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Read Mr. Yudkowsky's scenario, (http://lesswrong.com/lw/y5/the_babyeating_aliens_18/) not because it is brilliant writing, but because the situation it presents is genuinely challenging and represents an aspect of first contact too little explored. What happens when we meet aliens that have evolved a moral system which is completely repulsive to us, a moral system so fundamentally different that their word for 'good' translates as 'babyeating'?
What happens when we meet aliens who see us the same way we see the Babyeaters?
Then tell me: what would you do, if you were the one aboard the Impossible Possible World, faced with the repulsive and yet internally consistent morality of the Babyeaters and the outraged ultimatums of the Superhappies?
What do you do with the human race?
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If people are ****ing lazy I will summarize that **** for them.
personally i'm with the superhappies
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Takes time to read something. Sheesh I only saw this and opened it up 30 seconds ago, not counting the time it took to compose this message explaining it.
Just got to
THIS VESSEL IS THE OPTIMISM OF THE CENTER OF THE VESSEL PERSON
YOU HAVE NOT KICKED US
THEREFORE YOU EAT BABIES
WHAT IS OURS IS YOURS, WHAT IS YOURS IS OURS
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Oh I'm not saying people are taking too long, just that if people don't want to read all that I'll write a grumpy and sarcastic summary for them
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Please do not :P
HOORAY!
WE ARE SO GLAD TO MEET YOU!
THIS IS THE SHIP "PLAY GAMES FOR LOTS OF FUN"
(OPERATED BY CHARGED PARTICLE FINANCIAL FIRMS)
WE LOVE YOU AND WE WANT YOU TO BE SUPER HAPPY.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE SEX?
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mmm, babies
will comment when done
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Siding with humanity here...
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Siding with humanity here...
Well there are lots of ways to do that. Specifically which strategy?
Alderson Bomb the meeting ground star, Alderson Bomb the adjacent system after lying, declare war on all the fools?
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Egh, well, here goes.
To me, there seems to be a difference between maintaining normal biological functions (such as pain, both physiological and emotional) and in actions that purposely cause it.
I might be just rationalizing it, but even if we had a way to remove all sources of pain, embarrassment and romantic problems, choosing to leave it unused doesn't make a convincing analogy to subjecting surplus children to a horrific prolonged painful death.
As such, I don't think the Superhappies' response to human civilization (forced painkiller) was quite as appropriate as humanity's and superhappies' response to the Baby-eaters' behaviour patterns.
In short, it's about defending the liberties of individual human beings to have their person and personality as they wish, while defending the Baby-eater children's right to their lives. There was really no justification for the Superhappies to enforce a transition to the entire human species.
Ideal solution to me would be to try argue with Superhappies about individual's right to their original spectrum of feelings. Obviously, something should be done about the Baby-eaters' obvious societal problem - all their peacefulness and seemingly functioning society don't justify the horrible premature deaths of the majority of the species; perhaps a genophage would be the best option.
I would argue with Superhappies about whether pain and suffering are good things... obviously, not as such. But like with all things, contrast is required for things to be meaningful. One could argue that bland uniform level of happiness could be a good thing, but in reality it would just make it neutral. Peaks in happiness and pleasure would create times of comparably lower happiness, and human psyche would tend to interpret those times as boredom or even suffer withdrawal from the constant euphoria.
The way human psyche operates, strife and conflict can be powerful motivators; stick can work better than carrot, so if all strife, suffering and pain were removed, there could possibly be a significant reduction in productivity and creativity.
Removing those parts would stifle our developement as a person, and as a society.
Also, technically the Superhappies shouldn't have been able to feel bad about the Baby-eater actions - hadn't they disabled their ability to suffer? At most they would have encountered confusion (as a result of numbing their emotional range and reducing their growth). This I think is an internal inconsistency - if they had removed their ability to feel negative emotions, then I doubt their empathy about the Baby-eater children or human ability to suffer could have been sufficient to provoke such a strong response.
Additionally, the "compensations" by Superhappies were a bit weird. It seems like the whole point of the Baby-eaters' habits was that the victims of the habit were sentient, conscious beings. And I can see multiple problems about consuming the members of same species regardless of consciousness, especially for a species that uses DNA as the primary means of communication (which seemed a bit handwaved considering the limitations and vulnerability of such a thing in actuality). Prionic diseases tend to appear in cannibalistic species (the crystalline-based Baby-eaters likely didn't have this issue, but Superhappies likely would!).
If this would not allay them, then the solution in True Ending would be possible, but I would likely have gone with exploding the local star, severing each species' only known contact point to each other.
And if you want my personal assessment of both species, I would also prefer to hang out with Superhappies - except for their blanket forced alteration policy that they seemed to adopt. It made no sense; from a rational perspective, they should have acknowledged the right of individual humans to decide for themselves whether they wanted to be happified or not.
By contrast, no one ever asked the Baby-eater children whether they would like not to be eaten, and despite the rationalization exercises by the adult society of Baby-eaters that perpetuated the habit, there was really no justification for it, especially after their rationality increased.
It was made fairly obvious that the children didn't want to be eaten, after all.
From literary perspective, it was an enjoyable and very readable short story. I liked it, but some things really pushed the threshold of my willing suspension of disbelief.
There you have it.
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In short, it's about defending the liberties of individual human beings to have their person and personality as they wish, while defending the Baby-eater children's right to their lives. There was really no justification for the Superhappies to enforce a transition to the entire human species.
But (playing story advocate here) the Superhappies have perfect empathy. Any species they encounter which has the ability to remove suffering from itself, but which hasn't exercised that ability, is basically inflicting suffering on the Superhappies, and is therefore on the moral level of the Babyeaters (or so they'd contend.)
Ideal solution to me would be to try argue with Superhappies about individual's right to their original spectrum of feelings. Obviously, something should be done about the Baby-eaters' obvious societal problem - all their peacefulness and seemingly functioning society don't justify the horrible premature deaths of the majority of the species; perhaps a genophage would be the best option.
Yeah, but to the Superhappies aren't our problems just as horrible?
I would argue with Superhappies about whether pain and suffering are good things... obviously, not as such. But like with all things, contrast is required for things to be meaningful. One could argue that bland uniform level of happiness could be a good thing, but in reality it would just make it neutral. Peaks in happiness and pleasure would create times of comparably lower happiness, and human psyche would tend to interpret those times as boredom or even suffer withdrawal from the constant euphoria.
You say that with such certainty, but I doubt that can be substantiated empirically. There are people who are simply, dispositionally, more happy than others - they don't seem to acclimate or desensitize to happiness.
The notion that happiness is somehow a relative, gauge phenomenon rather than an absolute position, while a common item of folk psychology, doesn't strike me as trivially obvious.
(fwiw i felt pretty much the same way, except with respect to the last item)
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A year after reading it the first time I'm still going with the superhappy proposal. Feels wrong to say that it is only because that option is barely less **** on balance than the other option/societies, but that's all I can come up with.
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Pop the star I guess.
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Great reading, thanks ;).
Well I think that the first step would be to agree to disagree, i.e., convince them that we shouldn't be killed just because we... ahhh don't want to use the spoiler tag.... we don't do that thing.
Then begin trade routes. Get the less morally psyched people to exchange things and to know each other.
Then kinda trying to make the point that perhaps their conscient whatevers are suffering, and suffering is supposedly bad, right?
And this is the point, really. If they do not acknowledge that their whatevers are suffering, either we could show them how that is indeed the case, or we could actually find out that no, they do not actually suffer for it.
The last case is the most interesting one. I'll stick with the former for a bit though, for it is easier.
If you can convince them that they are making their whatevers suffer while it is quite possible *not* to do so, ahem, our own example is evidence enough, then only a religious fanatism would prevent them to gradually change their ways. Another reason why religion is evil :p (hehe).
This "gradual" approach would be, I think, the one that would bring the least suffering for all involved.
Now for the "former" case, where the whatevers actually *do not suffer*. Now there we would reach a connundrum, for one could make the case that their own society is actually better than our own!! The reason? Well, if they didn't eat their babies, there would not have been enough food for anyone. So they have to eat them. If they chose only to get one baby, then the amount of consciousness that is enjoying life is a hundred times shorter in that short timespan than what would have been otherwise.
If one makes the case that it is "better" for more consciousnesses to enjoy life, then their life cycle is probably maximizing just that.
In such a case, I'd recommend to try to "get along" with them and deprive ourselves from getting too much contact with that kind of reality, just as we don't like to get in contact with other people's defecations and whatevers.
Idk, only my first thoughts on the issue.
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Oh **** I only now realised there's more than one page of that! I kept reading about "superhappies" and I was like wtf.
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lol ^
the Superhappies, for all their advancement, didn't seem to think things through. There is the fact that we develop from adversity, which is why their solution is wrong (what concept of individual liberty do they have? Obviously some given their reaction to the Babyeaters). There is the fact that our suffering inflicts suffering upon them through empathy. The simple solution there is to not communicate, or to communicate solely through simple text media.
Also, why didn't they nuke the star where they met? It's more reliable to destroy the entire network of course, but severing the one point of contact should work almost as well.
also DO NOT TAUNT SUPER HAPPY FUN BALL
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lol ^
the Superhappies, for all their advancement, didn't seem to think things through. There is the fact that we develop from adversity, which is why their solution is wrong (what concept of individual liberty do they have? Obviously some given their reaction to the Babyeaters). There is the fact that our suffering inflicts suffering upon them through empathy. The simple solution there is to not communicate, or to communicate solely through simple text media.
I AM SUPER HAPPY FUN BALL I WILL SPEAK IN METAPHOR
Imagine that the man who lives next door to you tortures a kitten every day. He came from a country where they used to have to torture thirty kittens every day, mind, so torturing only one is an improvement. His society has written reams of poetry and beautiful art about the sad and painful necessity of torturing kittens. It is part of their soul.
But nonetheless, although he doesn't have to torture the kitten any more - he can take medication to prevent it - he explains that circumstances conspire to make it happen every day, and that it is simply part of his identity.
Now, you don't have to ever see this man, and you can't really hear the yowls of his kitten. But now that you've met him, and read all his books, you know he's over there, torturing that kitten. And you really could force him to take his medication...
That's how the Superhappies feel about humanity, only more so. Is cutting off all contact somehow a solution? Does the man have a cultural right to torture his kitten?
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lol ^
the Superhappies, for all their advancement, didn't seem to think things through. There is the fact that we develop from adversity, which is why their solution is wrong (what concept of individual liberty do they have? Obviously some given their reaction to the Babyeaters). There is the fact that our suffering inflicts suffering upon them through empathy. The simple solution there is to not communicate, or to communicate solely through simple text media.
Also, why didn't they nuke the star where they met? It's more reliable to destroy the entire network of course, but severing the one point of contact should work almost as well.
also DO NOT TAUNT SUPER HAPPY FUN BALL
The crew still felt the Superhappy intervention with the Babyeaters was necessary. Instead they decided that popping Hyugens was a better option since it disconnected humanity from the Superhappies while still keeping the starlines open to the Babyeaters.
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Just finished it, great read.
I probably wont be quite as in-depth as many other responses
After giving it some thought, I would adopt a Humanity first resolution. I wouldn't be terribly interested in dealing with the Babyeaters, because no matter how repulsive they may be, they have every right to live the way they do. Infringing on the beliefs of an Alien species is no different from infringing on the beliefs of a Human group, and and If thats going to be a center point of my argument then I might as well hold my response to that standard. Besides, I believe the story made it clear that the Babyeaters would have difficulty fighting back against Humanity, and with the creation of the Alderson Weapon (which, with a little research, can surely be made to operate remotely) then simply pushing the Babyeaters out of sight and coming down on them hard if they DO try anything doesn't seem to be too out there. Ignorance is often considered bliss for a reason, despite the hypocrisy I feel while typing that.
Now, the Superhappies... here is where it gets tricky. I don't like them. Their beliefs, their wanton disregard for the facets of other life, these things disgust and infuriate me. Whether this is the fault of their empathic nature, inexperience, or simple Hubris is irrelevant. They have established themselves as oppressors and foes, no matter the intention or end result. This does not sit well with me.
Truthfully, if I were humanity, I would want to fight them. Wipe them out. This would be tricky, for reasons stated in the story, and if the conflict dragged on, it would become impossible. I'm sure that even the Alderson Weapon would only work once. With all that taken into consideration, destroying the star and denying them passage seems to be the only real answer, though I truly do wish for an Imperium style crusade against these creatures. However, as much as I would hate to halt Humanity's galactic progression in one direction, I'm sure there are other Alderson lines that can be used. Of course, this doesn't preclude future encounters with the Superhappies in the style of the Shivans, and if both species continue to persist, then they will meet again. And when that time comes, chances are the Superhappies will be quite a ways above us on the Kardashav scale. It truly is a sticky situation, in the long term.
I would like to add that I am not trying to come across as Xenophobic, but these species truly are incapable of interacting with us, it seems. The chances of Humanity maintaining positive relations with the Babyeaters are simply too slim, and well, I just dont like the Superhappies
It didn't really bother with a literary analysis, just the basic "what if" question.
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And he lived happily ever after.
Brilliant ending.
About the question that GB posed, well the story is kinda like directed in an inevitable way. I would make the same choice commander made, it's the most rational, the most ethical, and the best, really, for mankind. The only "low point" about it is that you are not in control of your own destiny, it's a matter of a deal. I'm not swayed by the "We are Humans FORAVAH!", nor am I swayed by the moral relativistic argument of "if they don't hurt us it's all fine and dandy".
And in practice, with all that 2% per hour (goddam!), they would reach earth in a relative small time anyway.
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The crew still felt the Superhappy intervention with the Babyeaters was necessary. Instead they decided that popping Hyugens was a better option since it disconnected humanity from the Superhappies while still keeping the starlines open to the Babyeaters.
They did not! They just toyed with the idea of having all this fuss "over with". And then commander reminded them of the holocaust.
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And he lived happily ever after.
Brilliant ending.
Yeah that line never sounded so sinister as it did in that case.
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The crew still felt the Superhappy intervention with the Babyeaters was necessary. Instead they decided that popping Hyugens was a better option since it disconnected humanity from the Superhappies while still keeping the starlines open to the Babyeaters.
They did not! They just toyed with the idea of having all this fuss "over with". And then commander reminded them of the holocaust.
Um... then why did they blow up Hyugens rather than the contact star, if not to preserve the Superhappies ability to deal with the Babyeaters?
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The crew still felt the Superhappy intervention with the Babyeaters was necessary. Instead they decided that popping Hyugens was a better option since it disconnected humanity from the Superhappies while still keeping the starlines open to the Babyeaters.
They did not! They just toyed with the idea of having all this fuss "over with". And then commander reminded them of the holocaust.
Um... then why did they blow up Hyugens rather than the contact star, if not to preserve the Superhappies ability to deal with the Babyeaters?
Hmmm I see I didn't read it all yet. Bugger. I hated the "real ending" much more btw. Oh okay, you got to "save" mankind and kill billions on the process. Big deal. Now mankind can go along suffering to eternity... until supperhappies arrive and just blast your planet off for good.
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Huh. Still mulling this one, don't have a fully formed response yet. I will say that being forcibly limited in my emotional spectrum is not something I would sit still for, however.
Aaargh. There really is no right answer that I can see now. :banghead:
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There seems to be some confusion regarding the Prisoner's Dilemma in the story, since the rational strategy (and stable Nash equilibrium) is to defect. No matter what the other player does, defecting guarantees a higher payoff. What the writer may have thought of was the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, in particular one with an uncertain number of turns. Which doesn't really make sense, since in the context of the story, the game ends after one of them defects (they blow the other's ship up).
Oh, and:
"If we don't fire on the alien ship - I mean, if this work is ever carried back to the Babyeater civilization - I suspect the aliens will consider this one of their great historical works of literature, like Hamlet or Fate/stay night -"
;7
The story seems interesting, and I'm still reading it, so...
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my favorite line in this:
"I don't suppose... we could convince them they were wrong about that?"
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lol ^
the Superhappies, for all their advancement, didn't seem to think things through. There is the fact that we develop from adversity, which is why their solution is wrong (what concept of individual liberty do they have? Obviously some given their reaction to the Babyeaters). There is the fact that our suffering inflicts suffering upon them through empathy. The simple solution there is to not communicate, or to communicate solely through simple text media.
