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[NullForceOmega]

Then I say fuck humanity, what the fuck have we done for the universe lately?  Your argument is bullshit and I'm done with you.

[Sensei]

It's probably more logical to think pragmatically: What gives us the better chance of surviving, attacking first or not? I call nonsense on the talk of light-speed weapons: If this is set in the present, the aliens might have that sort of thing and we certainly don't. If we do have them, maybe the aliens know more about physics than us and don't care about our "relativity" and "conservation of energy".

I'd say that in the scenario where aliens are capable of traveling to our planet before we're capable of traveling to theirs, it's very very unlikely that we would have a weapon effective enough for a pre-emptive strike. I like our odds more of hoping they're nice...

Besides, alien invasion has been a colonization allegory since 1898. Did any african nation have a weapon that could pre-emptively destroy european ships?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

[It's bad enough that there was a thread in the general discussion forums on the premise "Is the Empire ACTUALLY better for humanity than being conquered by literal demons?"

Funnily enough, also my thread.

[Rolan7]

It's bad enough that there was a thread in the general discussion forums on the premise "Is the Empire ACTUALLY better for humanity than being conquered by literal demons?" I mean, the emperor requires thousands of literal human sacrifices to stay alive. WH40K fans love to talk in character and make jokes that way, it doesn't mean that that's their real-life way of thinking.

Yeah, this.  I love repeating memes, especially WH40K ones, but I hope for something better.
Though, the God Emperor was truly amazing.  He rejected godhood.  He wanted humanity to follow science and reason.  He lead a crusade against the out of control nanomachines known as Orks, but I'm having trouble finding evidence that he sought to destroy the Eldar.  He was even trying to build a human webway, as I understand.

It's just that everything went to shit after his death.  His true teachings were rejected, and he was labelled a god against his express desires.  Psykers are fed to his corpse so that it glows in the warp, serving as a beacon.  The Empire is an absolute perversion of everything he stood for, except survival.

Edit:  In retrospect, I should probably find and peruse MSH's thread instead.

[IronyOwl]

The hell happened to this thread?

[Flying Dice]

The hell happened to this thread?

Snakeboobs are the will'o'wisp that got us irretrievably lost in the mire of the Swamp of De Rail.

[Teneb]

The hell happened to this thread?

REMOVE AYY happened. Maybe some humanity fuck yeah on the side.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

He didn't really go after the Eldar because the Eldar already imploded themselves and created Slaanesh. Over 99% of the Eldar Empire died as a result, leaving only Amish Eldar (who aren't traveling the universe and thus not encountering humanity), Angst Eldar (who can literally see the future and thus avoid humanity), and C-C-COCAINE Eldar (who, while dicks, had reason to avoid Great Crusade-era humanity).

Ironically, the Eldar provide an excellent proof-of-concept on why aliens are inherently dangerous. The Eldar don't see other species as people, but as automatons. That's not the Dark Eldar. That's all Eldar. Even the Exodites are only "friendly" by way of total recluisiveness. Meanwhile, the Craftworlders are off murdering hundreds of billions of humans to preserve a few of their own from being made Slaanesh's afterlife-waifus, and the Dark Eldar orient their entire society around eating the essence of other sapients, not because they have to, but entirely because they get high off it.

[Culise]

It's probably more logical to think pragmatically: What gives us the better chance of surviving, attacking first or not? I call nonsense on the talk of light-speed weapons: If this is set in the present, the aliens might have that sort of thing and we certainly don't. If we do have them, maybe the aliens know more about physics than us and don't care about our "relativity" and "conservation of energy".

I'd say that in the scenario where aliens are capable of traveling to our planet before we're capable of traveling to theirs, it's very very unlikely that we would have a weapon effective enough for a pre-emptive strike. I like our odds more of hoping they're nice...

Besides, alien invasion has been a colonization allegory since 1898. Did any african nation have a weapon that could pre-emptively destroy european ships?

