Attacking Earth

kzt wrote:David classes the MA with the Nazis or commies. People who are so caught up in their intellectual craziness that fail to notice how their little golden path to the future has turned into a highway paved with dead bodies.

I think the Nazis are an especially apt comparison for the MAlign as regards the fruits of their genetic programs.
Remember, Mengele? And the all kinds of terrible medical research and experimentation performed on inmates at concentration camps?

That's the closest situation I can think of that we have in real life history to the MAlign's genetic research programs.

Terrible things were done in horrifically unethical ways ... there's absolutely no question about that ... but the information, the knowledge resulting from it all - you reject the means used to obtain them, but do you also refuse to acknowledge the results? Do you refuse to try to make some good out of the terrible things that happened?

Kytheros wrote:

kzt wrote:David classes the MA with the Nazis or commies. People who are so caught up in their intellectual craziness that fail to notice how their little golden path to the future has turned into a highway paved with dead bodies.

I think the Nazis are an especially apt comparison for the MAlign as regards the fruits of their genetic programs.
Remember, Mengele? And the all kinds of terrible medical research and experimentation performed on inmates at concentration camps?

That's the closest situation I can think of that we have in real life history to the MAlign's genetic research programs.

Terrible things were done in horrifically unethical ways ... there's absolutely no question about that ... but the information, the knowledge resulting from it all - you reject the means used to obtain them, but do you also refuse to acknowledge the results? Do you refuse to try to make some good out of the terrible things that happened?

The Nazis absolutely are. Absolutely! As I've acknowledged in a couple of my posts. Good connection.

And no, the research should NOT be discarded, IMO. Why should all of those deaths be in vain? Yet, that kind of heinous crime can not be allowed to continue. The ends does not always justify the means.

The E wrote:The E wrote:And what's with all this fear of the nonhuman? It's a large galaxy out there, there's enough room for everyone.

cthia wrote:That is a rather naive, irresponsible and misguided stance. First off, the disconnect is what is pinned up on the Billboard itself. Call a spade a spade unless it isn't. And, ushering in a new age of humanity ISN'T what the MA are doing. They are ushering in a new age of nonhuman - "We are ushering in a new age of biological species!"

And before anyone dumbfounds me and asks "What is wrong with ushering in a new age of biological species?" ...

Because we are not Gods! Creating life forms is a God's purview. Since many of you don't believe in the concept of a God, then why insist on acting like one? Unless you think that life was initially created by mindless arrogant humans in the backwoods of the galaxy???

It is arrogant to think you can safely (intrinsically safe) create a new species. It is unrealistic that that species may never come into opposition to humankind.

It is insane to have one day created your own demise.

Beowulf recognizes the god-complex. A defect running rampant in the Detweiler line at the genetic level.

Lord Skimper wrote:Yes, but not just Earth. The GA weapons mean you can attack the 30 top worlds, and take them. After that the rest of the League will fall into place. Roll in hit the heaviest of ship military concentrations. Within a year the war will be over and the rest of the League will sue for peace and surrender. Given numbers 6 for the Andermani, 6+3 for Manticore and Grayson plus Mesa and Henkes trail, and 15 one of which is Beowulf, maybe 1 is Roscoe's fleet, that can be done with a Dispatch boat, for the Peeps. The rest of the League will just fall apart. 50 million max will die likely a lot less than that. 3 million and the trillions of the League and all of the GA will be safest. The MAlignment will be hunted by the forces in the dark. Silesia and the Cluster will be protected and manned by locals with the secondary SD and dreadnought fleets, older Battlecruisers and the like. Manticore home is protected by Honor and the system pods. A pair of SD a pair of older BC and a couple hundred MK23 pods can take over the gate defense, could give the SD a pair of Keyhole II each.

All forces then converge on their targets and capture them. Most will surrender after a brief demonstration. The few pigheaded will have their ships removed from their fleets then surrender. One simultaneous strike to capture a million Admirals.

