IDEA! Avatar 2: Ava-Tarrer

[mr friendly guy]

Without that being accepted, your arguments aren't going to go anywhere, and just serve to provoke the hard-core Avatar fanbase into ever more shrill denunciations of your posts. You should really get out before you provoke any further animosity.

Hard core Avatar fanbase? The term "Disciples of Wong" wasn't that convincing when it was first used to describe "hard core Warsies" who believed Wars would kick Star Treks arse in a "real" fight.

I can't speak for others, but I would like people to explain why they are denunciating him. I do so because I find him and other military wankers try to justify their imperialism with bullshit.

[Ford Prefect]

They have more than one of these things. Incredibly limited, yes.

[Steve]

Well, hardcore might be too far, but OTOH this thread was rather blatantly intended to draw out the people who didn't like how the story was done, who thought RDA was unfairly villainized, etc.

I honestly consider the whole debate to be a pointless waste of energy on what was essentially a very well-decorated and decently acted morality play - with very clear evil villains and noble heroes - that took Dances With Wolves and Ferngully and tossed them into a blender, with maybe just a dab of the Smurfs*. I honestly didn't care for the Na'vi very much and didn't see them as the paragons of nobility and right and moral superiority over Humanity that others have claimed they were meant to be... but that doesn't mean I thought it justified to blow up their homes or anything.


* = Note that I fully recognize the original elements of the story and setting, but the similarities to both Dances With Wolves and Ferngully are still there. It is, indeed, a preachy movie that touts the moral inferiority of evil corporations that rape the land for profit and displaces native inhabitants.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

I think the only people saying the Na'vi are or are supposed to be saints who make humans look like garbage are detractors of the film, and there seems to be a large overlap with the "nuke Pandora" crowd.

[madd0ct0r]

Heh, that picture's based off a German coal stripper currently in use.

If all of the mining equipment they have is like that then they HAVE to mine opencast. Dumpertrucks aren't much use in tunneling, let alone humongous bulldozers or strippers.

Since opencast is much much cheaper and there's no evidence that Selfrdige's bosses cared enough about the enviroment to mandate ALL* mining to be tunnel, I'd guess that only Opencast stuff was shipped to Pandora. Retooling once they were there would be nigh impossible.

*To be fair, if i was sitting in an office on earth I wouldn't see much issue with stripmining a couple of square kilometers of area when the rest of the planet is untouched.

[Cesario]

Schools don't improve lives in and of themselves. Schools are a mechanism whereby the things that do improve lives, knowledge and ideas, can be transfered. The only thing we know the Na'vi learned at that school was English. What ideas and knowledge did the Na'vi find of value asside from the linguistic skills to listen in on the communications of the human invaders?

Now you are engaging semantic whoring with this "in and of themselves." The point is the Na'vi not being willing to negotiate is bullshit because a) they learnt the language to communicate and b) they actually went to a human place to talk. Your bullshit has been ripped apart and you just continue to shift the goalposts.

Do you know what negotiation is?

You say the Na'vi didn't want anything useful from the humans, when its pointed out they went to school, you just say it doesn't count because they don't improve lives in and of themselves.

And you know, that communication technology, dispite the Na'vi only ever using it in pursuit of killing all humans, is yet another example of something that the humans could have offered the Na'vi in trade.

Don't shift the goalposts. Earlier you said this gem

If you'd been paying attention, you'd have noted that I pointed out a few times that the Na'vi were perfectly willing to take things from humans that could help them with killing humans. The fact that they limited themselves to these things, and were obviously not trading for them is all that needs to be said about that.

Too bad the natives are clearly of the opinion (and the audience is called upon to agree with them) that the Na'vi way of life is the ideal. There is no compromise here. No acknowledgement that there are positive aspects of both cultures that could be put together into a greater whole. Just an outright rejection of everything in the human way of life and a complete embracing of everything in the Na'vi way of life, which actually has no technology more advanced than bows and arrows.

The Na'vi did embrace aspects of human culture like learning English and using two way radios. You lost, so you shift the goal posts to what parts of human culture they embraced wasn't good enough. I know you are stupid, but this board limits the edit function, so anyone can look back and see what you really wrote. Want to shift any more goalposts.

Learning English is an aspect of human culture? It's another one of those things that is useless in and of itself.

But I'll grant you that by the time things escalated to full out war, the Na'vi eventually managed to see the value in tactical communications technology. Under Jake's explicit leadership. Which demonstrated signficant changes from the Na'vi military status quo.

Again, my main problem was the Na'vi's refusal to talk, not their prefference for a primitivist lifestyle.

Oh really

Main problem, not only problem. The Na'vi are repulsive on a variety of levels.

Except for the part where the Na'vi were giving lectures about how the evil, soul-less humans aren't at one with nature, or like our great hero, after becoming the leader of the Na'vi tells their god that humans killed the planet earth. No, there was clearly no luddism here at all.

Aside from the fact you mistook environmentalism for luddism, you were clearly against the primitivist lifestyle there with a likening of it to luddism. And lets not forgot the other quote I have of you from above.

You are clearly a lying dipshit who shifts the goalposts. And this is just from the posts you have replied to me. I shudder to think what I would find if I had to re-read what you wrote to others.

Or if you read what I wrote to anyone the first time. Imagine the horrors you'd have found.

But this a red herring right.

Are you commenting on your own faulty argumentation? Honestly, I felt it wouldn't be worth the time to catelogue all your problems.

If the Na'vi said lets take it to a vote, and 50.1% voted against adopting technology you would still say RDA were right to attack. You would just use that Earth is dying and it neeeeeeds the unobtanium. Like I said, your whole rants against primitives is a red herring to cover up for your jerking off militarism and imperialism.

Adopting the technology or not means jack shit to my argument. The Na'vi aren't immoral for living their lives as they are. The Na'vi are immoral for not negotiating (those "compromise" things don't work if you aren't talking to the other person, much less willing to give something up), being smug pricks (something they weren't alone in, but which was far more widespread among them than among the observed humans), and for repeatedly rejecting the person who saved their children while embracing the jackass who's incompetence got their home bombed.

