Poll: A theoretical moral dilemma

darthotaku

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leave the animals. new planets means new life which we don't want to completely destroy. introducing humans to the is going to be bad enough, no need to do more damage just so we don't need to figure out which alien cow tastes best
 

LarenzoAOG

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Leave the civilian ship behind, the military personnel are probably more capable than the civilians, plus having the added benefits that any large military outfit will have doctors, engineers, mechanics, and people that will make good leaders, not to mention that if the planet we land on has any animals that can kill a human it will be a boon to have people who know how to fight.

Also we'll need all those tasty meat creatures to produce goods like meat and fibers and what else have you.
 

Avaholic03

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Lose the "data" ship. If we get to an inhabitable planet, it should already contain it's own biosphere. Introducing a bunch of Earth species there would be stupid. We'll just have to learn to love the taste of or .
 

Popadoo

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Why do we need the military? Are we fighting aliens? If the world has banded together to save the human race surely there wouldn't be need for wars!
 

Ti0k0

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We don't need 2 million civilians to inhabit a new planet, leave a civilian ship.
The soldiers on the army ship is needed to help with the construction of our new society, let the army act as a policeforce, just like the UN soldiers do in warzones.
We will need the data of the Old World for terraforming; we don't know WHAT kind of planets we'll encounter
 

Evil Top Hat

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I would leave the military ship behind. When you enlist, you accept that you are putting your own life at risk to protect your nation and it's civilians. Soldiers are the guys that exist to take the bullet for everybody else (literally, in many cases), it's unfair to allow a bunch of civilians die when soldiers that signed up knowing what they were in for go free.
 

dietpeachsnapple

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Avaholic03 said:
Lose the "data" ship. If we get to an inhabitable planet, it should already contain it's own biosphere. Introducing a bunch of Earth species there would be stupid. We'll just have to learn to love the taste of or .
I was looking for the person who would post this before I would. I found that person, and it was you. I would only add that interfering with a balanced biosphere is just asking for trouble. The time between rations running out, and new food usage starting would have to be filled with learning to love " or ."
 

Soods

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arragonder said:
Soods said:
Jamieson 90 said:
Why do we need a ship for the data and 1 person? wouldn't it reasonable to just put them on one of the other two ships?
DNA of one species would require unbelievably lot of room in a computer, and when you have the DNA of thousands of species, it's gonna take a lot of laptops.
you can fit the entire human genome in 750megs, assuming a billion species are on that ship each with a completely different genome using no form of compression you could fit that in 750 terabytes, that'd take a server cluster not a space ship.
From popular demand, I fixed that part. Now they're taking frozen test subjects with them instead.
 

Soods

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Popadoo said:
Why do we need the military? Are we fighting aliens? If the world has banded together to save the human race surely there wouldn't be need for wars!
Space is a big place, who knows what you can find there. Or what can find YOU there.
 

Darkasassin96

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They are talking about test tubes in freezers. Frozen test subjects. i assume that means a frozen elephant not an elephants blood kept at sub zero temperatures you retards.
 

Kordie

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Avaholic03 said:
Lose the "data" ship. If we get to an inhabitable planet, it should already contain it's own biosphere. Introducing a bunch of Earth species there would be stupid. We'll just have to learn to love the taste of or .
As you said, IF we find a planet, it SHOULD have life... what if it doesnt? without the stores to create new life you are relying on finding a self sustainable eco system that wont mind a new top of the food chain... And what if we find a "close enough" planet that just needs some plants and animals to be habitable? I consider that a big risk when the other choice is a 4.3% population reduction.

Soods said:
Popadoo said:
Why do we need the military? Are we fighting aliens? If the world has banded together to save the human race surely there wouldn't be need for wars!
Space is a big place, who knows what you can find there. Or what can find YOU there.
Military offers more than just guns, they also offer grunt work and security. Wherever you end up I'm certain there will be needed people for construction, farming, "pest" control, camp security, and many other manual labour intensive tasks.
 

Indeterminacy

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Pull a Wall-E and fuel them all enough to last one return trip into orbit and back again. No reason to think we all need to go to the same place.
 

MammothBlade

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Oct 12, 2011
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Going to have to sacrifice some civilians. You have to make a utilitarian choice here either way. In order to ensure the survival of my political career, I'd cover up the real reason I got rid of the ship. Perhaps by causing an "accidental" explosion which destroys it before it can take off.
 

Avaholic03

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Kordie said:
As you said, IF we find a planet, it SHOULD have life... what if it doesnt? without the stores to create new life you are relying on finding a self sustainable eco system that wont mind a new top of the food chain... And what if we find a "close enough" planet that just needs some plants and animals to be habitable? I consider that a big risk when the other choice is a 4.3% population reduction.
There's no such thing as a "close enough" planet with no life on it. A complex biosphere doesn't just form overnight because you brought some seeds and animals with you. If nothing is growing on this hypothetical planet, there's probably a good reason for that (i.e. that it's uninhabitable). And terraforming such a planet would take decades at least.
 

Kordie

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Avaholic03 said:
There's no such thing as a "close enough" planet with no life on it. A complex biosphere doesn't just form overnight because you brought some seeds and animals with you. If nothing is growing on this hypothetical planet, there's probably a good reason for that (i.e. that it's uninhabitable). And terraforming such a planet would take decades at least.
I think you are undervaluing how complex spontaneous life is. It is perfectly reasonable to foresee a young planet suitable for life that has not developed it yet, or a planet with life too early in its evolution to be farmable. Consider as well the drake equation, there are separate factors for planets that could support life, and those that eventually develop it. Currently, SETI uses around 0.33 as the value for planets that develop life (with other estimates around 0.13). Basically giving you a 1 in 3 chance that the planet has life of some form, and 0.01 as the rate of developing intelligent life.

Edit* I realise intelligence is not necessarily needed, but we need something more evolved than plankton and insects.

Further more, I am not saying this process would be quick, but when you compare trying to terraform a planet to the alternative of fly to another one and hope it's good, you need to be able to weigh the options. And I'll concede I did make a big assumption here, being that we would be able to mass produce the new life when we arrive at a planet, otherwise what is the point of having brought along all the samples to begin with?
 

standokan

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The military ship, I doubt that there actually are any really treats out there, for which soldiers are needed. Thinking here that civilians can and will actually build shit and work.
 

mrdude2010

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Soods said:
Jamieson 90 said:
Why do we need a ship for the data and 1 person? wouldn't it reasonable to just put them on one of the other two ships?
DNA of one species would require unbelievably lot of room in a computer, and when you have the DNA of thousands of species, it's gonna take a lot of laptops.
at the current rate of technological advancement, however, one could make a case that a ship full of hard drives today may take up a much smaller space by 2357
 

SpcyhknBC

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Why is everyone hating on the specifics? I don't think the OP wanted you to nitpick that he has assigned one ship to data keeping, just call it an ark and it is there to accomplish any and all terraforming projects when they arrive at Earth 2.

If you really want to nitpick the data ship, DNA sequence alone is not enough to generate an organism. It'd be nice if it was, make my research much easier. Also, he changed it to frozen samples, let's call it 1000 genetically diverse omnipotent stem cells per species. Don't want to accidentally breed all the species into a bottle neck and have them die out.

Anyways, civilians were my pick. Got plenty of extra ones to begin with, Earth has been lottery-ed once, just do it again and put all the unlucky civs on the last ship and bounce.