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Return of the 'Original' Terrans

Mak Taru said:
I never said that they are not "evil". By human standards they may very well be. But is bargaining with "evil" never an option?
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You can bargain with evil when you have some leverage.

We have literally no leverage.

They could kill us all in a variety of different ways.
They could enslave all of us who don't die resisting.
They could easily destroy our planet.
We have nothing they want which they can not take by force relatively easily.
We also have NO WAY WHAT SO EVER to verify ANYTHING they say is true or false, that they could not alter or doctor.

It's like a third grader trying to bargain with a serial killer.
It's effectiveness is 100% in the hands of the serial killer, we (the child) has no bearing on how it turns out other than being a minor nuisance and hopefully persuasive communication.

The only threats we could make would be to fill the ocean with contained bombs that contain every biological and chemical weapon we can think of and every aquatic disease. Even then their tech level is high enough we can't be sure they can't stop them or clean the oceans up anyway, or prevent it in the first place.

You can't bargain with no leverage, it doesn't work. You can only beg and you seem to have some weird need to hear about all of humanity begging and going on and on about how there is no good option. It's almost fetishistic.
 
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daniel_gudman said:
10,000 years ago human hunter-gatherers didn't have any of those things, either.
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10,000 years ago, they were mostly as you said hunter-gatherers and nomadic. There wasn't any society. They were mostly close families one or two, that wanders around, rarely settle down. And when they do, it isn't in any way a society. Too few in numbers.

When they do start to settle down and aggregate in large numbers, you'll start getting carpenters, stonemasons, and so on. Just because I gave modern concepts that the old ones doesn't apply to the example.
You'll have to wait for a few more millennia around the 6th Millenium BC before even the first city was built and the framework of a society started.
 
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Kalzky said:
Hunter-gatherer tribes are definitely a form of society.
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When in large numbers, you can start calling them tribes and are indeed a form of society. But those were rare, most of them as I said was just close-knit families.

Anyway, I derailed from the main point I was trying to get through. The mice wouldn't have any police or form a complex society just because they are sapient. Sapient doesn't equal society necessarily.

I'm not trying to determine here when humans started forming a society or not. This is a bit of a strawman argument.
 
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Terran Imperium said:
When in large numbers, you can start calling them tribes and are indeed a form of society. But those were rare, most of them as I said was just close-knit families.

Anyway, I derailed from the main point I was trying to get through. The mice wouldn't have any police or form a complex society just because they are sapient. Sapient doesn't equal society necessarily.

I'm not trying to determine here when humans started forming a society or not. This is a bit of a strawman argument.
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Sapient and sentience are both such broad terms to be actually meaningless.

One means "has wisdom"
Wisdom means "Has experience"

So the plants that stop curling their leaves after being dropped several times are sapient technically. (Changing behavior off of experience is technically what wisdom IS)


The other means "able to perceive it's environment"
So in theory if you lost all of your senses including touch you would cease to sentient.

People try to use these to mean things like ration or forming complex systems of thought.
They don't.

They then use these meaningless terms and get upset and make arguments based on what they think the terms mean.

Sapient means has wisdom, rodents are capable of learning and thus are sapient.
 
Okay, since no one else seems to be responding, I might as well reveal the twist.

Their offer is genuine, but the only reason they are making it instead of just wiping us out is because we're related to them. Their culture is xenophobic, and they only view lifeforms that originate from their own planet as being worthy of existence, but they have committed genocide on hundreds of sapient alien species, and they intend to keep this up. They're currently involved in a war with a coalition of less powerful races that have allied to resist them, and Earth is near the front lines of the conflict. That's why they want to get this relocation done quickly.

This group of races knows that their enemies place a lot of importance on their ancestral homeworld, so if they were to discover it they would probably burn it themselves, just to spite the arthropods. It may be possible to convince them otherwise, but it's a major risk. They'd likely see humans as the primitive, backward cousins of the barbarians that are threatening to wipe them out, so allying with them might be difficult.

Even though the solar system might fall to the alliance in the next decade or so, the arthropods are winning the war overall, and the most generous estimates show that the alliance will only be able to hold out for around a century before being completed defeated, unless they can find some way to turn the tide.
 
Mak Taru said:
Okay, since no one else seems to be responding, I might as well reveal the twist.

Their offer is genuine, but the only reason they are making it instead of just wiping us out is because we're related to them. Their culture is xenophobic, and they only view lifeforms that originate from their own planet as being worthy of existence, but they have committed genocide on hundreds of sapient alien species, and they intend to keep this up. They're currently involved in a war with a coalition of less powerful races that have allied to resist them, and Earth is near the front lines of the conflict. That's why they want to get this relocation done quickly.

This group of races knows that their enemies place a lot of importance on their ancestral homeworld, so if they were to discover it they would probably burn it themselves, just to spite the arthropods. It may be possible to convince them otherwise, but it's a major risk. They'd likely see humans as the primitive, backward cousins of the barbarians that are threatening to wipe them out, so allying with them might be difficult.