The only reason the entire Pandora biosphere is intact at this point is that the human race in general, even if not Quaratch and Selfridge in particular, have moved so far beyond their current mindset in moral development that they're halfway as inhuman as the so-called humans in Star Trek.

Yeah, let's point that giant orbital laser at the ground. No problems could possibly come from that.

I am sure the people in Cesarioworld have not mastered complicated engineering principles like "plug hundreds of smaller emitters into the same power source", but it shouldn't be much of a problem elsewhere.

Except for the fact that it wasn't solved in the Avatarverse.

That's still an engineering problem that needs to be solved. One they obviously hadn't solved in this universe.

Yes, they concentrated on building c-fractional starships four kilometres long to go to the next star system over in search of magic rocks that would have the ability to solve their energy woes.

That's waaaaaaaaaay easier

Apparently it was.

So, evacuate the planet earth? That's a great idea. Now, if only they had enough space ships to do that. Wait, I seem to recall something about an exotic component or two that's required to make their space ships workable at large scales...

Oh, right, I forgot the laser was built by leprechauns and thus needed no spacelift or orbital industry. Their four kilometer long orbiting antimatter reactors were also built by leprechauns, apparently.

*sigh*

You're right, that plan is impossible. Now, if the movie showed us some sort of small intra-system vehicle capable of operating inside a gravity well of a gas giant, equipped with re-entry shielding and fusion engines and sporting a large cargo bay, it would be completely different. Imagine how many such vehicles you could build for the cost of one Venture Star! It would be a total game changer, man.

We could call them something cool and mythological, like Valkyrie shuttles - taking the worthy from polluted Earth hell to paradise.

God, it's too bad nothing like that was ever shown in the film. It would've been awesome!

It's even sadder that the entire film was set on the planet where the magic space rocks that enable their space fleet to be constructed happen to be being mined.

Because a light bulb is equivalent in power usage to a farm tractor?

It's not a "light bulb". The entire fucking sky in Jake's city is covered by the ads: in case of an energy crisis, it's exactly the sort of thing you shut off to conserve energy.

Not to mention that this implies they are still wasting energy on producing consumer goods that producers have to try to sell. All of this while their food supply is in danger.

As I wrote, either they have enough energy to do all that, or they're too stupid to live and thus have no right to sate their hunger by raping other people's livelihoods.

Isn't capitalism supposedly a means of streamlining things and improving efficiencies? I guess you think that state bread lines forming immediately is not only a more efficient use of resources, but must happen before any attempt to secure new energy resources can ever be made.

Because Blackwater got completely ingored when they were massacring people, right?

They got away with murdering dozens of unarmed civilians.

By your logic, this clearly means they would have also gotten away with genocide.

Seriously, you should drop it, because now you are arguing against reality. You're not going to prove a corrupt government body has no limits to what it will allow, because you might as well be arguing against gravity.

Duck season. Rabbit season. Weren't you the one arguing that the humans were wicked and evil, and I was the one arguing that the existence of rules the RDA had to operate within puts the lie to that? I guess that there were rules the RDA had to operate within and that the humans weren't mostache twirling supervillains. I conceed the point to you, my good sir.

Not my words. That's from the film. Apparently the humans in this universe got really good at dealing with pressure, cold, and radiation, while not advancing much in the area of "arrow to the face" and "crushed by a giant rhino thing".

Yeah, people in the film always speak with utter scientific precision. Hyperbole is not allowed in Hell's Gate, it cuts into corporate profits

Still an annoying line from the film. And I can't think of a better way of addressing it than having Pandora's biosphere burned off and to watch them try to mine in the resulting conditions.

And? Inevidable versus urgent. Were you reading at all during this entire conversation?

If they can live for 20 years with no unobtainium whatsoever, then you've really shot your home tree argument in the foot, you know that?

Did you even read my Home Tree argument?

What are necessities, exactly? The manufacture of food? We can't cut that off, right? How about getting that food to the people who will starve without it? Obviously that's not something we can get rid of too, so transportation infrastructure has to stay intact. Population will need to be limited if we don't just want the problem to get worse, so we're going to need to deal with birth control and education, so probably shouldn't gut the communication infrastructure. Oh, people still need to breathe, so we've got to keep pumping out those filter masks or an equivalent.

So, you want to switch off the advertisements. That'll save how much power relative to the rest of the infrastructure that's keeping the human race from dying out that has to replace the work of the entire planet's biosphere on top of everything we know will be required from just our modern prospective?

What part of "in an energy crisis, the first things to go are those least needed" is too complicated for you to understand?

If your food supply is in danger, you save wherever possible, period. You don't cover the sky in ads, you don't let bars have massive TVs that cover all the walls, you institute strict power rationing.

One TV probably doesn't eat much power. Twenty billion wallscreen TVs are another matter entirely.

Yep, collapsing their entire economy and gutting their global communication infrastructure is sure to both add efficiencies to the system and ensure that the people continue to be fed. It's a bold plan, but we definately hired the right man for the job.

I just can't get over the fact that the planetary environmental equivalent of a shallow-depth tropical scuba dive is still being defended as "THE MOST HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT KNOWN TO MAN!!!1!"

I can't believe it was said in the first place.

Yes, a lot of idiots have been claiming I'm making shit up from whole cloth from the beginning, and have continued to do so long after I provided a source. Even to the point of vandalizing a wiki that they'd suggested I use to find the evidence in.

The source you provided, at least in terms of the wiki, had the disadvantage of... being a wiki. Which means anyone can post anything there and so long as it isn't refuted or opposed it stays, regardless of actual truth.

So I'm afraid it's not very strong evidence.

But evidence of what? Recall that I wasn't trying to prove that the crisis existed with that cite. I was demonstrating that I didn't make it up from whole cloth.

It was, again, Darth Tedious who declared it a valid source and decided to insult me for "ignoring" it.

Minimize how?

