Testing Chat V: The Final Mysterious Island: Miami Beach

[Civil War Man]

it was really great when one of 'em tried to get fyad in on it and they spent the rest of thread owning him though.

So I know nothing of Internet politics. What is "fyad" and why would they care?

Testing was basically SDN's version of FYAD. It stands for Fuck You And Die.

[Oxymoron]

Spectrum Studios had been a movie production house before the war and had seen no reason to stop when the world ended.

Sentences like that are among the reasons why I read Post-Apocalyptic fiction.

[adr]

Asynchronous (overlapped) read and write operations are not supported by anonymous pipes.

ugh windows i love you but sometimes you make my life hard

[Jung]

IB you mind if I respond to something you posted on your tumblr?

(tw: child abuse)
Suppose an evil king decides to do a twisted moral experiment on you. He tells you to kick a small child really hard, right in the face. If you do, he will end the experiment with no further damage. If you refuse, he will kick the child himself, and then execute that child plus a hundred innocent people.

The best solution is to somehow overthrow the king or escape the experiment. Assuming you can’t, what do you do?

There are certain moral philosophers who would tell you to refuse. Sure, the child would get hurt and lots of innocent people would die, but it wouldn’t, technically, be your fault. But if you kicked the child, well, that would be your fault, and then you’d have to feel bad about it.

But this excessive concern about whether something is your fault or not is a form of selfishness. If you sided with those philosophers, it wouldn’t be out of a concern for the child’s welfare - the child’s getting kicked anyway, not to mention executed - it would be out of concern with whether you might feel bad about it later. The desire involved is the desire to avoid guilt, not the desire to help others.

We tend to identify guilt as a sign that we’ve done something morally wrong, and often it is. But guilt is a faulty signal; the course of action which minimizes our guilt is not always the course of action that is morally right. A desire to minimize guilt is no more noble than any other desire to make one’s self feel good at the expense of others, and so a morality that follows the principle of according value to other people must worry about more than just feeling guilty.

I think where the refusal comes in is that this mindset can ultimately lead to the Nuremberg defense. "Yes, I committed evil at the commands of my superiors, but if I refused myself/others would have been hurt and the evil would have happened anyway - I couldn't fight the system and win."

But of course systems only work if people either agree with them or act like this. If everybody refused to obey evil commands the evil system wouldn't work.

The scenario is one of those contrived ones that strips away the complexity and ambiguity of real life and thereby clarifies a moral choice matrix but also falsifies it. A more realistic scenario would be something like being in the police or military of an oppressive state and being given evil orders. You could think "if I don't obey these orders, they will just punish me and replace me with somebody who will. If I do what I have to to keep my position, maybe I can blunt the worst abuses and/or eventually gain enough influence to actually change things. Besides, the same evil will happen either way, but the other way I and maybe my family will suffer too, which is worse." Maybe that's true, but then maybe the most effective way to fight the system would be to obey your conscience, which would if nothing else at least deprive the evil cause of one pair of hands, which is probably more than you can say with certainty for obeying the order.

The scenario assumes the evil king won't have any problems finding other people to kick the child, but if everybody obeyed their conscience maybe he would. And remember, even if defiance isn't futile, it's probably in his interests to make you believe it is.

TL:DR: the thing is basically an endorsement of utilitarian hard man morality, which looks a lot more dubious when you take it out of scenarios carefully constructed to justify it and think of it in the context of messy reality.

[adr]

Another problem with those scenarios are the assumptions are rarely so clear in the real world: how do you know the king is sincere in his threats?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYxEIyNA_mk
FULL METAL JACKET - THE VIRGIN MARY SCENE

[Infinity Biscuit]

The crux of it isn't the issue of utilitarianism vs deontological ethics or anything like that.

The main thing I was trying to show with that reblog is my distaste for the heavy focus on guilt in morality.

At its core you have so many examples of people whose professed morality is based, when broken down, on avoiding guilt, rather than doing good. It just heavily reminded me of the rape argument I got into on SB where a good 3/4 of the thread or more could not grasp the idea of dealing with the possibility of rape from the standpoint of "how do we ensure people aren't hurt or are benefiting from this" rather than "how can we ensure I'm never inarguably guilty of raping someone". It's a deeply self-centered and self-absorbed basis but it's seen everywhere and it worries me.

