IDEA! Avatar 2: Ava-Tarrer

[Shroom Man 777]

They can industrialize if they want to, or if they don't want to, then they won't. Okay.

The dismissive mindset exists, and we have seen so many people. Sarevokerritches et al. think that, so it's not about just you.

But

Jesus Christ, am I really such a poor communicator that you all still think I'm suggesting we forcibly industrialize the NaVi, rather than suggesting that if we educate them and give them a hand they'll industrialize on their own?

When asked about "What is wrong with the Borg or the Strogg?", instead of going "they're a bunch of monstrous things that kidnap people and forcibly cyberize them against their will into slaved killmachines dedicated to killfucking the rest of the universe", you instead went for the option of "Well for starters they aren't human..." in that longgo multiple-choice list of Borgo-Stroggian cyberpostmetapaleo-atrocifications. Well, I guess it was a good option?

Okay. So being not-human is (also) something that's wronggo with them-o. I see.

And previously, you came off as not industrialized = lesser inferiors who need to be educated. Whereas industrialized = superiors who do not need to be educated, and should be the ones educating others (who aren't industrialized). Automatically, without thinking of why these guise from an entirely different (and living) planet may not conform to your notions of what's so and not-so.

I guess, yeah. You are a terrible communicator when it comes to conveying that you can deal with alternate ways of life or ways of thinking of ways of being (like being not-human, or not-industrialized, or both). Because... it comes off that you can't deal with these alternate not-the-same-as-you-and-yours things without automatically reacting to them because they fall outside your preconceptions.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

What Shroom said.

When presented with the Na'Vi scenario, a race that has a higher standard of living than us, exists in a situation that has a much greater long-term sustainability than our own, and are quite happy with it, your response is, "They're ignorant, primitive savages that need to be educated."

When asked what is wrong with the Borg and Strogg, your first response *isn't* "They're nightmarish horrors that will aggressively and likely painfully assimilate humanity into their culture against its will", but rather, "Well for one thing, they're not human."

Exactly what conclusion are people going to draw from that except that you value industrialization over happiness and sustainability, and that you believe humans have more moral right to commit imperialistic atrocities against other species by sheer virtue of them being human?

[Number Theoretic]

Been following this thread for a while and so far, it has been interesting.

I think what the "they need to be educated" crowd is trying to tell us is that the Na'vi weren't really in a position to make an informed decision about whether they want some of the human's knowledge and technologies because they lack the context in which those technologies can be useful. So, the reasoning is, to be very patient and tell them about ourselves and how we solve problems in order to give them the chance to make an informed decision. Which could be justified by honesty and the ideal of giving them a chance. And not in the "ram it down their throats for their own good"-way but in a patient and honest way.

But this reminds me of Communism: a nice idea in theory, but not even remotely practical.

From a commercial point of view this idea is ridicously useless: it would take ages and generations of peaceful intercultural exchange to bring the Na'vi to the point where they can make an informed decision about whether they could want anything humanity has to offer. And even then it is still unclear whether they would say "yes, deal. Take the home tree deposit and thanks for all the fish" or still say simply no because that site is sacred to them.

And concerning the attack: it still seems to me that Selfridge could have played it safe, stuck with the status quo and mined elsewhere if it weren't for his greed which motivated him to take a risk. Or he could have considered the deep mining option which i hinted on earlier (but which would be less profitable). But then, there would be no movie

[Stark]

If it takes generations to create a need for some trade good, maybe that suggests there is no need for it right now.

[Ryan Thunder]

Oni, have you considered that I might not have pointed that out because it seemed insultingly obvious?

[Cesario]

Sorry if I've missed it previously Cesario, but what about native title?

Aren't the NaVi owners of their land and free to tell RDA "no thanks"?

Doesn't the land belong to Eywa, and thus isn't theirs to trade away in the first place? Eywa was apparently cool with the mining right up until the Well of Souls incident.

And if anyone except Grace knew about and believed in the planetary supercomputer's existence, I'm sure Selfridge and his ilk would have seen dollar signs and ordered an immediate stop ot the mining precisely because the profit oportunities from this new technology would outweigh what he's getting for his space-gold that is in no way important to human survival whatsoever.