Well, for starters.... how about not destroying a tribe's home just to get directly to a deposit?

Mine deposits that don't require you to destroy their home. Defend yourself, yes, but don't go looking for a fight by attacking their freaking home.

Part of the problem is that defending themselves and looking for a fight aren't mutually exclusive. Quaratch's strike against the Well of Souls in the final act, for example, was an attempt to defend the people under his command. Jake's army hadn't yet invaded Hell's Gate, but reading the writing on the wall, Quaratch determined that his best chance of surviving was a pre-emptive strike. The incident with Home Tree can be thought of as a smaller scale version of the same thinking.

Thing is, that "provoking every trime in the region" thing wasn't anticipated by anyone in the film on eithe side of the conflict. Right or wrong, the expectation of all involved was that the ones who were forced to move would lick their wounds and move on. That was what we saw happening before Jake pulled his stunt.

Honestly, it looked more to me like the RDA people simply discounted the possibility,

Including the ones opposed to the RDA.

and the Omaticaya were still reeling from demoralization when Jake tamed the big damn pterodactyl... but that doesn't mean the other tribes wouldn't have acted eventually in some manner.

Sure, we can speculate as to the possible future course of events, but that doesn't change what the RDA knew and expected prior to the attack. As I noted, your honor, humans are not temporally transcendent beings.

Really, the only main thing Jake's intervention did was cause RDA to lose. (And even then only because he had the nerve to ask the planetary consciousness for direct help.)

Which is actually further evidence against your position that the Home Tree attack constatuted a gamble. Even with the intelligence, moralle boost, and leadership Jake provided to the gathered tribes, it still took an act of divine intervention for the RDA to lose.

There's no actual evidence that was an option. In fact, it's kind of a plot point that resources and mining equipment are incredibly limited due to the fact that they're mining in another star system.

So how do they mine in the first place if they can't dig underground?

Actually, I'm being a bit facetious there, tunnel-making is a different beast than mining directly, yes.

I'd want to ask someone more familiar with mine engineering (oh Sheppp.....*) for how much work it'd require. But consider that Hell's Gate had the means to repair and maintain all of the equipment that not only sustained the mining operations but the outpost itself and the Avatar project. All of those delicate medical and science instruments. The trailers used as field stations. The VTOL transports (With their GLASS CANOPIES!!!!). Just having the outpost exist as it did indicates a level of self-sufficiency that might make underground mining sustainable. Since ultimately they could probably just get away with using timber to maintain the tunnel structure, and Pandora has shitloads of timber. (Maybe that's the reason for Colonel Quaritch's battle armor having that BIG FUCKIN' KNIFE, to quote the Spoony One).

* - Yes, I know, Shep's not a mine engineer. But he is a Research-Fu Master.

The equipment they had was what they were already using for their existing mining operations. It's not like its trivially easy to convert pit mining equipment into tunnelers.

Though if it was possible, the "mine under it" plan would have been a great compromise to bring to the table in those negotiations that never happened with the Na'vi.

Of course they were the antagonists of the film. That's a narrative term that simply requires that they occupy a specific place in the narrative. It doesn't require that they be the good guys. The cops in any given heist film are the antagonists, but that doesn't make them the bad guys.

My bad for thinking too squarely in writer-speak. I still consider them the bad guys. I still think they weren't right. That should clarify my position.


Frankly, you're not going to convince anyone. There is simply not enough evidence shown to sustain the "humanity on the verge of destruction" argument you've made. Whatever has made you think that true simply isn't prominent enough in the material for others to accept it. Without that being accepted, your arguments aren't going to go anywhere, and just serve to provoke the hard-core Avatar fanbase into ever more shrill denunciations of your posts. You should really get out before you provoke any further animosity.

Look, I realize you think you're being generous and are looking out for my interests, and I appreciate that. But I've been on the recieving end of real animosity. I'm not really all that concerned about the hurtful words a bunch of fellow internet nerds are going to throw at me in defense of a bad movie.

Without that being accepted, your arguments aren't going to go anywhere, and just serve to provoke the hard-core Avatar fanbase into ever more shrill denunciations of your posts. You should really get out before you provoke any further animosity.

Hard core Avatar fanbase? The term "Disciples of Wong" wasn't that convincing when it was first used to describe "hard core Warsies" who believed Wars would kick Star Treks arse in a "real" fight.

I can't speak for others, but I would like people to explain why they are denunciating him. I do so because I find him and other military wankers try to justify their imperialism with bullshit.

You still haven't figured out what my position actually is yet. Pathetic.

They have more than one of these things. Incredibly limited, yes.

Yeah, those things look like they'd be great for digging undergound tunnels.

[Darth Tedious]

Duck season. Rabbit season. Weren't you the one arguing that the humans were wicked and evil, and I was the one arguing that the existence of rules the RDA had to operate within puts the lie to that? I guess that there were rules the RDA had to operate within and that the humans weren't mostache twirling supervillains. I conceed the point to you, my good sir.

So everyone is clear on your position, are you arguing

Humans mining Pandora vs Na'vi
or
Humans back on Earth vs Na'vi

When you say the humans were morally superior to the Na'vi?

[Ford Prefect]

Yeah, those things look like they'd be great for digging undergound tunnels.

They built these things on site. They make the Bagger 288 look like a child's toy. Their mining options are not limited by anything other than greed.

[Cesario]

Duck season. Rabbit season. Weren't you the one arguing that the humans were wicked and evil, and I was the one arguing that the existence of rules the RDA had to operate within puts the lie to that? I guess that there were rules the RDA had to operate within and that the humans weren't mostache twirling supervillains. I conceed the point to you, my good sir.

So everyone is clear on your position, are you arguing

Humans mining Pandora vs Na'vi
or
Humans back on Earth vs Na'vi

When you say the humans were morally superior to the Na'vi?

I'm making no more distinction than the film did between the two.

Yeah, those things look like they'd be great for digging undergound tunnels.

They built these things on site. They make the Bagger 288 look like a child's toy. Their mining options are not limited by anything other than greed.

