Quarto said:
Ok, here's a question that somebody should have asked a long, long time ago - how do we know that the eugenics didn't help Confed win the war?
The G.E. project could've helped winning the war, true. If Hawk already know Seether to be a great pilot from the Academy, and Hawk fought in the war, this appears to be he case, even if the extent of it remains unknown. When I speak of eugenics on my posts, I'm specifically making a reference to the Gen-Select Bio-Weapon. There's no indication that those were used.
Doesn't it make you wonder about whether Confed wouldn't have been able to win outright, had they not made the decision to nuke Kilrah?
That's an excellent point, and I completely agree with you. The T-Bomb didn't sound that expensive, but the Behemoth could've mean the carriers necessary for Confed to win the war with conventional means.
Quarto said:
Additionally, it's hard to see how Blair could be sure that the Confederation was on the verge of losing the war.
Agreed. Corroborating what you and LOAF said, I think it was not necessaly inevitable that Confed would lose the final battle, since they had already won before against terrible odds.
The prediction available to them that Confed was about to lose the war could've been proven wrong.
Blair very strongly disagrees with Tolwyn's plans to use the Behemoth... and then comes to accept genocide as a solution after finding out about Angel's death. So Blair seems to have been thinking more about revenge than saving humanity.
The might've resulted in genocide, but the objective was not it. Regardless, it's clear Blair's disposition to nuke Kilrah improved after he had more reasons to hate the Kilrathi.
So let's consider this: would it be justifiable to use the T-Bomb to win the war before the Battle of Terra, or any other situation were there was a very real risk of Confed losing the war?
Bandit LOAF said:
No, the final briefing is the one that matters the *least*. It's the self-justifing one - as close to after the fact as you can get. It's the claim that's made *after* the money has been spent, the time has been used and the weapon has been built. In terms of discussing the morality of the weapon you have to look at the reason it was created, not the extraordinary coincidence that happened the day the bomb was ready.
The atomic scientists, for instance, came out and complained that the bomb was immoral and wrong... after they'd developed it for the Army. A little late, isn't it?
Let me surprise you right here and say that I agree with you. I really do. If indeed the T-Bomb, or the nuke, is an intrinsically wrong weapon for which there can be no justification, complaining about it later is meaningless.
However, if the case had to do with the specific use of the device, i.e., it would be justifiable or not to use it on some situations depending on the circumstances
So, are they? Honestly, I don’t know. Let’s begin with the real world example, nukes. I find compelling arguments both ways. It might be an intrinsically evil means, one that can’t ever be justified. Or maybe there are some circumstances that would make it acceptable to use them.
The moral debate about nukes is so complicated that are indeed good arguments both in favor or against the morality of having them and not having them. Because if you abandon your nukes while your enemy have them, you are encouraging them to use it against you.
Your example of the military scientists is quite good. I think it makes no sense for them to complain it’s an evil weapon, but they had the right to complain it was used on an evil way.
What I’m saying is that I do held a strong and very well justified belief that Bio-Weapons made with eugenic purposes are intrinsically wrong and can never be justified in any circumstances. Not because they are bio-weapons, but because eugenics is universally morally wrong and unjustifiable. Bio-weapons probably fit the same category, but I’m unsure.
Now, to the T-Bomb. In theory, it’s a morally neutral device since it could be used against an empty planet, or a planet with solely military installations. But that’s a weak argument, because it’s not the way it was meant to be used. It was designed, I assume, to destroy Kirah, which has civilians. We can band the Behemoth on the same category of Planet Killers.
When it comes to destroying homeworlds, there is a very strong case that those weapons are intrinsically wrong, therefore unjustifiable. On the other hand, there is a very strong case for the justification of their use on WCIII. Not by any merits of this kind of weapon, but from a completely external angle: not using them would have terrible consequences.
The issue then becomes weighting what is more terrible, and making a choice out of the available alternatives. This is a dangerous situation, prone to sliperry slopes. It’s not clear, and it appears to be on a gray zone. I tend to accept the use of the T-Bomb as a terrible, yet absolutely necessary means to saving Confed and preventing mankind from being conquered and enslaved by an evil alien Empire.