I AM SUPER HAPPY FUN BALL I WILL SPEAK IN METAPHOR
Imagine that the man who lives next door to you tortures a kitten every day. He came from a country where they used to have to torture thirty kittens every day, mind, so torturing only one is an improvement. His society has written reams of poetry and beautiful art about the sad and painful necessity of torturing kittens. It is part of their soul.
But nonetheless, although he doesn't have to torture the kitten any more - he can take medication to prevent it - he explains that circumstances conspire to make it happen every day, and that it is simply part of his identity.
Now, you don't have to ever see this man, and you can't really hear the yowls of his kitten. But now that you've met him, and read all his books, you know he's over there, torturing that kitten. And you really could force him to take his medication...
That's how the Superhappies feel about humanity, only more so. Is cutting off all contact somehow a solution? Does the man have a cultural right to torture his kitten?
Been mulling over this, and did a very illuminating wiki walk on various points of view on ethics. (I'm still not an authority on this at any rate :nervous:)
I stand by my initial reaction that humanity feeling suffering is not at all like the torture of a kitten. An individual wronging another individual is almost always ethically wrong, but the cumulative suffering of humanity is an abstract concept. It's not universally wrong or right, it's what we get out of it. We may or may not benefit from a wider "emotional spectrum", as IronBeer puts it, but we definitely learn from adversity. All in all, the ability to feel suffering is a positive aspect of humanity (in a post-scarcity society this might be debatable but the Humanity in the story is very likely not post-scarcity).
Because of our basic psychology, taking away that aspect would be to our detriment in one way or another. For the SH's, their psychology seems to lend itself to a "happy-happy-joy-joy" existence, and it is a positive factor for them. Thus in both cases, what we have now is what is right for our society from an objective standpoint.
The only remaining point of conflict is the SH's perfect empathy. Now, memories can be passed down into what is basically a collective consciousness for them. Either this cultural memory is perfect or it is not.
The unlikely case first: if it is, any suffering is spread throughout their society like a virus. The effect may diminish as it is shared, but it is always there. They know about humanity's suffering and it causes them pain, which they share with all their species. This suffering, for them, is there whether or not they "cure" us. They have already been damaged, and much less so than by the knowledge of the Babyeaters culling their young (remember, that revelation basically incapacitated their captain). They can leave us in peace and not be much worse for it.
The likely case: memories are not transmitted perfectly, they are forgotten and die off in the cultural memory. If this is true, the damage we would do by letting them know we suffer is finite. If they can keep secrets, they could in fact let the memory die with their crew and close families. In this case, the finite damage we do to them is far, far less than the irreversible damage they do to us.
[EDIT] Ghostavo: um no (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma)
Both defect: both get a 5-year sentence.
Both cooperate: both get a 6-month sentence for a minor charge.
One defects: defector goes free, other gets full 10-year sentence.
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[EDIT] Ghostavo: um no (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma)
Both defect: both get a 5-year sentence.
Both cooperate: both get a 6-month sentence for a minor charge.
One defects: defector goes free, other gets full 10-year sentence.
Wikipedia:
For cooperation to emerge between game theoretic rational players, the total number of rounds N must be random, or at least unknown to the players. In this case always defect may no longer be a strictly dominant strategy, only a Nash equilibrium.
For every situation where the number of rounds/turns/whatever is known, defecting is ALWAYS the rational response. And for every situation, defect/defect is a Nash equilibrium.
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er, actually, no, my favorite line is now this:
"If we don't fire on the alien ship - I mean, if this work is ever carried back to the Babyeater civilization - I suspect the aliens will consider this one of their great historical works of literature, like Hamlet or Fate/stay night"
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I need to convince myself that I should read this story just for the sake of reading a good story, because there's a fundamental part of me that absolutely loathes the concept of hypothetical morality conundrums. We have enough real moral issues floating about on this ball of rock of ours that we don't need to bother with inventing crazy farfetched ones on top of them. :p
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Just finished reading, I would choose the normal ending over the true ending.
That is all.
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oh, jesus... :lol:
"You may call me Big ****ing Edward; as for our species... This translation program is not fully stable; even if I said our proper species-name, who knows how it would come out. I would not wish my kind to forever bear an unaesthetic nickname on account of a translation error."
Akon nodded. "I understand, Big ****ing Edward."
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Yeah, not doing it for me. Although humanities "pain" response could be more fine tuned, emotional pain is just like physical hurt, an excellent warning mechanism, there's nothing ethically wrong about feeling it. Destroying one's children, and causing them a month of pointless suffering in the process, is not ethically similar.
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Yeah, not doing it for me. Although humanities "pain" response could be more fine tuned, emotional pain is just like physical hurt, an excellent warning mechanism, there's nothing ethically wrong about feeling it. Destroying one's children, and causing them a month of pointless suffering in the process, is not ethically similar.
But you're arguing that from the human standpoint. 'Pain is okay because it works for us, it's been the key to our survival.' Well, the Babyeaters have survived by eating their babies; it's the very neural foundation of their system of morality. The Superhappies evolved in an environment where pain was as useless and repulsive to them as eating babies is to us.
See the analogy?
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I would have blown up the junction star: to protect humanity from the happies and the babyeaters from humanity (and from the happies too, I guess).
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I don't know what to make of this story. It smells like an artificially constructed moral problem, which is conveniently placed on further future to allow more creative freedom for the writer; but that tends to imply certain type of laziness towards the affairs of current day. There were also several occasions where it broke my suspension of disbelief, but I confess that the reception towards sci-fi and fantasy tends to change with age. Overall I say that I could have spent those 20 minutes reading it worse.
Instead of thinking of the aliens and humans, the history of humanity before meeting the aliens caught my eye; what the hell happened to them? Several moral standards seemed to have returned from the Medieval Ages or even earlier, while the story is placed in much further ahead in time. It is weird, but I was more interested in the backdrop instead of the presented moral difficulties. The text has something common with general philosophical problems posed by earlier philosophers: despite the intentions of the writer, what ever the answer on the proposed problem is, it will not change the world. It all tends to go down to people discussing about it, and then forgetting it - as self-touched by the text also, so props for that.
For the above mentioned reasons if I were able to, I would ask the motivation of the writer to write such a story? Is it that he believes that he is able to make people understand more about different cultures, or is it that he simply wanted to ask audience a question what would they do in that situation? If so, my answer would be "Why would you like to know?", or "See what I do when that happens to me". But if it is about the different cultures and difficulties understanding them, then I'd ask why to place such a story in the sci-fi setting in the first place?
There is something what I have always disliked in the mathematical type logic when it is applied to common life. There is no white knights that always tell the truth nor the black knights that always lie, and no smart questions that would reveal which knight this one is. The physicist, or should I say the realist instead in me is simply screaming loud that it doesn't work that way! So is it that the text tries to push its point too hard, because it all starts to unfold as a constructed philosophical question on which there isn't an answer, and that the purpose of this question is to reveal something about the person answering to it? Whether I should learn something about myself or not after doing that is another thing.
EDIT: Aaaand Mongoose beat me to it
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I don't know what to make of this story. It smells like an artificially constructed moral problem, which is conveniently placed on further future to allow more creative freedom for the writer; but that tends to imply certain type of laziness towards the affairs of current day. There were also several occasions where it broke my suspension of disbelief, but I confess that the reception towards sci-fi and fantasy tends to change with age. Overall I say that I could have spent those 20 minutes reading it worse.
That's exactly what it is. The author (who is not a great writer at all) says up front it's a constructed moral problem in a convenient future.
There is something what I have always disliked in the mathematical type logic when it is applied to common life. There is no white knights that always tell the truth nor the black knights that always lie, and no smart questions that would reveal which knight this one is. The physicist, or should I say the realist instead in me is simply screaming loud that it doesn't work that way! So is it that the text tries to push its point too hard, because it all starts to unfold as a constructed philosophical question on which there isn't an answer, and that the purpose of this question is to reveal something about the person answering to it? Whether I should learn something about myself or not after doing that is another thing.
Yeah I don't think this has anything to do with what the text is actually saying, and I have no idea where you got it.
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But you're arguing that from the human standpoint. 'Pain is okay because it works for us, it's been the key to our survival.' Well, the Babyeaters have survived by eating their babies; it's the very neural foundation of their system of morality. The Superhappies evolved in an environment where pain was as useless and repulsive to them as eating babies is to us.
See the analogy?
There is a clear analogy, however - in one environment individuals experience a range of emotions, and have learned how to promote the positive ones, whilst still experiencing the negative ones. If a human decides that they've had enough of pain, I doubt there's a lack of technology to eliminate it for that individual - as a matter of fact it's stated to exist.
If the Super Happies had merely insisted on making childbirth an orgasmic experience, I doubt there would be objection.
This is starkly different than for a species who causes completely needless harm and pain to their children. The S-H are actually shown to acknowledge that difference (being driven insane by the Baby Eaters). This type of situation is abuse, not self inflicted.
The logical ethical solution for the Super Happies would be to offer a painless existence for those who want is, they are limited in their empathy by their apparent lack of individual feeling.
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This is starkly different than for a species who causes completely needless harm and pain to their children. The S-H are actually shown to acknowledge that difference (being driven insane by the Baby Eaters). This type of situation is abuse, not self inflicted.
Right, but the Superhappies consider the harm and pain inflicted and experienced by humans to be equally needless, because their own existence proceeds without requiring it. They're to us what we are to the Baby Eaters.
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They're not comparable. One is inflicting pain on ANOTHER sentient being, the other is inflicting pain on ones-self
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They're not comparable. One is inflicting pain on ANOTHER sentient being, the other is inflicting pain on ones-self
Not comparable to humans, but to the Superhappies (who have perfect empathy), both of them are simply 'inflicting pain'.
Even setting that aside humans can still harm each other, which is revolting to the Superhappies.
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The problem I'm having is it's impossible for me to relate to the "Humanity" of the story. Just the fact they live so long would make their perspective unrecognizable to us. The story describes how "humanity got it's act together" and solved all of it's problems only to turn around and artificially create suffering by making rape legal. That leads me to think that their market driven society uses suffering as a lever for meaning. I'm with the SuperHappies on this one, screw em.
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If the Super Happies had perfect empathy, they wouldn't adopt a resolution that resulted in the suicide of a quarter of humanity. They are bound by not having a concept of individuality. They have no more perspective on us than we do of them. The Babyeaters however are individuals like ourselves.
Also, Hard Light is having some serious issues on my computer with not delivering replies and being unable to quote.
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The problem I'm having is it's impossible for me to relate to the "Humanity" of the story. Just the fact they live so long would make their perspective unrecognizable to us. The story describes how "humanity got it's act together" and solved all of it's problems only to turn around and artificially create suffering by making rape legal. That leads me to think that their market driven society uses suffering as a lever for meaning. I'm with the SuperHappies on this one, screw em.
I honestly have no idea what that whole passage about rape was about but I think it's meant to make some feminist point about how 'rape' no longer involves suffering or somesuch at all, rather than to provide some hint of a brutal sexual dystopia. There was a line which implied rape is no longer primarily a male act inflicted on women.
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Do you know there was a time when nonconsensual sex was illegal?"
(...)
Akon wasn't sure whether to smile or grimace. "The Prohibition, right? During the first century pre-Net? I expect everyone was glad to have that law taken off the books. I can't imagine how boring your sex lives must have been up until then - flirting with a woman, teasing her, leading her on, knowing the whole time that you were perfectly safe because she couldn't take matters into her own hands if you went a little too far -"
(...)
When our children legalized rape, we thought that the Future had gone wrong."
Akon's mouth hung open. "You were that prude?"
(...)
"Um," Akon said. He was trying not to smile. "I'm trying to visualize what sort of disaster could have been caused by too much nonconsensual sex -"
From what I gather, they legalized rape, but somehow it didn't become widespread? Anyway...
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Right, but the Superhappies consider the harm and pain inflicted and experienced by humans to be equally needless, because their own existence proceeds without requiring it. They're to us what we are to the Baby Eaters.
Except I didn't see that baby eating was still a factually crucial or in any way beneficial element to baby eating society except for sustaining their way of life.
Pain is an important indicator to us that something is not quite right. I wonder what the Superhappies would do when subjected to trauma due to accident or disease - continue on their merry way until they just die, unaware of the problem?
Emotional pain is also important factor in human psyche as long as the world is not perfect. In a perfect world, there wouldn't be anything to cause emotional pain or distress - but taking the ability to feel pain away doesn't make the world a better place.
Sadness, feeling of loss, or lack of satisfaction will lead to desire for something better. Not being able to feel loss for the death of a loved one would, to me, diminish the meaning of the relationship. Similarly, if someone is in a bad position economically, socially or what have you... if they weren't able to feel unsatisfied, or otherwise have a negative feeling about it, they would never have motivation to improve their position.
The more I think about it, Superhappies being "unable" to feel emotional distress, pain or otherwise, sounds unplausible. Their goal in life would be to have as much lulz as possible - if you put them in a situation where lulz was denied (let's call it a srs bsns), wouldn't they feel... lack of happiness as a bad thing?
Wouldn't they think "hey, this sucks"? Would they feel emotional distress for lack of lulz? Would they feel pain when deprived from their... means of communications?
...actually sensory deprivation never had such nasty connotations before, now that I think of it.
So anyway, Superhappies come across as a bit of hypocritical.
At any rate the key difference in Humans to Superhappies and Baby Eaters to Humans is that what humans do to themselves is an individual decision - the story seems to suggest that humans would have been capable of disabling their ability to feel pain, physical or emotional - whereas the Baby Eaters brutally murder their young regardless of their obvious objections.
Both the Baby Eaters' feeding habit and Superhappies' forced painkiller distribution reduce the liberties of individual.
Which may be a moot point to Superhappies if they see themselves as one individual in some sense, but that doesn't change the crux of the matter.
Eating children and choosing to retain the ability to feel pain are not ethically analogous decisions.
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"You may call me Big ****ing Edward;"
I'd reference this as a self-introduction, but the number of people that would get it would be pretty low in real life.
Re-reading the SH people, it seems implied that you keep free will, so what they offer to do seems to be the equivalent of offering a perfect antidepressant. Not that bad a deal if offered, but then, without some pain, without being able to ever feel less than super-happy, what is feeling super-happy? Isn't feeling the same thing all the time going to feel like nothing after awhile?
"Guess I'd rather hurt than feel nothing at all"
-Just as I read the SH ending.
Oh music collection, you so crazy
But maybe it'd be paradise, surely the SH's would let us keep our physical bodies or at least endow the ability to project them for each other.
Maybe allow humans to have the choice to be taken in by the SH's if life get too hard for them, but otherwise let humanity operate as it is, as people are happy with it, the SH's know human's can do free thought, and forcing something upon them is shown to be a painful experience.
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Except I didn't see that baby eating was still a factually crucial or in any way beneficial element to baby eating society except for sustaining their way of life.
The same may have become true of pain for the Superhappies.
Both the Baby Eaters' feeding habit and Superhappies' forced painkiller distribution reduce the liberties of individual.
So does prohibiting murder. That alone isn't an adequate moral argument, I think.
EDIT: baby eating is literally the core of Babyeater society and morality. It is the pathway along which all their social reasoning developed, including the neural wiring they use to interact. To alter it would be to change them as fundamentally as removing pain and suffering from humanity.
Eating children and choosing to retain the ability to feel pain are not ethically analogous decisions.
To you, the human.
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I think the biggest point was more that humans made children suffer. They would bring their gazillion of ships to earth to save the children if they didn't abide to their demands. Of course they also saw adults suffering as nasty, but the parallels to the babyeaters were more direct: the kids.
Oh and legal rape for the win!! :lol: :eek: :eek2: :lol:
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Both the Baby Eaters' feeding habit and Superhappies' forced painkiller distribution reduce the liberties of individual.
So does prohibiting murder. That alone isn't an adequate moral argument, I think.
Au contraire, mon ami, prohibiting murder preserves the would-be victim's right to live, which outweighs one's right to do what they want, I think we can all agree.
