IDEA! Avatar 2: Ava-Tarrer

[Cesario]

Even without the wiki, it should be pretty obvious that the kill-on-sight order came after the school incident. It would have been pretty hard for Grace to run a school while being killed on sight.

Not as hard as you might think if it was just the obviously alien humans who were being killed on sight. No way to know what point the Na'vi made the connection between the Avatars and the humans.

Isn't the whole "the land really belongs to Eywa and she hasn't said no yet" line of thought basically the same as taking over churches by force and feeling you have every right to do so because God hasn't struck you down with lightning yet?

And if God reacted the way Eywa did to that sort of thing, no one except the truly dense would be questioning His existence.

Isn't the whole "the land really belongs to Eywa and she hasn't said no yet" line of thought basically the same as taking over churches by force and feeling you have every right to do so because God hasn't struck you down with lightning yet?

More like a mosquito landing on your skin and drinking your blood and thinking it has every right to do so because you haven't said "no" or swatted it yet.

The mosquito might well be able to drink its fill and fly away before you even notice it was there. That doesn't mean it's all right, or that you won't kill a mosquito out of hand if you catch it drinking your blood if its activity becomes conspicuous enough to notice.

Why yes, we've discussed the Mosqueto analogy before, when we were debating whether the RDA as a superbeing might not have some of the moral value that we're so quick to ascribe to Eywa.

What part of "no one believed Grace because she was transparently stalling for time" was unclear about that scene? They didn't look at her research, go "yep, that's an impossibly advanced biotech neural network, bulldoze anyway". They looked at the timing of Grace's discovery, Grace's obvious contempt for the mining operation, and her history of siding with the natives and quite reasonably decided it was far more likely she was technobabling her way through a bullshit discovery just for the sake of something to stop what she wasn't ready to accept was inevidable.

The fact that she happened to actually have a real discovery to present doesn't really change the fact that she was likely to say anything at that point to try to stop the Home Tree incident and both Selfridge and Quaratch knew it. She had no credibility, a fact not helped by the fact that she was supposed to be helping Jake on that mission of finding out what the Na'vi wanted that Jake was busy blowing off.

She had the evidence to prove it, which she gathered before the whole thing started. THREE MONTHS before, in fact. I may be making abit of a leap here, but she probably wrote a lab report about it and filed it. Her boss might have even had access to it!

Due dilligence indeed.

Strange that if she had it all figured out that early that she went along with Selfridge's negotiation plan in the first place, since even with the Na'vi moved out of Home Tree peacefully, the mining would have broken up the roots of the tree and damaged the neural network.

Now, the rest of your post can be neatly reduced to these statements:

Oh dear, this is going to be another one of those posts.

(about the Battle Los Angele movie):

I rather suspect that there was really no hint of attempted communication by the aliens in that film like every other so-called analogous alien invasion film people have brought up, but if the aliens really did try like you claim, I can't fault them.

This explains pretty much everything about you.

A lot of my sentences seem to be having that effect on you. If I were to encounter a being who's entire being was being accurately summed up in every sentence they uttered about wildy differing topics, I'd be a bit awed and humbled. That seems like the sort of trait I would associate with a god.

Aliens ask, humans say no, aliens murder humans wholesale, aliens are in the right.

You didn't read what I was responding to, did you?

What am I thinking, asking you if you've read something important to the context of my statements? I apologise for even asking such a dumb question, and will instead point out where you are wrong directly.

Aliens ask, humans murder every alien that tries to ask, process repeats several times across the globe, aliens murder humans wholesale, aliens are in the right.

In his breakdown of the plot, the humans made no attempt at communication, were violent towards every overture for communication, and essentially did deserve what they got. If that isn't how the plot of the film actually went (as I posited was likely the case), I obviously can't speak to those events since they were never presented.

All your claims that it was totally different with Germany invading Poland for resources and land are just transparently untrue.

The Polish were regularly murdering German ambasadors? I must say, I never expected to be on the side of the Nazis, but that's really something you just do not do.

And? Therefore? Concluding?

The native american tribes weren't the magically peaceful utopia you were trying to paint them as. Obviously.

HOLY SHIT THANKS FOR ENLIGHTENING ME...

You're welcome.

Oh wait, I never said that was the case. I wrote the Na'Vi, much like Native Americans, might've strongly valued manly feats of skill and bravery because they're useful for hunting.

You used this to argue that their warriors didn't serve the purpose that warriors transparently do serve.

They also happen to have a use in war OH NO it means the Omaticaya deserve to get murdered for their land and fight wars of conquest like all the time!

Let me know when you're invested enough in this thread to actually read it. It's getting tiresome trying to separate your poor reading comprehension from your deliberate straw men.

In Cesarioworld, diplomacy means demanding what you want and going to war if you don't get it.

That's what diplomacy means most of the time in the real world. Though on occasion, we get to do things like demanding what we want and the other guy deciding that there are some things he wants that we could trade him for it.

Holy shit.

I'm glad you will never be able to influence policy in any meaningful sense, because...goddamn. I guess you would've went to war with Russia over the missile shield, then, since GBI was completely unnaceptable to them, and thus compromise was impossible?

What compromise was reached, exactly? Either the missile shield was deployed or it was not.

Are we back in Cesarioworld again?

You're the one who made the place up. Why are you asking me?

Admission of fallability on the part of the Na'vi has been fairly sparse in this thread, I'm afraid, and I haven't hunted down every mention of them in the forum's history.

We were not discussing particular failures of Na'Vi society because the topic is about whether or not RDA atrocities were justified, for which it is irrelevant.

Just like how the particular failures of a man being executed are irrelevant to whether or not his execution is justified?

And let me beat you to the punch here: "Because I used a deliberately one-sided analogy that isn't exactly identical to the situation under discussion to illustrate a principle, clearly the only explaination is that I think that the two situations are exactly comparable, and that I am thus passing a death sentence on the entire Na'vi species." Was that about right?

You might just as well bring up Polish antisemitism in a discussion about the Germans genociding the country, and it would be just as relevant.

Since this is your area of expertise, was the Polish antisemitism a useful tool used by the German high command to keep the Final Solution progressing apace in the conquored Polish territories?

