a human code. (A stylised version of morse.)

Now, it might be a bizarre form of communication, but I would personally say that it’s very difficult to assert that broadcasting something to another species in one of that species’s own forms of communication equates to ‘no communication’.


On the rest of his stuff, yeah, we’ve got to give it a certain amount of credence, as our main source of info on the Guardians.

However, I think in doing so we should note a few things:

1. Ram Tah has been called into question from the early days of the Guardian stuff by Melville (posted a link to the Galnet article a few posts back).

2. Ram Tah is posting his thoughts as he gets scraps of info, and they’re often clarified or superseded as he gets further info.

3. Ram Tah’s source of info is the Guardian databanks, so he’s only getting the Guardian side of things, and what’s more, it’s probably only the Guardian’s official version of things. And even that has things which have been expunged from the records, or which it simply has no record of (for example, what happened to the Guardians who were exiled from their society at the end of the first civil war).


That’s a lot of stuff there so will just leave it at that for this reply and then do another reply for the other points from your post!

 

[Sensei Jacksama]

It’s Ram Tah’s comparison with modern events where the falsehood is. Specifically he says that the Thargoids attacked humanity and made no attempts whatsoever to communicate. That’s not correct.

Rumours are that the whole conflict started after we attacked a deputation they’d sent to meet us.

That could just be a false rumour of course, but then:

• we learnt of Soontill from the Thargoids
• there’s rumours of that being a result of an illicit taping of a delegation debating whether to ask for our help.
• there’s rumours of various clandestine points of intercivilisation interaction

Some things are potentially just rumours there of course.

The real clincher though is the Thargoid Sensors. They literally broadcast in a human code. (A stylised version of morse.)

Now, it might be a bizarre form of communication, but I would personally say that it’s very difficult to assert that broadcasting something to another species in one of that species’s own forms of communication equates to ‘no communication’.


On the rest of his stuff, yeah, we’ve got to give it a certain amount of credence, as our main source of info on the Guardians.

However, I think in doing so we should note a few things:

1. Ram Tah has been called into question from the early days of the Guardian stuff by Melville (posted a link to the Galnet article a few posts back).

2. Ram Tah is posting his thoughts as he gets scraps of info, and they’re often clarified or superseded as he gets further info.

3. Ram Tah’s source of info is the Guardian databanks, so he’s only getting the Guardian side of things, and what’s more, it’s probably only the Guardian’s official version of things. And even that has things which have been expunged from the records, or which it simply has no record of (for example, what happened to the Guardians who were exiled from their society at the end of the first civil war).


That’s a lot of stuff there so will just leave it at that for this reply and then do another reply for the other points from your post!

I agree that RT doesn't have the whole story and he has to clarify things as he gets new information. I believe the data banks are likely from individuals in that civilization so when they say the AI destroyed the biosphere's from the perspective of the person who wrote that it would seem to be the end of the world when it's not. From our perspective it would appear it was their extinction event until we find other logs. They were experiencing an apocalypse so communication and information is fragmented. I dont think that means RT is lying or spinning what he's learning. Hes trying to learn about an alien civilization from the perspective of its destruction.

As to the thargoid probes you might be right about that; but honestly I think it's more likely fdev was just trying to add a puzzle and couldn't design an actual alien computer language that could be interpreted by layman players. We aren't actual NASA scientists so they have to have a little story telling to make things interesting.

 

[Chaparral]

10/28 : Civil War Log – Annihilation This log concerns the end of the second civil war. Remarkably, it seems the artificial intelligences developed during the conflict became fully self aware at some point, and were horrified by the destruction unfolding around them. It’s difficult to get a sense of exactly what happened next, as the Guardians were not privy to the Constructs’ thoughts. But reading between the lines, I believe the Constructs determined that even if peace was restored the Guardians would never be able to transcend their violent natures. I believe they decided that the only way to preclude further violence – while giving their own burgeoning society the best possible chance of survival – was to destroy what remained of the Guardians’ civilisation. By this time, the Constructs had complete control of the Guardians’ munitions and automated war machines. Their attack, when it came, was swift and merciless. Strategic nuclear and chemical-weapon strikes were executed with a precision that only a machine race could accomplish. The few that survived were able to record what had happened, but they soon succumbed to radiation poisoning. The Guardians were utterly destroyed.