I don't think there's any way to establish (to Blair or to anyone) that the Confederation would absolutely lose the war if it couldn't destroy Kilrah.
Again, I agree with you: Blair could not know that with absolute certainty, neither could anyone on Confed like Tolwyn, Paladin, Confed Intel and Confed HQ. This information is known only to the gamers, because we know the alternate ending, but that bears no effect to the characters. This also means that the research on the subject was not necessarily accurate.
Because it proves that all we're dealing with is the downfall of the Terran Confederation, an organization that in this very thread you call 'terrible', and not the extermination of all mankind.
Agreed, I might have been overly dramatic about the extermination of all mankind. But we can’t discard the possibility that mankind might not survive forever under Kilrathi rule, much less thrive. And since they were not interested in keeping more slaves, since they seem to have no shortage of them. They would not be so caring in handling the occupation and minimizing loss of life.
But when we weight in the damage caused by the T-Bomb, it’s also not equal to the extermination of all Kilrathi, but the destruction of their homeworld, and most of their fleet around it. If anything, the Kilrathi were much better off surrendering than Mankind would ever be. More to the point, there is good reason to assume Thrakkath was more interested in destroying Earth than making it a colony or a beach house, since apparently Kilrathi doesn’t like water. Do they lick themselves? Do they spit hairballs?
The issue isn't whether or not he's right in either case -- it's that they're both examples of exactly the same ideology... but you support one and hate the other. How?
Because they are not the same ideology at all. Making a projection that mankind was about to lose the war to the Kilrathi did not require any ideology. Radio Rollins could do that for you for free. It was a statement of fact. It had absolutely, absolutely nothing to do with eugenics at all.
I’m not disputing the overall concept that another major threat might appear in the future, and that Confed should prepare batter for that. Again, this still has nothing to do with ideology. You can know all those things.
Eugenics, on the other hand, are ideology, and a very bad one. More importantly, they are demonstrably wrong and don’t work in the way their defenders claim, and the WC game acknowledges this fact. More on this later.
I can explain that very easily: Wing Commander said so.
How can ships travel faster than light? Wing Commander said so.
20th century science isn't suddenly and magically applicable in criticizing Wing Commander's clearly opposing intentions because you decide you hate Geoff Tolwyn.
But Wing Commander doesn’t say, anywhere, that using bio-weapons would make mankind stronger, that Paulsen’s and Tolwyn’s speeches were factually correct, and that eugenics would’ve helped defeat the Space Bugs.
Tolwyn and Paulsen said all those things, but they are not true. He’s the bad guy, the villain, not everything he says at this capacity must be acknowledge as unquestionable truth. Thrakkath tells the emperor everything is fine and Confed has no chance of averting destruction, but we know he is wrong about his facts.
When the villain of the game says things to justify the action that the game itself declares are wrong, we have no reason to assume that the ‘science’ behind this justification is beyond questioning. While the specific issue might not have been specifically addressed, it’s not far fetched to assume it was deemed wrong when Tolwyn was persecuted and conicted for his actions in trying to implement his ideology. Politically, his ideas were rejected, what demands the existence of an opposing set of ideas negating his, even if they are not made explicit.
You do understand me, I need a citation to know that eugenics doesn't work in Wing Commander. Not whether or not it is *right*, but whether or not it is a sound scientific concept in the 27th century -- because as best I can tell, as offensive as Tolwyn's *ideas* are, no one ever says his science is bad.
All right, now I understand you, and I’ll try to explain it on a throughout manner.
The claims made by Tolwyn are not novel and don’t involve any speculative technology. The only new science WC in this regard is the nano-tech weapon. Gen-Select device, on itself, is a sci-fi tech that exists because WC tell us, like jump drives.
Eugenics, on the other hand, is not even a scientific concept at all, much less sound, but an ideology, and that’s why it’s not needed to be countered on scientific level. I assume this was so self-evident the authors felt no need to make overt claims.