Individual liberties are all fine as long as they don't affect others' liberties, feeling sad every now and then shouldn't be outlawed. ACTING on said sad feelings in a way that makes others unhappy, that's "bad"
That said, with rape being legalized, I can't say these future humans aren't the old human race is best race like in most sci-fi.
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Both the Baby Eaters' feeding habit and Superhappies' forced painkiller distribution reduce the liberties of individual.
So does prohibiting murder. That alone isn't an adequate moral argument, I think.
Au contraire, mon ami, prohibiting murder preserves the would-be victim's right to live, which outweighs one's right to do what they want, I think we can all agree.
Sure, but a Babyeater would tell you that eating babies preserves the rights of all Babyeaters - it is, after all, the very foundation of good, the most basic act of morality, important to them the way a simple act of kindness is to humans.
That said, with rape being legalized, I can't say these future humans aren't the old human race is best race like in most sci-fi.
I seriously don't think that they mean rape in the sense of rape today. It clearly means something very different, something in the dynamic has changed. The fact that the example given is female on male is evidence of that, not because female/male rape is impossible or not problematic, but because it was obviously selected as a statement.
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a lot of you are missing a key point here, the SH position was focused not on human individual suffering, but that humans allowed each other to suffer and ~specifically~ that humans allowed their children to suffer when they had the means to negate that suffering.
now that said i think better reasoning could have been employed when trying to explain ourselves that pain was unfortunately essential to our learning process and that the SHs should not try to equate it to what they knew of it. we had very different minds from each other our experience of joy and pain were apparently different than theirs (specifically the greatest joy in our lives comes not from an absence of pain but in overcoming it, perhaps an explanation of masochism could be helpful, that their are humans who derive pleasure from pain directly), and what worked for them would not work for us, because. if they offered their abilities then many humans would likely take the offer up (lets face it, there would be tons of people lining up for a ticket aboard the CPFF PLAY GAMES FOR LOTS OF FUN, even especially knowing full well that nearly endless tentacle rape was what awaited them), and perhaps, after considerable amounts of 'communication', they would in time convince us of their position. a focus should have been placed on how our perception of pain was different than theirs, it plays a vital role in defining our personalities and that we were not ruling out that we might be wrong. when the obvious parallels to the babyeaters is made it should be pointed out that in spite of our outrage the reason were were not acting against them was because we were considering similar aspects about them, the role it plaid in their lives and civilization and how even though we were having a hard time understanding how their world could work we considered it would have been wrong to impose our perspective on them with force, at least not without extremely thorough deliberation and communication with them on the subject. and if that didn't work, it might help to build some bridges with a 'hey, at least we don't eat our own babies'. also a mention of vorephilia might lead to an interesting discussion given the circumstances.
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If they are so into kinky hedonism we could have won them over with S&M :P
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See, I don't really think there's any ethics above humanity. We are the source of our ethics, I don't think we should listen to S-H above ourselves.
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I'm sort of feeling this out as I type it, so bear with me...
A lot of people seem to be focusing on the whole "abandon pain" part of the Superhappies' deal and glossing over the fact that their deal would also require us to EAT OUR OWN BABIES WHAT THE ****! and this I cannot abide no matter how fair their plan seems on paper or how human-centric that attitude is. In the absence of an objective universal morality, then each species' morality is equally valid, or rather it's a sort of might-makes-right situation: your morality is valid insofar as you can defend and impose it. What I mean is, we have a right to defend our way. I mean yeah, humans are going to see the human way as right.... and that's fine because we're all human and agree to it (mostly).
So, I don't know what the right call is with the Babyeaters, and really I have a hard time worrying about it when the Superhappies seem to present a much larger and more immediate problem. The logical choice may be to go along with their plan, but the caveman part of my brain rages against the thought of a reprehensible, forced change to our species (eating babies wtf) by some higher power.
Within the confines of the scenario (military victory 100% impossible) then I'd have to say the true end is the best way to go. Otherwise, if it's just long odds but not impossible, I say rage against the Superhappies with everything we've got. Victory may be beyond us, but let it not be said that humanity lacked the testicular fortitude to scream into the storm. Our way wins or we die trying.
tl;dr: FIGHT THE POWAH
EDIT: Oooh, yeah what Mars said ^^
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Humans! Lay down your sorrows!
(http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs13/i/2007/083/0/e/300_Persians_come_and_get_them_by_commanderlewis.jpg) (http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs13/f/2007/083/e/8/300_Persians_come_and_get_them_by_commanderlewis.jpg)
Come and get them!
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Both the Baby Eaters' feeding habit and Superhappies' forced painkiller distribution reduce the liberties of individual.
So does prohibiting murder. That alone isn't an adequate moral argument, I think.
Au contraire, mon ami, prohibiting murder preserves the would-be victim's right to live, which outweighs one's right to do what they want, I think we can all agree.
Sure, but a Babyeater would tell you that eating babies preserves the rights of all Babyeaters - it is, after all, the very foundation of good, the most basic act of morality, important to them the way a simple act of kindness is to humans.
That said, with rape being legalized, I can't say these future humans aren't the old human race is best race like in most sci-fi.
I seriously don't think that they mean rape in the sense of rape today. It clearly means something very different, something in the dynamic has changed. The fact that the example given is female on male is evidence of that, not because female/male rape is impossible or not problematic, but because it was obviously selected as a statement.
On the Rights:
Your argument would make more sense to me if it weren't for the little bit where its 99% of babies being eaten
On the Non-consensual sex:
While the example of pinning down the flirting guy and giving him a **** seems not so bad, just legalizing RAPE sounds right for abuse, I mean, where did future! humans draw the line?
Between that and the capitalism taken to the extreme with markets as described, I still feel that this humanity wasn't that good.
a lot of you are missing a key point here, the SH position was focused not on human individual suffering, but that humans allowed each other to suffer and ~specifically~ that humans allowed their children to suffer when they had the means to negate that suffering.
now that said i think better reasoning could have been employed when trying to explain ourselves that pain was unfortunately essential to our learning process and that the SHs should not try to equate it to what they knew of it. we had very different minds from each other our experience of joy and pain were apparently different than theirs (specifically the greatest joy in our lives comes not from an absence of pain but in overcoming it, perhaps an explanation of masochism could be helpful, that their are humans who derive pleasure from pain directly), and what worked for them would not work for us, because. if they offered their abilities then many humans would likely take the offer up (lets face it, there would be tons of people lining up for a ticket aboard the CPFF PLAY GAMES FOR LOTS OF FUN, even especially knowing full well that nearly endless tentacle rape was what awaited them), and perhaps, after considerable amounts of 'communication', they would in time convince us of their position. a focus should have been placed on how our perception of pain was different than theirs, it plays a vital role in defining our personalities and that we were not ruling out that we might be wrong. when the obvious parallels to the babyeaters is made it should be pointed out that in spite of our outrage the reason were were not acting against them was because we were considering similar aspects about them, the role it plaid in their lives and civilization and how even though we were having a hard time understanding how their world could work we considered it would have been wrong to impose our perspective on them with force, at least not without extremely thorough deliberation and communication with them on the subject. and if that didn't work, it might help to build some bridges with a 'hey, at least we don't eat our own babies'. also a mention of vorephilia might lead to an interesting discussion given the circumstances.
I really like what your saying here, and assuming that this future humanity was free of child abuse, I think the SH's could be swayed to see our point of view, at least enough to allow our continued existence, ideally having them hang around as an 'option' for people that run out of luck: to be taken to happyfunboat
On redsniper's point (having to eat babies)
I beleive that these were being GE'd so that they're really not human, so its pretty much like eating some other meat, just with uncanny resemblance, and if that brings displeasure to enough humans, the SH societal rules would mean abandoning this rule, or else their society breaks apart at its core.
....
Actually, this is a neat road for thought: with SH society unable to handle the conflicting values to be assimilated, once a human's thoughts become part of their link, its given a no-win scenario, which could confuse the kiligiananngaganans enough that they this thought becomes a plauge that destroys their race, like an infinite logic-loop, leaving the surviving humans with the babyeaters contained, the SH's essentially self-destructing.
but that sounds like an episode of ST:ToS, if I add in Kirk sleeping with a "female" kiligianannananggagan.
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On redsniper's point (having to eat babies)
I beleive that these were being GE'd so that they're really not human, so its pretty much like eating some other meat, just with uncanny resemblance, and if that brings displeasure to enough humans, the SH societal rules would mean abandoning this rule, or else their society breaks apart at its core.
Cannibalism leads to a horde of physiological issues, primarily (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmissible_spongiform_encephalopathy) prionic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_%28disease%29) diseases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creutzfeldt%E2%80%93Jakob_disease), that would, in the long term, be absolutely detrimental to human civilization completely regardless of the ethical implications associated to it.
Forcing humans or any other species (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_and_bone_meal) to exercise cannibalism would thus be against Superhappies' own ethical principles.
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their deal would also require us to EAT OUR OWN BABIES WHAT THE ****!
I don't remember that part, I recall that the SHs would eat THEIR babies, but not anything about them doing the same to us.
The more I think about this the more I think that maybe the better way to work this out would have been for the three races to join together and determine what moral components they all had in common, if all three agreed then it was flatly universal, if two out of three races agreed to a point then it could be considered universal enough that, at the very least a race had the right to allow it within their own civilization, with a standing agreement that if any member of a given race felt convinced by the morality of the others (post universal agreement) that they would be permitted to form a colony under the governance of said other race.
I wonder what the babyeaters thought of Jonathan Swift...
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I'm with the humans here: Prime Directive and GTFO. The story would have been better served by a less elaborate and goofy setting, IMO. Something closer to home and without all the "You could not possibly imagine this ****" business.
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their deal would also require us to EAT OUR OWN BABIES WHAT THE ****!
I don't remember that part, I recall that the SHs would eat THEIR babies, but not anything about them doing the same to us.
The more I think about this the more I think that maybe the better way to work this out would have been for the three races to join together and determine what moral components they all had in common, if all three agreed then it was flatly universal, if two out of three races agreed to a point then it could be considered universal enough that, at the very least a race had the right to allow it within their own civilization, with a standing agreement that if any member of a given race felt convinced by the morality of the others (post universal agreement) that they would be permitted to form a colony under the governance of said other race.
I wonder what the babyeaters thought of Jonathan Swift...
It seems to me what gives the super happies their moral superiority is their technology which is far ahead of anyone elses. All three species went with a similar evolutionary survival strategy which was to use technology. Under those circumstances their way clearly is superior.
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On redsniper's point (having to eat babies)
I beleive that these were being GE'd so that they're really not human, so its pretty much like eating some other meat, just with uncanny resemblance, and if that brings displeasure to enough humans, the SH societal rules would mean abandoning this rule, or else their society breaks apart at its core.
Cannibalism leads to a horde of physiological issues, primarily (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmissible_spongiform_encephalopathy) prionic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_%28disease%29) diseases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creutzfeldt%E2%80%93Jakob_disease), that would, in the long term, be absolutely detrimental to human civilization completely regardless of the ethical implications associated to it.
Forcing humans or any other species (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_and_bone_meal) to exercise cannibalism would thus be against Superhappies' own ethical principles.
Yeah, that's where the little theoretical breakdown of the SH's social order as a result of this stuff comes into play.
Unless they decide ethics are bad and should be done away with now for the sake of happiness, otherwise this whole thing would break them.
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I was under the impression that the Superhappies (and, to a lesser extent, the humans), had already removed sources of pain/anguish, which would include those disorders, via technobabbly stuff.
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Read Mr. Yudkowsky's scenario, (http://lesswrong.com/lw/y5/the_babyeating_aliens_18/) not because it is brilliant writing, but because the situation it presents is genuinely challenging and represents an aspect of first contact too little explored. What happens when we meet aliens that have evolved a moral system which is completely repulsive to us, a moral system so fundamentally different that their word for 'good' translates as 'babyeating'?
What happens when we meet aliens who see us the same way we see the Babyeaters?
Then tell me: what would you do, if you were the one aboard the Impossible Possible World, faced with the repulsive and yet internally consistent morality of the Babyeaters and the outraged ultimatums of the Superhappies?
What do you do with the human race?
Well, firstly I'd absolutely have went along with the Superhappies, as I can't really see myself disagreeing with them on almost anything. Secondly, I'd have explained to them that if we simply go and tell the rest of humanity what we're going to do to them (as happened in the other ending), they'll become very unhappy in the meantime, as surely the Superhappies would have happily agreed to take that into account and handle the whole thing differently. As for the Babyeaters, I don't see a problem with exterminating them or, with the help of the Superhappies, changing them to be nicer.
I don't really see how that's a challenging situation: the Babyeaters are evil, the Superhappies are good, and humans are in between. Of course I'll side with the Superhappies. The only problem in the story seems to be that the Superhappies' compromise would make some humans unhappy (for a short while) whereas that doesn't really make much sense; the Superhappies would be willing to avoid that and it'd seem likely that they could do so.
Anyway, it was a really good read. The only things I didn't like were the completely out of place web culture references and the pretty boring endings.
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their deal would also require us to EAT OUR OWN BABIES WHAT THE ****!
Didn't the Superhappies specify that they'd alter the Babyeater children so that they would not be sentient when eaten? I assume they would have done that for us as wel.
I don't really see how that's a challenging situation: the Babyeaters are evil, the Superhappies are good, and humans are in between.
By human standards, perhaps. The Babyeaters appear "evil" by both human (they debate whether they're allowed to think of what the Babyeaters do is "evil") and Superhappy standards, and humans appear "evil" to the Superhappies. It's possible that humans and Superhappies appeared "evil" to the Babyeaters because they DIDN'T eat their babies.
I think that a big point of this story is that morality is subjective, between species at least.
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I don't really see how that's a challenging situation: the Babyeaters are evil, the Superhappies are good, and humans are in between.
By human standards, perhaps. The Babyeaters appear "evil" by both human (they debate whether they're allowed to think of what the Babyeaters do is "evil") and Superhappy standards, and humans appear "evil" to the Superhappies. It's possible that humans and Superhappies appeared "evil" to the Babyeaters because they DIDN'T eat their babies.
I think that a big point of this story is that morality is subjective, between species at least.
Well, that doesn't make any sense to me, really. Species' don't have morality, individuals do, and within the Babyeaters species there's definitely at least two different views: "eating babies is good" (view held by adults) and "eating babies is bad" (view held by babies to be eaten). It seems that the vast majority of Babyeaters end up in the latter category, therefore placing the "Babyeater morality" into the minority within their species.
So, yeah, when I say that "the Babyeaters are evil", I'm actually referring to just the adults, who are the only Babyeaters we're dealing with in the story (or so it seems). When an individual eats another in a painful manner against the latter's will then whether or not they belong to the same species or not is irrelevant when it comes to morality.
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I suppose. Thinking about it some more, it also showed how individuals can have their own morality (e.g. the humans arguing on how they should deal with the Babyeaters and Superhappies). But, the morality of members of the same species also seems to be similar (e.g. most humans believe that the baby eating is evil, most adult Babyeaters don't), so it suggests that there's something in the species or society etc that drives the similar moral standards... or am I misunderstanding this a bit? :nervous:
EDIT: What I'm trying to say here is that while morality differs between individuals, there are also similarities between members of the same society or species or other group, which is most probably not a coincidence. I'm not an expert on how all this stuff works, though, so...
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I suppose. Thinking about it some more, it also showed how individuals can have their own morality (e.g. the humans arguing on how they should deal with the Babyeaters and Superhappies). But, the morality of members of the same species also seems to be similar (e.g. most humans believe that the baby eating is evil, most adult Babyeaters don't), so it suggests that there's something in the species or society etc that drives the similar moral standards... or am I misunderstanding this a bit? :nervous:
Well, sure, individuals of the same group often have similar moral standards when compared to individuals outside the group. Humans in general have different moral standards than babyeater adults in general. Non-religious liberals in general have different moral standards than religious conservatives. My point was just that morality isn't really any more subjective between species or any other groups than it is between individuals; there might be bigger differences on average, but that doesn't make it any more or any less subjective.