Prior to the hometree attack she's arguing about the potential damage to the neural network.

THEY DON'T GIVE A SHIT BECAUSE IT'S NOT UNOBTANIUM.

But hey, she's only the highest ranking scientist on the planet getting overruled in the face of easier profit.

What part of "no one believed Grace because she was transparently stalling for time" was unclear about that scene? They didn't look at her research, go "yep, that's an impossibly advanced biotech neural network, bulldoze anyway". They looked at the timing of Grace's discovery, Grace's obvious contempt for the mining operation, and her history of siding with the natives and quite reasonably decided it was far more likely she was technobabling her way through a bullshit discovery just for the sake of something to stop what she wasn't ready to accept was inevidable.

The fact that she happened to actually have a real discovery to present doesn't really change the fact that she was likely to say anything at that point to try to stop the Home Tree incident and both Selfridge and Quaratch knew it. She had no credibility, a fact not helped by the fact that she was supposed to be helping Jake on that mission of finding out what the Na'vi wanted that Jake was busy blowing off.

But I'm not sure we can help the Nav'i do better.

In the film, humanity isn't doing very well by the Nav'i s standards. I think I remember a funeral early on of an Nav'i who died of old age. They have enough to eat, plenty of space per person, no evidence of disease or crap living conditions and can talk directly to most of the other species around them.

Seriously, why would they want roads, Humvees, drive through McDonalds, day time tv or any of the actual benefits of human life? they don't need them, hence they don't want them.
When half the forest glows it's not like electric light is that useful.

Have you considered that an alien culture might have non-material things they can offer as well? Music, philosophy, litterature, hell a written language, a scientific understanding of the universe unconnected to the nifty bells and whistles that come with technology.

And that's ignoring little things like parachutes to keep them from dying when they fall off their birds and neuromedicine that can fix damaged nerves so they won't need to commit ritual suacide when their pony-tails get cut.

another real life anology:

Should we have the right to force Montgarre Minority groups off their land to allow us to build a rubber plantation? They'll be moved to a new village with permentant homes, a toilet every 10 families, occasional running water and menial jobs at the rubber plant.
Has their quality of life got better?

Should we have the right to force entire fishing villages off the coast to allow us to build a fancy 5* resort (time to payback 5 years, estimated working life, 25 years). They'll get a compensation house elsewhere and a fat cheque as a thankyou. Of course, in two years when the money runs out they're kind of stuck without a livelihood, but hey, good beach is a precious commodity wasted on them yeah?

both of these are happening up the road from me.

How are these analogous?

How about we apply Cesario's argument to Battle Los Angeles:

Hey, we tried to negotiate with you guys in 1941, but you just fired at our ship. We tried all around the world in a bunch of different years after that, but no one ever responded to us.

So clearly you dumb monkeys don't understand what's good for you and we need your water. So too bad, we're going to wipe you out to ensure we have unrestricted access to your resource which you have attacked us over and then failed to engage in discussion with us about.

Is this not your point of view?

If you're not lying about the content of that film, then yes, the aliens did their due dilligence, and humanity deserves what it gets.

I rather suspect that there was really no hint of attempted communication by the aliens in that film like every other so-called analogous alien invasion film people have brought up, but if the aliens really did try like you claim, I can't fault them.

No, advocating for that sort of thing comes in at number 8. This is why I gave you those numbers.

You've said yourself that you wouldn't mind at all if they were murdered,

Yep, 7.

ergo

Oh dear, you're going to try to pretend you understand logic again.

you would not protest if it were cops who dragged them out into the street and shot them in the face.

Of course I wouldn't protest, but for reasons far more obvious. If the cops are systematically murdering my graduating class, the most likely reason I haven't also been shot is that they've overlooked me. Them continuing to do so is in my best interests.

So you do think death is just punishment for aggravated assault, and no amount of obfuscation and evasion is going to conceal that fact.

Oh, it's so cute when people like you don't realize that I'm perfectly aware of my own belief structure and think it will come as some grand surprise or it's something I would bother trying to hide.

The native american tribes did murder eachother over land and hunting rights. They were every bit as human as their european invaders.

