48 KiB
Huge logical miss I've never seen addressed in Luminosity/Radiance (spoilers everything)
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Author: u/elevul Cyoria Observer*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3dibs0/huge_logical_miss_ive_never_seen_addressed_in/
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Score: 0
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Created: 2015-07-16T14:36:25
Post:
I've just finished reading Radiance, which I started right after Luminosity, and, leaving aside my HUGE critique to the lack of rationality of the fiction after Bella was transformed (but that's way too long and I need to gather my thoughts before making a full write up of that), there is one specific thing that bothered me greatly through the whole story:
Why did NOBODY bring up the superiority of the species argument? Specifically, Bella, is obsessed in protecting humans, yet despite multiple references to Vampires as species, NOBODY, not even those who consider humans as only food ever brought to her the extremely simple arguments that Vampires are an evolution (=upgrade) of humans, and since they are as superior to humans as humans are to apes, and since they are the predator that predates on humans, there is no point in worrying about killing humans, aside from the fact that humans could be dangerous to vampires if fully in the known.
The "you can't transform humans who are mates to you" was really disappointing as well, since it gave more priority to the inferior species rather than the species she's part of, in a matter that's absolutely critical to a vampire's well-being.
Did I miss something, or Luminance/Radiance really has no place being compared to HPMOR or other rational stories?
Comments:
u/adad64 [+19] Chaos Legion (7 minutes later)
...Um. Because she values human life or at least that of sapient beings?
u/elevul [+0] Cyoria Observer (47 minutes later)
And? Many others vampires don't, so why didn't they ever bring this up with her?
u/ArgentStonecutter [+8] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 hours later)
I can see other vampires making that argument. I can't see a rational person accepting it.
u/elevul [+3] Cyoria Observer (2 hours later)
Perhaps, but it was still never made, and the human-eating vampires were only depicted as being such because human blood is tastier.
u/failed_novelty [+4] (3 hours later)
Perhaps those who care to argue with her on the subject have enough sense to not try an approach which they can easily predict will not work?
Seriously, would you think that you could get a vegetarian to eat a hot dog by lovingly describing the slaughter of the animal?
u/Transfuturist [-2] Carthago delenda est. (6 hours later)
No, but I would love to gross one out like that.
u/elevul [-2] Cyoria Observer (7 hours later)
No, but you could make them back down and stop threatening you with a knife if you dare touch meat.
u/DangerouslyUnstable [+13] (34 minutes later)
In what morality is it OK to kill something solely because you are superior to it? You mention apes specifically and there is already a large debate about whether apes should be given the rights and protections of personhood (same thing with dolphins). Even with less intelligent animals, there are people who believe killing them is morally wrong (vegetarians).
While I personally think it's ok to kill some of the less sapient animals as long as it's done humanely, any species that has sapience, regardless of how much, should not be killed unless the relative gains are enormous. Since vampires don't need to eat humans, and humans have sapience (regardless if whether or not vampires are "superior") it is obvious that the correct moral choice is to not eat them.
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (58 minutes later)
Regardless of that, my question wasn't regarding the subject itself, but why the opposite argument wasn't brought up in the story at all by any of the human-eating vampires. Bella was never seriously challenged on that topic in an actual serious discussion.
u/DangerouslyUnstable [+4] (an hour later)
Ok i see your point. I would just say that none of the opposing vampires really seemed keen to debate it with her. They didn't really want to convince her, they just wanted her dead.
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (7 hours later)
Enemies yes, but why, for example, Siobhan never discussed the matter with her, since she wasn't exactly keen on it?
u/ancientcampus [+8] juggling kittens (9 minutes later)
It prioritizes choice over forcing upgrades upon people. This is a longstanding moral debate, one addressed in the story, but our society as a whole maintains that forcing invasive changes upon a person against their will is generally wrong, despite its perks. Doctors have lost their license over less.
u/elevul [-2] Cyoria Observer (52 minutes later)
I understand that, the issues here are that:
The turned is magically guaranteed to love the partner, and given enough time guaranteed to love or at least like being a vampire (we only had two examples of vampires who hated being such, afaik, one was Carlisle who hated it on moral grounds but then accepted it when he discovered he could survive on animals, and the second is the Italian guy who was killed by Aro as a newborn so barely had time to experience the advantages of being a Vampire).
