A Zoo full of humans (RAR!)

SF: discuss futuristic sci-fi series, ideas, and crossovers.

Moderator: NecronLord

User avatar
Joun_Lord
Jedi Master
Posts: 1211
Joined: 2014-09-27 01:40am
Location: West by Golly Virginia

Re: A Zoo full of humans (RAR!)

Post by Joun_Lord »

Simon_Jester wrote:Being kidnapped and forced to live in a place against their will does not give your descendants less of a claim to it. Or do the descendants of the early US's slaves have less right to live in America than the descendants of its slaveowners? How the hell does that make sense?

And I already pointed this out- the inhabitants' inability to repair or maintain the station is irrelevant to whether they have a right to it. You probably didn't build the structure you live in. And you certainly didn't build the continent you live on. If that continent it suddenly started sinking into the sea or undergoing an Ice Age, you'd be pretty helpless to do anything about it except run for your life, now wouldn't you? Does that mean you don't really have a right to a say in what happens to that continent? Could some random aliens with super planet-engineering powers just roll up to the Earth and say "lol, these people have no idea how to maintain or repair their planet, they don't have any real claim to it, they just happened to evolve here?"

If anything, the zoo inhabitants' inability to control the zoo makes the imperative to not fuck up their home without permission even stronger, because they are totally helpless and we are just straight-up murdering them in that case.
The better question is do descendants of slaves have a claim to slaver owner's plantations, their property. Because the station isn't just land to be settled, its a structure built and owned by another group of people. With the exception of shady shit in places like Zimbabwe I think most of the time when giving reparations to former slaves/subjects they are directly given their former masters property.

But this is beyond property as the thing is a completely artificial construct floating in pure death that requires outside help to function and not kill everyone. Yes the continent I'm on might sink but not because I don't know how to wire a light switch. Without the robots or some Earth scientists replacing the robots the station will degrade and eventually break.

It is like a slave ship carrying loads of African tribals over to work in some fields for douchebags who descendants will say it totally wasn't about slavery. It is a completely artificial construct floating in a sea of pure death that requires outside help to function and not kill anyone. If the crew abandons the ship the former tribals will have no way of keeping it afloat. They have no knowledge of rigging, sails, hull repair, ballast, navigating, or anything. They have even less knowledge then I do and the sum total of my experience with boats was floating down a stream near my house on a leaky kiddie pool as a child and watching crap tons of naval themed movies plus Waterworld.

The station is even worse then a relatively simple wooden sailing boat, it would be more like the same tribals on an operating oil rig. Without constant vigilance by skilled workers and engineers with an understanding of the systems and how to repair them it explodes.

Even if the zoo humans have claim to the station there is no way to let them stay without either keeping them in their current life of being zoo animals without even asking them because to even approach the people we'd need to go through all the robots that will try to stop us or we'd need to figure out the station enough to run it and have engineers take over from the robots for atleast decades while we work to educate the zoo humans to do it themselves if our own engineers can even figure it out in a reasonable time frame in the first place and do so without compromising the integrity of the station.

They are totally helpless anyway it goes, we cannot even ask permission without making them more helpless, anything we do beyond leaving them alone creates more danger for them.
Ralin wrote:Hell, worse really, since we don't know how badly off those original humans were or even if they actually agreed to go in the first place. As oppression goes, having to follow rules like "Don't kill each other" and "Don't shit in the water" are pretty damned mild ones.

Note how there's nothing stopping them from having whatever literature and arts they please.

I also like how Joun has also spontaneously generated what amounts to a new racial epithet for these hypothetical people and jumped right ahead to the "We have to civilize them and teach them how to act like real people!" part of imperialism without a trace of irony or self-awareness.


Did you miss the part where they have their reproductive abilities dictated to them, where they are forced to live where they are, where their ancestors were kidnapped (unless you think extremely primitive people can actually consent to being abducted anymore then African tribals or Native Americans could have consented to get on the white people's boats and there is even any way anyone can consent to being a zoo animal and owned property)? Its a bit more then "don't fight" or "don't shit in the water".

