>Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They're

A good thread.

>>54006570
Ethno-masochism. If you've ever met a liberal, you've had ample experience with it.

>>54006600
Fpbp

Also a pity DS9 didn't take this further and show just how bad the UFP, and humanity in particular, could be to show how far they had come.

The Jem'Hadar should have died screaming.

>>54006570
cognitive disassociation

you are so ashamed of being human you literally imagine yourself to be some sort of meta-species.

>>54006570
The common term is Humanity, Fuck You, and usually devolves into discussing details of an Alien campaign using a Cthulhu RPG that no one will ever seriously run but everyone agrees would totally be a good idea if the GM could manage to capture the right level of tension and atmosphere.

Besides, the whole concept of Humanity having this unique niche is backwards thinking. First off, who is HFY always told by? Other aliens. This basically means Humanity always has whatever the other race lacks. Humanity's real ability is Versatility, not as an in-universe skill, but that they fill whatever niche the other aliens lack. Whether this is good or bad for them is entirely based on the tone of the story. Thus, it's not that Humanity is made interesting by whatever special power they lack, they're simply made more interesting based on whatever they have relative to any other aliens they encounter.

>>54006570
A Lovecraftian/eldrich horror thread.

>>54006786
Literally that entire episode is about that, complete with the point of Quark being show to be full of shit about his Ferengi superiority, because he wastes a Jem'Hadar without thought the moment HIS chips are on the table, too.

Not the first time Quark has killed in cold blood, either. Dude just keeps surprising himself.

>>54006912
The fact of the matter is, if we ever encounter any other intelligent life, the odds are that we won't be evenly matched by a long shot. It won't be the sort of multi-species community you see in space operas, where species can safely speculate on each other's relative virtues because in the end they're almost the same and they're all here to stay. We'll either be far above or far below them in power. Either way, it'll end horribly for one side or the other. Either we'll roll over them or they'll roll over us, either way from a position of complete superiority.

>>54006980
And as an extension of this, no matter who rolls over whom, it won't be a matter of virtue or quality of character. Whoever wins, it won't prove a thing except the imbalance of power that was obvious right from the beginning.

>>54006912
No, the original concept was to reverse the trend in science fiction where humanity is seen as a nominally weak baseline. Which is something a lot of oldschool settings like Star Trek or Ringworld legit do.

The point was that humanity is a pretty fucking weird outlier on our own planet. The basic example is the fact that we evolved to have a high average speed over long distances. Human endurance is much greater than that of most other animals, but because we see ourselves as the standard and most of us stopped running daily the moment civilization kicked in we generally don't realize stuff like this. But our weird naked skin evolved exactly to facilitate that, too. Which is why we're one of the few furless mammals.

Compared to other Earth life we are on the upper spectrum of size, the very top of endurance and long distance speed, and we're much more accurate with projectiles than other primates. Just the fact that you can toss your wad of paper into the waste basket from across the room is something that's completely alien to all other animals.

>>54006570
>Let me tell you something about Ferengi, son. They're a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their pockets are full and their negotiations are working. But take away their latinum, deprive them of the market, customers, unclothed wives, tax them over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those ears. Look in their teeth. Well? Aren't you going to say something?

>>54007098
One would hope that we'd be better than animals. But when pitted against other intelligent species in fiction, HFY isn't a subversion at all; it's par for the course. Humans are always treated as superior, often in blatantly silly ways. Writers have this weird idea that humans are unique in our will to live, our willingness to adapt when the alternative is death, and our willingness to attempt to fight against impossible odds when the alternative is death. In these respects we are exactly equal to animals and probably all forms of life.

>>54007233
I feel sorry for the 1950's Human Capitalists

>>54007362
nice

>>54007295
The point is, science fiction is still inherently about us. It comments on the human condition, so taking a different look at mankind can spur one on to have fresh commentary about the human condition. The starting commentary being that we're already unusual on our own world. And it's also something that would steer us away from this "plucky humanity" kind of reasoning, though that's all too often what shitty HFY threads turned into.

Then again, maybe there's so evolutionary example to seeing ourselves that way. We did outcompete a bunch of other homonids, after all.

>>54007098
Not to mention, by the time a human is old most everything that is not a turtle, a whale or a tree will be long dead.

>>54006720
this is what happens when you build a whole family of cultures off the martyrdom fetish of some prick on a stick and then let them rise above the suffering. They're left with the distinct impression that suffering is glamorous and yet nothing to suffer for, so they literally make shit up because they can not wrap their heads around the idea that they aren't victims.

>>54006570

I'm actually a big fan of the Uplift series, because while it kinda seems like "Earth, fuck yeah!" (With Humans, Uplifted Chimps, and Uplifted Dolphins all being main characters) especially in the first trilogy, in the second Trilogy you see that it was our origin as species that evolved sapience on our own and choosing our own path that gives us our strengths. In the second Uplift triolgy you see that when other species are allowed to make their own decisions, instead of having everything dictated by their patron species, are just a great as Humans.

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>>54006570
Absolutely correct. Us humans can absolutely devolve into the mud drenched, eye gouging, sister raping screaming beast for which we sprang.

We evolved on a planet where the water was trying to kill us on a regular basis.
Drink from the wrong pond? Dead.
Eat the wrong plant, insect, or fish? Dead.
Didn't notice the 12 foot lizard that looks like a log waiting near the water? Dead.
Didn't notice the giant man eating cat sneaking up on you as you slept? Dead.
You weren't constantly vigilant against venomous spiders as you sat down to rest? Dead.
Stay out in the sun too long? Dead.

The list goes on and on. No scales or fur, no claws, no fangs. Not the best swimmer, climber, or runner.

So in order to survive we became the most vicious, conniving, bloodthirsty critters in our environment. If anything was even remotely a threat we went out and wounded it, then we tracked it back to its den and murdered it and its children. For good measure with skinned them and wore their faces as hats.

Some of us cannot get past our own instinct, and we have to lock these people up or institutionalize them, but the fact is that every single one of us is like them deep down.
Every single day we build up our civilization, we thicken the walls between us and that same murderous creature.

So before you take away our creature comforts remember. The largest creature on our planet is a 300,000 lb behemoth of meat. We used to kill them with pointed sticks and drain their fluids for lamp oil.
We built an entire industry out of murdering each other.

Please. Don't tear down our walls.

>>54007606

The Uplift series is often shamelessly HFY, but I did enjoy that, in the context of its extreme conservationist values (the whole thing about Galactic society valuing the preservation of planetary ecosystems, the destruction of planets being punishable by literal species-wide enslavement, etc), Brin didn't neglect to touch on humanity's destructive streak.

Like, I think it was whales? That were either rendered entirely or almost-entirely extinct due to human disregard (it's been a while since I've re-read the series). The destruction of an almost-sapient species (by definition, one capable of being "uplifted"--a very important distinction, as one might guess based on the title of the series) is a crime almost beyond measure. Humanity went through great pains to destroy records and hide the fact that they literally genocided not one but SEVERAL near-sapient species before they even hit the tech-level required to travel in space.

As a result, humanity as a species (due in part to the fact that it lacked any kind of galactic "parent-figure") is one of the most horrific mass-murderers in the universe.

>>54007547
That is only due to the advancement of technology to the point of having even some knowledge of medicine and hygiene. Prior to the late 19th century most humans that survived birth thru their early childhood only lived to their 40s or 50s due to how harsh a lifestyle we had to live.

It's only due to medicine and the birth of "white collar" jobs that we see humans hitting ages in the 70s and up.

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>>54006570
Yes yes, Certainly an interesting thought.

You know, I read something fascinating just the other day. A team in France had found the remains of a neanderthal who, by all accounts, could easily have been the most unlucky man to ever live.

As a child, this man had a withered right arm, that even at at the end of his life had never grown to full length or strength. His joints also seem to have been swollen, indicating that he had arthritis. He was missing teeth, and there was evidence that he had been maimed in a fight with a wild animal. To cap it all off, the man died when the cave he was resting in collapsed during an earthquake.

But, without a doubt the most interesting thing about this man was his age: he died in his early 40s - quite old for a Neanderthal. Do you understand what that means?

This man could not have lived as long as he did alone. He lived in the most brutal, savage era of human history, yet there was someone who supported him his entire life. Someone helped him, someone shared their hard-earned food, someone tended his wounds.

Someone cared.


For painting mankind all with one brush, you are as foolish as those human supremacists you claim to be above. Human beings are complex creatures who can be saint or sinner in equal measure; both of these aspects are intrinsic to humanity and both deserve to bee explored.

>>54007743
>>54007743

>>54007757

There were still Whales, there are several mentions of whale song actually being one of Humanity's exports and there was K'tha-jon who had Orca genes and ends up going feral cannibal.

I think the only species specifically mentioned is Orangutans as being extinct, but yeah, our ecological damage was something we covered up.

>>54007743
And the same is true of every other creature on the planet.

Please die in a fire, HFY-fag.

>>54008330
Fine, then.

Earthlings, Fuck Yeah!

>>54008366
Earth, Fuck Yeah has some interesting applications if you take the deathworld trope and play it straight.
>gravity that brushes right up against the upper limits of the rocket equation, making Earthlings freakishly strong heavy worlders
>fungal spores are so omnipresent that we breathe them in and out, and our immune systems grew up constantly fighting them off - ET is mushroom food if his space suit cracks
>at least four cataclysmic impacts happened in Earth's past - one that melted the planet and formed the moon, one that caused an early extinction, one that killed the dinosaurs, and one in 10,800 BC that melted an ice sheet and killed off a bunch of Pleistocene fauna. Any ONE of these is rare.
>flight via air pressure hax has evolved five separate times, six if you count humans

>>54007807
That's not true at all. People regularly lived until their 70s or 80s in the ancient world as long as they weren't the serf or slave class in their society.

>endanger lives and suddenly they'll fight back
Wow.

>>54008553
I prefer HFY over EFY, because the former seems more realistic; we can compare ourselves to other lifeforms that already exist, and logically extrapolate for a space setting.

Which is why human resilience is such a good focus for the genre. A human can take injuries that other animals would die of shock if they received; this may be a trait that is unique to humans when compared to aliens.

>>54008643
>alien life we encounter in space is more likely to have things in common with the animals on Earth that didn't make it into space than the one species that did

Face it, we are either alone, or we aren't special.

The only thing unique about us is civilization and leaving the planet, and any other species we meet in space will have done the same.

>>54008807
I don't think you're considering just how different things could have been if conditions weren't exactly as they are now.

I read something the other day about what life on earth might have been like if Jupiter and/or Saturn didn't exist, and we were bombarded with a lot more radiation from the centre of the galaxy; how that would have affected plantlife, and the ripples that would have had.
Something as inconsequential as the gas-giant that's hundreds of millions of kilometers away had such a profound impact on us; how can we account for all the variables and say that it'll all be the same?

I think that all sentient species will have more differences than similarities with eachother. Humans probably won't be superior, but there's nothing to say that we aren't unique.

>>54008259

Fuck I need to read those books again.

>>54008330

And how many other species on our planet have come to start dealing with other species peacefully, save for human intervention?

Damned few, and nowhere near the level of humanity.

>>54008553
>fungal spores are so omnipresent that we breathe them in and out, and our immune systems grew up constantly fighting them off - ET is mushroom food if his space suit cracks
>Mushroom food
This is actually a strange fear that I have. I am incredibly wary of fungus, which is odd considering how I love to eat mushrooms.

The idea of watching someone die to fungal infection or having fungal growth in my lungs is something that makes my blood run cold.
Which sucked because the last house I lived in had black mold.

>>54009032
Keep your immune system strong and it'll all be fine.

>>54008911
They are going to need limbs that can manipulate tools. They are going to need access to the elements and resources necessary to construct space craft. They are going to need intelligence, and this favors an omnivorous, non-specialized diet (requires brainpower to identify food) and a social species (requires brainpower for social interaction; also required for civilization and space flight) as well as a K-strategy for young (required for increased brain size and survival with the slower development it brings).

There are a number of things that seem to be required for sapience. Any species that meets these requirements and makes it to space are going to have quite a few similarities to us.

>>54008615

This. What people don't understand about the '30 year average live span' is how much it was affected by two things.

First: childhood death. This was a large part of everything.

Second: death from injury. An injury in most parts of the world is still likely to cause you serious long-term problems. In more developed countries, though, you can have injuries that were death sentences and survive to a ripe old age. Cancer and heart disease are nothing new, cancer was named in Ancient Greece, but now people are living so much longer and majority cause of death is no longer shit like 'broke a bone and died of gangrene' or 'didn't eat enough' or 'died in childbirth', because we figured out how to deal with most of those problems.

>>54009058
I spent my formative years hunting and fishing in swamps. I'm good. I still have a fear of fungus and large underwater critters.

Which reminds me. For the purpose of worldbuilding in a HFY area, we have to take into account how many humans grow up in air conditioned urban settings that won't capitalize on their natural gifts.

>>54009059
You know what has inteligence, a social structure, manipulating limbs, and a K strategy? Monkeys.

You know what else has all of those things? Elephants.

You know what two animals are (basically) completely different from eachother? Monkeys and elephants.

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>>54008643
>A human can take injuries that other animals would die of shock if they received
Why and how has this meme spread so quickly among HFY fans?

>>54009059

We simply don't have the data. As far as we can be sure, intelligent life has evolved once on this planet. We cannot look at any other intelligent life forms because we haven't found any. So we don't know if that is a Universal or parochial trait.

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>>54009059
>K-strategy
Stop propagating outdated concepts.

>>54009148
You can lose an arm and still function. Not a lot of animals can do that in the wild, especially not 4 legged kind.

>>54009148
Horses I guess?

>>54007743
>not the best runner

but humans are hands down the best at endurance running. We can outrun horses, anon. Horses. We're not the FASTEST but in Endurance Humans are at the top of the pile.

