The Emperor and the Primarchs

[Karhedron]

Not sure what you mean about the Pauli-exclusion principle.

D'oh! 

 

Of course I actually meant Heisenberg Uncertainty principle where you cannot simultaneously know a particle's position and velocity precisely. The more accurately you know one, the greater the uncertainty in the other. I have amended the OP.

 

That'll teach me to try and be clever on a Friday afternoon. 

[The_son_of_Dorn]

I just wrote out a lengthy reply on word but wont let me paste it?

[The_son_of_Dorn]

I get very confused with this sort of thing. I generally try and lean towards the Emperor "Knows without knowing". My personal perspective is even the future that can be "changed" is as a result of predeterminism (Is that even a word?).

 

 

 

A lot of the stuff even the bad is predestined. For whatever sake or reason usually seems arbitrary at best (More universal law than inference by the dark gods).  However I also believe the Emperors "Divinity" comes from a sort of "faith" in himself and in others. That despite adversity he believes humanity as a whole will still overcome.  There is also a part of me that would like to believe that his sons have "fallen" so they may better understand the extensive horror of the emotional spectrum they are experiencing and in a way may actually one day recover from. (Sort of like how the best person to be a drug abuse councillor may of once himself been a drug addict, ergo they understand personally what the addict is going through)  Therefore the fallen primarchs actually become redeemed and are actually better positioned to lead humanity against the chaos of the warp. Don’t get me wrong, not all can be saved but for those that are. CHA CHING!

 

 

 

I know I’ve gone a bit of the topic but for me the greatest Primarch who stands a form of redemption is Mortation. I like how he is into numerology and has on occasion even had great moments of self introspection about his actions and life choices.  I also think (or again personally like to believe) he knew certain Primarchs had to fall to overcome their respective “god” in order to best overcome them.

 

 

 

Just my 2 penneth trying to look at things in a potentially positive light.

[Legionnaire of the VIIth]

Well as a Craftworld Eldar player and having read most of the (all be it too few) books written from their perspective I see the future within Warhammer 40k as being an ever growing tree diagram. Basically for every choice from the point you start looking at it you have divergent choices, once those moments pass in real time for you they become fixed points and viewing time backwards only shows a single line with points of what has happened, divergent pasts from those you live in are no longer able to be seen as they never came about and no longer exist in your reality. So if you look at a point in the future you may see three divergent paths, and depending on choice, divergent futures can be traced from the choice of action coming off of each one you choose to explore. To make it more complicated these choices aren't all reliant on you, they are also reliant on the actions of everyone involved in the "watershed moment" (the point in time the most important choices are to be made) and properly reading their actions and what they will do while matching the choices you will make will help to direct you to your desired future outcome.

 

Now it is easy to lose your way along all of this, you might even think that you have directed the future towards the point that you want only to actually be traveling down a different path. One that very closely resembles the point you are seeking or at one of the watershed moments you let your guard down and the variables (other people and things which are interacting with the world around you and the potential future) throw off your path or revealing a new future you didn't explore, notice, misunderstood (after all they aren't actually seeing a diagram but are getting glimpses of event that they have to interpret), or was maybe even obscured (warp entity shenanigans), making it all go wrong in the end. Or you, not properly understanding what you are doing might even guide the path down one that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't started meddling with it. For instance seeing the destruction of a world, you follow that path and do everything you can to save the world only the problem was, if you had never begun your path to save the world, that world would never have been at risk in the first place as you didn't investigate or understand fully what ultimately caused the disaster to happen that had to be overcome.

 

So to me, the Emperor is not all knowing, he is just an intellect far beyond anything I would ever be able to comprehend. He charted paths to a future he desired, a future in which only the idealized version on humanity he had lived in the galaxy. The issue is he isn't the only player, other beings such as the Chaos Gods had their own game they were playing. So at watershed moments they cast their lots and the Emperor failed to prevent or was powerless (thus not all powerful) to prevent them. Events such as the Primarchs being scattered. Perhaps it was hubris (like Magnus') which had him let his guard down. This resulted in the Primarchs not being the Son's he would have raised, the ones that would have realized his desired future. Now the path had diverged, to make the best of it he adjusted tracing down the multitude of possible futures, killing the Sons who would not allow for the realization of his desired future and took in the ones that he saw in a future that could still realize a future very similar to the one he had been aiming for originally.