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here is another interesting take on the baby eaters. their society is based on a strict form of honor, and it is hard wired into them that if someone is wrong that they must be punished. their society has developed to the point that they understand if someone was basing their understanding on flawed data, if a better alternative simply had not been thought of, then this is forgivable so long as the other party is willing to admit this and change their position. by BE standards we would be required to wipe them out if we judged them to be flawed fundamentally and they refused to change. we had the ability and emotional capability to do this. the question should be put before them as to what we should do, with the proviso that we, as a general rule, considered individual rights for self determination as the highest virtue (this being the only thing holding us back from the former action), and that us eating our babies was an unwise suggestion for them to make if they wished for this to go well for them. if they wish to be consistent then they would either admit to being wrong and change their ways or demand that we wipe them out, this is something that we very much would like to not do, however given their system of morality it is hard for us to know how to proceed.
another important difference between the baby eater situation and our own is that while BE babies do flee and beg not to be eaten, and human babies do cry out for pain to be removed when present, humans do respond to the cries of their children, and no human child would without prompting ask for pain to be forever removed irreversibly, and no BE (adult or child) wishes to be eaten, most humans wish for their ability to sense pain to remain intact. so clearly the SH understanding of human pain is flawed, their initial communication with us was that we preferred the absence of pain to it's presence, and the presence of pleasure to its absence, they failed to consider that our sensation of pleasure was directly related to our sensation of pain, and that while this observation was correct, this was not the highest moral determinant in our reasoning.
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It was pretty heavily implied that if they were ever convinced eating babies was wrong they would annihilate themselves.
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There seems to be some confusion regarding the Prisoner's Dilemma in the story, since the rational strategy (and stable Nash equilibrium) is to defect. No matter what the other player does, defecting guarantees a higher payoff. What the writer may have thought of was the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, in particular one with an uncertain number of turns. Which doesn't really make sense, since in the context of the story, the game ends after one of them defects (they blow the other's ship up).
Oh, and:
"If we don't fire on the alien ship - I mean, if this work is ever carried back to the Babyeater civilization - I suspect the aliens will consider this one of their great historical works of literature, like Hamlet or Fate/stay night -"
;7
The story seems interesting, and I'm still reading it, so...
Actually, I think he may be talking about the EGT (Evolutionary Game Theory) version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. It incorporates more strategies, and has some interesting proof for why Cooperation/Altruism might evolve, including strategies that gain a higher payoff than the always defect. /takes off the Zoology hat
And, heh, interesting inclusion of Fate/Stay Night as a piece of classic literature :p (It's not worthy of that, but it's fairly good)
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There seems to be some confusion regarding the Prisoner's Dilemma in the story, since the rational strategy (and stable Nash equilibrium) is to defect. No matter what the other player does, defecting guarantees a higher payoff. What the writer may have thought of was the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, in particular one with an uncertain number of turns. Which doesn't really make sense, since in the context of the story, the game ends after one of them defects (they blow the other's ship up).
Oh, and:
"If we don't fire on the alien ship - I mean, if this work is ever carried back to the Babyeater civilization - I suspect the aliens will consider this one of their great historical works of literature, like Hamlet or Fate/stay night -"
;7
The story seems interesting, and I'm still reading it, so...
Actually, I think he may be talking about the EGT (Evolutionary Game Theory) version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. It incorporates more strategies, and has some interesting proof for why Cooperation/Altruism might evolve, including strategies that gain a higher payoff than the always defect. /takes off the Zoology hat
But again, I assume that's because evolution would favor cooperation/altruism in the long run, with a kind of infinite iterated version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. In the context of the story, it's used in a weird way.
A better but still not perfect example in the context it was used is the Centipede game, which describes the situation better (gain better information on the other species but present the chance for them to blow you up). The problem is that the Nash equilibrium is still defecting immediately.
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There seems to be some confusion regarding the Prisoner's Dilemma in the story, since the rational strategy (and stable Nash equilibrium) is to defect. No matter what the other player does, defecting guarantees a higher payoff. What the writer may have thought of was the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, in particular one with an uncertain number of turns. Which doesn't really make sense, since in the context of the story, the game ends after one of them defects (they blow the other's ship up).
Oh, and:
"If we don't fire on the alien ship - I mean, if this work is ever carried back to the Babyeater civilization - I suspect the aliens will consider this one of their great historical works of literature, like Hamlet or Fate/stay night -"
;7
The story seems interesting, and I'm still reading it, so...
Actually, I think he may be talking about the EGT (Evolutionary Game Theory) version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. It incorporates more strategies, and has some interesting proof for why Cooperation/Altruism might evolve, including strategies that gain a higher payoff than the always defect. /takes off the Zoology hat
But again, I assume that's because evolution would favor cooperation/altruism in the long run, with a kind of infinite iterated version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. In the context of the story, it's used in a weird way.
A better but still not perfect example in the context it was used is the Centipede game, which describes the situation better (gain better information on the other species but present the chance for them to blow you up). The problem is that the Nash equilibrium is still defecting immediately.
Well, there you're bumping into the problem of single instances of the Prisoner's Dilemma and the problem with Game Theory in general. It's assumptions and it's lack of long term strategising. GT, for that reason, has been superceded in the field of evolutionary behaviour/animal behaviour by EGT, which does (or can do) involve iterations/rounds of the game, representing the longer term of a species. Even Nash Equilibria is flawed in that regard. (Also: Assuming perfect rationality of the players is a flawed assumption, as well)
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There seems to be some confusion regarding the Prisoner's Dilemma in the story, since the rational strategy (and stable Nash equilibrium) is to defect. No matter what the other player does, defecting guarantees a higher payoff. What the writer may have thought of was the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, in particular one with an uncertain number of turns. Which doesn't really make sense, since in the context of the story, the game ends after one of them defects (they blow the other's ship up).
Oh, and:
"If we don't fire on the alien ship - I mean, if this work is ever carried back to the Babyeater civilization - I suspect the aliens will consider this one of their great historical works of literature, like Hamlet or Fate/stay night -"
;7
The story seems interesting, and I'm still reading it, so...
Actually, I think he may be talking about the EGT (Evolutionary Game Theory) version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. It incorporates more strategies, and has some interesting proof for why Cooperation/Altruism might evolve, including strategies that gain a higher payoff than the always defect. /takes off the Zoology hat
But again, I assume that's because evolution would favor cooperation/altruism in the long run, with a kind of infinite iterated version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. In the context of the story, it's used in a weird way.
A better but still not perfect example in the context it was used is the Centipede game, which describes the situation better (gain better information on the other species but present the chance for them to blow you up). The problem is that the Nash equilibrium is still defecting immediately.
Well, there you're bumping into the problem of single instances of the Prisoner's Dilemma and the problem with Game Theory in general. It's assumptions and it's lack of long term strategising. GT, for that reason, has been superceded in the field of evolutionary behaviour/animal behaviour by EGT, which does (or can do) involve iterations/rounds of the game, representing the longer term of a species. Even Nash Equilibria is flawed in that regard. (Also: Assuming perfect rationality of the players is a flawed assumption, as well)
Game theory considers iterated versions of games, so I have no idea what you are going on about.
Regarding rationality, in this context we're talking about civilizations that have colonized other worlds, one of which has a position in their society enforcing rationality! It's funny that in the story he mentions something of the sort "Any civilization in space must surely have analyzed the prisoner's dilemma!" and then immediately makes the wrong conclusion about it.
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There seems to be some confusion regarding the Prisoner's Dilemma in the story, since the rational strategy (and stable Nash equilibrium) is to defect. No matter what the other player does, defecting guarantees a higher payoff. What the writer may have thought of was the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, in particular one with an uncertain number of turns. Which doesn't really make sense, since in the context of the story, the game ends after one of them defects (they blow the other's ship up).
Oh, and:
"If we don't fire on the alien ship - I mean, if this work is ever carried back to the Babyeater civilization - I suspect the aliens will consider this one of their great historical works of literature, like Hamlet or Fate/stay night -"
;7
The story seems interesting, and I'm still reading it, so...
Actually, I think he may be talking about the EGT (Evolutionary Game Theory) version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. It incorporates more strategies, and has some interesting proof for why Cooperation/Altruism might evolve, including strategies that gain a higher payoff than the always defect. /takes off the Zoology hat
But again, I assume that's because evolution would favor cooperation/altruism in the long run, with a kind of infinite iterated version of the Prisoner's Dilemma. In the context of the story, it's used in a weird way.
A better but still not perfect example in the context it was used is the Centipede game, which describes the situation better (gain better information on the other species but present the chance for them to blow you up). The problem is that the Nash equilibrium is still defecting immediately.
Well, there you're bumping into the problem of single instances of the Prisoner's Dilemma and the problem with Game Theory in general. It's assumptions and it's lack of long term strategising. GT, for that reason, has been superceded in the field of evolutionary behaviour/animal behaviour by EGT, which does (or can do) involve iterations/rounds of the game, representing the longer term of a species. Even Nash Equilibria is flawed in that regard. (Also: Assuming perfect rationality of the players is a flawed assumption, as well)
Game theory considers iterated versions of games, so I have no idea what you are going on about.
Regarding rationality, in this context we're talking about civilizations that have colonized other worlds, one of which has a position in their society enforcing rationality! It's funny that in the story he mentions something of the sort "Any civilization in space must surely have analyzed the prisoner's dilemma!" and then immediately makes the wrong conclusion about it.
Wow, my mind went. I was meaning the strategies but ended up talking about iterations o.O. What I mean is that EGT incorporates strategies beyond those usually used in GT, reflecting some of the more complex factors involved in biological decision making. Anyways, besides my blooper there, I think my problem with that part of the story is that it's assigning human societal/pschological/rationale development to other civilisations, which is obviously one of the things the story is attempting to draw attention to (with the whole 'moral philosophy at complete odds to our own' thing). Perhaps the idea of the Prisoner's dilemma never occurred to this other civilisation, etc.
I say all this without having read the story, mind, as I don't have time to at the moment.
In other news, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_Game_Theory That should keep you happy, and might engender an interest in looking up the primary literature.
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Could you give an example of a "strategy beyond those usually used in GT"?
By the way, my thesis is on game theory.
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Well, I'm a layman in terms of Game Theory, so I could be utterly wrong about that comment, but my understanding of that comment is that EGT uses a different basis for measuring the success of it's games, using an off-shoot or refinement of Nash Equilibria to show whether a strategy is Evolutionary Stable (ESS - Evolutionary Stable Strategy, implying that it is the underpinning driver of the behaviour of an organism/class of organism). As such, the strategies within EGT are not completely the same as within GT, or their success is measured in slightly different ways. You'd have to talk to someone who's subject area is Ethology specifically to get a more complete answer, but I think the ESS refinement of Nash Equilibrium is the crucial driver of the differences involved.
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Interesting story, very well written.
About the rape thing - the exact wording used is non-consentual sex. Maybe it involves only cases like having sex with a passed out person without their consent? One could argue that things like physical assault would still be punished, so just attacking another person and force him/her to sex by using violence would still be against the law.
Anyway, I would probably choose the superhappy ending.. :p
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About the rape thing - the exact wording used is non-consentual sex. Maybe it involves only cases like having sex with a passed out person without their consent? One could argue that things like physical assault would still be punished, so just attacking another person and force him/her to sex by using violence would still be against the law.
Bolded statement is still Rape.
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I don't think it's like that at all. I think in their society the fundamental underpinnings of rape as an act of domination and abuse are somehow gone, and therefore the 'act' is no longer a form of meaningful crime.
I'm just not sure how.
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Well, I'm a layman in terms of Game Theory, so I could be utterly wrong about that comment, but my understanding of that comment is that EGT uses a different basis for measuring the success of it's games, using an off-shoot or refinement of Nash Equilibria to show whether a strategy is Evolutionary Stable (ESS - Evolutionary Stable Strategy, implying that it is the underpinning driver of the behaviour of an organism/class of organism). As such, the strategies within EGT are not completely the same as within GT, or their success is measured in slightly different ways. You'd have to talk to someone who's subject area is Ethology specifically to get a more complete answer, but I think the ESS refinement of Nash Equilibrium is the crucial driver of the differences involved.
Those strategies talk about the payoffs in terms of populations, so I'm beginning to think that EGT is some kind of subset of GT rather than the other way around.
Basically Nash Equilibrium indicates a tuple of strategies that no individual player has incentive to deviate (basically, those who deviate stand worse than they did if they didn't deviate), while Evolutionary Stable Strategy indicates that a population of players with a strategy will still do well if suddenly some players try to deviate from that strategy.
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Well, I'm a layman in terms of Game Theory, so I could be utterly wrong about that comment, but my understanding of that comment is that EGT uses a different basis for measuring the success of it's games, using an off-shoot or refinement of Nash Equilibria to show whether a strategy is Evolutionary Stable (ESS - Evolutionary Stable Strategy, implying that it is the underpinning driver of the behaviour of an organism/class of organism). As such, the strategies within EGT are not completely the same as within GT, or their success is measured in slightly different ways. You'd have to talk to someone who's subject area is Ethology specifically to get a more complete answer, but I think the ESS refinement of Nash Equilibrium is the crucial driver of the differences involved.
Those strategies talk about the payoffs in terms of populations, so I'm beginning to think that EGT is some kind of subset of GT rather than the other way around.
Basically Nash Equilibrium indicates a tuple of strategies that no individual player has incentive to deviate (basically, those who deviate stand worse than they did if they didn't deviate), while Evolutionary Stable Strategy indicates that a population of players with a strategy will still do well if suddenly some players try to deviate from that strategy.
I never implied that it was the other way around, or intended to give the impression that it was the inverse. EGT is a subset of GT, but with some of the underlying principles adapted for the fact it is dealing with the biological/evolutionary system, rather than faceless players attempting to garner a higher payoff.
The best way to think of the associated payoff of a strategy in EGT is as a "fitness" score, so that in fact several strategies can 'survive' evolutionarily, without having to be the highest scoring.
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Superhappies are dicks, these humans are dicks. We can't impose our morality on the baby-eaters any more than they can on us - they tried to convince us to eat babies because they couldn't force us or wie us out - the implication being that they would have done so if they could. So the babyeaters are dicks too.
I have no problem with the baby-eaters. Battuta's kitten analogy is flawed, because you're talking abour human-on-human interactions. Culture is something we can judge and change, we can, as a species, decide what is right and wrong and impose it on other members of our species. We already do that by preventing murder, rape etc. But we cannot force our morality onto a group that has evolved utterly without it, and outside the bounds of it. Yes, the babyeaters children are suffering, but that's their bad luck for being born into a nasty species. It's neither our right nor our responsibility to change that.
If you acceot that there was no way to both survive personally and save humanity from the superhappies, then the only appropriate course of action would have been to blow the star in the meeting system, especially once the baby-eaters ship was already dead. In fact, the crew of the ship chose possibly the worst option they had available - they killed billions of people, and left the babyeaters open to the kind of species-wide manipulation that they considered to horribly reprehensible for our own species, but somehow it's OK for theirs? Like I said, they're all dicks.
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Superhappies are dicks, these humans are dicks. We can't impose our morality on the baby-eaters any more than they can on us - they tried to convince us to eat babies because they couldn't force us or wie us out - the implication being that they would have done so if they could. So the babyeaters are dicks too.
I have no problem with the baby-eaters. Battuta's kitten analogy is flawed, because you're talking abour human-on-human interactions. Culture is something we can judge and change, we can, as a species, decide what is right and wrong and impose it on other members of our species. We already do that by preventing murder, rape etc. But we cannot force our morality onto a group that has evolved utterly without it, and outside the bounds of it. Yes, the babyeaters children are suffering, but that's their bad luck for being born into a nasty species. It's neither our right nor our responsibility to change that.
If you acceot that there was no way to both survive personally and save humanity from the superhappies, then the only appropriate course of action would have been to blow the star in the meeting system, especially once the baby-eaters ship was already dead. In fact, the crew of the ship chose possibly the worst option they had available - they killed billions of people, and left the babyeaters open to the kind of species-wide manipulation that they considered to horribly reprehensible for our own species, but somehow it's OK for theirs? Like I said, they're all dicks.
I agree with this assessment.
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we cannot force our morality onto a group that has evolved utterly without it, and outside the bounds of it.
Is that not it's self a judgement of right and wrong that we as a race determined? could we not just as easily have come to the opposite conclusion? could we not change our minds if presented with the right situation?