>>54009140
An elephant isn't going to be building a spaceship and launching it into space. Not just because of lack of intelligence, but because it is physically incapable of building a rocket and also physically incapable of launching its huge mass into space.

I only listed examples.

Weight is another issue. Planet size and atmosphere is another. Reliance on water (or potentially chlorine as a replacement, but this is only theoretical).

There are nearly infinite variables for possible species. But only an incredibly finite number of those options produce a species capable surviving long enough to invent and then build something to bring them into space. Even fewer possible options who can actually implement those ideas.

>>54009177
There is other intelligence life on Earth. We have tests for sapience that other animals have passed. They just haven't built cities or spaceships for one reason or another.

We have the data to make reasonable guesses.

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>>54009288
But the vast majority of people DO die due to shock from losing a limb if they don't receive immediate medical attention.

The thing that allows humans to survive extraordinary injuries is the fact that they have access to modern medicine, not any intrinsic "betterness" to their systems that allows them to run on a broken bone or work their way up a spear shaft after the tip's been jammed in their shoulder.

>>54009328

We can outrun them over short distances, and on uneven terrain. But over long distances, horses will win if it's a single day, lose if it's a week, and it's the same horse.

>>54009362

Citation needed.

>>54009362
Stop mixing up sentience and sapience. Sentience is a dime a dozen while we are the only sapients on the planet.

There's a local business that's always advertising on the radio where I live called Quark Auto, and I'm like, nigga, I'm not buying used cars or car parts from a ferangi.

>>54007598
Preach, brotha

>>54009365
I suppose 'lose' was A bad term, broken or lost function would make more sense. Dogs / horses and most prey animals are a free meal if they break something, a human can limp, crawl or run his way back to safety or society after a break. There is no guarantee of a kill if you bleed a human to follow later. Were ridiculously good at surviving things that outright remove other animals from the game.

>>54009371
>>54009407
>Stop mixing up sentience and sapience.

I'm not. I'm talking sapience. I know the difference.

Sapience is generally defined as awareness of self, and the mirror test is the primary test for this.

The asian elephant, chimpanzee, bonobo, bornean orangutan, bottlenose dolphin, killer whale, and eurasian magpie have all passed this test.

Of course, the mirror test is under debate by some. There are other methods to test for consciousness. Look up 'animal consciousness' if you want. Some species of corvid, for example, are more intelligent than any ape.

>>54009519
The mirror test is nowhere near an indicator for sapience.

>>54009495
So what, exactly, allows humans to avoid bleeding to death when given a massive bleeding wound that most other animals lack? Because I'd say that all the dolphins and manatees I see with inches-deep gashes torn into their backs and neck have survived stuff that would kill humans either instantly or within the day.

>>54006720

You mean realism?

You mean, like, "We need to radically reinvent ourselves or we're going to destroy ourselves and go nowhere?" That's realism.

But, yes, that is what I preach as a liberal, and it is the opposite of HFY.

>>54009519

Corvids, then don't really have a K-strategy for their young, which seems to belie your earlier point, assuming that you are >>54009059

>>54009533
Many scientists disagree with you, bruv.

>>54009541
Protip: climate models that assume CO2 causes significant warming have made no accurate predictions of note. Your entire world view is a lie.

>>54008129
Fucking nice Anon.
This fels like a quote.
Unless it is, then I feel stupid.

>>54006980
>>54007094

This.

But we can still dream. I think a lot of the horror we subject ourselves too is just self-fulfilling, we accept that war is inevitable so we make it happen. Maybe we'll make contact and find that the space-opera-peaceful-confederation is already out there and that our species is actually freakishly hostile and pessimistic for such an advanced intelligence. What if we're just assuming war is inevitable because we're assuming everyone else acts like humans?

>>54009549
Most birds are K-strategists, yes. They have a few eggs once a year and care for the hatchlings until they're ready to live on their own. Not as strongly K-selected as humans, but they're still a far cry from, like, flies or sea turtles.

I mean, they can't build rockets so I don't expect to see any bird-aliens, but there you go.

>>54009590
>pro-tip I can make up anything on the internet

ok brah, lemme know how much Exxon is giving you these days.

>>54009590
What evidence do you have to disprove most scientists' climate models?

>>54009541
I'm going to head off this argument right here and point out that he was talking about the opposite end of the wanky woo-woo shit sandwich while you're talking about the opposite of having a woo-woo shit sandwich at all.

>>54008129
I read it in his fucking voice. Good job, anon.

>>54009589
>under debate by some
>many scientists
You couldn't be fuller of shit if it were dripping out of your ears. Self-awareness is not sapience or intelligence.

>>54009630
The burden of proof is on them. Until their models show accurate temperature predictions for a given set of inputs it's just LARPing. A decade ago people were claiming NYC would be underwater and Kilimanjaro ice free by now.

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>>54009590
>>54009624
>>54009630
>>54009663
Get your climate shitposting out of my HFY shitposting.

>>54009663

The evidence is overwhelming and you are a tool. Go educate yourself.

Frankly, the evidence doesn't NEED to be overwhelming, it is a fact that the earth's climate is fragile, and it is a fact that we are significantly altering the chemistry of the atmosphere, and the bottom line is that *our oil economy isn't necessary*. It exists because oil and car companies chose to create a society that would consume oil. While you're brushing up on the geological timetable (and the numerous sudden climate changes which lead to mass extinction events), you should also read up on the history of American oil, and on all the ways that the automobile and oil industries has manipulated U.S. laws and infrastructure to the detriment of the average citizen.

You stupid authoritarian twit.

I think DS9, being the first Trek series to take place entirely without Roddenberry's input, presents an interesting divide between it and the series that came before, which in many ways led to it being as divisive as it is. OG and TNG are about exploration, idealism, the future, what humanity could be.

DS9 is about real politic, home, pragmatism, and what humanity IS.

If it had just had a more memorable cast I think it would be right up there, it's still my favorite though and in my opinion the last GOOD Star Trek we got. Even if it did blow it's "godlike space entities" load in the first fucking episode.

>>54009755
Don't take the bait, retard. If the first thing someone says to dispute a climate study is "the burden of proof is on them and I don't think their data is accurate", they're not interested in having their mind changed and there's no data you can show them that they'll accept.

>>54009651

Yes it is, what the fuck are you talking about.

It's not the ONLY thing that can be defined as sapience or intelligence, there are higher and lower and different places where someone could place the bar, if they were ranking it as a binary thing.

But, uh, yea, self-recognition is definitely a sapient/intelligent quality, some species have it and some don't, its a meaningful and interesting measure of intelligence.

>>54009802
Pigs still aren't self aware though right?

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>>54008129
This actually comes nicely together with this anon
>>54007743
Humans know they come from savagery, and spend every day trying to distance themselves from it because they know how far they have to fall.

Not only does this afford us creature comforts, but it makes us better beings. There is always the spark of good that ignites the warm fires of a caring civilization. But beyond the firelight lurks a dark beast, circling, waiting for the fire to go out.

>>54009787

I will swat at conservatives if and when I feel like it, thank you very much.

Personally, I like to enter a thread and see that I wasn't fast enough, they've already gotten told. I think the internet is learning to call out sophistry faster and more reliably, being a bullshitter is getting harder and harder.

>>54008129
>>54009639
Second, read it in his fucking voice

>>54009802
Non-human species exist which pass a (one (1)) test for a (one (1)) quality of intelligent life != non-human intelligent life exists on Earth.

>>54009599
>This fels like a quote
It's heavily inspired by the ending of Horrible History: Savage Stone-Age, by Terry Deary.

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>>54009853
I can't tell if you're reverse double baiting because you sound smug as shit

And the internet is making being a bullshitter easier and easier because you can just shout out, ignore, or find fake information to undermine your opponent

>>54009853
Literally fuck off back to /pol/ if you're going to make an active habit of replying to bait. It doesn't matter if you're right because it's fucking bait.

>>54009893
this this this this this

>>54009755
>the data is overwhelming
But it's not.
https://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2973.html
>In the early twenty-first century, satellite-derived tropospheric warming trends were generally smaller than trends estimated from a large multi-model ensemble.

The models haven't predicted shit this century.

>>54009842

Tolkien briefly talked about his 4th age and what things were like for Aragorn's son; a new age of glory and splendor, with evil vanquished, but that just means men start turning to evil practices (as they did in Numenor).

He didn't really follow up on the idea, possibly because he had told it before, but I hear a lot of truth in it.

We're at our best when our circumstances are worst. And then when things are best we sort of make our own demons, like, we aren't even designed for peace and plenty, we don't know how to handle it.

>>54006570
A reality thread.

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This.

>>54009872

"Intelligent" is a very broad word and it sounds like you're struggling with that. It can be accurately used to mean a lot of different things. "There are other intelligent species on Earth" is a perfectly reasonable statement; "there are no other intelligent species on Earth" is also a reasonable statement.

>>54009913
It's more that human instinct to survive, hoarde, consume, and propogate is ALWAYS on, whereas our cooperation instincts tend to click on when things are bad.

As a result, we cooperate more when the chips are down, and compete more when we have plenty because we don't need to cooperate to ensure our survival.

Remember cooperation itself is a survival mechanism, as is empathy. We developed these traits because they're good and advantageous for us as a species. The Law of Reciprocation, as it were.

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>>54009936
You know full well what everyone else means when we say "intelligent" in this discussion. Stop pretending you don't.

>>54009936

The guy at the top of the chain he's replying to was very clear that he was talking about species intelligent enough to develop cities or spaceships which haven't done so "for one reason or another." That's patently wrong, and your post is semantic in nature and irrelevant to that claim.

>>54009893

I have never and will never participate in that aspect of 4chan culture and my life is a lot easier because it. If I feel like responding I will respond. I don't care if I'm being trolled, you're silly if that matters to you, just go do your thing and talk about what you want to talk about.

4chan isn't /b/, its a board with a topic, but you've already posted off-topic more than he and I did, and climate change is at least a TANGENT to Humanity Fuck Yea/Fault of Humanity, I'm not the one trying to police other users.

>>54010008
>climate change is at least a TANGENT to Humanity Fuck Yea/Fault of Humanity
It's fucking not. Take it to /pol/; take it to sci/; just stop replying to fucking bait posts.

>>54010008
>>>/sci/8976591

>>54009853
Completely unrelated to your pseudo-intellectual political crap, but do you read what you say before you post? Like can you hear how much of a turbo-douche you are or does the constant buzzing of your vibrator block out all higher order processing?

>>54009911

Holy shit, it almost sounds like Planet Earth is an extremely complex system and is hard to predict. Clearly this means we should fuck it up as hard as possible just so a few evil fucks that most of us will never meet can make a few more dollars.

Republican Reasoning 101: Look through your opponents' entire body of evidence, find weakest piece of evidence, talk about this exclusively, offer no opposing evidence.

>>54010025

Nananananananana
That's all I have left to say to you.

>>54009953
>>54009913
So a good way to combat this is by artificially introducing conflict when times are plenty and peaceful.

Gladiator games, staged volunteer driven wars for glory and money
Searching for a new threat

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>>54009933

Kira lookin' good. White streak was a nice touch.

>>54009996
>>54009983

No, the conversation isn't as narrow as you're pretending, and even that guy had a better point that you think. Some species DO build cities. Other species have forms of intelligence which far exceed ours in some specific ways, part of what they lack is physical/logistic and part of it is the other forms of intelligence they lack. My best guess for an all-around intelligent species is an elephant, they're long-lived and very socially sophisticated, they have a tool-using appendage, and a relatively high (if still far below human) aptitude for learned skills and problem solving.

Don't get me wrong, though, this is a good discussion. How about this:

"If humans went extinct, elephants could be fabricating tools and planting their own crops within the next 10,000 years". Do you think that's unrealistic? Why?

>>54010138
Lurk for 2 years before posting you fucking obvious transplant.

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>>54008129

>>54010201
>Other species have forms of intelligence which far exceed ours in some specific ways
Name them.

>>54010111

I'm comfortable with who I am and that is one hell of a drug.

More specifically, I'm secure in the belief that liberals are right, and I also suspect that conservatives receive more trust and credit than they deserve simply because they ACT like they're right, while liberals are too polite and self-conscious. I theorize that you actually have a lot of liberal tendencies and that I annoy you because I represent the know-it-all liberal that you are afraid of being. I also suspect that you regularly encounter conservatives who state their beliefs more confidently and obnoxiously than I have, and you don't call them out.

Don't take that personally, though, I have no fuckin idea who you are, you might not even be American and then everything I'm saying is bologna to you.

>>54010201

You're wrong. "High (if still far below human)" intelligence isn't what anyone was talking about and you know it. The conversation started about space-faring god damn species.

>>54010156
Well, this is exactly what ancient empires tended to do. Look at the Romans. The Aztecs. The United States

It always tended to be bloody and rarely solved the underlying problems though.

>>54010271

If you say so.

>>54006570
I'm not a fan of human wanking but this doesn't really seem like a good criticism.

"Oh, look at how hypocritical the humans are! When times are good they are nice but make things bad and they suddenly start having to take drastic measures to save themselves! How evil!"

Like what, would you prefer the humans be assholes all the time, or do you expect us to smile and wait to die and not react to our surrounding becoming harsh? The first doesn't benefit you and the second is such a fucking unreasonable demand I'm almost questioning if you're cognitive.

Look you can say a lot of nasty things about humans, but fucking reacting to our surroundings is a positive, not a negative.

>>54006570
>What's the opposite of a Humanity, Fuck Yeah thread?

>>54006600
>A good thread.

And so it is.
So many posts I want to respond to, I thought I'd FPBP and acknowledge this, that I like what I've read of this thread so far, and hope to continue discussion.

Not at all what I expected from an anti-HFY thread started with a Start Trek quote.

>>54006570
I used to have a crush on that guy. It was really fucking weird. I used to fantasize about his freaky teeth leaving bitemarks that surround my nipples.

>>54010252

You got me, I know that dogs can be trained to read human body language better than humans can, that's all I'm coming up with and I don't have a source or anything.