And they did it with only the resources they brought along specifically to do so. Clearly they can build anything if they can build exactly what they expected to need to build.

[Ford Prefect]

Their stereolithography largely uses locally sourced materials. The only thing they can't build on site are advanced electronics.

[mr friendly guy]

Do you know what negotiation is?

In Cesario world it means when they don't give you what you want when you ask "nicely", you can take it by force? So I guess we are just working with different definitions. But then you are the retard who describes learning English as "one of those things that is useless in and of itself", so its not really surprising in your mind words mean totally different to what is written in the dictionary.

If you'd been paying attention, you'd have noted that I pointed out a few times that the Na'vi were perfectly willing to take things from humans that could help them with killing humans. The fact that they limited themselves to these things, and were obviously not trading for them is all that needs to be said about that.

I you'd been paying attention, you'd have noted that this is shifting the goalposts. Ergo, the argument the Na'vi didn't want human things, is now changed to the didn't want human things which aren't use to kill humans, or things which you consider "useful in itself".

Learning English is an aspect of human culture?

Yes in Cesario world, language is not part of culture. No wonder people think of you as a retard.

It's another one of those things that is useless in and of itself.

Cesario describes learning English as "one of those things that is useless in and of itself." While doing so in... drum roll here please.... English.
If English useless in and of itself, why are you using it then to facilitate communication? Were you always this retarded? Or was it only after you got beaten up too many times by those fellow students you think it will be great if they got mowed down by a machine gun?

But I'll grant you that by the time things escalated to full out war, the Na'vi eventually managed to see the value in tactical communications technology. Under Jake's explicit leadership. Which demonstrated signficant changes from the Na'vi military status quo.

Thanks for conceding that your claim that the Na'vi saw no use in human culture to be wrong. I just had to read through how many pages of bullshit before you admitted this.

Main problem, not only problem. The Na'vi are repulsive on a variety of levels.

But according to you RDA are the good guys right? You are a morally bankrupt cretin. The worrisome thing is, you don't confine your bullshit to fictional universes.

Or if you read what I wrote to anyone the first time. Imagine the horrors you'd have found.

So in an entire quote showing with links where you shifted the goal posts, you choose to reply to the last line which was essentially an insult, and not the bulk of the argument. Very telling isn't it?

Are you commenting on your own faulty argumentation?

You know, when the other posters including myself insult you, we at least do your the courtesy of explaining where your argument breaks down. You cannot even bother doing that. But I guess in your mind this is a sign that you are winning. AM I RITE?

Honestly, I felt it wouldn't be worth the time to catelogue all your problems.

But its worth your time trudging through 18 pages telling us how repulsive a fictional alien race is? I see you really can prioritise.

Adopting the technology or not means jack shit to my argument.

Except for the part where I demonstrated you hated them for being luddites. You yourself admitted in this very post I am replying to that the lack of negotiation was not the only problem. So it would do harm one of your arguments at the very least. Do try and make yourself consistent.

The Na'vi aren't immoral for living their lives as they are.

You sure fooled me with your rants against luddites that you did not think this way. Oh wait, you shifted the goal posts and hope that by repeating this same line people would believe you even though I linked to show where you said what.

The Na'vi are immoral for not negotiating (those "compromise" things don't work if you aren't talking to the other person, much less willing to give something up),

1. RDA did not negotiate much either when they reached an impasse. Oh wait they got the shiny military toys you want to masturbate to so its ok. Gotcha.
2. I will repeat again. If the Navi negotiated and decided in a vote they didn't want to give up their homes, you would still say RDA is right. You demonstrated it in this very reply. In this hypothetical scenario, they negotiated and put it through a vote. Yet it still didn't make a difference according to you. So I was absolutely right and you are too god damn stupid to even realise your mistake. Thanks for playing.

being smug pricks (something they weren't alone in, but which was far more widespread among them than among the observed humans),

In Cesario world being smug pricks is immoral. I wonder how you think of self righteous people. I will hazard a guess if that person is Cesario, its A-Ok. But if it was someone you are arguing against, its immoral.

and for repeatedly rejecting the person who saved their children while embracing the jackass who's incompetence got their home bombed.

I am pretty the Na'vi attacked the person who blew up their home, ie RDA? Oh thats right, in Cesario world black is white and vice versa, so Jake is at fault. Tell me bozo, if a woman says no, she really means yes right?

The only reason the entire Pandora biosphere is intact at this point is that the human race in general, even if not Quaratch and Selfridge in particular, have moved so far beyond their current mindset in moral development that they're halfway as inhuman as the so-called humans in Star Trek.

Because humans even now (yet alone in the future where Avatar humans "have moved so far beyond their current mindset in moral development") think its perfectly ok to destroy a planets entire biosphere. Projecting your own characteristics onto your opponents I see.

[Cesario]

Do you know what negotiation is?

In Cesario world it means when they don't give you what you want when you ask "nicely", you can take it by force? So I guess we are just working with different definitions. But then you are the retard who describes learning English as "one of those things that is useless in and of itself", so its not really surprising in your mind words mean totally different to what is written in the dictionary.

You don't seem to grasp that there are no inherent advantages to English specifically when you already have a language. The only use it has for the Na'vi is communicating with the humans, something they aren't interested in doing anyway.

If you'd been paying attention, you'd have noted that I pointed out a few times that the Na'vi were perfectly willing to take things from humans that could help them with killing humans. The fact that they limited themselves to these things, and were obviously not trading for them is all that needs to be said about that.

I you'd been paying attention, you'd have noted that this is shifting the goalposts. Ergo, the argument the Na'vi didn't want human things, is now changed to the didn't want human things which aren't use to kill humans, or things which you consider "useful in itself".

That would be "not useful in itself". If you're going to throw stuff back in my face trying to prove you understood what I said, get the details right.

Learning English is an aspect of human culture?

Yes in Cesario world, language is not part of culture. No wonder people think of you as a retard.

It's another one of those things that is useless in and of itself.