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Yes, the babyeaters children are suffering, but that's their bad luck for being born into a nasty species. It's neither our right nor our responsibility to change that.
The Babyeater children are pretty much exactly analogous to human children. Are you really able to make a strong, unambiguous, doubtless statement that we can save human babies from being eaten even if they had the bad luck to be born into another culture, but we can't save human babies from being eaten if they had the bad luck to be born into another species?
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About the rape thing - the exact wording used is non-consentual sex. Maybe it involves only cases like having sex with a passed out person without their consent? One could argue that things like physical assault would still be punished, so just attacking another person and force him/her to sex by using violence would still be against the law.
Bolded statement is still Rape.
Bolded statement is what the future society no longer considers to be bad. rest of the post is an explanation of why future society might have come to that position.
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The Babyeater children are pretty much exactly analogous to human children. Are you really able to make a strong, unambiguous, doubtless statement that we can save human babies from being eaten even if they had the bad luck to be born into another culture, but we can't save human babies from being eaten if they had the bad luck to be born into another species?
unlike humans though the BEs will want to eat their babies when they become adults. it is specifically stated that it is a instinctive behavior.
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The Babyeater children are pretty much exactly analogous to human children. Are you really able to make a strong, unambiguous, doubtless statement that we can save human babies from being eaten even if they had the bad luck to be born into another culture, but we can't save human babies from being eaten if they had the bad luck to be born into another species?
unlike humans though the BEs will want to eat their babies when they become adults. it is specifically stated that it is a instinctive behavior.
Sure, but you could have a culture of humans born with a condition that makes them hunger for baby flesh (but which has also allowed them to survive in their environment) and I'm sure you'd have people coming out of the woodwork to cure them.
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and if said people didn't want it would it be the right thing to do?
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I have no problem with the baby-eaters. Battuta's kitten analogy is flawed, because you're talking abour human-on-human interactions. Culture is something we can judge and change, we can, as a species, decide what is right and wrong and impose it on other members of our species. We already do that by preventing murder, rape etc. But we cannot force our morality onto a group that has evolved utterly without it, and outside the bounds of it. Yes, the babyeaters children are suffering, but that's their bad luck for being born into a nasty species. It's neither our right nor our responsibility to change that.
So where and how do you draw the line? At what point does it become ok for you, as A, to intervene when B hurts C? As you're well aware, species is a completely arbitrary separator, so could you explain why would you choose to pick that instead of any of the other equally valid separators available to you (such as age, political views or the number of limbs)?
Anyway, you're saying that the species of the participants matters, so just to chart your point of view more accurately...
Not ok for A to intervene when B hurts C:
A: Human B: Babyeater C: Babyeater
A: Babyeater B: Human C: Human
Ok for A to intervene when B hurts C:
A: Human B: Human C: Human
A: Babyeater B: Babyeater C: Babyeater
That's how you see it, as far as I can tell. However, that leaves quite a few things unanswered, so could you please say where the following ones fit in?
Ok or not ok for A to intervene when B hurts C?
A: Human B: Human C: Babyeater
A: Babyeater B: Babyeater C: Human
A: Human B: Babyeater C: Human
A: Babyeater B: Human C: Babyeater
I'd especially like to hear why - assuming that I'm correct when I guess that "ok" is your answer to all of them - would it be ok for a human to prevent another human from hurting a babyeater when the babyeater is, as you say, of another species and we therefore have no moral responsibility of their well-being. Point being, if you truly are not concerned about the suffering of babyeaters, then you cannot be concerned about suffering of babyeaters inflicted on them by other humans.
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and if said people didn't want it would it be the right thing to do?
Well that's the question, isn't it? I'm not coming down on one side, just saying 'there is ambiguity here'.
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Well that's the issue, we never get what we really want.
This ain't no Star Trek.
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we cannot force our morality onto a group that has evolved utterly without it, and outside the bounds of it.
Is that not it's self a judgement of right and wrong that we as a race determined? could we not just as easily have come to the opposite conclusion? could we not change our minds if presented with the right situation?
Yes, of course it is. If this is a moral test, then the only basis we have from which to approach it is from he morality that we have developed. The fact that we might have come to a different conclusion is irrelevant - this is the one we've got, and this is the one we work from. Same with the potential to change minds - it could certainly happen, but that potential is irrelevant in this situation, as it hasn;t yet.
Yes, the babyeaters children are suffering, but that's their bad luck for being born into a nasty species. It's neither our right nor our responsibility to change that.
The Babyeater children are pretty much exactly analogous to human children. Are you really able to make a strong, unambiguous, doubtless statement that we can save human babies from being eaten even if they had the bad luck to be born into another culture, but we can't save human babies from being eaten if they had the bad luck to be born into another species?
Yes. That divide - between secies evolved independently on different species - is unimaginably vast, orders of magnitude greater than any cultural variations on Earth. Even if the children are supposedly "analogous", trying to apply our morality to their society is utterly inappropriate.
Sure, but you could have a culture of humans born with a condition that makes them hunger for baby flesh (but which has also allowed them to survive in their environment) and I'm sure you'd have people coming out of the woodwork to cure them.
Absolutely. Humans aren't morally permitted to eat babies. Babyeaters are.
So where and how do you draw the line? At what point does it become ok for you, as A, to intervene when B hurts C? As you're well aware, species is a completely arbitrary separator, so could you explain why would you choose to pick that instead of any of the other equally valid separators available to you (such as age, political views or the number of limbs)?
Species is not an arbitrary separator. Consider - our morality evolved in response to millions of years of evolutionary pressure and thousands of years of societal pressures. None of those pressures, outside of those exerted by the universal framework of evolution - neccesarily applied to the babyeaters, since they evolved on a planet thousands of light years away. Applying our morla framework to them is equivalent to hunting down and punishing every orca in the sea for eating whales - after al, if species is an arbitrary separator, we should hold all species to account equally.
Ok or not ok for A to intervene when B hurts C?
A: Human B: Human C: Babyeater
A: Babyeater B: Babyeater C: Human
A: Human B: Babyeater C: Human
A: Babyeater B: Human C: Babyeater
I'd especially like to hear why - assuming that I'm correct when I guess that "ok" is your answer to all of them - would it be ok for a human to prevent another human from hurting a babyeater when the babyeater is, as you say, of another species and we therefore have no moral responsibility of their well-being. Point being, if you truly are not concerned about the suffering of babyeaters, then you cannot be concerned about suffering of babyeaters inflicted on them by other humans.
Interactions of the wo species outside the limited ones int his story become complex. For example, I would expect Babyeaters to follow human laws while within human legal jurisdictions, given that entering ito them implies consent to local laws. I would accept the right of a human to help another human defend himself against a Babyeater, just as I would expect humans to judge harshly another human who attacked a babyeater. But those are situations that involve humans, and our moralty has to come into play in those situations. But the options they were considering in this story - genocide and species-wide genetic manipulation to fundamentally alter another, utterly alien species because it didn't fit into our morality - are flat-out wrong. They're talking about making moral judgemens in how one alien deals with another alien within their own internally consistent morality, and that's wrong, whether we're doing it or the supperhappies are.
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The Babyeater children are pretty much exactly analogous to human children. Are you really able to make a strong, unambiguous, doubtless statement that we can save human babies from being eaten even if they had the bad luck to be born into another culture, but we can't save human babies from being eaten if they had the bad luck to be born into another species?
Yes. That divide - between secies evolved independently on different species - is unimaginably vast, orders of magnitude greater than any cultural variations on Earth. Even if the children are supposedly "analogous", trying to apply our morality to their society is utterly inappropriate.
But the divide is also arbitrary. The experience of a human baby being eaten by Babyeaters and a Babyeater baby being eaten by Babyeaters is identical. It's inconsistent to treat them differently.
Absolutely. Humans aren't morally permitted to eat babies. Babyeaters are.
That's circular. Ultimately you have to appeal to something external beyond 'we can do it because we can, we can't because we can't'. You need to take an externality like 'so and so suffers', and then the above weakness comes into play.
(obviously all moralities are constructed so this is basically like arguing about D&D rules)
But those are situations that involve humans, and our moralty has to come into play in those situations.
If the argument is that human morality no longer applies to babyeaters because the babyeaters are so vastly different from humans, and yet babyeater babies are basically human babies, I don't think the argument for that vast gap holds up.
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Good read, thanks for that.
Reminds of the moral and ethics discussion we had at the university.
And while the fact that the cultures are "alien cultures" makes it kind of a given that they are "different"... we really don't need to leave earth to observe how different culture's morals can clash. Take the (not practiced anymore) Senilicide and Invalidicide amongst Eskimos for example.
Or just take the role of women and their rights (or lack of) in different cultures even today.
Reading an article about the practice of mutilating the female members of your society as they reach maturity indeed made me feel sick... and yet, it's what humans - not aliens - do in some parts of the world.
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Tell me that reading about the practice of mutilating the female members of your society as they reach maturity doesn't immidiately make you feel sick... and yet, it's what humans - not aliens - do in some parts of the world.
Nonvoluntary body modifications are always a bad thing (no need to specify females especially).
In a way, it is very much analogous to what the superhappies would force upon humanity - permanent loss of a part of yourself, due to perceived greater good by someone other than yourself.
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Tell me that reading about the practice of mutilating the female members of your society as they reach maturity doesn't immidiately make you feel sick... and yet, it's what humans - not aliens - do in some parts of the world.
Nonvoluntary body modifications are always a bad thing (no need to specify females especially).
In a way, it is very much analogous to what the superhappies would force upon humanity - permanent loss of a part of yourself, due to perceived greater good by someone other than yourself.
But if the part being permanently lost is, say, a third arm which repeatedly and uncontrollably punches other people, isn't that pretty well justified?
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In a way, it is very much analogous to what the superhappies would force upon humanity - permanent loss of a part of yourself, due to perceived greater good by someone other than yourself.
I would actually associate it much more with the "Babyeater" morals... i.e. inflicting physical harm on the young members of society. Worse in a way as far as the "reasons" are concerned... as the "human" justification for these traumatic acts are rooted in religion/tradition and superstition and are performed despite health concerns and risks, which as a whole strikes me as a worse rationalization than the one offered by the aliens in our fictional story.
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But if the part being permanently lost is, say, a third arm which repeatedly and uncontrollably punches other people, isn't that pretty well justified?
No. That sort of situation can be managed by other means, such as:
-restraints
-temporary paralyzing drug
-staying at an arm's distance from potential people who the arm would punch
If there was no medical risk caused by the anomalous extra limb, cutting it away without asking its owner for permission just because it offends someone's aesthetics or personal space is not a valid response.
I for one would think an extra hand would be very handy in many ways, even with the handicaps you mentioned. I certainly wouldn't want anyone to cut it off without my explicit permission.
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That's a technical objection, not a response to the point.
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That's a technical objection, not a response to the point.
Then make better analogy
Full human emotional spectrum is not a disability. Involuntary modifications to it or any other feature of human physiology are unacceptable, assent of the subject must be acquired first.
Removing limbs and parts of genialia and parts of human brain are irreversible changes that should be decided by the person for themselves, not by parents, moral guardians or superintelligent aliens.
It's not their business - only the individual is qualified for such a decision. Baby eaters, on the other hand, take all choice away from their children as they consume them; in their parents' stomach the baby eater children find a new meaning for suffering as they are slowly being digested by a month or longer.
As to the aliens rushing to resque the suffering human children... children do not have the emotional stability and maturity to make a decision like this for themselves, not if it's a permanent one. If the Superhappies can come up with a solution that temporarily disables ability to feel pain and doesn't cause withdrawal symptoms or side effects, then sure, introduce it as an optional antidepressant and anesthetic but forcing it upon all humanity as a permanent solution? I just can't agree with that.
Aside from that (and I'm moving firmly to nitpicking territory here): Have the Superhappies performed clinical experimentation on how humans actually respond to removal of ability to suffer? If they haven't, they can't make anything more than educated guesses as to how it would affect us. What happens to a person who can't suffer? What motivates them? Panem et circenses? Having more lulz doesn't strike me as a viable motivation (http://www.4chan.org/) for getting anything actually ever done. As humans grow, their personality adapts to withstand the negative emotions and suffering. I would think that a person who grows without pain and suffering will be terribly confused if subjected to a situation where negative emotions or physical pain would arise.
And let's up the ante a bit - who's saying the Superhappies are telling the truth about their agenda?
What if they simply want us subservient and unmotivated to improve things because we can't suffer?
After all, removing the ability of one's subjects to suffer is all a dictator needs to maintain their position of power infinitely, to remove all causes for uprisings simply because people won't care what happens to them.
They say they are bad at deception - is this a fact, or a clever ruse?
This thread is awesome, it's like a gift that just keeps giving...
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I don't see an argument there that can't be easily adapted to justify the Superhappy position (or any other arbitrarily constructed form of suffering). It seems to neglect the principle of mediocrity.
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I don't see an argument there that can't be easily adapted to justify the Superhappy position (or any other arbitrarily constructed form of suffering). It seems to neglect the principle of mediocrity.
I don't see how this is possible, so perhaps you should explain why the refutation of the Omniscient Morality License can be used to justify it?
You are claiming that Herra's argument can be easily adapted to service the Superhappy position because of the references to children and their inability to make a decision like this for themselves (I believe), but you are missing his assertion: if the children are not capable of making the decision, but the decision remains fundamentally optional to their continued ability to function, then making any such decision for them is immoral at best.
Or put more simply: The entire Superhappies agenda smells suspiciously like the promises of some religions. It would silly of us to rail against the precepts of a supposedly just and loving god who wishes to take away our choices, but to bow to an agenda such as this.
If we were to all behave as good Christians/Muslims/Hindus/whatever then that would indeed bring an end to much suffering and conflict. Do you propose the formation of one world religion and the enforced belief in it by all? This is essentially the same thing but on a grander, and considerably stupider in the specifics, scale.
One religion and strict adherence to it by any possible party will simply result in the end of the clash of ideals that pushed human culture and science into the information age, and arguably still does. This will probably slow the overall development of the species. The proposed scheme will do far more. Pain, after all, is an evolved trait meant to inform you that something is not functioning correctly and to provide negative reinforcement against dangerous actions. Without the means to discern pain, how many children and adults will cripple or kill themselves because they did not know their danger? This could be downright disastrous to the continued survival of humanity. The Superhappies could be trying to kill us off, either through violence or a subtler death.
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I don't see an argument there that can't be easily adapted to justify the Superhappy position (or any other arbitrarily constructed form of suffering). It seems to neglect the principle of mediocrity.
Well, my position is that every sentient being has certain rights and certain obligations.
Rights include things such as autonomy of one's own self and actions concerning oneself.
Obligations include stuff like acting in a way you would want everyone else to act (categorical imperative) which can be expanded to a plethora of moral guidelines such as "if you can't accept someone hurting you, don't hurt others" or "if you cannot give life to the dead who deserve to live, don't be too keen on handing out death to those who deserve death".
Societal obligations may require trading in parts of one's autonomity in exchange of receiving benefits from the society (these would include paying taxes, obeying legislation, fulfilling one's civic duties when requested etc.)
I'm not going to adapt into a situation where I would be required to abandon my autonomy to the degree demanded by the superhappies. I don't recognize their moral or ethical superiority. If might makes right, and they can force me to give up my autonomy, then I'm not in a position to argue, but I would not agree with it on a fundamental basis.
Both the Superhappies' and Baby Eathers' ethical principles clearly don't appreciate the right to personal autonomy and therefore are in breach with mine. Since there's no real ways of measuring which ethical or moral system is superior to others, I must just stick to my guns here.
And my ethics says that subjecting forced changes upon technologically inferior species is not justifiable, just as eating children is not justifiable in the context of "modern" Baby-eaters (it may have been justified long time ago, but now it is just a remnant of a repugnant cultural habit preserved by the social norms - much like mutilation of children exercised in many Earth cultures is still being done.
Oh and if you refer to mediocrity principle - that humans are in no way special - then I'll call on its corollary (which I just invented): No other alien species is any more special than humanity.