And? Therefore? Concluding?

The native american tribes weren't the magically peaceful utopia you were trying to paint them as. Obviously.

It's still "they have warriors = they deserve to die (unless they concede their ancestral land to us)".

Actually, you were just being particularly dense about not admitting that they had warriors in the first place. I realize you have a hard time separating me correcting your basic errors from me explaining why the Na'vi aren't perfect, but do try to make some effort in that direction.

So if you are to stay consistent, you must conclude

You don't understand my position or logic in general well enough to finish that sentence.

Two weeks ago, I said, "Hey, Lu, stick this up your ass!" and I gave him finger. Otherwise, I haven't talked to him in twenty-five years.

There's only so much communication necessary for a rejection.

Even discarding the fact they posed for photos with Grace and all, how is this wrong or morally repulsive? Just how much communications would you demand they maintain in order to stop being morally reprehensible racists, by your standards?

More than, "There's nothing you have that we could possibly want, White Devil!!!"

Or, more accurately, Jake was a dumbass and assumed that, when someone competent in his place would have found something to give Selfridge.

Why? Why do you assume "someone competent" would have necessarily come to a different conclusion?

Because we've seen problems in their civilization that modern technology could help with. The ones we see in just our small crossection of their society may not be big enough to buy Home Tree with, but they're big enough to give to Selfridge to prove that there's room to negotiate and find more things we can offer them.

Why even bother sending Jake if you don't accept the possibility there might legitimately be nothing the Omaticaya would want from you?

Because Jake's job was to find out what those things were. Was that not clear?

In Cesarioworld, diplomacy means demanding what you want and going to war if you don't get it.

That's what diplomacy means most of the time in the real world. Though on occasion, we get to do things like demanding what we want and the other guy deciding that there are some things he wants that we could trade him for it.

In the real world, diplomats are known to have done this thing called "compromise" when it becomes obvious a proposal is utterly unnaceptable to the other side.

No, that's when compromise can't happen.

Tell me, would it have been different if the Na'Vi had fuckoff space battleships and thousands of nuclear weapons?

Yep, no one on the forum would have been questioning why the RDA were holding back, because the reason would be obvious.

As it stands, the only explaination that makes any sense is that the humans aren't evil.

Isn't it sad for your case that Quaratch's plan was working until idiot Jake decided to rally them to a hopeless battle that required litteral divine intervention for them to win.

How was the plan working? Because they were shell-shocked barely a day after their home got destroyed?

And you have the gall to say I'm the one who has problems with long-term thinking

Isn't it sad for your case that everything was unfolding exactly as predicted up until this point?

How, when there's nothing the Na'vi want, exactly?

There's nothing they want in exchange for their livelihood.

The bolded was not actually what was said in the film. You added it on later.

Until the machinegunning incident at the school, relations were cold but there was no war or shoot on sight orders, therefore mining elsewhere is at least somewhat acceptable, therefore it might be possible to negotiate for mining rights in places that are not their ancestral home.

It should be easy to understand, really.

I did say that incident made a difference.

Ah, but according to you, these magical blue space elves don't have violent incidents between eachother. They're all so perfect they're using warrior to mean athelete instead of its transparently obvious meaning.

And where have I said that they don't have violent incidents between each other? Hey, I even admitted their warriors both hunt and fight when necessary! In a previous thread, I said Tsu'Tey was violent and quick to draw his knife!

There's a difference between "they are fallible and occasionally fight wars" and "they are repulsive racists who deserve to get murdered en masse unless they give us what we want". I mean, holy shit, degrees of gray etc etc etc.

Admission of fallability on the part of the Na'vi has been fairly sparse in this thread, I'm afraid, and I haven't hunted down every mention of them in the forum's history.

Yes, they obviously wanted that. What with Selfridge explicitly saying he doesn't want that, Quaratch needing to perform a coup in order to be able to make a pre-emptive assault on a force that's actively massing to murder every human on the planet, and all the effort spent using the narrow window of divine intervention to try to find out how to negotiate with these people. Obviously those are the acts of people who want a full scale war.

Selfridge shrugged when his security forces massacred a school full of kids, and negotiated by sending his killdozers to a mining site he hadn't secured the rights to. He might not have consciously wanted war, but he didn't mind inflaming the natives one bit.

