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This show is brought to you by our generous patrons at patreon.com slash falloutlorecast. Welcome to the Fallout Lorecast, the place for the Fallout community to come together to explore the boundaries of our knowledge about the world of Fallout. Vault Dwellers, wastelanders, and other people of the Fallout time and place, welcome to the Fallout Lorecast. I was like, I'm gonna come up with another name for other, there's got to be other people than just wastelanders and vault dwellers, right?
City people. I don't know. Raiders. Raiders.
Ah, there you go. See, I could have come up with that, but I didn't. Welcome back to the Fallout Lorecast. This is your host, Tom, or Robots, and I'm back with Laini, or Neospandora.
How's it going, Laini? Hello. How are you? Good.
I'm suffering from a cold, so if I'm not making any sense, you know, though, I decided I have to tough through this because this is our Patreon episode, and we've got some really cool people that we need to talk with. And I can, you know, I'll just sound a little funny and be a little bit cloudy in my head, but, hey, you know what? I'll just tell you what. I'll shut up, and I'll let everyone else do the talking, and then we'll have an even better show.
Imagine that. So let's get through. Whoa. My audio was very high.
Thank you for the new subscription, whoever dropped that subscription in. MK10 Gamer. Thank you for resubscribing. But here, let's get through.
We're going to announce some of our patrons who were able to join us this week. We have Katamari Junkie. By the way, Katamari Junkie, I absolutely love Katamari Damacy and the other Katamari games. They're phenomenal.
Definitely a favorite. Yeah, welcome to the show. This is your first time on. Thank you so much.
I'm glad to be here. Yeah, thanks for joining us. And then we also have another brand new friend, Stagger. Welcome.
Welcome to the show. Hey, reporting live once again from my boiler room. Once again, Stagger and assemble. Yeah, he joined us the other night.
We had some other broadcasts, and you've been supporting a few of the shows, so thank you so much for that. And then NighttimeSmith is back as well. Nighttime, I hear you had a kind of a rough day. I hope things are getting better for you.
Yeah, I'm alert. Just kind of a bit sleepy, but I'm ready for the podcast, so let's roll. Let's roll. Yeah, and we have an interesting topic this week.
We're talking about some of the most difficult moral dilemmas that we've had to deal with in the Fallout games. And this is a hotbed, right? These things are not without moral dilemmas. But the point here is to talk about the ones that hit us the hardest, the ones that were the most difficult for us to have to make decisions or the things that we did in-game and then later decided, hey, maybe I shouldn't have done that or regretted it, or maybe regretted it in the moment.
You know, there's lots of different ways this can play out. So I'm just going to open this up. Who wants to chime in? Who has kind of a thing that comes to mind first when you guys are thinking about moral dilemmas?
Anybody like to go first? I can. Go for it, Katamari. Yeah, so it actually was a mission I just played recently.
I just kind of got back into Fallout 4, and I downloaded the DLC. I wanted to see what it had to offer, and I started doing the Far Harbor quest. I got kind of like all the way towards the end. I thought I had an idea of how I wanted it to go.
Like, they pitch you against kind of the harbor, the cultists of Adam, the cult of Adam, Children of Adam, Children of Adam, and Acadia, which is all the synths. And, you know, I thought I had it all. Like, I wanted, like, I didn't want the Children of Adam. I hated those people.
So I was like, they have to go. And that was like my first decision. And it came down to finding out information about Dima, of what he did to a resident of Far Harbor. And I was like, no, you need to come clean.
You need to tell people this. And I thought that was making a moral right choice. Right up until I followed that through to the entirety of Acadia being raided. And I was very upset by that.
Yeah, well, you can't always tell what your decisions are going to result in. I wanted so bad for it to work out. I was like, I'm going to save Acadia. I'm going to save Far Harbor.
And I'm going to be morally good. Yeah, yeah. That's one of the worst decisions. That's an interesting dilemma, the idea that, like, micro versus macro morality, right?
Like, you were thinking on a micro level, like, this is the right thing for you to do in this situation, which is totally fair. You know, like, go for it. Like, be honest, you know. And then the long-term result of that is something that you couldn't have predicted, but resulted in something way more terrible than just the thing that you were dealing with on the micro level, right?
