FaxModem1 wrote:Except, we saw Bester's answer to the trolley problem. Everyone who isn't Carolyn < Carolyn.
You have no evidence of that, and have zero idea how human psychology works, do you? When people make decisions, they rationalize those decisions so they can sleep at night. You also missed my point.
Bester has an ego the size of Mars, but he's been living for others for 60 years in the show. He's in an arranged marriage with a wife who doesn't love him, who he doesn't love. There are precisely two people he's ever loved, one of whom was murdered/forced to commit suicide (his mentor, not romantic but filial), and both of these individuals were as a teenager.
I say this because that's the context for him. So after 60 years of effectively being alone, not letting anyone else in, not making yourself vulnerable to anyone ever. For that long. How do you think you'd respond if you finally loved someone and they were taken from you?
That's why I asked how you are with those trolley problems. You know what happens in trolley problem experiments? Most people take the utilitarian option so long as everyone is faceless and they just have to pull a lever. But you ask them to shove someone over a bridge to block the train (they are very very fat in these scenarios) and suddenly people have trouble. Put a loved one on the tracks, and they suddenly start running large groups of people over.
This is normal human behavior. So unless you are willing to call just about everyone evil... you don't actually have a point.
This means that if he had to sacrifice all those poor souls taken to be used as spare parts for the Shadows to fix Carolyn, he would do so. This is why at the end of season 4, when he's talking to Sheridan, he only really cares if Carolyn made it out okay
Because *gasp* she's the one he cares about on a personal level. Horror! Shock! Are the families of terrorism victims terrible people for only inquiring about their loved ones and not necessarily wringing their hands over people they don't know?
How about this: Sheridan requires a quid pro quo to do anything to actually help all those people, and even after that uses them as weapons and kills a bunch of them. Unlike his soldiers, they didn't sign on for any of it. They don't consent to take that risk at all. At least Black Omega pilots know they are at risk and might die, and accept that risk. They KNOW they might be sacrificed. They know they might be
You're right, commercial telepaths are all right people, as they like making friends with mundanes, and just consider it a trade skill they have.
You're speaking from ignorance again. No. They don't. Telepathy isn't just a trade skill you dumbass. It's a part of who they are the same way being gay is for us. Or the way being black is for a black person. It matters to them. Moreso, because they are not actually integrated into mundane culture.
Look at Harriman Gray from "Eyes". His views are pretty typical and he isn't a commercial telepath, he's a P10 military teep.
The Psi Cops are the Supremacists of the bunch
Really? You base that on what? Two people? Out of several thousand. Nice generalization!
those at Psi Cop HQ. But they don't have to be that way.
Really? And what do any of them say or do that indicates this to you? That they need to make sure the Mundanes see everything inside the Corps is okay so they don't stick their nose in where they're not wanted? Really? How is that bad? Mundanes have the power of life and death over every telepath. Internal rules like that are basic self-defense. Tell me, does it annoy you when straight people criticize the gay community or try to dictate what our cultural norms should be? When they see one gay person acting badly and decide we're all like that? Now dial that up to 20, because in the B5 universe, telepaths have Zero legitimate political power and no control over their own destiny. They don't even have control over the curriculum used to teach their children.
Jesus fucking christ. You say these things and you convince me you didn't actually read my megaposts (here or on facebook) but instead broke your nose with your own knee spasms.
For one, mundanes vs telepaths isn't a zero sum game.
No, it isn't. But telepaths are held under the Nuremberg Laws. You cross that bridge once you're out of the fucking ghetto.
Having a cultural attitude like that of the Minbari towards their telepaths, as that of gifted helpers, would do wonders for relations. Or more of a, 'We can coexist' mentality.
So you DID just ignore my megapost on the history of the Psi Corps' formation. You are literally blaming telepaths for their own ghettoization. I am going to say this exactly once.
THE PSI CORPS EXISTS BECAUSE MUNDANDES MANDATED IT. MUNDANES WROTE ALL THE LAWS AND ALL INTERNAL POLICIES AND ENFORCE THEM AT GUN POINT. THE PSI CORPS CULTURE ADAPTED TO THIS.