Cesario describes learning English as "one of those things that is useless in and of itself." While doing so in... drum roll here please.... English.
If English useless in and of itself, why are you using it then to facilitate communication? Were you always this retarded? Or was it only after you got beaten up too many times by those fellow students you think it will be great if they got mowed down by a machine gun?

Still not getting the whole "the Na'vi already had a language" thing.

But I'll grant you that by the time things escalated to full out war, the Na'vi eventually managed to see the value in tactical communications technology. Under Jake's explicit leadership. Which demonstrated signficant changes from the Na'vi military status quo.

Thanks for conceding that your claim that the Na'vi saw no use in human culture to be wrong. I just had to read through how many pages of bullshit before you admitted this.

You read things? That's unexpected.

But yes, killing humans is something they were clearly interested enough in doing that they were willing to lower themselves to use the tools of the evil ones in order to do it. I conceed.

Main problem, not only problem. The Na'vi are repulsive on a variety of levels.

But according to you RDA are the good guys right? You are a morally bankrupt cretin. The worrisome thing is, you don't confine your bullshit to fictional universes.

I did warn you that you didn't want to get into that.

Or if you read what I wrote to anyone the first time. Imagine the horrors you'd have found.

So in an entire quote showing with links where you shifted the goal posts, you choose to reply to the last line which was essentially an insult, and not the bulk of the argument. Very telling isn't it?

You clearly didn't read even the parts you quoted, since they don't support your conclusion.

Are you commenting on your own faulty argumentation?

You know, when the other posters including myself insult you, we at least do your the courtesy of explaining where your argument breaks down. You cannot even bother doing that. But I guess in your mind this is a sign that you are winning. AM I RITE?

This might work if you were demonstrably reading my arguments instead of showing how straw men broke down.

Honestly, I felt it wouldn't be worth the time to catelogue all your problems.

But its worth you time truding through 18 pages telling us how repulsive a fictional alien race is? I see you really can prioritise.

I certainly can. One is far more ammusing than the other. Cataloguing your ignorance is not really coming out ahead.

Adopting the technology or not means jack shit to my argument.

Except for the part where I demonstrated you hated them for being luddites. You yourself admitted in this very post I am replying to that the lack of negotiation was not the only problem. So it would do harm one of your arguments at the very least. Do try and make yourself consistent.

Idiot, my dislike of the Na'vi covers many levels, not all of them moral ones relevent to the discussion.

The Na'vi aren't immoral for living their lives as they are.

You sure fooled me with your rants against luddites that you did not think this way. Oh wait, you shifted the goal posts and hope that by repeating this same line people would believe you even though I linked to show where you said what.

Speaking of repeating the same line:

Idiot, my dislike of the Na'vi covers many levels, not all of them moral ones relevent to the discussion.

The Na'vi are immoral for not negotiating (those "compromise" things don't work if you aren't talking to the other person, much less willing to give something up),

1. RDA did not negotiate much either when they reached an impasse.

The RDA weren't given the option to negotiate. They did try to get negotiations started again using the small window of brief divine intervention it took to get the Na'vi to pretend they were going to listen to something besides their own self-praise, but that turned out to be a dead end because Eywa's sign apparently were just enough to elect Jake prom queen, and not enough to get anyone on the Na'vi side to actually listen to him.

Oh wait they got the shiny military toys you want to masturbate to so its ok. Gotcha.

The Na'vi's stuff was way prettier. I've always been fond of the biotech angle, and the carbon reinforced bone structure has a lot going for it.

It just turns out that the bad guys in this film happened to be the pretty people instead of the ones driving the ugly mechas.

2. I will repeat again. If the Navi negotiated and decided in a vote they didn't want to give up their homes, you would still say RDA is right. You demonstrated it in this very reply. In this hypothetical scenario, they negotiated and put it through a vote. Yet it still didn't make a difference according to you. So I was absolutely right and you are too god damn stupid to even realise your mistake. Thanks for playing.

And now you aren't even reading your own posts. You said nothing about the Na'vi voting not to give up their homes. You blathered on about the Na'vi voting not to adopt a technological lifestyle. You also said nothing about the Na'vi negotiating at any point during this decisionmaking process.

So how about you lay out your real hypothetical that you apparently forgot to put down last time?

being smug pricks (something they weren't alone in, but which was far more widespread among them than among the observed humans),

In Cesario world being smug pricks is immoral. I wonder how you think of self righteous people. I will hazard a guess if that person is Cesario, its A-Ok. But if it was someone you are arguing against, its immoral.

While that is usually true in practice, it is really more a manefestation of me being on the right side while my oponents are on the wrong one.

and for repeatedly rejecting the person who saved their children while embracing the jackass who's incompetence got their home bombed.

I am pretty the Na'vi attacked the person who blew up their home, ie RDA? Oh thats right, in Cesario world black is white and vice versa, so Jake is at fault.

You seem to have missed the whole scene where Selfridge was explaining the point of Jake's mission. Both in your original viewing of the film and in this thread where I quoted his dialogue.

Tell me bozo, if a woman says no, she really means yes right?

You don't want to get into the subject of consent with me.

The only reason the entire Pandora biosphere is intact at this point is that the human race in general, even if not Quaratch and Selfridge in particular, have moved so far beyond their current mindset in moral development that they're halfway as inhuman as the so-called humans in Star Trek.

Because humans even now (yet alone in the future where Avatar humans "have moved so far beyond their current mindset in moral development") think its perfectly ok to destroy a planets entire biosphere. Projecting your own characteristics onto your opponents I see.

I simply have no expectation that any modern government would put up with this shit given the importance of the mining operation.

[madd0ct0r]

RE my earlier post about mining tech. If the RDA actually built the stuff on site (and not just from shipped parts) then they could have retooled for tunneling. I'd assume they'd turn up with competent engineers, not just the cheapest bidders.

You don't seem to grasp that there are no inherent advantages to English specifically when you already have a language. The only use it has for the Na'vi is communicating with the humans, something they aren't interested in doing anyway.