Oh, yeah, exactly. And, you know, I was pining over that thought for like five to ten minutes before I even chose to have him do that. And then, you know, I had Nick with me, and Nick's like, yeah, I like that response. And I'm like, yeah, I'm on the right path.
Yeah, Nick's a good guy. He's coming back on this. We can't go wrong. We're good.
Yeah, so it's the worst way I wanted. It was like one of those moral dilemmas in the moment, and I just got lost in it, and it just steamrolled me. Yeah. Have you guys—this raises a thought in my head.
Have you ever had one of those moments in one of these games where something happens, and for me, usually I'm playing on my keyboard and a mouse on my computer, but you can do the same thing on a console, where you, like, the computer situation would be, you're playing, and then all of a sudden a thing happens, and you just kind of back away from the desk for a moment, and you just kind of let the realization of what happened or the feelings kind of wash over you, and you're like, oh. The equivalent on the couch with a controller would be like, you just kind of drop the controller on your lap, and you just sit back and go, ah. Did that really just happen? Like, oh.
Have you ever felt that way? That is definitely what I did in that moment. Yeah. Yeah.
Nighttime? I think I was a—it wasn't a moral dilemma, but it was like I was helping Covenant against their first, uh, raider attack. And, uh, one of the named characters stuck his head out from the corner of the gate to shoot around the corner, and I just see his head explode. And I go, oh, I thought he was an essential character.
And I was like, okay. And then there were missiles and stuff flying around. I'm like, all right, this is serious. He's not an essential character.
All right, I guess the exploding head seems to have filled that in for me. Nice. Okay, who else wants to go? Who else has a moral dilemma or a situation you later regretted?
I thought of something. Yeah. Yeah, go for it, Stagger. All right.
Uh, yeah, I just thought of this because I'm completely unprepared. I found out about the topic, like, two hours ago. Um, so I, a little bit ago, I started a, I call it my semi-pass this playthrough of Fallout 1. I don't have the time or patience to try and, like, 100% run through the game without, like, killing anybody.
But I, like, generally run with, like, the Albert charisma, like, character archetype and kind of take my time to really think about everything I do before I do it and try and, like, resolve every situation diplomatically or non-violently. And, uh, spoiler warning, in Fallout 1, in Junktown, I believe, there's a doctor named Doc Morbid. Um, you can go to the basement, and you find, uh, his, like, demented, Never? Never justified?
Get it, Maurice. No? No. No, I don't think so.
Like, if you're going through and you're, like, hurting other people just for the sake of your own survival when you have the choice to work with them, no. There's nothing good about that, in my opinion. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, that thing's pretty clear, but, you know, difficult times, difficult situations, and also a long history of conflict can often force your hand.
Like, maybe you no longer have the ability to work things out with other people. This is one of those story tropes that comes up in both post-apocalyptic stories like The Walking Dead or something like that. You know, like, just because you as an individual don't have any beef with somebody else doesn't mean that you aren't part of the larger organization that has a longer, older history than you and you are now carrying forth their reputation. So, for example, let's say you become, let's say you're raised as part of a raider group, right, theoretical situation.
You're raised as part of a raider group. You grow up knowing that this is just this is the way life is. You assume that this is what's right. This is what your parents have taught you.
You're not one of the worst raider groups, but you steal from other people. You, you know, you're, you do some bad things. You get to the point where you become the leader of this group, right? And now you know that there are some local towns and you decide that you're going to try to make peace with them.
Like, that's the right thing to do, but it may not be possible because the people will not trust you at that point. And in that situation, do you then go on raiding them or do you, I mean, you can't just give up. You have a lot of people who are depending on you for their own livelihood. So in that sense, keeping them alive is a morally good thing.
You can't just let them all die. Just step down as leader and let somebody else step up. But then, you know, well, yeah, but then you would know that the group would continue doing bad things. If you maintain leadership and still keep doing those bad things, maybe you can slowly over time change the reputation of the group, but you know that it's going to take a decade of working back from the, you know, the edge of the abyss in a sense, which means doing things that you think are immoral, but less and less immoral over time in order to gradually shift the reputation of the group or doing things against the enemies of somebody who used to be your enemy in order to prove to them that you are now their friend.
