/lit/ - Literature

Very interesting scenario you mentioned here. Unfortunately I can't help you with any literature regarding this.

I hope you don't mind, if I give you my thoughts on this. Now let us think, a species like the one you mentioned would come to our planet. In your scenario is it fixed, that they have the intention of destroying / annihilating us?
I would always think, that a species who is far above us in every term, would not destroy us. Why would they have to? Is it the potential they would see in the human race or the danger we could be to the universe (or to them) one day?
Wouldn't a species like that look at us and remember its past? That they once have been as stupid as we are today?

Just a little input from my site, since I think this is very interesting. Also I went with an alien and not a robotic race.

Why they want to annihilate us?

>>2493544
I anticipated some of your questions, because this is of course one sort of an appeal we could make. The opposing force would be so powerful, they would consider us on the same level as we consider, say, rocks, general terrain. Even this is kind of problematic because of course we have a movement towards conservation and environmentalism. So it would have to be even more trivial a relationship that no-one is going to take issue with. They'd get rid of us, and this is the way they'd see us, in the same way that any of us would scratch an itch on our arm or something. That is the level they are operating on.

I'm hoping I addressed this question
>>2493546

>Falling for fake D&E.

>How would we justify our continued existence?

da fuq
this is a retarded question

How could you call them superior. They've adapted and evolved for their specific environment; we've adapted and evolved for ours.

There is no superiority. If they have, say, different technology that is more capable than ours at extermination, food production etc. that's not superiority but the result of their environment giving them different abilities. In short, even if they did decide to exterminate us, they wouldn't be able to do it from any sense of superiority. We couldn't be 'backwards' because there is no 'forwards', only different outcomes.

>>2493573
yeah it's a really weird way to think about it

i mean, would you say that the most superior human being presently existed would be justified in wiping the rest of us out? & we wouldn't have any kind of recourse or convincing argument against him or her?

>>2493577
You have to accept that it's a thought experiment. Just posit the existence of such a race for the purposes of discussion. Obviously it's ridiculous in real terms.

d&e what do you even read

like i don't think i've ever seen you post about a book just like subjectivity and qualia and shit

>>2493577
>How could you call them superior.
I meant it in a purely relative sense, relating to survival in the context I'm discussing. I of course take your point, and you're right for mentioning, that there isn't some generic superiority or inferiority apart from all these conditions.

Sam Harris talks about this in his book 'The Moral Landscape'. You probably think he's a vapid pop philosopher like Grayling but Harris talks quite a bit about this problem.

Ultimately he says yes, it would be moral for the entire human race to be wiped out if it reduced the suffering of a consciously higher species.

To answer this question I think you'd first need to provide the "justification" for living outside of these circumstances.

>>2493564
If they consider us as rocks and don't have total intention of annihilating us, we can survive.

I don't think our arguments or opinions would hold any weight in such a situation. We don't seek the opinions of cows before we slaughter them. If they wanted to kill us, they would.

>>2493582
>would you say that the most superior human being presently existed would be justified in wiping the rest of us out?
I'd have to think about this particular issue for a while. It seems a lot less straightforward because at least superficially we're talking about the same species, and we're talking about one person out of many.

You made me think about how this is kind of situation is reversible on an individual level though. We can think of a scenario where you are stuck in a room, no escaping, with someone who is going to kill you, who is better than you in every way and won't listen to anything you have to say. How do you/Can you stop him from killing you? H. G. Wells would say that the person has a fatal heart attack in the middle of killing you or something.

>>2493594
I think I remember this guy being talked about like a year ago on /lit/

>>2493617
>I'd have to think about this particular issue for a while. It seems a lot less straightforward because at least superficially we're talking about the same species, and we're talking about one person out of many.

It's not less straightforward, it's just a smaller gap between the inferior and superior. It's just a question of amplitudes.

the categorical valuation of 'a human life' still exists. just run that. i dunno. you lot are cute sometimes

also making the supposition that such an advanced race would want to annihilate us is already kind of, you know, making certain assumptions that aren't necessarily justified - if such an advanced race would find it both acceptable and beneficial to annihilate us that says something about the answer to your question

i get the impression the buddhists and eastern philosophers have a better handle on this than we in the west do

>>2493617

Yeah, he's a neuroscientist and part of the new atheist movement; he wrote a book about religion too.

He says there's no reason to believe such beings exist, but that a morality based on a spectrum of experience is tacitly predicated on it being true that if something stands in relation to humans in the way humans stand in relation to cockroaches, then that thing is more important than us (if you accept that humans are more important than cockroaches).

He's also pro-torture.

>>2493660
It would make more sense if the aliens had not yet decided what to do with us and gave us an opportunity to show that we are worth preserving.

>>2493672

They'd just say "No John, we are the robots."

>part of the new atheist movement
>wrote a book about religion too.

Surprise, surprise.

>>2493680

Yeah and Derrida uses language to showcase his ideas.

>>2493691

he has the worst posture

"Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" deals with this issue.

>D&E
No village is complete without the idiot.

Also:
experience is subjective

I have no knowledge of any works that tackle the reality of the human race as a finite species; at least not in the manner that you have contrived. However, ignorance of a material does not negate the probable existence of such a piece of literature.

>>2493770
swallowing a lot of blood general

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j79Vrqj2iDI