So why did they learn it then?

Main problem, not only problem. The Na'vi are repulsive on a variety of levels.
...
Idiot, my dislike of the Na'vi covers many levels, not all of them moral ones relevent to the discussion.
...
Idiot, my dislike of the Na'vi covers many levels, not all of them moral ones relevent to the discussion.
...
It just turns out that the bad guys in this film happened to be the pretty people instead of the ones driving the ugly mechas.

being smug pricks (something they weren't alone in, but which was far more widespread among them than among the observed humans),

In Cesario world being smug pricks is immoral. I wonder how you think of self righteous people. I will hazard a guess if that person is Cesario, its A-Ok. But if it was someone you are arguing against, its immoral.

While that is usually true in practice, it is really more a manefestation of me being on the right side while my oponents are on the wrong one.
...
You don't want to get into the subject of consent with me.

Ignoring the quote spaghetti, Ceasrio, would you mind restating your position again?
Because I thought everyone, you included, had agreed a few pages back that the central proposition (that a lot of humans would die with unobtanium) was without evidence.

Or has that been conceeded, and the argument is now were the Nav'vi or RDA more immoral?
If it's the latter, then can you describe the all of the ways the Navvi disgust you?
As for humans, the same applies. Do you find Quarritch more or less attractive then Selfridge? Where does Grace stand in this, or Trudy?

Is it the tail? Is it the skinniness? Physical superiority?
Is it specific individuals or the race as a whole?

[Cesario]

RE my earlier post about mining tech. If the RDA actually built the stuff on site (and not just from shipped parts) then they could have retooled for tunneling. I'd assume they'd turn up with competent engineers, not just the cheapest bidders.

That would do it, yes.

So again, that would be something awesome for them to offer in compromise when the negotiations started. Pity they never started.

You don't seem to grasp that there are no inherent advantages to English specifically when you already have a language. The only use it has for the Na'vi is communicating with the humans, something they aren't interested in doing anyway.

So why did they learn it then?

That's a very good question.

Main problem, not only problem. The Na'vi are repulsive on a variety of levels.
...
Idiot, my dislike of the Na'vi covers many levels, not all of them moral ones relevent to the discussion.
...
Idiot, my dislike of the Na'vi covers many levels, not all of them moral ones relevent to the discussion.
...
It just turns out that the bad guys in this film happened to be the pretty people instead of the ones driving the ugly mechas.

In Cesario world being smug pricks is immoral. I wonder how you think of self righteous people. I will hazard a guess if that person is Cesario, its A-Ok. But if it was someone you are arguing against, its immoral.

While that is usually true in practice, it is really more a manefestation of me being on the right side while my oponents are on the wrong one.
...
You don't want to get into the subject of consent with me.

Ignoring the quote spaghetti,

Then why did you go to the trouble of grabbing random bits?

Ceasrio, would you mind restating your position again?
Because I thought everyone, you included, had agreed a few pages back that the central proposition (that a lot of humans would die with unobtanium) was without evidence.

Actually, I agreed that it was not in the film. Basing it entirely on the film, there is no evidence, and the only thing we're left with is the humans still being weirdly nice for land-raping imperialists.

Or has that been conceeded, and the argument is now were the Nav'vi or RDA more immoral?

I think that could work as a reasonable description of the current situation, yes.

If it's the latter, then can you describe the all of the ways the Navvi disgust you?

Probably not. I'm quite sure I'd miss one or two in an effort to construct a comprehensive list.

As for humans, the same applies. Do you find Quarritch more or less attractive then Selfridge?

Less, defintely. Scars just don't do it for me.

Where does Grace stand in this,

Smokers are a huge turn-off.

or Trudy?

Best of the bunch.

Is it the tail?

Honestly, I scarcely noticed they had it.

Is it the skinniness?

While that is usually a problem for me, they made it work.

Physical superiority?

Nah, half my favorite fictional character crushes could break me in half without trying.

Is it specific individuals or the race as a whole?

The entire species, while deliberately designed through the metric of "would you hit that?" really doesn't do a thing for me. It's the feiline facial structure that causes problems. Particularly around the nose, though the ears are also troublesome for me.

[madd0ct0r]

I was referring to your spaghetti quoting - you just turned a 12 line post of mine into 12 separate posts that'll reaper if I quote your post.

Not that I need to as you refuse to say why you dislike the blues "in case you miss one of the reasons"

sigh. Why are you bothering with this?

[Cesario]

I was referring to your spaghetti quoting - you just turned a 12 line post of mine into 12 separate posts that'll reaper if I quote your post.

If you read back a bit, you'll find that someone complained early on in the thread about me not using this quoting style.

Not that I need to as you refuse to say why you dislike the blues "in case you miss one of the reasons"

You asked for a comprehensive list. This looks a good deal like an obvious trap that I'm not particularly inclined to walk into.

sigh. Why are you bothering with this?

Presumably the same reason you are, because this exercise is ammusing.

[madd0ct0r]

An obvious trap you aren't going to walk into?

While refusal to state your arguments is of course debating honestly and in accordance with board rules?

Are you saying you refuse to present the reasoning to back up your claims?

PS THIS IS A TRAP.

[PeZook]

I am sure the people in Cesarioworld have not mastered complicated engineering principles like "plug hundreds of smaller emitters into the same power source", but it shouldn't be much of a problem elsewhere.

Except for the fact that it wasn't solved in the Avatarverse.

What possible reason could there be for this being impossible? Seriously. They can fire a huge-ass laser and keep it powered and pointing at a tiny object for five and a half months, but you declare that using hundreds of smaller emitters and keeping them pointed at power satellites in Earth orbit (a technology we could build TODAY) is too difficult for them?

Yes, they concentrated on building c-fractional starships four kilometres long to go to the next star system over in search of magic rocks that would have the ability to solve their energy woes.

That's waaaaaaaaaay easier

Apparently it was.

Based on what, exactly? They built three orbiting antimatter reactors with no unobtainium whatsoever. Each one of these was four kilometres long. They then built a starship around each.