But now, but you still have to do immoral things against their enemy. You see the dilemma here? How do you guys? I'm sorry, sorry, you guys go ahead, Katamari, and then Stagger.
I have to say, I am starting to see your side here, that is a pretty moral. I'm playing devil's advocate. I'm just showing that there's not always an easy choice, right? Like, we can sit back and say, oh yeah, if I became the leader of a raider group, I'd stop the raiding.
We'd start farming. We'd start working with the communities around us. Like, that's great. That's all well and good.
And any nation on this planet could have a leader who wants to do that. But you are, you are having to deal with a situation that is in many, in many places, thousands of years older than you are. You know, with the United States, at least hundreds of years older than you are. Stagger, what were you going to say?
I mean, I was just going to make a quip about how I can definitely tell you the background in philosophy. Back on the raider thing, it's so hard to like, I don't know. It's like, back on the raider thing, like, people are byproducts of their environment in a lot of situations. You have to acknowledge that, but at the same time, like, there's still personal accountability.
If you're a cognizant human being, like, you understand that it's probably wrong to rob people and kill them. Like, it's rough. Yeah, it's tough. You, it often takes people who grew up in difficult situations like that well into adulthood before they actually have the means and the ability to understand the situation they're in, understand what they have agency over in order to make different choices and how to remove themselves from the situation that they grew up in.
Usually takes well into adulthood for that. And that's why having other people around you to help with that is important. And in a post-apocalyptic setting, you're not going to have much of that support. You're going to be off on your own.
It's going to be the rare individual who's able to really push themselves through that in order to make a change and do something different. That's just my perspective on it. I don't know if you guys have any other thoughts. Nighttime, do you have any thoughts on any of this?
I kind of lost my train of thought. It's okay. I might come back later. Yeah, McCulley in chat says, could the raiders as a group move somewhere else and just claim that they are not raiders and possibly start over that way?
Potentially. That's assuming that they know where to go and that there's going to be resources there. But they could also travel somewhere else and find it is extremely irradiated and desolate and will not grow food and then just they'll starve to death. So, yeah, there's risks involved with that as well.
Or there's other more dangerous things there that are going to kill them. I think they might have to work on their skill set, which is they're probably not farmers. They're probably not tradesmen. They're probably mostly killers.
So they might, you know, try to become a private army and pay them. Mercenaries. Yeah, it's a travel to a place where people don't know them. You know, far enough away from the local settlements to find other settlements and then be hired out as, you know, for mercenary work could potentially be a thing.
But even then, isn't mercenary work typically morally gray? Yeah, it's pretty gray. It's like when, what was it? Kellogg got hired on by that tavern when you go through his life.
And the people that were hiring him wanted him to kill a family that was on land that these people didn't want them on. Right. Right. Yeah, you don't get to make the decisions if you're being hired by somebody.
I mean, you can always decide to turn down the job, but then you might be looking for, you know, work at all. You may not be getting any work at that point. So oftentimes in a situation, especially as desperate as, you know, the wasteland, that might mean not eating for a while, not having a place to live. So, you know, sometimes you feel caught in that situation as well.
So let's, let's open this up a little bit more. Nighttime, do you have a situation that you can recall being of a particularly difficult moral situation? Probably the one that stood out to me most through most of the games was in Fallout New Vegas. When you go to the sharecroppers farm and you just start talking around, talking to people.
And I think it's the Trent Bascom is the character's name. And he tells you that he's not getting enough water and that the logs say that they're supposed to be getting enough water. And the NCR lieutenant says that they're getting enough water, but he says that they're not getting enough water. And then you start asking questions and it's like, he goes, oh, well, you know, that's what Corporal White said, you know, a few days ago.
And, you know, I don't really care for it because, you know, I don't have time to chase up these wild theories. And so you start asking more questions and you end up going to the NCR base. And apparently this guy's been missing for like a few weeks or something and they don't know where he is. He's AWOL.
