She right?

She right?

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yeah

yes

Yes.

Of course, but only if your dog comes in 10mm

The only people with dogs sufficiently trained to be useful for bear-baiting are people who have long ago come to see working animals as tools, not pets. This isn't to diminish their relationship or imply they mistreat their animals - in fact I think a working animal well used by its master is perhaps a more meaningful relationship than that of a dumb lapdog sitting in the lap of a dumb consumer pig sitting in the lap of his couch - but it is to point out that sentimentality over animals is a luxury born from not actually needing animals to perform any of the tasks that animals are useful for. Namely: dangerous ones.

Note that in this analogy, the dog is humanity and "you" are the Council, not the other way around. A lot of people seem to misunderstand that somehow.

I don't know, ask this guy.
youtube.com/watch?v=kboRIizb6GE

Also, the dog is wearing a vest.

Alt-right, by the looks of it.

muslims hate dogs so it's easy to see why she would say that.

You earn one internet, good sir

Yeah, right out of my party lmao

>not saving your dog
what a coward, sad that you can't let her and kaidan die at the same time in ME

>if you're fighting a bear
maybe don't do that

No fuck you pic related faget.
You and your dog fuck up that bear.
Our ancestors use to fuck up MAMMOTHS.
And your faggy ass can't even kill a bear?

not surprised this shit character says something shit

Might have been easier to swallow if not for the "as much as you love your dog, it isn't human"-part. Can make one not want to see her point.

I wonder what she'd have to say about me picking literally any xeno party member over her worthless ass.
>Introducing a party member as running from her squad mid-firefight

i kill her every time because of this

anyone have the video talking about relativistic kill vehicles

#justdumbgruntthings. This is why I'm saving the human biotic instead of your dumb ass

For the longest time I thought that was blood. Thank you for clarifying user.

I'd probably die trying to get me and my doggo out of there.

The mod you're using to change Ashley's face isn't human, OP.

I don't want a threesome with my dog. Then again, I'm not Canadian.

Everyone in this thread would condemn their dog to death without the slightest hesitation if it meant living.

Yeah, she is right. It's called national self-interest. The turian government is not going to put their own people and society at risk for the benefit of humanity. Or the benefit of any other species.

Similarly the United States is not going to put the interests of Panama ahead of its own and vice versa.


People who don't understand her analogy are naive, uniformed, and probably stupid.

>not killing a bear with your bare hands
>not living up to C. Dale Petersen
Pathetic

yeah no shit, anyone who wouldn't is mentally ill

I'd do that with a person too

I don't get her argument. You use what you must to not die. That's how survival works.

...

I'm glad I left her on Virmire
Worst squad member

>Sup Forums still fundamentally misunderstands things said in Mass Effect, of all games

It sounds like you get her argument exactly, so why do you think you don't get it? She uses a dog/human comparison to illustrate that the "other", while loved and valued, is still going to be valued less than yourself in life or die scenario.

i'd fight the bear

her argument is that humans only view other humans as equals, aliens whilst intelligent ultimately are not "humans" to humans

Her argument is this.

If you were fighting a bear alongside another human and because of reasons not explained in the rhetorical question, only one of you could live, there would be some consideration over who that would be. It's possible one person might sacrifice themselves to save the other. A soldier might save a scientist, a man might save a fertile woman, etc. because they believed that person is more useful to the species in the long run.

In the case of a non-human, which in this extended metaphor Ashley represents with a dog, there is no decision to make. You would let the dog die because the dog is not human and you will always value your species over another.

So she's arguing that with relations between two different species there is no way one would choose extinction for the sake of another, it's not possible. That species would have never survived and evolved intelligence were that the case.

Tldr; the council is going to betray humanity shepard you dummy something something tennyson

exactly

You are simultaneously over- and underestimating people so badly it's hilarious

We had this thread about a week ago. Yes she's right.

Dogs are lesser than humans, their lives are worth less. However, dogs aren't "intelligent" so her argument isn't free of flaws, but the point she's trying to express is correct; you put humans, your own species, first.

>Tldr; the council is going to betray humanity shepard

Ash was always right.