 

Once again he let his guard down or through his traveling along the path of that future, while managing an Empire and commanding an incomprehensibly massive military force for the Crusade, let things shift unnoticed. The other players put things along the Primarchs paths, subtle objects to twist and corrupt them or in whispers planted ideas in their heads. Perhaps the Emperor had faith that his power and intellect had put them along the path he desired so he started focusing on other things. After all the Primarchs are his creation and while some were like children rebelling against their parent he might have still viewed them as being good children. He may have believed that they would ultimately make the correct decisions to keep the future on track while he focused on other elements that were of vital importance to the realization of that potential future. There are no guaranteed events in the future, there are always paths that turn away from them but people have to cooperate with that future to realize it.

 

In the End, did he love his Sons? Perhaps he loved the ideal that he wanted them to be and they ultimately didn't live up to. Perhaps he loved them while also using them like one love their pet that is also their seeing eye dog, both something they have an affection for while also serving a purpose to their continued existence. Or perhaps he loved them like an engineer loves his pet project, having great affection for it but still seeing them as machines that serve the purpose they were intended to do; once that job is done well maybe they could be repurposed. Or maybe it was all something else to him, after all he is not really human (I don't buy into the god theory personally), his powers and intellect make him far to alien to be one of us common creatures called human.

 

In the end this is of course nothing more than my opinion and views.

[TorvaldTheMild]

Well as a Craftworld Eldar player and having read most of the (all be it too few) books written from their perspective I see the future within Warhammer 40k as being an ever growing tree diagram. Basically for every choice from the point you start looking at it you have divergent choices, once those moments pass in real time for you they become fixed points and viewing time backwards only shows a single line with points of what has happened, divergent pasts from those you live in are no longer able to be seen as they never came about and no longer exist in your reality. So if you look at a point in the future you may see three divergent paths, and depending on choice, divergent futures can be traced from the choice of action coming off of each one you choose to explore. To make it more complicated these choices aren't all reliant on you, they are also reliant on the actions of everyone involved in the "watershed moment" (the point in time the most important choices are to be made) and properly reading their actions and what they will do while matching the choices you will make will help to direct you to your desired future outcome.

 

Now it is easy to lose your way along all of this, you might even think that you have directed the future towards the point that you want only to actually be traveling down a different path. One that very closely resembles the point you are seeking or at one of the watershed moments you let your guard down and the variables (other people and things which are interacting with the world around you and the potential future) throw off your path or revealing a new future you didn't explore, notice, misunderstood (after all they aren't actually seeing a diagram but are getting glimpses of event that they have to interpret), or was maybe even obscured (warp entity shenanigans), making it all go wrong in the end. Or you, not properly understanding what you are doing might even guide the path down one that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't started meddling with it. For instance seeing the destruction of a world, you follow that path and do everything you can to save the world only the problem was, if you had never begun your path to save the world, that world would never have been at risk in the first place as you didn't investigate or understand fully what ultimately caused the disaster to happen that had to be overcome.

 

So to me, the Emperor is not all knowing, he is just an intellect far beyond anything I would ever be able to comprehend. He charted paths to a future he desired, a future in which only the idealized version on humanity he had lived in the galaxy. The issue is he isn't the only player, other beings such as the Chaos Gods had their own game they were playing. So at watershed moments they cast their lots and the Emperor failed to prevent or was powerless (thus not all powerful) to prevent them. Events such as the Primarchs being scattered. Perhaps it was hubris (like Magnus') which had him let his guard down. This resulted in the Primarchs not being the Son's he would have raised, the ones that would have realized his desired future. Now the path had diverged, to make the best of it he adjusted tracing down the multitude of possible futures, killing the Sons who would not allow for the realization of his desired future and took in the ones that he saw in a future that could still realize a future very similar to the one he had been aiming for originally.

 

Once again he let his guard down or through his traveling along the path of that future, while managing an Empire and commanding an incomprehensibly massive military force for the Crusade, let things shift unnoticed. The other players put things along the Primarchs paths, subtle objects to twist and corrupt them or in whispers planted ideas in their heads. Perhaps the Emperor had faith that his power and intellect had put them along the path he desired so he started focusing on other things. After all the Primarchs are his creation and while some were like children rebelling against their parent he might have still viewed them as being good children. He may have believed that they would ultimately make the correct decisions to keep the future on track while he focused on other elements that were of vital importance to the realization of that potential future. There are no guaranteed events in the future, there are always paths that turn away from them but people have to cooperate with that future to realize it.