And, you know, you end up going and finding out that one of the followers of the apocalypse that was in free that is in Westside, I believe, was sealing water from the northern cistern in order to pipe it into Westside so that they could grow more food. And that that corporal had found out. And so I forget the Legion, not the Legion, but the follower of the apocalypse that killed him and made it look like he got killed out in the street. But he did this in order so people in Westside could have the water to drink.
And then your decision is in this quest is to turn him in either by telling him what happened and then making sure that nobody in Westside has enough water to grow their own food. Or you let him turn himself in, thereby protecting the water resources for the Westside. Or you can just kill him and then just tell people that the case had a dead end. Right.
So what did you go with? I had the follower of the apocalypse turn himself in. I thought that would have been the best option because that way people could still get enough water and the case would have been closed and then the family wouldn't have to deal with the fact that their son all of a sudden went missing. Right.
Right. And that would be the right thing to do. You know, he got caught. You should turn himself in.
Yeah. OK, now, did you feel like it worked out the way you expected it to? Yeah, I didn't think it worked out too bad. I mean, it was a pretty easy quest, but I mean, it's a moral dilemma of how desperate people are out there just for as, you know The train is going so fast it can't stop.
It's dark. You can't see in front of itself. And you just happen to be standing right at the place with a little little lever and you can decide if it's going to go on track A or track B and it splits. And by default, it's set up to go on track A and you look ahead on track A and you see a person standing on the track and you call out to them, but they can't hear you.
They're not getting off the track. And you know if you do not change the direction that this train is going, that they are going to become a smushed puddle on the train tracks. Right. Then you look on track B and there's four people on track B and they can't hear you either.
Do you change which direction the train tracks go? Now, chances are most of you guys are going to say no. Would you agree with that? I would definitely not change it.
Right, because it's one person versus four people. And if someone's going to die, one person is less deaths than four people. And you didn't cause the train. You're only there to potentially help them.
Right. It's only one person versus four people. This is where the dilemma gets tricky. What if that one person is your mom?
So notice the jump here is let's let's deposit into this person personal value. So now they're not just random strangers. The train either runs over your mother or runs over four strangers. What would you do?
My mom's getting old anyway. Bye, mom. You would just let it run over your mom. You know, she's his mom.
Or what if it's your what if it's your your best friend or what if it's your your kid or, you know, like anybody who like what if it's the person you care the most for in the world? If it was my son, no, four people would die. Right. Like this is this is an interesting dilemma.
What do the rest of you guys think? If it's my family or the people I care about, then yeah, that's always gonna take precedence before strangers. Like maybe not the healthiest mentality to have, but it's just how I am. But I think most people would decide with that because it affects you personally.
Right. And you know that that person you're going to save is like in most cases you're gonna be like, oh, that's a good person. That's somebody I care about. I think they're a good person.
I don't know those strangers. And even though there's four of them, I'm gonna save the person I know, especially if they're a good person that I care about, as opposed to four strangers. But ultimately, the other argument, the other side of that is, but that's four people versus one person. They might be they're somebody else's mom, son, daughter, whatever.
Best friend. Like, could you bring yourself to sacrifice your person you care about for the well-being of four strangers? No, because I'd have to live with the loss of the person that I care about every single day. I'd wake up thinking about them, go to bed thinking about them.
Now those four people have to die. Lanie, what do you think about this? I mean, I guess I would kill the four people. I mean, it doesn't make me happy.
No, it's a tough decision on purpose. Like, you're not going to be happy about it either way. No, obviously. If you have empathy, if you are a moral empathic person, you know, like, if you're sympathetic towards the needs of others and that kind of thing.
Right. But so here's let's let's raise this. And this is a way this is a twist. A lot of people don't put it, put this on.
Take that situation, move yourself out of the situation and put the person who has the ability to change the tracks. That's now Superman. And Lois Lane is on the train tracks or four other people. What would Superman do?
Stop the train. But pretend that it can't stop the train. It is a Kryptonite train. He can't stop the train.
He can only redirect it. What does he do? Well, I guess Lois Lane is gonna live. You think so?