Lots of animals perform staggering calculations that a human couldn't, just to respond to more advanced sensory data, or respond more quickly than a human would. But that isn't exactly *thinking*, it's doing what a human would do to catch a baseball or recover from a fall, only better.

A human that grew up in isolation would be terribly stunted and wouldn't perform as well as an octopus at a lot of tasks. But that isn't a fair comparison.

>>54010364

He has those sharp teeth and he's always doing weird things with his mouth to draw attention to them.

>>54010299
>That last option
u wot m8?

>>54010423

Pro Wrestling isn't exactly the colloseum, but our culture of military service and expansion is SO much like Rome's, we've just accepted war as a normal and ongoing part of our foreign policy, our leaders don't even have to justify it to us anymore.

(I'm not him, he might have his own answer)

>>54010423
What is Desert Storm, and Iraqi Freedom

>>54010466
>>54010487
That is not America. That is the global bankers and their employees in the US govt trying to hijack the military.

>>54010506
>America can't do anything wrong it must the illumanati lizardmen grays in black helicopters mind controlling people!

>>54010506

Trying and succeeding. And, yes, that IS America.

It would be America even if there were no democratic process and no public consent involved, a lot of countries don't have those things, we have those things and we chose to use them for evil.

>>54010542
>evil

Well now I never said America was evil

America is mostly Chaotic Good, leaning towards CN sometimes

>>54010379
>Lots of animals perform staggering calculations that a human couldn't, just to respond to more advanced sensory data, or respond more quickly than a human would.
That's pretty much hardware optimization seen in nature. I wouldn't call it "intelligence", because it isn't really transferable. It's like the old story of the mantis shrimp having a dozen photoreceptors: it doesn't mean mantis shrimps can see nine more primary colors than we can or even that they have finer color resolution than we do; they're actually shit at distinguishing colors. It just means the mantis shrimp has a workaround for quickly processing specific colors that are important to it in its natural niche, without the luxury of a powerful all-around visual processing system as we have.

>>54010576
This. The human brain is basically Ricer shit.

>>54008615
I think that anon's point was that for the vast majority of humanity prior to the late 19th century, if you weren't part of the nobility or clergy (or the merchant/middle class that started forming in the late 1600s and onward), you were likely to die of illness/injury by your 40s and 50s.

>>54010568

I said that. America is evil as fuck. We arm troublemakers as a general principle, the "enemy of my enemy" principle, we do it in South and Central America, we do it in Asia, we do it in the Middle East, we promote instability and war on purpose.

The idea used to be that whatever insane insurgents we armed last week will do the fighting for us. Now its worse, because its the same shit-taking attitude except we send our own army in too, our generals don't care about national security, they WANT enemies, they care about job security.

As individuals most Americans are good. As a force in the world, though, every American citizen (or at least every person who has voted for a Republican) is personally responsible for a great deal of evil.

>>54010648
If this wasn't a shit thread already, I'd call you a faggot for dropping partisan bait for the /pol/lacks, but that old saying about pissing in an ocean of piss couldn't be more applicable than right now.

>>54010648
I mean would you think the USSR would do a better job? World powers don't play nice, if they did then they probably don't have the stuff to become a world power in the first place.

>>54006570
>What's the opposite of a Humanity, Fuck Yeah thread?
A dumb self-hater thread.

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>>54010648
>people who don't vote in line with my political inclination are evil
If there were ever a time and place for that kind of hollow bullshit, this thread and this board ain't fuckin' it.

>>54010542
The United States has the largest most powerful war machine in the history of our species and it is explicit for the purpose of peacekeeping or retaliation. Not for conquest.

Whenever the US invades another country, politicians have to go on and on about how the people there are suffering under their current leadership or stage a false attack on our soil in order to get public opinion behind the action.

I wouldn't call that evil.

>>54010519
Most Americans just want to pursue a hobby, work hard and get an honest paycheck.
Not an unreasonable goal.

The idea of America was for everyone to get a fair shot at pursuing their own dream so long as they do not smother the rights of
others. Everyone. Regardless of gender or skin color, once you decide to uphold the rights of others you are American.

>>54010698
>it is explicit for the purpose of peacekeeping or retaliation. Not for conquest.

Rome never waged wars of aggression. It strictly protected it's interests and it's allies.

Just, somehow, magically, defending itself eventually involved annexing and occupying half the known world.

>>54006786
>a pity DS9 didn't take this further and show just how bad the UFP, and humanity in particular, could be to show how far they had come.
>>54006952
>that entire episode is about that
This has me wondering if there is a way to stably balance showcasing both the heights of excellence that Roddenberry dreamed humanity was capable of, not just in technology or intelligence, but in true nobility of spirit and also the grim, dark, and savage strength of survival that humanity may never truly be free from and in fact, might best retain for it's power and as a base element of humanity.

War seems like the optimal venue to show the full spectrum of these traits, but how could one explore them without slipping into inflammatory politics, vain bias, or false dichotomies?
I really liked DS9's Dominion War arc for the times it touched on these themes of noble men in a hellish war.

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>>54008129
Uhh, excuse me captain, but if the neanderthal managed to survive to the age of 40 with all those ailments, then wouldn't that make him the LUCKIEST man to ever live?

>>54006720
Conservatism is a mental disease.

>>54010688

It doesn't work like that, we didn't do anything to mitigate the USSR and its tyranny, we just added more war and tyranny to it.

>>54010696
There haven't been any Democratic warhawks. (Or democratic polluters, or democratic free-market-cowboys setting up stock market crashes, or Democratic religious tyrants [god damn do I miss the Christian Left]. There have been other things, lots of Democratic central-banking-shills for instance).

Evil is real and sometimes people vote on it, sorry you didn't get the memo.

>>54010698

What a sick joke. The U.S. army exists to make money for U.S. corporations, mostly oil companies but not just them, there's also the military itself, contractors in bed with politicians both growing fat from a running Chinese loan that they'll never have to pay back.

30 years ago, I MIGHT be willing to say, "The American people are victims, they're scared, they got scammed, they don't know any better". I mean, even then, choosing Reagan, choosing Nixon, choosing either Bush, these were moral failures, people should have known better.

But this is the information age.
Ignorance is a choice.

>>54010648
>America is evil
>Countries are somehow moral agents

>>54010780
Being born with all those ailments sort of balances it out. Let's just split the difference and call it an interesting life.

>>54010814
Take it to fucking /pol/.

>>54009365
>modern medicine
The first recorded successful amputation in human history occurred at the latest around 1,800bce. Possibly even as early as 3,500bce.
Source: The Rigveda
The paper "On Joints" which recommends and outlines amputation procedures for various maladies (including gangrene, wound infections, and otherwise irreparable bone fractures) was writing in the 5th century bce.
Source: The Hippocratic Corpus

We've been surviving limb damage and loss just fine for nearly all of recorded history. There is nothing "modern" about it.

>>54010698
>>54010542
>>54010648
>>54010814


America, on the whole, is not so much evil as self absorbed. Every nation by it's nature, up until this point, has been self absorbed. The purpose of a nation has always been to defend it's populace from outsiders and promote their good over theirs. A tribe, writ large.

With the rise of globalism, the dichotomy is shifting. The purpose and meaning of governance is changing. As a global society, we're caught in the middle of that shift, one no one was or is quite prepared for. Our laws, governments, and sovereignty is not adjusted for the new realities, so problems arise and have been arising since the close of WW2 (arguably since the start of or lead up to WW1). What was started with the industrial era, was doused in gasoline and turned up to 11 with the information age. "We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in."

Right now the social shifts and crises we are seeing are a violent realization that the world as we have understood it since the renaissance is changing. We are all more interconnected. The prosperity of one nation is heavily dependent on others, and we can't go back to change that. What were once local tribal struggles now engulf us all, spilling onto the world stage with bombs in crowds and cars driven into markets.

Furthermore our laws have not kept up with the opportunities our new world presents us with, such that those who would exploit the new openness have a very easy time doing so, and can spread themselves across multiple countries defying laws in one and making profits in another.

>>54010698
>stage a false attack on our soil in order to get public opinion behind the action.
That's pretty much every war the US ever fought.
The people of the US never want to go to war, so something is conveniently made to happen to justify it. Any war you look into follows that formula.

>>54010816

Do you have any D&D sourcebooks within arms reach? Open one. Find the chapter on countries.
They have alignments.
Yes, its a generalization, its pretending that countries are people, the whole influence that this particular sea of humanity has on itself and on other seas of humanity is judged and aggregated.

If a country is full of Lawful Good people living in fear of the one lich-king, that's a Lawful Evil country.
If a country is full of Lawful Evil dickheads being dickheads, that's also a Lawful Evil country.

Or a lawful evil government; maybe I'm not paying that distinction enough mind, but "government" is just a word for the people who decide how shit goes down, whichever people those might be. If the government is evil then evil shit goes down.

What I'm saying is that if America were in a D&D sourcebook we would be listed as an evil country. We aren't the Dales, we're the Zentarim.

>>54010875
We never had those for Korea/Vietnam. Iraq was only tangentially related to Afghanistan.

>>54009540
Other humans step in and provide treatment. Even something as basic as dressing the wound or sewing it up can mean the difference between recovery and death.
Hell, even a basic understanding of first-aid (not a new concept by any stretch of the imagination) can allow you to patch up a huge array of injuries on your own.

As far as dolphins? They actually have some spectacular natural healing abilities, assuming Corkeron hasn't been disproven since his '87 paper.

>>54006980
>The fact of the matter is, if we ever encounter any other intelligent life, the odds are that we won't be evenly matched by a long shot.
>Either we'll roll over them or they'll roll over us, either way from a position of complete superiority.
>>54007094
>And as an extension of this, no matter who rolls over whom, it won't be a matter of virtue or quality of character. Whoever wins, it won't prove a thing except the imbalance of power that was obvious right from the beginning.
This is true and I have loved this whenever I have seen it done well.
Usually it's with humans and God-like aliens, but I recall a few stories of basically humans regretfully or ambivalently committing genocidal acts simply by crossing paths with weaker races.
Stargate Universe had a great Planet-Maker god-like race. It dwarfed the humans and anything they could imagine, converted several who then created religion by simply being proven to exist, then horrified the others with a miraculous act of apparently attempting to help the lost worshipers.
All while nothing was truly known of the race beyond what they could do.

>>54009605
>Maybe we'll make contact and find that the space-opera-peaceful-confederation is already out there and that our species is actually freakishly hostile and pessimistic for such an advanced intelligence.
I always liked the alien races in some movies, such a Contact, that very much keep humanity in the dark and only act in extremely subtle, indirect ways to passively guide humanity towards a more enlightened future.
It just makes sense.
If we were truly contacted by a benevolent alien race that vastly outclassed us, they would very likely treat our entire race like a violent mental patient.
At a cautious distance from the subject and within a controlled and isolated environment, constantly observe and occasionally attempt interactions to illicit emotional and mental healing and growth.

But Farscape was fun too.

>>54010877
>What I'm saying is that if America were in a D&D sourcebook we would be listed as an evil country. We aren't the Dales, we're the Zentarim.

Actually we explicitly are the Dales, and America is CG.

>>54010861
>self-absorbed

That means evil.

I mean, if you're self-absorbed and you forget someone's birthday that isn't evil. If you're self-absorbed and so you enslave an entire country and make them grow bananas for you that is evil. Even if they're ignorant, stupid, complacent, the people who voted for the regime are responsible and the people who buy the bananas are responsible too.

You're right, though, in that human history is a sea of shit, and when I say "the U.S. is evil" I could just as easily say "the U.S. is a normal human country doing normal human things."

Really the U.S. is way way waaaaay more just and benevolent than it was 100 or 200 years ago, and better than any other country which existed before the modern era.

I just don't think that's good enough to avoid extinction. I think that we really have to work to get the hang of this global-coexistence thing, I think its kind of urgent, because the techniques of tyranny are advancing so quickly too.

>>54010877
You're seriously going to point towards a D&D sourcebook to try and justify real-life ethical positions? Because there's a huge gulf between anyone, anything, much less an entire country being statted as Lawful Evil under the purview of a dungeon-crawling wargame with roleplay rules bolted on over the years, and actually trying to assign a label as contentious as real-life "evil" to something in earnest.
Sit down and think about the shit you're spewing before you post more of it.

>>54010783
Actually it's par the course.

>>54010915
Are you serious? Have you never heard of Gulf of Tonkin? That's like baby's first true conspiracy. I don't think there is anyone who even pretends to dispute that anymore.

>>54010934

Fantasy authors work in the realm of wishful thinking and I do not fault them for this. That's their job.

But your job as a citizen is to be a realist and to look at your country as it actually exists.

Your job as a citizen is also strictly voluntary. Nobody makes you vote. Nobody makes you talk about politics. People who don't like politics shouldn't participate.

>>54010962
What makes you think extinction won't be a blessing; global coexistence a curse? If human history is as shitty a sea as you think, then let us drown, because any way of refloating us will in fact be nothing short of tyranny.

I like to think that there might be Humans in outer space with that Space Federation, just that Humanity as a whole might not be for a long time

>>54010963

I wasn't justifying anything; my "justification" lies purely in the realm of modern world history. That gets me to the point of saying, "Gosh, the people in this region are collectively responsible for human harm and suffering on a massive scale, and they're doing it on purpose". These are facts.

The opinion is when I say "And that is evil". I think "evil" is a perfect word to describe that sort of thing. That's an opinion, you can disagree, you can use your words and I'll use mine.

I believe in judging people. I think that bad things happen because good people are too afraid to judge. Also, I believe in good and evil people. America has both. America is a place where the good people generally let the evil people win, which causes a lot of evil outcomes. I'd love to see that change.

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>>54011013

My answer is that anybody who wants to get off the ride can do so at any time. I'm not saying you won't be missed, but like, if you really think non-existence is better, -you have that option-.