It would be like Germany sending their ambassador with a request for the Danzig corridor and then before receiving the answer, sending in troops to set up new border posts.

They'd get fired upon by Polish soldiers and nobody sane would say Germany was somehow in the right here.

Or more like Germany sending their ambassador with the request, the Ambassador not delivering the request, the Polish mysteriously only accepting this particular incompetent ambassador, and them beign surprised when things break down and escalate to violence.

The RDA's behavior is like the old joke about a guy who prevented rape once.

How?

He convinced her!

You consider that a horribly despicable practice, don't you?

If it's "you will have sex with me one way or another, so you better come willingly" then yes, it is.

I mean, jesus christ, dude.

That's not convincing someone. That's coersion. No wonder you're so far behind the curve in this thread.

You know, if I'm going to get a world named after me, you should really give me more detailed information on its history.

God. You really are dense, aren't you?

Here's a breakdown of this incredibly obvious analogy:

Thanasia = Germany
Pollackistan = Poland.

Whoa. Mind blowing!

Since you spent so much time making up little incidents that diverge ever so slightly from the historical record, I need you to either start using their correct names so I can dispute you on matters of fact, or deal with the fact that you need to provide full details for your made up scenarios.

Who said anything about without violence and destroying them as a nation? I'm just asking how about everything except not bombing them. Rest of the outcome is still as intended.

And I replied: if they could be moved without violence and death and destruction of their way of life, it would have been great!

Earth would get the precious space rock, and the Na'Vi would lose nothing.

But it's like me eating cake every day and not getting fat: ain't gonna happen.

No, you're still not getting the proposal. We don't bomb them. There's still death and destruction. It is just carried out by infantry in mech suits instead of bombs.

Since the firebombing was such a sore point for you. I presume this will probably also result in the deaths of a bunch of filthy, stinking humans too, so you should be able to enjoy that at least.

IF humans just needed some more time to institute conservation policies AND they absolutely needed the unobtainium to buy them time for these policies to work AND they absolutely couldn't afford the shipments to be reduced in volume...then they have justification to assault the tree.

Now all you have to do is prove the last two assumptions are true in the context of the movie, and you are golden.

Just the last two? You're conceeding the third one, or did you just lose track of how many assumptions you were putting there?

The first one cannot be proved one way or another, so sure, let's be generous towards you (again) and say that yes, the humans are trying to make things better on Earth (P.S. they use gigantic lasers to accelerate starships to fractions of C, and dying species are being overhunted. Yeah...)

So you're already claiming the first one that you are "giving me" is outright false. You're not being a dishonest fuckwad at all, are you?

So just prove the humans needed unobtainium to buy some time for these policies to work, and that a reduction in the volume of earthbound shipments would have triggered a mass die-off.

So prove something I never claimed, and repeatedly explained that I didn't think was the case. Interesting proposal. Looks a lot like all your other proposals.

I love how you bring in information they didn't know at the time to justify your assertion that they made an immoral choice rather than an ignorant one.

They made an immoral choice unless you can prove unobtainium shipments slowing down would have caused mass starvation. Let's say it's starvation that's going to be avoided in the future via institution of draconian policies aimed at saving the environment.

Because the dead miners mean nothing.

Selfridge was also an idiot, since he obviously wasn't following Grace's research and thus dismissed her revelations out of hand. But hey, it's an unknown and strange alien environment, so something that looks like a tree is obviously just a tree!

Onwards, for profit!

It wasn't Selfridge's job to follow Grace's research. That much was obvious given how little oversight Grace was getting. Grace was the one who wanted to convince Selfridge of the existence of the neural net. She fucked that up.

Selfridge had no reason to believe that wasn't just a tree, because all evidence up to this point was that they were just trees, and Grace's big breakthrough only came at the precise moment that Grace would have said anything to avoid the attack.

One minor difference is that the RDA didn't give a fuck what happened to the Na'vi so long as their resource exploitation continued apace.

No point coming up with different words with which to repeat myself for the slower members of the audience.

