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[Cthulhu]

I learned which argument I hate the most.

The "I'm right, you're wrong, figuring out why is my challenge to you" cop out.  It's all the pathetic obvious weakness of "You're just a shill for Big Hoagie" (I argue about a lot of weird things) with an added layer of fake arrogance.

I was talking to someone about aliens, and how, if there's any chance they could bring their weapons (Mainly relativistic weapons, but anything that destructive, really) to bear, there's 0 logical reason not to strike preemptively.  The response was the Carl Sagan thing, that if life is to reach that level of technology they must conquer their destructive tendencies first or they'll destroy themselves.  That's all well and good, and rings of truth, but the prohibition against violence doesn't necessarily extend to members of another species, and there's no evidence that it does.

And all I got was "Yes there is, and one day you'll see it"

>:C

[Skyrunner]

To be fair, saffron is the tiny pistils/leaves (which one, I forgot!) of the saffron plant. Very small amount per plant.

I hate alien believers misusing Sagan's arguments xD
He specifically says that 'if there ARE aliens, chance are we'll never see them' because either they are in the stone age right now, or because they're too technologically advanced to make mistakes like th current alien abductions. They would just clone us and do experiments rather than take abductees.

Or, they just haven't found us.

[nenjin]

It's the pistils.

[ChairmanPoo]

I find the whole "peaceful aliens vs hostile aliens" debate about as meaningful as zombie survival strategies and pirates vs ninjas discussions, tbh. That is to say, not at all.

[RedKing]

Yeah, saffron is basically the...umm....reproductive organ of the crocus plant. Flower nads are expensive.

  It's all the pathetic obvious weakness of "You're just a shill for Big Hoagie" (I argue about a lot of weird things)

...I want to hear that argument.

[Cthulhu]

Zombies, pirates, and ninjas are irrelevant yeah, but intelligent life is totally possible and we should consider what to do if we find it.

I'm not averse to being friendly with aliens, but I'm averse to betting the survival of my species that the aliens want to be our friends.

[Flying Dice]

Playing X-COM, doing a terror mission. Going very well; more than half the map cleared, no casualties, 8 kills. Not many civvies dead. Trying to line up a shot with my rocket tank, and my laptop touchpad interprets a sliding movement as a tap (i.e. left click) and I accidentally fire a rocket into a wall and collateral half my team of veterans. -____-

One does not simply slide into Cydonia. Get cheap mouse and a newspaper for a mousepad, even a student budget should accommodate that. Enhances laptop gaming by lightyears. Now to enjoy my mouse enhanced X-COM experience->

Ah, I've got a mouse and pad. I just don't take them with me when I go places.


OT: As far as I'm concerned, if aliums are anything like us, they're not to be trusted.

[Bauglir]

Saffron: Difficult and time-consuming enough to harvest that it is literally the most expensive spice in the world, as I recall. Moreso even than vanilla (which is, admittedly, largely subsidized by slave labor).

[Levi]

Moreso even than vanilla (which is, admittedly, largely subsidized by slave labor).

Really?  Dang, they should put that stuff on the labels.  How's a guy supposed to know he's supporting slavery when he bakes a cake.

[Bauglir]

Well, keep in mind this is from memory. It may also be wage-slavery of the "Well, you're not technically forced to work here, but we charge you more in rent than we pay you so you'll never get out of debt and you have nowhere else to work" variety, or I may even be conflating it with chocolate. I can't seem to find any references that seem legit, but a big part of that is search results being crowded out by the slave who perfected the pollination method, and uses of the word "vanilla" to mean "plain", rather than the flavoring.

So, in retrospect, huge grain of salt there.

[Johuotar]

Steam starts bugging and refuses to start. Must redownload everything.

[fqllve]

You can get better results by searching for vanilla planifolia or the vanilla orchid. While I don't know about slave labor or wage-slavery the working conditions are about what you'd expect in such a labor intensive industry. From what I understand it's pretty similar to the cocoa industry, child labor, poor working conditions, subsistence level or below wages. I think the conditions are better in Mexico than in Madagascar and there is also fair trade vanilla, so you're not locked into the system.

[Leafsnail]

I was talking to someone about aliens, and how, if there's any chance they could bring their weapons (Mainly relativistic weapons, but anything that destructive, really) to bear, there's 0 logical reason not to strike preemptively.

How about "These intelligent aliens might have the ability to detect/ neutralise our strike, and smash us with their much better weapons in response (when otherwise they'd be prepared to trade with us and try to learn about our technology)"?  I mean, if anything firing our possibly hopelessly inferior weapons at them seems like the far more risky path to me.

[Frumple]

Prreeeety sure Cuthy was talking about the aliens hitting first, not us.

And yeah, totes in on the whole "When we find intelligent alien lifeforms, pray they're absolutely nothing like us." Hopefully they'll have entirely different material needs too, so we can just kind of ignore each other and maybe have some nice conversations in the process.

[Leafsnail]

Well pray that noone on the alien side is using Cthulu's logic at least.

I'm not sure about "ignore" - they'll probably be pretty curious about what we might have that's new to them.  Although at this point if we meet aliens they'd have to be vastly technologically superior to us since they'd have to come and seek us since we have no capability to do the same to them.