[General Battuta]

I still think the discussion is dancing around the question of how much of the UEF's success belongs to the Vishnans and how much to genuine, home-grown human progress.

[Phantom Hoover]

Something like half the posts on the last page have been convoluted analogies. I know it's tempting to explain the similarities between the Vishnans and Hitler, but the standard of discussion is a lot higher if everyone tries to stick to the issues at hand.

[manwiththemachinegun]

The damage is probably not irreversible, I'm not trying to say every aspect of the UEF was designed to accommodate Vishnan sensibilities. But then, they can afford to take the long view, that's what Unbutu is all about if I've read the background information right. It's a council designed to steer humanity towards a long range goal.

Alpha One and the other survivors of the Lucifer mission were undoubtedly gifted with a glimpse of their enemy's intentions. We know that Mars and Jupiter and other factions deal with Unbutu differently. But on a grand scale, they're still just pieces on a board being used for some purpose. "Dancing around" how much credit the UEF is to be given is difficult from the perspective of Joe player (such as myself), because we are not given much information as to how much the upper leadership of the Elders has been compromised. They are ALL Nagari sensitive and therefore all are vulnerable to influence. You don't see that possibly reducing the impact normal humans have on their environment?

The Hammer of Light fanatics embrace this connection with the Shivans and welcome their judgement. The one Elder who disagreed with the Council was assassinated with the player pulling the trigger.

Keep in mind, we're working with the information Blue Planet has presented. If our conclusions are wrong, they're wrong. But I have not seen much information to suggest the UEF has a long term solution to the Shivans or Vishnans beyond some super secret project we only hear a few lines of dialogue about. Cassandra is part of it, but that only opens the door to the meeting with Bosch and his biased opinion about what Laporte should do.

Laporte's cries about being rats in a maze resonated with me precisely because there doesn't seem to a faction that is free of manipulation, one that is working towards human survival of the status-quo beyond following the bidding of the Shivans, or trusting the "good will" of a collective of energy beings that judge failure most harshly.

Something like half the posts on the last page have been convoluted analogies. I know it's tempting to explain the similarities between the Vishnans and Hitler, but the standard of discussion is a lot higher if everyone tries to stick to the issues at hand.

What? No one made a comparison between Hitler and anything. The Vishnans according to Bei have cut communication with the UEF and have given their permission for a Shivan cull. That is very relevant to the discussion as to whether or not the Vishnans have the interests of humanity in mind, or their own.

[Phantom Hoover]

yes the reason i used that as an example was to avoid singling out anyone or indeed bothering to remember what they said

[Ravenholme]

Laporte's cries about being rats in a maze resonated with me precisely because there doesn't seem to a faction that is free of manipulation, one that is working towards human survival of the status-quo beyond following the bidding of the Shivans, or trusting the "good will" of a collective of energy beings that judge failure most harshly.

The Gaian Effort. Ignore the radical, hardline elements and that's pretty much their entire raison d'être

[manwiththemachinegun]

On the plus side their ships are tough as hell, shame about those unshielded reactor covers, the bane of all super warships.

[Luis Dias]

It seems like a lot of the question here is whether the Vishnans said 'here's the blueprint, make it happen', or whether the Elders said 'what's the end goal? We're a smart, resourceful species, we'll figure out a way'.

I personally lean towards the latter; the UEF was a human achievement.

The question itself is a much much bigger and interesting one than the answer. Why is the "responsibility" so important? Why is volition so important?

Lets not try to have the cake and eat it. To take an analogy, the reason why torture is such a moral problem is precisely because it works, not because it doesn't. If it didn't, there wouldn't even be a moral issue (and Geneva conventions and what nots). Likewise, the possibility of Humanity's salvation being independent from mankind's volition is a much darker and terrible dillema. For then the question is, should we abandon volition of our own future or should we be eradicated?

Now go far away from the clichés. All contemporary (and traditional) drama in western fiction has been precisely about how we control our destinies and how that imperative is way beyond any other moral dillema. Either that or its denial (Say compare Looper with 12 monkeys).

Why not transcend this very question? Or is that impossible? Serious question.

[The E]

Why is volition so important?

is everything. You should know this.