 

In the End, did he love his Sons? Perhaps he loved the ideal that he wanted them to be and they ultimately didn't live up to. Perhaps he loved them while also using them like one love their pet that is also their seeing eye dog, both something they have an affection for while also serving a purpose to their continued existence. Or perhaps he loved them like an engineer loves his pet project, having great affection for it but still seeing them as machines that serve the purpose they were intended to do; once that job is done well maybe they could be repurposed. Or maybe it was all something else to him, after all he is not really human (I don't buy into the god theory personally), his powers and intellect make him far to alien to be one of us common creatures called human.

 

In the end this is of course nothing more than my opinion and views.

Yeah but you always have to be sceptical of foresight, the information you glean comes from the warp.  The Eldar are better than any other race at divination but they still absolutely suck at it, they are right as much of the time as they are wrong.  I think the Emperor knows that, because he is by far more psychically powerful and skillful than any living Eldar but he sees its limitations and he downplays the use of it as being an aid at best, where the Eldar pride themselves in its effectiveness to the extreme.   

[Lord_Caerolion]

Because again, if he were all-powerful, it means he should be able to select exactly which future would occur (otherwise there are things outside his power), and going by the butterfly effect that means that a random Grot on the other side of the galaxy could have far-reaching implications in what occurs.

 

Sure, the Emperor can see the future and adapt accordingly, but that doesn't make the Emperor all-powerful, as the existance of the Heresy, or just Farseers in general, well show.

[b1soul]

The Emperor is a Chairman of the Board who doesn't trust the company execs and therefore withholds from them critical information they need to deal effectively with the biggest challenge faced by the company. This Chairman has limited this information to himself and his Vice-Chairman. The CEO (Horus) and the other c-suite execs (the other primarchs) are kept in the dark, but the Head of HR (Russ) has some insight since he's responsible for axing executives.

[Karhedron]

The Emperor is a Chairman of the Board who doesn't trust the company execs and therefore withholds from them critical information they need to deal effectively with the biggest challenge faced by the company. This Chairman has limited this information to himself and his Vice-Chairman. The CEO (Horus) and the other c-suite execs (the other primarchs) are kept in the dark, but the Head of HR (Russ) has some insight since he's responsible for axing executives.

The head of R&D (Magnus) also had some insight but in his case, an incomplete picture was worse than no picture as he overstepped his brief and sent the stock tumbling. The Head of Corporate Espionage (Alpharius/Omegon) had also worked out some of the details and jumped in bed with the CEO.

[Legionnaire of the VIIth]

And in this corporation analogy where does Malcador come in?

[Slasher956]

Malcador is the EA to the chairman, so whilst he has power and knoweldge they come directly from the chairman so the execs never know exactly how much he has of either....

[bluntblade]

 

The Emperor is a Chairman of the Board who doesn't trust the company execs and therefore withholds from them critical information they need to deal effectively with the biggest challenge faced by the company. This Chairman has limited this information to himself and his Vice-Chairman. The CEO (Horus) and the other c-suite execs (the other primarchs) are kept in the dark, but the Head of HR (Russ) has some insight since he's responsible for axing executives.

The head of R&D (Magnus) also had some insight but in his case, an incomplete picture was worse than no picture as he overstepped his brief and sent the stock tumbling. The Head of Corporate Espionage (Alpharius/Omegon) had also worked out some of the details and jumped in bed with the CEO.

You forget the bit where Corporate Espionage decides to work with a hostile conglomerate.

[b1soul]

I think of Malcador as the vice-chairman of the board

 

Magnus is CMO, Chief Magic Officer (except magic isn't supposed to exist but it kinda does)

 

Guilliman could be CFO, as the avenging bean counter

 

General Counsel Curze is insane

 

I guess Vulkan or Ferrus could be CTO

 

Perturabo would like to be CTO, but he's stuck being COO or the glorified head of some new business unit the company doesn't care about

 

Russ is Chief of HR and is in charge of handling exit interviews, this didn't go well with the CMO

[TorvaldTheMild]

I think I finally understand what the Emperor meant by "“I know some people think me omnipotent. But there is a catch with being all powerful and all knowing” “You can't be both at the same time”. I think he said this because he doesn't use his omniscience, he only uses his omnipotence (using the word relatively, as its obvious he isn't omnipotent by the literal definition), as he needs Kai Zulane to tell him the future, of the Pyrrhic victory against Horus. It also makes the fact of his failures even more comprehensible. Maybe he makes such massive errors because he doesn't use divination as it would take too much of his psychic might, I mean he is more powerful than any farseer yet he doesn't seem that apt at divination and like in outcast dead he literally needs others do divine the future for him.