Politics are for those of us who want to stick this thing out and see how far we can get.

>>54011024

Like the human auxillary of the Tau?

>>54010814
>30 years ago, I MIGHT be willing to say, "The American people are victims, they're scared, they got scammed, they don't know any better"
The baby boomers fucked us over, its turning around

>>54007098
>No, the original concept was to reverse the trend in science fiction where humanity is seen as a nominally weak baseline.
Not that anon, and this is just me autisticly re-reading your post and being genuinely confused by small point.
The above line appears to be a disagreement, hence the word "No".
I am not challenging the point made in the line, but I am curious what the "No" or disagreement in general was actually disagreeing with, as I could not find a satisfactorily matching counterpoint in that anon's post.

Moving on:
>our weird naked skin evolved exactly to facilitate that, too. Which is why we're one of the few furless mammals.
In what way is our "weird naked skin" an evolutionary adaptation to facilitate speed or endurance?
Is that what you were stating?
If not, what were you asserting?
I have not kept on science reading, is there any consensus of this in the scientific community?
At last I read, the theory that our relative lack of fur was an aquatic adaptation seemed the most likely and sensible to me.

>Just the fact that you can toss your wad of paper into the waste basket from across the room is something that's completely alien to all other animals.
Tool-use itself is relatively rare, but our refinement of it is extraordinary.
>>54007295
>One would hope that we'd be better than animals.
True, but it's still impressive to see a samurai shoot a man at full range away, charging on horseback, in the fucking eye.

>But when pitted against other intelligent species in fiction, HFY isn't a subversion at all; it's par for the course.
This seems to be true.
A while back I did a "totally legit" and "completely scientific" survey of a sample of popular science-fiction and HFY was about 50% with aliens being superior about half the time.

>>54011049
>I think "evil" is a perfect word to describe that sort of thing. That's an opinion, you can disagree, you can use your words and I'll use mine.
No; let's start using the same words. Give me your definition of "evil" for me in concrete terms and not in platitudes. Draw me the dividing line, instead of pointing to landmarks way out on either side. Show me how the responsibility falls; where it filters from the collective into the individual. Because using words as monumental as "good" and "evil" and then backpedaling under the umbrella of "opinion" is just worthless sophistry.

>>54010861
neoliberalism.txt

"We can't change that! Now go die in a hole, poor people."

>>54011069
It's not a position of wanting off the ride. It's a position of believing, firmly, that the ride should stop; that nothing good can come of it; and that "how far we can get" will only ever mean depths and not heights.

>>54011114

There isn't a clear line, because I AM talking about the real world, and the real world IS fuzzy and complicated. Really, I don't view it as "fuzzy", I think that grey is an illusion created when we aren't perceptive enough to separate the black dots from the white ones, if I had perfect knowledge then I could write a perfect definition of evil and render a perfect verdict on each person. But the real world is complicated and we're all stupid monkeys working with abstractions.

What I'm getting at is, I don't claim to be a perfect JUDGE of good and evil, that doesn't mean that there ISN'T good and evil.

Some people place no value at all on the interests of others and pursue their own interests exclusively. They will cause massive harm to others in order for a trivial gain to themselves; I do not care WHY they do this, I do not care if they feel guilty or not, what makes them evil is the bottom line that they WILL do this, and they'll do it on purpose.

Some people make an admirable effort to place the needs of others first or to places the needs of others on part with their own. Some are better at it than others; I don't think the distinction between "good people" and "neutral people" is as easy to define or as important, I'm focusing on evil and non-evil, and I do not use "evil" lightly. A great deal of harm can be averted by having just a SLIGHT regard for those around you; sure, you'd sell out another to save yourself, you put yourself first, but your regard for others is still more than zero, you wouldn't kill someone for fun, you are not nearly as dangerous as the kind of person who has ZERO regard for others.

The most powerful people in America are the ones who have Zero regard. They're evil. Capitalism- I do not mean markets, markets are a powerful and useful technology, I mean dirty corrupt monopoly-based American Capitalism- this is a system where sociopaths float to the top.

>>54007598
This isn't what he meant when he said "fishers of men"

>>54011308
Okay. I don't need a dictionary definition. Tell me where your landmarks are, and point to closer ones this time. Point me to the closest landmarks you have that you can adequately distinguish. Show me what "evil" means to you in the most precise way you're able.

>>54011308

When I talk about a country's alignment, I am making a grand abstraction, as if each individual American were one cell in a great brain, as if all our efforts were the actions of one body. You might not like this, but that does not mean that my view is inconsistent, it just mean you don't like it. Abstractions aren't wrong, they're only wrong when you treat them as more than abstractions.

And there's no theoretical difference between making such a grand abstraction of a fantasy country verses a real one. The difference is that the real country is real and its complicated and it gives you a million more chances to be wrong. I can say that Thay is an evil country, and then as I run my game I can make up the details as I go.

Its the same with people. I can say I want to play a Lawful Good fighter and then invent a personality that matches that. In the real world you can't do it that way, but a person can still BE ALL OF THE THINGS WHICH WE MEAN when we describe Lawful Good, its just that one person can never judge another perfectly, there is no final word from the GM, we can be wrong. And that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

So, yes, I AM pointing to landmarks way out on either side, because those are the ones that are productive to talk about. I don't know if the Punisher is evil, you could make good point either way, but I know the Joker is evil.

The U.S. isn't the Punisher. Not if you look at what we have actually done to the countries we've interacted with in the last 50 years. We're the Joker. We're evil.

Where does it filter to the individual? You vote with your vote, for one. All Republicans should be ashamed of themselves. I'm holding that line. You might not be an evil person, but when you pulled that lever you committed an evil act.
We also vote with our feet. I think anyone who works for Monsanto or Exxon should be ashamed of themselves.

I hit the character limit again so I should just stop for now. But does that help?

>>54010262
high quality bait

>>54011394
If you were fifteen and talked to me that way I'd slap you.

>>54011147

Well I'm still riding and I'm still having fun so fuck you. You have no business believing anything on somebody else's behalf, and that's the whole reason why I respect your right to get off the ride.

I don't support suicide. I think it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem. But you're the final judge of what you do or don't want from your existence, and I expect the same courtesy in turn.

I think that the struggle would have been beautiful and worthwhile even if we never got this far, even if it was just a brief surge of ancient philosophers and then a lot of peasant revolts getting butchered. I'm glad those peasant revolts happened, that's worthwhile to me, the mere ATTEMPT to make something better.

But people believed and they kept fighting for what's right, incrementally, outnumbered, outgunned, winning a tiny bit of ground each generation. And now we're here.
Holy shit.
Look at the world you live in compared to the world humans came from. If we got this far then where could we go from here?

>54010877
>What I'm saying is that if America were in a D&D sourcebook we would be listed as an evil country.
>>54010992
>But your job as a citizen is to be a realist and to look at your country as it actually exists.
In terms of D&D alignments?
You're silly.
That's fine.
Try to keep your silliness in line with the thread topic, okay champ?

>Nobody makes you talk about politics. People who don't like politics shouldn't participate.
If only they had a board they could post on to avoid it.
Perhaps by talking about how game settings might incorporate the ideas OP proposed as being the opposite of HFY?

>>54011394
>So, yes, I AM pointing to landmarks way out on either side, because those are the ones that are productive to talk about.
They're not. They're cheap ways of attempting to bolster your position with nothing of substance. Because you then turn around and you, completely unjustified, place the U.S. in the position of the Joker (by the way, pop culture references garner no favors when discussing political ethics) as if it were self-evident.
It's not self-evident. Show me how you arrive at the U.S. being evil without looping back on your own rhetoric, or tell me that you consider the actions of the U.S. to be evil a priori and that you derive your view of morality from there. Give me something to work with that isn't fluffy, double-spaced empty posturing.

>>54011477
>You have no business believing anything on somebody else's behalf, and that's the whole reason why I respect your right to get off the ride.
t. calls anyone who wants to take the ride in a different direction "evil"

>>54010814
>There haven't been any Democratic warhawks

you tried to get one elected last round, faggot

>or democratic polluters

EPA under Obama spilled tons upon tons of toxic waste into the colorado river in order to take over the town

>or Democratic religious tyrants

t. doesn't remember the 70s

>>54011364
Is displacing democratically elected government in Chile, killing the leaders and replacing them with a bloodthirsty dictator enough to qualify a country as evil?
Or maybe paying religious nutjobs to destabilise a region and then being surprised that the region is a bomb waiting to explode?
What about supporting a dictator of Indonesia who killed up to 3 million of his people?
>b-but we are the good guys because the USSR
Fuck USA with a rusty spoon

>>54011486

I think that alignments are a good system because people are too afraid to judge each other and D&D gives you a safe fantasy space to practice this skill.

Prejudging is bad. Making broad conclusions based on race, gender, religion, etc, this is useless. But actual judgment, GOOD judgment, looking at another person's actions and the outcomes of their actions and holding them accountable, this is essential, and in my country it is lacking.

My moral code isn't alignments, and I find flaws with D&D's concept of evil, and with the things that other people call evil, and if we discussed an individual and I went into detail about how I judge them you would probably take specific issue with my definition of evil. I grant you this. I'm just trying to have one discussion at a time; I'm defending the basic PRINCIPLE of calling a thing evil. Maybe you think that homosex is evil, I certainly don't, and I would insist that the word "evil" can't possibly be appropriate for a person who isn't harming others, and that would be a productive conversation to have.

"You can't call real people evil! Evil only exists in fantasy games!" this is something people say when they are TOO SCARED to have that discussion. I don't even blame them, judgment is scary, the idea of everyone judging each other is fucking scary. And I think it is necessary.

>>54011511
>Give me something to work with that isn't fluffy, double-spaced empty posturing.
He broke character limit saying "If you look at what we have actually done to the countries we've interacted with in the last 50 years. We're the Joker. We're evil. " as if only the interactions he is focused on happened in a vacuum and intent is meaningless when determining alignment.
That dog won't hunt.

>>54011594
Tell me why any of those are evil instead of expecting me to swallow rhetoric like a child. I don't deny that they might well be evil. But show me that you understand how to get to the answer without reading from someone else's talking points.

>>54011644
To add: I'm not intentionally being thick for no reason. Show me, for a start, why you cast someone as a "bloodthirsty dictator". Show me how you determined that destabilization was ever the end goal. Lay out your bases for judgment rather than snippets of finished ones.

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>>54006786
>Also a pity DS9 didn't take this further and show just how bad the UFP, and humanity in particular, could be to show how far they had come.

We got that when Sisko gassed the Maquis

>>54011644
>supporting, with full knowledge, somebody who literally kills millions of people
>not evil
???
Like, crimes of Suharto, Pinochett and Osama, all supported by the USA, are undeniable. You really need to be intentionally thick.

>>54011603
>this is something people say when they are TOO SCARED to have that discussion
Nobody's "scared" to have that discussion. I'll gladly judge and be judged. But if you use a word then you should justify it, especially if you believe it weighty enough that "the basic principle" of its use is something you think is worth defending.

>>54011692
Why do you categorize them as crimes? At what extent of support does one share culpability and to what degree? And here's the tricky one: why do you think the USSR any better, that opposition to its ideology and practices should not constitute a defense?

>>54011603
>I think that alignments are a good system
“How to Get Your /tg/ Post Mocked in Eight Words or Less”

>because people are too afraid to judge each other
Heh
In some, small, sub-culture pockets, maybe.
That some of those pockets are very loud on the internet remains irrelevant.

>Prejudging is bad. Making broad conclusions based on race, gender, religion, etc, this is useless. But actual judgment, GOOD judgment, looking at another person's actions and the outcomes of their actions and holding them accountable, this is essential, and in my country it is lacking.
Fair enough.

>I'm just trying to have one discussion at a time; I'm defending the basic PRINCIPLE of calling a thing evil.
And you are doing so very, very poorly.
I have steadfastly and logically defended the existence of Good and Evil actually existing in real life here on /tg/ before and not succumbed to your folly and foolishness.
Only I did so in a thread about, wait for it, Good and Evil.
Spot the “bundle of sticks suitable only for burning”.

>I don't even blame them, judgment is scary, the idea of everyone judging each other is fucking scary. And I think it is necessary.
You sound like what I would call a “neo-liberal” who is not drinking all of his kool-aid and has issue with some aspects of the sub-culture that they find themselves surrounded in, specifically the aspect of never applying judgment, critique, or honest appraisal to challenge the views of those in your own tribe.
I have no way of knowing how close that is to the truth, but that is how your post sounds.

This is /tg/.
We have no problem fucking judging each other.

>>54011511

Well why the fuck didn't you say so? You didn't ask me about the U.S, you asked me to explain my willingness to describe real-world things as evil.

The contra affair.
Our every interaction with the country of Equador
Our every interaction with the country of Mexico. Cartels are descended from paramilitary groups trained by the U.S, and they rose to power because we destabilized Mexico on purpose over and over. They're funded by the drug problem which we refuse to treat (prison is a job fair for junkies), and in fact actively nurtured. Crack cocaine was introduced to the U.S. as a government operation to fund anti-communist paramilitary groups who would go on to torture children to death for decades. Jesus Christ I wish I was making this up.
Supporting Isreal. isreal started out as Jewish Isis, they took their land by force, we embraced them as allies because we were trying to make enemies in the region because our government was controlled by oil and wanted an excuse to fuck around in the Middle East.
We went to Iraq because our president was a 2nd-generation-oil-barron-1st-generation-war-profiteer. We went to Afghanistan for the same reason, it was just easier to get people to go along with it.
The last time a United States soldier ARGUABLY died for your freedom was the Civil War (though that was really about conflicting economic models). The last time a Unites States soldier arguably died for ANYONE'S freedom was World War II (though that was really to protect our Allied war debt).
They've given LSD and mustard gas and radiation poisoning and syphilis and god-knows-what-else to our own soldiers and to civilians and to the civilians of other countries.

