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[Trup1aya]

what the hell? what do you mean? the difference between me and a white person is that we are of different races. that alone doesn't make one of us better than the other, but it is something different about us, among probably several other things. unless you mean something more with "distinct biological" in your description, I don't know what you're talking about.

What he's saying is genetically, there is no such thing has different human races... The term race is something people use to explain what amount to minute genetic variations between individuals. And this use started before people had real any understanding about the genome...

It's a misnomer. Biologists and anthropologists don't recognize race as a valid classification because there's generally more genetic differences between individuals within a group than there are between groups. So assigning 'races' based solely on a few inherited physical characteristics is arbitrary.

 

[Raven Prime]

what the hell? what do you mean? the difference between me and a white person is that we are of different races. that alone doesn't make one of us better than the other, but it is something different about us, among probably several other things. unless you mean something more with "distinct biological" in your description, I don't know what you're talking about.

You can identify as a separate race, as a social construct. It however isn't considered to be anything with a firm biological basis. Your cultural reality, your ethnic background etc. are all far more real and technically more precise terms than 'race'.

If tomorrow all people with green eyes and blue eyes would group together they could also invent different races, if they live apart long enough, they would develop distinct cultures and habits. But if you think about it, it's all very arbitrary, just like the amount of melanin in your skin, it's just something to optimize your vitamin D absorption vs your UV protection.

To be clear, I'm not discrediting people's social and cultural identities, heritage and what not are very real. But factually there is no biological basis for separate human races, not on basis of skin color or eyefolds or whatever. I also don't think there are many benefits to the concept of race, historically it's been used to divide the human species and take power away from many. If anything it always and only benefits one group over the interests of others.

Let's not forget that your initial comment was about the use of the term race instead of species. I've been trying to point out that your understanding of the term race is instead the 'incorrect' use of the term.

Anyway I think it's best not to hijack this thread with this discussion.

What he's saying is genetically, there is no such thing has different human races... The term race is something people use to explain what amount to minute genetic variations between individuals. And this use started before people had real any understanding about the genome...

It's a misnomer.

Exactly.

 

[The Artisan]

What he's saying is genetically, there is no such thing has different human races... The term race is something people use to explain what amount to minute genetic variations between individuals. And this use started before people had real any understanding about the genome...

It's a misnomer. Biologists and anthropologists don't recognize race as a valid classification because there's generally more genetic differences between individuals within a group than there are between groups. So assigning 'races' based solely on a few inherited physical characteristics is arbitrary.

You can identify as a separate race, as a social construct. It however isn't considered to be anything with a firm biological basis. Your cultural reality, your ethnic background etc. are all far more real and technically more precise terms than 'race'.

If tomorrow all people with green eyes and blue eyes would group together they could also invent different races, if they live apart long enough, they would develop distinct cultures and habits. But if you think about it, it's all very arbitrary, just like the amount of melanin in your skin, it's just something to optimize your vitamin D absorption vs your UV protection.

To be clear, I'm not discrediting people's social and cultural identities, heritage and what not are very real. But factually there is no biological basis for separate human races, not on basis of skin color or eyefolds or whatever. I also don't think there are many benefits to the concept of race, historically it's been used to divide the human species and take power away from many. If anything it always and only benefits one group over the interests of others.

Let's not forget that your initial comment was about the use of the term race instead of species. I've been trying to point out that your understanding of the term race is instead the 'incorrect' use of the term.

Anyway I think it's best not to hijack this thread with this discussion.



Exactly.

well that's what race means for me. i am an american, but my heritage from my parents include south asia being my motherland and knowing their language, and what not, just like you said. i identify as brown, just like a jamaican or an african american would identify as black.

but to go along with what you're saying, if there's no such thing as a genetic race I guess that makes sense since we are all the same species, but then how would accusing someone of being a "racist" ever make sense? if no such thing exists?

 

[Horp]

I'm tired of so many plots with alien enemies stating in the beginning that "they are many times smarter than us", and in the end we beat them by outsmarting them. Often there isnt even a single scene where their supposedly superior intelligence can be observed.

 

[zeemumu]

It always felt like the opposite to me when it came to fantasy universes. When I'm playing WoW or a LotR game I don't want to play as a human.

 

[MikeyB]

Haven't humans essentially lost in Fallout? If you think about what the population was, you play a remnant of a species that totally lost. Same goes for Last of Us, and any Zombie games.

Sci fi series where humanity is an immature interloper in danger of being crushed... The Uplift series are sort of like that. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy crushes humanity in the first or second chapter. That's all I can think of now.

 

[GoldandBlue]

Robotnik the Human always loses to those damn furry critters.

