Ye Olde Hegemony

[Nero]

The difference is we're not some freaky blue cat-race.

[Icuownage]

Unobtanium was a rare substance, not Pandora-Exclusive. It was just that Pandora was a very rich source.

[archimage_a]

So it is a matter of convienance and nothing else....

 

Yeah, your argument was majorly improved with that little revelation.

[Seraphi]

Again, fair point, but I'm only going by canon. Whether or not it is absolutely vital or just sort of "It'd be cool to have, I guess" would make our opinions wildly differ.

 

And if aliens came to visit us, I think mankind would probably be happy about it, and try to work out an agreement which benefits both parties without harming us too much.

 

I mean, in the movie, had the Na'Vi agreed to it, they probably would have gotten a lot more from the deal in the long run, but they insisted that natural was best in a hippyish fashion and shunned technology. They declined the offer of expansion.

 

In short, while the navi stagnate on their rock (You could hardly call that life... ), humanity is exploring the cosmos and expanding. They had the offer, it was right there, all they needed to do was take it.

 

Again, the thing about debating this is that we all know how badly canon can screw up (Hello Star Wars), and key pieces of information here are rather iffy. Was unobtanium really vital, for instance.

 

And we have no idea whether the humans in the movie planned to help the Na'Vi and not just screw them over. I like to have a little faith in humanity, as much as I know not to, and think that we would have been at least relatively fair.

[Icuownage]

Not my argument. To be honest they probably could have spent all that research on alternatives. Or scouting for another source.

 

@Ross

 

If aliens visitied us and they were still friendly, some of the people will welcome them, a lot of the population will be shocked about this and will turn into sheep (metaphor) and then some people will hate the aliens and some will probably commit suicide, and religion will turn into a F storm, but not be disproven, but less likely to be true.

[Seraphi]

Indeed... Personally, I would welcome visitors with open arms, assuming they were friendly and not "Hey, we're gonna blow your world up so we can populate it instead"

 

Although, as humanity has countless times shown with issues like racism, we don't do well accepting people who are different.

[Icuownage]

I'd be friendly to the new alien people, would probably end up studying them to see how they work and try learn their language if I can possibly actually pronounce any of the words they use.

[archimage_a]

In short, while the navi stagnate on their rock (You could hardly call that life... ), humanity is exploring the cosmos and expanding. They had the offer, it was right there, all they needed to do was take it.

 

Reminds me of a song.

[hide]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9u5zqKvC7E[/hide]

 

You can call life on this planet "life"? Half of us push the paper around a desk to make sure the other half can not work and watch the terrible TV and Movies.

 

Whether or not it is absolutely vital or just sort of "It'd be cool to have, I guess" would make our opinions wildly differ.

Nothing is 'That Vital'...Aside from Water, Air and Food...and we clearly have all of those things.

 

And if aliens came to visit us, I think mankind would probably be happy about it, and try to work out an agreement which benefits both parties without harming us too much.

Reminds me of the song again...

We don't trust people from the next county....We have been at war more often than not with the people in the next country over the last 200 years....

I seriously doubt an alien race setting up a tube into space would go down terribly well for any of the normal people in the world...especially when our opinion of anything remotely different is that it "Isn't really life."

 

 

Was unobtanium really vital, for instance.

Clear not, if it was vital we would have done what we did to the Native Americans...shot them and then educated the surviours into being civilised...not the otherway round.

 

And we have no idea whether the humans in the movie planned to help the Na'Vi and not just screw them over. I like to have a little faith in humanity, as much as I know not to, and think that we would have been at least relatively fair.

....

OBVIOUSLY WE WERE TRYING TO HELP THEM!

The fact that they didn't want our help seems a total irrelevance!

[Seraphi]

In short, while the navi stagnate on their rock (You could hardly call that life... ), humanity is exploring the cosmos and expanding. They had the offer, it was right there, all they needed to do was take it.

 

Reminds me of a song.

[hide]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9u5zqKvC7E[/hide]

 

You can call life on this planet "life"? Half of us push the paper around a desk to make sure the other half can not work and watch the terrible TV and Movies.

 

But the determination is there. At least, it's present in the people I talk to and myself. I would love nothing more than to see the race as a whole pushing boundries and getting farther into the cosmic playground. I don't want to settle with "We're never going to colonise other planets, might as well be happy with what we have".

 

Whether or not it is absolutely vital or just sort of "It'd be cool to have, I guess" would make our opinions wildly differ.

Nothing is 'That Vital'...Aside from Water, Air and Food...and we clearly have all of those things.

 

Maybe it is the sole substance that can power some recent, important machine? Hell, the people travelling to Pandora were cryogenically frozen, so we can assume that it is at least 5 or so years away, and assuming it took several trips, between discovering the substance and going there to mine it, 15 or more years could have passed. A lot can change in 15 years, humanity could have grown to rely on it too much, just like we've done with oil right now.

 

And if aliens came to visit us, I think mankind would probably be happy about it, and try to work out an agreement which benefits both parties without harming us too much.

Reminds me of the song again...