Ignoring any moral implications of going full-on Saberhagen Berserker, one significant flaw to the first-strike extermination doctrine is that it breaks down the second you assume more than two parties - that is, in this circumstance, more than two species exist.  An RKV will necessarily reveal your own existence, even if you fire it safely away from your own homeworld, by virtue of its impacts, and will reveal yourself as a hostile and inimical lifeform to anyone else in the neighborhood; in other words, everyone else suddenly has a vested interest in killing you right back, and is very likely to be able to figure out where you are.  It also presumes that effective extermination is practical - if you miss one single self-sustaining "cell" (a colony, habitation station, or the like), you end up with aliens who have a vested interest in concealing themselves until they can return the favor, and assuming equals, RKVs are just as difficult to intercept for you as they were for them.  Finally, it assumes your knowledge is still valid; especially if the lightspeed barrier is in effect, you can easily end up with a situation where your targeting data can be years or centuries out of date when you begin firing, and will be more than twice that when your projectiles arrive (and that assumes your detection and firing apparatus are in the same location).  The Killing Star is all well and good, but it does have some major issues of its own. 

In other words, I don't buy it either.  The maximum survival strategy in such a scenario would seem to be dispersal and the silence of our homeworld and key seed colonies to ensure first contact, not only with the known alien, but also any other unknowns, on our own terms at a remove from Sol.

[Rolan7]

and the Dark Eldar orient their entire society around eating the essence of other sapients, not because they have to, but entirely because they get high off it.

But... also because they have to, right?  They stave of Slaanesh through the life force they reap?
Thanks for the rest of the explanation by the way.

[puke]

From what i herd the DNA difference between a human and housecat is around 11%

I bet there's 100% of your dna in your housecat, your dirty git.

(sorry, not directed at you Sonlirain, you just left the lead-in for the joke open)

[EnigmaticHat]

Ok, people are trying to use Warhammer 40k as evidence in a debate about real life.

I think the sun has set on the era of this conversation.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

and the Dark Eldar orient their entire society around eating the essence of other sapients, not because they have to, but entirely because they get high off it.

But... also because they have to, right?  They stave of Slaanesh through the life force they reap?
Thanks for the rest of the explanation by the way.

They don't have to. The reason their souls are sieves isn't just because they're Eldar, it's because of the way they act. They're essentially engaging in Slaanesh-worship while thumbing their noses at her. Even insulated in the Webway, which is even harder for the Immaterium to access than the Materium, that's gonna have severe consequences. This is also why they don't spend much time outside the Webway. All Eldar belong to Slaanesh because they gave birth to her, but the Exodites and Craftworlders get by just fine without feeding on torture.

In fact, there are even a couple of cases of DEldar smuggling themselves out of Commorragh, slapping on a spirit stone, and going straight with the Craftworlds. But not many. Note that for all their posturing, all three Eldar types live in a society that by human standards is utterly decadent and nearly laborless. But the Dark Eldar are so far beyond that, they're still living up the party that started all the way back at the rise of the Empire, and going down to "just" not having to work or want for anything isn't good enough anymore. By comparison the Craftworlds are an extreme reactionary ascetic revolt, and the Exodites are a further extreme reactionary ascetic revolt off that.

[IronyOwl]

The hell happened to this thread?

Snakeboobs are the will'o'wisp that got us irretrievably lost in the mire of the Swamp of De Rail.

So what I'm hearing here is that Vipers are irresistible sirens whose mere presence drives humans mad.

[BFEL]

I'm not assuming that.  I'm saying that even if the odds are .0000001% that they'd rather kill us, that's too big a risk.

I don't know why being "intelligent" means we should give them the benefit of the doubt, or why that affords them some kind of rights.  We barely afford our own people rights.  You can say you have the right to life, the right to health, the right of way, but all it takes is one drunk dude going ninety to prove that no, there's no such thing as inherent rights.

While we're talking about those, I'd say that if anything you don't have the right to give aliens the benefit of the doubt.  You don't have the right to put the entire species (really the entire biosphere of the planet) at risk for the sake of aliens.  Fuck aliens.  This isn't like black people and white people, this is like black people and rocks.  Their experiences are spaghetti to us, they're so far from our sphere of comprehension as to be basically meaningless.  Who gives a shit if they die?

Real talk.

When we were first testing nuclear bombs, the scientists in charge basically said "this might kill everyone ever" and we went ahead with that anyway.
If you can't accept risk then you shouldn't have bothered crawling out of the womb, scrub

And since the entire biosphere of our planet has no rights to life, health or any such things you have just as much right to put our species life at risk as you do to put aliens at risk.

Every single other person in the world is so far from your sphere of comprehension to be basically meaningless, thus the gap between "I don't understand why this human does this" and "I don't understand why this lifeform from the other side of the galaxy does this" is meaningless.
Its basically comparing infinity to infinity+1.