I don’t debate that the technology of the Gen-Select is scientifically sound and exists on WC, it does what it’s supposed to do, kill people by actively selecting the ones that doesn’t fit a certain criteria.
The eugenics ideology behind the makeup of this weapon are a completely different deal, and they are not the same as the science and technology behind it.
Your basic idea is not wrong and I’m not disagreeing with it.
I’m simply pointing out that the eugenics ideology is not part of the science and technology part of WC we must assume to be true, but a set of beliefs particular to Tolwyn and the Black Lance that are not shared by the rest of Characters and Factions, and we shouldn’t assume them to be universally held true.
As you recall, all of the eugenics ideology was merely a theory, it never happened. It was never put in practice on the WCU A theory that was never tested can’t be said to work for certainty. The gen-select device works perfectly and kills the people it’s supposed to kill, but we never, ever see the supposed results of race improvement.
By itself, the fact that it was never put to the test allow us to know it is merely a theory at best and that it can’t be know with certainty that it works.
Most important, we also know that Tolwyn’s ideas are not universally accepted as true because, upon hearing them, the majority of the senate rejects them. It’s reasonable to assume that opposing views exist on WC that eugenics work is not an universally accept truth, and that no one questions it. Wing Commander does certainly does not say that.
And if Eugenics is not a belief universally held to be true by everyone on Wing Commander, we know for a fact that there is at least a possibility that it’s wrong.
Yes, Seether was almost certainly under orders, which included the ability to use deadly force, to keep a Black Project secret. This is what military officers do.
That’s also what gangster do, use deadly force to keep authorities from learning the existence of an illegal activity. Why can’t he be both? We know the project was illegal, and it was never legit. It was done against direct instructions of the senate. The G.E. program was cancelled, and the Senate never approved the development or use of Bio-Tech weapons.
Who he was keeping the secret from? Confed’s enemies? No. He was keep it secret from the legitimate Confed leadership who had the authority and the right to know what was happening. And that’s not even remotely what the military do.
If a Faction of the US Air Force was shooting down American Commercial Airplanes to justify the use of a Bio-Weapon against an American interest, and this was completely unknown and in fact against direct orders from the legitimate leadership of the US, and an American Air Force Colonel killed someone to prevent them from revealing this plot to the US Senate, I don’t think it would be classified as a legitimate order.
The ‘gangster’ part might have been a little dramatic exaggeration, but there was nothing legitimate or regular on that action.
We cited the novel, part of the Wing Commander continuity, at the very beginning of this thread to point out that what you're saying just isn't the case.
But the game, where the murdering with gusto and maniacal laughter happened, are also part of the continuity. At least during this moments he was, well, like that, because the game shows it.
Nope, I think it's much worse. Tolwyn was crazy, he believed he was doing the right thing. Wilford was sane and he believed he was doing the wrong thing -- and he did it anyway.
Well, I agree with most of what you say here. Tolwyn was crazy, and he believed that he was doing the right thing. We know he was not. If you can agree with me here, I’d see no reason for further disagreement on that regard.
About Wilford, you must look back to the moment where he ordered the Raid. He suspected there was some conspiracy against the Border Worlds that would lead to a war with Confed. If such a war was to break, the militia would be in desperate need for weapons, and raiding a confed shipyard would be a legitimate move. However, war didn’t break out, and it become a petty act of piracy. The basic goal of acquiring weapons to protect civilians against aggressions is not wrong on itself, even tough the means were.
That on a practical level. In abstract, "sheer, poorly plotted opportunism" is much, much better than the "ideology" in question could ever be, and we know that because “ideology” has killed much, much more people in much worse ways than opportunism ever did.
Black Projects budget, presumably.
No misappropriation of funds? How unimaginative. Confed Back Projects must have an incredible budget. Confed craft, BW craft, Expensive Heavy Fighters with exotic engines , fission guns and built-in cloaking capability, the Pelius device, the Flashpak, Bio-Weapons, an Infantry battalion, fashion-designed black uniforms, a hidden space base, mercenaries.