Not turning the Mate makes a member of the Vampire species useless and potentially hostile, disrupting the stability of the vampire social strata itself, all to guarantee a (meaningless) choice to a member of the inferior species.
u/failed_novelty [+3] (3 hours later)
Please present your evidence in support of the theory that each vampire has one and only one potential mate.
I find it unlikely that so many vampires find their mates within such a short span of time. It seems much more likely that there exists a set of people suitable as mates for any given vampire, and they form a mate bond when they meet one of them.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+2] Utopian Smut Peddler (5 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/elevul [+0] Cyoria Observer (7 hours later)
Leaving aside that it was specifically stated within the story, if it was like that the Romanians wouldn't have remained without mates for god knows how many millennia they have been alive.
u/ArisKatsaris [+6] Sidebar Contender (an hour later)
yet despite multiple references to Vampires as species, NOBODY, not even those who consider humans as only food ever brought to her the extremely simple arguments that Vampires are an evolution (=upgrade) of humans, and since they are as superior to humans as humans are to apes, and since they are the predator that predates on humans, there is no point in worrying about killing humans, aside from the fact that humans could be dangerous to vampires if fully in the known.
...your argument is so far removed from anything I consider relevant, that I'm having trouble figuring out where to begin picking at it. It just touches on nothing that would motivate Bella (or any of the 'vegetarian' vampires, or me).
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (an hour later)
Why? Through the story eating humans was only shown as something vampire do because of their instinct (thirst of blood, and human blood tastes better), there was no rational argument brought in FOR eating humans, or at least to keep a neutral stance on the matter like the Vulturi did.
And this in a story that's supposed to be a founding pillar of the rational fiction genre.
u/Sagebrysh [+4] Rank 7 Pragmatist (8 hours later)
While Bella is a rational agent, I think its a stretch to say all or even any of her enemies fell into the same boat. I haven't read Luminosity in a while so bear with me, but it would seem to me that the Vulturi thought along the lines of...say...far right republicans. "We eat humans because that's what we do." The argument for eating humans seems to stem largely from instinct on the part of vampires, or tradition on their part. They eat humans because that's the way things have always been, and it seems to work well enough for them, that why try to break what clearly works? Its like the whole "marriage is between a man and a woman because that's the way it is." They make no attempt to critically or rationally address their point of view because they don't feel the need to. Animal blood was so 'obviously' inferior to them that there's no real reason for them to consider it.
Its definitely a bit of arguing by definitions instead of by sense "Vampires eat humans because that's what vampires do." Their definition of vampire includes eating humans, they don't need to argue why they eat humans, they just do. Its "Just the way things are". This is of course some fallacious logic on their part, but why bother being logical when you can just kill whoever disagrees with you? Not to invoke godwin or anything, but I doubt Hitler had a deep and logically reasoned out explanation for killing all jews that would actually give pause to a serious rationalist. Bella is able to outwit her opponents specifically because she employs rationality while the other side relies on brute force and intimidation.
u/eaglejarl [+4] (2 hours later)
since [vampires] are as superior to humans as humans are to apes
What definition of "superior" are you using? Vampires are stronger, faster, and tougher, but they don't seem to think better. To the extent that we are superior to apes it's due to superior intelligence, not improved physical abilities.
On a separate subject -- it's been a long time since I read those stories, but the way I remember it is that vampires can't reproduce physically, they can only (a) convert a human or (b) have a kid with a human, and the latter is a very high-risk option that will almost certainly kill the mother and will get some of the most powerful vampires angry at you. Am I remembering that right?
[1] A few vampire also have special psychic powers, but that's supposedly a very small percentage.
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (2 hours later)
What definition of "superior" are you using? Vampires are stronger, faster, and tougher, but they don't seem to think better. To the extent that we are superior to apes it's due to superior intelligence, not improved physical abilities.
While it is true that within the scope of the story they do not appear to think better, they do demonstrate superior cognitive capabilities, especially mnemonic capabilities and communication (the perfect example being them often sustaining multiple conversations at once at speeds far exceeding what humans could keep up with). From what Bella has analyzed right after being turned into a vampire (while she was still thinking rationally) it seems that for most vampires the issue is that while their mental capability increased by orders of magnitude, emotions increase by that same amount, and instincts (especially those surrounding the continuous thirst) grow as well, putting compulsions at a higher priority than rational analysis, to the extreme that a vampire in presence of an extremely tasty human (singer) stops thinking completely.