Nah, he's right. I get it, people love their dogs, I love mine, too. But if you actually let yourself get torn apart by a bear to keep your dog alive you're a fucking retard.

what kind of dog are we talking about here? if it's a caucasian shephard dog, a breed of dog that was bred specifically to fight bears, i'd join the fight
if it's a chihuahua i'd run away as fast as i could

I won't let this fucker die because of me.
If he dies I have nothing else to live for

youtube.com/watch?v=ayNESV_JGCY

The difference is my dog and I knew our roles. His was a protector. If I was in danger he would sacrifice everything to protect me. That was the compact. I loved him and now he's gone. He was a good dog.

I went out later that week and shot every goddamn moose I could find.

No, that is not her arguments. She's not speaking about individuals.

Oh my god, 10 years on and I STILL have to explain this to people.

Do you not understand ANYTHING about international relations? That's what she's talking about. She's speaking broadly about the races of the galaxy as a whole, who are ordered into governments based on their species. Each government, thus each species, is going to act in its own self interest. Their own survival is paramount to them, not ours. That doesn't mean they are against us surviving or thriving, but it means if they have to choose one or the other between themselves and us they will choose themselves. Thus why humanity needs to itself keep its own best interests first and foremost and not surrender its autonomy to the Council.

The Normandy, being a state of the art Alliance vessel, and crewed in part by non-human, non-Alliance personnel, is also a political tool and strategic asset. It's reasonable to worry about Garrus, Tali, Wrex, or Liara could be used to gather useful intel on the vessel by the foreign governments they are citizens of. Not out of any malicious intent towards humanity necessarily, but merely to strengthen their own political and military bargaining power, which is a negative for us considering influence is a zero-sum game.

you could just buy another dog

Alright, I'm going to be honest, I agree with Ash, but if I had THAT fucking beast, yeah... I might try to find some sharp shit to stab the bear with.

stick > automatic rifle confirmed once again
cdan't win against the stick

What about krogans?

Her analogy falls apart when you realize how many people have risked their lives for, and actually died trying to save their dogs. Humans aren't always motivated by rational self-interest.

youtube.com/watch?v=_LQoXmSrsL4

...

tl;dr: Asari put Asari first, Turians put Turians first, Salarians put Salarians first etc.

It is not immoral, or a sign of hatred for other species for humanity to do the same.

>But if you actually let yourself get torn apart by a bear to keep your dog alive you're a fucking retard.

Retarded yes, but those people do exist. Plenty of people have killed themselves this way, trying to save their animal and dooming themselves in the process (not any bear cases I can think of though).

The real problem here is that people take her metaphor way too literally.

only if you're a retard that isn't a commando with permanent master immunity

>It's reasonable to worry about Garrus, Tali, Wrex, or Liara could be used to gather useful intel on the vessel by the foreign governments they are citizens of. Not out of any malicious intent towards humanity necessarily, but merely to strengthen their own political and military bargaining power, which is a negative for us considering influence is a zero-sum game.

For example...

We don't actually know how the Migrant Fleet got this technology, but it is very interesting, no? It makes sense. They have motivation. So does Tali. This technology was of great benefit for them and if we were in their place we'd do anything we had in order to obtain it as well.

However consider what the cost of humanity might have been. Rather than having this technology stolen from us, which gains us nothing, we could have instead traded it in return for something else. We'd have better bargaining power with the quarians if we had more to offer them that they needed. Whatever the means were, the quarians obtaining this tech without us negotiating it was a net loss for the Systems Alliance and thus the human species.

Agreed. It is just biology. An organism that doesn't put its own survival first, or that of its offspring (which can extend outward to more distantly related relatives or members of the same species), is not one that will survive for long.

A species doesn't become dominant over a planet and attain space travel by being subservient to another.

Here's a good quote about the topic: (next post)

Haha, I laughed at this.

>Tali complains about negative stereotypes
>shares confidential human (and Turian, to a lesser extent) military design secrets with her people

You always have to remember how humans were introduced to the galaxy: the Turians started killing a bunch of them for doing something they weren't aware was wrong or dangerous.