So if there was no genocide, Thanasia (P.S. it's a stand-in for Germany) would be entirely justified in invading Pollackistan, yes?

When you're ready to actually read, let me know. I bolded your answer for your conveninence.

Let me know when you're ready to respond to my arguments.

Oh you're just begging to get stuffed into a locker again, aren't you?

Bring it, Internet Tough Guy. When you realize that threats of violence don't work so well over the internet and the only thing you can be judged by is what you say, feel free to stop by and respond to my arguments. I'll still be here after you're done sobbing to yourself about your wasted life.

The Na'vi allowed their children to be taken care of by aliens which wore Na'vi skinsuits and slightly off-looking ones at that.

Just a reminder, among those "children" is our main "hero"'s love interest.

I'd say that this is ample evidence that before those aliens started shooting at their kids relationships were quite positive.

So positive, no Na'vi ever shared a hope, dream, or aspiration that would provide a hook for negotiations in the entire time they were interacting.

Would you have allowed your children to be educated by aliens in human disguises resting somewhere in the uncanny valley?

So far into the uncanny valley, in fact, that Tsu'tey thought of Jake as a potential romantic rival. So far into the uncanny valley that Tsu'tey was right about Jake being a romantic rival.

The humans behind the Avatar program clearly knew how to create a body that wasn't in the Na'vi's version of the uncanny valley.

Heck, if aliens presented themselves to Earth like that it's quite probably massive outbreaks of hateful xenophobia would immediately occur even faster than if they had come in all their space-starfishy glory.

And rightly so. Disguising yourself like that is, at its best, an insult. A declaration that our puny little minds couldn't handle the idea that something that didn't look like us could be a person with intelligence or worth, but rather must be a monster to be destroyed.

And the humans in Avatar did arrive on Pandora in all their "starfishy glory". The Avatar program came into existence much later as an attempt to improve relations with the natives. Suggesting that the natives puny little minds really couldn't handle the idea tha tsomething that didn't look like them could be a person with intelligence or worth rather than just being a monster to be destroyed.

Insinuating that the Na'vi were acting in bad faith from the very start towards humanity is supported by nothing.

Except how pathetically little Selfridge had when he sent Jake out on his fact-finding mission. The details he was asking Jake for should have been covered at the beginning of any intereaction with the Na'vi, not however many years and billions of dollars bioengineering a Na'vi skinsuit followed by litteral divine intervention.

The Na'vi allowed their children to be taken care of by aliens which wore Na'vi skinsuits and slightly off-looking ones at that. I'd say that this is ample evidence that before those aliens started shooting at their kids relationships were quite positive. Would you have allowed your children to be educated by aliens in human disguises resting somewhere in the uncanny valley? Heck, if aliens presented themselves to Earth like that it's quite probably massive outbreaks of hateful xenophobia would immediately occur even faster than if they had come in all their space-starfishy glory.

Insinuating that the Na'vi were acting in bad faith from the very start towards humanity is supported by nothing.

This only means that the Na'vi were complicit in Stolen Generations and it was through bad parenting on part of the Na'vi that got their kids machinegunned. If such parental neglect is endemic to their culture, then that also makes them reprehensible. And also no less racist or arrogant or arracisogrant!

Don't forget how little they apparently valued those "children" what with never saying a word about them when talking about the evils of the space white man.

I had a great idea. Okay, so we're more industrialized than them. And we're also human. So this means we cannot apply the plight of non-industrialized non-human peoples (caused by industrialized humans) on industrialized humans. People utterly refuse to accept the whole "what if we turned this situation around and made us the subject to this treatment" and utterly disregard it because... I don't know, what we do to others cannot be applied to ourselves? Double standard because of some perceived superiority in our ways, and inability to grasp that differing views and differing ways and differing lifestyles - particularly in vastly differing environments on, dig this, an entirely different planet - may not automatically be inferior or lower than our own preconcepts. Okay.

So here's another horrible anal-ogy.

We, all seven billion of us, wake up to find the sky blotted out by a destructor fleet. A destructionator fleet. They are blaring that we are to be evacuated from Earth, and placed into decent accommodations, while they begin the process of mining the entire planet Earth. Those who refuse to be evacuated, sign waivers to stay on the planet, or actively resist, will die in the process of destroying our home tree world.

