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March 29, 2024, 08:33:29 AM

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Ways to precipitate human extinction

Started by Johnny Foreigner, November 27, 2021, 10:18:37 PM

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Sebastian Cobb

no seriously what the fuck does this mean?



I know there's some self-referential thing about all this but i am absolutely lost

Video Game Fan 2000

Interpretation where someone projects their own feelings or ideas, I think?

Glad you asked because I'm having a bit of a "fuck me I should know this" over it

Sebastian Cobb

is this how Germans say "make it up as you go along"?

of course it isn't because they almost certainly have a compound for that, christ.

Cold Meat Platter

love this 'I Know the German word for this so I'm right' stuff. More please. This is what's called "Liebe Deutsche Wörter"(maybe, its just from google translate fingers crossed)

Cold Meat Platter

It's just interpretation I think. Which is the same as reading something into, really, isn't it? Just translating something to another language isn't a point.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Cold Meat Platter on November 29, 2021, 12:00:58 AMIt's just interpretation I think. Which is the same as reading something into, really, isn't it? Just translating something to another language isn't a point.

So bollocks then?

Lost at sea here

Video Game Fan 2000

Honestly posting in this thread now its you two making fun of people for pointlessly using German words is making me feel more like the guy in the hotdog suit from the meme by the second

maybe it should be a currywurst

Cold Meat Platter

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on November 29, 2021, 12:03:08 AMSo bollocks then?

Lost at sea here

No, the german word just means exactly what he described previously, reading intentions into something. It's just a pretentious flourish, 'I know the German for this and it sounds impressive'.

Video Game Fan 2000


Sebastian Cobb

I don't know what I'm doing... I'm not being coy, I tried to translate the German, which I think might be a flimsy idiom but don't know for sure.

Normally this stuff is easy and computers generally translate German well. Das ist nicht mein Bier and all that

Cold Meat Platter


tourism

Quote from: Johnny Foreigner on November 28, 2021, 11:35:10 PMSurmising some misanthropic, self-loathing motive behind a reasonable concern is mildly amusing but it is also too easy. It is a fudge and it is glib. Goodnight.


Whilst I have no time for the Hicksian 'virus with shoes' craic, I have always wondered why apparently superintelligent self-aware machines like in The Terminator and The Matrix didn't just wipe out humanity with a biological weapon, given they weren't exactly likely to suffer any unwanted side-effects.

Yes, without it there is no story.  But why didn't James Cameron come up with a sci-fi excuse?  Like we'd all been genetically modified to be impervious to viruses or something?

But human beings whinging about the existence of human beings is like miserable bastards whining about being stuck in a traffic jam, apparently unaware that they're part of the traffic jam.  Human beings are fucking incredible - and the fact that we've not yet achieved utopia is hardly a reason to write off humanity.  That's sociopathic.

H-O-W-L

Quote from: TheBrownBottle on November 29, 2021, 05:39:44 AMWhilst I have no time for the Hicksian 'virus with shoes' craic, I have always wondered why apparently superintelligent self-aware machines like in The Terminator and The Matrix didn't just wipe out humanity with a biological weapon, given they weren't exactly likely to suffer any unwanted side-effects.

Yes, without it there is no story.  But why didn't James Cameron come up with a sci-fi excuse?  Like we'd all been genetically modified to be impervious to viruses or something?

SkyNET in Terminator is not intending to extinct all human life long-term, but rather to destroy all human organization and governance. The future war stuff seen in T1 and T2 involves Tech-Com, which is basically a continuity-of-force of the surviving members US National Guard and military along with military-trained personnel born post-war. The civilians seen in the bunker in T1 are a mixture of their families, scavengers they send out for gear, and support personnel rather than the raw survivors of humanity.

In truth, when SkyNET goes self-aware (and Reese mentions this in T1, as does the T-800 in T2) it doesn't declare humanity the enemy, but specifically organized human governments.

The later sequels lose sight of this but this is the original intent of SkyNET, not global extermination. The middling-gameplay but amazingly faithful video game Terminator: Resistance tackles this very well, with whole unorganized human settlements of mere survivors with no military defense existing outside SkyNET's influence unmolested. It's brought up that SkyNET is more than aware of where unarmed, merely-surviving human pockets remain, but it just doesn't care to eradicate them -- it views them as no threat, and as little more than roaches that can be swept up later on. Instead, SkyNET has a roving, constantly moving "Annihilation Line", a moving purge army, that moves through specific areas in a sweep.

