124 réponses à ce sujet

[Bio Addict]

Threads like this are what happen when you give hippies access to the internet.



The more you know.

[Chuvvy]

Yes. Yes it is. I'm human and I want to live. I really couldn't give a **** about the rest of you. I mean, I'd sacrifice you all if it meant I'd get a few more seconds of sweet, sweet life.

[TuringPoint]

Well, some people like that sort of art apparently.

[Onyx Jaguar]

Slidell505 wrote...

Yes. Yes it is. I'm human and I want to live. I really couldn't give a **** about the rest of you. I mean, I'd sacrifice you all if it meant I'd get a few more seconds of sweet, sweet life.

I like how this man thinks

[The Spamming Troll]

Onyx Jaguar wrote...

Slidell505 wrote...

Yes. Yes it is. I'm human and I want to live. I really couldn't give a **** about the rest of you. I mean, I'd sacrifice you all if it meant I'd get a few more seconds of sweet, sweet life.

I like how this man thinks

o captain my captain

[adam_grif]

Nightwriter wrote...

Anyhoo. Basically, life = good, death = bad. Anyone whose mind operates
outside this system of thought is probably beyond my ability to deal
with or help. I am a person of limited intelligence here, yet I somehow
am able to scounge enough neurons together to comprehend that the
complete destruction of the human race is not in my best interest.

It's not a matter of being intelligent enough to see that, it's based on your meta-ethical stance. If you don't believe human lives are intrinsically valuable then you can't be persuaded that wiping out humanity would be bad. That living is better than being dead is a foundational assumption that everybody in this thread has mutually agreed on, but that is not necessarily true (we can't prove that, it's just a widespread opinion).

Computer_God91

Did you miss my post about how we are a rock or a missle away from
extinction? Because I think that is the biggest return from space travel
and colonizing other worlds, we wont go extinct if one planet is
utterly destroyed because we would have another world with humans on it.
Personal wealth is meaningless when you face complete annihilation.
Money should not be the issue if you are ten seconds away from
extinction and the only way to save yourself is to spend a little green
on making something that will save you or your species. nobody would say
to you if you held a gun to there face "It'll cost to much money to
stop you." unless they truly wanted to die.

I reject your assersion that we are "a rock or a missile" away from extinction. I assume you are talking about some kind of global nuclear exchange. Firstly, I disagree that the probability of this happening is significant. Fifty years of the Cold War demonstrated that setting an exchange off is not easy. The "close calls" that happened (and there were many) are raised as examples of how "easy" it is to trigger one, but that's not really the case. Many of them happened, but all were correctly identified as false-positives before any retaliation was to take place. This demonstrates that the process is resiliant to accidents and mis-identifications. The arsenals are in the hands of rational actors with an understanding of game theory, none of whom want to see a nuclear exchange happen.

Secondly, I cannot reject the notion that nuclear war = extinction strongly enough. There are not enough nuclear warheads in the entire world to wipe out the global population even if they tried. We could get "many" people, mostly in high-density populated areas such as cities, but the global population is far, far too spread out to ever break more than 90% of the population killed.



(quick and dirty calculations on the subject. Not entirely accurate but close enough for the purposes of this thread)

That the population gets targeted in a nuclear war is also something of a fallacy. The common misconception about this is that "cities" get targeted, and it's 1 nuke per city, and that the city gets totally destroyed. WRONG.

Read these essays on the subject:

The Nuclear Game - An Essay on Nuclear Policy Making


The Nuclear Game (Two) - Targeting Weapons




The Nuclear Game - The Attack And After

If those are too tl;dr for you, then the conclusions are this:

- The primary targets of nuclear attacks are the opponenets strategic force, their military assets, and their infrastructure (power, industry etc)
- Most of the world would survive the initial nuclear attack.
- Most of the casualties would come after the attacks from societal collapse.
- The world would regress to the 17th century, technologically, at worst.

If you are discussing large rocks from space wiping out our species, I must once again point to this being highly statistically unlikely. Before you start babbling on about how "we are overdue for a big one" or some such rubbish, I will preemptively state that this is a Gambler's fallacy. The technology does not exist yet to establish permanent extra-planetary colonies, and putting a moon base up will have it being (expensively) reliant on Earth for most of its supplies. True independant colonies (i.e. Mars) are a long way away from being plausible, and are ultra-expensive to undertake.