The first one cannot be proved one way or another, so sure, let's be generous towards you (again) and say that yes, the humans are trying to make things better on Earth (P.S. they use gigantic lasers to accelerate starships to fractions of C, and dying species are being overhunted. Yeah...)

So you're already claiming the first one that you are "giving me" is outright false. You're not being a dishonest fuckwad at all, are you?

We could get into an in-depth discussion about the energy requirements of the laser, but I didn't feel like it so I conceded.

You didn't conceed. That's why you brought up all the ways you don't believe it will work. The "concession" was just a smokescreen to keep me from addressing this point so you can play a gocha game later after I've addressed the two points you wanted me to address, thus dragging this entire exercise out further.

And since you refuse to provide evidence for the latter two assumptions, why does it even matter?

Why should I provide evidence towards assumptions you made up in the first place, until you've even so much as agreed to the ground rules about?

Do you recall what was required to get a clear concession out of your side on the chemical weapons issue discussed earlier?

So just prove the humans needed unobtainium to buy some time for these policies to work, and that a reduction in the volume of earthbound shipments would have triggered a mass die-off.

So prove something I never claimed, and repeatedly explained that I didn't think was the case. Interesting proposal. Looks a lot like all your other proposals.

So...thread over?

If that's how you feel, I'm not keeping you here. Feel free to stop by when you're invested enough in the subject to give it a read.

Since you outright refuse to prove the only thing that would make the RDA's actions justified (saving billions from starvation and mass death), it means they were not justified in any way, and that you concede.

Because the lives of the miners mean nothing.

How else can you justify mass murder and destruction of the Home Tree?

As a method of cutting short a drawn-out conflict that otherwise would have continued indefinately as the non-urgent, but inevidably needed mining continued apace with more people being killed throughout. I've explained this to you several times already.

[Darth Tedious]

How else can you justify mass murder and destruction of the Home Tree?

As a method of cutting short a drawn-out conflict that otherwise would have continued indefinately as the non-urgent, but inevidably needed mining continued apace with more people being killed throughout. I've explained this to you several times already.

And people have called bullshit on it several times.

How was the mining 'inevitable' or 'needed'?

[Cesario]

How else can you justify mass murder and destruction of the Home Tree?

As a method of cutting short a drawn-out conflict that otherwise would have continued indefinately as the non-urgent, but inevidably needed mining continued apace with more people being killed throughout. I've explained this to you several times already.

And people have called bullshit on it several times.

How was the mining 'inevitable' or 'needed'?

No, people have largely ignored it and gone back to "if you don't need it right this second, and if even the slightest margin of safety is present in the system, there is no possible way to justify anything but continuing to take it on the chin from the natives until you really are in a zero safety net life or death struggle for survival, and even then, I'll only dignify that with a maybe".

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Isn't the whole "the land really belongs to Eywa and she hasn't said no yet" line of thought basically the same as taking over churches by force and feeling you have every right to do so because God hasn't struck you down with lightning yet?

And if God reacted the way Eywa did to that sort of thing, no one except the truly dense would be questioning His existence.

The first time anyone in charge had even a hint that Eywa was someone who actually could theoretically own land or be talked to at all was long after Home Tree was leveled. Even assuming RDA used "it's Eywa's not yours so we're leaving it up to her" as a line (hint: they didn't) they had no reason to actually believe it. It'd be a clever piece of bullshit to try to muddle up the issue, just like it is here.

[Cesario]

Isn't the whole "the land really belongs to Eywa and she hasn't said no yet" line of thought basically the same as taking over churches by force and feeling you have every right to do so because God hasn't struck you down with lightning yet?

And if God reacted the way Eywa did to that sort of thing, no one except the truly dense would be questioning His existence.

The first time anyone in charge had even a hint that Eywa was someone who actually could theoretically own land or be talked to at all was long after Home Tree was leveled. Even assuming RDA used "it's Eywa's not yours so we're leaving it up to her" as a line (hint: they didn't) they had no reason to actually believe it. It'd be a clever piece of bullshit to try to muddle up the issue, just like it is here.

Yes it would be.

[Darth Tedious]

And people have called bullshit on it several times.

How was the mining 'inevitable' or 'needed'?

No, people have largely ignored it and gone back to "if you don't need it right this second, and if even the slightest margin of safety is present in the system, there is no possible way to justify anything but continuing to take it on the chin from the natives until you really are in a zero safety net life or death struggle for survival, and even then, I'll only dignify that with a maybe".

JUST ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION.

This has been the problem all thread. Instead of defending the key issue upon which your whole position relies, you talk shit and avoid the point.

The first time anyone in charge had even a hint that Eywa was someone who actually could theoretically own land or be talked to at all was long after Home Tree was leveled. Even assuming RDA used "it's Eywa's not yours so we're leaving it up to her" as a line (hint: they didn't) they had no reason to actually believe it. It'd be a clever piece of bullshit to try to muddle up the issue, just like it is here.

Yes it would be.

Doesn't the land belong to Eywa, and thus isn't theirs to trade away in the first place? Eywa was apparently cool with the mining right up until the Well of Souls incident.

Given that you're now calling your own arguments bullshit, I think it's time for you to make a real point or fuck off.

HOW WAS THE MINING OF UNOBTANIUM INEVITABLE OR NECESSARY?

And while you're at it, you still didn't answer my earlier question:

WHAT RIGHT DO HUMANS HAVE TO MINE ON PANDORA?

If you cannot answer either of those questions, your position is groundless and indefensible.

[Cesario]

And people have called bullshit on it several times.

How was the mining 'inevitable' or 'needed'?

No, people have largely ignored it and gone back to "if you don't need it right this second, and if even the slightest margin of safety is present in the system, there is no possible way to justify anything but continuing to take it on the chin from the natives until you really are in a zero safety net life or death struggle for survival, and even then, I'll only dignify that with a maybe".

JUST ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION.

This has been the problem all thread. Instead of defending the key issue upon which your whole position relies, you talk shit and avoid the point.

The first time anyone in charge had even a hint that Eywa was someone who actually could theoretically own land or be talked to at all was long after Home Tree was leveled. Even assuming RDA used "it's Eywa's not yours so we're leaving it up to her" as a line (hint: they didn't) they had no reason to actually believe it. It'd be a clever piece of bullshit to try to muddle up the issue, just like it is here.