Well, maybe, after the Behemoth, that was peanuts.
Okay, then by all means *note them* -- because all you've done so far is whimper and whine that anyone would dare point out that something be equal to what you've somehow decided is the worst atrocity in the universe. 'They're not the same!!!!!' isn't the same thing as explaining how they aren't the same.
All right, I’ll just do that. I’ll break it down topics and make a nice table for easier understanding, and will even include the similarities, in all fairness.
Code:
Hyperion Telamon
1. War Yes No
2. Strategic Value No? No
3. Civilians/Military Yes Yes
4. Target The Planet Population
5. Purpose Weapon Test Weapon Test
6. Declared Obj. Win present War Win future War
7. Means Destruction of Kilrah Eugenics
8. Effects Immediate Not Demonstrated
9. Authorization Yes? Illegal Weapon
1. Existence of a declaration of war, simple and straightforward.
2. Strategic Value, unsure about Hyperion, none for Telamon
3. Presence of Civilians and Military, per our discussion, on both planets
4. The Specific Target of the Weapon. The T-Bomb acts on tectonic planets and destroys unstable planets, and the Gen-Select targets certain individuals with specific genes and kills them.
5. The Purpuse, on both cases, was to test the weapon.
6 and 7. The declared overall objective of the T-Bomb was to win the war by the means of blowing up Klrah, while the declared objecvice of the Gen-Select was active eugenics, i.e., killing certain people deemed unfit to live. If the overall objective was to improve mankind this way, in order to win future that would presumably require some kind of wide deployment of this weapon, but that is never revealed. The only mention I remember is when Blair, without rebuttal, speaks of billions.
8. The full effects of blowing up a planet are immediate and can be easly observed on shor term. It goes boom, and that's the end of the story. Eugenics would require a long time and observation to have noticable effects, all that happens in short term and the observation time available in the game is that a lot of people die.
9. While I assume the development and use of the T-Bomb was granted by the Confed leadership, we know for certain that the contrary can be said about the Gen-Select device.
We can assume that, inside WCU, despite the polemic around it, the T-Bomb was found to be generally acceptable weapon because, while the Gen-Select was not. In all likehood, this is the case in both in the senate and on the mainstream public opinion, considering the reactions shown towards those weapons.
And, again, this is not an argument for Hyperion or the T-Bomb, but against the moral equivalence to the Telamon and the Gen-Select. Even tought we can find both to be wrong and unacceptable, they are still not quite the same thing.
Not in the least. Who, pray tell, was responsible for the capture of the bio-convergence scientist who allowed The Project to develop it's GE weapon in the first place? And then the lab she used to do this research? Oh, well, that was Colonel Christopher Blair, Terran Confederation Space Forces... but he was only following orders!
But, surprise, surprise, someone else who is at the exact same point in the chain of command who follows the exact same orders *is* a criminal who *is* responsible for his actions. Funny, isn't it?
When Blair became aware about the situation, he did something about it. Seether, however, knew what it was about all along. Blair was not a willing participant on the activies of the Black Lance and was being deceived. Can you say the same about Seether? Was him being deceived? Did he fought against the conspiracy once he knew the truth? Did he make an effort to warn the Senate about forbidden bio-weapons, as was the duty of any military officer?
Seems to me that the purpose of the plot in Wing Commander III is to raise *exactly* the same question: genocide vs. losing the war.
Well, genocide is a somewhat vague terminology that will fit in a number of things. That doesn’t mean that a specific action that arguably can be described as genocide, i.e., the bombing of Kilrah, would necessarily mean that any and every genocide was to be acceptable in the same way in order to win a war. It was only found acceptable on WC3, and that’s still under debate, because it was a last resource. On WC4, there was not even a war to launch a last resource on.
It is the same evidence. Tolwyn is applying the same process to both situation - and, in fact, the exact same research applied to the first (war will be lost) goes into the second pronouncement.