Asteroid deflection as an alternative to planetary redundancy is both cheaper and more possible in the short-term. But, if we can't see an asteroid coming within a couple of years of it arriving, then we aren't going to be able to stop it anyway, and if we do see it coming a few years away, we can implement plans to divert its course even without investing anything significant into space technology right now.

But on the other hand, people really are starving and dying, and all space tech has been getting us for the past 40 years is some interesting scientific data, but very little of anything that is practicaully usable.

Captain Zaysh wrote...


If you divide the USA's entire GDP across the whole planet everybody
gets $2215 each.  Good luck making sure nobody is homeless or starving
with that.

EDITED for appalling maths

If only the United States wasn't the only first world country in the world, and that Europe, Australia, Canada etc also existed. And if only several billion people weren't homeless and starving (and thus didn't need new clothes or food or homes).

ReconTeam wrote...

And in response to adam, 1st world countries have no duty to try to
raise everybody to their standard of living. How many Somalias and
Afghanistans will we have to see before we realize that places like that
will always be wastelands unless they themselves get their act
together? Better that money go to space programs or defense programs
which have been a huge factor in pushing technological development. A
man who is unwilling to work is not entitled to the quality of life as
somebody who does work. The best we can do is provide opportunities to
employ people.

Raising people to first world living standards is how you bring them into the 21st century. Education is the cornerstone to combatting ignorance, and in countries where only the super-rich get meaningful educations and use their wealth and education to seize more power and continue decade long fighting, you can't hope to see any meaningful improvements.

Your position, that it is 'their fault' for being poor is one grounded in ignorance with undertones of racism. I know people from Somalia who moved here (Australia), and they are really nice people! Their children are normal Australian children. The problems over there are the result of culture and socio-economic woes, not the result of some inherent inferiority or something. These problems can be solved, and more importantly, they should be solved, because they have as much right to live their lives as you or I do. If it is our ethical duty to help out other people, then it is our duty to help all people, not just the ones we share a national border or cultural identity with.

Kaiser Shepard wrote...

Oh please, the Matrix sequels were a better middle chapter and
conclusion of a trilogy than any other we've had this last decade.

THE DARK KNIGHT is the middle chapter of the new Batman Trilogy, with The Dark Knight Rises coming soon. It was an amazing fillm. In the 2000's we had this little series called [b]Lord of the Rings[/i], whose middle and ending chapters were 1000x better than the abysmal Matrix sequels. The Blood and Icecream Trilogy had Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (the third is coming out 2011). The blade trilogy! Spider-Man 2 was 1000x better than Matrix Reloaded, although admittedly, the third was just as bad as revolutions. X-Men is in the same boat as Spider man, with X-2 being awesome and X-3 being awful.

[Sursion]

What if, both the reapers and galactic races are destroyed. Future races will be free of the reaper threat.

Modifié par Sursion, 10 novembre 2010 - 02:39 .

[Redem0]

You know actually the Reaper kinda wanted to preserve humanity above the other races that were going to be destroyed. The catch its mainly survival through being the building bloc a reaper. So yea humanity probably evil enough to be a reaper

[The Spamming Troll]

Redem0 wrote...

You know actually the Reaper kinda wanted to preserve humanity above the other races that were going to be destroyed. The catch its mainly survival through being the building bloc a reaper. So yea humanity probably evil enough to be a reaper

survival? let me know how your next conversation goes with a prothean or whatever race the reapers last oozed into a reaper. survive and reaper dont belong in the same sentance.

Modifié par The Spamming Troll, 10 novembre 2010 - 03:01 .

[Redem0]

Well I didn't meant that survival was positive in someway, but at least there's something left compare to all the other cultures that were probably wipe out in the last cycle, just saying that the assumption that the Reapers wanted to wipe out humanity is incorrect, its closer to instrumentalisation (and well everything cultural is off course is wipe out)

[Destroy Raiden_]

Yeah the reapers want to preserve us like Honore Fragonard did



http://4.bp.blogspot.../fragonard2.jpg



If the reapers show and destroy the world it won't be any Hitch hikers guide to the Galaxy thats for sure.

[Inquisitor Recon]

adam_grif wrote...
Raising people to first world living standards is how you bring them into the 21st century. Education is the
cornerstone to combatting ignorance, and in countries where only the super-rich get meaningful educations and use their wealth and education to seize more power and continue decade long fighting, you can't hope
to see any meaningful improvements.

