[NGTM-1R]

Does that mean that you prefer pistachio ice cream to Rocky Road?

Because that seems to follow just about as well from anything you've said.  

Yes, because the human race so clearly deserves destruction. You know better than to flippantly dismiss that.

[General Battuta]

Does that mean that you prefer pistachio ice cream to Rocky Road?

Because that seems to follow just about as well from anything you've said.  

Yes, because the human race so clearly deserves destruction. You know better than to flippantly dismiss that.

By whose standards? Any question of deserts implies a frame of reference. I will happily flippantly dismiss it because attempting to invoke mere primate morality (created and defined by the requirements of stable society in Terran and Vasudan society) suggests that you're saying that the human race deserves destruction by human standards...which means nothing in terms of attempting to figure out why the Shivans are aggressive xenocidal things of uncertain motives and methods.

You asked if I thought the Shivans were 'good guys'. The question is meaningless, unless you mean from the human perspective, in which case of course not, they're the bad guys - they're trying to kill us.

[NGTM-1R]

By whose standards? Any question of deserts implies a frame of reference.

No, I'm pretty sure that there are at least a couple of moral absolutes and complete intentional genocide of a species is one of them.

[General Battuta]

By whose standards? Any question of deserts implies a frame of reference.

No, I'm pretty sure that there are at least a couple of moral absolutes and complete intentional genocide of a species is one of them.

I no longer have any idea what point you're trying to make, and we're veering into deep philosophical territory here, but:

1) A godawfully bad book called The Shiva Option provides a case of complete intentional genocide that I imagine you could get behind 100% (i.e. it's a case of zero-sum genocide where one or the other has to go due to the inflexibility of one party);

2) you're wrong; there are no moral absolutes that exist independent from the viewer. Physics contains no morality and in the absence of a viewer the universe is simply physics.

What this has to do with War in Heaven I have no idea.

[General Battuta]

The "Shivans are the good guys" is about as dramatically interesting as a rock in the face.

I agree, but for different reasons.

Namely we shouldn't be solving the Shivan mystery because that retroactively destroys anything interesting in the canonical games.

I don't believe a solution has been presented (or promised).

Ah, but does that mean you support the conception of Shivans as good guys?

Because that also rather ruins FS1 and FS2.

So explain to me the link between these two posts. I don't understand how you went from my statement in 1 to your reply in 2. How does stating that no solution to the mystery of Shivan motives and aims has been presented or promised translate into belief that the Shivans are morally justified by human standards?

[General Battuta]

What we know about the Shivans is that they are trying to kill us and therefore we need to kill them back.

When it comes to addressing the ultimate motives and purpose of the Shivans, what I can say is that we prefer to stick closely to all the clues :V: dropped about them, rather than going for an explanation like Scroll of Atankharzim which drops in a lot of additional elements.

I can feel a lot of fear behind some of this speculation, mostly driven by concern that if we do give an ultimate explanation for the Shivans it will involve demoting them from their status of inexplicable omnicidal menace. Like I said earlier: trust us.

[NGTM-1R]

I no longer have any idea what point you're trying to make, and we're veering into deep philosophical territory here, but:

That would most likely be your own fault since the argument has veered entirely on disproving the points you've made to defend your conclusions. I'm still on my original point. You're going through a series of ad hocs to defend against it.

1) A godawfully bad book called The Shiva Option provides a case of complete intentional genocide that I imagine you could get behind 100%;

A: You're wrong.
B: Personal attacks, even implied, do you no credit.

2) you're wrong; there are no moral absolutes that exist independent from the viewer. Physics contains no morality and in the absence of a viewer the universe is simply physics.

Morality does not exist outside you. Let us conduct an experiment on this subject, shall we? Go kill your neighbor.

You are arrested and imprisoned. Morality does exist outside you. Now, you'll argue if we wipe out humanity, morality will not exist outside humanity, but it clearly does inside social animals. If we wipe out the social animals (or even all life), more will eventually evolve because physics allows for that to happen and anything not expressly forbidden will eventually. And they will hold similar conceptions of morality because they are advantageous to the species. (Unless you can devise some means for them to hold completely different ones which are advantageous to the species; I think getting around the "not killing each other at random" bit will be hard.)

So no, perhaps it's not physics, but it is biology. It's not about observation at all.

[General Battuta]

I no longer have any idea what point you're trying to make, and we're veering into deep philosophical territory here, but:

That would most likely be your own fault since the argument has veered entirely on disproving the points you've made to defend your conclusions. I'm still on my original point. You're going through a series of ad hocs to defend against it.

wut

I don't know which points or conclusions you're even talking about. What's your argument here? I'm trying to get you to explain a weird jump you made earlier. Your original point has never been clear.

1) A godawfully bad book called The Shiva Option provides a case of complete intentional genocide that I imagine you could get behind 100%;

A: You're wrong.
B: Personal attacks, even implied, do you no credit.

wut?

Are you some kind of secret member of The Shiva Option fan club? I didn't say you would get behind the book 100%, I said I thought you could get behind the scenario presented.

2) you're wrong; there are no moral absolutes that exist independent from the viewer. Physics contains no morality and in the absence of a viewer the universe is simply physics.

Morality does not exist outside you. Let us conduct an experiment on this subject, shall we? Go kill your neighbor.

The argument is not that morality does not exist outside you; it's that it does not exist outside a social context which includes the historical and evohistorical background of the species. And that leads to this point:

morality will not exist outside humanity, but it clearly does inside social animals.

Indeed - which is precisely my point; morality varies so enormously within the social animals that something which might seem moral to the highly social/eusocial ants seems abominable to humans.

If we wipe out the social animals (or even all life), more will eventually evolve because physics allows for that to happen and anything not expressly forbidden will eventually. And they will hold similar conceptions of morality because they are advantageous to the species. (Unless you can devise some means for them to hold completely different ones which are advantageous to the species; I think getting around the "not killing each other at random" bit will be hard.)

See above; morality varies wildly between social animals, and even within human society, to the point where 'killing other groups at random' has been the correct strategy even for humans, and enormous moral structures have emerged to justify this strategy.

[General Battuta]

The "Shivans are the good guys" is about as dramatically interesting as a rock in the face.

I agree, but for different reasons.

Namely we shouldn't be solving the Shivan mystery because that retroactively destroys anything interesting in the canonical games.

I don't believe a solution has been presented (or promised).

Ah, but does that mean you support the conception of Shivans as good guys?

Because that also rather ruins FS1 and FS2.

So explain to me the link between these two posts. I don't understand how you went from my statement in 1 to your reply in 2. How does stating that no solution to the mystery of Shivan motives and aims has been presented or promised translate into belief that the Shivans are morally justified by human standards?

Answer this post please.

[General Battuta]

I think NGTM-1R is circling around some kind of fear that the Blue Planet team ultimately wants to paint the Shivans as 'good guys' who have been doing everything for the good of the galaxy or whatever.

I can't address that directly without spoilers and he doesn't seem to be able to address it directly at all. 

[Fury]

Enough of this ****.