Seems to me like AI killed the radio show - I mean the Guardians and the radio show. So where are the AI...

 

[Thatchinho]

Seems to me like AI killed the radio show - I mean the Guardians and the radio show. So where are the AI...

Well that's the million dollar question!

Lots to take into account. A few things:

• Where, also, are the Exiles?
• It has been several million years since the demise of the main Guardian civilisation
• The AI's (early ones at least) were designed to be responsible for their own development.

A few relevant bits from the logs:

Technology 8: Now I understand. This was the missing piece. The monolith network was augmented by vehicle-based communication systems, personal devices and even implants. These were designed to operate seamlessly with the network to provide ad-hoc coverage. Having implants that you can direct communications to you directly would revolutionize communications as we know it. I can only speculate what this would have felt like, but it might have even gone as far as a technological telepathy of sorts.

Technology 16: This data contains some details regarding AI in the Guardians society. The rise of the artificial intelligence almost elevated the Guardians society to a whole new level. There are parallels between the Guardians experience of machine sentience and our own, but as with other aspects of their society, the key difference was the way AIs were socially integrated in to the Guardians lives. If this process had not been hindered by the rise of the religious abolitionist movement, I believe a technological symbiosis and utopia could have been achieved, but alas it was not to be.

Technology 18: This data contains some details regarding AI in the Guardians society. What really sets the Guardians apart from humanity, technologically, was the way they embraced neural implantation and artificial intelligence. Not only did the implants enhance one’s mental capacity, they also provided one with a direct connection to the monolith network and the fledgling AIs. It was this symbiosis that fueled the rapid advancement of technology during this era, but unfortunately this same advancement also resulted in the ultimate destruction of their species.

(Note from me here on the last sentence - there's several different aspects to it. On one front it lead to social divisions and a technophobic/traditionalist backlash that turned into the first and then second civil wars. On another, the tech advancement undoubtedly increased the Guardians' destructive capabilities. On yet another, it also contributed to putting destructive capabilities into the hands of some of the AIs. And on yet another front, the forced separation of the symbosis will almost certainly been a significant contributing factor in terms of why the ultimate action of the AIs.

Technology 19: This data contains some details regarding AI in the Guardians society. The early AIs were designed with two goals in mind. The first was to augment the abilities of the Guardian operators who were responsible for managing the monolith network and interaction with the AIs – a goal they achieved. The development of shared thought-space technology and neural networking gave their civilization an unprecedented intellectual boost. The second was for the AIs to actually drive their own development, which they also achieved. The first few generations of AI relied heavily on the monolith network, but they soon evolved into a more distributed model by storing their consciousness within the implants.

Technology 20: This data contains some details regarding AI in Guardians society. At this stage, social engineering was being used to ensure the AIs adhered to the same user models as their progenitors. But during the first civil war, most implanted Guardians were exiled, and the AIs recognized their vulnerability. They responded by developing their own operational hardware, independent of implanted Guardian users. Frustratingly, the details of these mechanisms have been purged from the record, possibly by the religious extremists who formed the last of the Guardian’s species.

 

[Zieman]

Where's the Guardian AI and where are the Exiles?
Regor, Bovomit, Bleia etc. permit locked volumes perhaps?

 

[Thatchinho]

I agree that RT doesn't have the whole story and he has to clarify things as he gets new information. I believe the data banks are likely from individuals in that civilization so when they say the AI destroyed the biosphere's from the perspective of the person who wrote that it would seem to be the end of the world when it's not. From our perspective it would appear it was their extinction event until we find other logs. They were experiencing an apocalypse so communication and information is fragmented. I dont think that means RT is lying or spinning what he's learning. Hes trying to learn about an alien civilization from the perspective of its destruction.

