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Post by strangebloke on Nov 6, 2010 17:55:04 GMT
He merely means that the court dwellers want to be "God" in the sense of living forever, understanding all, and capable of manipulating anything. I'd say that is taking it pretty seriously. Sure it is, but its just the basic ethic of science: explore, understand, and improve human life. Not all that big a deal.
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Post by evilanagram on Nov 6, 2010 20:39:58 GMT
@op: Worth the cost? Well, it's considered wrong to sacrifice lives for material gain, but the moral rules are not... logically consistent. For every dangerous job on the world, each year something is paid for with lives. Humanity sacrifices ~3370 lives each day in traffic accidents just to move goods and people around easier. Compared to that, 4 lives lost over a span of at least a century would be a ridiculously low cost for anything that can be described as "godlike power". But the moral rules aren't there to minimize loss of life directly. It's because no one wants to be to ruled by someone who lets them die whenever it's advantageous. Also, this avoids all the pitfalls in the "ends justify the means" philosophy; the slippery slopes, the unintended consequences, and the loss of goodwill. So far the court's shady tactics have worked fine. The court hasn't grown into a tyranny, all victims are either dead or contained, and their dirty actions aren't widely known. But that might change. All in all, I think it should be harder for the court to use people like that. Maybe use the robots to make it impossible to keep it such things under wraps for very long. It your tactics can't stand the light of day, you shouldn't be using them anyway. The examples you give are tenuous at best. People who have dangerous jobs are (usually) not forced into doing them. They take a chance because they think their pay is worth the risk. There is a massive difference between that and murdering someone, which is what the Court did.
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Post by todd on Nov 6, 2010 22:32:07 GMT
It becomes a problem when innocent bystanders get exposed to the dangers. Which comes back to the issue that Court security seems quite lacking. Which is all the more puzzling since the Court faculty, whatever else you can say about them, are not incompetent. They don't seem to have any back-up plans for what to do if the students persist in getting into places they're not supposed to go into - all the stranger since those teachers who were once students there (like Anja and James) must remember that they didn't let warnings and cries of "danger!" mean anything to them when they were kids. This wouldn't be surprising if the Court teachers were incompetent - but because they're extremely competent, it's a mystery.
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Post by jayne on Nov 7, 2010 0:40:17 GMT
It becomes a problem when innocent bystanders get exposed to the dangers. Which comes back to the issue that Court security seems quite lacking. Which is all the more puzzling since the Court faculty, whatever else you can say about them, are not incompetent. They don't seem to have any back-up plans for what to do if the students persist in getting into places they're not supposed to go into - all the stranger since those teachers who were once students there (like Anja and James) must remember that they didn't let warnings and cries of "danger!" mean anything to them when they were kids. This wouldn't be surprising if the Court teachers were incompetent - but because they're extremely competent, it's a mystery. Eglamore didn't tell Annie not to break the rules, he said don't get caught. Anja and Donald expect Kat and Annie to break the rules like they did. They hope they will be careful and ask for help if they need it but they have to let them grow up.
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Post by todd on Nov 7, 2010 1:09:59 GMT
I know - but in a place as dangerous as the Court, where if you're not careful you can wind up dead or possessed by an etheric spider, that does seem a trifle negligent.... (I wouldn't want to imagine what a school inspector would make of the place.)
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Post by jayne on Nov 7, 2010 1:17:04 GMT
I know - but in a place as dangerous as the Court, where if you're not careful you can wind up dead or possessed by an etheric spider, that does seem a trifle negligent.... (I wouldn't want to imagine what a school inspector would make of the place.) Yeah but they grew up there... the danger is normal for them. Imagine a kid who grew up in New York City.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Nov 7, 2010 1:27:24 GMT
(I wouldn't want to imagine what a school inspector would make of the place.) Well, we don't have to, because the outside world largely leaves the Court alone.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Nov 7, 2010 5:51:55 GMT
[edit] This is a reply to the notion that the Court is a dangerous place for the students. That doesn't really become clear until the very end of this post. My bad. [/edit]
My guess is that the main reason the students at the Court are not under tighter lock-down is that as a group they're mostly obedient.
I went to a small private escalator school k-12 (we learned a little about elevators as well). It may be hard to relate to but the culture there is tightly controlled. How did they do that, you ask? The staff really ground the kids down with The Rules.
