[General Battuta]

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.

[rscaper1070]

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.

[Mars]

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.

[General Battuta]

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.

[Ghostavo]

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...

[Herra Tohtori]

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.

[MR_T3D]

"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.

[General Battuta]

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.

[Luis Dias]

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!! 

[MR_T3D]

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.

[General Battuta]

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.

[Bobboau]

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.

[StarSlayer]

If they are so into kinky hedonism we could have won them over with S&M

[Mars]

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.

[redsniper]

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 ^^

[Herra Tohtori]

Humans! Lay down your sorrows!

Come and get them!

[MR_T3D]

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.

[Herra Tohtori]

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 prionic diseases, 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 to exercise cannibalism would thus be against Superhappies' own ethical principles.

[Bobboau]

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...

[swashmebuckle]

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.