Their suspicious view of aliens may not always be justified, but it is understandable.

>not fighting side by side with your dog against the bear
its all or nothing

It's literally what the Alien races do at the beginning of ME3

Shepard has to solve everyone else's problems before they'll even lift a finger for Humanity.

When we put our heads together and tried to list everything we could say with certainty about other civilizations, without having actually met them, all that we knew boiled down to three simple laws of alien behavior:

THEIR SURVIVAL WILL BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN OUR SURVIVAL.

If an alien species has to choose between them and us, they won't choose us. It is difficult to imagine a contrary case; species don't survive by being self-sacrificing.
WIMPS DON'T BECOME TOP DOGS.

No species makes it to the top by being passive. The species in charge of any given planet will be highly intelligent, alert, aggressive, and ruthless when necessary.
THEY WILL ASSUME THAT THE FIRST TWO LAWS APPLY TO US.

We ask that you try just one more thought experiment. Imagine yourself taking a stroll through Manhattan, somewhere north of 68th street, deep inside Central Park, late at night. It would be nice to meet someone friendly, but you know that the park is dangerous at night. That's when the monsters come out. There's always a strong undercurrent of drug dealings, muggings, and occasional homicides.

It is not easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. They dress alike, and the weapons are concealed. The only difference is intent, and you can't read minds.

Stay in the dark long enough and you may hear an occasional distance shriek or blunder across a body.

How do you survive the night? The last thing you want to do is shout, "I'm here!" The next to last thing you want to do is reply to someone who shouts, "I'm a friend!"

What you would like to do is find a policeman, or get out of the park. But you don't want to make noise or move towards a light where you might be spotted, and it is difficult to find either a policeman or your way out without making yourself known. Your safest option is to hunker down and wait for daylight, then safely walk out.

There are, of course, a few obvious differences between Central Park and the universe.

There is no policeman.

There is no way out.

And the night never ends.

I didn't like watching how Mass Effect went from grey area to ebil cerbersus pro-human nationals r bad mmkay. Renegade went from realistic view to psychopath and Paragon went from idealist to literal saint.
Bioware is TRASH
STILL MAD

That's a super old pasta but a good one.

>I think everyone practice realism therefore I must practice realism
Really makes me think

Even though BioWare presented them as "hurr durr, irredeemably evil" I was actually somewhat 'proud' that a group of human "extremists" were able to fuck everybody's shit up so badly.

If it was an option (as it should've been) to ally with a non-indoctrinated Illusive Man on your own terms I'd have done it in a heartbeat.

I see no examples of the governments in Mass Effect doing anything else.

Space will be the ultimate cold war. The universe is highly destructive and our nations/races/planets are far, far apart. Methods of destruction will merely begin at planet wide catastrophe.
So much as a sneeze and you alert yourself to the dark reaches thousands of years older than you, that don't want to take a chance, because what could you ever offer.
Space is truly manifest destiny. This getting along with aliens crap will be the end of man.

>Even though BioWare presented them as "hurr durr, irredeemably evil" I was actually somewhat 'proud' that a group of human "extremists" were able to fuck everybody's shit up so badly.

Why? That was just retarded writing on BioWare's part, in multiple ways. Especially them suddenly having a military force that could take on the asari and turians. What the fuck.

Is-ought senpai. Also I am not so much as critiquing the game's portrayal of IR as I am critiquing your argument for it. Your analogy of Central Park carries too much implications to really argue your case

This is pretty much on the same level as food analogies.
The difference between a dog and a human is fucking enormous compared to the difference between a sapient, space-faring race of aliens and a human. Also, the only reason I'd sic my dog on the bear is to survive, because there's literally no way I'd be able to take on a bear without any weapons; if I was armed, I would fight the bear to try and protect my dog. Not to mention that running away from a bear is stupid and would get you killed anyways, but she's already clearly a dipshit who can't come up with anything better than the equivalent of a food analogy so I wouldn't expect her to know that.

The entirety of 3 was garbage. Cerbs was thrown together with a second rate slush fund from humans, and it was used up on one ship, for one guy, who was fucking dead. Now they're the biggest threat to Shep because the writes drew evil out of their views and ran with it.

