Hypothetical scenario....

Pretty sure that's a tradition in western literature too.

Bah, that's what I get for looking for potholes. Who knew we didn't have an index for ancient Greek stories, and we also didn't have the story of the Labyrinth and the Minotaur?

But there's a bunch of stories about dragons and young women too, from the middle ages.

edited 18th Apr '11 9:02:21 PM by deathjavu

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

OK, the one thing I am not getting now is, if (following some of the assumptions above) there is a god requiring the sacrifices, what makes it wrong? I'm assuming the god isn't just requiring sacrifices For the Lulz, but something like The Gods Need Prayed Badly, and the culture being "on it" in terms of knowledge — otherwise why wouldn't they have, you know, rebelled far before you arrived? (I'm recalling the Thanagarians in DCAU now)

EDIT for clarity — Think of it as the precursor machine scenario — it's not that someone is doing stuff for the lulz, it is just that things work that way. Doesn't mean you can't go searching for a viable alternative, but it does mean you ought to don't condemn their entire race because you happen to see it as "evil" from your perspective in the meantime. Doing so would be, you know, evil.

edited 18th Apr '11 9:27:50 PM by SilentReverence

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?

God is not always good? I think that's where this sort of thing gets tripped up over all the time. Namely because we think of modern "God" as being benevolent when the classical tradition is something much closer to divine frat boys.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

@ OP, how much effort would it take? While destroying culture is a good goal, if it takes significant amounts of effort, it's not worth my time.

Fight smart, not fair.

Any half-decent god that needed regular sacrifices to survive would kill itself.

Well, assuming said god wasn't the only thing holding back something worse...

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Or is in such a context that death as we know it is small compared to its usual operations.

Ex: "You get sacrificed and you become an archangel."

edited 18th Apr '11 9:40:20 PM by Pykrete

Wait, so now we're onto the characteristics of their God instead of what we would do about this scenario?

If I walked in on this situation, the first thing I'd probably say is "This religion is horseshit." instead of thinking "What is their God like?"

Given that they probably have a much higher child mortality otherwise than one baby per year anyways, and given that shutting down their culture would likely kill a bunch of people anyways in the collapse, and given that it takes such a long time to reach a good standard of living...

...I would still stop them. One baby every five years forever is infinite babies. There is nothing that is not worth saving infinite babies.

I'm convinced that our modern day analogues to ancient scholars are comedians. -0dd1

Well, considering that you may have to kill them all in order to stop them, I'm pretty sure that a living civilization is worth theoretically infinite babies... since those babies won't be born anyway when you stop them...

Except possibly the lives of everyone else in the ongoing culture for the future. I mean that's infinite people (heat death etc. aside).

edited 18th Apr '11 10:27:34 PM by Pykrete

@OP: When I read your hypothetical scenario, I immediately wondered if you had recently read Three Worlds Collide

'Don't beg for anything, do it yourself, or else you won't get anything.'

Assuming Like Reality, Unless Noted, and that therefore there's no evidence of any causal link between the sacrifices and their prosperity, I'd stop it. Unless it takes a lot of work. One baby every 5 years isn't that much, all things considered. If I just had like "stop infant sacrifices" button in front of me I'd push it without hesitation.

The death of their "culture" is a complete non-issue to me. Culture has no value whatsoever, and not just "no inherent value", no value at all. The pretty paintings and nifty stories will still exist regardless of the practices of the citizens. Preserving peoples' belief in inanity and accompanying inane practices is like preserving the exact shape of a beach before the next wave hits it. Completely meaningless.

edited 18th Apr '11 11:41:01 PM by Clarste

@Karmakin: Thank you for saving me words and thus time.

Anyways, I'd let the fuckers kill themselves into extinction. There's a very good reason why we slow breeding primates don't have the luxury of killing babies unless we are under an extreme overpopulation problem.

Hell, even most historical cultures were supposed to be baby killers didn't do that other than very specific rituals once or twice per year. When they did more than once or twice, it was because they were already dealing with the damage of overpopulation, like the mesoamericans.

A single phrase renders Christianity a delusional cult.

In other words, it's literally Someone Else'

^{the society killing its five-year olds (five year olds are not babies)}

s Problem. I'm not going to stop a society from driving itself into extinction. We could use more societies like that.

Some posts in this thread are utterly depraved. There is no way something can be ethical in one culture, but unethical in another. Either something's wrong, or it isn't. And murder of five years old isn't ethical, period. Ethics exist not as some abstract, independent ideals, but as tools for the benefit, welfare and protection of humans, including individual five years olds. It's a simple utilitarian logic.

Now, utilitarian logic is also to look for the greater good, but I don't see how preserving that culture is for the greater good. In the end, culture is just décor, after all. To use a real life example, all the treasures in the Louvre wouldn't be worth a single human life.

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

OP: I'd study the culture even more deeply, and find a way to incorporate the familiar elements into Christianity - sans the babykilling of course. Talk about similarities to Christianity, and state that there is a different, unbloody way of conducting a sacrifice while still satisfying God. Basically what missionaries have done since Paul.

So ethics are a means to an end, and their end is "the benefit, welfare and protection of humans". As that is not my end, ethics would be the wrong tools for me to use in this scenario.

Yes, yes, we get it, you're an unique little snowflake, and sooo edgy...

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

No, but attempting to stop it could easily cause something considerably worse.

On second thought, you can be off-topic by yourself. I've thought of something more relevant.

Using your definition of ethics, you need to rephrase "wrong" as "ethically wrong" in order to differentiate it from "morally wrong", because the scope of morality has to be wider than the scope you've assigned to ethics. If you have some goal other than benefit/welfare/protection of humans, like the welfare of non-humans, the benefit/welfare/protection of [some particular subset of] humans, the welfare of the souls of humans, "ethics" isn't going to be relevant, but you'll still have a system of decision-making or hierarchy of values or something like that. You can't just assert that "benefit/welfare/protection of humans" is the only/highest priority.

edited 19th Apr '11 3:23:18 PM by Tongpu

Octo: What if they have a 20% child mortality rate anyhow before the age of 10, and attempt pick out the sick child for the cermoney?
Or it is a way to keep the population properly in line?
Just because you think it is so, does not make it so.
Besides, nothing wrong with what they are doing if they actually got nothing against what they are doing.

A guy called dvorak is tired. Tired of humanity not wanting to change to improve itself. Quite the sad tale.

That would make things... less bad, but since even the sick child theoretically has a chance of survival, it would still be bad.

What? Do you mean by population the people, or population numbers? Because the former would even be an evil aim all by itself, nevermind child sacrifices.

By that logic there is no moral judgement at all possible anywhere in the world. Which is obviously silly.

Come again? I don't quite know what you mean there.

—-

Of course I can. That is the entire reason why we have moral/ethics in the first place.

edited 19th Apr '11 6:36:52 PM by Octo

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

One can insert your morals and ethics up until the point where you start killing people of a civilization to destroy their culture...

At that point, one becomes no better than the people s/he is killing... If one isn't worse by killing the civilization rather than allowing them to live at the expense of a child.

Actually, I think the reason we have them has more to do with the welfare of our respective ingroups than that of children in foreign societies. But either way, that's a description, not a prescription. Whatever our initial reasons for having them, we aren't limited to those, just as we aren't limited to using sex only for procreation.