Yes it would be.

Doesn't the land belong to Eywa, and thus isn't theirs to trade away in the first place? Eywa was apparently cool with the mining right up until the Well of Souls incident.

Given that you're now calling your own arguments bullshit, I think it's time for you to make a real point or fuck off.

HOW WAS THE MINING OF UNOBTANIUM INEVITABLE OR NECESSARY?

Didn't you notice that I conceeded that there was no evidence that the mineral was necessary for human survival in the film some time ago? At this point, I'm just explaining to you what position exactly I had previously been putting forward, since you still don't seem to have grasped it.

And while you're at it, you still didn't answer my earlier question:

WHAT RIGHT DO HUMANS HAVE TO MINE ON PANDORA?

The answer was "we don't have enough information to answer that question from the film". I realize you have trouble with things that can't be broken down into a binary, but I'm not going to give you a dishonest answer just because you can't fathom the real one.

If you cannot answer either of those questions, your position is groundless and indefensible.

I conceeded the main point seven pages ago. The remaining time has been bickering over details and ignoring things I've said.

[Darth Tedious]

Didn't you notice that I conceeded that there was no evidence that the mineral was necessary for human survival in the film some time ago? At this point, I'm just explaining to you what position exactly I had previously been putting forward, since you still don't seem to have grasped it.

No, everyone grasps the postion you were putting forward.
Said position is groundless and indefensible. It is a bullshit argument, and the minor points you have raised to support it have been bullshit also.
Everybody gets it, and no matter how much you explain it, people will continiue pointing out what's wrong with it because it is bullshit.
Over the last seven pages, you have continued to pull out new and fresh bullshit to try and support that postion. And people have kept shooting it all down, because it's all bullshit.

I must say though, 'twas some top-shelf trolling.

[Cesario]

Didn't you notice that I conceeded that there was no evidence that the mineral was necessary for human survival in the film some time ago? At this point, I'm just explaining to you what position exactly I had previously been putting forward, since you still don't seem to have grasped it.

No, everyone grasps the postion you were putting forward.

If that were the case, I wouldn't have to keep explaining it.

[Ryan Thunder]

Cesario, you are encountering the same problem I used to. You came to a mistaken conclusion, and upon realizing that you were mistaken, felt you needed to explain how you came to that conclusion so that people can understand that it was just a mistake. Right?

Well, thing is, generally, they don't really care about that and will think you're continuing to argue with them because you're doing anything beside abase yourself to them for your grievous error. Used to get that all the goddamn time. It's irritating as hell, but you just have to resist the urge to try and explain yourself, pretty much.

[Darth Tedious]

You don't have to keep explaining it.

No amount of explanation is going to get people past the fact that the entire argument is built on false premises.

It is bullshit.

It doesn't matter how much you explain it, people are still going to call it bullshit.

Everyone understands the argument.

No amount of explanation is going to make it any less false.

[Cesario]

Cesario, you are encountering the same problem I used to. You came to a mistaken conclusion, and upon realizing that you were mistaken, felt you needed to explain how you came to that conclusion so that people can understand that it was just a mistake. Right?

Well, thing is, generally, they don't really care about that and will think you're continuing to argue with them because you're doing anything beside abase yourself to them for your grievous error. Used to get that all the goddamn time. It's irritating as hell, but you just have to resist the urge to try and explain yourself, pretty much.

No, problem isn't that I want them to understand I made a mistake. I don't really give a rat's ass about that. I'd just preffer their mocking insults were targeting a position that I, at any point in this thread, actually held.

Frankly, it's sort of ammusing that even in victory they're this clueless.

You don't have to keep explaining it.

No amount of explanation is going to get people past the fact that the entire argument is built on false premises.

It is bullshit.

It doesn't matter how much you explain it, people are still going to call it bullshit.

Everyone understands the argument.

No amount of explanation is going to make it any less false.

You don't understand it. That's the really sad part. You handed me the script so I could find the evidence that my position was not based on the film itself, but at no point did you ever understand what point I was actually arguing.

[Simon_Jester]

How on earth do you know that they didn't understand?

Do you assume that anyone who understood your argument would automatically agree with it?

[Darth Tedious]

Cesario, are you sure you understand what you were arguing?

From page 1, from your first post ITT:

Someone seems to have forgotten that the Na'vi weren't the morally superior ones in this movie.

That was your opening sentence, and you are yet to prove this one point.

The Na'vi were warlike and confrontational from the outset. The atrocities by the humans that supposedly provoked the Na'vi to close the school weren't in the movie, or even mentioned in the movie. Going just off the movie, the Na'vi allowed the school to exist long enough to get a sense of who and what they were dealing with, then when they felt they understood enough, shut down communication, diplomacy, and mutual benefit, in favor of confrontation and smug self-superiority.

See, your whole opening argument has since been proved to be bullshit. We know why the school shut down.

The humans, on the other hand, were consistently trying to establish peaceful compromise. They felt they had a fair trade to offer, but the Na'vi never gave them a chance to present their offer.

Bullshit again. The humans had made their offer, and the Na'vi turned it down because it was worthless to them.

Extremists existed on both sides of this conflict, but no one on the Na'vi side (at least no one shown in the movie) wanted to negotiate. Everyone except military commander psycho was trying to get a peaceful settement the whole way through. And really, I think a reasonable argument could be made about the people carrying out the attack might well have been doing so under duress because they were scared shitless of commander psycho, who was already trying to murder human civilians.

Again, all bullshit. The only 'offer' the RDA wanted to negotiate was "How much will you take to leave your home?"
When they didn't get what they wanted, they took it anyway.

Why did the Na'vi accept their great white savior Jake when they rejected the scientists who were already trying to share knowledge, establish peaceful contact, and all that? Jake was a warior. And that's what continued to gain him respect in their society. The Na'vi as a culture didn't respect words, or knowledge, or restraint. They respected fighting and killing.

Bullshit.

THIS is why they accepted Jake. Eywa, THEIR LIVING GOD, told them to.
Fuck your highschool dramatics about the Na'vi choosing Jake over Grace for prom queen "BECUZ HEZ A WAWWIER!"
Eywa choose him.