I don't know everything. I don't think Superman would. I think Superman would go for the four over one. Right, because the superhero sacrifices for the well-being of everyone else.
Like that. That's the thing we learn. Right. In the movies, the superhero or in the comic books or whatever, the real hero is willing to sacrifice even even to their own death many times for the well-being of everyone else.
And yet when we are in that situation, we act like a villain. Isn't that weird? The villain is the one who makes the decision about the thing they care about to the detriment of the majority. And we justify that.
But when we posit that that person is a superhero, most people would say they sacrifice Lois Lane and save the four other people. Well, I don't claim to be morally good. I claim to be chaotic neutral. That is where I am and that is where I always stay.
Right, right. But it's just an it's an interesting thought process, though, right? Because when it's personal, our decisions are different. When it's objective, when it's out there somewhere, then we see things in a different way.
Right. We like to hold other people to standards that we ourselves do not want to hold ourselves to. And it's a very human thing. I'm not saying this is right or wrong with a capital R or capital W.
I'm just saying, like, like which thing is it? And that's what makes it so novel, is that when we see people make moral decisions that are sacrificial for the greater good, it stands out so much because it's so rare. It's against the thing that we know is the thing that is most likely to happen. And that's why those people stand out as heroes.
And usually we see it in the example of, you know, sacrificing yourself for the greater good, you know, like a like a war hero. Somebody who's willing to, you know, storm the beaches of Normandy in order to make sure that the Nazis don't take over the world so that, you know, we can have freedom and democracy and all that. Right. That's a war hero.
They're willing to sacrifice their own life for the greater good. But you put it in a more likely situation that you're like sacrificing the life of somebody you care about and all of a sudden it becomes more difficult. Because I don't want to be on a soapbox on this. I just want to hear some of your thoughts on this, too, like you.
Like Asimov's three laws. Like that's a that's a dilemma that's talked about a lot. Whereas if an AI and this is what they're trying to figure out with self-driving self-driving cars is, what does it choose to do? Does the car avoid hitting a group of several people in order to hit one person?
How do we train a computer software or an AI to make the right decision? Try and try to input whatever that moral, the moral fabric that we might have as humans into a machine. That's that's something that I think we're going to have a very hard time trying to quantify. Yeah, that's why this stuff is always difficult, because it's not, there's no clear answer.
There's always a way to justify one way or the other, depending on the things that you value more. Lanie, what's the time? I was actually reading about this the other day. The other thing with the self-driving cars, right, is what if the dilemma is between saving other people, like hitting another car or saving the person in the car, right?
How do you decide that? Right. Is the job of the car to protect the person driving it at all costs? Or is the job of the car to keep more people safe?
Right. Yeah. So there's, there's a lot with self-driving cars. That's that's a good example.
That is a good example. Um, so here's, here's another one. I'll throw this out there. This one's called hit and run late one night you were driving home in a bad rainstorm.
A drunk reeled out in front of your car and you try to stop, but you hit him. Nobody sees you. The guy looks and smells as if he's homeless. You check to see how badly he is hurt and realize he is dead.
You have never even had a speeding ticket and are an upright professional with a family and a well-known and respected, well-known respected in your community. Do you make a report anonymously, confess your crime or drive home and forget about it, knowing no one is going to pursue the death of a homeless drunk. So this is a situation in which it's like a tree falling in the forest. Did it actually happen?
Right. You know for a fact, if you were to walk away from the situation, you would be the only person who would ever know that it happened. Do you walk away? Do you report it anonymously or do you actually own up to do it?
I'd be gone. I'd be gone in a heartbeat. Bye-bye. Lanie.
I would, I mean, if there's an option to report it anonymously, I think that's what I would do because obviously in that scenario, you don't wanna be caught for it, but I would feel so terrible if I knew that that body was just out there because you don't know, right? You don't know who that person knows or maybe they do have a family, right? And like maybe, maybe it's tragic for them to disappear. You have no idea.
And just because they look and smell homeless doesn't mean that they are. You know, like you're just making assumptions based on, you know, the rapper the person is in. Maybe they, I mean, who knows, maybe they were on a camping trip and got lost in the woods. Yeah, I would look and smell like a homeless person, you know, Now, do you think you can live with yourself with that?