But let's talk about the Minbari for a second. Telepaths still exist to serve mundanes. Minbari culture basically pigeonholes them into being itinerant monks who exist to serve and at the sufferance of, mundanes. They are still effectively an underclass.
This is why the Corps from Crusade works so much better, as individuals like Harriman Gray can go after their dreams without having to be forced to work as Internal Affairs.
You know how many telepaths were involved in crafting the new laws? Zero. You know what those new laws are?
Most jobs are still closed to telepaths. They can join the military, sure, but they are still discriminated against freely. The Psi Corps is gone, completely disbanded, so they don't have a culture or society of their own anymore at all. That was taken from them. There are no more communities of telepaths where they can simply *be* without having to constantly suppress their own senses.
When it comes privacy, they were on the honor system before. If a telepath accidentally picked up someone's surface thoughts, all they had to do was not mention it or act on it at all. NOW they are subject to twice-yearly compliance scans and get punished if they know things they shouldn't. The law is written so that politically inconvenient telepaths (like Matheson) can be removed from their positions, because no telepath is ever innocent.
The Corps is the one wanting stronger telepaths, literally raping them to make them stronger, and cutting off any prior access they have with their families.
Mundane policies, enforced at gun point. The selective breeding program (including "enforcement") was cooked up by mundanes. And remember, compliance is enforced at gun point. If the Psi Corps stopped complying with EA law, things get really bad for telepaths. They have no due process rights, so the Director can simply order them killed.
Also, the Corps does not cut off family access. First off, the requirement that telepaths be raised in the Corps is a policy written by Mundanes. The Psi Corps has no say in that, and never did. That includes telepaths born in the Corps. Second, for Mundane and Telepath parents, visits are permitted. Kids can go home for holidays and there are visit days on sundays. There are Psi Corps schools and other facilities scattered all over EA space, including most major cities on earth. TeepTown in Geneva is just the first one and serves as Psi Corps HQ.
If the Mundane parents don't visit, that's on them.
Again, where is the Sheridan bids for telepath slaves scene from season 3?
Nice strawman you're burning.
If he needed telepaths so desperately to fight the Shadows, why doesn't he just buy them by the bushel?
Probably because if he knew about it, he'd balk at slave-trading. Doesn't mean he's going to do anything about it. There are 20-45 million slaves in the world right now. How often does that come up? How much do you think about the fact that much of the chocolate you eat is made from cocoa that is grown by slave labor?
There's also the question of why the telepaths just take it. If they aren't being confined by Psi Corps rules, why are they openly going into the arms of slavers? Those kind of thoughts being broadcast by their potential slavers should send them red flags that they can happily walk out of using their telepathic powers.
You'd be surprised. It's easy to hide that sort of thing if the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Sympathetic UR agent arranges for a telepath to get a job with a corporation performing illegal scans. Whatever. Telepath gets there, they're not being paid, and they live in a concrete box. No money means they'll have a hard time escaping.
Most telepaths, even those raised in the Corps, are not trained in attack probes either. It simply wouldn't occur to the average P5 to kill someone with their mind, and even if it did, there are more mundanes. When she was being attacked by that Free Mars dude, Talia could have scragged his brain. It simply didn't occur to her to do it because she was never trained for it, and she doesn't know what to attack.
Lyta knows how to do it because her original internship was with Metapol, and they expect that even their back-line profilers and the like might come under attack. Harriman can do it because... Military Teep. Talia, not so much.
Telepathic slaves doesn't really fit the Babylon 5 setting without bringing a host of problems and inconsistencies.
That's only because you are not reading the very much cannon novels.
Which isn't the group we saw in the Underground Railroad. We saw a group of former Psi Corps trained telepaths who were very capable at telepathic tricks. Enough that they could at least be aware that they were in danger from any potential slavers.
Again, not necessarily. Golmar Kuhn (the little person) probably could. The P11 likely could. We don't know about anyone else.
A P5 can scan someone until they stroke out, but that's really obvious and they're vulnerable while they do it. A P5 can also see through one person's eyes, but they have to be familiar enough with the nervous system to do it, or figure it out through trial and error.
It isn't until someone's a P8 or so that a telepath becomes a nightmare for mundanes to deal with, and that's only if they know how. A lot of telepaths don't, and there are still countermeasures like cutouts that can be used.