I could go on dissecting your FIRST POST ITT, but it has already been done, by everyone, in great detail, for 12 pages.
Your first defence of your postion (that humans were morally superior the Na'vi) was that humanity was in danger. This was bullshit.

You even tried some bullshit about how USING CHEMICAL WEAPONS WAS A NICE THING TO DO UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES.

All to defend the bullshit idea that humanity was morally superior to the Na'vi.
When RDA the had no right to be mining there, and even less right to ask the Na'vi to give up their homes for something we didn't even need.
You flat-out refuse to even attempt to answer the most basic of moral questions about the film:
Did we have the right to mine there?
If you can't even try to answer that, how can you claim to make any sort of moral judgement on the events of the movie?

You came into this thread with a bullshit statement, built on bullshit reasoning, backed up by bullshit arguments. What is there to not understand? It's all bullshit.

[Shroom Man 777]

That just means Eywa likes professional killers over learned people who defend Na'vi children Eywa's tissues. This means Eywa is not only morally bankrupt with a skewered values system, but she is also a mean gossip girl bitch. Like, Grace Augustine was supposed to be the prom queen, but Eywa dumped a whole can of red paint on Grace just as Grace was getting on stage. But instead of going all Carrie and using pyrokinesis to ruin shit, instead we got VTOLs firebombing Home Trees and shit.

Eywa thinks she's too cool for school, but I've got a news flash for you, she isn't!

Nu-uh!

Uh-huh!

Nu-uh!

Uh-huh!

Don't go there girl! Talk to the VTOL cause the glass canopy ain't listening!

You got sass, girl!

Damn right! You mean motherfu-

Shut yo mouth!

I was only talking about Selfridge!

We can dig it!

[PeZook]

Strange that if she had it all figured out that early that she went along with Selfridge's negotiation plan in the first place, since even with the Na'vi moved out of Home Tree peacefully, the mining would have broken up the roots of the tree and damaged the neural network.

I didn't say she had it all figured out, just that she based her statement on something more than spurious last-chance bullshit made-up facts, and Selfridge should've been aware of that had he actually done his homework (as he should, seeing as the planet was so goddamned hostile. Oh, and the fact biomedical research formed a large part of the company's bottom line...)

A lot of my sentences seem to be having that effect on you. If I were to encounter a being who's entire being was being accurately summed up in every sentence they uttered about wildy differing topics, I'd be a bit awed and humbled. That seems like the sort of trait I would associate with a god.

Well, yeah, okay, it doesn't explain everything about you, just your attitude to this particular issue. I misspoke, you have a point.

You're still a fucker.

Aliens ask, humans murder every alien that tries to ask, process repeats several times across the globe, aliens murder humans wholesale, aliens are in the right.

In his breakdown of the plot, the humans made no attempt at communication, were violent towards every overture for communication, and essentially did deserve what they got. If that isn't how the plot of the film actually went (as I posited was likely the case), I obviously can't speak to those events since they were never presented.

Turns out communications between two vastly different species is difficult and might end in violence!

Mass murder is certainly easier, I can agree on that, but still...couple dozen scouts get murdered, therefore we will destroy six billion beings!

You sir are a true utilitarian, concerned about preventing the most harm to the most people!

The Polish were regularly murdering German ambasadors? I must say, I never expected to be on the side of the Nazis, but that's really something you just do not do.

The Poles were regularly murdering German ambassadors right in their Panzers after the Germans bombed Wieluń!. You could even say they issued a shoot on sight order for any uniform-wearing German spotted in their territorry!

Clearly they deserved to get themselves invaded.

You used this to argue that their warriors didn't serve the purpose that warriors transparently do serve.

Yeah, especially in that one post where I corrected a guy who said they're exclusively hunters.

Let me know when you're invested enough in this thread to actually read it. It's getting tiresome trying to separate your poor reading comprehension from your deliberate straw men.

You used this argument to say the Omaticaya are somehow morally inferior to the RDA. What didn't I understand about you bringing up the fact they had warriors?

What compromise was reached, exactly? Either the missile shield was deployed or it was not.

Poland got a part-time Patriot battery and the US scrapped European GBI altogether going with sea-based missile defence systems?

God damn, turns out there are some things you can just afford to demand and not get! But Cesario, I thought diplomacy was mostly about getting what you want or TAKING IT WITH VIOLENCE?

Just like how the particular failures of a man being executed are irrelevant to whether or not his execution is justified?

And let me beat you to the punch here: "Because I used a deliberately one-sided analogy that isn't exactly identical to the situation under discussion to illustrate a principle, clearly the only explaination is that I think that the two situations are exactly comparable, and that I am thus passing a death sentence on the entire Na'vi species." Was that about right?

Except the killer is an outlier. All you did by saying "They have warriors! They liked Jake better!" is proof the Na'Vi had a normal society, not some sort of national equivalent to a murderer.

Since this is your area of expertise, was the Polish antisemitism a useful tool used by the German high command to keep the Final Solution progressing apace in the conquored Polish territories?

Sometimes, yes.

You didn't conceed. That's why you brought up all the ways you don't believe it will work. The "concession" was just a smokescreen to keep me from addressing this point so you can play a gocha game later after I've addressed the two points you wanted me to address, thus dragging this entire exercise out further.

And if I did that, I'd get bitchslapped by everybody else.

Why should I provide evidence towards assumptions you made up in the first place, until you've even so much as agreed to the ground rules about?

I did agree on the ground rules. The only way to justify mining the Home Tree and killing the natives if they don't move is if not mining it will cause a mass die-off on Earth. And for that to be true, you must prove that:

A) Unobtainium is critical for food production on Earth, and once that's done...

B) Earth can't handle reduced unobtainium shipments resulting from mining other, smaller deposits.

Do that and I will concede the RDA was justified in their actions. Both of these are sufficient and necessary conditions. Or concede clearly. You know, unlike all 'these people' on 'my side' you keep complaining about.

Here, it's for the record, for everyone to see.

Because the lives of the miners mean nothing.

Compared to mass murder of innocents, the occasional face-arrowed miner means very little.

Especially since such a low-level conflict can still be mended diplomatically without riddling every single Omaticaya with bullets.