No, you misunderstood me. I was not talking about the part that claims that Confed is going to lose a war. But the remedy prescribed. Blowing up the enemy homeworld is self-evidently a means to win the war, or at least cripple the enemy. But you could never know for sure until you tried. It was tested, and it worked. Using bio-weapons against yourself was not really ever tested at all on the WCU, and there’s no way to know for sure it would produce the desired result.
Besides, it can’t be the same process, because he had very detailed information about the Kilrathi and what was to be required to defeat them. There was no such thing for the Nephilim. As you demonstrated, Confed has known about them for even before the Kilrathi war, but they didn’t have a lot of details. If Tolwyn knew, for example, that blowing up Kilrah would spawn Space Bugs, he might have factored in on his research that doing that was a bad idea. But this part about the amount of information they have is not important to my point, because I don’t disagree at all with the notiont that Confed was at risk of losing the war.
The problem, again, is the part about the eugenics. And, as matter of fact, we know it’s wrong! Confed fared very well against the Space Bugs so far in two major encounters (or one, depending on how you see WCP and WCSO). And Confed did defeat the Space Bugs without ever using bio-weapons as prescribed by Tolwyn. This prediction wasn’t correct.
The only way to prove with certainty that Tolwyn’s research was completely correct would be to have Confed lose the war against the Space Bugs because it didn’t perform the eugenics, and to have mankind facing extinction, *because that’s what Tolwyn predicted would happen*.
And since *that didn’t happen at all*, we can’t say the eugenics part was right with certainty. And that’s all I was saying.
Tolwyn tells us that without using Eugenics to “discard certain elements” and be made strong, mankind would “face extinction”, and to really accept this as unquestionable truth would require mankind to lose the next war and be destroyed with absolute certainty.
Tolwyn’s research says the species that is weak faces extinction. But then you made a good point that to be weak and lose a war to the Kilrathi would NOT mean mankind was going to face extinction. If that’s the case, it goes against he most important part of his entire argument.
If anything, and Tolwyn’s research was absolutely correct, being strong and winning the war could never brought about a far worse enemy, what *did* happen after Kilrah was blown up *according to his plans*. And also losing the war, being weak, would mean necessary mean facing extinction, what, according to you, wouldn’t happen.
WC tells us that being strong does not necessarily improve the probablity of survival (Space Bugs because we beat the Kilrathi), and being weak doesn’t necessarily contribute to extinction (Defeat on the Kilrathi war does not equal extinction).
Except this is something you made up. We know the Confederation knows about the Nephilim and that they are a thread -- this is *entirely* you wanting to complain about Tolwyn instead of being interested in debating anything germaine to the Wing Commander universe.
Even after WCP, very, very little is known about the space bugs. Confed didn’t knew on WC3 that, for example, that blowing up Kilrah would bring them against us. Besides, I was not making an argument against the idea that the Space Bugs were a big threat.
As displayed above, the predictions that mankind would necessarily lose the war against an enemy worse than the Kilrathi without eugenics, which was what Tolwyn was saying, have been proven wrong. The condition that would prove it right is if Mankind loses a war and faces extinction because it didn’t do eugenics.
That's not true at all and you know it. Blair doesn't know any of these things... and for the large part they aren't even true. You can't ever cite the alternate losing endgame as evidence of anything because it just doesn't happen.
All right, I agree with you on this one. It didn’t happen. So, we can’t know for sure mankind would lose the war, with certainty, if the T-Bomb fails. This also means, of course, that the research indicating it would was not necessarily completely accurate.
All we know is that if Blair dies or is captured that the war cannot be won. That tells us *nothing* about the absolute value of the T-Bomb -- and you can find the same truth to pretty much any 'losing endgame' you'd like to cite. Blair is the variable, nothing more.
It does shows that if Blair fails to deliver the T-Bomb, or is unable to acquire it, the Confed loses the war. But that’s a fairly irrelevant point to our current discussion.