What about installing them on the moon and using them to power massive amounts of habitats is more difficult than hurling them four light years out for exploration's sake? What about this situation points towards an energy crisis on Earth?

It's even sadder that the entire film was set on the planet where the magic space rocks that enable their space fleet to be constructed happen to be being mined.

Okay, I will use pictures.



They had these. They need no unobtainium. They can carry hundreds of passengers and have enough delta-v to collect gas from the gas giant's upper atmosphere and return it to Pandora.

So even with no vehicles other than those we saw in the movie, they had more than enough capability to move their population, or at least their industry, off-planet to be powered by the massive antimatter reactors there.

No unobtainium needed to solve the energy crisis, if there even is one. If there's none, the moral right of the RDA to rape loot and pillage other people's land is gone.

Isn't capitalism supposedly a means of streamlining things and improving efficiencies? I guess you think that state bread lines forming immediately is not only a more efficient use of resources, but must happen before any attempt to secure new energy resources can ever be made.

No, capitalism has nothing to do with "efficient use of resources". It results is massive duplication in production by definition because producers compete to sell their products to consumers, with many producers fighting for the same market.

This actually wastes resources and energy. It works well when you have an excess of both, breaks down if shortages occur. And in an existential crisis, it's the first thing to go: if your food supply is threatened by energy shortages, fuck yes you switch to a planned economy and ration everything that's not needed for survival.

Duck season. Rabbit season. Weren't you the one arguing that the humans were wicked and evil, and I was the one arguing that the existence of rules the RDA had to operate within puts the lie to that? I guess that there were rules the RDA had to operate within and that the humans weren't mostache twirling supervillains. I conceed the point to you, my good sir.

I never said humanity as a whole was evil. I said the RDA was for murdering hundreds of people in the name of profit. Sometimes I said "the humans" in the clear context of the human mining operation on Pandora.

Still an annoying line from the film. And I can't think of a better way of addressing it than having Pandora's biosphere burned off and to watch them try to mine in the resulting conditions.

Yet you were saying the RDA is somehow moral for not using this option, and then proceeded to argue vehemently that it would actually make sense for them to wipe out the entire Pandoran ecology from the profit standpoit.

But now you backpedal furiously and say it was just facetious and a joke. Right. Sure it was. Good joke. Everybody laugh.

Did you even read my Home Tree argument?

Which one? You keep switching between three versions: "RDA urgently needed to mine unobtainium or Earth is kaputt and they bombed the hometree to prevent deaths to miners, too", "RDA wasn't in any particular hurry to mine the unobtainium from Home Tree but still needed it at some time in the future and they bombed the hometree to prevent deaths to miners" and "RDA didn't actually need unobtainium from that particular deposit and they bombed the hometree just to prevent deaths to miners"

Yep, collapsing their entire economy and gutting their global communication infrastructure is sure to both add efficiencies to the system and ensure that the people continue to be fed. It's a bold plan, but we definately hired the right man for the job.

THEIR FOOD SUPPLY IS IN DANGER.

That's your claim. You claim THEIR FOOD SUPPLY, the thing they need to live, is in danger due to energy shortages, but banning bars from using massive wallscreen TVs and shutting down holographic ads is somehow excessive and impossible (due to wah wah economy will collapse!). Because using small TVs, the Internet, radio or PA systems is not an option: the only possible global communications network they can have are massive 100 inch TVs. And of course the ads, these are a crticial part of the food distribution infrastructure

If you read back a bit, you'll find that someone complained early on in the thread about me not using this quoting style.

That was me, and nothing about using quote tags means you have to split a post up into single sentences.

Oh, and here's a nice quote from pandorapedia about the Na'Vi not wanting to talk to the humans, the bastards:

And a lot of the sorties we’re out talkin’ to the Na’vi, especially the Omaticaya clan. I fly Grace, I mean Avatar Grace, out to her school a lot, also. So I know a lot of the locals. They’re pretty cool. Everybody around base thinks they’re these vicious savages, but they’re really not. They’re very spiritual, and they know how to party. They love music.

By Trudy Chacon.

Man, they totally never talked to humans and thought all humans were evil scum. Coming to the human school and doing dancing and singing and learning English and astronomy and chatting up helicopter pilots is totally evidence for that.

Oh yeah but they weren't interested in negotiation for their ancestral home, THE RACISTS

[PeZook]

You know, if a fat Sicillian man went up to you and said "I want to buy your home" after shooting up a local school, and you refused to even talk to him, and the fat Sicillian went "have it your way, but the bulldozers are already on their way", would there be any doubt who was in the wrong?

[Shroom Man 777]

Does the Sicillian own a meat processing facility with which to dispose of his... yard trimmings? Does the homeowner enjoy gardening and prefer working with his juniper bush over to doing the plumbing or fixing his engines?

Then the Sicillian is much more industrialized and should educate the homeowner who is a luddite shmuck with a laughable hobby.

Does the homeowner think that gangsterism is insane? If so then he is a prejudiced reprehensible fucker.

Does the homeowner work at school, and think that jocks are hard to teach because it is hard to fill a football helmet when it is already full? If so, then he is even more prejudiceder and more reprehensibler and more fuckerer.

[Shroom Man 777]

Okay, I will use pictures.

http://www.pandorapedia.com/sites/defau ... le_1_0.jpg

They had these.

The spaceships the humans rode on to go to Pandora, before they discovered unobtanium, were obviously rented from the leprechauns.

Maybe the leprechauns are demanding monthly installments of unobtanium or else they will impound or take back the humans' space fleets.

[Connor MacLeod]

Does the Sicillian own a meat processing facility with which to dispose of his... yard trimmings? Does the homeowner enjoy gardening and prefer working with his juniper bush over to doing the plumbing or fixing his engines?

Then the Sicillian is much more industrialized and should educate the homeowner who is a luddite shmuck with a laughable hobby.

Does the homeowner think that gangsterism is insane? If so then he is a prejudiced reprehensible fucker.