As a method of cutting short a drawn-out conflict that otherwise would have continued indefinately as the non-urgent, but inevidably needed mining continued apace with more people being killed throughout. I've explained this to you several times already.

And I already called bullshit on that: destroying the Home Tree killed a lot of people, and the conflict would continue because the Omaticaya would now be angry.

Shock and Awe have never, ever worked to solve a long-term conflict in the entire history of human civilization. At best the hostilities stopped briefly as the abused people moped and licked their wounds and carefully nurtured their massive grudge before picking up arms and going for another round. So, you have to shock and awe them again and again and again and again until they are a completely broken people (not even remotely accomplished by daisycuttering the soul tree) or kill every single one of them.

That's clearly better than sucking it up and accepting a lower quarterly statement!

[PeZook]

By the way, if the Omaticaya respected warriors more than scientists (which makes them repulsive ugh I think I just puked a litte at the thought! Neolithic tribesmen don't value science!), why wasn't Grace's team attacked when they went into Omaticaya territorry?

I mean, Grace was convinced the Na'Vi knew her team was there, but wasn't worried about getting an arrow to the face. Her helicopter and the mercenary guarding it weren't attacked, either.

Then when the humans blew up the home tree, the Omaticaya carried off Grace's avatar while leaving Jake's for dead.

Neytiri wanted to give Jake the arrow treatment when she spotted him alone, on the other hand.

[PeZook]

Forgive the triple post, but I really have to ask our master diplomat and strategist this question because I am very, very curious as to the answer:

Consider, what these great over-mans have to offer, in turn. They will shelter us if we vacate our world, introduce us to sciences and technologies heretofore unimaginable to our primitive minds, they will give us knowledge and understanding of the way the universe - and the other universes around it - function far beyond what we currently know. Our way of life under their benevolent guidance will be free of the troubles that plague us today. They will give us wealth, they will give us the power cosmic, they will posthumanize and transhumanize us to be gods like they.

All we have to do is to leave our world, our way of life, and everything we have lived for on Earth our entire lives, behind and watch as the whole planet - and all those who choose to stay on it - is all put to the flame.

Sounds fair, right? The great voidships open their vast maws, waiting for the cities of Earth to empty themselves into their cavernous holds, and then they shall bring us... to infinity and beyond.

What's the catch?

I mean, were you going to get to a negative at any point in this exercise?

What guarantees do we have that they will actually give us any of the stuff they promise? Who or what is going to stop them from getting rid of the savages by loading their great voidships with refugees...and voiding the atmosphere?

[Simon_Jester]

That's a generalized version of a question any 'primitive' might reasonably ask of anyone who promises them some reward in exchange for relocating. I think most of us will remember the Trail of Tears. The usual experience of low-tech, low population native societies is that everything the foreigners promise will be delivered grudgingly, late, in less quantity than promised, or not at all. Once they've got the natives in their power, they don't have an incentive to play by the rules, you see.

So the fertile land promised them to farm turns out to be rocks and sand, the schools promised to teach their children to read and write kidnap them away from their parents and beat them for speaking their native language, the agents responsible for being liaisons between the natives and the outsiders' government turn out to be a bunch of corrupt bastards who are in it to see how much money they can squeeze out of the natives by selling them rotten food and firewater, and so on.

[Darth Wong]

Because the lives of the miners mean nothing.

Compared to mass murder of innocents, the occasional face-arrowed miner means very little.

Not to mention the fact that the miners are invaders. Douchebaggio seems to be proceeding from a basic assumption that the humans have as much right to be there as the natives do, and that their respective actions should be judged irrespective of their status as invaders.

[Darth Tedious]

Not to mention the fact that the miners are invaders. Douchebaggio seems to be proceeding from a basic assumption that the humans have as much right to be there as the natives do, and that their respective actions should be judged irrespective of their status as invaders.

No, he absolutely refuses to even speculate on whether the humans have the right to be there or not.
I guess by doing so, he leaves the possibility that the humans had every right to be there open to his imagination...

[KhorneFlakes]

Hell, it should also be mentioned that Cesario thinks the Federation is a fucking utopia.

Hilarious. If the Federation of all things is a utopia, what's the Empire? I'd hate to see Cesario's definition of a dictatorship.

[Shroom Man 777]

Uh, the Empire is a nation that blows up entire planets - in the process murdering billions - to make some kind of "point". That actually makes them worse than the Nazis, by virtue of body count.

[Darth Wong]

Not to mention the fact that the miners are invaders. Douchebaggio seems to be proceeding from a basic assumption that the humans have as much right to be there as the natives do, and that their respective actions should be judged irrespective of their status as invaders.

No, he absolutely refuses to even speculate on whether the humans have the right to be there or not.

I guess by doing so, he leaves the possibility that the humans had every right to be there open to his imagination...

Actually, this approach allows him to build all of his arguments upon the assumption that they have a right to be there, without opening up that assumption for discussion. It's exactly like Bible thumpers who refuse to even discuss the question of whether the Bible is correct. They just keep making statements which assume and/or imply that it is, just as Douchebaggio keeps making statements which assume/imply that humans have the right to be there.

[Cesario]

How on earth do you know that they didn't understand?

Do you assume that anyone who understood your argument would automatically agree with it?

I admit I'm being generous in assuming they don't understand. It's possible they're just being deliberately dishonest in their construction of straw arguments that have nothing to do with my position. But either way, I take the generous position that they don't understand because they're pointing to me and demanding I prove points that have nothing to do with my position.

Cesario, are you sure you understand what you were arguing?

Fairly confident, yes.

From page 1, from your first post ITT:

Someone seems to have forgotten that the Na'vi weren't the morally superior ones in this movie.

That was your opening sentence, and you are yet to prove this one point.

It being my thesis, it's not surprising that you don't consider it proven when you're still working through the supporting arguments.

The Na'vi were warlike and confrontational from the outset. The atrocities by the humans that supposedly provoked the Na'vi to close the school weren't in the movie, or even mentioned in the movie. Going just off the movie, the Na'vi allowed the school to exist long enough to get a sense of who and what they were dealing with, then when they felt they understood enough, shut down communication, diplomacy, and mutual benefit, in favor of confrontation and smug self-superiority.