Big whoop, they can draw. That doesn't make up for their loss of freedoms. Or would you be okay with being put into a nice comfortable cage where everything is dictated to you, you can only breed when they want and with who they want even if you don't want to because they have to maintain the population and breed certain traits, where you can be drugged or killed anytime by robots if they deem you to be trouble but you can do art or play with balls? Sure you can't leave or fuck or have any control over your own life but there is nothing stopping your from having whatever literature or arts you please.

Its not imperialism or being racist to what to teach people how to be human who are not being treated like human beings, are being treated like animals, like zoo animals. Its not imperialism to think they need freed being sapient beings, its not racist to think that because they have been breed to be good little docile zoo animals who lack much of an education will need to be educated or "civilized" to even be aware of what happened to them.
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: A Zoo full of humans (RAR!)

Post by Simon_Jester »

Joun_Lord wrote:The better question is do descendants of slaves have a claim to slaver owner's plantations, their property. Because the station isn't just land to be settled, its a structure built and owned by another group of people. With the exception of shady shit in places like Zimbabwe I think most of the time when giving reparations to former slaves/subjects they are directly given their former masters property.
Just yesterday you were talking about dismantling the station so we could learn about it.

So gee, it's like you respect the aliens' property rights... When it's about claiming that a bunch of dirty subhuman Untermenschen don't have any right to a place they are the sole inhabitants of and have been the sole inhabitants of for generations.

But then you don't respect the aliens' property rights... When it stops Our People from doing whatever the fuck we want to whoever the fuck we want, wherever and whenever the fuck we feel like it.

Double standard much?

I just want you to know, you're coming across really bad here. Like, Captain Planet villain level cartoon-bad. Like, "change my name to Looten Plunder" bad. You're taking hundreds of years of the exact attitudes that caused people to act like a giant collective imperialist bag of dicks towards everyone else who didn't have enough machine guns to stop them, and you're compressing them into about two or three days. This would be a good time to stop and say "wait, shit just got fucked up."

...
But this is beyond property as the thing is a completely artificial construct floating in pure death that requires outside help to function and not kill everyone. Yes the continent I'm on might sink but not because I don't know how to wire a light switch. Without the robots or some Earth scientists replacing the robots the station will degrade and eventually break.
If you DID live on a continent that could somehow sink because you didn't know how to wire a light switch, would that mean you didn't have a right to continue living there? And that other people could evict you whenever you want?
It is like a slave ship carrying loads of African tribals over to work in some fields for douchebags who descendants will say it totally wasn't about slavery. It is a completely artificial construct floating in a sea of pure death that requires outside help to function and not kill anyone. If the crew abandons the ship the former tribals will have no way of keeping it afloat. They have no knowledge of rigging, sails, hull repair, ballast, navigating, or anything. They have even less knowledge then I do and the sum total of my experience with boats was floating down a stream near my house on a leaky kiddie pool as a child and watching crap tons of naval themed movies plus Waterworld.
Would that mean that some bunch of random pirates have a right to grab the ship (or oil rig, or whatever) for themselves and evict the slaves and strand them on a random desert island or something?

You're not answering the question I've been asking you.

You seem to be arguing that "I don't know how to maintain the structure I'm in without help" cancels out "I live here and I've lived here all my life and so did my great-great-great-great-...-grandparents." So as a straight up or down, yes or no, does it?

If so, then doesn't that mean that a lot of humans in real life have no right to live where we live? Because it's not like we're doing a good job of not fucking up our planet. And it's not like we know how to fix it when it breaks.
Even if the zoo humans have claim to the station there is no way to let them stay without either keeping them in their current life of being zoo animals without even asking them because to even approach the people we'd need to go through all the robots that will try to stop us or we'd need to figure out the station enough to run it and have engineers take over from the robots for atleast decades while we work to educate the zoo humans to do it themselves if our own engineers can even figure it out in a reasonable time frame in the first place and do so without compromising the integrity of the station.