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it may have been justified long time ago, but now it is just a remnant of a repugnant cultural habit preserved by the social norms
But, see, I think the key point is that this is exactly how the Superhappies feel about us, and I think they feel the same way about our arguments that our flaws are adaptive and necessary that we do about the Babyeaters'.
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it may have been justified long time ago, but now it is just a remnant of a repugnant cultural habit preserved by the social norms
But, see, I think the key point is that this is exactly how the Superhappies feel about us, and I think they feel the same way about our arguments that our flaws are adaptive and necessary that we do about the Babyeaters'.
Except that they should also be considerate of our respect for the individual's right to decide for themselves how they want to be. I would have no problems with them offering the change process as a suggestion, but considering that the story implies we already had the ability to do it to ourselves, that would be a moot gesture and our happiness could easily be improved better by other means.
Further on, if humanity had the means to do this to themselves, why do the Superhappies think we haven't done so? Do they so underestimate us that they think it hasn't been tried already? If the Superhappies think pain and suffering are not necessary components of normal (and healthy) human existence, then they have the burden of proof considering THEY are the ones suggesting the change, or mind their own business.
The difference between humans and baby eaters is that we don't kill our children or cause them to suffer on purpose. If the Superhappies claim that denying our children the pain inhibition system or whatever is the same as actively hurting them, I call shenanigans on that because they still haven't provided proof that life without ability to suffer (which is different than life without suffering) wouldn't have detrimental effects on individual humans and the species as a whole.
To justify the removal of negative feelings from children to "ease their suffering" would not be justifiable, if it turned out that human beings would in fact do better with the ability to suffer. In such a case, denying that ability from developing children and youth would be incredibly cruel, as they would not be able to develop the coping mechanisms to handle such a thing, even if the system was temporary and could be disabled upon adulthood.
No, the only viable option is to wait until certain degree of physical and emotional maturity, then offer the option of abandoning the ability to suffer to individual humans. If they accepted, it should still be a non-permanent, reversible solution. If they declined, and retained their unmodified emotional spectrum, then what right would the Superhappies have to deny them their own choice?
On that note, I wonder what sort of oppression masochistic Superhappies would experience.
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But, see, I think the key point is that this is exactly how the Superhappies feel about us, and I think they feel the same way about our arguments that our flaws are adaptive and necessary that we do about the Babyeaters'.
Then they're giant flaming hypocrites.
They have not elected to meet us as superiors, and they cannot pretend to the sort of vast superiorities needed to even begin to rationalize such a thing. The Superhappies are not the Shivans, to use a familiar metaphor, vast and incomprehensible to our limited intellects. By being able to actually couch their motivations in terms we can understand and then communicating them with us, they have chosen to engage with us intellectually, thus proving that we are not so different we cannot construct arguments for each other to examine and critique. (As we are in this thread.)
The method they have chosen exposes them as equally flawed in moral authority. But their unwillingness to reason shows them blinder to perceive it.
Or in other words: if the Superhappies want to make something like this stick, then they need more than just a radically different system of values; they need to be something like Cthulhu.
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I'm sure the Babyeaters could decide to stop eating babies on an individual level if they pleased - they have the technological ability. But eating babies is so vital to them, not eating babies so criminal and alien, it would be revolting.
Look, allow me to eat babies
If the humans think eating babies is not a necessary component of normal (and healthy) babyeater existence, then they have the burden of proof considering THEY are the ones suggesting the change, or mind their own business.
If the humans claim that denying our children the ability to live en masse or whatever is terrible, I call shenanigans on that because they still haven't provided proof that life without ability to eat babies wouldn't have detrimental effects on individual babyeaters and the species as a whole. The whole foundation of our species is the ability to eat babies, it is the definition of good, the metric by which all morality is measured. Failing to eat babies is the ultimate evil.
To justify the sparing of babies or the removal of their consciousness to "ease their suffering" would not be justifiable, if it turned out that human beings would in fact do better with the ability to suffer. In such a case, denying that ability from developing children and youth would be incredibly cruel, as they would not be able to develop the coping mechanisms to handle such a thing, even if the system was temporary and could be disabled upon adulthood.
I actually can't translate this as easily but I'm pretty sure a Babyeater could in a heartbeat, something like 'sparing babies would destroy our entire social order, the soul of the Babyeaters is the pain of eating our beloved children, and noone who fails to experience that pain can be called a true Babyeater'. We're talking about something neurally wired into them.
The individual freedom argument doesn't roll for me because we routinely deny individual freedoms to individuals who impinge the freedom of others, and by allowing ourselves to suffer, we bring great pain to all Superhappies. We're basically attacking them, as if we'd walked up to them with a contagious and devastating memetic virus and just let it spread, in spite of the fact that we possess a cure we could have used.
oh and this for a moment
(The difference between humans and baby eaters is that we don't kill our children or cause them to suffer on purpose.
I'm of the opinion that a negative act is pretty much morally equivalent to a positive one.
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To turn the tables:
Superhappies just don't like suffering and can't understand how it could be beneficial to any species, because it hasn't been beneficial to them (or the detriments have been too great to offset benefits).
From that standpoint, removing all suffering would be a valid point of view but they are failing to take into account the psychological and physiological differences between Humans and Superhappies, which are significant enough that Superhappies shouldn't be making assumptions that what is good for them is good for everyone, and what is bad for them is equally bad for everyone.
This betrays a fundamental immaturity in their reasoning: The thought of pain is so uncomfortable to them that they are able to justify its removal from any species they encounter, by any means necessary.
To be honest, I can't believe a species like that would fall into this sort of reasoning in reality, but I guess for the story's purposes it had to happen...
I'm of the opinion that a negative act is pretty much morally equivalent to a positive one.
You mean leaving good thing undone is equivalent to doing a bad thing?
I could agree to this if it wasn't for the context; there is no guarantee whatsoever that removing the ability to suffer from children would be a good thing - thus leaving it undone can't be treated as equivalent to doing a bad thing to a child.
If it turned out that people who have the ability to suffer will do better in life than those without that ability, that would mean the children without the ability would grow up to be emotionally (and possibly physically) crippled adults.
That would be a bad thing.
If the humans think eating babies is not a necessary component of normal (and healthy) babyeater existence, then they have the burden of proof considering THEY are the ones suggesting the change, or mind their own business.
The baby eater children don't have a healthy and fulfilling life, as opposed to children who grow up to become able to cope with occasional bouts of unease...
The switcharound analogy is incomplete because there's no conclusive proof that leaving children with ability to suffer counts as "leaving a good thing undone", while eating a baby eater child is definitely a "bad thing to do" for the baby eater child (considering it brutally ends their existence in a prolonged death).
The argument thus relies on whether or not removing the ability to suffer would really advance and improve the state of human existence. Until that question was resolved with some degree of certainty, the Superhappies have no justification for their claims, and they are undressed as what they are - an attempt to force THEIR standards on OTHERS, just like adult baby eaters enforce their standards on the baby eater children by eating them.
TL;DR:
Eating of the baby eater children is only for the benefit of adult baby eaters, while there is a definite possibility that letting human kids retain their ability to suffer could actually result in net benefit for them, and it would require quite a long research period with a test population to ascertain the functionality of humans without ability to suffer.
*breathe in*
Ethical implications of required tests, unpleasant.
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The notion that oh, our system might work but theirs definitely doesn't just strikes me as too certain, too unambiguous. The fundamental dynamic of 'it's okay for us to change the Babyeaters, but not for the Superhappies to change us' is just too self-interested and suspect.
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The fundamental dynamic of 'it's okay for us to change the Babyeaters, but not for the Superhappies to change us' is just too self-interested and suspect.
There's a reason I didn't take that stance.
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The notion that oh, our system might work but theirs definitely doesn't just strikes me as too certain, too unambiguous. The fundamental dynamic of 'it's okay for us to change the Babyeaters, but not for the Superhappies to change us' is just too self-interested and suspect.
Never said it was ok for us to forcefully change the Babyeaters.
Just do raids to rob some of their children and form a population of them that doesn't eat their children, then make them take care of the problem. They'd likely be quite motivated to change the main population's cultural eating habits. And just keep a firm technological step between us and them so that if they decide to go to war against us, we would have the deterrent for that.
PROBLEM, BABY EATERS?
And the same about uncertainties applies to Superhappies just as well. They are of the opinion that our way definitely doesn't work while theirs might. They haven't shown any factual basis for this belief.
It is the epitome of unambiguity for the Superhappies to assume their superiority justifies their policies toward others, when it in fact merely enables it.
Technological superiority, one does not ethically superior make, hmmm?
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Pffft you're just doing the same thing. SAME THING. I call shenanigans.
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Pffft you're just doing the same thing. SAME THING. I call shenanigans.
Yes, except the Superhappies and Baby Eaters are wrong and we're right.
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Pffft you're just doing the same thing. SAME THING. I call shenanigans.
'
I don't see an argument there that can't be easily adapted to justify the Superhappy position (or any other arbitrarily constructed form of suffering).
Problem, officer?
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Pffft you're just doing the same thing. SAME THING. I call shenanigans.
Yes, except the Superhappies and Baby Eaters are wrong and we're right.
oh okay (http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-downs.gif)
I'm pretty sure the Superhappy reaction to us is analogous to our reaction to some bunch of savages eating their own **** and suffering through a 95% mortality rate through some choice of their own: good lord why. And while the Superhappy reaction is alien to us, even morally hegemonistic, I think we routinely can and would muster the same kind of outrage towards situations that touch our particular 'god no, it shall not stand' nerves. And I'm inclined to view most allegedly logical or ethical arguments for our own rightness vs. Superhappy wrongness as rationalizations for that kind of centrism.
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I'm pretty sure the Superhappy reaction to us is analogous to our reaction to some bunch of savages eating their own **** and suffering through a 95% mortality rate through some choice of their own: good lord why. And while the Superhappy reaction is alien to us, even morally hegemonistic, I think we routinely can and would muster the same kind of outrage towards situations that touch our particular 'god no, it shall not stand' nerves. And I'm inclined to view most allegedly logical or ethical arguments for our own rightness vs. Superhappy wrongness as rationalizations for that kind of centrism.
Well, it would be easy for us to determine that the savages suffer from high rate of disease, famine and exposure to elements, and thus have not only lower material quality of life compared to non-savages but also less of it on time axis.
Emotional well-being is more difficult to measure, but we could definitely provide humanitarian aid to these savages. If they were savages by circumstance they would accept it gladly - if they were savages by choice, the adults could reject it. You raise an interesting point though - would it be ok to leave the children of the tribe to consciously suffer along with their parents?
No. If it was a tribe of savages by choice, the adults could be deemed unfit as parents, and children could be assigned with other legal guardians. There is no justification for putting a child through material suffering like that - make the choice for yourself, but putting your child to the risk of premature death due to all the problems doesn't justify it.
Again the analogy fails in that there's no definite proof that ability to suffer is a bad thing as such, whereas there's a high risk of actual suffering associated with the high mortality rates, bad nutrition and - most likely - lacking education in savage growing environment. I wouldn't be able to comment on how functional and balanced adults of their savage society the children could become, but based on how much more they could become, it would be also justifiable to say they would be able to have a better life away from their parents.
Like I pointed out before: Life without ability to suffer does not equate to life without suffering. It is our responsibility to provide for our children and protect them from harm, but to also teach them to protect themselves from harm. Without ability to suffer, there wouldn't be motivation to learn that.
My standing point here is that there hasn't so far been a single point of evidence for the assumption that detracting from human emotional capability would somehow end up as net benefit for individual and species - it is an assumption spawned by a species that has had a very different evolutionary history, very different social development history and most of all very different physiology and brain chemistry.
By contrast it is easy to prove the detriments of savage life compared to... non-savage life. There is ample amount of material evidence to the fact, whereas the Superhappies could have at most run a limited number of simulations of how humans would react to losing the ability to suffer, considering this is a first contact situation.
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Question: Does anyone know if babyeater children can even feel pain, or that the experience IS painful to them in the first place? All we have to go on are the speculation of the acting xenobiologist, who has no proof one way or the other.
I mean, what if being eaten is a positively orgasmic experience to the babyeater young?
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It's not. It's described as being a horrendous, drawn-out, tortuous death in the story. Even if it isn't rigorously experimentally proven to be such, for the sake of the story and scenario I think we can assume it as bad as the author says.
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It's not. It's described as being a horrendous, drawn-out, tortuous death in the story. Even if it isn't rigorously experimentally proven to be such, for the sake of the story and scenario I think we can assume it as bad as the author says.
But that's the point. There is NOTHING in the story other than that xenobiologist's (who has been a xenobiologist for less than 24 hours at this point) speculation to lend credence to this idea. The author never conclusively confirms or denies that there is any pain being felt at all.
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But the divide is also arbitrary. The experience of a human baby being eaten by Babyeaters and a Babyeater baby being eaten by Babyeaters is identical. It's inconsistent to treat them differently.
Of course it's inconsistent. Consistency only means anything if the situations you're acting in/reacting to are basically similar. Applying the same standards to Babyeaters and humans, despite the supposed similarities isn't "consistent" - it's uniformity and massive oversimplification.
The babyeater's children suffer, yes, but it is not up to us to decide that that suffering is unjust or unneccesary. We accept suffering in other species every day (Meat industry, animal testing etc. etc.) because we have a moral framework that encompasses just about everything on Earth and says what is and isn;t acceptable. But applying that framework outside the closed moral system of Earth is inappropriate and wrong, and, in the absence of something better, we have to fall back on the Babyeaters to decide the acceptability of any moral action that involves only members of their own species.
That's circular. Ultimately you have to appeal to something external beyond 'we can do it because we can, we can't because we can't'. You need to take an externality like 'so and so suffers', and then the above weakness comes into play.
You're just flat out wrong on that IMO. There's nothing external that we can appeal to without applying our own morality to something absolutely alien - there are no absolute rights or wrongs, only contextual ones, and that context can't be considered universal. We can't eat babies because as a species, we've decided that we won't. They, as a species, have accepted that they can and should. The details might get messy and grey at the boundaries of human-babyeater interaction, but the core argument, as far as I'm concerned, is effectively over.
If the argument is that human morality no longer applies to babyeaters because the babyeaters are so vastly different from humans, and yet babyeater babies are basically human babies, I don't think the argument for that vast gap holds up.
Calling them "basically human" just ignores my point. They are analogous to human babies, but they aren't human babies. They will grow up to eat their own babies because that's the moral framework which their society has decided on (which is a consequence of an utterly different biological and social evolutionary history).
I feel like I'm just repeating myself, but frankly I'm yet to see any compelling evidence that we have any right at all to interfere with the babyeaters any more than the superhappies have to interfere with us.
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It's not. It's described as being a horrendous, drawn-out, tortuous death in the story. Even if it isn't rigorously experimentally proven to be such, for the sake of the story and scenario I think we can assume it as bad as the author says.
But that's the point. There is NOTHING in the story other than that xenobiologist's (who has been a xenobiologist for less than 24 hours at this point) speculation to lend credence to this idea. The author never conclusively confirms or denies that there is any pain being felt at all.
Oh hell, I don't remember. I figured that for the purposes of the thought experiment we were supposed to assume that the babyeaters' babies' deaths were as horrible as possible. Just as we're supposed to assume that Alderson dynamics work the way the author says, or assume that we have no chance of taking the Superhappies in a straight-up fight.
I mean, we also don't have any guarantee that the Superhappies can really remove all pain and suffering from the human race, they only claim they can. It may turn out that whatever procedure thay use has the unintended effect of giving us the ability to fire meson beams from our nipples and we end up conquering the whole galaxy with it. :p
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It's not. It's described as being a horrendous, drawn-out, tortuous death in the story. Even if it isn't rigorously experimentally proven to be such, for the sake of the story and scenario I think we can assume it as bad as the author says.
But that's the point. There is NOTHING in the story other than that xenobiologist's (who has been a xenobiologist for less than 24 hours at this point) speculation to lend credence to this idea. The author never conclusively confirms or denies that there is any pain being felt at all.
As the story points out: Of course they don't want to be eaten! Evolution would take care of any organism that wants to be eaten in a very short term!
They struggle, they fear, they're horrified by the hunt, and then they suffer for about a month as their body is dissolved first and brain last.