See, your whole opening argument has since been proved to be bullshit. We know why the school shut down.

And I did note that the new information about the school changed things considerably.

I've since reconsidered just how much that changes things, because of the fact that the Na'vi never bring this point up themselves even in the version where Grace does talk about it, and the fact that the RDA are still concerned about their PR image after supposedly masacring a group of children. There are elements that don't fit.

The humans, on the other hand, were consistently trying to establish peaceful compromise. They felt they had a fair trade to offer, but the Na'vi never gave them a chance to present their offer.

Bullshit again. The humans had made their offer, and the Na'vi turned it down because it was worthless to them.

The humans had made an offer.

Extremists existed on both sides of this conflict, but no one on the Na'vi side (at least no one shown in the movie) wanted to negotiate. Everyone except military commander psycho was trying to get a peaceful settement the whole way through. And really, I think a reasonable argument could be made about the people carrying out the attack might well have been doing so under duress because they were scared shitless of commander psycho, who was already trying to murder human civilians.

Again, all bullshit.

All bullshit when you discuss only one element of the paragraph you quoted.

The only 'offer' the RDA wanted to negotiate was "How much will you take to leave your home?"

Also known as "seeking a diplomatic solution" or "negotiation".

When they didn't get what they wanted, they took it anyway.

As Selfridge explained quite matter of factly to Jake, if they can't find a carrot, it'd have to be all stick. I see no reason he wasn't equally frank with the Na'vi assuming he ever got the chance to speak to them directly.

Why did the Na'vi accept their great white savior Jake when they rejected the scientists who were already trying to share knowledge, establish peaceful contact, and all that? Jake was a warior. And that's what continued to gain him respect in their society. The Na'vi as a culture didn't respect words, or knowledge, or restraint. They respected fighting and killing.

Bullshit.

THIS is why they accepted Jake. Eywa, THEIR LIVING GOD, told them to.
Fuck your highschool dramatics about the Na'vi choosing Jake over Grace for prom queen "BECUZ HEZ A WAWWIER!"
Eywa choose him.

You know, this is an interesting point, because apparently that bit of divine intervention wasn't enough to get anyone to listen when he delivers his dire prophecy of "if you don't evacuate now, the RDA will kill you all and nothing you can do will so much as inconvenience them in doing it". Apparently it was just enough to elect him prom queen.

Heck, let's look deeper into Eywa's potential motivations here. Let's assume that Eywa isn't a precog and thus doesn't know that Jake will become Torak Makto and drive the human invaders from their land. Suppose Eywa's been trying to find a way to get someone on the Na'vi side to talk to the humans, but her magic glowy dandelion seeds work best at night when all the sane humans are hiding from the nocturnal predators. So Jake gets picked because he's a dumbass who stayed out at night on Pandora. Eywa sees the oportunity to try and get the Na'vi to start listening to one of the humans because Eywa does know full well the Na'vi can't fight and hope to win, and that their current violent path is going to lead them to destruction, so she sends this sign not just about Jake but about the Sky People in general.

The signs are misread and tragedy is the inevidable result.

I could go on dissecting your FIRST POST ITT, but it has already been done, by everyone, in great detail, for 12 pages.

So you have nothing further to say that hasn't already been posted and addressed. Got it.

Your first defence of your postion (that humans were morally superior the Na'vi) was that humanity was in danger. This was bullshit.

This was based on me misremembering where I learned of the state of earth in the Avatarverse, yes.

You even tried some bullshit about how USING CHEMICAL WEAPONS WAS A NICE THING TO DO UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES.

You might want to go over that section again, because it looks like you missed how that one ended.

All to defend the bullshit idea that humanity was morally superior to the Na'vi.

Humanity was morally superior to the Na'vi. It just doesn't look like it because humanity is also technologically superior to the Na'vi. Rooting for the underdog is easy.

When RDA the had no right to be mining there, and even less right to ask the Na'vi to give up their homes for something we didn't even need.

Less than no right to even ask? Well, that would seem to be the Na'vi position, given their refusal to speak meaningfully with the human negotiators.

You flat-out refuse to even attempt to answer the most basic of moral questions about the film:
Did we have the right to mine there?

That's actually something we've been discussing from the get-go.

If you can't even try to answer that, how can you claim to make any sort of moral judgement on the events of the movie?

Because there were morally meaningful choices in the film besides "to mine or not to mine?"

You came into this thread with a bullshit statement, built on bullshit reasoning, backed up by bullshit arguments. What is there to not understand? It's all bullshit.

Tell me, what would you think of an argument you honestly didn't understand? Think hard for just a moment and posit an argument that makes no sense to you, and tell me you wouldn't just call it bullshit because you couldn't see how it progressed from A to B to C.

Strange that if she had it all figured out that early that she went along with Selfridge's negotiation plan in the first place, since even with the Na'vi moved out of Home Tree peacefully, the mining would have broken up the roots of the tree and damaged the neural network.

I didn't say she had it all figured out, just that she based her statement on something more than spurious last-chance bullshit made-up facts, and Selfridge should've been aware of that had he actually done his homework (as he should, seeing as the planet was so goddamned hostile.

So Selfridge should be able to make the exact same intuitive leaps Grace took three months to make, just by reading over a paper, in the course of his conversation with Grace where it was clear that she would stall for time even without a real discovery to present. I didn't realize you had such high regard for Selfridge's inate intelligence.

Oh, and the fact biomedical research formed a large part of the company's bottom line...)

Except biomedical research formed a very small part of the company's bottom line, what with the rediculus value that the unobtainium was commanding.

A lot of my sentences seem to be having that effect on you. If I were to encounter a being who's entire being was being accurately summed up in every sentence they uttered about wildy differing topics, I'd be a bit awed and humbled. That seems like the sort of trait I would associate with a god.

Well, yeah, okay, it doesn't explain everything about you, just your attitude to this particular issue. I misspoke, you have a point.

You're still a fucker.

Awe, I love you too, but let's not get all mushy about it.

Aliens ask, humans murder every alien that tries to ask, process repeats several times across the globe, aliens murder humans wholesale, aliens are in the right.