In addition, SkyNET has a good use for humanity: laborers. Reese talks about being taken to a camp in T1, and it's expanded upon in Resistance and other supplementals that said camps are a double-job of manual labor and extermination. Humans are put to work making munitions and machines for SkyNET as well as building and maintaining its uplinks and computer systems as well as R&D that SkyNET can't handle without physical presence. It prizes human scientists and doctors especially since they're great for figuring out new, better ways to kill people (infact it's implied in Resistance that the leap in Infiltrator technology from 'robot with rubber skin' to 'fucking flesh man' is a result of SkyNET having an enslaved human research team that aided with the design from a human POV). In addition, there's also the logistics of keeping these people alive until it doesn't want them anymore, and while machines are used for the bulk of it, SkyNET also does have some (again, enslaved) people in logistical roles in its slave-camps.

If you bump into a Terminator or any of SkyNET's machines at random you'll get slotted right away but it won't come looking for you unless you're actively resisting. Being an oppressed little scavver living in a hole eating beans is of no concern or threat to SkyNET.

TrenterPercenter

Quote from: Johnny Foreigner on November 28, 2021, 11:35:10 PMYouse are reading all kinds of intentions into my rather succinct initial question; this is what is called Hineininterpretierung.
I have said very clearly, more than once now, that killing people is out of the question, for various reasons. What I am concerned with is to halt population growth, i.e., to stop homo sapiens from proliferating.

Surmising some misanthropic, self-loathing motive behind a reasonable concern is mildly amusing but it is also too easy. It is a fudge and it is glib. Goodnight.

Do you know what the word extinction means? Also as I pointed out you are not the only misanthropic poster on here and these aren't sentiments unique to you so there is no reason to view this as a personal matter (including what follows).

Regardless of how committed or not you are to mass murder/sterilisation etc... you (as others have as well) are missing the issue with just wanting to get rid of the human race; its a view point, a toxic one, that is based on narcissistic desires and beliefs about the natural world.  It's maniacal and repulsive before you even get to actually killing anyone; just as racism is  maniacal and repulsive before any action to enforce it occurs.

This isn't the same as worrying about climate change or denying it; this is about wanting humans removed from the planet for some imagined benefit (a world on your terms).  This is based on fallacies about the natural would not being brutal and uncaring and ignoring the fact that it is natural for organisms to overpopulate and collapse (and at cataclysmic scales).  You are on a fucking space rock orbiting a hydrogen bomb that is hurtling through space.  No-one knows why, where it is going, or if for sure something isn't going to end it all at any given minute.  It is a hostile and fragile existence in which as far we can tell eventually everything is torn apart and annihilated without so much as a conscious shrug. 

We are an insignificant speck in cosmos so this "we are the worst" bullshit is highly anthropocentric; The universe doesn't care about you and your survival; it doesn't care about your boring fears of not having enough "pleasure" or any other earnest hippy shit veneering put on the miserable loathing of others.

This is very different from appeals to other humans to manage things like climate change and sustain ecosystems because you don't need to hate other people to do that; in fact it's about the exact opposite; the name is Extinction Rebellion because it is against the extinction of humans not for it.

Buelligan

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on November 28, 2021, 11:52:52 PMno seriously what the fuck does this mean?



I know there's some self-referential thing about all this but i am absolutely lost

Seems pretty straightforward, I might be wrong, of course.  Isn't he saying that there is a tendency, a possibility, a proclivity, on display in this thread, to label something as "a bad/good/neutral thing" in a final definitive way, purely because it suits the pov of the labeler.

In this case, asserting that unnamed diverse people who may or may not entirely agree with you are misanthropists.  No attempt to think about anything, just dismiss what they're saying and who they are with a label.

TrenterPercenter

Imagine being that full of hate you are willing to be an apologist for musings about the extinction of humanity. 

This is the Tommy Robinson defence "I just think these ideas need to be heard, look here is an Indian man saying it, no one actually said they really wanted to get rid of any immigrants in practice and if they did they were  just being "edgy", I'm really surprised at how ignorant you are all being to what are just different points of view".




Buelligan

Because you have to be full of hate to look at what humanity (capitalism) is doing to the planet and think the rest of existence would be better off if they weren't?  Because the only explanation for those thoughts is you're like Tommy Robinson.  Yeah.

AllisonSays

The problem with musing about this in the hifalutin philosophical mode, for me, is that it avoids a material consideration of what 'population control' or 'managed extinction' would look like. We're talking about eugenics, essentially, which as a concept and a practice has a 150-year history we can probably take some lessons from in terms of who's likely to be affected by it both globally and locally - so non-white and working class people, basically.

I think trying to work towards a radical political solution to climate change is the only palatable option, for me. Anything else, in reality, looks like the violent imposition of sterility onto subaltern peoples. It wouldn't be hedonistic, I can promise you that.

TrenterPercenter

#109
Quote from: AllisonSays on November 29, 2021, 08:18:23 AMThe problem with musing about this in the hifalutin philosophical mode, for me, is that it avoids a material consideration of what 'population control' or 'managed extinction' would look like. We're talking about eugenics, essentially, which as a concept and a practice has a 150-year history we can probably take some lessons from in terms of who's likely to be affected by it both globally and locally - so non-white and working class people, basically.