Even though the solar system might fall to the alliance in the next decade or so, the arthropods are winning the war overall, and the most generous estimates show that the alliance will only be able to hold out for around a century before being completed defeated, unless they can find some way to turn the tide.
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Why wouldn't the arthropods have told us that there was another empire out there that would destroy us if it could?

And...how come you've been telling us that the arthropods are less warlike than humans, if they are actually a genocidal warmonger race that's in the process of wiping out all other sophonts for the evulz?

This isn't a twist. This is just you changing your story.
 
Huh. So basically, right now the majority party of the Arthropod Empire argues that only Earth life has value.

Given the typical trajectory of fascist/xenophobic movements, there is no doubt an extremist wing that argues that only the 'purest' Earth life has value, namely Earth life that is in some way closely related to them. That is to say, mammals and birds and maybe even reptiles are just biological garbage. Or that the Earth should be reseeded with life that existed before the Permian Extinction and that life postdating that event is an abomination.

It is reasonable to assume that some day in the millions of years of future time to come, the radicals will take power in the Arthropod Empire. They may not even really care about wiping out post-Triassic Earth life. It may just be an internal political power play, a performative display of superior ideological purity and commitment to biological 'purity.' Such displays would have great power, in a species that you tell us has been obsessed with 'purity' for tens if not hundreds of thousands of millennia.

But it would be so very, very easy for a radical faction, even one that held little power in Arthropod space, to exterminate us forever purely as a gesture of how much their species 'should' hate and strive to purge all life that is not themselves.

And so, sooner or later, that will happen.

We were right. Better to die on our feet than to die on our knees.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Huh. So basically, right now the majority party of the Arthropod Empire argues that only Earth life has value.

Given the typical trajectory of fascist/xenophobic movements, there is no doubt an extremist wing that argues that only the 'purest' Earth life has value, namely Earth life that is in some way closely related to them. That is to say, mammals and birds and maybe even reptiles are just biological garbage. Or that the Earth should be reseeded with life that existed before the Permian Extinction and that life postdating that event is an abomination.

It is reasonable to assume that some day in the millions of years of future time to come, the radicals will take power in the Arthropod Empire. They may not even really care about wiping out post-Triassic Earth life. It may just be an internal political power play, a performative display of superior ideological purity and commitment to biological 'purity.' Such displays would have great power, in a species that you tell us has been obsessed with 'purity' for tens if not hundreds of thousands of millennia.

But it would be so very, very easy for a radical faction, even one that held little power in Arthropod space, to exterminate us forever purely as a gesture of how much their species 'should' hate and strive to purge all life that is not themselves.

And so, sooner or later, that will happen.

We were right. Better to die on our feet than to die on our knees.
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Also, if we resist then there's at least a small chance that the alliance will see and admire our defiance in the face of their hated enemy and thus be inclined to not kill us.

If the arthropods really care about earth that much, maybe it can even be used as a bargaining chip to discourage their ongoing rampage.

Not that it matters. The Cambrian slugs will resolve this situation in a humane and equitable fashion for all parties.
 
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Rule 3: Be Civil
Yeah, I called it. If you actually had any skill in writing you'd be writing this as a short story rather than a worldbuilding thread.
 
Leila Hann said:
Why wouldn't the arthropods have told us that there was another empire out there that would destroy us if it could?
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They are afraid we would try to ally with them.

And...how come you've been telling us that the arthropods are less warlike than humans, if they are actually a genocidal warmonger race that's in the process of wiping out all other sophonts for the evulz?
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I never said that. I said they don't war against their own kind as often as humans.
 
MrCogmor said:
That is ridiculous. How would we ally with them? We don't have FTL and our only source of information on them is the crabs.
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They are very, very paranoid.

To elaborate, they've studied human culture and know that we wouldn't trust them if they told us how they treat alien species. They don't want to try to explain why an alliance of multiple alien races is trying to wipe them out. They figure there is a high chance of us figuring out the truth and siding with the alliance over them. They want to keep it simple - relocate the natives, fortify the planet, get it done quickly.
 
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MrCogmor said:
How? Again the crabs are the only source of information Earth has on interstellar politics and even if Earth did want side with the alliance it doesn't have the ability.
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Just to note that having FTL technology doesn't ensure competent politicians. They may very well be painting their own pre-conceived notions onto the human race.
 
Mak Taru said:
I never said that. I said they don't war against their own kind as often as humans.
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Just wait until there is no other kind for them to kill.

Then they will start warring against "their own kind." Or retroactively defining "their own kind" more narrowly.

"Purifying the race" is an inherently sick desire that can only end in one sick place.

Mak Taru said:
They are very, very paranoid.