Agree on the reproduction issue, the lack of which might indeed undermine the status of "species" for vampires, though for immortal creatures reproduction itself doesn't hold that much evolutionary value I think.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (5 hours later)
I'm trying to think what an actual war between humans and vampires would look like. (I'm leaving the magic aside for a second and just look at the rest of it.)
Vampires are physically superior in a hand-to-hand fight and are very durable but can still be blown to pieces with blunt force trauma, so bullets and grenades and bombs oh my should work just fine on them. Flamethrowers will do them up a treat.
Vampires are easily spotted during the day and can't teleport or turn to mist, so it's possible to fort up at night.
Vampires can convert humans, but it's a long-ish process, and the newborns are useless as covert agents, only as battle chaff. Converting humans is a case of removing a human asset and turning it into a poorly aimed weapon -- some strategic advantage, but not much.
There are...a few thousand? maybe a few million?...vampires in the world, and seven billion humans.
I don't think that would be a fun fight for anyone. I'm honestly not sure who would win, but civilian populations would take a massive pounding and if the humans won it would be through genocide.
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (7 hours later)
Point is though that if it went to a war, not only the Vulturi have a lot of people infiltrated into the governments, but actually killing a human leader or multiple humans leader would be fairly easy for most vampires, even without the witches powers. The speed alone would put them head and shoulders above any protection humans could come up with.
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+2] Utopian Smut Peddler (5 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/elevul [+2] Cyoria Observer (7 hours later)
Re-read the sidebar, Characteristics of Rational Fiction, and show us where you think the story is missing something. That's a fun debate. This isn't. It's just annoying people.
Oh, I can assure you, I have tons of qualms with those as well, especially the "Nothing happens solely because 'the plot requires it'. If characters do (or don't do) something, there must be a plausible reason. " rule.
The sheer amount of scenes that happened because the plot required it (2nd time Bella was burned, Caius deciding all of a sudden to get rid of Abby, Cody's defection, etc) and Bella holding the idiot ball through situations that any rational character would have resolved or at least attempted to before they exploded (powers development [this is a HUGE one, both on Bella, who had two points at which she realized her powers could do a lot more, yet never actually worked on them except for Jasper's emotional power, and for Elspeth, who in the car just decided to STOP growing her power, completely], Irina's situation, James' hunting and many others I don't remember anymore) is ridiculous.
As another user said:
I think the reason you had to use coincidences is because you made too few changes in the universe. You made Bella smarter and more rational, but everything else, as I see it, is the same. >There was no other way to make life more difficult for the heroes without some major bad luck. I think it would have been better if you altered the universe to be a harder challenge for Bella's wit; made the Volturi smarter, changed some of the laws, introduced new elements - whatever.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2gq4r6/rst_rationalistgenredefining_classics_luminosity/
The enemies kept holding the idiot ball, so it was necessary for Bella to do the same, otherwise the plot wouldn't have developed how it was supposed to...
But anyway, that's another discussion for another day (probably never, as I'm starting to read more and more critical reviews and I guess from now on I'll just link those when someone recommends Luminosity/Radiance).
u/TimeLoopedPowerGamer [+3] Utopian Smut Peddler (9 hours later)
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
u/elevul [+2] Cyoria Observer (19 hours later)
You have misunderstood and you haven't. I wanted to have the discussion on why the "Vampire uber alles" argument was never brought to Bella's attention, not on whether the argument itself is right. It just felt like a huge glaring miss on a story that was supposed to be rational but had such a heavy undertone of "vegetarian good, meat-eater is bad and stupid".
u/ancientcampus [+2] juggling kittens (2 days later)
It might not have happened directly on-screen, but it definitely happened. "Human Rights" was one of the big controversies that her, I guess you could call it her political party, was centered around. From not eating humans, to respecting their lives, property, and free will. The story goes into detail on how most vampires don't consider humans to be "people", and the many ways that played out. Bella definitely had heard both sides of the argument - that's what the whole bloody revolution was about. She undoubtedly had hangers-on trying to convince her otherwise.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (11 hours later)
Just to step back...is this a fair statement of your position?
"No one ever said to Bella 'we should be allowed to eat humans because we are superior to them.' Because no one ever said this, Luminosity and Radiance are not rational."
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (19 hours later)
How about "Nobody verbally challenged Bella on the Vegetarianism fad she was set on imposing on the whole world, with force"?
u/eaglejarl [+4] (a day later)
Let me decompose that for simplicity, if I may:
- Bella tried to forcibly convert the world to vegetarianism.