I think trying to work towards a radical political solution to climate change is the only palatable option, for me. Anything else, in reality, looks like the violent imposition of sterility onto subaltern peoples. It wouldn't be hedonistic, I can promise you that.

Exactly.

Also relevant to ERs stated aims; you've had environmentalist groups before but ERs expressed aim is that it is a rebellion against human extinction; they are seeking radical political solutions not just the degradation of humanity; which is what misanthropes do.

TrenterPercenter

Also complete bunk that humanity and capitalism are synonymous; modern capitalism was invented in the 17th century it is not "humanity", not even close, and it is just an economic system and organisation of power (by capital).

So now we've had the arguments of Tommy Robinson and Jordan Peterson. Great.

Cerys

Clearly all that has to be done is to engineer thumbs on to cats.  We'd all be obsolete by Christmas, shambling on to the conveyor belts so Tiddles could push us off the horizontal plane before zooming off in his Bugatti for an evening of caviar, budgie-slaughter and loud, loud sex.

TrenterPercenter

And I for one welcome our pollexed feline overlords.  I'd like to remind them that as a trusted forum personality I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil away their underground catnip caves.

Kankurette

Quote from: AllisonSays on November 29, 2021, 08:18:23 AMThe problem with musing about this in the hifalutin philosophical mode, for me, is that it avoids a material consideration of what 'population control' or 'managed extinction' would look like. We're talking about eugenics, essentially, which as a concept and a practice has a 150-year history we can probably take some lessons from in terms of who's likely to be affected by it both globally and locally - so non-white and working class people, basically.

I think trying to work towards a radical political solution to climate change is the only palatable option, for me. Anything else, in reality, looks like the violent imposition of sterility onto subaltern peoples. It wouldn't be hedonistic, I can promise you that.

You've perfectly articulated another reason why I dislike the 'humans should go extinct lol' bullshit.

jobotic

Quote from: Video Game Fan 2000 on November 29, 2021, 12:06:57 AMIsn't he german tho

Well then it's even less impressive that he knows a German word.

Buelligan

I think a problem with these discussions is that, whilst it is utterly obvious that humanity (capitalism) is destroying the planet - and stopping that would make existence better for all other life forms, it's very hard to admit that for some.  Admitting it means, we are doing harm, we do need to change.  Not many people like them apples.

Not many like to realise their planet, if they're going to continue acting the cunt, would be better off, far better off, without them.  It's an ugly thought to realise our behaviour makes us persona non grata on a whole world.  Especially when changing that behaviour is so fucking inconvenient.

But it is a necessary conversation.  Some, in the hope of avoiding seeing too darkly in the glass, will try to make the whole thing about being a Nazi.  A fucking misanthrope.  Being into eugenics.  Being like Tommy Robinson.  Everyone who thinks that humanity is fucking the planet and it'd be better if they stopped is like Tommy Robinson, so shut your goddamn mouths.

And yet the reality of what is happening to our world continues to exist.  Continues to happen.  It's just the thinking about making some changes that stops being discussed.

AllisonSays

But the 'humanity (capitalism)' diptych there is surely the crucial point. Because humanity isn't reducible to capitalism either historically or like anthropologically, so we can indict capitalism without therefore indicting humanity.

Anyway, I think there's some merit in what you're saying about the desire to avert our eyes from the reality of climate disaster - that's certainly something I feel very strongly in myself - but I also think there are fundamentally different modes of talking about it. Some of them are implicitly or explicitly eugenicist; some of them aren't. It's worth criticizing the former one, and doing so doesn't necessarily entail denial or putting one's head in the sand.

Fr.Bigley

The great Frey Bentos incident will destroy humanity. In 4 delicious flavours.

Buelligan

Quote from: AllisonSays on November 29, 2021, 10:35:31 AMBut the 'humanity (capitalism)' diptych there is surely the crucial point. Because humanity isn't reducible to capitalism either historically or like anthropologically, so we can indict capitalism without therefore indicting humanity.

Anyway, I think there's some merit in what you're saying about the desire to avert our eyes from the reality of climate disaster - that's certainly something I feel very strongly in myself - but I also think there are fundamentally different modes of talking about it. Some of them are implicitly or explicitly eugenicist; some of them aren't. It's worth criticizing the former one, and doing so doesn't necessarily entail denial or putting one's head in the sand.

What you're saying is entirely correct, IMO.  Problem is, these conversations need to be had.  Shutting them down only serves the (capitalist) status quo.

On the thing about the conflation of humanity and capitalism, as I said earlier - it's not what they are, it's what they do.  Currently capitalism is driving sufficient numbers of humans to destroy our planet.  If they continue, all humans will die (and all or many other species too).  We should think and speak about that.  There isn't a way we can just draw a pleasant veil over this and carry on comfortably.