[Oxymoron]

this is ridiculous

[Crazedwraith]

well the next time i have a spare £7000 I'll keep that collection in mind...

[Jung]

The crux of it isn't the issue of utilitarianism vs deontological ethics or anything like that.

The main thing I was trying to show with that reblog is my distaste for the heavy focus on guilt in morality.

At its core you have so many examples of people whose professed morality is based, when broken down, on avoiding guilt, rather than doing good.

Is that really so bad?

So much of human evil is justified by the belief that it's really doing good in some roundabout way. Against that background, a philosophy that amounts to "I do not pretend to know what is good for the world, but I will not personally do things I think are bad" seems to have something to recommend it.

[Oxymoron]

well the next time i have a spare £7000 I'll keep that collection in mind...

You can actually buy each individual sets for 50% the overall cost

[Infinity Biscuit]

So much of human evil is justified by the belief that it's really doing good in some roundabout way. Against that background, a philosophy that amounts to "I do not pretend to know what is good for the world, but I will not personally do things I think are bad" seems to have something to recommend it.

Except the way it often manifests is how to avoid being on the hook for bad things rather than ensuring you aren't (partially or fully, directly or indirectly) responsible for bad things, let alone ensuring bad things don't happen.

[F.J. Prefect, Esq]

well the next time i have a spare £7000 I'll keep that collection in mind...

You can actually buy each individual sets for 50% the overall cost

Can you? Just the Rhinos would cost a thousand pounds if you bought them individually

[Oxymoron]

Well, I'm going by the quote of someone else on another board :

This is the moment I realize that somebody will actually buy this...
The Entire Ultramarines Chapter in 1 purchase [<= link to the offer above]

Your cost: Only TWELVE THOUSAND DOLLARS to get 1200 models. That's about $100 per model, because they TOTALLY cost that much if you just buy them all seperately. I'm pretty sure you could put all of this together by buying out an entire game store, and come away at about $5000. But, because this is all conveniently in one purchase for you, they're allowed to bump up the price to retard levels.

(Also, it actually gives a list of each kit on this page, so you actually could make this EXACT same thing yourself, and come out paying a fuckload less).

[F.J. Prefect, Esq]

Uh

12000 divided by 1200

Is not 100

[Oxymoron]

My answer :

Huh, actually, I'm not a math genius, but I think it's more around $10 per figure, but don't quote me on this...

[F.J. Prefect, Esq]

Like it comes to about 5 pounds per model

That's somewhat inflated for the boxes of normal infantry, but the vehicles and characters and the special infantry normally cost 20, 40, 45 pounds each

[Oxymoron]

Yeah, thinking about it, I also doubt you could get the listed kit for less than what they're charging for the pack. Unless you spent years hunting for bargains on the used market.

[Oxymoron]

But man, I'm imagining that shit getting shipped to you... It must take a whole palette by itself. The shipping costs alone must be cringe-worthy.

[Oxymoron]

There's a thing that bugs me with the plot of the first novel(s) of The Horus Heresy series...

So, the Imperium of Man, at that point, does not believe in the supernatural or in demons, which is why they are left unprepared to the corruption of chaos.

However, by that point, Humanity had been using Warp-drives for at least ten thousand years,or even twenty thousands, I'm not exactly certain on that. You think that they would KNOW by now the kind of bad shit that lies in the Warp, and what happen when a ship's Gellar Field goes down.

And even then, the reason why the Emperor exist in the first place is to protect Mankind from the perils of Chaos.

So what ? Am I missing an important plot point here or is the whole premise resting on a plot hole as big as the Eye of Terror ?

[Bakustra]

There's a thing that bugs me with the plot of the first novel(s) of The Horus Heresy series...

So, the Imperium of Man, at that point, does not believe in the supernatural or in demons, which is why they are left unprepared to the corruption of chaos.

However, by that point, Humanity had been using Warp-drives for at least ten thousand years,or even twenty thousands, I'm not exactly certain on that. You think that they would KNOW by now the kind of bad shit that lies in the Warp, and what happen when a ship's Gellar Field goes down.

And even then, the reason why the Emperor exist in the first place is to protect Mankind from the perils of Chaos.

So what ? Am I missing an important plot point here or is the whole premise resting on a plot hole as big as the Eye of Terror ?