Of course she's right about the council, Humanity's uplifting was an accident. They found Protean tech before any of the council species could acquire it, and many of the already spaceborne species believe Humanity isn't ready for the responsibilities that come with the freedom of space travel.

Damn near any organisation would fuck over Humanity if they'd profit from it, they're not natural biotics like Asari, Turians are a greater military power, and Salarians are greater innovators.

It always bothered me that humans were singled out in the game if they were human 'nationalists'. Despite the fact that we saw examples of species-first organizations that were treated as good guys. Even groups like the salarian STG that do really shady, frankly illegal shit.

Then there is the whole fact that the games want to glorify the Council and their Spectres. A Council that refuses to even consider admission to most species and has maintained the hegemony of the big three for thousands of years. That restricts the sovereignty of "associate" races but fails to protect them. That employs secret agents with a broad mandate to "protect galactic stability" (keep us in charge) and whom have the legal right to do ANYTHING. The Council doesn't even provide oversight of the Spectres. They specifically say that they don't like to get involved in the details of Spectre operations. They don't want to know what you're doing or why... as long as it benefits them and maintains the status quo. It's why they dragged their feet on Saren even when it looked like he might have instigated a geth attack on a human colony that killed thousands.

They even seized a planet that the quarians discovered and threatened to annihilate the settlements they'd made on it all because the quarians started settling people before they had finished filling out all the right paper work.

The Council talks about wanting to prevent wars and genocide, yet when the quarian species was being exterminated by the geth they did nothing. They let 99% of their race die and their civilization disappear and then left the geth alone to develop into an even more severe threat centuries later. Rogue AI's that had destroyed and entire species.

They used the krogan as tools and nearly drove them to extinction too. When the batarians were no longer useful they were tossed aside and when humanity was in peril they were left to dangle. First at the hands of the geth and then the Collectors.

That damn little bitch!
I'll make sure that that quarian in me2 get tortured by Cerberus, that the truth about her father is told, and that the whole flotilla is destroyed on my next playthrough

You aren't really making any sense. I wish you'd elaborate.

That's exactly the point, it's expressed multiple times throughout the series "the species of the galaxy are taken aback at how dedicated the humans are to achieve a modern standard of military forces", our strength is our ingenuity and restlessness. For example, humans were the first to introduce "aircraft carriers" as a way to get around the dreadnought limit, we beat back the Turains despite being massively behind, Mordin expresses that the Salarians recognize that if the Krogan got out of line the "humans and Turians would destroy them utterly", and the other races are afraid of humans, viewing them, and the Alliance as "a sleeping giant"

When we set our minds to it our military, scientific achievements etc. can easily equal, if not surpass the other species. Read the codex entries throughout the series, this has always been expressed.

No. That's the pansy tactic.
huckberry.com/journal/posts/man-kills-grizzly-with-hands-and-teeth

Some old Ausfag died by putting his hands between a shitty jack russel and a brown snake

Dumbarse died in under an hour

It's worse than that. ME2 states that the Lazarus Project to ressurrect Shepard and the construction of the Normandy SR2 consumed a majority of Cerberus' resources. Then on top of that you have their losses suffered during Lazarus, the derelict Reaper, project Firewalker, and Project Overlord. THEN you have their losses in Mass Effect: Retribution which takes place about six months later. In that the turians, with Anderson's help, arrest dozens of Cerberus operatives throughout the galaxy, seize and shut-down their front companies and bank accounts, and attack and destroy several secret Cerberus bases, killing or capturing all personnel inside. Even the Illusive Man barely escapes being captured/killed.

Oh, mind you, that's not counting their losses in ME1 if Shepard did that quest-line.


Through all of that... somehow in ME3 they turn up with a galaxy conquering military.

They should have been bit players in ME3 with frankly, hardly any role or screen presence at all. Just some optional briefings from TIM and then at the very end maybe they appear with a commando force to make some power play depending on your decisions.

>not knowing about is-ought problem
Your essential argument for IR realism is that everyone is doing it therefore you ought to do it. But there is a huge gap between what is and what you ought to do that you did not justify. Just because eating shit is natural/popular/traditional etc etc doesn't mean you ought to do it.

