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On December 01 2019 03:12 Sent. wrote:
Are there any sci-fi settings where interplanetary slave raiding has a plausible explanation? By "plausible" I mean having a good reason to burn all that spaceship fuel just to kidnap someone from another solar system and force them to do simple manual labor for you.
I think it’s plausible for an alien species to have a sort of dysfunctional culture that emphasizes the subjugation of other species to prove their technological or racial superiority. I know the critique is that an advanced intelligence would know its a waste of resources and pointless. I still think it’s feasible for some society to value proofs (slavery) as means of demonstrating pride and strength.
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People don't generally collect pets for their workhorse utility. Doesn't seem like much of a stretch for aliens to adopt "sub" species in a similar way imo.
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On December 02 2019 05:45 Sent. wrote:
I can think of a few other scenarios with the slavers using alien technology for interstellar travel, e.g. on-planet stargates, but I couldn't come up with any scenario where the slavers are an advanced species, at least as advanced as Battarians from Mass Effect.
I guess you can say it's plausible to have slavers capturing Twi'leks to turn them into very valuable sex slaves, but those would be rare, my question was about stuff like capturing Wookies on their homeworld to have them work in your mines or factories located on another planet.
IIRC before TLJ ships ran by magic in star wars, they had some kind of inexhaustible power source. So if you could hyperdrive to a planet, raid some stone age inhabitants/unarmed colonists and fill your ship with them this could turn out profitable quite easily. You'd definitely need much less equipment and capital than for an assembly line f.e..
SW has a bunch of other factors though, IIRC robots are newer than space ships in star wars, at least I don't remember the Naga Sadow comics having any robots. Also AI and general utility of robots in SW seems very low, they generally aren't able to solve complex problems by themselves nor do they seem to be very efficient workers. People in SW seem unable to combine more complex machinery with AI, literally all machinery seems to run on intervals.
And like others mentioned there exist collectors/sadists/pleasure slaves and for more war-like groups like the mandalorians or criminal orgs that don't necessarily have access to large scale production slavery might be a side benefit to their normal activities. For raiding "cultures" like dark elves in 40k a lot of these factors come together (sadists, cheap travel, raiding/warrior culture).
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On December 02 2019 11:37 Archeon wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2019 05:45 Sent. wrote:
I can think of a few other scenarios with the slavers using alien technology for interstellar travel, e.g. on-planet stargates, but I couldn't come up with any scenario where the slavers are an advanced species, at least as advanced as Battarians from Mass Effect.
I guess you can say it's plausible to have slavers capturing Twi'leks to turn them into very valuable sex slaves, but those would be rare, my question was about stuff like capturing Wookies on their homeworld to have them work in your mines or factories located on another planet. IIRC robots are newer than space ships in star wars, at least I don't remember the Naga Sadow comics having any robots.
That's what always bugged me about the Hyperspace War, how can you have advanced space travel, but no droids/ advanced machines to build them? It just seems totally implausible to me...
But then again SW has always been more fantasy than legitimate sci-fi, which ironically is why I love Star Wars. The best relationships are love/hate relationships, I guess 
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I think in general there will always be some jobs where slave labour is actually cheaper than highly advanced robots
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Now I'm ready to hear some examples!
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On December 02 2019 23:04 Uldridge wrote:
Now I'm ready to hear some examples!
For example very seasonal work (few weeks a year). Coffee, tabacco, aspargus plantation are still mainly done by humans (I think) despite having the technology available.
Child labour in some Asian countries is still a thing. Making shoes and shirts and whatnot. Pretty sure machines could do that already
Then some stuff where we don't have the technology (yet) like cooking, cleaning, gardening, ....
Just the top of my head. There are probably a hundred more examples
EDIT: Just to clarify. I know the above question was with highly advanced technology. But my point still stands: Right now we DO have some of the technology, but human labour is apparently still cheaper therefore used
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Without the "trading" part of slaving I feel like the probability of highly adapted/specialized species/equipment for harvesting on native planets would make sense in most fictional settings.
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On December 02 2019 23:41 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2019 23:04 Uldridge wrote:
Now I'm ready to hear some examples! For example very seasonal work (few weeks a year). Coffee, tabacco, aspargus plantation are still mainly done by humans (I think) despite having the technology available. Child labour in some Asian countries is still a thing. Making shoes and shirts and whatnot. Pretty sure machines could do that already Then some stuff where we don't have the technology (yet) like cooking, cleaning, gardening, .... Just the top of my head. There are probably a hundred more examples EDIT: Just to clarify. I know the above question was with highly advanced technology. But my point still stands: Right now we DO have some of the technology, but human labour is apparently still cheaper therefore used
There are quite some 'automatisable' tasks that are not, because people want to keep their job, and the society as a whole is against being replaced by robots for work. This turn more in a philosophical question than a technology one here.