And the people doing things aren't grotesque not-humanoids. They're human. 100% homo sapiens. But they're from another reality, a reality where humanity has exceed any and all limitations imposed upon it by nature. They rule the cosmos with inconceivable technologies that let them transgress upon the very boundaries of reality itself. Their industries incorporate whole planets, even suns. Transdimensional travel for them is the corner stone of their solid singularity society.

Yet it comes at a price. To provide the unimaginable power needed to maintain their greatest civilization, they have turned to truly esoteric energy sources. They scour the omniverse seeking for other, alternate-reality, Earths, much like our own. They typically vacate the denizens there as best they can. And then they destroy these Earths. The process of creation through world-destruction releases a surge of orgone energy that they absorb with their orgone-accumulators, which is used to fuel the cores of their greatest machineries.

This orgone-energy can only be gathered from the destruction of Earth. Not only in the corporeal sense, but in the arcane and esoteric sense. In destroying another reality's Earth, they erase its past, its present, and its future - and all these potentials are then siphoned to their Earth, invigorating it and giving it even greater strength.

Think of the movie The One, but instead of Jet Li killing Jet Li killing Jet Li to become nobody's bitch, it's planet Earths doing this.

Maybe that alternate super-Earth needs the destruction of our world to survive. Or maybe they don't need it to survive, but it only provides greater energy at greater values to power super-machines that aren't really vital to survival. Maybe they could've mined another Earth devoid of life, but our Earth was nearer in the interdimensional neighborhood.

The cold calculating and vast intelligences far greater than ours, orchestrating this great plan, don't really care about that though. We're a bunch of primitives who haven't even gotten over our dependence of mineral slimes and fossil fuels, in the thousands of years our civilizations have existed, we haven't even been able to thrive on other worlds. What are we to such as they? What do we have to offer?

Consider, what these great over-mans have to offer, in turn. They will shelter us if we vacate our world, introduce us to sciences and technologies heretofore unimaginable to our primitive minds, they will give us knowledge and understanding of the way the universe - and the other universes around it - function far beyond what we currently know. Our way of life under their benevolent guidance will be free of the troubles that plague us today. They will give us wealth, they will give us the power cosmic, they will posthumanize and transhumanize us to be gods like they.

All we have to do is to leave our world, our way of life, and everything we have lived for on Earth our entire lives, behind and watch as the whole planet - and all those who choose to stay on it - is all put to the flame.

Sounds fair, right? The great voidships open their vast maws, waiting for the cities of Earth to empty themselves into their cavernous holds, and then they shall bring us... to infinity and beyond.

What's the catch?

I mean, were you going to get to a negative at any point in this exercise?

[madd0ct0r]

Well, I'd assume a vast portion of the muslim population would choose to die with mecca.
I'd further assume a proportion of the world population would choose to die for similar reasons - 3rd generation farmers, isolated rainforest tribes who didn't know or could not understand, 'merican survivalists who distrust the new world order, various hindus might object to the destruction of souls reincarnated in other forms then human ect ect ect.

but at least you're being consistent here.

[Shroom Man 777]

Oni, have you considered that I might not have pointed that out because it seemed insultingly obvious?

Well, then thank you for pointing out that being "not human" is also something wrong according to you. I mean, most of us wouldn't have considered that as a wrong thing.

[Cesario]

Not to try to put words in his mouth, but is it possible that "not human" was not intended in the same way as "not homo sapien", but rather in the "they're inhuman monstrosities from beyond the stars with no concept of compassion or mercy who will gut away everything that makes us who we are, that makes us human" sense?

[weemadando]

You mean just like humans are to the NaVi right?

[Cesario]

Not really, no. The humans have no interest in taking away everything that makes the Na'vi who they are. They're just here to mine.

Also, demonstrably have a sense of compassion and mercy, what with the whole "not nuking them from orbit" thing.

[Xess]

Not really, no. The humans have no interest in taking away everything that makes the Na'vi who they are. They're just here to mine.

Also, demonstrably have a sense of compassion and mercy, what with the whole "not nuking them from orbit" thing.