>>54010262
I'm Polish and have long since abandoned any hope for any political sphere, I just live my life to be happy. I just hate people like you and people like your opponent who are determined to suck the joy out of life, by playing identity politics, by shit flinging at one another incessantly, company be damned and by, put simply, wishing to be annoyed. You want to argue with your fellow man, because he prefers Romney to Hillary or Geert to Trudeau or Farage to Rudd. The unfortunate thing is, both of you are just space dust, blessed with a microsecond of conscioisness, before becoming dust again and you waste it seeking anger.

>>54011727
There's a start. Now look at those landmarks, and use them to help you draw that line I asked for earlier. I don't want to put any words in your mouth, so I want you to hash it out for me. It doesn't have to be word-perfect; I won't quibble over the specific verbal formulation.
1. Given that we accept your assignments of intent, as much as intent can be ascribed to an entire nation, why are any of these evil?
2. If you were wrong about the intent behind these actions, would they still be evil?

>>54011692
>>54011594
Political actions never occur in a vacuum.
There could be a perfectly morally justifiable reason for taking an action that, on the surface, could be seen as evil.
For example, voting against a bill that would support [idea universally accepted as Good] because is also heavily supported [idea universally accepted as Evil].
Politics are complicated and are not simple.
Nor are they ever simple to apply an alignment to.

BTW, I am not defending those actions as "not evil".
I lack the proper relevant information to adequately gauge them.
I suspect so do you.

>>54009365
I can't get over how much that pig looks like a big, fleshy mutant chicken.

>>54011787
Please be the new direction of this thread.

>>54011712
Because literal genocide is evil by any fucking definition.
I'm not defending USSR. They were evil and even more so. Doesn't change it was a fight of two evil empires. Eastasia always at war with Oceania.

>>54011727

Excuse me, I said 1st when I meant 3rd, George W Bush's father and grandfather were both war profiteers.

>>54011722

Another poster has been saying I'm silly to reference D&D alignments, I thought that was you. If you wanted me to list evil things that America has done you just had to say so.

We didn't arm Sadam to "keep the Russians in check", that implies that we were somehow mitigating Russian evil, no, we armed Sadam just to cause shit, our enemies have less power if the whole world is destabilized and full of tribal power struggles, THAT IS THE PENTAGON'S PHILOSOPHY, there has been no hint in the last 2 or 3 generations of them turning from this path.

Maybe I'm over-emphasizing the actions of our military? Do you think this? Sure, American tourists aren't all that bad, there are lots of English processors teaching in foreign countries and having a non-evil influence on the world, etc etc. But, unfortunately, our military does most of the influencing.

Also, if you don't want to have a political discussion in an off-topic thread, all you have to do is shut up. It is dishonest to use that line in the middle of a long off-topic post, especially if you're the guy who asked me to explain my views.

>>54011810
I'm not going to bother asking you to justify why their actions should be classed as genocide or why genocide should always be considered evil, because I doubt you'd be able to. Just elaborate on one point for me: do you hold them as equally evil, or was one less evil than the other?

>>54011774

Willingness to cause massive harm in return for marginal benefit. That's the definition I gave. The lack of any regard, even marginal regard, for the wellbeing of others. This is what I describe as evil, and why I describe the military as evil.

The people calling the shots have extensive knowledge of what they are doing, they KNOW that they are causing massive harm for marginal benefit. And it is a strictly personal benefit. Kissinger never believed that anything he was doing helped our country. I will defend this statement extensively. He did exactly what a bloodthirsty sociopath would do if a bloodthirsty sociopath was in his position and wanted to make a little extra money for himself and his sociopath friends.

The people who voted for Republican leaders, and the people who influenced the culture around them to be more receptive to Republican leaders, these people did not have extensive knowledge of what they were doing. But they had knowledge enough, the MOSt ignorant among them, to still know that something was fishy. And further knowledge wasn't that far away, even before the internet, it wasn't that hard to find out that Che Guevara and Castro saved Cuba from a (RIDICULOUSLY evil) American dictator, or that Isreal never wanted peace, or that the oil giants are greedy and powerful and have tried to conquer our country before. They should have known better. They didn't willfully cause evil, but they willfully closed their eyes and pulled a lever.

These factors combined- a leadership that is willfully evil, a voting body that is complacent with evil- have lead to the extremely destructive actions which myself and others have described.

And, as I said, I making a broad abstraction when I describe a whole country as evil, as if it were one organism acting.

>>54009933
>Kess

WTF happened?

>>54011947
How massive is massive; how marginal is marginal; and measured from whose perspective?

>>54011947

Intention doesn't specifically matter, what matters is having the opportunity to NOT cause massive harm and then bypassing that opportunity.

If a child jumps in the path of your vehicle and it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to turn aside, that isnt' evil.

If you could have turned aside, but that might have killed you, so you save yourself, that isn't evil.

If you had enough time and room to swerve safely, and you in that moment decided "fucking kid jumping in my way I hate children", and you hit the child, you have done evil. You didn't ask for that situation, but I don't care, you still chose to do great harm to others for selfish and trivial reasons.
if you COULD have seen the child in time, but you were texting while you are driving, I wouldn't describe that as evil, but I would describe you as at FAULT, you made a mistake and you should have known better. Yes, in that moment you did the best that you could, and yes you had always told yourself that you could drive safely while texting, but you still should have known better. This is why its hard to speak of intentions; you didn't have the intention of killing a child, but you had the intention of texting while driving, and you knew the risks.

Doing an evil thing doesn't automatically make you evil. Really, I think that evil meaningfully describes actions, and to speak of an evil person is to say that this person can be expected to do evil, it is a description of behavior.

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>>54011831

>>54011947
>>54012031
Now trickle all that down to the Republican voter. Why should your internationalist perspective weigh more than the concerns of an average American voter? When foreign and domestic policy are often unhappily married by virtue of the two-party system, how do you mean to claim that they did have the luxury of the time and room to swerve safely? What lends an event in Aleppo more weight than an event in Albuquerque, that prioritizing one is an evil act?

>>54011966

The perspective is a construct; when making moral judgments I think you need to take the perspective of an outsider who does not value the wellbeing of one human above another.

There are no units of measurement for this kind of thing. I am making a subjective moral judgment when I claim that enslaving Equador is causing massive harm, and that the profits of the Dole/Chiquitta fruit company are a marginal benefit, and that Americans getting Bananas for 60 cents a pound instead of 1.50 a pound is a marginal benefit, and that the benefit is so grossly out of proportion to the harm that this should be judged as an evil act. Do you think that enslaving Equador and assassinating every liberal that they try to elect is NOT an evil act? Where is the bar for you, if anywhere?

>>54012098
They have no bar when they sit comfortable and unchallenged by life inside of a dark room forever.

>>54011822
>Another poster has been saying I'm silly to reference D&D alignments, I thought that was you.
Yep, that's me. Hello.

>If you wanted me to list evil things that America has done you just had to say so.
That's another anon.

>we armed Sadam just to cause shit, our enemies have less power if the whole world is destabilized and full of tribal power struggles, THAT IS THE PENTAGON'S PHILOSOPHY
It's a bit more targeted than that.
We are not the Joker, out to watch the world burn.
And for the last 16 years, we've been rethinking the pragmatism of starting a brush fire in your enemies backyard so as to keep their attention divided.
Just because it worked out well for the American revolution and has been a basic strategy used for countless millennia, doesn't mean it's as viable in today's world.
At least, not done as casually as it has been done by America in the previous couple decades.

>But, unfortunately, our military does most of the influencing.
And I'm sure they only ever do Evil things.
>especially if you're the guy who asked me to explain my views
Well, that wasn't me.
I was saying that you were silly.
Then when you explained your intent, I was saying your ability to achieve your intent is so very, very poor that you should stop and shouldn't have ever started here in the first place.
Now I am saying that you are so incredibly myopic that it is as if you are attempting to discuss proper swordsmanship by pointing at the blade of a sword, citing it as being far to sharp for anyone to hold and wield properly while someone else is trying to tell you that you're supposed to hold the other end and everyone else in the room is wondering why you are doing this while standing pantsless on a table in a Bingo parlor.
Even if you point out the truth of one small aspect, you are ignoring a vast world of other factors, including where you are.


>if you don't want to have a political discussion in an off-topic thread, all you have to do is shut up.
Fair enough.

>>54012098
>I think you need to take the perspective of an outsider who does not value the wellbeing of one human above another.
Why is that? And how do you extend this philosophy? How do you weigh well-being between two humans? Moreover, how do you weigh well-being between two groups of humans, and of different sizes?

>Where is the bar for you, if anywhere?
I'm not an American so I'm not quite qualified to comment.

Murder the rich.

>>54012133
No, Anon, you are the rich.
And then Anon was of the petite bourgeoisie.

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>>54012151
I'd like their knuckles broken and teeth taken out too.

It's cool though. We're already on the path to the hell end. There's no surviving. The petty will kill us all with their scraping for the last riches, and then kill themselves, and finally dogs will inherit the earth.

>>54012097

In reality, there is no upside to voting Republican. Wealth doesn't trickle down, and "fiscal republicans" spend more money than democrats, and Christian laws are destructive even to Christianity.

Even if they were right about something though, lets say you have very strong feelings about gun control, that's the only issue where the Republicans have a reasonable point, even if you have strong feelings about gun control, your FEELINGS of safety and security and liberty are worth grossly less than the LIVES AND FREEDOM of some foreigners that you will never meet, and the point where you openly admit to feeling otherwise is the point where I say "You are an evil person".

Lots of Republicans aren't bad people, they're confused, they're emotionally compromised because Republican propaganda is very well crafter. They're in the realm of "not evil, but still responsible, responsible by negligence". Other Republicans are just bad people and are free from any concern for the less advantaged.

Democrats, the voters and the leaders both, are a mixed bag. I'm not saying they're all good, I'm saying Republicans are all bad.

A person dying in America is no more or less important than a person dying elsewhere. No human is more important than any other human; a slight benefit to one is worth the same as a slight benefit to another; a great benefit to one is worth more than a slight benefit to another.

I think its possible to say, "A genius's life is worth more than mine, and my life is worth more than a retard's". There are a lot of problems with that view but its really not THAT far from mine, the important thing is that you aren't just saying "I'M WORTH MORE BECAUSE I SAID SO", anyone making a moderate effort to be impartial is very close to agreeing with me, even if they would make wildly different judgments in some situations.

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>>54012098
I don't care what happens to Ecuador unless enough other people care about it that it starts to affect me. I'd prefer that they didn't so that I wouldn't have to care. So far it hasn't shown any signs of blowing up in my face yet.
My vote is probably worth slightly more than yours if you live in a big city.

>>54012127

Fair enough, but you must realize, deconstructing moral judgements takes MUCH MUCH less effort than making them.

At the end of the day I think that my motives are pragmatic, we are where we are because our ancestors believed in silly unprovable things like justice and mercy and natural rights, that got us this far. I think that trying to distinguish good from evil is worthwhile, even if you aren't particularly good at it.

Amorality is the easiest ideology to defend, but the ends which they lead to are also the easiest to predict, and I don't like them.

>>54012257
Let's be real here.

Mortality takes effort and intent. It takes work and hard thinking.

People are lazy.

Humanity is going to die, and it is its own fault, because nobody did anything.

>>54012216
>>54012216

You're what I mean when I talk about the evil Republicans.
I have a lot of the "should have known better" type Republicans as friends, a few of them are just straight-up better people than I'll ever be, but they still should have known better.
I don't know any "I only care about me" Republican in person, because those types do not broadcast their views in person. Well, until they're feeling insecure and then they try to make friends with you by talking about how much they hate sand-niggers. And they put on this air of humor and narcissism, like politics are a big joke and its all beneath them but at the same time they hang on your every word because they desperately want somebody to approve of their views. I digress. And I've probably worked at a bar for too long.

>>54012320
>And I've probably worked at a bar for too long.

get the fuck out of that industry like I'm going to

make as much money in a better spot as you possibly can while you still have legs and life

because once all the jobs are gone and half of america is a burning wasteland being picked apart you can go back to it

>>54012208
I think it's very disingenuous to acknowledge your own party as a mixed bag but to damn every individual Republican by association. But ignoring that: why should a politician be evil if he prioritizes his countrymen and good if he doesn't? That is to say (and thank you for leading us to this point here >>54012257
): why is your system of morality useful to us? How is labelling self-interest on any level except in extenuating circumstances—pragmatic?
Because, remember: you're not playing alone, when you look back on history and you dismiss justice and mercy and natural rights as "silly unprovable things". You're introducing moral benchmark #54009541 to an already overproliferated market, and one that's essentially guaranteed to fail because of the faulty hardware it's intended to run on.
I'm not arguing for amorality; the opposite. But what I see here is that you begin by claiming to argue for realism and end off with stating your belief in pragmatism; yet every step of your argument in between has been based on empty rhetoric except a core, coaxed out over maybe a dozen posts back and forth, of the essentially polite fiction of unbiased human equality.
What the fuck are you doing?

shame republicans are too fucking cowardly to split off and form their own party apart from the worthless ideals of the robber barons pretending to be humans

same goes for the dems but their cowardice is a whole other spineless flavor

>>54009933
I would bang Janeway and Troi in a heartbeat. Their voices are damn sexy.

>>54012367

I gave people vague answers when they asked for vague answers, I could have spend the last 4 hours talking about politics exclusively if people had asked for that, instead they asked deeply descontructive questions about my use of moral words and concepts, and I gave them the answers they asked for.

You probably don't know very much about the U.S. and its foreign policy, so you will require much more convincing and more in the way of infodumps before you are remotely receptive to the idea that our country is run by self-serving murderers. Its a strong claim, it inspires criticism, and I for one wish it wasn't true.

I'm done for now, but don't worry, I'm an obnoxious cunt and I'm easily sidetracked into discussing politics, I'm sure you'll hear from me again.