(I'm obviously not talking about child labour and such)
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I think most people would be fine with being replaced by robots, if that didn't mean that the increased profitability goes into other peoples pockets while they don't get anything.
We just need to figure out a good way to give the replaced people some of the value that the robots produce.
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On December 03 2019 05:13 Simberto wrote:
I think most people would be fine with being replaced by robots, if that didn't mean that the increased profitability goes into other peoples pockets while they don't get anything.
We just need to figure out a good way to give the replaced people some of the value that the robots produce.
Did you post this specifically to test my self-control?
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On December 03 2019 05:13 Simberto wrote:
I think most people would be fine with being replaced by robots, if that didn't mean that the increased profitability goes into other peoples pockets while they don't get anything.
We just need to figure out a good way to give the replaced people some of the value that the robots produce.
I'm not sure about the "most people" part. People like the feeling of owning things they earned with their own work. If you take that away but leave them with a stable source of income, sooner or later lots of them should start feeling like their lives are meaningless.
Also, maybe that's just a misunderstanding, but the way you worded it makes it look like you think people would be fine with being "replaced", as long as they're guaranteed some kind of income in exchange. Nobody should be fine with being "replaced", it means being told you're no longer good enough to do your job. I'm guessing you meant being fine with no longer having to work, right?
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It does mean you're freed up to do whatever you want, though. You know, instead of working a mindnumbing job just because you need to make ends meet.
People will get a lot more satisfaction if they're able to become adept at expressing themselves or learn or indulge in hedonism. I will say that it's fairly difficult to give a random person freedom and let this person thrive in it. Even in freedom, one needs some kind of value system / structure, or he will fall into an existential crisis, probably ending up in a nihilistic / fatalistic loop.
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I feel like similarly to religion, people would suffer without work.
4 work day week? Sure no problem. Possibly even 3 or half-day. But many people both need an occupation for their mind as well as the feeling of a purpose of any kind. The robot utopia would destroy our society like how pension already destroys our old people in a lot of ways.
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Work is basically a thing to keep mind and body busy. If you can't find for yourself what you want to do with your mind and body, you need someone else to tell you what to do with your mind and body.
Obviously people need to keep their mind and body busy, because we've evolved from social hunting / gathering animals, that have lived in hierarchical systems for quite a while now. It's the same like certain breeds of dogs, if you don't keep them busy, they'll just go mad and eat your couch out of boredom.
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Norway28706 Posts
I worked a pretty tough manual job for almost 10 years and tbh I liked it a whole lot. It was really satisfying to like, have a goal that me and some buddies had to reach every day which required skill and considerable effort on our part. At the same time people who work that type of job full time for 25+ years tend to get all sorts of injuries.
Working 3-4 day week or 5-6 hours instead of 8+ is really good though, but a lot of people thrive from having something that must be accomplished - and deteriorate from not having anything like that. And especially for people where 'works hard' is one of the ways they are able to excel and feel a sense of mastery, I think the automation might be pretty disastrous, even if they ended up still getting money.
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People wont be without jobs when automation takes over,they will get different jobs.
There are a lot of jobs that can never be done by computers to the same extend as they can be done by humans.
For example taking care of elderly people,teaching people how to play a music instrument,a teacher,beeing a lifeguard and many more things.
The jobs that will be mostly replaced are factory jobs and office jobs but there is many other things that people could do and get satisfaction from.
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On December 03 2019 06:16 Archeon wrote:
I feel like similarly to religion, people would suffer without work. Uh...what? Did you want to phrase that differently?
On December 03 2019 08:18 pmh wrote:
People wont be without jobs when automation takes over,they will get different jobs.
There are a lot of jobs that can never be done by computers to the same extend as they can be done by humans.
For example taking care of elderly people,teaching people how to play a music instrument,a teacher,beeing a lifeguard and many more things.
The jobs that will be mostly replaced are factory jobs and office jobs but there is many other things that people could do and get satisfaction from. That's an argument that is thrown around an awful lot, but there is nothing to indicate that the jobs taken by automaton will be, or have been replaced by anything else as of yet. When algorithmic learning can teach a person to play a musical instrument, to teach, to replace 20 lifeguards with 1 lifeguard, what jobs will there be to take over those jobs?
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True automation can only be reached if machines realize they are broken and call for a repairmachine themselves and the repair machine knows what it has to do. That is still a very loooooooong way
Me personally, i wouldn't mind not having to work. I have a very long list of what I want to do:
Learn a new language, do more exercise, learn programming, travel, ...
Sense of accomplishment could be easily reached in pretty much all those things
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EPT