In his breakdown of the plot, the humans made no attempt at communication, were violent towards every overture for communication, and essentially did deserve what they got. If that isn't how the plot of the film actually went (as I posited was likely the case), I obviously can't speak to those events since they were never presented.

Turns out communications between two vastly different species is difficult and might end in violence!

So that's your excuse for a species that makes no attempt at communication and instead goes straight to the "kill it because it's different and therefore frightening"? Just so we're clear.

Mass murder is certainly easier, I can agree on that, but still...couple dozen scouts get murdered, therefore we will destroy six billion beings!

You sir are a true utilitarian, concerned about preventing the most harm to the most people!

Have to take care of your own in the face of an enemy that has proven no willingness to interact peacefully.

The Polish were regularly murdering German ambasadors? I must say, I never expected to be on the side of the Nazis, but that's really something you just do not do.

The Poles were regularly murdering German ambassadors right in their Panzers after the Germans bombed Wieluń!. You could even say they issued a shoot on sight order for any uniform-wearing German spotted in their territorry!

Clearly they deserved to get themselves invaded.

Ah, so the poor humans were so terrified by the flying saucers they decided the safest course of action was to assume they were dealing with invading Nazis and shoot, maybe planning to say the aliens were wearing uniforms when called before whatever court eventually tried them for this. It's foolproof.

You used this to argue that their warriors didn't serve the purpose that warriors transparently do serve.

Yeah, especially in that one post where I corrected a guy who said they're exclusively hunters.

Hm, wasn't you? I apologise.

Let me know when you're invested enough in this thread to actually read it. It's getting tiresome trying to separate your poor reading comprehension from your deliberate straw men.

You used this argument to say the Omaticaya are somehow morally inferior to the RDA. What didn't I understand about you bringing up the fact they had warriors?

I brought up the fact that they had warriors to demonstrate that the Na'vi knew what Jake's job description was.

What compromise was reached, exactly? Either the missile shield was deployed or it was not.

Poland got a part-time Patriot battery and the US scrapped European GBI altogether going with sea-based missile defence systems?

God damn, turns out there are some things you can just afford to demand and not get! But Cesario, I thought diplomacy was mostly about getting what you want or TAKING IT WITH VIOLENCE?

I'm sorry you never considered the possibility of loosing.

Just like how the particular failures of a man being executed are irrelevant to whether or not his execution is justified?

And let me beat you to the punch here: "Because I used a deliberately one-sided analogy that isn't exactly identical to the situation under discussion to illustrate a principle, clearly the only explaination is that I think that the two situations are exactly comparable, and that I am thus passing a death sentence on the entire Na'vi species." Was that about right?

Except the killer is an outlier.

Which matters one whit to the principle I was demonstrating why?

All you did by saying "They have warriors! They liked Jake better!" is proof the Na'Vi had a normal society, not some sort of national equivalent to a murderer.

Like I said, their society has no value for a scholor who saved their children's lives, but found it in their hearts to embrace a warrior here to learn their secrets and kill them.

Since this is your area of expertise, was the Polish antisemitism a useful tool used by the German high command to keep the Final Solution progressing apace in the conquored Polish territories?

Sometimes, yes.

I suspected, but didn't want to presume.

You didn't conceed. That's why you brought up all the ways you don't believe it will work. The "concession" was just a smokescreen to keep me from addressing this point so you can play a gocha game later after I've addressed the two points you wanted me to address, thus dragging this entire exercise out further.

And if I did that, I'd get bitchslapped by everybody else.

I don't believe you would have any difficulty getting away with this, actually.

Why should I provide evidence towards assumptions you made up in the first place, until you've even so much as agreed to the ground rules about?

I did agree on the ground rules. The only way to justify mining the Home Tree and killing the natives if they don't move is if not mining it will cause a mass die-off on Earth. And for that to be true, you must prove that:

A) Unobtainium is critical for food production on Earth, and once that's done...

B) Earth can't handle reduced unobtainium shipments resulting from mining other, smaller deposits.

Do that and I will concede the RDA was justified in their actions. Both of these are sufficient and necessary conditions. Or concede clearly. You know, unlike all 'these people' on 'my side' you keep complaining about.

Here, it's for the record, for everyone to see.

Except even when I was operating under the assumption that the human race was going to die out from not mining the mineral, I never argued that mining smaller deposits at sites other than Home Tree would not also satisfy that need. The Home Tree deposit itself was never something I considered vital to the survival of humanity, or really important in and of itself.

I argued that it made sense environmentally and in terms of stopping or slowing the attacks on humans that were already underway from whatever mining was already being done, and that by stopping those attacks it becomes less likely the humans back on Earth will decide that nuking the pompous blue space elves might not be such a horrible thing after all.

Because the lives of the miners mean nothing.

Compared to mass murder of innocents, the occasional face-arrowed miner means very little.

Except for the fact that those miners were coming home in body bags if at all, diminishing what sympathy the earth population had for the Na'vi with each one that's killed, meanwhile their numbers are adding up in a conflict that will last for so long as any human presence remains on Pandora.

Especially since such a low-level conflict can still be mended diplomatically without riddling every single Omaticaya with bullets.

How? By what means do you see that conflict coming to an end without killing either every human or every Omaticaya on the planet? Jake was everyone's great plan, and we saw how that worked out, so what is your alternative?

As a method of cutting short a drawn-out conflict that otherwise would have continued indefinately as the non-urgent, but inevidably needed mining continued apace with more people being killed throughout. I've explained this to you several times already.

And I already called bullshit on that: destroying the Home Tree killed a lot of people, and the conflict would continue because the Omaticaya would now be angry.

Shock and Awe have never, ever worked to solve a long-term conflict in the entire history of human civilization. At best the hostilities stopped briefly as the abused people moped and licked their wounds and carefully nurtured their massive grudge before picking up arms and going for another round. So, you have to shock and awe them again and again and again and again until they are a completely broken people (not even remotely accomplished by daisycuttering the soul tree) or kill every single one of them.

Except for the basic option that the Omaticaya have to simply move on, accept their defeat at the hands of the stronger warriors who just won their territory from them, and go to see if they can do better when they get up the nerve to go kill a neighboring tribe for its land and home tree.