Crushing the league into submission means that the GA would be looking over its shoulder for a long, long time.

Eventually the technological imbalance will sort itself out, at which point having 500 or 1,000 heavily industrialized systems with the means to build massive fleets and pissed at you would be a very bad situation.

cthia wrote:

Kytheros wrote:I think the Nazis are an especially apt comparison for the MAlign as regards the fruits of their genetic programs.
Remember, Mengele? And the all kinds of terrible medical research and experimentation performed on inmates at concentration camps?

That's the closest situation I can think of that we have in real life history to the MAlign's genetic research programs.

Terrible things were done in horrifically unethical ways ... there's absolutely no question about that ... but the information, the knowledge resulting from it all - you reject the means used to obtain them, but do you also refuse to acknowledge the results? Do you refuse to try to make some good out of the terrible things that happened?

The Nazis absolutely are. Absolutely! As I've acknowledged in a couple of my posts. Good connection.

And no, the research should NOT be discarded, IMO. Why should all of those deaths be in vain? Yet, that kind of heinous crime can not be allowed to continue. The ends does not always justify the means.

Just imagine how lord nelson would cope if he had to go up against Hitler instead of Napoleon.

darrell wrote:
Just imagine how lord nelson would cope if he had to go up against Hitler instead of Napoleon.

The JU-88s would have been a real problem...

cthia wrote:...The Mfecane Worlds have many problems of their own, even inside of Beowulf's moral fence. ...

The point about the Mfecane worlds is that they do not, and never have had, any concern about imposing their ideas on the rest of humanity. The founders were racist nutjobs, but through initial poverty and philosophical intent they simply let "natural selection" transform their colonists to suit the planets.

Natural selection is cruel, inhumane, and uncaring. It is NOT however intrinsically evil. The founders of the Mfecane worlds could arguable be considered "evil" but I think they were just fanatic racial purists.


RFC has provided a couple of examples of near-transhuman results -- The Harringtons, The Wintons, The Mfecanes, The cyborg world where implants and prosthetics are a fashion statement, etc -- and all done through free-will and/or natural selection, without any agenda to export "improved human" control of "normal" society.

What makes the MAlign "evil" is the same thing that makes radical/extremist religious nuts feel they must "save" the rest of humanity by the sword -- "infidels must die," etc. That it also makes them a "cult" is mere semantics.

As a random thought: Part of the MAlign's need to "show up Beowulf" quite possible stems from the fact that they haven't really made "Ubermensch" when compared to places like the Mfecane worlds; they have to "borrow" Mfecane traits because they can't reproduce them artificially (through bio-engineering.) All around them, natural selection is producing individuals and groups that are in some way superior to the MAlign's carefully designed 'Ubermensch.'

Weird Harold wrote:What makes the MAlign "evil" is the same thing that makes radical/extremist religious nuts feel they must "save" the rest of humanity by the sword -- "infidels must die," etc. That it also makes them a "cult" is mere semantics.

Those who know what's best for us
Must rise and save us from ourselves - Rush, Witch Hunt, Moving Pictures

kzt wrote:

darrell wrote:
Just imagine how lord nelson would cope if he had to go up against Hitler instead of Napoleon.

The JU-88s would have been a real problem...

Yea, would have run in fear, the plane was so ugly.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:...The Mfecane Worlds have many problems of their own, even inside of Beowulf's moral fence. ...

The point about the Mfecane worlds is that they do not, and never have had, any concern about imposing their ideas on the rest of humanity. The founders were racist nutjobs, but through initial poverty and philosophical intent they simply let "natural selection" transform their colonists to suit the planets.

Erm... they also genetically engineered their colonists. And I suspect that Web (no geneticist or biologist) was (probably unintentionally) underplaying the degree of genetic manipulation they did. There just wasn't enough time to get any significant results from just natural selection (as per the Grayson heavy metal tolerance... which Alison Harrington discovered was not natural at all).