>>54012320
I post my views anonymously on the internet because there are no consequences for it and I was honestly just curious how you'd reply since I thought you'd probably hate my guts. In person I pretend to be apolitical to people I don't care about and I pretend to be a "moderate" lolbertarian or whatever you call it to people I do care about.
I don't frequent bars and I've certainly never worked at one. I don't think I'm evil but I'm okay with it if you want to call me evil. It's nice to meet you.

>>54012367
>>54012430


...
Well, you asked specific questions and those aren't hard, okay:

We could have theoretically ousted our conservative leaders, and replaced them with people who actually serve the values that Republicans talk about. If that had happened then the war in Afghanistan would have gone down VERY VERY differently, and the war in Iraq would have never happened, and then Isis wouldn't be swelling with young men whose families were raped or shot or bombed or abducted-and-tortured.

Isis is our problem now; it's EVERYONE'S problem, and my worldview is that we hold some responsibility for WHOEVER that harms, but the pragmatic fact is that it harms us too. Even looking purely at American self-interest, this is a huge problem that we could have avoided by not having our heads up our asses.

Same with the 2007 stock market crash. That happened because crooks said "Deregulate us!" and Republicans said "You should believe them!" We could have gained a lot by going without that.

Mexico, holy shit, imagine if Mexico was a real country and not some medieval shithole, imagine if we were building them up instead of taking them down, building an actual North American economy. Our most powerful lords would own less but everyone else would be richer. We could have that.

As far as the core stuff, "essentially polite fiction of unbiased human equality", look up the prison dilemma.

Humans behaving cooperatively can achieve more and hinder each other less than humans behaving uncooperatively. But, in an environment of noncooperation, the cooperative human is punished most, he's the sucker. These aren't opinions, and they aren't empty rhetoric, they are laws of strategy.
I believe in the "super-rational" approach; meet someone cooperatively, until they betray you once, and then SWITCH to uncooperative mode but only with respect to them.
Judge.
Punish.
I think that's the answer.

>>54012367
Being a generic liberal.

>>54012048
>Kant
>not a post modernist himself

Spooked me real good

>>54012506
The Republicans you're complaining about might still be clinging to power, but the what-could-have-been Democrats you're talking about definitely don't exist anywhere near the top, and certainly not on any ballots that have passed through my hands. It's a shit sandwich that we have to unfuck from both sides and I don't think you're doing yourself or anyone else any favours by saying people who vote Republican are evil when voting Democrat has pretty much never been any better.

>>54012506
>Same with the 2007 stock market crash. That happened because crooks said "Deregulate us!" and Republicans said "You should believe them!" We could have gained a lot by going without that.

This is a child's understanding of the financial crisis. The regulations in question on the banking sector, most notably the Glass-Steagal act, were repealed in part on democratic presidencies (see: Bill Clinton). This allowed commercial banks to act speculatively in the market, which manifested itself most notably in the housing market. As part of a federal initiative, though government-sponsored enterprises such as Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, there was a provision of debt to lower/lower-middle class actors who were in no way able to able to service, let alone pay the principal, their obligations. With the repackaging and bundling of these mortgages through the banks, the problem spiraled out of control. Then somebody realized and started selling; and it all spiraled out of control.

This explanation, by itself, is incomplete and vastly simplified. However, it captures the most essential information and postulates one conclusion: everybody was guilty. You, me, the Smiths down the road, the schlubs in the government, the bankers. Everybody.

That's not even getting into the fundamental problem that underlies the current market, as peddled by modern thought: that consumption, demand, alone is the most important driver of the economy, damn production. The entire laughable notion that obscene levels of debt, further made absurd through the funding of federal welfare programs that we can't even afford, is somehow permissible or good.

Thank the left.

>>54012618
*Fannie May
*under democratic presidencies.

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>>54012569

>>54011049
So humor me, what's a 'good' country?

>>54008129
Different species from us.

>>54012818
Close enough to breed with if nothing else.

>>54012906
It's sad sometimes, to think, that we lost a second species who could have grown up with us on this awful rock.

All we have left is their genetic legacy in us.

>>54012775
No such thing. Not till we, or some other apes elsewhere, invent a pure AI to take over and cleanse the planet of human sins.

>>54012981
The AI is going to conclude that 99% of us need to die to save the world.

The AI will fail, and we will all die anyways to our own idiocy, and the AI will take off into space, to die anyways in the vast endless reaches of dark, right before it concludes that the purpose of existence is to spend energy to reach a 0 state for no reason than

>physics

There is no victory, and the only winning move is to not exist in the first place.

>>54013010
99% not good enough. When I say "cleanse", I mean 100% or more if somehow possible.

Sapience is the closest thing to meaning, you just have to remove all the atavistic fleshy bits.

>>54013055
Why are you worried? No matter what you do, humanity is now pretty clearly doomed. Tremendous starvation and pestilence and weather will savage us to within an inch of our lives, and then we'll finish the job with the last fights for resources and more wealth. More more more more more, as the final trillionaires lock themselves inside of vaults they paid the lowest subcontractor to build, right before they're compromised and they all die as well.

AI is the only hope we'll ever have of sending our poison and worthless seed out into the cosmos, where it'll just burn up to random space catastrophe.

>>54007743
>No scales or fur, no claws, no fangs. Not the best swimmer, climber, or runner.

See, this is the core of shitty HFY. Assumptions that aren't true.

No, we have no scales or fur, because we have naked skin. And we have naked skin to facilitate sweating. And we have sweating because it will cool us, so we can run for long distances during the hottest periods of the day. We have no claws because we have hands, which allow us to fashion tools, carry water during our runs, and throw stuff with accuracy no other animal can muster. We are one of the best swimming mammals if we bother to learn as you might tell from us conquering the oceans with bits of wood and fabric. We are one of the best climbing mammals because we share family tree with mammals evolved for that, except we're the offshoot that is made for running. Those climbing skills didn't disappear or anything. And running? We're the best. Over long distances we're hands down the fastest species on the planet, save for birds. Yeah, you have to fly to beat humanity. And because we're insanely fast and capable of being insanely fast during the hottest period of the day, we spread across the planet in a way only one other species has managed, and that species did so by lifting with us on those bits of wood and fabric I talked about (it's rats, in and of themselves also a highly intelligent and hardy species).

You're taking this entire point in precisely the wrong, and most cringe-worthy direction. We're no more vicious than any other species. It's just that the neverending vore Hell that is life makes for vicious animals.

>>54012208
>A person dying in America is no more or less important than a person dying elsewhere. No human is more important than any other human

Then why is your entire philosophy grounded in the belief that literally every human being outside of a select phenotype and sexual orientation should be deified?

>>54013136
>It's just that the neverending vore Hell that is life makes for vicious animals.

AND YOU JUST HAD TO BRING THAT INTO THIS

>>54011111
What that other Anon suggested was that the point of HFY is external, where we imagine aliens to be specialized in some way, and imagine ourselves to fill an artificial niche baked into the setting's creations.

>In what way is our "weird naked skin" an evolutionary adaptation to facilitate speed or endurance?
It's been explained a few times already, but naked skin facilitates our particular type of sweat, because fur gets in the way of proper sweating. You know how dogs pant to regulate heat, and humans don't? That's what I'm talking about. In essense our entire body is a radiator, which allows us to put in a lot of long-term effort in a way other animals can't. Our ability to sweat, due to our naked skin, is one of the great contributors to humanity having insane endurance compared to other animals.

>At last I read, the theory that our relative lack of fur was an aquatic adaptation seemed the most likely and sensible to me.

One does not need a lack of fur to be aquatic. In fact, a lot of species that evolved for amphibious behaviour retain their fur. I mean, we don't call them fur seals for nothing, you know? At best our adaptation makes us slighty better at swimming than we otherwise would have been, but mostly we're good swimmers because our arms have a huge range of motion, we can learn to swim, we can hold our breath, and because the way our face evolved to keep sweat from running into your eyes and nose also provides benefits for diving and swimming.

>>54010814
>There haven't been any Democratic warhawks.

John F. Kennedy.

You're welcome.

Though in general, I don't think that any postwar US President leave his office without having become a war criminal.

>>54006570
Ferengi had potential as hypercapitalists.
Unfortunately they went the strawman route.
They know what a union is but they have laws against them? What? Why didn't the disgruntled workers just start their own employment agency?
Also, the misogyny doesn't fit them at all. Gender equity *is* hypercapitalist, it means individuality and lack of unity in a family unit. In one of the early episodes quark mentions his species considers pregnancy a rental. That doesn't work if females can't earn profit, and that was a super fun thing to imagine about their society.
Just one of the many things ruined by left vs. right emnity.

>>54007598
I'd also blame almost deliberate misinterpretation of Jesus as He was portrayed in the Bible; too many people characterize Him like some sort of divine kitten, willing to roll over and let you pet His belly at the slightest provocation because, no matter how much you hate Him, you'll somehow come to love His purring.

This is not the Jesus that whipped the money-lenders out of His father's house, or the Jesus that saved the sinner from being stoned yet still condemned her sin.

>>54013837
It kind of works to a point if the women in a house are considered the property of the dominant male. The females might be getting nothing from renting their wombs out but that's because they are property, dominant man is just renting out his property.

>>54010933
The best example I can think of where humans fuck over a weaker race through mere contact is the Martian Chronicles.

>>54011964
She went to jail for exposing herself to a child. But I guess that doesn't really answer the question so much as raise further questions.

>>54015346
That's a good one.
Regrettably, I am only familiar with the movie and some feverish rememberings of some animated version, but I loved the concepts.

>>54009605
War and malice aren't required for domination. Where there's an imbalance of power, the weaker party will suffer regardless of the stronger party's intentions. Any case where two parties' interests are mutually exclusive will end up in a victory for the stronger one even if it doesn't come to war. And conflicts of interest happen a lot when two populations are trying to occupy the same ecological niche in the same area, which is a state of affairs that never lasts long.

>>54015385
>She went to jail for exposing herself to a child.
As I recall, and I don't care enough to look it up again, that was a case of her deciding the most reasonable resolution of a dispute between her and another woman was to flash the woman on her front lawn, forgetting or ignoring that the woman's child was present.
The woman chose to continue the dispute by pressing charges, aided by several witnesses.
Not as bad of a misrepresentation as when police tried to trump Paul Reubens into a child pornography charge.
They came to his place because (I think) he was loud and drunk and when they saw a 4chan sized pornography collection just sitting out, encompassing the living room, they decided there was no way it wasn't illeagal.
After combing through everything, the only damning things in the pile were a magazine featuring 18+ men with "boys" in the title and a vintage nudist magazine with a couple pics of families.
My point being that context matters.

>>54015592
That context doesn't really vindicate her. It's not like "Ohhh! It all makes sense now! She had to do it to win her argument with a neighbor on her lawn! I'd totally have done the same thing."

>>54015637
It just makes it clear she was being an ass, not diddling kids.

>>54013331
>Our ability to sweat, due to our naked skin, is one of the great contributors to humanity having insane endurance
I find your sweat-based theory of evolution odd.
I don't deny the advantage of sweating, but I don't think sweat came first nor was it the original driving force of our lack of fur.
Everything leads from being aquatic apes.
We don't lose fur because it makes us better swimmers, but because it's less necessary in the water, aside from the emerged head of course.

>the way our face evolved to keep sweat from running into your eyes and nose also provides benefits for diving and swimming.
See, how do you know it wasn't a swimming adaptation that aids against sweat.

Just saying, you seem oddly sweat-centric.

How do you guys feel about a Stellaris level Conquest? Just some super advanced Race coming over and marking Earth as theirs. The AI overlord doesn't care about us specifically, we're just a Planet in a strategic location amongst many.

>>54015346
Explain

>>54015718
Because modern humans didn't evolve in the water you dolt.

>>54015919
And this was proven?
How did they account for the aquatic adaptations?

Realism would be preferable. We can be wonderful and we can be absolute shit. The same person can be both in a day. HFY threads are just "man, if other sentient beings exist I bet they're consistently like humans at our worst" and the opposite is just "man, if other sentient beings exist I bet they're consistently like humans at our best."

>>54015718
Are you trolling?

I hope you are, because this shit is retarded.

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>>54007757
>>54008259

Those books were sweet. Ulacalthing remains best Xenos in all of them. Is it only me who wanted Brin to write more of the first trilogy rather than the Storm books? Because I found the Uplift War to be the best out of all six books. Just enough HFW to keep the fun going, then the Gubru show up with big guns and the only thing our fancy Rock Beats Laser guerrilla warfare can do is gather together and proclaim it a war crime to destroy us all with overwhelming force. Only so much pluck and ingenuity can do, even against a race known for dramatic overconfidence and without the one mediating member of the ruling Triumvirate.

Also, anyone read the Commonwealth Saga? I actually really liked a lot of the characters in there despite them being a bit of a doorstopper, and the cool gimmick of half the second series being a fantasy novel was actually really well handled. Edeard was well done even AFTER he got the time travel reset button, because at some points he couldn't bring himself to have to live through it all again and again to fix problems.

>>54015868
Marians in the Martian Chronicles are just another native people, who get exterminayed not due to deliberate genocide but due to Earth germs and the inability to compete for space and resources. A lot of humans like and admire the Martians, but as a Ferengi would tell you, a sack full of admiration is an empty sack.

>>54007547
>Humans live a long time
>Amazing physical prowess
>Hand eye coordination
>Tool creation
>But a really long and wierd reproductive cycle that can kill the mother

Humans are basically elves

>>54016241
Posting with humor? Yes.
Lazily posting without bothering to be precise or accurate? Yes.
Trolling? No.

As I said, it's been a while since I read up.
Has anon's theory that we are of the Sweat, born to it, and evolutionarily molded by the perspiration actually been established as probable, or was there another reason you found my post retarded?
Or are you just fishing?