[-Sara-]

But torture doesn't always work, as at some point people will say anything you want to hear, even if it is not at all the truth. And they'll believe what they say with conviction too.

With torture, the line between interrogation and conditioning is thin and when  your victim starts to believe their own lies, they cannot tell you the whole truth anymore. Not because they don't want to, but because they're convinced they're telling the truth, oblivious to the fact that the new truth is fabricated to appease their captor.

It's like retrieving data from a harddisk, if you're not careful and do it wrong, data becomes corrupted and irretrievably broken.

[Luis Dias]

But torture doesn't always work, as at some point people will say anything you want to hear, even if it is not at all the truth. And they'll believe what they say with conviction too.

With torture, the line between interrogation and conditioning is thin and when  your victim starts to believe their own lies, they cannot tell you the whole truth anymore. Not because they don't want to, but because they're convinced they're telling the truth, oblivious to the fact that the new truth is fabricated to appease their captor.

It's like retrieving data from a harddisk, if you're not careful and do it wrong, data becomes corrupted and irretrievably broken.

That's the kind of discussion that I really do not want to delve into. I disagree with you and so does most intelligence agencies around the world for obvious reasons. The myth of this method being "bad" seems to me very pernicious for two reasons. First, it is a lie (torture like all tools available, is not perfect and has its aforementioned flaws, but it *does* give precious intel for the agencies using it), and second it flattens what is foremost a moral dillema into an engineering problem: "It does not work, therefore we should not use it".

The flattening (2) isn't bad per se, but because it is a lie (1), it becomes perverse.

Anyways, this is the last comment I'll make about torture. My point was *not* about torture, but about moral dilemmas that are incredibly mind****ing to deal with.

[The E]

And should anyone want to follow up this discussion with further discussions of torture, I would liek to remind you that we have a General Discussion board for that purpose.

[James Razor]

Well, my point of view is that saving humanity by changing it (or the human nature) IS NOT saving humanity.

The difference in between the Shivans and the Vishnans isnt all that great tbh.: One side destroys humanity by simple extinction, the other one by altering it in something else. But if u look at it from some point of view, at the end the outcome is very simliar. I one case there is just no one left to remember it.

If we look at history, i have to say that i belive that humanity can save itself. Someone else allready brought up Modern Day Europe as example. It isnt perfect yet, but it is a big improvement compared to what was. I have a great-grandmother that is turing 100 years old in april. She LIVED throught he stuff i did read in my history books at school.

If u go back one hundread years from now u will find out that we have A LOT of achievments to be proud of.

But what we realy need is to know the exact extent of vishnan involment. Because there is a important difference in teaching a child something and let it self figure out what is best for itself while preventing it from the most disasterous consequences(*), or FORCING a wanted behaviour onto the child without letting itself find out and understand why this behaviour is suboptimal (i want to avoid the word *bad* here).

Both methods have been explored in real life, and as far as i know the first method is todays commonly accepted method of education.


* Just to go a little bit into detail of what i mean: For example i wouldnt allow a child to play with explosives, but i would very well allow it to ride bike or climb on a tree or let it play in ways that might result in a broken leg. But i would try to minimize the risks, give helpfull advices and try to minimize the damage (bike ride -> helmet) that can occure. But not neccissarily prevent all harm from it by turing it into a michelin puppet.

So it is very important to know how and to what extend the vishnans have been interfering. Have they been like caring parents or total control freaks?

I could live and accept the caring parent version (which i dont belive in, see their reaction to the war), but i couldnt live being totaly controlled by them. There is an expression that pretty much sums it up in that case: Better die standing that living on your knees.

[SaltyWaffles]

What I'm confused about is *how* the Elders are compromised by the Vishnans, and why the Vishnans are acting the way they are...it just doesn't add up as I understand it.

They extensively manipulate and help shape human culture/society in Sol for decades, resulting in Ubuntu and the UEF. Come WiH, the UEF is invaded without provocation (justified or not) by an outside, unforeseeable force, which they resist for 20-ish months with purely defensive tactics while they struggle to defend themselves and reconcile this war of self-defense with their nature of Ubuntu and diplomacy. They're still holding on fairly well, and apparently there is hope for a victory that is not won purely through force of arms.