I'm not going to discuss anything prior to RDA deciding to kill the Na'Vi since I don't care to, but I don't think killing someone inefficiently, at close range and greater risk to your self can be said to be more compassionate than killing them via nuking them from orbit.

[Cesario]

Not really, no. The humans have no interest in taking away everything that makes the Na'vi who they are. They're just here to mine.

Also, demonstrably have a sense of compassion and mercy, what with the whole "not nuking them from orbit" thing.

I'm not going to discuss anything prior to RDA deciding to kill the Na'Vi since I don't care to, but I don't think killing someone inefficiently, at close range and greater risk to your self can be said to be more compassionate than killing them via nuking them from orbit.

More to do with the fact that there's still a biosphere when they're trying to mine on the planet of everything trying to kill you.

[weemadando]

Which returns us to "What gives the humans the right to mine when the natives have said no?"

Is it just manifest destiny in space? Humans are special? Profit over blue space elves?

[Cesario]

Which returns us to "What gives the humans the right to mine when the natives have said no?"

Is it just manifest destiny in space? Humans are special? Profit over blue space elves?

Doesn't the land belong to Eywa, and thus isn't theirs to trade away in the first place? Eywa was apparently cool with the mining right up until the Well of Souls incident.

[Darth Tedious]

There is the minor detail of the RDA having never asked Eywa if it was cool to mine...

Again, what gave humans the right to mine on Pandora, a world to which we have no claim?

[Cesario]

There is the minor detail of the RDA having never asked Eywa if it was cool to mine...

Again, what gave humans the right to mine on Pandora, a world to which we have no claim?

Le-gasp. Are you asking me to speculate on what happened prior to the start of the film? Why that would be an absolutely impossible feat.

[Darth Tedious]

The wiki you referenced earlier seems to have a fair bit of information on the history of humanity on Pandora. There should be no need for speculation.

The question still stands, what gave the humans the right to mine on Pandora?

[Cesario]

The wiki you referenced earlier seems to have a fair bit of information on the history of humanity on Pandora. There should be no need for speculation.

The question still stands, what gave the humans the right to mine on Pandora?

I'm sure you're curious, but really, this gets into details about the initial contact with the Na'vi, the discovery of Unobtainium in the first place, the initial mining operations, when and how that kill on sight order got handed down by the Na'vi, and all of it is backstory that the film simply didn't get into at all.

[weemadando]

OK, according to this site:

2129 - Pandora discovered, RDA granted monopoly rights for exploitation and products derived from it in perpetuity by Interplanetary Commerce Administration with the stipulation that they abide by a treaty that prohibits weapons of mass destruction and limits military power in space.

No mention of any negotiations with the locals anywhere I can locate aside from the interactions initiated by Grace Augustine in an attempt to engage with them. And we know how that ended.

So, lets assume that they did have permission to start with...

The locals revoke permission = murder them all to get what we want?

[Darth Tedious]

Even without the wiki, it should be pretty obvious that the kill-on-sight order came after the school incident. It would have been pretty hard for Grace to run a school while being killed on sight.

It should also be pretty obvious that the RDA had at no point been granted permission to mine by the Na'vi.
It is not a logical leap to realise that the RDA never sought Eywa's permission, given that Eywa (as an actual superentity and not an imaginary deity) was only just being discovered by Grace during the events of the film.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Isn't the whole "the land really belongs to Eywa and she hasn't said no yet" line of thought basically the same as taking over churches by force and feeling you have every right to do so because God hasn't struck you down with lightning yet?

[weemadando]

Isn't the whole "the land really belongs to Eywa and she hasn't said no yet" line of thought basically the same as taking over churches by force and feeling you have every right to do so because God hasn't struck you down with lightning yet?

Or robbing your house while you're out because you're not around to say no?

And then shooting you when you do come home and say "HEY STOP!"

[Simon_Jester]

Isn't the whole "the land really belongs to Eywa and she hasn't said no yet" line of thought basically the same as taking over churches by force and feeling you have every right to do so because God hasn't struck you down with lightning yet?

More like a mosquito landing on your skin and drinking your blood and thinking it has every right to do so because you haven't said "no" or swatted it yet.