But I'll indulge you - maybe the Baby Eaters in fact form large gestalt entities (possibly subconsciously) by somehow assimilating the consciousnesses of the consumed children?
Maybe the children in fact continue their lives and even influence their "host" past their original form's existence? These are crystalline forms of life, after all - I wouldn't be surprised if they had developed a way to do this. Many animals in nature actually feed on their young if they happen to end up short of nutrition themselves. Perhaps this crystalline branch of life actually has developed its own way of optimizing the performance of individuals, an ability to develop that isn't limited to reproductionary, Darwinian evolution? Rather than death of an individual resulting in the loss of their life experience and potential, preserve it in the entity that consumes them?
Who knows? The Baby Eaters might not know this themselves. Maybe they are simply convinced that eating the babies is a good thing - just as I'm fairly convinced that ability to suffer is vital for human health.
We could both be right, and we could both be wrong - but do the Superhappies care about anything but their ability to enforce their vision of good upon the species they meet?
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You're just flat out wrong on that IMO. There's nothing external that we can appeal to without applying our own morality to something absolutely alien - there are no absolute rights or wrongs, only contextual ones
It's exactly the contradiction encapsulated there that is so troublesome to human cognition.
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The minute I read Big ****ing Edward this popped in my head... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WasvsUgu_w&feature=related)
Anyway, I find the Superhappies' no pain plan an anathema, more to the point I don't see them as any different then any other imperialistic hegemony. Take away the veneer of hanky panky and they are just your run of the mill scifi villains. I mean ****, how do we know its not some Brave New World gimmick they've instituted to keep their populace in line? The humans are basing their decisions on a five minute porno, their technological disadvantage and some grey scale chick, that's no basis for analyzing what being annexed by these hedonistic asshats entails. I'd pop the contact system star, not only because I find the Superhappies loathsome but it would be hypocritical to save ourselves and leave the baby eaters to be assimilated by them.
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Herra, you keep repeating that we don't know if removal of the ability to suffer would make life better or not.
The only one we can ask that is someone who's had their ability to suffer removed. What do you think they'd say? Would anyone say that "nah, I preferred my ability to suffer"? Not really, because that'd already mean that they're discontent with their current state, which equates to a mild form of suffering. The removal of the ability to suffer from someone would necessarily mean that said someone wouldn't want to revert the change, because they'd simply lack the motivation to do so.
If you change someone against their will, then the fact that you did it against their will can't be wrong if your change also changes their mind about it, making them happy with or even indifferent towards said change. Of course any suffering you inflict to them during the process can still be wrong.
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Absolutely. Humans aren't morally permitted to eat babies. Babyeaters are.
You are absolutely correct as morals (by the scientific definition of the word) are indeed specific to certain cultures. Morals define what is right and wrong for THAT culture, no more no less.
But since we have ethics as a discipline to examine morals... it just means the problem is an ethical one ;)
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Black Wolf, I find your absolutist tone regarding moral relativism to be ironic, "it is absolutely wrong for us to hold morals as an absolute", as I already mentioned once, this is it's self one of those human relative values. I believe it is derived from valuing self determination. but what ever the case may be, it is just as misguided to try and establish 'enforcing ones moral/ethical framework on another species is absolutely wrong' as it is to try and establish 'eating one's own offspring is absolutely wrong' or for that matter 'allowing any suffering in another is absolutely wrong'
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I'll grant you, the absolute nature of the ideal can be called into question. But non interference remains the best option in this scenario, and, excepting where there is neccesary interspecies crossover (i.e. trading or xenobiology or whatever - when they're right in each others faces, and actions (with ensuing consequences) take place), I can't think of any scenario where we could apply our morals to another species.
The other thing to remember is that, in this scenario, we're taking the role of the humans. The question is "What would you do?", not "What is absolutely right". Without a universal moral code (which I agree (and have stated in this thread) is impossible), then all we can do is apply human ethics to a situation, and human ethics should ensure non-interference. We might not be able to (or have to) force that on other species (i.e. we're not morally obligated to enter into a suicidal war with the superhappies to stop them converting the babyeaters) but we can certainly expect it, and base our actions on it.
Regardless of position, I still don't think there's any moral alternative t blowing the meeting-system's star. What the humans did in the story was wrong.
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well, I don't know, it wasn't discussed in the story, but I would assume that if they had tried anything with the superhappies there they would have stopped it, and I would have been worried about there being more superhappies in system that would have stopped any attempt to pop the star. so from a pragmatic point of view, throwing the BEs at to the SHs and closing the door before they turned to us seems like a fairly good way to go.
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Meh, I had missed this one earlier.
So where and how do you draw the line? At what point does it become ok for you, as A, to intervene when B hurts C? As you're well aware, species is a completely arbitrary separator, so could you explain why would you choose to pick that instead of any of the other equally valid separators available to you (such as age, political views or the number of limbs)?
Species is not an arbitrary separator. Consider - our morality evolved in response to millions of years of evolutionary pressure and thousands of years of societal pressures. None of those pressures, outside of those exerted by the universal framework of evolution - neccesarily applied to the babyeaters, since they evolved on a planet thousands of light years away.
How my morality evolved has absolutely no effect on whether I should act according to it. Neither do I see any reason to, nor have you provided one, to limit the scope of my morality to only those whose morality has evolved in a similar manner to mine. I really really really don't see how that would make any more sense than using any other separator.
Applying our morla framework to them is equivalent to hunting down and punishing every orca in the sea for eating whales - after al, if species is an arbitrary separator, we should hold all species to account equally.[/bw]
Huh, why would I want to hunt down and punish every orca in the sea for eating whales? What's the equivalent situation between humans which you think I'd support? I guarantee that whatever it is (I'm guessing hunting down a murderer and punishing them), the reason why I wouldn't do the same for orcas is not the fact that they're of a different species or don't share my idea of morality, but the fact that they're stupid and punishing them wouldn't have any positive effects. Just like how if I could be certain that hunting down and punishing a murderer would have no benefits at all, I'd rather not do that. Not to mention that I don't support punishment of criminals anyway; it's useless, unlike for example making them actually compensate the damage they've caused.
However, I wouldn't have any objections whatsoever to humanely killing all predators or other animals which hurt others as long as I'd be convinced that the overall amount of suffering would reduced. That's what my moral framework is about; species is irrelevant.
Ok or not ok for A to intervene when B hurts C?
A: Human B: Human C: Babyeater
A: Babyeater B: Babyeater C: Human
A: Human B: Babyeater C: Human
A: Babyeater B: Human C: Babyeater
I'd especially like to hear why - assuming that I'm correct when I guess that "ok" is your answer to all of them - would it be ok for a human to prevent another human from hurting a babyeater when the babyeater is, as you say, of another species and we therefore have no moral responsibility of their well-being. Point being, if you truly are not concerned about the suffering of babyeaters, then you cannot be concerned about suffering of babyeaters inflicted on them by other humans.
Interactions of the wo species outside the limited ones int his story become complex. For example, I would expect Babyeaters to follow human laws while within human legal jurisdictions, given that entering ito them implies consent to local laws. I would accept the right of a human to help another human defend himself against a Babyeater, just as I would expect humans to judge harshly another human who attacked a babyeater. But those are situations that involve humans, and our moralty has to come into play in those situations. But the options they were considering in this story - genocide and species-wide genetic manipulation to fundamentally alter another, utterly alien species because it didn't fit into our morality - are flat-out wrong. They're talking about making moral judgemens in how one alien deals with another alien within their own internally consistent morality, and that's wrong, whether we're doing it or the supperhappies are.
Their morality isn't internally consistent: almost every babyeater says that eating babies is great but also protests against getting eaten themselves. That's as inconsistent as saying that stealing is wrong but that it's still great for you to steal from someone else.
Also, the bolded part: well what have we been talking about if not human morality!? If I'm asking you a moral question then saying that human morality would have to come into play is no answer. The question was why would you consider it to be wrong if a human went and tortured a babyeater even if local laws didn't prohibit it in any way and it resulted in no ill effects to anyone but the babyeater?
Finally, are you really going to say that you think it would be wrong for a babyeater to prevent another human from torturing you? That'd be a perfectly consistent conclusion from what you've said, and frankly I think that shows how your view can't really hold water... unless you really agree with the said notion, which I doubt.
The whole idea of species being a sensible separator sounds awfully bizarre when you consider that evidently my morality has more in common with that of the Superhappies than with yours, and your morality has more in common with that of the Babyeaters than with mine, don't you think?
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Forcing entire species to change their way of life, no matter how noble your intentions are, is wrong. While what the babyeaters do is morally reprehensible to us, I don't think we're nearly qualified enough to make interventions on that scale; change the way of life of an entire species, the values of which evolved during eons of development, conditions and events we don't really understand because we weren't there. We're hardwired to see things our way and find their way unacceptable because of the conditions present during our own biological, intellectual and social evolution. They're hardwired to see things their way due to conditions present during their own evolution. This makes both parties biased and not qualified to make decisions on who's right and who's wrong. The story uses extreme examples to tickle the brain, but the overall point of not meddling in things we can't possibly understand is what I think we should take away from here. If you find the ending in which the Superhappies force change on earth unacceptable then it is equally unacceptable to go meddle in babyeater affairs.
In short, humanity needs to get over itself and figure out that not everything is our business, no matter how tempting the intervention seems to be. Hell, we can't even forcibly intervene in other human nation's affairs without causing more harm than good - I think it's safe to say that intervening in an alien species's way of life would end in disaster :)
BTW Battuta great read, thanks for linking that.
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Forcing entire species to change their way of life, no matter how noble your intentions are, is wrong.
Why? No one's giving any kind of solid reasoning for why it would be.
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while I find myself in general agreement with that statement, I am quick to admit it is based on little more than a gut feeling.
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Why? No one's giving any kind of solid reasoning for why it would be.
I did give reasoning. I refer you to the part of my post that states that moral values of each species evolved based on conditions present during each species biological, social, and intellectual development. This results in both species being hardwired to see things through the prism of a set of values that evolved over the course of each species's evolution. This also means said species are biased and not qualified to make judgements on what the other one's way of life should be like. Yes, I see baby eating as wrong, reprehensible, and revolting. But I do acknowledge that I base that attitude on a set of values that I didn't invent, but was inherited. This means that my own opinion is biased and I can no longer say - as ridiculous as it may sound - that baby eating is universally wrong for everyone, everywhere, at any time. What would have happened if I grew up in a society where baby eating was not only acceptable but considered the basis of all good? Would my revulsion to it have remained the same? Of course not - there's no absolutes when it comes to moral values. If I grew up in baby eater society I would consider any alien civilization trying to force me to abandon my inherited set of values evil. Just as I see the Reapers evil and Commander Sheppard good. I'm sure the Reapers have their own perspective on the matter :) So, I can accept that my moral values work for me and my culture, and will keep adhering to them and applying them within the confines of my own culture. I will not try to apply them to cultures I can't begin to understand and will rather spend my time working with things I am qualified to work with. I think every civilization should have the right to live the way they choose to as long as it doesn't threaten others. They should also have the right to defend their way of life by force if need be.
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Why? No one's giving any kind of solid reasoning for why it would be.
I did give reasoning. I refer you to the part of my post that states that moral values of each species evolved based on conditions present during each species biological, social, and intellectual development. This results in both species being hardwired to see things through the prism of a set of values that evolved over the course of each species's evolution. This also means said species are biased and not qualified to make judgements on what the other one's way of life should be like. Yes, I see baby eating as wrong, reprehensible, and revolting. But I do acknowledge that I base that attitude on a set of values that I didn't invent, but was inherited. This means that my own opinion is biased and I can no longer say - as ridiculous as it may sound - that baby eating is universally wrong for everyone, everywhere, at any time.
Sure, but that also means that you can't say it in any context. If you can't say that it's wrong for aliens to eat their babies, then you can't say that it's wrong for humans (humans other than you, that is) to eat babies either. If me and my babyeater friend are sitting down to have dinner, with a human baby on my plate and a babyeater baby on my friend's plate, then it would be utterly inconsistent for you to interrupt my dinner but not my friend's dinner just because I'm of the same species as you. If I think eating human babies is great and my friend thinks eating babyeater babies is great, then neither of us shares your set of values and for all intents and purposes we might both be equally alien to you except for our physiology. What would the moral values of the human species be in that case; for or against babyeating?
What you're saying is that your own opinion (and everyone else's opinion, too) is biased and because of that you can't tell someone who has different values than you what to do, which is sort of fine. However, you're then adding in an extra condition that the aforementioned only applies if the other guy is of a different species than you, regardless of how alien or similar to you they actually are. That still doesn't make sense.
What would have happened if I grew up in a society where baby eating was not only acceptable but considered the basis of all good? Would my revulsion to it have remained the same? Of course not - there's no absolutes when it comes to moral values. If I grew up in baby eater society I would consider any alien civilization trying to force me to abandon my inherited set of values evil. Just as I see the Reapers evil and Commander Sheppard good. I'm sure the Reapers have their own perspective on the matter :) So, I can accept that my moral values work for me and my culture, and will keep adhering to them and applying them within the confines of my own culture. I will not try to apply them to cultures I can't begin to understand and will rather spend my time working with things I am qualified to work with. I think every civilization should have the right to live the way they choose to as long as it doesn't threaten others. They should also have the right to defend their way of life by force if need be.
Sure, but that doesn't really work, as it doesn't give you answers in a lot of situations. For example:
What do you do when an isolated backwards religious cult, which just wants to be left alone to live life the way they like to, mutilates their unwilling children horribly? You must let them, as to do otherwise would be interfering in their business.
What do you do when a babyeater scientist, who likes the same music as you and wants to be your friend and really doesn't want to eat babies, defects and pleads for asylum and the other babyeaters would do horrible things to him if they caught him? You must refuse, as to do otherwise would be interfering in their business.
What do you do when an alien society with a population of 1 million is ruled by a single brutal dictator and all the rest 999999 are asking you to help them and you easily could? You must refuse, as to do otherwise would be interfering in their business.
There's an infinite amount of scenarios in which your proposed system breaks down, because a clear line can't be drawn between someone either being or not being part of your culture, or even your species. It's entirely plausible that an alien could be closer to you culturally and philosophically than millions of humans are. Not in terms of table manners or what sort of art they enjoy, but in terms of what they think about issues like the one we're talking about, the important things.
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There's an infinite amount of scenarios in which your proposed system breaks down, because a clear line can't be drawn between someone either being or not being part of your culture, or even your species. It's entirely plausible that an alien could be closer to you culturally and philosophically than millions of humans are. Not in terms of table manners or what sort of art they enjoy, but in terms of what they think about issues like the one we're talking about, the important things.
I do see where you're coming from and that line of thinking does have some merit. You are assuming, however, that there is a chance that I (or some other human, doesn't matter who) could possibly find myself close and more compatible with an alien whose set of values were based on conditions completely alien to us. I suppose it's possible, but in the context of the story this thread is about, highly unlikely. The story was, after all, written in a way to make the alien cultures about as incompatible to our own as possible.
It's impossible to make a rule that makes 100% sense in every given situation. Since that is the case, in my opinion the safest thing to do is to have a strict inter species non-interference policy; let each species apply their own rules to their own and inside their own space. If they don't like the fact that earthlings frown on stuff like eating babies, don't come to Earth. If a human doesn't like babies getting eaten, then maybe that human should think twice before booking his next vacation at YummyBaby Prime.
As for a religious cult that mutilates their own children, my reaction would depend on whose cult it is. If it's alien I'd consider it their internal matter. If it's human, then those people grew up on this planet and I will drop a human set of values on them like a ton of bricks.
That said, the story was written intentionally so no easy answers could be found. I'm not saying my solution makes sense. I just think that when no solution make sense at all, go with the safe thing. In this case that's non interference.
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Forcing entire species to change their way of life, no matter how noble your intentions are, is wrong.
Suppose their way of life consists of visiting other species star systems... and blowing them up ? ;)
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Suppose their way of life consists of visiting other species star systems... and blowing them up ? ;)
First of all, naturally non interference can only apply if that means nobody threatens the other party. Secondly, however, that is quite a ridiculous supposition.