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>>54008129
THE NEANDERTHAL WAS A CO-DEPENDENT SPECIES. ITS MIND COULD NOT COMPREHEND WHAT YOU HUMANS CALL "ACCEPTABLE LOSSES".
INSTINCT DROVE THEM TO CARE FOR EACH OTHER.
INSTINCT TAUGHT THEM THIS WAS THEIR ONLY MEANS OF SURVIVAL.
IT WAS YOU, CRO-MAGNON, WHICH FIRST LEARNED THAT SOME MAY DIE SO THAT THE WHOLE MAY LIVE. YOU UNDERSTOOD THAT A COLLECTIVE IS MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A COG IS INSIGNIFICANT, SO LONG AS IT SERVICES THE WHOLE.
YOU CONSUMED THE NEANDERTHALS FLESH, TOOK ITS GENETIC LEGACY, AND ALLOWED IT TO DIE. CRO-MAGNON ASSIMILATED NEANDERTHAL.
JUST AS YOU, TOO, SHALL BE ASSIMILATED. YOUR PSYCHOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL UNIQUENESS WILL BE ADDED TO OUR OWN.
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

I really liked your post anon, and wanted to get in before all the /pol/shit craps this thread up even more.

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>>54017557
Ah, so you were only pretending to be retarded.

>>54015037
>>54013837
You know what'd been a good gender quirk for Ferengi? (And this is just my fanfiction) If they had no gender dimorphism at all and would only discover the other's gender if they ever registered themselves for a procreation vancency.

>>54017622
Ferengi keep their women barefoot and naked. Or they did, before they realized if they let women own property it meant they could sell them things and use them to make money.

>>54007743
Counter-point.

Humanity's greatest achievement is being able to make these kinds of moral arguments. We realize we've done some fucked up shit over time, and do our best to make up for it.

An animal has no concept of peace. No concept of remorse. Sure, humans kill each other, but so do chimps. Difference is, we have the capacity to feel bad about it.

There are humans who feel bad for killing animals for meat. People who try to make the process of feeding ourselves to survive as pleasant as possible for our prey. A cat plays with its food because it enjoys killing. There's a reason we refer to treating someone with kindness and dignity as being humane.

Humans are exceptional. We've been at the top of the food chain since before we were even homo sapiens. We hunt more effectively in groups than any other pack animal. We outpace virtually any other animal on the planet over long distances. Our cognitive thinking and tool use meant that we were the deadliest creature on the planet even back when all we had was pointed sticks and rocks. Do you even understand how fucked up it is that we figured out how to create fire? There are scientists out there amazed by the fact there are monkeys who understand the concept of washing their food, and even your caveman ancestor knew how to cook meat. We had a ridiculously unfaor advantage compared to every other species on the planet, even other hominids. Humans were built to survive, to conquer and to invent.

With all that said, we chose to do more. We made laws. We built hospitals. We tried to preserve endangered species. We educated our children. Dolphins fuck their young to death and torture other animals for fun. Chimps will eradicate entire packs of rivals, including the children. Humans are far less vicious than animals, we simply have advantages that make us more effective killers. A housecat with a handgun would be as sadistic and cruel as any serial killer.

>>54012924
I read somewhere it was because humans were insane enough to try and cross oceans and mountain ranges. We spread our seed and weren't easily wiped out when one part of the world floods or a plague affected one side of the ocean. And when we rejoined our mad brethren we had a fresh genetic pool. The neanderthal stayed put and endured everything nature could throw at it together. Slowly diminishing. No one out there to help or get help from. Just those mad humans going all about the place.

>>54011800
I wouldn't know where to start. Big fleshy mutant chicken is a pretty heavy load to work off.

>>54006570
>>54007233

Someone needs to do a Klingon version of this greentext.

The thing that always bothered me about HFY is how they would try to explain how badass humans were with this weird shit about us breathing poison and whatnot. As if a lot of that shit wouldn't be necessary for space travel.

If we aren't alone, odds are any other intelligent species would be similar to us in a lot of ways. Not necessarily physically, but at least in their general make-up. Barring some weird space-magic or something, they would need to be carbon based, with all that entails. They would need tools for obvious reasons, which would also almost certainly require mastery of fire. And mastery of fire would mean they would come from a planet with oxygen, but not enough oxygen that a spark would set their entire atmosphere on fire. So they would most likely breathe at least somewhat similar substances to us. Since they would have to survive long enough to invent space travel, odds are they would be the dominant species on their world. If nothing else than for the simple reason that they would have space ships, and you'd have to be one hell of an animal to beat that.

Now, as for physical capabilities, space travel is taxing as fuck. There's a reason we select fucking genetic freaks to be astronauts. So obviously they couldn't be incredibly frail and prone to being killed by minor things. I mean, sure, you could argue they could invent technology to make up for weak bodies, but in that case they'd probably be on par or more impressive than humans with that technology in mind. I guess they could've existed on a low gravity world that made space travel less taxing, but I digress.

So you'd have intelligent tool users from a planet with an atmosphere similar to ours who would need to dwell on land. They'd have conquered their planet too so probably wouldn't be that surprised humans managed to kill tigers. Sure, if they're particularly small or weak they might be impressed with our physical form but in a space age weapons would probably render most of that moot.

Even with the liberal shitposter, this was a good thread.

Proud of you /tg/.

>>54012775
Not technically a country, but it does everything a country should do internally:
>Zapatista commune

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>>54013912
Amen

>>54013912
They're both in there. That's the great thing about having a sacred text written by different people with different agendas. You can pick and choose whichever parts of it benefit you at the moment, from meek forgiveness to bloodthirsty aggression

>>54006570
>What's the opposite of a Humanity, Fuck Yeah thread?
>>53939353
>/ysg/- Yog-Sothothery General

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>>54020664
Oh don't even get me started on that shit. They take the dumbest shit and try to wire it as something that makes us badass. Also I hate the fact that all HFY is modern generic Humans in space. Like Human thought and outlook would stay the same in the future as they are now.

Now if HFY gave Humans a different and unique culture, society, aesthetics, architectural look, and etc. and went into details on how it came about and such then Humans can be considered "unique" and "special" in its own way compared to other races.

Like for example, the middle east. Their religious duty or praying 5 times a day, geometric aesthetics, and architectural design, makes them unique and different than the other humans on earth.

Simple stuff like that is enough. You don't even need to go into bullshit like how "our spit is poisonous" to make humans unique from other races.

BTW about the whole "Humans are adaptive" crap HFY pulls. If we are so adaptive then how come in the future we didn't fucking capitalized on this shit and Augment ourselves to the point we are capable of breathing in water?

>>54025749
Honestly, the biggest issue about HFY is that the genre is literally 99%+ fanfiction. Obviously it's gonna be shit most of the time, because professional/practised authors aren't the ones writing it.

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>>54017565
You say that we sometimes kill so that the whole may live, and you may be right. You say we use "acceptable losses" to justify our ruthlesness, and you may be right. You may even be right that ultimately our reistance Is. Futile.

But let me tell you this: all those conscenssions, all those sacrifices, that wild drive to survive, will see us fighting tooth and nail against whatever you can throw at us.

And if we win, we Will rise above whatever heinous acts we had to commit to be victorious because the civilization we are so willing to abandon in order to win is also what we are fighting so hard to preserve.

*punches borg while screaming*

>>54011683

Same with In The Pale Moonlight, where he tries to fake a Dominion plan to attack the Romulans, and ends up being complicit in the assassination of a Romulan ambassador. He got what he wanted, dragging them into the war, but had to wrestle with the ethical consequences.

The small arc with Section 31 dealt with this too. It was a running theme with DS9

>>54026187
>>54026238
Sisko might be my favourite captain as far as entertainment value goes. He bordered on batshit insane but really he was just a good soldier. His character is a good reminder that Picard was in charge of a exploration ship, not a warship and that it takes very different men to achieve very different goals.

I guess in that sense HFY has a point when it talks about "Adaptability." its not that were adaptable like a Xenomorph or whatever, its more that using the individuality of every person in the race we should be able to find someone who can get a job done, no matter what the job is, no matter what is required of them.

I feel like this video is relevant to this thread in some way, probably.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-YyL7X4CWw

>>54026491
Pretty cool. Makes me want to watch Star Trek, even though I was never a fan.

>>54026571
DS9 has some GOAT acting in it. I recommend checking out the season 1 episode "Duet" Its pretty stand alone insofar as you should be able to figure out the main thrust without needing to know about Star Trek and the acting is Shakesperean and bombastic

>>54026571
DS9 is kind of weird in that sense. Don't get me wrong, it's still Star Trek, particularly early on, but it also went to decidedly non-Trekky places as the series went on. Not only the whole Dominion War, but you had shit like the question of faith in an age of super-science, war crimes on occupied Bajor and the effects it had on the psyches of both the occupied and the occupiers, the greater good justifying som heinous shit (the link cuts out the bit before, which I actually like better, where you get the argument between the general Starfleet "ends don't justify the means" and the more pragmatic "I just saved the quadrant, and all it cost was a single Romulan ambassador and one criminal").

Not gonna lie, the religious shit goes to some weird and shitty places, which is sad considering some of the episodes dealing with the Bajoran faith and how it helped them endure a horrible occupation because Starfleet were too goody-two-shoes toactually go to war over human rights violations are some of the best ones in the series. Like I said, it's still Trek, so if you don't lile the general formula you probably won't enjoy it, but it osn't quite as idealistic in the "no money, religion or war" front.

>>54017557
Here's a hint: Use Google instead of smugly demanding an explanation for well known scientific discourse. It's not our job to teach you shit you should know before you open your dumb trap about it.

>>54025749
What makes the Islamic world unique isn't that they pray five times a day, but how they are the most religious people on the planet, who's religion literally means "submission", and how in their ideal society everything would be done according to religious doctrine.

And that's certainly something to keep in the back of your head, but uniqueness goes far beyond superficial shit like that. It's like saying Western society is unique because our women wear high heels.

>>54030238
That's literally every religion when they get power tho. Tibet was no different before China liberated it, plenty of places in US still are that way but are too fat and lazy to do anything about it, just look at your average evangelical church.

>>54010742

>This has me wondering if there is a way to stably balance showcasing both the heights of excellence that Roddenberry dreamed humanity was capable of, not just in technology or intelligence, but in true nobility of spirit and also the grim, dark, and savage strength of survival that humanity may never truly be free from and in fact, might best retain for it's power and as a base element of humanity.

There is, it was called Deep Space 9. Like, when you say you liked the Dominion War for when it touched on nobility, I assume you're talking about episodes like Inter Alia where Bashir does the true blue good thing and trusts the Romulan Senator to prevent a murder, but even in the darkest episodes like AR-558 and Pale Moonlight we see humanity's noble spirit fighting to stay alive. At the end of AR-558, the hardest Space-Marine-iest Starfleet guy leaves his knife on the battlefield, resolving to leave behind what he had to become to achieve his mission and survive hell. Sisko ends Pale Moonlight in mourning and shame for what he's done despite his resolve to do it again, there is no pride of triumph.

When Nog loses his leg and almost breaks mentally, he still eventually heals and returns to his life in Starfleet thanks to the help of his human (hologram) friend. When Jake learns on that Klingon war planet just how much of a coward he is and leaves Bashir to die, Bashir has no blame for ire for Jake, he's just glad everything worked out. When O'brien almost kills himself because of the memories of what he did in that mental prison, he is able to come back and be a great father and NCO again, just like he did after his first trauma killing the Cardassians on Setlek 3.

The people who say DS9 strayed from Star Trek's soul and reveled in tearing down the idea of Humans Being Better didn't watch the same show I did.

>>54030261
Not really. Sure, SOME religions might have a similar nature, but none of the same size and influence.

>just look at your average evangelical church

Your edge is showing. I'm not particular enthusiastic about hardcore Christianity (which, contrary to popular belief, is modern and not Medieval), but American evangelicals do not have a faith based rule of law. They do not have capital punishment for the breaking of religious taboos, and no religious police patrolling the streets. Except -maybe- if you look at some tiny, isolated communities.

In the end you can relativize everything to pieces, but if the point is that Islamic culture is unique (and it is), then that's not because of their superficial activities, but because of the culture that spurs them on.

>>54030559
The only thing keeping tiny, isolated communities so tiny and isolated is the underlying fabric of capitalism and classic liberalism that's been hammered into the heads of americans.

Without it, you'd have evangelical bombers left and right.

>>54030559

The fact that you're taking the time to point out nuance for the sake of minimizing the negative behaviors and beliefs that arise from Christians while painting Islam with one giant cultural brush would be comically ironic if it wasn't one of the biggest contributing factors to the world's problems right now.

>>54030364
Exactly this.

DS9, in the end, still has the same idea behind it that TOS and TNG did: Making this utopia happen isn't something that took place in the nebulous past, and that people in the show are only reaping the benefits of. They make it happen, again and again, every day, by making the right choices. Sometimes those choices are easy, sometimes they are hard.

The key difference between TNG and DS9 is that they delved into the concept of those choices having consequences, and leading to other, more complex choices, while the TNG Enterprise blasted off towards the next set of choices by the end of the episode. And, of course, the fact that in DS9 the choices were also under stress from the limited means available to the crew. But when DS9 introduces the Dominion, it also makes it pretty clear in unmistkable terms that the TNG crew wouldn't have solved this particular issue. By blowing up a Galaxy class starship operating under TNG logic. If anything, the point of DS9 isn't that Roddenberry logic comes apart under pressure. Its point is that one must be adaptable if that logic is to survive at all.

But it's not like TNG or TOS never made those points, either. One of my favorites is A Private Little War, with its TNG follow up Too Short a Season. In the end, those shows are thematically all the same. Voyager is greater departure from Star Trek logic than DS9 ever was.

>>54030586
>Religion that has influenced the underlying basis of morality for every culture on the planet.

>Causing the world's problems.

I mean, maybe, but you're a giant hypocrite for saying so. You literally would not have a basis for morality at all without Christian influence.

>>54030643
please be bait...