They are totally helpless anyway it goes, we cannot even ask permission without making them more helpless, anything we do beyond leaving them alone creates more danger for them.
Well at the very least we should stop and fucking take stock for a while before deciding to smash everything to hell. Especially since we can't just randomly experiment on the station without killing the inhabitants, and evacuating the station would take time. Or have you escalated all the way up to "murder the Untermenschen and take their stuff because they weren't using it to live anyway oh wait they were lol whatever" yet?
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
User avatar
Joun_Lord
Jedi Master
Posts: 1211
Joined: 2014-09-27 01:40am
Location: West by Golly Virginia

Re: A Zoo full of humans (RAR!)

Post by Joun_Lord »

Simon_Jester wrote:Just yesterday you were talking about dismantling the station so we could learn about it.

So gee, it's like you respect the aliens' property rights... When it's about claiming that a bunch of dirty subhuman Untermenschen don't have any right to a place they are the sole inhabitants of and have been the sole inhabitants of for generations.

But then you don't respect the aliens' property rights... When it stops Our People from doing whatever the fuck we want to whoever the fuck we want, wherever and whenever the fuck we feel like it.

Double standard much?

I just want you to know, you're coming across really bad here. Like, Captain Planet villain level cartoon-bad. Like, "change my name to Looten Plunder" bad. You're taking hundreds of years of the exact attitudes that caused people to act like a giant collective imperialist bag of dicks towards everyone else who didn't have enough machine guns to stop them, and you're compressing them into about two or three days. This would be a good time to stop and say "wait, shit just got fucked up."
There is more then one thing to consider when talking about the station. Using the tech is part of it considering the technology represents something that could be used to improve lives and to defend against anymore people being abducted. Its not just about property rights.

My point about the aliens owning the structure is their is a way of doing things to try to make things right for former slaves and the like, we don't just hand over their former master's property even if they have been living there for generations. Even though the zoo humans are living there now somebody else owns or did own the station. We have to acknowledge the aliens property rights even when we are taking their property to either give to the zoo humans in compensation or whatever else we'd do.

The aliens committed a crime when they abducted thousands of people to be put into a zoo, when they for thousands of years abused the freedoms and reproductive rights of sapient beings. Considering we cannot go and arrest the aliens we impound their property and use it to help the people they wronged.

However their property is extremely dangerous in the wrong hands, is deadly to the wronged people if something goes wrong, is continuing to imprison the wronged people without some drastic change that might inadvertently endanger them. Even leaving aside the concerns of alien invasion and the needs of 6 billion people on Earth that could be helped by the tech there, if we free the inhabitants of the zoo we might be putting them in danger by leaving them onboard a possibly failing station. A station that if still functional would do everything in its power to re-imprison the inhabitants.

But at the same time we cannot discount the needs of the many. The station is alien technology that can help alot of lives and potentially protect all of humanity should the aliens return. Morality says leave the zoo humans there and don't "Looten' Plunder" but morality sometimes takes a backseat to actual human lives. Think of all the millions who could be fed by whatever fabrication and recycling tech keeps the people on the station fed. Think of the millions whose health can be improved by the advanced medical technology that the station uses to keep the inhabitants healthy. Think of the entire human race that can be kept free and not made into zoo animals if we use the technology to meet the dickhole aliens who captured 40,000 of our people for a zoo exhibit.

Sometimes a less then moral choice needs to made and worrying less about the comfort of 40,000 compared to the lives of millions and billions is not the most moral thing to do but I'd think its the correct thing to do.
Simon_Jester wrote:Would that mean that some bunch of random pirates have a right to grab the ship (or oil rig, or whatever) for themselves and evict the slaves and strand them on a random desert island or something?

You're not answering the question I've been asking you.

