Mal-3
Fun Tyrant
You are really not helping your argument here, m'dude.
What is your wackyist alternate history idea?
- Thread starter Kuomintang
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- Discussion Supernatural
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- alternate history
I...didn't write the book? What argument am i making?
the atom
Anarcho-Kemalist Thought Leader
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How does ethical delineation between people and animals function when you introduce a species that's substantially closer to us than anything else in the animal kingdom, but still possessing significantly more a primitive cognition than us?
You ever read any Harry Turtledove? That's literally the underlying concept of the book. You take anyone of his alt-history novels and there's a one sentence elevator pitch that sums up the whole thing.
EX, The two Georges. What if Britain had competent leadership in the 1770's and the US war of independence was ended with negotiations and what's now the US is still British territory, and all other revolutions failed horribly. I've actually read this one. MLK is the Governor-General of the North American Union, Richard Nixon is a sleazy (but nationally known for reasons) used car salesman, JFK is the editor of the Sons of Liberty (a modern day independence movement that has a very strong Irish-American membership, and is super racist) movements magazine Common sense.
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Yes, but mostly Worldwar and Timeline-191, neither of which had plot points that skeeved me out as much as the current topic.
I mean at one point we did share the planet with other Homos who had less advanced cognition than us.
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Do you distinguish between that and the premise of "what if homo erectus was still around" at all, though?
We're talking about a group, a different species, that did exist in the real world. One cannot just take a thing that actually happened and say "we can never speak about the idea of this co-existing in the same world with us, it's morally problematic by nature."
It must be pointed out that gorillas and chimpanzees can be taught limited communication using sign language. It is reasonable to suppose that homo erectus could too, if they were still around. And, again, we cannot put ourselves in a position where the bare act of imagining "what if this thing that really existed in real life were still around" is inherently immoral.
I think this is a more credible and solid criticism of A Different Flesh, in that Turtledove is basically just writing the Native Americans out of history and that's unnerving given just how much effort real Europeans put into literally erasing them from the real world.
The absence of the Native Americans is more of an issue than the presence of the 'sims.'
Can they? I didn't remember that from my read of the book, though it was twenty years ago.
Now THAT is a good representation of the problem.
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- The Midlands.
Yes. The part I'm uncomfortable with is the claim that homo erectus being "less evolved" means it's morally acceptable to treat them as chattel, which @the atom articulated much better than I did. Especially if we're supposed to take them oh-so-conveniently being just intelligent enough to communicate and follow instructions but not capable of abstract thought at face value in the story.
Disclaimer: I might be a bit more sensitive than usual about this sort of thing because I was introduced to the "Human Biodiversity" movement the other day.
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Okay, I definitely understand that.
My recollection of the story is that by the time the timeline comes up to the 1990s-era present, people are at least engaging with the question of whether it's okay to treat homo erectus as chattel the way people casually did in earlier eras. The trouble is, well... you end up in this argument between the people who correctly point out that it's horribly unethical to, say, infect homo erectus species members with AIDS in an attempt to figure out better treatments for using on humans, and the people who correctly point out that human society contains all kinds of things that homo erectus is not well equipped to engage with on equal terms to the point where it's not clear what stable role can exist for them in that society where they are treated as full equal participants.
It's uncomfortable in very large part because racists so much enjoy lying and pretending that this problem exists with real world human racial minorities, and I'm not denying that or saying it's irrelevant. But it does put us in an awkward
Well, it's hard to say whether homo erectus in the story is completely, qualitatively incapable of abstract thought; what would that even mean?
The 'communicate and follow instructions' bit, though, is derived fairly directly from real world primates. Gorillas and chimpanzees, as I've mentioned, can use some elements of sign language to communicate with humans, and it is reasonable to suppose that homo erectus, even if not capable of fully vocalized human speech, would have a greater capacity in this regard, while probably not equaling or even approaching that of the average human.