Here's the thing about them defending their homes. Their home was gone. There was nothing to defend or retake after the destruction of Home Tree. It was only because Jake convinced them that the planet itself was in danger (and was Eywa's chosen one, and captured Torak) that they rallied with some other tribes and started a push to wipe out the humans. Whatever grudge this tribe may or may not have held and nursed on to eternity doesn't change the fact that they've got no reason to stay and kill humans except for petty revenge, because there's nothing for them to retake.

That's clearly better than sucking it up and accepting a lower quarterly statement!

Pity those statements could have been a lot higher if he didn't have to pay a private army of mercenaries to be sent across the stars to protect his miners. Obviously that expendature was because he was greedy, right?

By the way, if the Omaticaya respected warriors more than scientists (which makes them repulsive ugh I think I just puked a litte at the thought! Neolithic tribesmen don't value science!), why wasn't Grace's team attacked when they went into Omaticaya territorry?

I mean, Grace was convinced the Na'Vi knew her team was there, but wasn't worried about getting an arrow to the face.

Of course, she wasn't really there, either.

Her helicopter and the mercenary guarding it weren't attacked, either.

The helicopter and mercenary she sent back because she was so disgusted that they carried guns in the incredibly hostile alien terrain full of giant monsters.

Then when the humans blew up the home tree, the Omaticaya carried off Grace's avatar while leaving Jake's for dead.

Ah, you must mean this scene:

The strings are cut. Jake flops to the ground, limp.

Elsewhere in the smoky Hell, Grace slumps unconscious. The
crying kids pull at her. Mo'at, leading a group of
Omaticaya, comes upon the scene.

111.



She grabs the kids and pulls them away, leaving Grace's
avatar helpless in the path of the flames. She hesitates,
then --

MO'AT
(SUBTITLED)
Bring her.

You consider this a consious choice of one or the other when only one of them was found amid the wreakage.

And even then, they're considering letting her burn to death after she saves yet more of their children. Maybe they just hate their children, and what Grace has been doing to save them is grating on them.

Neytiri wanted to give Jake the arrow treatment when she spotted him alone, on the other hand.

She learned he was a warrior after that point, remember?

Forgive the triple post, but I really have to ask our master diplomat and strategist this question because I am very, very curious as to the answer:

Consider, what these great over-mans have to offer, in turn. They will shelter us if we vacate our world, introduce us to sciences and technologies heretofore unimaginable to our primitive minds, they will give us knowledge and understanding of the way the universe - and the other universes around it - function far beyond what we currently know. Our way of life under their benevolent guidance will be free of the troubles that plague us today. They will give us wealth, they will give us the power cosmic, they will posthumanize and transhumanize us to be gods like they.

All we have to do is to leave our world, our way of life, and everything we have lived for on Earth our entire lives, behind and watch as the whole planet - and all those who choose to stay on it - is all put to the flame.

Sounds fair, right? The great voidships open their vast maws, waiting for the cities of Earth to empty themselves into their cavernous holds, and then they shall bring us... to infinity and beyond.

What's the catch?

I mean, were you going to get to a negative at any point in this exercise?

What guarantees do we have that they will actually give us any of the stuff they promise? Who or what is going to stop them from getting rid of the savages by loading their great voidships with refugees...and voiding the atmosphere?

The fact that the extradimensional invaders would be wasting time and effort in doing so, if they were just going to burn the planet anyway. But yes, that's precisely the sort of Twilight Zone Twist that I was asking about in the face of so obviously good a deal. But the thing is, Shroomy is presenting it as though the deal actually offered is horrifying and monsterous in and of itself.

That's a generalized version of a question any 'primitive' might reasonably ask of anyone who promises them some reward in exchange for relocating. I think most of us will remember the Trail of Tears. The usual experience of low-tech, low population native societies is that everything the foreigners promise will be delivered grudgingly, late, in less quantity than promised, or not at all. Once they've got the natives in their power, they don't have an incentive to play by the rules, you see.

So the fertile land promised them to farm turns out to be rocks and sand, the schools promised to teach their children to read and write kidnap them away from their parents and beat them for speaking their native language, the agents responsible for being liaisons between the natives and the outsiders' government turn out to be a bunch of corrupt bastards who are in it to see how much money they can squeeze out of the natives by selling them rotten food and firewater, and so on.

You're right. Once they have the natives in their power, they don't have an incentive to play by the rules. The problem with that reasoning comes when you realize the extradimensional folks had us in their power from the beginning, so it seems a bit arbitrary for them to stop playing by the rules only after offering the lift.

Because the lives of the miners mean nothing.

Compared to mass murder of innocents, the occasional face-arrowed miner means very little.

Not to mention the fact that the miners are invaders. Douchebaggio seems to be proceeding from a basic assumption that the humans have as much right to be there as the natives do, and that their respective actions should be judged irrespective of their status as invaders.

Their respective actions should be judged irrespective of who got there first.

Hell, it should also be mentioned that Cesario thinks the Federation is a fucking utopia.

Hilarious. If the Federation of all things is a utopia, what's the Empire?

You're unclear about the status of the evil empire ruled over by an evil wizard following a religion who's central tennet is to be as evil as possible? And that blows up inhabited planets to make a point about how ruthless it is?

I'd hate to see Cesario's definition of a dictatorship.

A government under which a single individual hands down orders, or "dictates", to the population, which are treated and enforced as law.

Why was that so frightening to you?

Not to mention the fact that the miners are invaders. Douchebaggio seems to be proceeding from a basic assumption that the humans have as much right to be there as the natives do, and that their respective actions should be judged irrespective of their status as invaders.

No, he absolutely refuses to even speculate on whether the humans have the right to be there or not.

I guess by doing so, he leaves the possibility that the humans had every right to be there open to his imagination...

Actually, this approach allows him to build all of his arguments upon the assumption that they have a right to be there, without opening up that assumption for discussion. It's exactly like Bible thumpers who refuse to even discuss the question of whether the Bible is correct. They just keep making statements which assume and/or imply that it is, just as Douchebaggio keeps making statements which assume/imply that humans have the right to be there.

Ah yes, effective argumentation following a clearly thought-out plan. Obviously the propriotory domain of Bible thumbers. That's exactly where my mind goes too.