If mutants became real, which side would you be on?

senordesol

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GamerMage said:
And lo, we are finally getting somewhere. What if there was a special group, say a special SWAT-type group they could send in, kind of like a nicer version of the DUP form Infamous: Second Son mixed the Psycho Squad from Cyberpunk. (Read my comment to Saucycarpdog, I elaborate a little mroe on the subject)
Send in where? The charred remains of a city of millions? That's not much help to anybody, is it? (and that's assuming they could deal with what lay in wait at all).

We're not talking about one lone nut with a rifle and limited amount of ammunition. A police officer can be trained to deal with that, and an entire police department can organize to handle the situation with snipers, LRADS, and anything else a normal human will be susceptible to.

We're talking individuals who could destroy an entire civilization with nigh a shrug of their shoulders. Even if you had a loyal team of 'super cops', given the variances in mutant power sets in the X-Men universe; there's no guarantee that they'd even be equipped to deal with whatever they're about to face.

The fact of the matter is, it is simply smarter to detect the mutations early and to excise or destroy anything that could be a threat to humanity before it has a chance to develop, for by the time those individuals (decide for themselves) literally millions could be at risk.
 

The Event

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I'm in favour of equality.

No one should be able to walk around the streets in posession of lethal weapons without some form of regulation.

So humans don't get to carry guns without some sort of licence and mutants who can fling random small pieces of metal at the speed of bullets can't walk around the streets unregulated.

People don't get to keep nuclear bombs in their homes, so mutants who can emit radiation that detonates like nuclear bombs can't live freely (Heroes)

I can't own a flame thrower, so mutants who can launch fireballs can expect some control.

If I want to fly somewhere I have to file a flight plan. If you're a mutant who can fly, so do you.

We place controls on people for what they might do all the time. That's why we don't allow unrestricted access to items like guns, explosives or poisons, because someone might use them for the wrong purpose.

On the other hand, if your power is to heal people, detect when someone is lying to you, breathe underwater, see in the dark, understand any spoken or written language etc. then feel free to do as you wish.
 

senordesol

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GamerMage said:
senordesol said:
GamerMage said:
And lo, we are finally getting somewhere. What if there was a special group, say a special SWAT-type group they could send in, kind of like a nicer version of the DUP form Infamous: Second Son mixed the Psycho Squad from Cyberpunk. (Read my comment to Saucycarpdog, I elaborate a little mroe on the subject)
Send in where? The charred remains of a city of millions? That's not much help to anybody, is it? (and that's assuming they could deal with what lay in wait at all).

We're not talking about one lone nut with a rifle and limited amount of ammunition. A police officer can be trained to deal with that, and an entire police department can organize to handle the situation with snipers, LRADS, and anything else a normal human will be susceptible to.

We're talking individuals who could destroy an entire civilization with nigh a shrug of their shoulders. Even if you had a loyal team of 'super cops', given the variances in mutant power sets in the X-Men universe; there's no guarantee that they'd even be equipped to deal with whatever they're about to face.

The fact of the matter is, it is simply smarter to detect the mutations early and to excise or destroy anything that could be a threat to humanity before it has a chance to develop, for by the time those individuals (decide for themselves) literally millions could be at risk.
Like I said, they'd be like SWAT, an immediate response team. But at least with these (ahem) "Super Cops" they'd at least have a fighting chance! Their odds would be better than the aveerage one, wouldn't you say? And given how much the government loves their weapons, you'd KNOW they would at least be a little curious. Not to mention, they'd probably have a field day with all the PR they could use to get the public on their side. There's so much potential for good here, don't you agree? and I'm not talking like 4, 6 person group here, either. I'm talking like a large Special Ops squad; like again, SWAT or the Green Berets. And given their history with trying to make psychic soldiers in the 60's or 70's, (Seriously, look it up, this happened. Look for the movie "The Men Who Stare At Goats") I'm sure they'd want in. There are so many ways this could both bad, but also, if done properly, a good Non-Sentinel way as well. Captcha: "Shuffle the deck" Indeed, I've shown you my hand, now you show me yours.
You seem to be missing a salient issue here: we're dealing with people who can slaughter hundreds if not thousands in minutes!

You would need to draft (as in: conscript, whether they're willing or not) hundreds of thousands of mutants to create a QRF with a nation-wide response time (assuming USA) of less than an hour, and even then -and this is important- there's no guarantee that they'd be equipped to deal with what they'd face.

Our ONLY chance is to catch the condition in childhood (the earlier the better), to contain, and then neutralize (be it kill the individual or excise the offending organs).

If the method of doing so means a tightly controlled team of a few hundred; fine. But the answer can't be to sit on our thumbs waiting for human bombs to go off.
 