The mosquito might well be able to drink its fill and fly away before you even notice it was there. That doesn't mean it's all right, or that you won't kill a mosquito out of hand if you catch it drinking your blood if its activity becomes conspicuous enough to notice.

[PeZook]

What part of "no one believed Grace because she was transparently stalling for time" was unclear about that scene? They didn't look at her research, go "yep, that's an impossibly advanced biotech neural network, bulldoze anyway". They looked at the timing of Grace's discovery, Grace's obvious contempt for the mining operation, and her history of siding with the natives and quite reasonably decided it was far more likely she was technobabling her way through a bullshit discovery just for the sake of something to stop what she wasn't ready to accept was inevidable.

The fact that she happened to actually have a real discovery to present doesn't really change the fact that she was likely to say anything at that point to try to stop the Home Tree incident and both Selfridge and Quaratch knew it. She had no credibility, a fact not helped by the fact that she was supposed to be helping Jake on that mission of finding out what the Na'vi wanted that Jake was busy blowing off.

She had the evidence to prove it, which she gathered before the whole thing started. THREE MONTHS before, in fact. I may be making abit of a leap here, but she probably wrote a lab report about it and filed it. Her boss might have even had access to it!

Due dilligence indeed.

Now, the rest of your post can be neatly reduced to these statements:

(about the Battle Los Angele movie):

I rather suspect that there was really no hint of attempted communication by the aliens in that film like every other so-called analogous alien invasion film people have brought up, but if the aliens really did try like you claim, I can't fault them.

This explains pretty much everything about you. Aliens ask, humans say no, aliens murder humans wholesale, aliens are in the right.

All your claims that it was totally different with Germany invading Poland for resources and land are just transparently untrue.

The native american tribes did murder eachother over land and hunting rights. They were every bit as human as their european invaders.

And? Therefore? Concluding?

The native american tribes weren't the magically peaceful utopia you were trying to paint them as. Obviously.

HOLY SHIT THANKS FOR ENLIGHTENING ME...

Oh wait, I never said that was the case. I wrote the Na'Vi, much like Native Americans, might've strongly valued manly feats of skill and bravery because they're useful for hunting.

They also happen to have a use in war OH NO it means the Omaticaya deserve to get murdered for their land and fight wars of conquest like all the time!

In Cesarioworld, diplomacy means demanding what you want and going to war if you don't get it.

That's what diplomacy means most of the time in the real world. Though on occasion, we get to do things like demanding what we want and the other guy deciding that there are some things he wants that we could trade him for it.

Holy shit.

I'm glad you will never be able to influence policy in any meaningful sense, because...goddamn. I guess you would've went to war with Russia over the missile shield, then, since GBI was completely unnaceptable to them, and thus compromise was impossible?

Are we back in Cesarioworld again?

Admission of fallability on the part of the Na'vi has been fairly sparse in this thread, I'm afraid, and I haven't hunted down every mention of them in the forum's history.

We were not discussing particular failures of Na'Vi society because the topic is about whether or not RDA atrocities were justified, for which it is irrelevant.

You might just as well bring up Polish antisemitism in a discussion about the Germans genociding the country, and it would be just as relevant.

The first one cannot be proved one way or another, so sure, let's be generous towards you (again) and say that yes, the humans are trying to make things better on Earth (P.S. they use gigantic lasers to accelerate starships to fractions of C, and dying species are being overhunted. Yeah...)

So you're already claiming the first one that you are "giving me" is outright false. You're not being a dishonest fuckwad at all, are you?

We could get into an in-depth discussion about the energy requirements of the laser, but I didn't feel like it so I conceded. And since you refuse to provide evidence for the latter two assumptions, why does it even matter?

So just prove the humans needed unobtainium to buy some time for these policies to work, and that a reduction in the volume of earthbound shipments would have triggered a mass die-off.

So prove something I never claimed, and repeatedly explained that I didn't think was the case. Interesting proposal. Looks a lot like all your other proposals.

So...thread over?

Since you outright refuse to prove the only thing that would make the RDA's actions justified (saving billions from starvation and mass death), it means they were not justified in any way, and that you concede.

How else can you justify mass murder and destruction of the Home Tree?