The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Petition the Supreme AI/Alien Armada/God to spare humanity
emnmnme
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
It's a common theme in science-fiction and mythology: one mortal human is picked by a higher intelligence to become a spokesman for the human race to make the case that humanity is worthy of continued existence. If the spokesman fails to convince the higher intelligence, the punishment is genocide. It's a trial of words with the highest stakes possible so what would you say if you were the spokesman. How do you convince something other than human that you and the rest of mankind have value and deserve a chance at co-existence? Assume two things: that the higher being has concluded it cannot co-exist with mankind due to mankind's bad behavior and that you, the spokesman, are isolated from everything while you make your case. No last-minute Google searches are available - you are on your own. Me, personally, I'd argue that debate and/or discourse would benefit both Man and the higher being. Mankind is receptive to adversity and will change its ways when it is proven to be wrong by the higher being and vice versa and even if one side constantly dominates in debates, the other side will still slowly improve.
Lott tried to convince Yahweh by arguing that Yahweh made a mistake and there had to be at least one righteous man in the city. It would be wrong to punish that one man while he is living in the city so... human shield! Captain Jean-Luc Picard attempted to steer the Borg's attention away from Earth by boldly stating Man valued his individuality and would resist losing it to the death. The Silk Specter's emotional outburst led Dr. Manhattan to reassess Man's unique worth. Neo offered to solve the Agent Smith problem for the Machines in exchange for peace.
Lott tried to convince Yahweh by arguing that Yahweh made a mistake and there had to be at least one righteous man in the city. It would be wrong to punish that one man while he is living in the city so... human shield! Captain Jean-Luc Picard attempted to steer the Borg's attention away from Earth by boldly stating Man valued his individuality and would resist losing it to the death. The Silk Specter's emotional outburst led Dr. Manhattan to reassess Man's unique worth. Neo offered to solve the Agent Smith problem for the Machines in exchange for peace.
emnmnme on
0
Posts
Kneel before PAWS!
Thank you, Dr. Breen from Half-Life 2.
Once again the Culture wins.
We can't change our ways if doing so would require us to be capable of an alien emotion. Could we expect a shark to show more compassion towards humans swimming in the ocean? A shark will never be capable of understanding or experiencing compassion. I may be wrong about sharks, but from what I understand about biology, many of the emotions that we experience that allow us to coexist, come from parts of the brain that other animals either don't possess, or haven't evolved like ours.
However (and this might appear to be getting off topic, but I promise to tie it in at the end)
It seems like a bit of a logical leap to assume that a spacefaring alien/supreme AI, would necessarily be capable of destroying us. There are far too many variables to account for when determining whether or not either of them would win a war with us (culture, biology, logistics, etc), and I hate the fact that most people assume that superior technology necessarily represents a superior ability to wage war. My counter examples to yours would be: Independence Day, and War of the Worlds. In both works, aliens are defeated with low tech (or no tech in the case of War of the Worlds) weapons. Hell, an aliens' weapons might be low tech by our standards, due to them achieving global peace early in their evolution (or never even experiencing war in the history of their species). What they may think might destroy us, our military leaders may scoff at. Something as simple as muskets could easily have massacred a slightly less technologically advanced species, and could give the alien species the impression that they could destroy us. Even if the aliens have been able to destroy other races, that doesn't mean that they could destroy us. The edge the conquistadors had over the Aztecs represented only a few hundred (?) years of technological advancement over the Aztecs (though may you could consider it due to the fact that they had divergent technological paths at some time much earlier in our species's history and that the Aztecs' technological progress didn't stagnate at some point), which isn't much when you consider the fact that the universe has existed for +/- 13.7 billion years. A supreme AI could also be at a disadvantage due to its possibly limited ability to interact with the physical world, or its inability to understand, and empathize, with humans which would present a significant tactical disadvantage and that could also be applied to any alien species. Villains in science fiction tend to be anthropomorphized, regardless of their background, so it's understandable that one would assume that we would be on an even playing field in terms of war, but I don't think that that is a fair assumption in reality. We could just as easily have the technological advantage in war, despite the fact that we are not yet a spacefaring race. Technology doesn't necessarily have to advance in every area, for every species, similar to way that the technology for most of our species has.
(tl;dr)
My argument would basically amount to the fact that either the AI/Aliens couldn't guarantee that trying to destroy my species wouldn't result in their species's extinction.
I'm not sure what I would say to a deity, but it would probably depend on how exactly you define a deity. It would probably be something along the lines of, "let me indulge in all of my vices one last time, before you kill us".
Edit:
Is this a Macross/Robotech reference?
That was Abraham, not Lot.
Although Lot was living in the city at the time.
I find it unlikely that a super logical race would use genocide to prevent genocide though.
Tell me that's not attractive to the sort of megalomaniac civilization that would have someone make the argument in the first place.