In universe, the idea is that two things- the formation of Slaanesh and the emergence of the Eye of Terror- caused the loss of that knowledge, and may well have kicked up general Warp activity, leading to the pre-Fall galaxy being much more mundane and so the Warp just being seen as naturally dangerous.

The basic problem here is that they want to set up obvious differentials between the original Imperium and the M41 Imperium, so the early Imperium is ignorant and unenlightened and the Emperor wants to keep it that way, but this ignorance is just like Enlightenment values!! This sort of works against the satirical aspects of the Imperium, but that's the problem with filling in backstory beyond a certain point- thematic contrasts work better when they're not thrown into relief.

Of course, we could always presume that the versions outlined in the HH novels are basically counter-historical works and not necessarily the "truth", but I'm not sure how much that helps enjoyment and it seems rather too clever for anyone bar Abnett to try.

[Infinity Biscuit]

Another reason I dislike the basing of morality upon guilt is that it seems to be the primary basis of opposition against working to confront one's own privilege. Even people who realise that they benefit massively unfairly for being descended from European conquerers often balk at the idea that this means anything to them in particular; after all, you're not guilty of doing anything bad to atone for, right? And the idea is often mocked as "white guilt", as are similar recognitions of privilege.

[Bakustra]

Another reason I dislike the basing of morality upon guilt is that it seems to be the primary basis of opposition against working to confront one's own privilege. Even people who realise that they benefit massively unfairly for being descended from European conquerers often balk at the idea that this means anything to them in particular; after all, you're not guilty of doing anything bad to atone for, right? And the idea is often mocked as "white guilt", as are similar recognitions of privilege.

Honestly, it seems almost solipsistic to base morality around the internal self rather than the external universe. I mean, the vast majority of ethical systems are built on recognition of something outside the self to serve as a basis, and most of the leftovers are built around denial that there is a meaningful basis. So concerning yourself with guilt is at odds with the majority of moral thought, and not psychologically beneficial.

Of course, a lot of this seems to be rooted in a smallness of the mind- that is, we can't fix these problems because there's not enough to go around, it's a dog-eat-dog world out there, why are we dragging people down etc. What's saddening is that this smallness of mind seems to have become fixed in a lot of people's imaginations- you can see it in the tripartite dialogue surrounding social justice in all corners, for one thing. But of course I've found myself adopting more mystical attitudes, so I may well be developing a sort of castigation complex.

[Galvanized]

There's a thing that bugs me with the plot of the first novel(s) of The Horus Heresy series...

So, the Imperium of Man, at that point, does not believe in the supernatural or in demons, which is why they are left unprepared to the corruption of chaos.

However, by that point, Humanity had been using Warp-drives for at least ten thousand years,or even twenty thousands, I'm not exactly certain on that. You think that they would KNOW by now the kind of bad shit that lies in the Warp, and what happen when a ship's Gellar Field goes down.

And even then, the reason why the Emperor exist in the first place is to protect Mankind from the perils of Chaos.

So what ? Am I missing an important plot point here or is the whole premise resting on a plot hole as big as the Eye of Terror ?

I always figured it was more like any ship in traveling in the Warp that had it's Geller Field would just vanish and eventually turn up as a crewless space hulk somewhere. It's not like if the Navy found a ship floating on the ocean today with no crew their first thought would be Demon attacks. They'd go with something way more mundane like a crewman went crazy, killed everyone, then threw himself overboard.

And there are human civilizations that the Great Crusade encounters which worship demons and practice magic, the books Descent of Angels and Legion both revolve around that. And inside the Imperium the Emperor is also deliberately suppressing information about the warp from everyone. He doesn't even tell the Primachs why they shouldn't be messing with Psykery, just that if they do the Space Wolves will show up and kill the whole Legion.

[Jung]

I kind of like the idea that the Emperor was initially sincere with his super-atheist routine and only later found out what kind of universe he was actually living in and didn't react well to the knowledge.

Which I'm pretty sure only makes sense if you disregard a lot of his supposed backstory but The Last Church seems a lot more thematically coherent if you assume Revelation is actually as sophomoric and devoid of self-awareness as he appears, and I can't really square that with 40K year old super-knowledgeable god-being.

[evilsoup]

novel(s) of The Horus Heresy series

There's your problem
those books are a terrible idea even in theory, you'd have to be much better than even the best WH40K writers to make it work
also they retconned my favourite minor character