Dress code was strictly enforced; wearing pants with belt loops but no belt got you an hour's detention. Skirt more than three inches above the knee? You get detention, usually more than one hour. Shirt with no collar, dyed or bleached hair, or any article of clothing with unapproved writing? Those things meant a day's suspension. Fighting on school property was pretty rare but it did happen because people are people everywhere; even if you got attacked without provocation if you defended yourself you got a week's suspension, no argument and no appeal. Alcohol on campus (or worse?) meant mandatory expulsion and lifetime ban. Even away from school getting into trouble could mean dire consequences.
The rules and high academic standards were a lethal combination. What was rebellion to us was incredibly tame to everyone else, thus I can relate to a night spent sneaking off to view a science experiment as being pretty subversive.
There doesn't seem to be much drug or alcohol use going on so that's probably out. There's probably a liquor store somewhere but a controlled environment like the Court would make the usual smuggling/selling to minors very difficult.
A big cause of harm to pre-teens and teens is car accidents. There don't seem to be many in the Court so that isn't an issue.
Another large danger for kids is suicide. At the Court I figure any students (or other resident) intent on self-harm would be directed into the test rather than left to stew by themselves.
So that leaves the random etheric stuff. There's alarms if you go near the bridge, the power station, and suchlike. Basil's lair is hidden, Gamma and Zimmy avoid people, and the Court doesn't know about Shadow 2. The only reason they didn't catch Jack right away was that he'd learned about the tracking stuff in the food. That leaves what, Mort? It's his job to scare people, not hurt them. It may even be his official Court job to scare people so as to make student life interesting (hello, residential).
There's still accidents and misadventure but I suspect all dangerous equipment is locked up when not in use, just like a regular school.
So... not really seeing the great danger to the average student, except random robot infatuation/stalkings. I think most kids probably don't go where they aren't supposed to; those that do sneak around and explore probably don't find much danger. The alarms on the dorms are easy for the kids to bypass because they're there to protect the kids, not keep them prisoner, and they're probably sufficient for that.
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Post by blackmantha on Nov 7, 2010 10:25:15 GMT
The examples you give are tenuous at best. People who have dangerous jobs are (usually) not forced into doing them. They take a chance because they think their pay is worth the risk. There is a massive difference between that and murdering someone, which is what the Court did. Yeah, you're right, that is the big difference. That second paragraph was more about weighing "4 lives lost" against "Phenomenal Cosmic Power", not yet going into the moral questions about unwilling sacrifices. I should have made that clearer.
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Post by todd on Nov 7, 2010 11:41:36 GMT
While I stand by my earlier remark that the Court's decision to be prying into the etheric sciences is ill-advised (and not just because it keeps them living next to Gillitie Wood, leading to the clashes with the forest-folk and the Court's using the wrong methods to solve the problem of those clashes), I also think that there's one point in their favor: they seem to be after it just out of interest in knowledge. There's no evidence that they're planning to use this knowledge for something like, say, taking over the world, and I can't imagine them trying that (partly because it doesn't fit the characterization of the faculty members whom we've met, partly because it doesn't fit the tone of the comic). The troubles that come from their search seem more accidental (Jack getting possessed by an etheric spider, for example - I don't think that anyone at the Court knew enough about Zimmy's abilities to know what would happen if she got too near the Power Station when it was in use).
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Post by theweatherman on Nov 7, 2010 12:50:42 GMT
Humans will do ANYTHING to survive, when the chips are down, death around the corner and the fat lady screaming, we will destroy, corrupt and burn anything in our path to keep living, the court is just another example of this.
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Post by warrl on Nov 16, 2010 2:41:45 GMT
For every dangerous job on the world, each year something is paid for with lives. Humanity sacrifices ~3370 lives each day in traffic accidents just to move goods and people around easier. Some years ago I read of a study which found that, statistically, every half-million US dollars spent on improving safety caused the death of one person. Which (assuming both the study and my recollection of it are accurate) isn't a bad deal if you can spend a half-million dollars on safety in ways that will save a hundred people... but it really stinks if the half-million is spent on documenting safety measures already in place. And really casts a bad light on safety measures that cost $3 million per life saved.