- No one verbally challenged her on this.
- Therefore, L/R are not rational.
If that's your position...well, I'm not sure it's one that really needs a lot of debate. There seem to be perfectly reasonable responses:
- Doylist: Alicorn didn't think of one particular thing. Meh, it's not that big a deal; these characters aren't really noted for their verbal debate skills anyway. Give a pass on this one and call it a plot hole at worst.
- Watsonian: humanivore vampires lack social organization more sophisticated than "pack". It makes perfect sense that their first and only response was violence.
I guess, really my response comes to this: you said that you'd never seen this argument discussed elsewhere. You've laid it out here and I don't think anyone in the thread has found it convincing. It's possible that you're the only sane man here, but thd odds don't seem to favor it.
Even if, for the sake of argument, we grant your point, that would mean that the story was flawed, not that it suddenly became completely non-rational. I don't think you'll have any trouble at all getting people to agree with the proposition "L/R were not completely rational."
Shoot, when you look at it, HPMOR, the founding cornerstone of the genre, has some imperfections. $antagonist's (whichever name you choose) plot was ridiculously overcomplex and had at least one major plot hole that I can think of offhand, yet it's still the cornerstone of the genre and a really good story to boot.
u/None [+2] (5 hours later)
Why did NOBODY bring up the superiority of the species argument?
Superiority on what terms? If you merely mean that vampires can kill humans easily, that's not an argument worth considering. It would work just as well for ebola! A century ago, it would apply to measles, and nobody's sad that we eradicated measles!
The interpretation I could agree with is that people have reasonable cause to prefer to be vampires rather than humans -- you get a better memory, you maybe become smarter (at least, you can read and type much faster, which is smarter on one axis), you don't age, you're more durable, you're stronger, and your senses are better. Plus the whole mate thing is convenient, in a way. The thirst is a nontrivial downside, naturally, and since it's slaked primarily by killing sentient beings, you might hesitate or choose not to turn.
there is no point in worrying about killing humans
The general thrust of your argument seems to be: people would often prefer to live as vampires than to live as humans, therefore we should let vampires kill as many humans as they want. That's a complete non sequitur. You may as well say that the uber wealthy should be able to hunt humans for sport because most humans would rather be wealthy than poor. This is the exact opposite of rationality. The two concepts are entirely unrelated.
If instead your argument were that you personally didn't care about humans and you did care about vampire freedom and autonomy, therefore you are fine with vampires eating people...that is rational, but it's not compelling to any moral person.
Did I miss something, or Luminance/Radiance really has no place being compared to HPMOR or other rational stories?
Luminosity. Get the title right.
You missed any shred of human decency. The Golden Empire was founded on human decency (well, and killing a lot of Volturi, and being able to trap vampires in essentially a prison world).
Before that, nobody has encountered a non-human diet outside the Denali and Cullen covens. Those two covens are non-judgmental and do not proselytize. We don't see extended interaction between non-humanivore and humanivore vampires for the most part, and when we do, it's focused on defeating the Volturi. There are literally only a dozen vampires in the world who care about humans and think they're people. The thought of eating animals rather than humans is too bizarre and not well publicized enough for people to come up with objections. It's all "you can try your outlandish diet, I expect you to die from it, and I'm just going to steer clear in case it turns you into a ravening beast."
Normal people don't just hear a bizarre idea and immediately treat it seriously and try to come up with objections. And in this case, it only takes a few seconds to get to a basic value mismatch, which lets you dismiss the other person's attempts to persuade you (if they're even trying) without further debate.
However, since the books end with an authority mandating strict non-humanivore behavior with the ability to enforce that mandate, if the books continued a bit longer, we would see people petitioning the Golden Throne with bullshit arguments like the one you put forward.
I looked at your comment history. Are you sure your real objection isn't that the books were written by a woman? Considering you post in /r/theredpill, plus the stuff you wrote here, plus apparently you think even 4chan is too feminist for you -- that doesn't mean for certain that you'd be dismissive of a work simply because a woman wrote it, but it's pretty damning.
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (7 hours later)
Superiority on what terms?
Yes, I was referring to the fact that vampires are stronger, faster, tougher, don't need food/water/air, are smarter (or at least think and act faster) and are an overall improvement over baseline humans in basically all characteristics.
The general thrust of your argument seems to be: people would often prefer to live as vampires than to live as humans, therefore we should let vampires kill as many humans as they want.