It's like I said. The dichotomy of bioware needed a big budget bad guy, so they went for space nazis using Cerb because nationalism is bad xd.

Any race advanced enough to make it into space that decides to just obliterate any planetary system at the first sign of evidence of advanced alien life would have killed themselves far before being able to expand their influence to the stars.

Well, to be fair ME1's explanation of Cerberus was retconned; it's stated that Cerberus is/was an "Alliance Black Ops" organization gone rogue, come ME2 we know that's not actually the case.

So ME2 Cerberus and ME1 Cerberus literally aren't the same organization.

>Your essential argument for IR realism is that everyone is doing it therefore you ought to do it.

What the fuck are you talking about? Do you actually believe international actors behave in ways that are not beneficial first and foremost to themselves (or at the very least those who control them)?

I did not actually provide the full quote from the passage in the book, "The Killing Star". Here is the part I left out: (next post)

You know this because the handful of space faring races you know are kind people?

The great silence (i.e. absence of SETI signals from alien civilizations) is perhaps the strongest indicator of all that high relativistic velocities are attainable and that everybody out there knows it.

The sobering truth is that relativistic civilizations are a potential nightmare to anyone living within range of them. The problem is that objects traveling at an appreciable fraction of light speed are never where you see them when you see them (i.e., light-speed lag). Relativistic rockets, if their owners turn out to be less than benevolent, are both totally unstoppable and totally destructive. A starship weighing in at 1,500 tons (approximately the weight of a fully fueled space shuttle sitting on the launchpad) impacting an earthlike planet at "only" 30 percent of lightspeed will release 1.5 million megatons of energy -- an explosive force equivalent to 150 times today's global nuclear arsenal... (ed note: this means the freaking thing has about nine hundred mega-Ricks of damage!)

I'm not going to talk about ideas. I'm going to talk about reality. It will probably not be good for us ever to build and fire up an antimatter engine. According to Powell, given the proper detecting devices, a Valkyrie engine burn could be seen out to a radius of several light-years and may draw us into a game we'd rather not play, a game in which, if we appear to be even the vaguest threat to another civilization and if the resources are available to eliminate us, then it is logical to do so.
The game plan is, in its simplest terms, the relativistic inverse to the golden rule: "Do unto the other fellow as he would do unto you and do it first."...

I'm sorry, user, but you're an idiot if you think any people could be both united in purpose yet belligerent and paranoid enough to blast away any and every sign of alien life in the pursuit of self preservation.
They'd kill themselves off through their own home planet wars, if not civil wars between multiple planets of their own.

Your thinking still seems a bit narrow. Consider several broadening ideas:
1. Sure, relativistic bombs are powerful because the antagonist has already invested huge energies in them that can be released quickly, and they're hard to hit. But they are costly investments and necessarily reduce other activities the species could explore. For example:
Dispersal of the species into many small, hard-to-see targets, such as asteroids, buried civilizations, cometary nuclei, various space habitats. These are hard to wipe out.
But wait -- while relativistic bombs are readily visible to us in foresight, they hardly represent the end point in foreseeable technology. What will humans of, say, two centuries hence think of as the "obvious" lethal effect? Five centuries? A hundred? Personally I'd pick some rampaging self-reproducing thingy (mechanical or organic), then sneak it into all the biospheres I wanted to destroy. My point here is that no particular physical effect -- with its pluses, minuses, and trade-offs -- is likely to dominate the thinking of the galaxy.
2. So what might really aged civilizations do? Disperse, of course, and also not attack new arrivals in the galaxy, for fear that they might not get them all. Why? Because revenge is probably selected for in surviving species, and anybody truly looking out for long-term interests will not want to leave a youthful species with a grudge, sneaking around behind its back...

>What the fuck are you talking about?
Your justification for realism is poor since it is based what is.

