Avatar Military Wankers Read This First

[mr friendly guy]

We should add Sarevok's argument that the Na'vi didn't claim the entire planet into the list of things for the Military Wankers to first read.

[NecronLord]

We should add Sarevok's argument that the Na'vi didn't claim the entire planet into the list of things for the Military Wankers to first read.

Done.

[Darth Hoth]

Regarding the claim that "Eywa" can supposedly own property, is there any evidence in the film that it has personality, intelligence or self-awareness to anything approximating human levels?

Supposedly the trees can store Navi memories, but that tells us little about the above. For all we know, it sending animals in the end was an autonomous feedback mechanism response, like what causes ants to teem when people disturb their hive.

The Navi are clearly intelligent and sentient creatures, hence one might be able to argue that they should enjoy "human rights." The same is not the case for Eywa, or at least not demonstrably so. If it is not intelligent or self-aware, why should it then be considered a person? We do not, after all, extend that courtesy to our own planet's native animals or plants, whether they are worshipped by some or not.

[Darth Hoth]

EDIT: This was a double post.

[Ahriman238]

Well, Eywa is clearly intelligent, and probably self-aware. He/she/it is aware of other intelligences outside his/her/it-self, the Na'vi and the humans, and clearly has no difficulty understanding the Na'vi. What other criteria for sentience is there besides the Frejitas scale that is, for the moment, unquantifiable?

And there are fifteen tribes living within two days travel of each other, that can't possibly work without some understanding of where one tribes hunting grounds end and another begins.

If you don't like that, there's always Sully screaming "This is our land!" while the Omaticaya cheer, and they certainly seemed to believe that Home Tree belonged to them.

I re-watched the movie with my fmaily recently, and was struck by a few things. One, it is ironic (and almost certainly foreshadowing) that Jake's brother died in a mugging "Some guy with a gun ended Tommy's journey for the paper in his pocket." He was shot and robbed, almost exactly what happens with the Omaticaya later.

Two, there were a minimum of seven Avatars besides Jake, Grace, and Norm. Where the hell were they while everything was going on?

Three, those who complain about the fight really should watch it again. In the first twenty seconds of the attack Jake kills four choppers solo, after saying he'd punch a hole for the other warriors. We see three more probables from the Na'vi, then Jake strafes the top of the shuttle/bomber. Quaritch orders the air group to break and attack, which is when Na'vi start dying left and right. He's confident enough to spare two gunships as air support for the ground team, which is what breaks the already slowing cavalry charge. He orders the Dragon to pursue Sully, Trudy blasts the Dragon which then focuses on her. Cue slow montage of Jake's friends dying, Trudy is shot down, Tsu'tey dies trying to get to the bomb crew and another Na'vi with him. The remaining gunships form up on the shuttle/bomber and it's over: the bad guys win.

Then of course we have all of nature taking arms agianst the RDA, the ground team is smashed, the choppers dragged out of the sky, but all the critters can't seem to hurt the shuttle/bomber or the Dragon, so Jake does it.

[NecronLord]

Regarding the claim that "Eywa" can supposedly own property, is there any evidence in the film that it has personality, intelligence or self-awareness to anything approximating human levels?

Supposedly the trees can store Navi memories, but that tells us little about the above. For all we know, it sending animals in the end was an autonomous feedback mechanism response, like what causes ants to teem when people disturb their hive.

The Navi are clearly intelligent and sentient creatures, hence one might be able to argue that they should enjoy "human rights." The same is not the case for Eywa, or at least not demonstrably so. If it is not intelligent or self-aware, why should it then be considered a person? We do not, after all, extend that courtesy to our own planet's native animals or plants, whether they are worshipped by some or not.

Firstly, authorial intent, which yes, is a dirty word around here, is clearly that it is sapient.

Second, if it is capable of understanding Jake Sully's plea and responding by aiding him, it essentially passes the Turing Test - its response is identical to that of an intelligent being. As it's addressed in the context of an intelligent being, and its responses pass the Turing Test, anyone saying it's not intelligent must presuppose a very complex mechanism to get around the idea that it may have a self-aware consciousness, which falls to Occam's Razor when we are clearly presented with the facts that it forms a neuron-like network with several orders of magnitude more connections than a human brain and acts like a conscious being.

