Comic Discussion > ALICE GROVE

Unanswered Questions from the Alice-verse

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ReindeerFlotilla:
We've always been chemically contaminated. Anyone who says differently fundamentally misunderstands physics. Usually willfully.

Or, as I like to say to people who promote organic, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

I'd still label any force that divided humanity in this manner with the intent to create and maintain this status quo as malevolent, and I'd view any force opposed to them as the good guys, in a relative sense. Making Earth a game preserve, forcing humans to live and die in it, denying them access to knowledge and choice, is evil.

improvnerd:
From a human-centric perspective, possibly. (But remember that before the blink humanity was about to destroy itself and most other life on the planet.

I don't think the blinkers are necessarily human, though, so they may have a different perspective on the issue.

Kugai:
Understanding is a three edged sword

improvnerd:
How about this:

Alice is a human herder gone rogue. She's started to care for her flock, providing them with what technology she can. And now her employers are trying to take her out.

ReindeerFlotilla:

--- Quote from: improvnerd on 19 Aug 2015, 16:05 ---From a human-centric perspective, possibly. (But remember that before the blink humanity was about to destroy itself and most other life on the planet.

I don't think the blinkers are necessarily human, though, so they may have a different perspective on the issue.

--- End quote ---

There's no other perspective worthy of consideration, here.

You can argue that Earth is too fragile for many humans, and that's fine. But to FORCE people to born, live, and die in poverty, and not give them a choice about it, that's evil. End of line.

You could say that some might choose that life, and that's also fine. Any force that could effortlessly move Earth's population into orbit has the power to make that choice an option.

From what we've seen, where are born is where you die in this world. One could argue that most of human history is like that, but this is a period where someone has the power to do something about it. Now, if I had the power to change a thing for the better, one could have a long debate about whether I'm obligated to. Maybe my choice is to live far away from the problem making intervention difficult.

But if I am actively intervening to perpetuate the problem, I'm obviously malevolent.

When I dismiss all other perspectives but they human one, it's not because they aren't important, but because (in the interventionist scenario) they are resolved. But they are resolved at the expense of humans. If the humans on the surface were THE actual humans that made things so that drastic measure were needed to protect the environment, then there might be a moral justification for making them live like this. But, even if the first ones were, these are not. Should you be punished for the sins of your father? What about the sins of his father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father's father?

Alice said thousands of years have passed. That up there is about 1400 years worth of fathers. Should you be punished for the acts of a man from the year 600 because you happen to be related to him?

Actions have consequences. Some Jews might have asked a Roman to nail a guy to a tree 2000 years ago, and because of that story we had the Holocaust. But we all agree the people who would do such things are morally wrong. OTOH some people worked out how to collect and burn hydrocarbon fuels for energy, and now we might be drastically altering the environment for their super distant progeny. While we are all part of the carbon problem, none of use started it. What's different is that there's no entity that has the power to force an equitable solution. Nor force can solve all the issues.

The blink d3mostrates a force that could have. If it lacked the power to do more than it did, intervening to keep the surface primitive would still be malevolent. There are better ways to do the job, especially given the potential of nanotechnology.

Aliens (because our AI children would either be us, and thus human as in QC or not us, and thus alien) with a different perspective would be not different than the Europeans in the colonial period. Again, we deem that morally bankrupt. Therefore, it is morally bankrupt. It's all well and good to speak of a different perspective, but the only perspective we know is the human. It's the only one we can know.  It's the only one we can use to make a moral judgment. Alice discusses inflicting catastrophic losses. That's also a moral decision based on her view that the SpaceTrees are acting immorally. You can't handwave out morality in this case. But morality doesn't have meaning when you introduce aliens who don't recognize the concept.

If aliens who don't recognize that having a choice (with the limits of the resource capacity) is fundamentally necessary for humans, but the trees do, from the human perspective, the trees are the good guys and the interventionist aliens are oppressors. At the very least, the trees might have a moral duty to try to get as many people off the surface as they could. And that would start with letting the prisoners know that they are, in fact, in a prison.

I actually don't think any of this is what's going on. In fact, I doubt it even occurred to Jeph that a force that decided to dictate what life will be like for people 70 generations from now, and forced people to live that way might be morally objectionable. But I'd argue that any force that was intervening on this Earth to limit the options of the people on the surface (including Alice) would represent evil, if there is another option as powerful as the blink.

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