 

[Steel]

Haven't humans essentially lost in Fallout? If you think about what the population was, you play a remnant of a species that totally lost. Same goes for Last of Us, and any Zombie games.

Sci fi series where humanity is an immature interloper in danger of being crushed... The Uplift series are sort of like that. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy crushes humanity in the first or second chapter. That's all I can think of now.

There are a ton of stories where humanity loses to itself, but that's not what OP's after. OP is after stories where OP gets completely and utterly outmatched and does not succeed against overwhelming odds because of their specialness.

As you mentioned though, Hitcherker's Guide is a great example of that.

 

[Raven Prime]

well that's what race means for me. i am an american, but my heritage from my parents include south asia being my motherland and knowing their language, and what not, just like you said. i identify as brown, just like a jamaican or an african american would identify as black.

but to go along with what you're saying, if there's no such thing as a genetic race I guess that makes sense since we are all the same species, but then how would accusing someone of being a "racist" ever make sense? if no such thing exists?

I will answer this and then probably let it rest. I have already tried to explain in a post a page back or so, that even while 'race' as per populair understanding doesn't exist, racism is still very real. I would also argue however that the continued belief in separate races stimulates the phenomenon of racism. To treat others as if they are less, necessitates the belief that they are somehow distinctly different from you. Exposing the myth of race would therefore eventually help combating racism for that simple reason, contrary to what some race advocates believe. (They believe that invalidating the concept of race also invalidates the experience of racism, I would counter that by saying that it invalidates the foundation on which racism is built, but not the phenomenon itself.)

As for the semantics of racism, here are some wikipedia quotes on the matter:

In the 19th century, some scientists subscribed to the belief that the human population is divided into races, that some races were inferior to others, and that differential treatment of races was consequently justified. Such theories are generally termed scientific racism.

Today, most biologists, anthropologists, and sociologists reject a taxonomy of races in favor of more specific and/or empirically verifiable criteria, such as geography, ethnicity, or a history of endogamy.

The UN does not define "racism"; however, it does define "racial discrimination": According to the United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,

the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

This definition does not make any difference between discrimination based on ethnicity and race, in part because the distinction between the two remains debatable among anthropologists. Similarly, in British law the phrase racial group means "any group of people who are defined by reference to their race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origin".

In Norway, the word "race" has been removed from national laws concerning discrimination as the use of the phrase is considered problematic and unethical. The Norwegian Anti-Discrimination Act bans discrimination based on ethnicity, national origin, descent and skin color.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism

 

[Trup1aya]

well that's what race means for me. i am an american, but my heritage from my parents include south asia being my motherland and knowing their language, and what not, just like you said. i identify as brown, just like a jamaican or an african american would identify as black.

but to go along with what you're saying, if there's no such thing as a genetic race I guess that makes sense since we are all the same species, but then how would accusing someone of being a "racist" ever make sense? if no such thing exists?

The term racism makes sense because humans do treat people differently based on outward physical traits.

So even though genetically, race isn't a thing, socially, it is... This fact just goes to show how stupid the it is to judge people by their skin color...

 

[JeffZero]

This topic has taken a sharp turn directly into my major (anthropology). Fascinating.

 

[RiverBed]

Wow, what a pretentious post.

It's only pretentious if you are pretending. You don't pretend to speak French if you can speak it.
Do you think people at large have an understanding of the world around them? I can't imagine anyone saying yes to that.

 

[redcrayon]

I like Harry Turtledove's The Road Not Taken. All these alien races have FTL and assume that Earth is ripe for conquest because humans still haven't figured it out. Well, turns out that in every other respect the alien conquerors are technologically backwards, including weaponry. Once their invasion spectacularly fails, humans reverse-engineer FTL and the civilizations of the galaxy weep.

He returned to a similar theme in the WorldWar books, charting an alien invasion during WWII, the ceasefire that follows and humanities development.

The alien species develops slowly but reliably, and so first observes us during the Crusades, before turning up 850-odd years later with an invasion force still expecting us to be fighting on horseback. Our production lines make the destruction of one lizard grav-tank for 50 Russian T-34s a viable strategy!

The lizards won't commit to unnecessary loss of life, and every other species has joined their (largely beneficial but overwhelmingly superior) empire willingly, but our factions just choose to fight to the death and each other instead, with the amount of lying and backstabbing shocking the aliens.