Your position, that it is 'their fault' for being poor is one grounded in ignorance with undertones of racism. I know people from Somalia who moved here (Australia), and they are really nice people! Their children are normal Australian children. The problems over there are the result of culture and socio-economic woes, not the result of some inherent inferiority or something. These problems can be solved, and more importantly, they should be solved, because they have as much right to live their lives as you or I do. If it is our ethical duty to help out other people, then it is our duty to help all people, not just the ones we share a national border or cultural identity with.

And is trying to raise these countries to first world standards worth the cost in our lives and money? I don't think so, especially after what we have seen this past decade alone. If you try to build schools, some terrorist will likely blow them up. Same with sewers, hospitals or pretty much anything we build. And despite our best efforts, people will still criticize it as "modern imperialism" anyway. What have we gotten out of nation building? Nothing worth the cost in my opinion.

I never said it is anybody's fault for one being born poor, and your claims of racism are completely mistaken. Many foreigners have immigrated to this country, worked very hard, and carved out livings for themselves. The majority in countries like Somalia are just trying to surving to get by day to day. That doesn't change the fact that the country is ravaged by gangs and warlords and exists in a constant state of anarchy. And much of this is due to the days of imperialism screwing up their development as nations. Yet we have seen the troubles with trying to fix these countries, and today we have to worry about getting our own nation back on track. And once we do that, we should put more into aerospace research and other lines of technological development.

Regarding the subject of poverty in modern nations, I have seen those who can work and choose not to, those who manage to live off the system. This shouldn't be possible. I have also seen hard workers get laid off and left without jobs for months in times like these. In my opinion the best thing we can do when it comes to poverty is providing plenty of employment opprotunities as well as the means to get by while you get back on your feet. Is your idea really to divide up the GDP of first world countries and spread it around? If everybody is entitled to the same thing, there is no incentive to work harder, just show up to your state provided job drunk and do the bare minimum. The Soviet bloc showed us many lessons that can apply here.

Modifié par ReconTeam, 10 novembre 2010 - 03:33 .

[MassEffect762]

@OP

Yes.

How would you like it if some thug ended your life.

Apart from that, the universe is plenty big for us mere savages/humans.

Modifié par MassEffect762, 10 novembre 2010 - 03:45 .

[Eski.Moe]

Valikdu wrote...

http://tvtropes.org/...mansAreBastards

NO! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?

[Zan51]

I remember many years ago watching a Quatermass series on TV with my Grandmother while she was staying with us and babysitting for my parents. I wasn't supposed to be watching it, but I could always twine Gran round my fingers...

The relevance to ME is that it involved people being mashed up and forced into pipes.. Just like the Reapers are doing. I think it might have been Quatermass ll, but it was the original screening of the Quatermass series, not a movie made out of it.

I searched for a mention of that in the Quatermass listings on places like Wiki and can't find anything that exactly matches my horror of seeing mushed up people oozing out of a pipe.... /shrug. Whatever. I have the memory of it and find it interesting BW chose to use the same theme for what the Reapers were doing to human colonists.

Modifié par Zan51, 10 novembre 2010 - 06:51 .

[KainrycKarr]

I'm human. So...yeah. It's a bad thing.

[Saremei]

A lot of deluded self hating emo kids on the internet these days. No, the complete destruction of humanity is never a good option. Whatever we do that is bad, any other species would too. As far as population is concerned, war is the best way to limit our populations. Can't have peace and freedom without massive population increases.

[Ieldra]

I'm trying for a more differentiated opinion:

First, the simple answer: I am a human, and of course I don't want to die. Survival, of myself, and even before that, my species, is wired into my genes. We are wired to see our survival as desirable, and even if you profess to think you'd rather have humanity extinct, you will do everything to survive if faced with death. There are also many other humans I don't want to die, even though I don't particularly care about the majority of humanity except in an abstract sense. So, yes, the complete desctruction of humanity would be, in this sense, a bad thing.

For the more philosophically minded: I don't believe that humanity *deserves* to survive in any absolute sense. There is nothing intrinsically valuable in humanity that wouldn't be valuable in any other intelligent species that might follow it as well. However, humanity is still a species, and genocide is usually considered a bad thing. To those who think humanity deserves to be wiped out (which is, I might add, a very different proposition from saying humanity doesn't intrinsically deserve to survive), I say: that position would have merit if you could have a reasonable expectation that what followed humanity is in any way better. In the scenario of ME3, we don't have that expectation. it is doubtful that such an expectation could ever be reasonable, because all organic species are the result of evolution, and had to acquire a certain competitiveness and ruthlessness in order to survive. Even if you believe in something like "intrinsically more deserving on the basis of ethics" at all, which I don't, a species inherently more deserving to survive could be only artificial, and it could be argued it wouldn't survive long - or become as bad as the Reapers in time.