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Alex
Full Member
Posts: 165
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Post by Alex on Nov 17, 2010 6:38:08 GMT
The Court's objective appears, roughly, to achieve some supreme triumph of artifice, knowledge, or both. Either of those seems to be a goal you could at least plausibly value over a few lives.
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Post by basser on Nov 17, 2010 7:33:42 GMT
Here, have a real life example:
I work in the metals lab at a lead/zinc mine on Admiralty Island, Alaska. Currently from where I'm sitting I can see no less than five different warning signs all for various things like cyanide use and respirator usage reminders, but by far the most prominent of all of them is the huge poster tacked to the door that leads outside. It reads "CHECK FOR BEARS BEFORE EXITING BUILDING" with a big scary-looking picture of a grizzly bear underneath. This is because Admiralty Island is home to the highest density of brown bears in North America.
Now, why on earth would anyone want to build a mine here when the site is literally crawling with man-eating carnivores? Because this is where the ore is. Jump ahead to the comic world, why would anyone want to build a research facility next to a demigod-infested forest? Logically, because that's where the magic is. Speaking from experience, human beings are willing to put up with a lot of danger if it happens to be in the way of something they want, be it shiny rocks or unimaginable power and knowledge.
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Alex
Full Member
Posts: 165
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Post by Alex on Nov 17, 2010 7:57:10 GMT
Obviously the proper solution is to just hire the bears to mine the ore, duh.
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Post by Elaienar on Nov 17, 2010 17:48:49 GMT
Yes but I don't think the suicide fairies would make very good teachers.
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Post by basser on Nov 19, 2010 10:41:20 GMT
Obviously the proper solution is to just hire the bears to mine the ore, duh. Honestly looking at some of my coworkers you'd be hard-pressed to say we haven't.
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Post by todd on Nov 20, 2010 23:15:44 GMT
I've sometimes wondered recently "What if the Court finally uncovers the big secret of the Bismuth Seed - and it's something disappointing or something that it could never comprehend or control?"
(To explain a bit about what I mean, I read a comic book story about a year ago where a secret society decides to steal the Stone of Destiny or Stone of Scone, set during its real-life return to Scotland in 1996 - one of their members switched a regular stone for the real one while it was en route to Edinburgh. The stone is brought before the head of the secret society, who hopes to make use of its mysterious powers, but it addresses him, telling him that the stone is just a mouthpiece for something far more powerful, something that even the secret society can never contain - but that this same something can speak and act through *any* stone, meaning that after all that scheming, all that the secret society had gotten out of it was a rock.)
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Post by basser on Nov 21, 2010 8:25:02 GMT
Well I guess then it would sort of be like most any other natural phenomena we've discovered. I mean think of gravity, for instance. It's everywhere and affects everyone, and yet we have no idea what it is, how it works, or what it's even for ("sticking stuff together" isn't an acceptably scientific purpose for being), and we certainly can't control it. But even so we still study its effects and build giant atom-smashers and whatnot in hopes of eventually figuring it out.
So I guess what I'm saying is, if the Seed Bismuth turns out to be too complex for human minds... so what? They're going to study the hell out of it anyway. That's just what scientists do.
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monte
Junior Member
Posts: 66
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Post by monte on Nov 22, 2010 1:42:56 GMT
I've sometimes wondered recently "What if the Court finally uncovers the big secret of the Bismuth Seed - and it's something disappointing or something that it could never comprehend or control?" If they they can not comprehend it, then that means they did not truly uncover the big secret. afterall understanding the Bismuth Seed is a secret in and of itself. Frankly i don't think Scientist would ever conclude that something is impossible to understand. I mean recall what Kat's opinion when it comes to magic; the logic of the scientist is that just because we can not understand it now does not mean we can never understand it. As long as that's your understanding then you will never stop testing since "we can not answer this" is an impossible answer... they will continue testing and study, and even when they use all of their current methods of study they will find new ways to study it As for control, could be the same issue... if they really want to control it i doubt they will ever stop trying to find a way. Though even if they were to finish their work with the Seed, I doubt it would mean the end of the court. It's a massive research facility which can have an infinite number of uses. It would take a massive amount of time, effort, and money to rebuild or move the facility. All in all, the Court would much rather deal with the woods rather than go through the trouble of moving the facility. Hell they would sooner find a way to destroy the forest rather than let it force them into moving
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