So a lot rides on who they pick. Are they picking who they think "runs" Earth, and if so, what position do they think meets that criteria (US President, Chinese premier, UN Secretary-General, someone else)? Do they think the CEO of some gigantic multinational corporation actually "runs" the world and is that person the spokesman? Are they going for someone they think is an example of the best of humanity, the worst of humanity, an "average" person? Do they just pick some random guy on a whim?
If they make Desmond Tutu the spokesman, we're in about as good shape as we're going to be. If they pick Kim Jong-Il, we're screwed. If they pick me, I'd give it a run and on my best day I think I could at least give us a fighting chance, but the gravity of the situation would probably freeze me up. I'd probably choke and not be able to get much of any kind of defense out at all.
It seems unlikely that either party would be capable of selecting the best representative to present our case.
This reminds me of how much I need to watch this movie again. I have been thinking about this situation nonstop since Hawking's quote about aliens got picked up by the media.
"Oh yeah, we don't have thumbs or civilization or sports or war. Wait, what were you asking? Save the humans?"
Exactly. Is it even reasonable to assume that an extraterrestrial lifeform (including AI, even though only humans would create an AI at this point) would necessarily disregard dolphins? What about Chimps? Bonobos? How would a vastly superior race determine which extremely inferior race should represent its entire planet? I think it would be difficult to argue in favor of our existence, while arguing that the natural resources within our solar system have less value than we do.
What? Since when did they require that?
Besides, a highly trained pet is still a pet. Outside of a few dozen across the galaxy Humans provide nothing the Minds can't already achieve outside of enjoyment of observing them.
It is a weird question. What do tall people keep short people around for? What do left-handed people keep right-handed people around for? What do clever people keep stupid people around for?
The answer is they don't keep them around for any purpose, because they don't get to define other people's purpose.
None of those people keep the other group alive for shits and giggles. The minds could operate just as easily without biologic people.
That's such a weird way to look at it. That's part of the point of the Culture - not treating other sapient entities as resources.
I'm not aware of any minds supporting habitats in spite of the fact of how they feel about Humans.
You seem nice. Do you want to be my friend?
Then show them like every movie ever and say its a documentary.
If they don't buy into this, the only other viable option involves nuclear weapons. Mr. Alien sir, you didn't happen to mention this planet to anyone else did you?
After all, think how much better off the natives of mexico would have been if rather than letting the conquistadores run around and gain a power base someone in the first group to meet them would have just stabbed Cortez in the face.
Replace 'alien' with 'european', and humans with native americans or africans, and you can make the same movie exactly but with much different connotations.
Picture it: Custer comes to native american tribe, misunderstanding leads to a battle, Custer tells native americans that they are wasting resources that America needs and killing animals that the us wanted to build a nature preserve for. Native americans attack, custer kills them en masse, eventually decides not to murder every man woman and child but turns lands into a reservation where the native americans are not allowed to leave, or have weapons or any modern technology.
If this movie was made Custer would be seen as a horrible dick, but keanu is presented in a positive light despite it being the exact same plot.
Edit:this is referring to the remake of course, the original was more reasonable.
My understanding is that 1) By an large they kinda like people and value their rights, 2) People do interesting and not necessarily predictable things things and 3) There are other biological equivitech races out there and it is easier to have relationships with them using people.
The vague "that the higher being has concluded it cannot co-exist with mankind due to mankind's bad behavior " in the OP, and particularly the "bad behavior" thing really makes it pretty hard to make any argument for the existence of man. Here is an alien from a totally foreign culture making a moral judgement against people.
To argue morals with an alien, you need to have some understand of their socially determined values. Until you have that understanding, any argument that you make is little more than listing what we perceive our own flaws and strengths are, which would not necessarily mean anything particular to an alien.
What do the aliens value? What threat do they perceive man kind to be? Which of our behaviors are "bad" and why? Think about all the ridiculous and random shit other humans can take offense at given the society in which they were raised. Now, expand that to every human society that has existed throughout history, and all the things they might consider "bad". All of that would not even scratch the surface of the alien's potential problems with people, because all of those humans are pretty much the exact same as you.
An alien that evolved light years away, eons ago, that has been exploring space for who knows how long, with a whole myriad of different physical, emotional and social needs would be totally foreign. Without knowing about the aliens and what shapes their values, it could be quite a grievous mistake indeed to begin making argument based on our own morality and values.
Any race that builds things is probably going to be equally biased toward building things as a sign of intelligence.
That and abstract thought.
If we're being destroyed for mass genocide, the species/AI/whatever is heading straight for the same fate by committing mass genocide.
If they're intelligent and don't care, what's the point? They have their heart set on pretending it's justifiable genocide, why not just fight back?
'Giving diplomacy a chance and proving our right to existence and then fighting as a last-ditch attempt at survival' vs. 'skipping straight to the fighting'
But Dolphins are huge arseholes, I wouldn't want earth to be represented by a species that kills and rapes for fun if we can avoid it.