Does the homeowner work at school, and think that jocks are hard to teach because it is hard to fill a football helmet when it is already full? If so, then he is even more prejudiceder and more reprehensibler and more fuckerer.

The important thing to remember is which cup the poison is in.

[Ford Prefect]

No unobtainium needed to solve the energy crisis, if there even is one. If there's none, the moral right of the RDA to rape loot and pillage other people's land is gone.

Just throwing this out there, but when Parker Selfridge makes a point to Grace about how important the mining operation is, he's talking about money. He doesn't say 'the fate of the world and the continuation of human civilisation hinges on this mysterious rock', he says 'there is a fuck load of potential profit here which we want to exploit'. There's no crisis, end of story.

[mr friendly guy]

You don't seem to grasp that there are no inherent advantages to English specifically when you already have a language. The only use it has for the Na'vi is communicating with the humans, something they aren't interested in doing anyway.

Stop shifting the goal posts you dishonest turd. The problem with you is, you sprout bullshit to defend your retarded position, and when that bullshit is taken apart, you make more bullshit to defend the earlier bullshit. To wit
1. You said the Na'vi weren't interested in anything about human culture - then why the hell did they learn English?
2. Your next level of bullshit is to say language is NOT part of culture. I am still ROFL over that one.
3. To follow that bullshit up, you make the further bullshit claim English is not useful in and of itself, (because apparently learning useless cultural things don't count). At the same time you say this, you use English to communicate this point demonstrating a) its usefulness and b) how stupid you are.
4. To defend that bullshit, you come up with ah when I said not useful in and of itself, I really really really meant not useful in and of itself to communicate among yourselves when you already have a language. Can you see the goal posts being moved further? Even you recognise this is bullshit, because another language can be used to communicate with people who speak this other language, ie humans. So quickly try to cover this weakness with a lie, that the Na'vi were not interested in communicating with humans. Sorry, they weren't interested in moving from their homes. The no communication clearly isn't true because they went to fucking school. Geez, you don't suppose you have to communicate to learn do you?

Is there any level of dishonesty you won't stoop too?

That would be "not useful in itself". If you're going to throw stuff back in my face trying to prove you understood what I said, get the details right.

This quite laughable when I quoted you with links to your posts.

Still not getting the whole "the Na'vi already had a language" thing.

Still not getting the whole "shifting the goal posts is intellectually dishonest thing". Of course shifting the goal posts might actually work if your second set of criteria wasn't as retarded as the first one.

You read things? That's unexpected.

Yeah, I guess you expect people to not go over what you say so its easier for you to lie. How dare I use your quotes against you.

But yes, killing humans is something they were clearly interested enough in doing that they were willing to lower themselves to use the tools of the evil ones in order to do it. I conceed.

I love how in one breath you conceed then fire off a but....
But for all its worth concession accepted dipshit.

You clearly didn't read even the parts you quoted, since they don't support your conclusion.

Aside the fact I showed several posts earlier my conclusion where you shifted the goalposts, and considering you eventually conceded in one of those points, I would say, yeah it does support my position.

This might work if you were demonstrably reading my arguments instead of showing how straw men broke down.

You mean how you accuse me of not reading, and then I quote you saying exactly what I accuse you of saying with links to boot. But I am apparently creating a strawman. Thanks for playing retard. Tell me, did you want to machine gun down your fellow students because they weren't as stupid as you are?

I certainly can. One is far more ammusing than the other. Cataloguing your ignorance is not really coming out ahead.

But arguing with someone who you consider ignorant is? Seriously retard, who are you fooling with this bullshit? Oh wait, you are the guy who says English is not useful in and of itself while using English to communicate the point.

Idiot, my dislike of the Na'vi covers many levels, not all of them moral ones relevent to the discussion.

Idiot, my demolishing your arguments were not confine only to your moral ones.

Speaking of repeating the same line:

Idiot, my dislike of the Na'vi covers many levels, not all of them moral ones relevent to the discussion.

Speaking of repeating the same line : Idiot, my demolishing your arguments were not confine only to your moral ones.

The RDA weren't given the option to negotiate.

Correction, they weren't interested in negotiating in good faith. If they did that they would be prepared for the option if talks fall through. They weren't. They planned to attack home tree anyway, which is why they only gave Jake a time limit.

And now you aren't even reading your own posts. You said nothing about the Na'vi voting not to give up their homes. You blathered on about the Na'vi voting not to adopt a technological lifestyle.

Since in the movie RDA were only offering technology in exchange for giving up their home, both options would pretty much go hand in hand.

You also said nothing about the Na'vi negotiating at any point during this decisionmaking process.

Oh my god. Seriously are you brain damaged or something? Once people have negotiated something with another country / countries, it still needs to be ratified by a vote in parliament. I trust you can join the dots.

While that is usually true in practice, it is really more a manefestation of me being on the right side while my oponents are on the wrong one.

Then why is everyone is using you as their chew toy, but you are just too stupid to see it? If you are right, why is it that you had to conceed something in this very post? If you are right, why is it that you cannot back up some claims from several pages back, like you know the Earth energy crisis bullshit? Your level of delusion is quite amusing.

You seem to have missed the whole scene where Selfridge was explaining the point of Jake's mission. Both in your original viewing of the film and in this thread where I quoted his dialogue.

You seem to have missed the part where you have to justify HOW Jake is at fault? You know, how it ties up to what right RDA had to force the Na'vi from their home in the first place. Because if they had the right, then one might be able to blame Jake for not convincing the Na'vi to leave. But if they did not, then the blames falls squarely onto them.

You don't want to get into the subject of consent with me.

Why? Are you going to embarrass yourself further?

I simply have no expectation that any modern government would put up with this shit given the importance of the mining operation.

An importance which you have not demonstrated despite repeated calls to back up your earth energy crisis hypothesis bullshit.

[Spoonist]

The important thing to remember is which cup the poison is in.

"They were both poisoned. I spent the last few years building up an immunity ..."