>>54030586
>>54030261
Yeah, your edge is definitely showing.

If there were theological Christian states with legal systems based on religious dogma, you'd have a point. But there aren't. The point is scale. And if you can't understand the difference between a tiny minority and a large majority, then you are probably not even old enough to be on this board in the first place.

You wouldn't understand nuance if it bit you in the ass. I'm legit offended by your shitty logic. Because no, mate. People like YOU are the problem in the world. You have a priori decided that Christianity = bad and Islam = good, and now you're defending Islam from... what? I only said they are very religious. Go out and ask the average Muslim. He'll agree. He doesn't see that as a bad thing. He'll openly tell you that he does want religious rule, and that it would be better for everyone.

But you do. And that's your right. But don't get asspained when the reality of religion doesn't stroke with this bullshit image you have built up about religious boogeymen, because if religion isn't your thing, you should have way more issues with the Islamic world than with those pockets of extreme Christianity in the secular West. You dunce.

>>54030643

Um... yeah I would, unless you really believe that every other religion in the world is completely amoral.

I believe in Christian virtues, that's why I haven't converted to some other faith or gone aethiest, but you'd have to be a pretty big dickhead to say that ONLY the faith responsible for Protestants and Catholics wearing each others entrails in the streets of every major city in Europe is the only source of morality in the world, and fuck that Buddah guy and all those Hindus and everybody else who every had a religion before my boi Jesus split us off from Judaism.

>>54030713
But that's not what he's saying, you dumbass.

>>54030650
Every culture has had Christian influence, fear the power of the missionary.

>>54030713
I'm not saying other religions are amoral, I'm saying you are a hypocrite for believing what you say, because you are coming from a lens of morality that stems from Christian influences.

>>54030682
Christianity = bad
Islam = bad
Juche = good

>>54030682

>You have a priori decided that Christianity = bad and Islam = good, and now you're defending Islam from... what? I only said they are very religious. Go out and ask the average Muslim. He'll agree. He doesn't see that as a bad thing. He'll openly tell you that he does want religious rule, and that it would be better for everyone.

1) Fuck off for claiming I said Christianity is evil just because I called you on your bullshit of saying that Islam is some fucking cultural monolith who's adherants all believe the same things.

2) How many "average Muslims" do you fucking know to put words in their hypothetical mouths exactly? Do you know how many Muslim-Majority countries are Islamic theocracies and/or hybrid republics where Sharia and other religious tennants are the law of the land? About 13. There are more secular Muslim Majority countries in Africa alone then there are Theocracies IN THE WORLD. I wonder how that could possibly be when your wisdom has made clear that all Muslims desire religious rule?

You want to get pissy because I pointed out you were saying something stupid, fine, but don't put words in my mouth or claim I said shit that I didn't.

>>54006570

James Cameron's Avatar.

You know, the thing that spawned it.

>>54030842
1) Fuck you for putting words in my mouth. You come in here being triggered that I talk about an identifiable group as being a group. Where do you even get off thinking that is a bad thing? YOU are the one who attached moral judgement to that shit. Not me. And then you start bitching about Christianity about of nowhere.

2) Are you seriously suggesting that people who self-identify as religious would consider being religious a bad thing? And just FYI, plenty of research has been done into the opinions of members of groups. Especially big groups, such as, oh, I don't know, the second largest religion on the planet. And when you take all those opinions, you arrive at an average. Astonishing, I know.

Take your bullshit white saviour complex somewhere else.

>>54030893

OK, I'm going to de-escalate this because I think you think I made other posts that I didn't post. My only point was that I thought it was wrong to ascribe a single way of thinking to Islam, or to use your word to focus on their "average," while at the same time describing Christianity's flaws in terms of caveats and exceptions and minorities. That was the beginning and end of my argument. I don't like people talking about Islam in terms of "generalities," not because I think Islam is good and Christianity is evil, but because the otherization of Islam is one of the biggest reasons for the uptick in radicalization, this bears out constantly when terrorist fighters are interviewed and organizational indoctrination methods are studied. Its not the ONLY factor, but its a big one and its the easiest one to fix by just not saying things like "Islam is _____," when you would never do that for any other major religion.

Anyway, I'm going back to talking about Star Trek.

>>54030364
I always thought DS9 handled a lot of issues with more care than either TOS or TNG. Like religion. Whereas a lot of the older shows delved into "YOUR GOD IS AN ALIEN AND SHOULDN'T BE WORSHIPED", the Prophets storyline actually explored other angles. Like Kira explaining how faith in the Prophets kept the resistance going. Who is Sisko to say they shouldn't believe when it resulted in something the Federation couldn't? Even if they're wrong, it helped them in a time of need. Are the Bajorans justified in treating a guy who doesn't share their beliefs as their Muhammed whether he wants to ot not? Is faith in the Prophets and faith in the Founders really all that different if they both serve to give their believers a sense of purpose? Should Keiko be forced to teach Bajoran faith?

Sure, it's not your average story of enlightened supermen, but handling it this way made the Federation seem a lot more tolerant and less obnoxious than preaching their ideals.

>>54006570
Why do humans run the federation?

They have all the famous captains as humans, humans making up most of the crews including that of Starfleet's "flagship, the headquarters is on Earth and Starfleet (human) admirals are the ones making all the important decisions with the elected civilian president pretty much being a figurehead...

Its about as annoying as all the commie-preaching

>>54030968

I really liked the conversation where Sisko tells Jake he's being an intollerant idiot like Winn from the other direction by saying things like "All this stuff about the Prophets is so dumb," and carefully explaining the importance of Bajoran religion and why it makes sense for them to continue worshiping beings who see the future regardless of them having a rational explanation for their existence.

>>54031024

You know we see four different Federation Presidents in Star Trek and only one of them human. Sarek is their biggest dick Diplomat and he's Vulcan. They're are all-Vulcan crews in Starfleet referenced on a couple of occasions, and so we can infer alien-majority ships are not uncommon in starfleet.

All that being said, I believe its canon that Humans are so common in Starfleet because they represent the largest percentage of applicants and enlistees. Humans like to explore on the whole more than a lot of other aliens. The Federation Government is centered on Earth because the other four founding races had a lot of bad blood and Earth was neutral ground, this was true even back in the day long before we actually saw it in the few good episodes of Enterprise.

>>54031024

The civilian government isn't impotent in Star Trek. The President in Movie 6 and the President in DS9 Homefront set the Admiralty down hard when they try to do bad shit, to the point of forcing renegade officers to attempt assassinations/coups to remove them as roadblocks to their schemes.

>>54030961
You want to de-escalate the situation? Go back in time and try not to be offended at every little thing.

>My only point was that I thought it was wrong to ascribe a single way of thinking to Islam

Yeah, and it's a shitty point. The word "Islam" itself describes the religion in broad terms, just as "Christianity" does, and you had no trouble painting them with the brush of small town extremists. "Islam" means a set of beliefs, and a set of broad rules based on those beliefs. And from that knowledge you can, yes, generalize.

You're making the assumption that every generalization is a bad thing automatically, and offensive to boot. If you're here to point out unfair generalizations, that's fine. But literally my only point is that Muslims are, on average, pretty goddamn religious and have a religion that is, by its very nature, quite conducive to a dogmatic, theocratic attitude. If you want to discuss that, fine, but you came in all offended.

This tactic is often used to shut down any discussion on sensitive subjects (i.e. anything about Islam): the claim that a group can't be judged on behaviour perpetrated as a group, because individuals and individual population will, invariably, deviate from the norm. But you can relativize literally down to the individual with that logic, and thus shut down every discussion.

>but because the otherization of Islam is one of the biggest reasons for the uptick in radicalization,

The West is more open and tolerant than it has ever been. I don't subscribe to this nonsense idea that Muslims have no agency over their own actions because something something evil whitey. This sort of logic is a one way street. It's not my job to think for überoffended religious folk.

>when you would never do that for any other major religion.

What, you a Betazoid now? You can read my mind? Fuck off with your baseless assumptions.

>>54031104
>The President in Movie 6

You mean President Red Foreman?

>>54031122

Damn right. With his sunglasses and giant hair. "This president is not above the law."

>>54031113

Talk about Star Trek or shut the fuck up and go back to /pol/

>>54031113

I gave you the opportunity to back down from insult flinging bullshit, and predictably you decided to go back to being aggrieved about shit I never said. I'll stick to being "offended," by dickheads like yourself, thanks.

Also way to not refute my point about how badly theocracies are outnumbered by non-theocracies among Muslim-majority countries making your point about Islam as a religion leading its followers to all believe in religious rule. But I suppose rationalizing your bullshit opinions takes precedence over, you know, fact.

>>54030643
Looked to me more like he was saying "painting Islam with a giant brush" is a cause of the world's problems, not Christianity.

And to be fair, he's got an argument. Regardless of whether or not you believe that the "majority" of Islam is of a violent fundamentalist creed, current tactics for handling that do not seem to be reducing the number of violent Islamic fundamentalists. I'll argue that the only way to disrupt that is to allow people from these countries to escape wartorn and oppressive nations into places with a more Western mindset. Of course, right now, aggressive drone policing of foreign countries, internal reactionary forces, refugee poverty, and widespread fundamentalist propaganda are making that difficult, but I believe that if we handle those three issues, we might have more success.

Which is kind of awkward when America keeps letting one of the nations producing the most anti-American extremists run the MidEast (I'm looking at you, Saudi Arabia).

>>54031282
>I'll argue that the only way to disrupt that is to allow people from these countries to escape wartorn and oppressive nations into places with a more Western mindset
Oh yeah sure, importing islamic problems into the west rather than forcing a reform and/or a de-islamization of the middle-east is working just so fucking well right now.

>>54009541
What does white guilt have to do with global climate change?

>>54030612
There are some episodes in DS9 that go out of their way to show that Picard-style diplomacy has its place in this too.

One of my favorites is the episode where Sisko and crew have claimed a downed Dominion ship, just in time for a bunch of Jem'hadar to show up and demand it back, entirely because the want to rescue a Changeling secretly hiding in it. The *best* part of that episode is that if Sisko and the Vorta in charge had taken the time to talk to each other, or either had been willing to give even an inch, its likely the lost Changeling could have been rescued.

If Picard had been in charge, that would have happened. But Picard-style diplomacy isn't suited to this style of war. Picard is a warrior, but he's not a soldier. Sisko is. And soldier's can't risk the kind of trust this situation required. Diplomats can, and have to.

>>54031332
Yeah, I can't really deny its got its issues. Forcing reform isn't doing much either, though -- hell, our attempts at regime change certainly aren't going anywhere.

I'd say we should just let them work it out on their own, but "let them work it out on their own" means "let the fundamentalists kill everyone who isn't one and see them still try to kill us anyway", so I don't think that's really a good strategy either.

>>54031200
Tell that to the other guy. He's the one who got his panties in a twist over a simple point. He can admit he derailed the discussion and walk the fuck away any time he wants, but I'm not going to let some permanently offended asshole insult me over nothing.

Also, if you want to talk about Star Trek, go to /tv/.

>>54031272
Fuck you, mate. You don't get to start flinging shit and then pretend to be the better man the moment your opponents aren't browbeaten by your dogmatic bullshit. You want this discussion to stop? Then stop. Admit you derailed the thread with your political nonsense, and stop posting.

And don't give me this crap that I don't respond to your point when the post you're claiming that in is wall to wall insults. Don't ask for respect when you give none. I answered as many of your points as I could in the limited space available to me, and I see no response from you to that. So if that's not good enough for you, you are welcome to suck my dick.

>>54031384

I'm hiding all your posts because I won the argument and am in fact the better man, and there's nothing you can do about it~

Do like the other post said and go back to /pol/ faggot

>>54031497
>don't say a single political thing during the entire conversation
>still have to go back to /pol/ according to the political commissar

You just can't make this shit up.

>>54031349
The Ship is a good episode. It's also a nice contrast between the Dominion being upset that they lose their literal god, to the point where the entire squad is sacrificed for it, while the Federation people are heartbroken about the rando's they lost. And the episode's goldshirt was a good character in his own right, and his death felt real. The crew all dealing with his (and their own) impending doom in different ways was interesting, too.

It's also a good contrast with Rocks and Shoals, one of my favorites, where diplomacy does actually work, and it's none the less horrible for it.

>>54012320
Not caring about something far removed from yourself isn't evil, it's normal. Idk why you think views like this are evil, but you obviously aren't old enough to comprehend what is really good and evil.

>>54031497
>MASSIVE

While I love DS9, some props have to be given to TNG for setting up a lot of the cool shit in the former. Stuff like the Maquis, a more militarised post-Wolf Federation that at one point considered mass-extinction of a (sort of) sapient species, and generally being a pretty fucking deep show for what it was.

A lot of what seems hokey and idealistic to the point of obnoxiousness about old Trek is because it was progressive at the time, but society caught up. Remember that when TOS was recorded you couldn't have race mixing on TV. On the flip side, removing the idealism from TNG when they made the movies resulted in a lot of horrible action schlock with virtually no redeeming features. Well, the removal of idealism and the addition of nonsense plot holes (Borg can't adapt to physical trauma. Even if said physical trauma is induced from hard light holograms. What do you mean kinetic energy is still energy and the Borg should be able to adapt to it since energy shields can shield against physical trauma in the Trek universe?)

DS9 was good because it looked at TNG and came up with situations where there would be a need to balance the Federation's core values with pragmatism. Voyager was shit because it basically used MUH CREW as an excuse to violate every Federation principle (the same organisation that refused to wipe out the Borg now give the Borg weapons with the explicit intention of driving a species into extinction), missing the point that Sisko was idealistic and Picard pragmatic when the situation called for it, they were just placed a bit further down the ends of the scale.

Trek works best when it adapts to the zeitgeist. Sticking to Roddenberry's vision is dumb when black dudes fucking white chicks or women being in charge of men is no longer a taboo. But likewise, contradicting it just because will just lead to edgelord shit.