[Kosh]

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.

[MR_T3D]

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.

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.

[Scotty]

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.

[zookeeper]

Read Mr. Yudkowsky's scenario, 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.

[ssmit132]

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.

[zookeeper]

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.

[ssmit132]

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?

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...

[zookeeper]

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?

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.

[Bobboau]

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.

[General Battuta]

It was pretty heavily implied that if they were ever convinced eating babies was wrong they would annihilate themselves.

[Ravenholme]

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 -"

 

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 (It's not worthy of that, but it's fairly good)

[Ghostavo]

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 -"

 

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.

[Ravenholme]

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 -"

 

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)

[Ghostavo]

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 -"

 

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.

[Ravenholme]

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 -"

 

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.

[Ghostavo]

Could you give an example of a "strategy beyond those usually used in GT"?

By the way, my thesis is on game theory.

[Ravenholme]

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.

[666maslo666]

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.. 

[Ravenholme]

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.

[General Battuta]

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.