Tono Makt

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Mutants (and super powered beings in general) on the level of the X-Men couldn't survive in a more realistic environment - that is to say an environment where messy, complicated people have these powers. It's doubtful that the physical planet could literally survive for more than a generation with mutants of the powers of the X-Men. The only reason that the Marvel universe continues to exist is because it's entirely and utterly fictional, and the writers can undo anything that they do with the tap of a key on a keyboard.

Once you put Mutants into our world, with the powers of the X-Men, our world dies. It doesn't matter what side of the fence you're on - the world is going to die. It wouldn't take a Hitler or an Osama Bin Laden or a crazy Norwegian or Pol Pot or Stalin. It would take two morons on X-Box Live getting angry at one another over a Halo argument with mutant powers, who normally wouldn't have the courage to use their power on someone they can actually look in the eye but when they get into the anonymity of the internet, gain the courage to misuse their powers. It would take a group of young mutants who bully another mutant into committing suicide in a public way, then defending themselves against the ensuing anti-bullying backlash. It would some mutant saying "I hate Nickelback so much I wish they would just DIAF when they perform at the Grammys!" and having the power to make it come true. It would take a mutant with the powers of Magma having a road-rage incident where they lost control of their temper because some idiot didn't signal when they cut into their lane. It would take the depressed, mentally disturbed teenage mutant who decides to commit suicide - but has the power of Charles Xavier, and so can cause millions (if not billions) of people to follow them to the grave. Those are what would kill the world - not the Magnetos, or Apocalypses, or Sinisters.

It will be the Youtube commenters who destroy the world. The X-Box Live trolls. The Freepers. The Fark Independents. The Bieliebers. The Nerdfighters. The American Family Association (AFA). The people who hate Anita Sarkessian and the people who defend Anita Sarkessian. The Columbine High school murders. The kid who has trouble controlling his bladder in high school who one day forgets to wear the proper diaper and wets his pants in the middle of class. Armond White. The Escapist moderator who's fed up with complaints about auto-play video/audio ads. The 12yr old girl who believes Slenderman is real. These are the people who would destroy the world. Real people. Not smart people, not stupid people. Not evil people, or careless people. Just people. Like us. People who have moments of weakness.

In the end it wouldn't matter what side of the debate I was on, or wanted to be on - I'm not going to survive to see which side is right. Maybe if we did the whole "Peace, Love, You're Just Like Me Except More Special! I Trust You." dance we might give mutants less to fight back against, and that might make us survive a few more years. Maybe if we did the "We're going to kill you and everyone who carries your genes across two generations.", we would survive a few more years because we'd be killing mutants before they got powerful enough to destroy the planet. But in either scenario the world will end. It's just a matter of time.


Given all that I'd be on the Pro-Mutant side. If I'm going to die, I want to die with a cleaner conscience. Just in case there actually is some sort of God in some sort of afterlife, I would much prefer to appear before them saying "I did not kill innocents to possibly save myself and my family." instead of "I murdered entire families hoping to remove the mutant gene from the entire gene pool and save the world, but it didn't work.".
 

briankoontz

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Saucycarpdog said:
When I say mutants, I mean the ones from x-men. People with extraordinary powers.

So lets say those kind of people suddenly became real. Would you be pro-mutant, anti-mutant, or somewhere in between? Try to give some good reasons behind your decision too.
It depends largely on the way in which they became real and what they do with themselves. If the purpose in creating them was to weaponize them for use against "terrorists", in other words merely an upgrading of the already ludicrously powerful hegemonic war machine, then they should be stopped. If they merely happened by accident and have no particular political allegiances, then they should become normal democratic citizens. There's only "sides" if the mutants themselves desire it - unlike what the prejudiced media believes normal humans have no problem living together with mutants.

Movies can't show mutants living together with normals because that's not "exciting enough". The question for the proposed mutants is, would living a normal life as a democratic citizen be "exciting enough", because if it's not then the mutants are better off not existing. That's far better than the mutants splitting into two groups and then fighting each other to give both sides meaning and purpose, with normal humans dying in droves as collateral damage - in other words the context for the plot of just about every modern superhero or mutant movie.

The more logical way to treat this issue is to compare it to the emerging transhuman reality, where machines will more deeply infuse themselves into humans for purpose of increasing the power of said humans. As the game series Deus Ex points out, this probably will create even deeper class divisions in society than already exist. Right now one of the few limits on human power is mortality, and another are the needs and specific operations of the body. The transcendence of these limitations would have terrible political ramifications. People who don't like Rupert Murdoch and lack the power to do much of anything about him can at least take comfort in the fact that he'll be dead soon. What comfort would exist for them if the technology existed to create Mecha Murdoch with the possibility of altering his cells to give him eternal life?

Mortality and other human limitations are far more valuable than the supporters of transhumanism believe. Vampires have lost all hope in life precisely because they live forever.