Blair dying early in Wing Commander 2 doesn't prove that the war is lost if K'Tithrak Mang isn't destroyed... it just proves that he's necessary to something in the future that can *NEVER BE KNOWN* (if it proves anything at all, which it doesn't, because 'what if' isn't a relevant citation in the first place).
I fully agree. The same goes when people tell Blair that Confed would lose the war if he fails this or that mission. Or when Tolwyn claims that, without eugenics, mankind would lose the war to a future enemy. The future enemy shows up, and Confed wins the battle without ever using gen-select.
No, it isn't, because you're just outright wrong about the facts. The Nephilim, including their massive strength and hostile intentions, were identified by the Confederation *before* the Terran-Kilrathi War even started.
When and how were still open questions, I assume. What is the source of this info, I want to read it (of course I’m not doubting you, I just really curious).
Because this is silly 20th century rhetoric that is *history* to Wing Commander IV. Its something obnoxious and pointless that only agwc ever obsessed over. It's the same logic you apply to bitch that lasers aren't real and that space fighters can't travel faster than light. Clearly in 2673 they do and they can.
That’s not the same thing at all. You want to know what’s the same? The logic applied to compare Wing Commander III to World War II and Wing Commander IV to World War II. Also, the same logic that compares the T-Bomb from Wing Commander with a 20th Century nuclear weapon is the same that compares Eugenics from Wing Commander with 20th Century Eugenics.
And it’s quite clear that the Gen-Select do work and kills the people its designed to kill. It’s a tech that exists in WC and not right now, like space fighters traveling faster than light. There’s no dispute about this. But all we ever see the Gen Select do is to kill people. The tech works. But if, as you say, they couldn’t *completely trust* the research indicating Confed was inevitably going to lose the war without the use of the T-Bomb or the Behemoth, then the same can be said about the research indicating that Confed would lose a future war without the use of the Gen-select.
It's shiny and happy to say that Tolwyn's plan had no merit because some post-World War 2 politically correct scientist told you so... but it doesn't apply here. All that 1996-1999 crap about this was nothing but mutual masturbation -- we don't like Tolwyn so lets apply our current science in a ridiculously exclusive way to make him look small in addition to his loss in terms of ideals.
That has nothing to do with post-World War 2 politically correct scientist. Any one of those would attempt to disregard specific genocides and eugenics that were politically incorrect to criticize.
This has absolutely nothing to do with Tolwyn being small or big. I understand that might’ve been the focus of the debate in times past, but that doesn’t alter the reality that his ideas are wrong now and wrong inside the WCU. Defending the feasibility of eugenics inside WC won’t ever do any good to Tolwyn’s image.
Clearly Tolwyn and a lot of other people believed that whatever form of eugenics they had perfected in 2673 - clearly beyond any of our thinking on the matter - worked... and nothing in Wing Commander says it didn't. (In fact, Blair et. al. stand around wondering if he was right afterwards with absolutely no criticism of the science.)
Of course Tolwyn and a lot of other people believed it could work. And they do say how, by killing people that don’t fit the criteria fed to the gen-select device, so it’s in no way beyond any of our thinking in the matter. What is described on WC to great extent is exactly the same we have today, with superior technology. The principle behind it is no different at all.
More importantly, nothing on WC says that Tolwyn’s ideas on eugenics were universally accepted and everyone in Confed agreed with them, and if that was the case, there would be no need to hide them. Tolwyn was found guilty, his ideas were presented and rejected. This means, to the very least, that people who disagree with Tolwyn on this matter do exist. If even the bombing of Kilrah is subject to debate, to presume that there would be a general consensus on this subject is far fetched.
Again, you're far, fer, fer too caught up on labels. Something being morally wrong (Tolwyn's speech, Paulson's talk) doesn't make it scientifically unachievable.
No it doesn’t, but there’s no indication it does. But the fact is that what they were discussing, killing a lot of people based on predetermined standards is scientifically achievable today. They just use nanotechnology to do that, instead of machineguns.
Eugenics is not a science, it’s an ideology. No amount of perfection would make it *work*, it would only make it kill people with better technology, which is precisely what happens on WCIV.