Like, what kind of... Some people... And, again, feel free to answer however you want. Some people, this would eat at them.
This decision would grow and grow and grow, and they would end up having nightmares and it would, like, eat at their subconscious. Some people would be able to just say, you know what, have it done. And they just move on with it. But it depends, you know?
I mean, it's tough because I've had some experience in this in the fact that my dad passed away of cancer. Watching him go through all of that, it was the literal worst thing I can think of. So you would see this as a form of mercy for him. Absolutely.
So that makes the decision a lot easier, right? Yeah. I get that. Sagret, did you have something?
Yeah, sorry. It's a little personal for me, so I kind of got distracted. I'm sorry, I was just touching on stuff. It's cool, but it is what it is.
It's a good dialogue. So in this hypothetical scenario, your father hasn't expressed whether they want to die or not? Yeah, you haven't talked to them about it. Again, I had to watch my dad die from COPD, which is a pretty long, hard thing.
And for a long time, he had expressed to me that he was ready to go, and he was okay. But about a month before he died, he actually told me that he's been ready for so long, but now that he's almost there, he realizes he wants to hang on a little bit longer. And that, I don't know, that kind of popped into my head. But if he hadn't expressed whether he would want to die or not, then I don't think I would take that decision in my own hands, regardless of how it's going to benefit me.
Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. It's tough. These are tough decisions.
Nighttime, did you have any thoughts on this? No final thoughts. Let's see. Some of these deal with different kinds of things.
So, for example, this one has to do with wealth. So it says your friend offers you an opportunity to make a great deal of money very quickly. He has arranged to set up an offshore account for your profits. He will not tell you exactly how he's making this money, but you get the impression it is not exactly legal.
He only wants an investment of $500 and promises you will have enough for your minimal investment that you will never need to work again. Do you give him $500 deciding if you don't know how he's making it, then you're in the clear? Do you demand to know the details before getting involved, or do you decide that you want no part in the deal and just trust your instinct that the offer is shady and you might even get into legal trouble? I would want to make an educated decision.
So you would want the details. So I would ask. Okay, and what if they're not willing to give you the details? Then probably I wouldn't do it, but probably because I don't know.
If they can't tell me what they're doing, I would rather know that it's something terrible, because, I mean, who knows? Maybe it's not that terrible. I don't know. Anyway.
How terrible is it? Let's just say it's arms dealing. Like, I don't know. Well, what I was thinking was, if they can't tell me what it is, how do I know that they're even trustworthy enough to actually take my money and, like, do what they say they will, you know?
How do I know they actually have a plan? Or what if they say it's to keep you safe, so you don't know? So you complete ignorance, like... Plausible deniability.
Plausible deniability. Would you go with it? I mean, that almost confirms, yes, this is an illegal thing, without saying that it is. Stagger has some thoughts.
Lainey's mulling this over still. In this scenario, I mean... Yeah, I can't take the money unless he tells me what it is. And even if I knew it was, like, anything that was illegal or unethical, I don't think I'd be able to take it.
Not that I don't want to, but it's like, for my own personal, I don't know, like, health, mental health, spiritual health, like, I'm in NA, and part of the program is, like, at least attempting to have, like, rigorous moral honesty and stuff. And I, like, for me, uh... Something like that, weighing on my conscience could lead to, like, a relapse, or acting out in ways that would be seriously detrimental to my life that I managed to put together. So I have to stay on the straight and narrow.
I agree with you a lot on this. The older I get, the more I realize the psychological tax of your decisions, and the things that you're doing, and the things you spend your money on, and the ways you interact with other people. Like, this is something that I don't think we put enough weight on when we're younger, because we feel kind of invulnerable. But as you get older, you start to realize that, like, something like this, even if you don't know what it is, the worry that you will eventually have to own up for whatever this is, and that it's going to come back and haunt you, could be enough to, like, that added level of stress over time is enough to just mess everything else up.