See, we're talking about a specie's base values here: those start evolving from the moment they develop sentience. Visiting other star systems, however, comes much later in a specie's development, when they're already intellectually mature. So we wouldn't be talking about some custom or value that's hardwired into them since the dawn of time; they would have to develop interstellar flight and technology to make a star go nova, and then make a conscious decision to go obliterating other race's solar systems. If they do that, they've pretty much crossed a line and given anyone with enough technology to defend themselves no choice but to respond in force.
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One should point out that the genetic frame of reference for morals is being superseeded by memetics in our current culture right now. There was this big war on planet earth where the struggle between these two reference points (genetics vs memetics) took place, and memetics actually kind of won.
The other side, the geneticists, or IOW, the nazis, did see evolution of the genes as something to die for and to kill for, that the ultimate objective of mankind was to bring upon itself the perfect homo sapiens gene pool (which of course was based on Arian genes and artificial selection against defective and abhorrent people), and that this would bring progress and happiness.
"Memeticists", that is, christians, jews and marxists actually see men in a "supernatural way", that is, it doesn't matter if you aren't all smart and haven't the "perfect genes", you are a human being and thus you are equal to the rest of us, equalitarianism was the basis of their morality. (We are all brothers, sons of the same god) And that the genes aren't the important thing in society, but ideas and "artificialnessness", that is, the ability to create an artificial world apart from the "natural" world.
In such a sense, BabyEaters were nazis, while humans played the part of "memeticists" here. One can always make the case that, even if one accepts moral relativism and the lack of absolute references that may help us dealing with this, that the "geneticists'" case is worse than the "memeticists", that is, that the latter do produce an increase of happiness and progress, since memes evolve much faster than genes.
Superhappies are the ultimate "genememeticists", in the sense that they have their own genes evolving as if they were memes.
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I do see where you're coming from and that line of thinking does have some merit. You are assuming, however, that there is a chance that I (or some other human, doesn't matter who) could possibly find myself close and more compatible with an alien whose set of values were based on conditions completely alien to us. I suppose it's possible, but in the context of the story this thread is about, highly unlikely. The story was, after all, written in a way to make the alien cultures about as incompatible to our own as possible.
It's impossible to make a rule that makes 100% sense in every given situation.
Even the rule of preference utilitarianism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_utilitarianism)? It's difficult to follow, but I've never heard of a situation in which any other rule would produce a "better" result, assuming that we'd solve the same situation twice by finding the right solution according to preference utilitarianism and the right solution according to any other rule and then comparing the results.
Of course, my own utilitarian view is probably slightly different than stock preference utilitarianism, but probably in this case it doesn't make a difference.
Since that is the case, in my opinion the safest thing to do is to have a strict inter species non-interference policy; let each species apply their own rules to their own and inside their own space. If they don't like the fact that earthlings frown on stuff like eating babies, don't come to Earth. If a human doesn't like babies getting eaten, then maybe that human should think twice before booking his next vacation at YummyBaby Prime.
Well, the issue is really more like "if a babyeater doesn't like to get eaten, then maybe that babyeater should think twice before being born", so the question is "safest for whom?". It's certainly not safest for the babyeater children, nor is there really any limits to the atrocities which could go on indefinitely if all species adopted a non-interference policy. Considering that, it doesn't really sound safe to me, except in terms of galactic politics and interplanetary warfare.
As for a religious cult that mutilates their own children, my reaction would depend on whose cult it is. If it's alien I'd consider it their internal matter. If it's human, then those people grew up on this planet and I will drop a human set of values on them like a ton of bricks.
That said, the story was written intentionally so no easy answers could be found. I'm not saying my solution makes sense. I just think that when no solution make sense at all, go with the safe thing. In this case that's non interference.
Well... I thought the solution was easy. ;)
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Just like babyeaters evolved to eat babies and supperhappies evolved to want everyone to be happy, humans (and also supperhappies and babyeaters, while we are at it) evolved mostly to want to force their morality on others. Supperhappies (and by proxy, humans) have an ability to force their morals on babyeaters in this story, and because that is what they evolved to do, they do it. You may argue about whether it is right or wrong, but there is no absolute moral standard that would prescribe that forcing your morality on babyeaters in this case is somehow "wrong".
Indeed, forcing your morality on others may be very beneficial from evolutionary standpoint, so it may really be one of the "constants" that should be mostly shared betweed different aliens. Natural selection still applies.
As for the Orcas eating whales in the ocean, there are quite a few reasons why this analogy does not reflect the story very well:
1. Orcas and whales are not intelligent, they cannot choose not to eat their prey, thus be blamed for their actions. We do not punish children, too, whatever is the crime they do. Babyeater adults are responsible for their actions by human and supperhapies standards.
2. Whales can be argued to be less intelligent or aware than babyeaters babies. Indeed our judgement of killing depends on the degree of awareness of lifeform being killed. Nobody cares about plants, some gurus in India care about bugs, quite a few people care about animals or human fetuses, and most people care about other people not getting killed or tortured.
3. We do not posses an ability to stop them, humans and superhappies did. If we could stop the Orcas, quite a few humans would indeed choose to do it, IMHO. That was one of the points in the story, that humans can cope with what they consider wrong, when they do not have the means to change it.
4. There are humans that are born or develop a body drive for crimes, for example certain psychopaths, or pedophiles. Being forced by their bodies to do the bad thing does not automatically give them the right to do it, tough. Just like for Orcas or babyeaters.
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Well, the issue is really more like "if a babyeater doesn't like to get eaten, then maybe that babyeater should think twice before being born", so the question is "safest for whom?". It's certainly not safest for the babyeater children, nor is there really any limits to the atrocities which could go on indefinitely if all species adopted a non-interference policy. Considering that, it doesn't really sound safe to me, except in terms of galactic politics and interplanetary warfare.
Since when are babyeater children our problem or responsibility, when 5 minutes ago before the encounter we didn't even know about them? We should devote the resources of our entire civilization and sacrifice who knows how many in a war so we could stop the suffering of entities we just found out about?
Or should we assume that other civilizations will look primarily to their own interests and do the same? My choice, blow up the star where contact was made. Let everyone fend for themselves.
I honestly thing that humanity in general needs to learn that 1) it doesn't understand everything, and 2) not everything is humanity's business in the first place. Unless our own security is affected by an alien civilization, in which case it of course becomes our business.
Of course, this story offers some pretty extreme examples which tempt you to do something by force. The problem will quickly become defining the line on when it's justifiable to intervene or not. Who exactly made us the space ethics police and gave us the right to impose our values on others? I fear we won't have the wisdom to assume that role for a very long time, and we shouldn't try to in the mean time.
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As for the Orcas eating whales in the ocean, there are quite a few reasons why this analogy does not reflect the story very well:
1. Orcas and whales are not intelligent, they cannot choose not to eat their prey, thus be blamed for their actions. We do not punish children, too, whatever is the crime they do. Babyeater adults are responsible for their actions by human and supperhapies standards.
Orcas and whales in general are highly intelligent and are known to have developed habits such as favourite foods. There's for example one orca (CA 2) that is a known shark eater - she actively seeks and kills great whites and eats their liver, leaving the rest to the bottom feeders.
Whales (and especially toothed whales living in pods) have been known to develope cultural features in their vocalization and other habits, such as how they hunt, where they hunt and what they eat. Orcas most definitely can choose what they prefer to eat, but often in nature it's eat or die - prey of convenience vs. prey of preference. It's entirely possible that even if orcas and dolphins both have high level of intelligence, it has not developed quite so high as to allow them to figure out that the other is at same level of intelligence as well, nor the empathy required for the decision to seek other prey.
Oh and dophins are serial gangrapists and jerks and deserve to be eaten a bit
2. Whales can be argued to be less intelligent or aware than babyeaters babies. Indeed our judgement of killing depends on the degree of awareness of lifeform being killed. Nobody cares about plants, some gurus in India care about bugs, quite a few people care about animals or human fetuses, and most people care about other people not getting killed or tortured.
The argument about the level of cetacean intelligence is badly hampered by a lack of meaningful communication between humans and whales. The bottlenose dolphin passes several tests that measure awareness of one's self, abstract thinking, problem solving but something else than trial and error, and other things often associated with sentience (or sapience maybe?). But, since we don't have HK-47 to facilitate communications, hostilities have not been terminated yet.
Nevertheless, it can be clearly said that baby-eater children have meaningful avenues of communication available to them and the adult baby-eaters, which without a shed of doubt proves their sapience. The baby-eaters consciously ignore this prospect of their behaviour.
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Well, the issue is really more like "if a babyeater doesn't like to get eaten, then maybe that babyeater should think twice before being born", so the question is "safest for whom?". It's certainly not safest for the babyeater children, nor is there really any limits to the atrocities which could go on indefinitely if all species adopted a non-interference policy. Considering that, it doesn't really sound safe to me, except in terms of galactic politics and interplanetary warfare.
Since when are babyeater children our problem or responsibility, when 5 minutes ago before the encounter we didn't even know about them?
Uh... well, since "now", of course. If we didn't know about them 5 minutes ago then they couldn't have been our problem or responsibility.
We should devote the resources of our entire civilization and sacrifice who knows how many in a war so we could stop the suffering of entities we just found out about?
Well obviously if it's worth it (which is a question I addressed in the previous post), then yes.
Or should we assume that other civilizations will look primarily to their own interests and do the same?
No, not really, as that's just selfish and the interests of abstract entities (like civilizations) aren't of any moral concern anyway.
Who exactly made us the space ethics police and gave us the right to impose our values on others?
The same who made everyone an ethics police? Humans impose their values on other humans and babyeaters impose their values on other babyeaters. As I've said before and still haven't been convinced otherwise, if it's ok for a human to impose their values on another human then it must also be ok for a human to impose their values on a babyeater.
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Who exactly made us the space ethics police and gave us the right to impose our values on others?
The same who made everyone an ethics police? Humans impose their values on other humans and babyeaters impose their values on other babyeaters. As I've said before and still haven't been convinced otherwise, if it's ok for a human to impose their values on another human then it must also be ok for a human to impose their values on a babyeater.
Wars have started for less reason than that.
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Who exactly made us the space ethics police and gave us the right to impose our values on others?
The same who made everyone an ethics police? Humans impose their values on other humans and babyeaters impose their values on other babyeaters. As I've said before and still haven't been convinced otherwise, if it's ok for a human to impose their values on another human then it must also be ok for a human to impose their values on a babyeater.
Wars have started for less reason than that.
Does not compute. Huh?
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Wars have started for less valid reasons than imposing one's values upon others.
And it's usually been the victors point of view that has been treated as the right one in the history.
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Yes, the babyeaters children are suffering, but that's their bad luck for being born into a nasty species. It's neither our right nor our responsibility to change that.
The Babyeater children are pretty much exactly analogous to human children. Are you really able to make a strong, unambiguous, doubtless statement that we can save human babies from being eaten even if they had the bad luck to be born into another culture, but we can't save human babies from being eaten if they had the bad luck to be born into another species?
I'm going to take the Banksian stand here, it's not our place or right to attempt to change a civilisation/culture utterly alien to ours (See: The Algebraist's Dwellers)
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Yes, the babyeaters children are suffering, but that's their bad luck for being born into a nasty species. It's neither our right nor our responsibility to change that.
The Babyeater children are pretty much exactly analogous to human children. Are you really able to make a strong, unambiguous, doubtless statement that we can save human babies from being eaten even if they had the bad luck to be born into another culture, but we can't save human babies from being eaten if they had the bad luck to be born into another species?
I'm going to take the Banksian stand here, it's not our place or right to attempt to change a civilisation/culture utterly alien to ours (See: The Algebraist's Dwellers)
Unless you're the Culture and you don't like how they work (http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-smug.gif)
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Yes, the babyeaters children are suffering, but that's their bad luck for being born into a nasty species. It's neither our right nor our responsibility to change that.
The Babyeater children are pretty much exactly analogous to human children. Are you really able to make a strong, unambiguous, doubtless statement that we can save human babies from being eaten even if they had the bad luck to be born into another culture, but we can't save human babies from being eaten if they had the bad luck to be born into another species?
I'm going to take the Banksian stand here, it's not our place or right to attempt to change a civilisation/culture utterly alien to ours (See: The Algebraist's Dwellers)
Unless you're the Culture and you don't like how they work (http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-smug.gif)
To be fair, Contact mostly works on the Pan-Human diaspora, so they're just bringing their own people under control.
Mostly, obviously, like any other state they carry out some interferences (Hello SC)
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Well, all I have left to say on this subject is that making grand scale decisions on another race's way of life without full understanding of who they are and how they came about to their way of life (which doesn't threaten us, by the way) is a colossally bad idea. At the risk of sounding overly pragmatic, doing so when it doesn't threaten us, while risking our own people and resources in a grand scale war that would be required, with no tangible benefits to humanity in sight would also be pretty dumb. So, babyeater children became our concern the moment we became aware of their existence? So you're telling me that we basically have the right to tell any race we ever come across in the universe what to do with their children and how to live? Jeez, what a jerk civilization, hope I never meet it. Oh wait, part of it. Damn..
Some things simply aren't our business. Yes, we can talk amongst ourselves how weird/reprehensible/downright evil someone's customs are in our eyes, but even with years of comprehensive study it would probably be premature to say we really understand a whole another race that evolved on such a different set of conditions that their values are totally alien to us. Thinking we're the ones who hold the key to absolute rightness and have the right to impose this on every civilization in the universe we're able to is nothing short of arrogant to the extreme.
Thinking things through, not acting immediately on things that upset, and generally not meddling in things one doesn't understand is the mark of a wise man.
Jumping in and trying to fix every problem you just learned about without fully understanding it is the mark of a blundering fool who will just make things worse. Our own history has shown this repeatedly on an international level. I suspect the effects would be exponentially more dramatic on a species to species scale.
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The problem is the story did not sufficiently specified what would the Superhappies do to the human race. I dont think ending the involuntary pain (and they spoke of involuntary pain, hence the injured child example) is bad, but pain is an important thing in the organism, it warns us that something is wrong, and MOTIVATES us to fix it. But if they proposed some alternative way of how to substitute the pain function, I would not be against it.
As for fixing embarassment and romantic struggles.. 1. how would they do it?
2. struggle is important part of what makes romances so pleasant in the end. Hell, struggle is an important part of what makes any human accomplishment so pleasant in the end..
I think it can be argued with the superhappies that some of the things they propose would in net effect probably DECREASE human happiness, so it will go against their goal.
Other than that, I am with superhappies - transhumanism, when done right, could be the best thing that happens to human race.
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I think it can be argued with the superhappies that some of the things they propose would in net effect probably DECREASE human happiness, so it will go against their goal.
Only in the short term, before the modification, right? After the modification there would be no unhappiness anymore.
Don t think it would sound too convincing to a "Superhappy". The contrary... they propably see our capacity to suffer as the problem to be adressed, rather than their own role in stimulating that capacity.
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we need more threads like this
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Yes. The last one I remember that came close to this one was the teleportation thread.
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The problem is the story did not sufficiently specified what would the Superhappies do to the human race. I dont think ending the involuntary pain (and they spoke of involuntary pain, hence the injured child example) is bad, but pain is an important thing in the organism, it warns us that something is wrong, and MOTIVATES us to fix it. But if they proposed some alternative way of how to substitute the pain function, I would not be against it.
As for fixing embarassment and romantic struggles.. 1. how would they do it?
2. struggle is important part of what makes romances so pleasant in the end. Hell, struggle is an important part of what makes any human accomplishment so pleasant in the end..
I think it can be argued with the superhappies that some of the things they propose would in net effect probably DECREASE human happiness, so it will go against their goal.
Other than that, I am with superhappies - transhumanism, when done right, could be the best thing that happens to human race.
Yes, transhumanism, with the caveat that it's something we choose ourselves and not something that an alien species with little to no knowledge of us chooses for us.
Transhumanism is very probably the future of humanity, albeit distant future, but I'm fairly certain we wouldn't get rid of our capacity for pain/suffering. For one, it offers an excellent part of the learning process (Children touching hot things soon learn not to because PAIN! The full spread of our abilities to feel/sense things offer a critical part of our learning/development and have a genuine use in our psychology/capacity for interaction with the world. It's a feedback system for our interaction with the environment, even if some of that environment is people doing unto others.)