So the Vishnans do a 180 and not only completely give up on humanity as a whole, but order a xenocide of humanity? Dafuq? And it's implied that they did this roughly a year ago--long before Jupiter fell or Ubuntu was truly in jeopardy. So...seriously, what the **** is up with the Vishnans? Aren't they just making themselves look like childish, foolish, and inferior counterparts to the Shivans almost immediately after they berated the Shivans for being 'clearly' wrong about humanity and the Vishnan plans for them?

For a nigh-immortal race, the Vishnans sure have ridiculously little patience or tolerance, not to mention determination to try harder or see things through. The moment their own plan doesn't go perfectly, they abandon the plan and order a purge of all of its elements?

In this sense, it wasn't the Sol War that triggered the Vishnans' abandonment of humanity, or the growing interest of the Shivans. It was their own utter failure to plan or adapt that caused it, on top of the fact that it takes *so little* for them to abandon humanity in the first place.

But further, both the Vishnan and Shivan positions about judging races seems ludicrously absurd. It's like butchering all toddlers who aren't exceptionally mature, rather than giving them a chance to grow, learn, and develop before deciding whether to spare or massacre them. So the Vasudans and Terrans had a fairly low-intensity war shortly after first contact? Okay, but at least they seem to be learning from the experience and--notably--are not trying to enslave or exterminate each other. So mercilessly wiping out both races is somehow a more 'mature' course of action? What the hell? It's not like they're protecting any other races, either, as there were no others under threat.

As for the potential Nagari network problem, wouldn't it be both more ethical and productive to guide and enlist aid from races to help secure the Nagari network and counteract the Great Darkness, rather than exterminating every race that makes it to a vague, eventual technological point, without warning or compromise?

The GTVA is rightfully paranoid about the Shivans and Vishnans, but the problem is that they shouldn't *have to be* in the first place. They're not dealing with Cthulhu here, they're dealing with two all-powerful races that routinely commit xenocide on a whim because they can, even when they are directly at fault for any perceived offense. Yeah, enlightenment and pacifism is kind of hard to achieve in the face of unknowable, unstoppable, constant xenocidal aggression that doesn't even try to reach any kind of understanding with you.

Were it not for stupidly hypocritical Vishnans and omnicidal maniac Shivans, the GTVA and UEF could find a peaceful solution (or could have) quite feasibly. Unfortunately, something called The Great Darkness might give a slight justification for the Shivans and Vishnans treating other races at all like they do and for them being anything more than complete, despicable monsters that are infinitely worse than the Ancients ever were.

[FIZ]

As to why the Vishnans are acting the way they are: perhaps when Ubuntu began to flourish, they segregated some very human emotions into the Fedayeen.  If the GTVA and Federation would have cooperated, particularly after being presented the dream reality of Earth being destroyed, the Fedayeen would have been behind the scenes and dormant.  With the outbreak of the war, the Fedayeen has instead grown and flourished into something much more Shivan out of necessity. 

[Luis Dias]

Come on Salty, stop controlling yourself. Tell us how you really feel about the Vishnans .

There are other kinds of fictions wherein ubber mega races are indeed understanding and nurturing as we would better appreciate (I'm thinking Contact here), or less maniacally inclined for xenocide (Babylon5), etc. However, this isn't one of them, and gladly so for it gives a lot more tension to the drama.

Now, regarding the actions and decisions of Vishnans, there are more solutions than you are letting on. Perhaps they are testing humanity in a way that goes beyond our notions of behaviorism and so on. It is indeed possible they tried to have planet Earth be the best that mankind could possibly offer and then test its limits. Its psychological limits, its sociological limits, its political limits, its subconscious, its intuitions, its instincts.

And yet, you say that mankind could "learn" its way and so on. But how do you know what it can and cannot do? Wouldn't a species that controls the very fabric of space and time be orders of magnitude more aware of mankind's limits, its real dangers to the cosmos within a framework of deep time thinking? Have we sufficient knowledge to judge the Vishnans with 21st century mediocre level of morality, something that is most assuredly in the "microbial" level of thought to the Vishnans? Is "morality" something even existent in Vishnanland?

Your writing reminds me of a certain mining ship's rant against a fearful bunch of Bentusi motherships.