In the end, there is no argument. Survival alone determines which species deserves to survive (note: it is a fallacy to apply this argument to individuals). At any point in time, the species that exist are those most deserving of having survived, because there is no other standard by which "being deserving of survival" can be measured. There is no other standard because ethics are part of a species and not built into the universe, so something like morality can only be applied within a species without restriction. If the Reapers win, they have won another round in the game of life, proving themselves deserving, and if humanity survives, it will have proven itself as well. However, there is never any guarantee any species will win the next round.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 10 novembre 2010 - 10:52 .

[CaptainZaysh]

adam_grif wrote...

Captain Zaysh wrote...


If you divide the USA's entire GDP across the whole planet everybody
gets $2215 each.  Good luck making sure nobody is homeless or starving
with that.

EDITED for appalling maths

If only the United States wasn't the only first world country in the world, and that Europe, Australia, Canada etc also existed. And if only several billion people weren't homeless and starving (and thus didn't need new clothes or food or homes).
 

Did you know the average 25-year old American is one of the richest 6% of people on the planet?  Redistributing first world wealth to the third world is not the answer (since, contrary to popular opinion, there is not enough first world wealth to go round).

Loved the nukes infographic, by the way.

[Lumikki]

Hard to say, human race seem to be very selfish and destructive. How ever, hard to say does human race evolution go in good or bad direction.

[Aurica]

adam_grif wrote...

Raising people to first world living standards is how you bring them into the 21st century. Education is the cornerstone to combatting ignorance, and in countries where only the super-rich get meaningful educations and use their wealth and education to seize more power and continue decade long fighting, you can't hope to see any meaningful improvements.

Your position, that it is 'their fault' for being poor is one grounded in ignorance with undertones of racism. I know people from Somalia who moved here (Australia), and they are really nice people! Their children are normal Australian children. The problems over there are the result of culture and socio-economic woes, not the result of some inherent inferiority or something. These problems can be solved, and more importantly, they should be solved, because they have as much right to live their lives as you or I do. If it is our ethical duty to help out other people, then it is our duty to help all people, not just the ones we share a national border or cultural identity with.

I don't believe that any country in this world would be willing bring a 3rd world country to 1st world standard.  For them to do so, they must have a vested interest. 

Personally it infuriates me to see my government spend millions of dollars "rescuing" victims of (insert natural calamity, tsunami, earthquake etc etc) of other countries when our own citizens are suffering.   All these money to help poorer countries should really be spent on ourselves to improves our lives instead.

Modifié par Aurica, 10 novembre 2010 - 11:56 .

[Ieldra]

Lumikki wrote...
Hard to say, human race seem to be very selfish and destructive. How ever, hard to say does human race evolution go in good or bad direction.

(1) Evolution doesn't determine ethics. Our brain structure only lays the groundwork. An example: we're wired to care about a concept called "fairness", but what exactly is considered fair is determined by culture. We're wired to respect legitimate authority, but what's legitimate for one is oppression for another. We're wired to protect our children and to be part of co-operative groups to which we are expected to be loyal, but that leaves so much room for interpretation that it's possible for a culture to maintain group identity by mutilating children - and consider that good.
(2) Being selfish is a necessary survival trait. For a social species like humanity, being occasionally altruistic increases the chances for the survival of the group, and consequently, the chances for every individual in the group. Altruism is, in the end, selfish as well. Selfishness will not go away.

[Xilizhra]

In ME-exclusive terms, I would allow the complete destruction of the human race if it saved other species from such a fate somehow (multiple other species, preferably).

[Kurt M.]

MuteSpeech wrote...

Cerberus Operative Ashley Williams wrote...

applehug wrote...

Am I the only one who was rooting for the collectors?

I have a (what I would consider) healthy innate interest in self-preservation.

See, I can see the point to this though. Eventually we'll run out of resources in the galaxy. Whether it takes a few hundred thousand years, or it only takes a few thousand years, eventually there'd be just no more room for life; it'd be a galactic-scale repeat of the drell's situation.

Reapers truly ARE the galaxy's salvation by destruction.

Surely by that time, some sort of intergalactic travel would have been researched, surely involving Worm Holes or something similar...I hope so at least. I was going to say sending FTL ships into Deep Space with cryogenic crew would do the job, but having in mind that Andromeda is 2,5 million light-years far away from the Milky Way....not even FTL engines would be enough.

That only highlights how friggin' big the Universe is.