No, my argument is (or would be, if I had to bring it to Bella in story): Vampires are not humans, they are another species superior to humans, and their main susteinance source is human blood. They can sustain themselves on animal blood, but at the cost of strength and eating satisfaction, and with the benefit of a clearer mind.
Humans eat other animals (included dolphins, which are the 2nd smartest species on earth), and can sustain themselves on vegetables, at the cost of some long term issues (B12 deficiency is the first that comes to mind) and with the benefit of a lower risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Thus, since humans eat both animals inferior to them and plants, why shouldn't Vampires eat both humans and animals?
Yes, there is the issue of sentience, to which I currently do not have an answer, although from what I could gather I doubt many humans would stop eating pigs even if those started to speak a little english overnight. Hell, we often attribute sentience to dogs and cats, yet asian cultures still eat them without issues.
You missed any shred of human decency. The Golden Empire was founded on human decency (well, and killing a lot of Volturi, and being able to trap vampires in essentially a prison world).
Precisely, The Golden Empire (a VAMPIRE governing body) was founded on HUMAN decency.
I'm starting to wonder whether Bella's shield not only protected against powers and fire, but also against entering the Vampire mindset upon turning, which left her self-identifying as a human while in the body of a vampire.
However, since the books end with an authority mandating strict non-humanivore behavior with the ability to enforce that mandate, if the books continued a bit longer, we would see people petitioning the Golden Throne with bullshit arguments like the one you put forward.
We did, there was that critique on the "don't forcefully turn mates" rule. But yeah, we'd have probably seen way more of that after the Empire was established. I was just wondering why nobody made these remarks to Bella before the thing was established, especially in the first book when they first encountered Siobhan and Maggy.
I looked at your comment history. Are you sure your real objection isn't that the books were written by a woman?
Thanks for digging, but no. I thought about it multiple times while reading, but despite some doubts on the story dropping the rational pretense halfway through, I don't think I am judging this more harshly than I would something written by a man.
I really wish it was that simple, though.
u/None [+3] (8 hours later)
Yes, I was referring to the fact that vampires are stronger, faster, tougher, don't need food/water/air, are smarter (or at least think and act faster) and are an overall improvement over baseline humans in basically all characteristics.
The thirst is a definite downside.
Thus, since humans eat both animals inferior to them and plants, why shouldn't Vampires eat both humans and animals?
I'm assuming this isn't your argument or anything you believe. If you do believe it or find it even vaguely sympathetic, I hope you never gain any significant amount of power. Even more so than when I just thought you were a redpiller and an apologist for sexual assault.
I was just wondering why nobody made these remarks to Bella before the thing was established, especially in the first book when they first encountered Siobhan and Maggy.
That requires people to have time to think about the issue when it feels threatening to their way of life personally. Maggie is sympathetic to arguments that affect her on a direct emotional and practical level, and they aren't impacted by any sort of divine or natural right to eat humans. Siobhan was never banned from drinking human blood -- in the first book, it wasn't even under consideration, and in the second, she had an exemption as long as she didn't murder anyone.
I'm starting to wonder whether Bella's shield not only protected against powers and fire, but also against entering the Vampire mindset upon turning, which left her self-identifying as a human while in the body of a vampire.
Doubtful. Maggie seemed to acquire it when she started eating animals. The Cullens seem to have basic human decency, though they feel they can't impose their will on others. The Denalis likewise, though not to such a great degree.
We did, there was that critique on the "don't forcefully turn mates" rule.
We saw one argument of moderate length. It appeared even when the ending was already slightly bogged down. How much more bogged down do you want the story to be?
You can always ask the author directly why she didn't include more discussions and objections to the no-eating-people rule. She's on twitter.
u/elevul [+2] Cyoria Observer (19 hours later)
The thirst is a definite downside.
Agreed, but it doesn't tip the scale since the upsides are so huge.
I'm assuming this isn't your argument or anything you believe. If you do believe it or find it even vaguely sympathetic, I hope you never gain any significant amount of power. >Even more so than when I just thought you were a redpiller and an apologist for sexual assault.
Please stop the personal attacks.
Yes, I believe every rationalist needs to read and internalize the research TRP has done into human mating strategies, no I don't believe in pushing said data on them.
So, if you want to discuss that, we can take it outside. This thread is not the right place for that discussion.