>Do you actually believe international actors behave in ways that are not beneficial first and foremost to themselves
No. But again just because they are doing this doesn't mean they should continue to do this

YOU SURE SHOWED 'EM BILLY

test

I agree with most parts of points 2, 3, and 4. As for point 1, it is cheaper than you think. You mention self-replicating machines in point 3, and while it is true that relativistic rockets require planetary power supplies, it is also true that we can power the whole Earth with a field of solar cells adding up to barely more than 200-by-200 kilometers, drawn out into a narrow band around the Moon's equator. Self-replicating robots could accomplish this task with only the cost of developing the first twenty or thirty machines. And once we're powering the Earth practically free of charge, why not let the robots keep building panels on the Lunar far side? Add a few self-replicating linear accelerator-building factories, and plug the accelerators into the panels, and you could produce enough anti-hydrogen to launch a starship every year. But why stop at the Moon? Have you looked at Mercury lately? ...

Dr. Wells has obviously bought into the view of a friendly galaxy. This view is based upon the argument that unless we humans conquer our self-destructive warlike tendencies, we will wipe out our species and no longer be a threat to extrasolar civilizations. All well and good up to this point.

But then these optimists make the jump: If we are wise enough to survive and not wipe ourselves out, we will be peaceful -- so peaceful that we will not wipe anybody else out, and as we are below on Earth, so other people will be above.
This is a non sequitur, because there is no guarantee that one follows the other, and for a very important reason: "They" are not part of our species.

Meh, that's not exactly true, that's like arguing that empires that are hostile to foreigners they encountered could never exist.

A militaristic and openly hostile to outsiders species IS possible, is it guaranteed? No. Even common? Likely not, but it is possible.

Before we proceed any further, try the following thought experiment: watch the films Platoon and Aliens together and ask yourself if the plot lines don't quickly blur and become indistinguishable. You'll recall that in Vietnam, American troops were taught to regard the enemy as "Charlie" or "Gook," dehumanizing words that made "them" easier to kill. In like manner, the British, Spanish, and French conquests of the discovery period were made easier by declaring dark- or red- or yellow-skinned people as something less than human, as a godless, faceless "them," as literally another species.
Presumably there is some sort of inhibition against killing another member of our own species, because we have to work to overcome it...
But the rules do not apply to other species. Both humans and wolves lack inhibitions against killing chickens.
Humans kill other species all the time, even those with which we share the common bond of high intelligence. As you read this, hundreds of dolphins are being killed by tuna fishermen and drift netters. The killing goes on and on, and dolphins are not even a threat to us.

Do you have an option to argue back against this bullshit? I mean yeah my greasy nerd self would run, but if I was Shepard I would fuck that cunt up.

As near as we can tell, there is no inhibition against killing another species simply because it displays a high intelligence. So, as much as we love him, Carl Sagan's theory that if a species makes it to the top and does not blow itself apart, then it will be nice to other intelligent species is probably wrong. Once you admit interstellar species will not necessarily be nice to one another simply by virtue of having survived, then you open up this whole nightmare of relativistic civilizations exterminating one another.
It's an entirely new situation, emerging from the physical possibilities that will face any species that can overcome the natural interstellar quarantine of its solar system. The choices seem unforgiving, and the mind struggles to imagine circumstances under which an interstellar species might make contact without triggering the realization that it can't afford to be proven wrong in its fears.
Got that? We can't afford to wait to be proven wrong.

hey won't come to get our resources or our knowledge or our women or even because they're just mean and want power over us. They'll come to destroy us to insure their survival, even if we're no apparent threat, because species death is just too much to risk, however remote the risk...
The most humbling feature of the relativistic bomb is that even if you happen to see it coming, its exact motion and position can never be determined; and given a technology even a hundred orders of magnitude above our own, you cannot hope to intercept one of these weapons. It often happens, in these discussions, that an expression from the old west arises: "God made some men bigger and stronger than others, but Mr. Colt made all men equal." Variations on Mr. Colt's weapon are still popular today, even in a society that possesses hydrogen bombs. Similarly, no matter how advanced civilizations grow, the relativistic bomb is not likely to go away... (then the part about Central Park)

>"Do unto the other fellow as he would do unto you and do it first."
There we have the realist's biggest weakness. They automatically assume the worst of themselves to be true for everyone else and then treat said assumption as fact.