[Darth Hoth]

If you don't like that, there's always Sully screaming "This is our land!" while the Omaticaya cheer, and they certainly seemed to believe that Home Tree belonged to them.

How many of them would even speak English well enough to understand what he was saying? The impression I got from the film was that the RDA's contact with the natives was more or less restricted to the Home Tree tribe.

Second, if it is capable of understanding Jake Sully's plea and responding by aiding him, it essentially passes the Turing Test - its response is identical to that of an intelligent being. As it's addressed in the context of an intelligent being, and its responses pass the Turing Test, anyone saying it's not intelligent must presuppose a very complex mechanism to get around the idea that it may have a self-aware consciousness, which falls to Occam's Razor when we are clearly presented with the facts that it forms a neuron-like network with several orders of magnitude more connections than a human brain and acts like a conscious being.

Well, but is there any evidence that the marshalling of the beasts was actually it responding intelligently to his plea? While I may, of course be wrong - it would not be the first time - I remember nothing objective that would connect them as cause and effect. In fact, if I remember it correctly, Neytiri (who as the shaman's apprentice ought to understand the tree roots better than Jake would) thought that it would not respond to him, and had never heard of anything like that ever happening before.

That there came a horde of animals to suicide-ram the RDA expeditionary force is clear. But whether it was actually because of Jake Sully asking for help, as the Navi later came to believe, is, as far as I can tell, entirely up in the air.

[Akhlut]

How many of them would even speak English well enough to understand what he was saying? The impression I got from the film was that the RDA's contact with the natives was more or less restricted to the Home Tree tribe.

He had Neytiri translating for him when he went to the other tribes.

[NecronLord]

Do you have a simpler explanation for why the creatures suddenly behaved in a completely unknown manner (including offering to serve as mounts when they are not normally known to) than a response triggered by the preceding scene Hoth?

Certainly you could suggest that the whole thing was somehow a response to a threat to the Tree of Souls itself, but that would suggest that Eywa were somehow capable of knowing independantly of Sully that the RDA planned to MOAB it, which is unsustainable.

The chain of events goes:

Sully articulates a threat against Eywa --> Eywa responds in a sensible way, showing it is capable of understanding human concepts at a rather high level (a non-immediate threat to self-awareness) and indicating that it is at least more sapient than all animals but humans.

[Shroom Man 777]

No, NecronLord, you are wrong and I am certain we can contrive more nonsensical bullshit reasons why the blue people should be killed and why humanity and the corporations are morally right or at least morally not-reprehensible in blowing up their homes and ruining their planet. Clearly the massive animal attack is not proof that Eywa is sentient. The RDA aircraft merely wandered into a mass animal migration, known to happen seasonally on Pandora. As to why that Thanasaurus cat allowed Neytiri to ride it, Neytiri simply coincidentally happened to have catnip with her. The Na'vi also do not have any concept of possession or property or territory at all, based on the observations of Professor Last Class Piles Sarevokerritch - who's previous works include his Nobel Prize-winning anthropological studies on the Prawns in Apartheid Space Africa, funded by MNU, wherein he concluded that Prawns are subsentient hive-mind creaturoids. Uh... uh... and amongst other things, we can safely disregard everything show on-screen in the movie. Sigourney Grace Ripley was simply being a histrionic woman, and she was also mistaken on those neural signals between Pandoran trees - they do not actually resemble brain patterns or electrochemical impulses, but rather uterine contractions. Her own uterus, at that. Jake Sully is also a race traitor, and before you call me a racist, I meant that he betrayed both Formula One and NASCAR lost use of his legs in a high speed vehicular accident - thus he is a reckless idiot and a shit protagonist and a bad guy, etcetera.

There were no Na'vi in the Home Tree. They were all committing suicide at Hell's Gate.

[NecronLord]

Updated OP with Avatar Human-Wank Argument #9: The humans need the Unobtanium, to regenerate Earth.

[Steve]

Wait, this debate is still going on that the thread needs updating?!

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm guessing this might have something to do with the nearly 60 page thread that cropped up over on SB recently.