We don't trust people from the next county....We have been at war more often than not with the people in the next country over the last 200 years....

I seriously doubt an alien race setting up a tube into space would go down terribly well for any of the normal people in the world...especially when our opinion of anything remotely different is that it "Isn't really life."

I agree with you here. The general public wouldn't like it at all, but I for one would like to see what they traded for such rights. If it's say, I don't know, FTL technology, then why not? If we were traded something for the rights to our water fairly, then I would not be angry.

 

However, the rest of the world would likely not see it that way.

 

Was unobtanium really vital, for instance.

Clear not, if it was vital we would have done what we did to the Native Americans...shot them and then educated the surviours into being civilised...not the otherway round.

That didn't really seem like an option at the time, since there wasn't a large enough human presence on the planet to make war worth fighting. It would be stupid to enter a war that would kill of 90% of the humans on the planet, even if you were sure you could win, when diplomacy was an option.

 

And we have no idea whether the humans in the movie planned to help the Na'Vi and not just screw them over. I like to have a little faith in humanity, as much as I know not to, and think that we would have been at least relatively fair.

....

OBVIOUSLY WE WERE TRYING TO HELP THEM!

The fact that they didn't want our help seems a total irrelevance!

Once again, it stems down to the "How vital was unobtainium" issue. We were trying to give them a deal which would benefit us, but also benefit them. We weren't helping them out of the goodness of our hearts, but to get something in return.

 

As a quick sidenote, we're getting rather off topic... Should we move our debate to the back room?

[archimage_a]

But the determination is there. At least, it's present in the people I talk to and myself. I would love nothing more than to see the race as a whole pushing boundries and getting farther into the cosmic playground. I don't want to settle with "We're never going to colonise other planets, might as well be happy with what we have".

When did they say that?

....Until the late 17th century we believed the Heavens were unreachable....culturally the Na whatevers are at a much earlier stage of development than we are....Is the earlier stage good or bad....No one knows!

The point is that you can't go 'Nah, they were never gonna develop space flight on their own, they were never gonna develop, they were gonna stay like that forever....'

 

 

Maybe it is the sole substance that can power some recent, important machine? Hell, the people travelling to Pandora were cryogenically frozen, so we can assume that it is at least 5 or so years away, and assuming it took several trips, between discovering the substance and going there to mine it, 15 or more years could have passed. A lot can change in 15 years, humanity could have grown to rely on it too much, just like we've done with oil right now.

Yeah...Oil really paid off well for humanity...

If we had grown too dependant on it then that is our problem not theirs.....You don't say 'I am addicted to Heroin, therefore it is ok for me to break into your house and steal your life savings to buy more Heroin because I need it.'

 

The obvious advantage to Plotpointium is that it floats, therefore you could use it to raise a whole spaceship into space, instead of using alot of oil/other now rare resources.

Or you could build floating appartments, or you could building floating farms, or solar collectors...or all of this wonderful technology which would make life easier on Earth.....NONE OF THAT IS VITAL.

Hell, if it is selling for thousands of dollars per kilogram...enough to finance a base, with alien clones and a top team of researchers and a hell of alot of troops...then it won't be used for floating apartments for the underprivalaged or whatever, it won't be used to produce cheap food or energy....it will be used so that rich people can pretend they can fly, so upper middle class people can live in the sky and spit down out common man, it will be used to create special sun kissed tomatos that are worth a hundred times a regular tomato and sold to idiots....Solar power will be ultra expensive because of the costs of unobtainium....there is no profit to be made in building free energy stations....if that was their goal then they would have turned up with a small freighter and a shovel...think about it.

 

 

I agree with you here. The general public wouldn't like it at all, but I for one would like to see what they traded for such rights. If it's say, I don't know, FTL technology, then why not? If we were traded something for the rights to our water fairly, then I would not be angry.

 

However, the rest of the world would likely not see it that way.

 

Right....So say it isn't water, say it is intelligence....They have mastered some way of harvesting intelligence...We have already agreed to a minor transaction, people who want to move on, the soon to die...those kinds of people....but the aliens have said that its simple not enough, they need higher concentrations of intelligence because all of this gathering here and there....well its expensive and if there was one place that all of the intelligent people could go, well that would be awesome....Thusly, in the middle of the nobel prizes they turn up, suck everyones brains out and carry on.

What price can we put on our intelligence?

Do we also have this intelligence harvesting device, we harvest the misfortunate and sell intelligence supplements to the well off?

Is it worth giving up all the chances we have to use our intelligence to develop new technologies, in exchange for simply being given those technologies?

 

That didn't really seem like an option at the time, since there wasn't a large enough human presence on the planet to make war worth fighting. It would be stupid to enter a war that would kill of 90% of the humans on the planet, even if you were sure you could win, when diplomacy was an option.

But the war wouldn't kill 90% of the people on the planet....We have the technology to clone them...we have the technology to create race specific biobombs....We could kill them all off, without risking a single human life....The down side would be what, exactly? We kill off a bunch of 'savages' who 'arn't really alive'? Who cares...we slaughter thousands of pigs, cows and other livestock every day.