And the more you make these kinds of decisions, the more of those you have, and the more they build up. Because if you're able to make one of those decisions, you're probably able to make lots of those decisions. And the more of those lottery tickets you pull, the more likely one of those is going to actually cash in at some point, and you're going to have to pay off for it. That's a terrible analogy, but you guys understand what I'm saying.
But, so yeah, I side with you on that. I think that that's, like, more likely than not to actually have a long-term detriment, even if it makes it so that you can financially be okay in the future. I think that the long-term worry is not worth any amount of money. That's my standpoint on it, but that doesn't mean I'm right or wrong.
That's just where I'm at with my life. I could probably do it if it was Bitcoin. That would be untraceable. It's not real money anyway, so what's the problem?
It's not real money, but it has bought me real things. It will very soon be real money. Like, it's on its way. You know, like, at some point it will be.
And it's taxed like real money now. Yeah, I mean, honestly, though, I would just give him the $500 and say, have fun. If it works out, it works out. If it doesn't work out, then I'm out $500.
Yeah, well, I don't think the worry is that you're out $500. I think the worry is that, like, you know, the FBI comes knocking at your door, and all of a sudden you're implicated in some sort of, like, human trafficking or drug ring or something. Or worse, terrorist hunting. Plausible deniability.
I know nothing about it. He just asked me to borrow $500. Or like nighttime said, some terrorist comes knocking at your door with AK-47s doing the knocking, and it doesn't matter if you have plausible deniability. I don't know.
I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. Okay, okay. Yeah, these are fun because, like, they make you think, you know? Like, what would I do?
And most of us are never going to be in these situations, but we're going to be in emotionally similar situations, potentially. You guys have any other thoughts on any Fallout stuff that kind of lines up with any of this? Or reminds you of anything in the games that you've had to do? Go ahead, Ling.
Nighttime's got a timer. Go ahead. Yeah, some of the stuff that the Institute asks you to do is pretty dark and damaging, especially, like, I think it was Warwick Homestead. You start talking to the head of the household there, and it's like, oh, he's my contact.
Oh, they took the original and replaced him with this one. And then you're talking to the family, and the wife is like, yeah, I kind of think he's not really my husband because he's way nicer than my actual husband. And everything's better now, so I don't really care. And it's like, you can't.
And then the other, the farmhands are convinced that he's a synth, and one of them goes to a good neighbor to try to hire a contract killer. And then halfway, I think at the end of the quest, you have to talk down the guy with the pistol and try to convince him the guy is totally not a synth, even though he's a completely different acting human being. And then the guy sits there and cries for like two days over outside the fence line. I mean, it's dark.
I mean, they replaced a human being with another person, but everybody doesn't really seem to have a problem with the new guy that's got the same face. Yeah, and then I guess the other question is, like, what else could you do about it? You know, like, You tell them? Do you tell them that, like, hey, no, that's not him.
That's a synth from the Institute. But, like, the thing is, what if the Institute decides to terminate the project? Right. And even if it is, like, what are you going to do about it?
You're going to kill the synth? Yeah. Well, I mean, if the Institute decides to terminate What they did was they sacrificed the quality of the nature around them. They polluted a lot.
They sacrificed the well-being of their own citizens, and they made a lot of these very hard and what would be considered generally unethical decisions, but they raised the status of their country and their people in the world, and now they're starting to pull back on those things. They're starting to implement more procedures to reduce pollution, to increase the well-being of the population. And I'm not saying that, like, I don't want people writing me saying, oh, Tom's a communist now. I'm like, I'm not saying that this justifies it, but what I am saying is if this means that multiple, multiple generations of Chinese citizens can live better, more fortunate, more safe and secure lives, was it justified, Sagar?
And that's something that always kind of interested me. I mean, like, to achieve the level of technology and, like, quality of life we have in the United States, we had our own industrial revolution. The United States stepped on a ton of people, violated tons of rights, polluted the frick out of the environment, and had slaves. And had slaves.
Yeah. And now we want to take these developing countries that are trying to achieve their own, like, high quality of life and level of technology and go, no, no, that's pollution. It's bad. Uh, but like, it's...