Great Moon Hoax - Wikipedia
A way to keep the A Different Flesh version of the Americas, and their native inhabitants: rather than crossing over the Bering strait, the proto-Amerindians head south, to what is now East and Southeast Asia. Fast forward more than a few millennia, and the Himalayan chain is now home to peoples descended from the ancestors of our Andean peoples, that were able to halt Indo-European and Proto-Sino-Tibetan expansion into the region while, in the the eastern portion of the Eurasian steppe, Proto-Mongolic and Proto-Turkic horse lords alike could do nothing against the sheer might of those peoples that would've become the Comanche and Lakota, in another timeline.
It's more than a bit convergent and handwave-y, and there'll be some losers compared to OTL, but maybe this might result in a more multipolar Asia, one in which the Han Chinese are just one of many peoples, and their leaders just local kings dealing with other local kings, rather than the near hegemons of East Asia, with the cultural influence of Indian civilization over Southeast Asia being more contained, too. In fact, having several (more) smaller states and polities and no true hegemon with imperial pretensions might lead Asia towards the same path of discovery and exploration for the sake of resource gathering that Europe went through, so that the empty American continent will be settled from both ends.
It's more than a bit convergent and handwave-y, and there'll be some losers compared to OTL, but maybe this might result in a more multipolar Asia, one in which the Han Chinese are just one of many peoples, and their leaders just local kings dealing with other local kings, rather than the near hegemons of East Asia, with the cultural influence of Indian civilization over Southeast Asia being more contained, too. In fact, having several (more) smaller states and polities and no true hegemon with imperial pretensions might lead Asia towards the same path of discovery and exploration for the sake of resource gathering that Europe went through, so that the empty American continent will be settled from both ends.
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I'm a little confused by what you imagine happening here, and there's a rather strong and strange kind of 'destiny' involved in the idea that bands of Siberian hunter-gatherers who travel entirely on foot are 'fated' to become a race of super-horse-raiders that have an informed ability to overwhelm anyone else who has the same culture.
A disease crafted during WW2(from any one of the numerous horrible human experimentation groups at the time) is accidentally released and Lycanthropy becomes a thing, only people don't actually turn into werewolves they just act more feral during full moons. 20% of the modern population ends up having it and it just ends up being a thing that people have to learn to live with.
This is gonna have consequences down the line, for a certain, very furry corner of popular culture.
A) Darn shame about the lack of animorphism.
B) Depending on the loss of cognition, it seems a very easy issue to work with if one has access to a solid room/cell/cage that needed some calm thought as to how to unlock....
You know those anime (often based on manga or light novels) that are basically isekai, but for a female audience? Often, the main character is sent to a place reminiscent of pre-revolutionary France, in the body of a villainous character that would otherwise meet a rather nasty fate - in some of those works, it's outright stated that said fate is to get acquainted with the sharp end of a guillotine.
So, what if some young Japanese girl from the 2020s, most likely someone with an otaku-esque obsession for actual pre-revolutionary France, were thrust into the body of the person many of these villainesses are vaguely inspired by, via the influence of earlier, much more well researched anime, that is, Marie Antoinette, before her marriage?
So, what if some young Japanese girl from the 2020s, most likely someone with an otaku-esque obsession for actual pre-revolutionary France, were thrust into the body of the person many of these villainesses are vaguely inspired by, via the influence of earlier, much more well researched anime, that is, Marie Antoinette, before her marriage?
Here's another one off wacky idea: a Vietnam-style Cold War proxy conflict on the island of Zyxia, where the Evil Empire isn't communism but rather militant esperanto pseudo-fascism!
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Oh, that is delightful.You know those anime (often based on manga or light novels) that are basically isekai, but for a female audience? Often, the main character is sent to a place reminiscent of pre-revolutionary France, in the body of a villainous character that would otherwise meet a rather nasty fate - in some of those works, it's outright stated that said fate is to get acquainted with the sharp end of a guillotine.
So, what if some young Japanese girl from the 2020s, most likely someone with an otaku-esque obsession for actual pre-revolutionary France, were thrust into the body of the person many of these villainesses are vaguely inspired by, via the influence of earlier, much more well researched anime, that is, Marie Antoinette, before her marriage?