You seem to be arguing that "I don't know how to maintain the structure I'm in without help" cancels out "I live here and I've lived here all my life and so did my great-great-great-great-...-grandparents." So as a straight up or down, yes or no, does it?

If so, then doesn't that mean that a lot of humans in real life have no right to live where we live? Because it's not like we're doing a good job of not fucking up our planet. And it's not like we know how to fix it when it breaks.
Of course not, if things are done they need done legally by some sort of legal entity. But thing that needs done is not to leave the slaves to their doom.

What I'm arguing is they don't know how to maintain the structure and will die without someone else maintaining it. Yes the fact they live in an environment they cannot stop from killing them cancels that out. Lives matter more then some nebulous property rights when you get right down to it. If I didn't know how to work out the gas system of my house and had it filling with far more hazardous gas then I normally have pumping into the place then people would be in the right to remove me to save my life. I wouldn't like it, I might even consider people taking away my property to be wrong and maybe it legally is so but I'd still be alive rather then Darth Vader's chubbier deader twin.

Very few things in our society are going to kill us if it breaks and our society has ways of repairing things even an individual cannot. If I break the gas system of my house I couldn't repair it but I can call a gas repair person. The zoo people cannot do so, they have no one in their society that can fix any of the technology that keeps them alive. They have to rely on another society to help them.

We can fix our planet if we so choose to but simple laziness prevents us from doing so. One could even make the argument that another species should intervene to stop us from killing ourselves because we are so goddamn dense. The difference between people of Earth and the people on the station is we with the right motivation could fix our pollution problems and all that, the zoo humans don't in any way shape or form have the capability to maintain their environment.

Even if they have every right to the station as we do to Earth they might need removed temporarily until such time as they can gain the knowledge to take care of themselves because preserving their lives now means they can enjoy their property later. Leave them on their property now with no way of maintaining it and they'd have it right until it kills them all or we just let them stay prisoners of it.
Simon_Jester wrote:Well at the very least we should stop and fucking take stock for a while before deciding to smash everything to hell. Especially since we can't just randomly experiment on the station without killing the inhabitants, and evacuating the station would take time. Or have you escalated all the way up to "murder the Untermenschen and take their stuff because they weren't using it to live anyway oh wait they were lol whatever" yet?
I never said we would need to anything right this minute, right now, this very instant. Blinding charging in and mucking up with an inhabited alien structure would be a bad thing.

But we cannot sit idly by forever. The people on the station remain imprisoned every minute we wait. People are on Earth that could be saved by some of the technology will starve, get sick, and even die while we wait. The threat of alien invasion remains a very real thing while we wait.

Anything we do should be done with patience, care, and a crapton of experts involved (and considering its the 80s I'm sure it will involve George Lucas and Gene Roddenberry somehow) but something still needs done because maintaining the status quo still leads to harm, possibly greater harm then interfering.
User avatar
FaxModem1
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 7700
Joined: 2002-10-30 06:40pm
Location: In a dark reflection of a better world

Re: A Zoo full of humans (RAR!)

Post by FaxModem1 »

I'm going to answer Zor's first question.

What happens?

The US and the USSR get into a pissing contest over the space-zoo technology gap and the space race to try and claim the advanced technology begins. This might resemble the USSR.collapsing in our timeline due to trying to keep up with the US in wild spending, only more on space craft and less on nuclear weaponry and Star Wars, while keeping up to date on the domestic economy.

NASA never gets its funding slashed, because Congress will want to make sure that democracy and apple pie make it to the aliens before communism and vodka does.

Whoever makes it there will probably try to dismantle and take apart a few of the nanny bots to reverse engineer the technology. Who knows if they can do so?

The zoo people, unfortunately, will be treated like every less powerful people in the way of a more powerful one, and, depending on the human race's ability to deal with the robots, will be pushed aside, forcibly developed, and/or assimilated into whatever culture makes a permanent presence there.

There's also question of how the zoo builders will act with wild wolves coming and interfering in their dog kennel.
Image
Post Reply