 

=][= Do not attempt to dodge the swear filter =][=

[redmapa]

I dont think anyone in 40k is good at divination or it being a clear cut subject. Eldrad is the greatest farseer and he has failed more often than not, he even failed his most important gamble in bringing Ynnead to life and wasnt able to foresee the Deathwatch stopping the ritual, then you have Tzeentch who while he sees all he still isnt able to have a reliable way to see the future to the point that he sacrificed countless demons to get a more reliable way to see the future.

 

So while I think I agree the Emperor may not be a great diviner I dont think anyone is.

[Marshal Loss]

Have you read Master of Mankind? It's kind of essential reading when it comes to the big E & prophecy.

[phoenix01]

In order to truly be omniscient, you must be outside of time. Think of time like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. When you are on the street corner watching the parade go by, you can see the float or balloon or band right in front of you, and see something of the float or balloon or band just ahead and just behind the one in front of you. This is our viewpoint of the past, present, and future. We experience what is just in front of us, we can remember what just happened (the float that just passed us), and we might get an imperfect glimpse of what is coming in the future (anticipation of the float that is coming up behind the one in front of you). But if you are in a helicopter high above the city streets, you can see the parade's beginning and end and all points in between. An omniscient being is like the parade viewer in the helicopter, able to see the beginning and the end, but the Emperor's argument of "You can't be both at the same time" is that while the helicopter rider may see the whole parade at once, he can't interact with the parade. He can't hear the music played by the bands or performers, or really enjoy the balloons as they all face toward the ground, or see the details of the floats.

[TorvaldTheMild]

Have you read Master of Mankind? It's kind of essential reading when it comes to the big E & prophecy.

Yes I've read it but what are you trying to point out?

[TorvaldTheMild]

In order to truly be omniscient, you must be outside of time. Think of time like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. When you are on the street corner watching the parade go by, you can see the float or balloon or band right in front of you, and see something of the float or balloon or band just ahead and just behind the one in front of you. This is our viewpoint of the past, present, and future. We experience what is just in front of us, we can remember what just happened (the float that just passed us), and we might get an imperfect glimpse of what is coming in the future (anticipation of the float that is coming up behind the one in front of you). But if you are in a helicopter high above the city streets, you can see the parade's beginning and end and all points in between. An omniscient being is like the parade viewer in the helicopter, able to see the beginning and the end, but the Emperor's argument of "You can't be both at the same time" is that while the helicopter rider may see the whole parade at once, he can't interact with the parade. He can't hear the music played by the bands or performers, or really enjoy the balloons as they all face toward the ground, or see the details of the floats.

You are missing the point.

[phoenix01]

Am I missing the point? Perhaps I am agreeing with you.

 

We know that the Emperor lived from the greatest antiquity. All those years up until the Unification Wars, he did nothing, exercised no power. All he did was watch. Then, just before the Unification Wars, he gave up his omniscience for omnipotence. He was no longer willing to just watch and not participate. He wanted to participate. He wanted to "hear the music, see the detail of the floats." That meant giving up his omniscience. Maybe this swap is because both omniscience and omnipotence require as you said "too much of his psychic might". Maybe it is a built in physical law that affects the exercise of such power. Who knows?

 

Since the future is always changing, this swap was a risk. He would have to rely on the far-sight of others to avoid obstacles in his plan. Unfortunately, those he relied upon were far from perfect in their far-sight.

[bluntblade]

I feel like it was more that He had gone from nudging things to actually grabbing the wheel.

[The_son_of_Dorn]

Maybe that's what he saw as needed. "Here's the part where I take over"

[b1soul]

Worst driver ever?

[Legionnaire of the VIIth]

Worst driver ever?

Well it seems to me, after that car accident with the Orks at the Ullanor intersection that nearly cost him his life he became to afraid to drive himself anymore and just spent his time in his private workshops trying to invent a new form of transportation that wasn't as scary. Unfortunately his Sons and his team of chauffeurs weren't that great of drivers and began systematically crashing his fleet of limousines.

[The_son_of_Dorn]

Power level discrepancy is amazing in warhammer. Big E can mentally snap his fingers and make a whole legion bend the knee but almost get killed by an angry green boi

[bluntblade]

But then the circumstances are very different. There's all your power focused on a task when you presumably haven't been doing anything strenuous for a while, and there's going up against a Warboss who's outfitted to the nines after hours of battle and falling several kilometres down a hole.