To elaborate, they've studied human culture and know that we wouldn't trust them if they told us how they treat alien species. They don't want to try to explain why an alliance of multiple alien races is trying to wipe them out. They figure there is a high chance of us figuring out the truth and siding with the alliance over them. They want to keep it simple - relocate the natives, fortify the planet, get it done quickly.
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So basically, they're terrible, and your fumbling attempts on the first page to conceal or excuse the terribleness ("it's their planet") were easily seen through and their terribleness deduced from the fact of what they wanted us to do.

Well, at least you're not acting as if this is something 'everyone' would do if they had the chance.
 
So, after the reality-warping hard light worldship forces the arthropods to withdraw and creates an impassable hyperspace barrier to halt their expansion until such a time as they've abandoned their genocidal ambitions, the Cambrian Slugs adress humanity.

Planets like Earth are a rare commodity in their ability to create technological species after technological species every 200 million years or so. Sadly, many of these newborn species are wiped out by either internal or external factors before they can expand offworld. The slugs tell us that we've kinda wrecked the biosphere worse than we can survive in at this point, and there's nothing to do but wait for the next couple hundred million years to produce a new biosphere with a new people.

The slugs - firstborn of this rare and sacred cradle of intelligent life - are sworn not to interfere in the younger races' development. However, since the arthropod situation threatened to cause much more severe and longlasting damage than ever before, they were forced to intervene. And, since now they've already intervened, they decide to offer us a choice.

We can stay on earth and probably die a slow, lingering death of environmental collapse. There's a chance we might be able to survive (either by tining things around or by getting off planet) but its a very very slim chance. Alternatively, they offer to transplant us onto a terraformed world and then leave us to rebuild our society as we see fit as a one time offer (and they won't help us again after this). If we accept this offer, we can also never visit earth again; it'll be someone else's turn to evolve. And, this is an all or nothing offer; if the majority of humanity chooses to accept it, dissenters will be forcibly relocated with them.

What do you choose?
 
Unless we can find another solar system that has a planet with a heart on its tummy, I'm pretty sure this one was meant for us to make a go of it in. I say we try to beat the odds.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Just wait until there is no other kind for them to kill.

Then they will start warring against "their own kind." Or retroactively defining "their own kind" more narrowly.

"Purifying the race" is an inherently sick desire that can only end in one sick place.
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Quite possible.

So basically, they're terrible, and your fumbling attempts on the first page to conceal or excuse the terribleness ("it's their planet") were easily seen through and their terribleness deduced from the fact of what they wanted us to do.

Well, at least you're not acting as if this is something 'everyone' would do if they had the chance.
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I never said any given option was the moral thing to do.

Some scenarios just have you choosing between bad and worse options.

There is only one real possibility of a 'good ending' here, but it's an extreme long shot.
 
Mak Taru said:
Okay, since no one else seems to be responding, I might as well reveal the twist.

Their offer is genuine, but the only reason they are making it instead of just wiping us out is because we're related to them. Their culture is xenophobic, and they only view lifeforms that originate from their own planet as being worthy of existence, but they have committed genocide on hundreds of sapient alien species, and they intend to keep this up. They're currently involved in a war with a coalition of less powerful races that have allied to resist them, and Earth is near the front lines of the conflict. That's why they want to get this relocation done quickly.

This group of races knows that their enemies place a lot of importance on their ancestral homeworld, so if they were to discover it they would probably burn it themselves, just to spite the arthropods. It may be possible to convince them otherwise, but it's a major risk. They'd likely see humans as the primitive, backward cousins of the barbarians that are threatening to wipe them out, so allying with them might be difficult.

Even though the solar system might fall to the alliance in the next decade or so, the arthropods are winning the war overall, and the most generous estimates show that the alliance will only be able to hold out for around a century before being completed defeated, unless they can find some way to turn the tide.
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Huh. Yeah, OK, fuck them. They're genocidal dicks and we should avoid them as much as we can.
 
What we know about the Anthropods.

1) An alliance of post scaricity races are losing lives to fight them.(Hated through out the universe)
2) They are trying to kick us off planet because they evolved on it. (Greedy)
3) The immediately go to force and threats to get what they want from others (Bullies)

So best results is to keep the nukes ready to go and hope we can get a message to the alliance somehow.
 
OverlordVan said:
Not a twist, just the writing the plot. The other Earthlings are bigger evil douchebags than us.

Why should we trust them?
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This. If a bunch of humans showed up and acted like this and had the same overwhelming military advantages, it would be an act of utter foolishness to trust them in any way. We'd have no reason at all to assume they are better than us, especially since they are so clearly xenophobic on top of everything else.

Everything about their behavior screams that they can't be trusted and will betray any deal they make the moment it's convenient or amusing for them.
 
So if like the whole galaxy is at war and we're near the front lines howcome the human institution of "Astronomy" didn't already know about that. Seems like something you might notice with a big telescope.
 
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