Or why not send more ships? This is the most precious resource ever...but we can only send one ship, and we can only send just enough troops for a final showdown in which we would be successful unless one of our own joined them and was on their side in a fight between us and ALL of the tribes on the continent?

 

Once again, it stems down to the "How vital was unobtainium" issue. We were trying to give them a deal which would benefit us, but also benefit them. We weren't helping them out of the goodness of our hearts, but to get something in return.

It has little, if anything to do with That'llbehandium.

We were trying to give them something they didn't want, which we thought would benefit them, out of out conscience need to make all life like our own, and getting something we want in return....

That seems like a very one sided deal...

"Hello, I am Bob, this is a slave collar, I am your new master and I am going to be teaching you how to carry rocks from our mine because that is the universal imperative for my people, to mine every rock in the universe, why? Because we must, it is in our genes. Now, if you resist then, out of the goodness of our hearts, we will have to shock you, because whatever you will be doing will be bad. I can assure you that this will benefit you...Hell, in five or six generations, even your children will agree with us, isn't that marvalous? We are going to be improving your whole race AND getting labour to help us mine rocks forever! Its a win-win....Ah, no talking back, that is bad."

[Seraphi]

I am going to finish this here, due to it being 6:35 in the morning, and whichever points I next make are likely to end up making me look stupid due to tiredness.

 

That said, it was fun, and although my views haven't really changed, it was still a learning experience, so thanks for that.

[archimage_a]

Kk, good debate. :thumbsup:

 

Oh, and:

[media]http://users.aber.ac.uk/lug9/hege/lol.mp3[/media]

For when Lol simply isn't enough.

http://users.aber.ac.uk/lug9/hege/lol.mp3

[Jehosaphat]

Kk, good debate. :thumbsup:

 

Oh, and:

[media]http://users.aber.ac.uk/lug9/hege/lol.mp3[/media]

For when Lol simply isn't enough.

http://users.aber.ac.uk/lug9/hege/lol.mp3

I opened that and switched tabs, expecting to hear a song about debating or something.

 

Instead, I get maniacal laughter.

 

Archi, please don't post those things at this time of night, I nearly hit my head on the ceiling.

[archimage_a]

Hehe, something feels wrong with reposting the link as the responce, though it would be a perfect moment for it :grin:

 

 

 

Anyway, sorry about your head. I did mark it as lol, so you might have a clue before you opened it =P

[Nero]

You should just post this:

http://5z8.info/bombbuilding_g4i8c_startdownload

as the link next time

[The_Mather1]

Avatar: decent CGI, horrendously overdone storyline. I mean really. How many times are moviemakers going to rip off Pocahontas before people get tired of it?

If you think about it it's pretty similiar to Tarzan too.

[Retech]

Maybe that's because Tarzan is just Pocahantas except Tarzan is a jungle folk instead of a befundled white settler. :thumbup:

[Earth]

yo, on elast thing on the topic of the Avatar movie, from what i gathered, the humans were there because wahtever the hell they were mining was funding their projects on pandora. now, lets take a look see here, in my relativley unbiased look from rosses mega human outlook. the converted dude who turned into a Na'Vi said that his home planet, Earth, had been stririped off all tis recources and left a baren and dying world. and, they were using the same method of living on a planet that they were doing on earth.. which would have left a really great eco system with marvelous amounts of life dead, and barren, like Earth had become. after that, who knows what they would go to next to do the same, [bleep]ing thing. see my point?

[The_Mather1]

What he said was that there were no plants left, and that the world was dying as in being overly poluted.

It was also previously said that the unobtainium was going to replace their dependancy on oil (and sold for a $1,000,000/kg.

[Retech]

Mather. Isn't it possible that due to inflation, a million dollars is pocket change for a five year old at that point?

 

-----

 

For some of the big battles, I may not list every single unit you have because there may be twenty of them. No doubt, they will be factored into the calculation.

 

-----

 

Part one of the war has been completed. Unfortunately, everything takes place almost simultaneously, so I can't really release just one. :lol:

[Retech]

Ermmm, I sorta forgot what an Ashrak is...again.

 

 

Sorry about that. Could you PM that to me quickly? I'll be on a break for the next hour, so there's plenty of time. I also need their cost. Basically any ally that knows can PM me as well.

[Nexaduro]

And if aliens came to visit us, I think mankind would probably be happy about it, and try to work out an agreement which benefits both parties without harming us too much.

We've launched nukes into space just to see what would happen... Don't you think some group of trigger-happy bunkernuts out there would try to initiate a conflict? And there's no saying what the aliens would expect in terms of hospitality. Hope to god they're not a hivemind, 'cause they might just launch into full-scale war because someone tripped a servant.

[Nexaduro]

Mather. Isn't it possible that due to inflation, a million dollars is pocket change for a five year old at that point?

Maybe that's why the world died, they cut down all the trees to make money instead of doing the smart thing and changing to a different kind of currency...

[Icuownage]

I think it was Mather's elite ninja unit, I can't remember what it did though and I don't think he wants it posted here.

[Retech]

PMED! :)