That requires people to have time to think about the issue when it feels threatening to their way of life personally. Maggie is sympathetic to arguments that affect her on a direct emotional and practical level, and they aren't impacted by any sort of divine or natural right to eat humans. Siobhan was never banned from drinking human blood -- in the first book, it wasn't even under consideration, and in the second, she had an exemption as long as she didn't murder anyone.
Right, and the other people who attended the meeting, Romanian included, weren't informed of Bella intending to force vampires to Vegetarianism.
Doubtful. Maggie seemed to acquire it when she started eating animals.
Hmm, I don't remember that happening, actually. I remember her accepting eating animals because it was a condition for her to live with her mate, and later just continued with that. Perhaps I forgot, but I have no recollection of her showing particular interest in humans, her daughter aside.
The Cullens seem to have basic human decency, though they feel they can't impose their will on others. The Denalis likewise, though not to such a great degree.
You are probably right on the Cullens (especially Carlisle who had such a strong desire that he founded the whole Vegetarianism), but I don't think the Denalis value humans that much.
We saw one argument of moderate length. It appeared even when the ending was already slightly bogged down. How much more bogged down do you want the story to be?
It didn't really feel bogged down to me, but you might be right.
You can always ask the author directly why she didn't include more discussions and objections to the no-eating-people rule. She's on twitter.
Oh, right. We're in 2015. Thanks.
u/Kishoto [+1] (30 minutes later)
It's been a while since I read it, can you refresh my memory about why you can't transform humans who are your mate? Is it because they taste too good to you?
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (59 minutes later)
No, this was a new rule Bella put when taking control of the Vampire population: that human mates of vampires cannot be turned unless they absolutely agree on it.
u/failed_novelty [+1] (2 hours later)
Because vampires ALWAYS magically love their mates, and turning a human (who may not even like their vampire 'mate') is morally indistinguishable from brainwashing them.
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (2 hours later)
So, let's take this down a notch:
If a human was in love with an ape, and it was possible to transform said ape in a human (with all the physical, cognitive and emotional benefits that entails), which would make it return said love, would you consider it wrong to do so?
u/failed_novelty [+2] (2 hours later)
Assuming I had complete, undeniable evidence that the ape was sapient? I would not uplift the ape without having the ape's full informed consent.
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (2 hours later)
Interesting, but this brings another point:
full informed consent
With human minds being as limited compared to vampires as apes' are compared to humans, how can you provide enough information that the consent would really be fully informed?
The increased strength, speed, intelligence, emotions, senses and communication, they cannot really be expressed in words, and even Elspeth's power would quite simply not be able to represent a Vampire's state of being to a human, who lacks the tools to understand it.
And, indeed, out of the 5 vampires who were brought back as humans, 4 wanted to be turned again, and the only one who didn't was because last time he was killed soon after turning while Aro was searching for Witches, so he didn't actually have the chance to fully experience his capabilities as a Vampire and all he remembered was basically 3 days of extreme pain and then being murdered.
u/failed_novelty [+1] (3 hours later)
The differences can be described - it is done well enough in the source material to convey the changes.
I see no difficulty in giving a human enough information for them to make an informed decision.
u/trifith [+1] Man plans, god laughs. Like the ant and the grasshopper. (59 minutes later)
I believe he's referring to the post-Bella era, when Bella hands down such a rule to vampire society.
However it was noted that it would be dangerous to the target for the actual vampire to change the person they're bonded to for exactly the reason you mention.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 hours later)
Canonical Twilight female Vampires can't carry a child to term, so vampires require normal humans to bear their children.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (56 minutes later)
I'd like to see "vampires are a separate species" established as something more than metaphor first.
u/elevul [+0] Cyoria Observer (an hour later)
What do you mean? Aside from the obvious physical and mental advantages, the genetic analysis Carlisle did on vampire DNA showed that they have 25 chromosome pairs.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+6] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 hours later)
On the other hand, vampires are mutually infertile. They need to breed with humans to have children. Humans can be converted into vampires. This isn't anything like a new species, they're more like humans carrying a symbiont. Possibly the extra chromosomes started out as part of a virus.
Also, evolution isn't a directed process. There's no such thing as "higher" or "lower" species, or a "next step" in evolution. No rationalist would give an argument based on that kind of interpretation of evolution any credit.
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (2 hours later)
On the other hand, vampires are mutually infertile. They need to breed with humans to have children. Humans can be converted into vampires. This isn't anything like a new species, they're more like humans carrying a symbiont. Possibly the extra chromosomes started out as part of a virus.