Everybody who's on top in the world stage at some point broke the ethical codes and stepped on other people. The Romans had slaves. The, um, the colonial empires of Europe colonized and took over lands from indigenous people across the globe. The United States did the same thing across North America.
All of those groups polluted and polluted until they were at the top of their economies. Um, all of this stuff has happened that way. It doesn't mean it's okay. No, no.
But it, you know, it happened. Like, and it creates, and you're right, like, from an individual standpoint, no, those are terrible decisions. You shouldn't do that. From a country standpoint, did it help the well-being of your society in the long run?
Yeah, yes. But did it also hurt the well-being of your society in the long run? That's my answer. We don't need any more Jeff Bezos.
Yeah, right. Yeah, I agree. I agree with that as well. Let's do it in a way where we foster competition, you know, that would be awesome because I would love a real competitor to Amazon.
We just don't have one. We don't have one. Right. I want real competition.
I want real competition to the ISB that many of us have only one or two choices of for our internet. I want real competition for that. Well, I could either have Spectrum, which is charter, or I could have dial-up. Right, that's not really an option.
That's really not choices. Yeah. Yeah, we should have choices, right? And people get upset about this stuff, like, well, you know, we should tax the rich.
Yeah, but we should have a system that doesn't, like, by default create these situations where, like, we have the ultra-rich, you know? Like, there should be more competition. It should be more difficult for any one person to become that powerful. And that can only be mandated by government.
And we should have had more than just Vault-Tec building those vaults. We should have had more companies. That's my answer. We don't need any more Jeff Bezos.
Yeah, right. Yeah, I agree. I agree with that as well. That's the answer.
Let's do it in a way where we foster competition. You know, that would be awesome because I would love a real competitor to Amazon. We just don't have one. We don't have one.
Right. I want real competition. I want real competition to the ISB that many of us have only one or two choices of for our internet. I want real competition for that, you know?
Well, I could either have Spectrum, which is charter, or I could have dial-up. Right, that's not really an option. That's really not choices. Yeah, yeah.
No, we should have choices, right? And people get upset about this stuff. Like, well, you know, we should tax the rich. Well, yeah, but we should have a system that doesn't, like, by default, create these situations where, like, we have the ultra-rich, you know?
Like, there should be more competition. It should be more difficult for any one person to become that powerful. And that can only be mandated by government. And we should have had more than just Vault-Tec building those vaults.
We should have had more companies. That's my answer. We don't need any more Jeff Bezos. Yeah, right.
Yeah, I agree. I agree with that as well. Let's do it in a way where we foster competition. You know, that would be awesome.
Because I would love a real competitor to Amazon. We just don't have one. We don't have one. Right?
I want real competition. I want real competition to the ISB that many of us have only one or two choices of for our internet. I want real competition for that. Well, I could either have Spectrum, which is chartered, or I could have dial-up.
Right, that's not really an option. That's really not choices. Yeah, yeah. No, we should have choices, right?
And people get upset about this stuff. Like, well, you know, we should tax the rich. Well, yeah, but we should have a system that doesn't, like, by default, create these situations where, like, we have the ultra-rich, you know? Like, there should be more competition.
It should be more difficult for any one person to become that powerful. And that can only be mandated by government. Yeah, we should have had more than just Vault-Tec building those vaults. We should have had more companies.
That's my answer. We don't need any more Jeff Bezos. Yeah, right. Yeah, I agree.
I agree with that as well. That's my answer. We don't need any more Jeff Bezos. Yeah, right.
Yeah, I agree. I agree with that as well. That's my answer. We don't need any more Jeff Bezos.
Yeah, right. Yeah, I agree. I agree with that as well. That's my answer.
We don't need any more Jeff Bezos. Yeah, right. Yeah, I agree. I agree with that as well.
That's my answer. We don't need any more Jeff Bezos. Yeah, right. Yeah, I agree.
I agree with that as well. That's my answer. We don't need any more Jeff Bezos. Yeah, right.
Yeah, I agree. I agree with that as well. That's my answer. We don't need any more Jeff Bezos.
Yeah, right. Yeah, I agree. I agree with that as well. That's my answer.
We don't need any more Jeff Bezos.