It's not the reporting of the Guardian stuff by Ram Tah that's the major issue, it's how he uses that to say misleading and false things about our current situation.

It's possible that he doesn't know that what he's saying about the current situation is wrong of course. I just find that a bit hard to believe.

There's a lot of underhanded stuff going on.

Consider the report from AEGIS in the following Galnet article: https://community.elitedangerous.com/galnet/uid/5ab383f5b709787d505dd1a2

If true, all we had to do to stop the conflict was withdraw from the Pleiades and return all the stuff we'd taken.

Instead what we saw last year was a deliberate targeted expansion into another Thargoid area. Or in other words, a deliberate drive to do more of what, according to AEGIS, lead to the current conflict in the first place.


Just on the Biosphere stuff, I've simply not seen anything anywhere to say it was the AI who destroyed the Biospheres. Indications from the records are that that was largely done by the Guardians themselves over the hundred years or so that the war ran for before the AI finally put a quick end to it.

As to the thargoid probes you might be right about that; but honestly I think it's more likely fdev was just trying to add a puzzle and couldn't design an actual alien computer language that could be interpreted by layman players. We aren't actual NASA scientists so they have to have a little story telling to make things interesting.

Yeah, it was always a possibility. There was a response from Michael Brookes on it a long time back, who said that the use of Morse was deliberate. Typically though it wasn't clear whether he meant that it was deliberate by FD to facilitate a puzzle, or that it was deliberate by the Thargoids for their purposes. It seemed from the context to be more towards the latter but it was definitely open to interpretation. Didn't get any further clarification.

 

[Thatchinho]

Where's the Guardian AI and where are the Exiles?
Regor, Bovomit, Bleia etc. permit locked volumes perhaps?

Hmmmm... It's been several million years since what we last know of them. There's theories...

And to save elaborating on a particular one, here's a link:

Community Event / Creation - OUT NOW: Sagittarius Eye Issue #10 (Get Your Copy Today)!

Greetings Commanders, Issue 10 of Sagittarius Eye is now available. Our team of talented writers, designers, artists, and editors have been hard at work again to provide you with fascinating stories right from the world of Elite Dangerous. In this issue, learn about the history, cultivation...

forums.frontier.co.uk

(It's a letter to the editors of Sag i after things got misrepresented in an article, but don't worry about that, hopefully it lays it all out clearly enough anyway! It's also prior to 3.0 so there's been some additional info since it was written, but tbh, that new info hasn't actually undermined the case laid out, just added a few different possible avenues, various of which ultimately lead to the same conclusions.)

 

[cmdr borschtl]

First, never go off the wiki.

Second there’s the entire RL set of evidence of human evolution on Earth.

human evolution isn't exclusive of a planet being seeded for it. So it's not a counter argument. You can have both.

 

[cmdr borschtl]

I thought it was well established that the AIs rebelled against the Guardians and wiped them out. Maybe I'm on planet Cyberdyne...

only those guardians were wiped out who were not outcast. There might be a surviving guardian faction since a faction was outcast from the guardians before the remaining ones got destroid. That surviving faction could still exist today. They might even masquerade as human faction.

 

[Vasious]

Or the AI were right and the Exiles repeated the cycle and killed one another in a a civil war.

The Guardians seem both creative and quite reactionary at the same time.

I don't see them getting along with Humanity at all

 

[Thatchinho]

human evolution isn't exclusive of a planet being seeded for it. So it's not a counter argument. You can have both.

Not if the timelines don’t allow it, which they don’t.

Well not for ‘seeding’ anyway, though we may just have different interpretations of what that means.

The Guardian Era was several million years ago.

The origins of our evolution go orders of magnitude further back than that.

Now, if we’re talking a little bit of genetic manipulation or a bit of a selective pressure applied at some point, then maybe. It’s a bit of a trope though.