Very interesting point, and indeed it might be true that the venom that transforms humans in vampires is a parasite whose purpose is to fuse with another species, elevate it and then hunt the species itself for it's own survival. Though we don't really have in-universe information on that (or any real information on what vampires or magic is, for that matter. Despite millennia of vampire society, and intelligence way above humans, there doesn't appear to have been any R&D in the origin or characteristics of the species), so it's all speculation.
Also, evolution isn't a directed process. There's no such thing as "higher" or "lower" species, or a "next step" in evolution. No rationalist would give an argument based on that kind of interpretation of evolution any credit.
Indeed, I might have misused the term "evolution", but the point remains that vampires are way above humans as far as capabilities go, AND they are human's natural predators, sitting on top of the food chain, so I'm not sure considering them as part of the human species makes much sense.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (3 hours later)
The only capability that matters in this context is intelligence, because we're tool users, and they don't actually seem any more intelligent than humans. Maybe that's a problem of the author not being more intelligent than humans, but still...
And they're not even obligate predators of humans. As you note drink they drink human blood because it tastes better. Not because they need to.
Also, "elevate it"?
u/elevul [+0] Cyoria Observer (7 hours later)
The only capability that matters in this context is intelligence, because we're tool users, and they don't actually seem any more intelligent than humans. Maybe that's a problem of the author not being more intelligent than humans, but still...
Indeed, they don't appear to think at a higher level, at least judging by how it was written, just think faster and interact with each other faster. This is probably because the author wasn't able or couldn't be bothered to model the interactions of an entire species of smarter beings, so she just went the just as smart but faster route.
And they're not even obligate predators of humans. As you note drink they drink human blood because it tastes better. Not because they need to.
Correct, but their compulsion is to drink human blood, and so is their instinct. It's true that later is found out that the thirst can be quenched by animals, but they are repulsed by it.
On top of that, if they drink animal blood they become weaker (although apparently with a clearer mind).
Also, "elevate it"?
Seems fitting, since the virus transforms a human into a being way above any baseline human, which shares little with the original human, with even the memories fading.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (5 hours later)
there doesn't appear to have been any R&D in the origin or characteristics of the species)
Actually, there doesn't seem to have been much vampire R&D at all. I think there were some mentions of vampires doing handicrafts (not sure?) but the backstory doesn't have any vampire researchers or scientists or engineers that I recall. I don't think Carlisle invented any new surgical techniques, for example.
Do vampires actually have a civilization of their own, or are they parasitic on humans?
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (7 hours later)
From how they were depicted in the story they seem parasitic, with most of the R&D going into Witches on the Vulturi side, and into human-vampire hybrids on Joham's side.
They do seem capable of creative thinking (Abby being the perfect example), but we don't exactly know if they apply it in other ways.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (11 hours later)
If they are purely parasites, how can they be considered superior? Our culture and technology are a huge part of what makes humanity valuable in the first place. If the only thing that vampires do is tear down the value of humanity, how are they contributing to the universe?
Is the definition of "better" that we're working on simply "X can beat Y in a fight"?
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (19 hours later)
To be fair, they don't really need to bother furthering the technology itself, as they lack most of the needs human have: they don't need sleep, shelter, food (aside from blood), clothing (they don't suffer cold or hot) and are deeply independent so better communication tools are not so important.
Not only, as long as they drink human blood they are not able to have big covens because it leads to fights continuously which means that pooling resources for research is not that easy (without Chelsea).
So, they are parasitic because they have no need to grow further, but they definitely have the potential to not be if they had to (=all of a sudden their food source disappeared).
u/eaglejarl [+2] (a day later)
As I said, it's been a long time since I read the stories. Apparently there is no such thing as vampire science or vampire technology; is there any evidence of vampire-created culture? Paintings, music, poetry, math -- do humanivore vampires actually create anything at all? I don't remember any of them doing so, but it might just be my memory.
If vampires create no art and no science, I don't feel that it's reasonable to call them a superior species. First off, they aren't really a species, since they can't reproduce on their own. Second, humanity's value (to the extent that we have any) is not in our combat capability, it's in our ability to create, to bring things into the universe that never existed before. If vampires don't do that, they are simply very efficient parasites. Not even terribly smart parasites, honestly, since most of them haven't figured out the concept of farming. There's a reason that most bacteria don't kill their host.
u/StepdaughterOfGaia [+1] (8 years later)
''is there any evidence of vampire-created culture?''
Edward composes music