What I love about them is that the Lizard invasion force leader, Atvar, is a viewpoint character and probably the most reasonable character in the whole series. The only thing that makes him an antagonist is being the enemy leader, he's actually an honest, fundamentally decent creature way out of his depth when dealing with the complexities of hundreds of human countries. The conversation between him and his nemesis in the later books, the colonisation fleet leader who arrives expecting a subdued planet but finds a total mess, is great too. Also, the aliens are only about four-feet high, they call humans 'big uglies', and get hilariously addicted to ginger, with it becoming effectively addictive drugs to them that the previously hard-working, dedicated troopers will kill each other for.

The series continues with

Spoiler

humans launching FTL craft on a mission to the lizard homeworld, but ships built decades later arrive only weeks after the first ship arrives due to our advancing technology, heralding a final win for humanity as their eventual dominance is practically assured. Long story short, the best thing the lizards could have done is leave us alone to kill ourselves. All they do is give a warlike, almost suicidally violent species a common foe to unite against!

 

[Sephiroth_VII]

You should read Accelerando. I don't know of any games like it though.

 

[Nose Master]

It's almost like they're written for a human audience

 

[justsomeguy]

OP is Alliance confirmed.

Spoiler

For the Horde!

 

[Tenebrous]

I'm tired of so many plots with alien enemies stating in the beginning that "they are many times smarter than us", and in the end we beat them by outsmarting them. Often there isnt even a single scene where their supposedly superior intelligence can be observed.

It's pretty ridiculous to say the least.

OP is Alliance confirmed.

Spoiler

For the Horde!

Orc Female Warrior, Conqueror, with 235k honorable kills. Fuck the Alliance, haha.

It's almost like they're written for a human audience

And god forbid stories should be different. Don't you think it would be more interesting to, just once, not be able to predict the ending of a game involving an alien species?

 

[ElTopo]

OP should play Hatred?

Please don't ban me.

 

[hateradio]

Even if there were a game without humans or humans loosing, the other species would still be human-like in their sentiments.

It's really hard to step outside our own bounds.

 

[ogbg]

You might like The Inheritors by William Golding. Told from the the perspective of a fairly advanced non-human primate (but still before language development) whose group encounters some kind of early hominid species. Also Watership Down, although the animals in that are given human abilities.

 

[10k]

Don't understimate us OP.

This is fucking awesome.

 

[ShinMaruku]

When you look at the historyography of race you find some really intresting things. Of course there is no such thing as races, and of course that term is fluid. Just a century or two before Irish and Slavic were races too, but as time expanded more ethnicities got intergrated into more overall umbrella terms as the 'in group' got more expanded upon.

It is mainly just a construct to separate people and can lead to tribalism. It's a hold over from when we came out of trees.

 

[primasaurus]

Hell, what great works of fantasy fiction result in the hero/humans failing totally at the last second? I'd love a good book recommendation, too.

Book: The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson (Human Extinction)

 

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[The Artisan]

I will answer this and then probably let it rest. I have already tried to explain in a post a page back or so, that even while 'race' as per populair understanding doesn't exist, racism is still very real. I would also argue however that the continued belief in separate races stimulates the phenomenon of racism. To treat others as if they are less, necessitates the belief that they are somehow distinctly different from you. Exposing the myth of race would therefore eventually help combating racism for that simple reason, contrary to what some race advocates believe. (They believe that invalidating the concept of race also invalidates the experience of racism, I would counter that by saying that it invalidates the foundation on which racism is built, but not the phenomenon itself.)

As for the semantics of racism, here are some wikipedia quotes on the matter:





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism

trust me, I understand what you are saying. What if I said when I or a rational person use the word "race", that it is being used as a synonym for "ethnicity"?

The term racism makes sense because humans do treat people differently based on outward physical traits.

So even though genetically, race isn't a thing, socially, it is... This fact just goes to show how stupid the it is to judge people by their skin color...

yeah. i'm not arguing with you there.

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Spoiler

off topic, but

the most overrated film of all time.

 

[Dame]

In one post you pointed out how useless batman actually would be in most DC fights, and the need to write him into relevance because humans must always be the best. Thank you.

I wouldn't mind fiction where humans were just a small player in a big world. Mass Effect had to ruin it with making them the saviors of the galaxy.

Mass Effect had so much potential if we weren't space Jesus.

 

[lazygecko]

What irks me the most about this stuff in fictonal worlds with multiple races is that the other races are usually depicted as a singular, monolithic cultures (because they usually act as stand-ins inspired by some real life human culture), while humans are usually depicted as more diverse and split up.

 

[aeolist]

read blindsight and echopraxia by peter watts, immediately

also the revelation space series by alastair reynolds

 

[RexNovis]

In one post you pointed out how useless batman actually would be in most DC fights, and the need to write him into relevance because humans must always be the best. Thank you.



Mass Effect had so much potential if we weren't space Jesus.

Did you seriously bump a 6 month old thread for this? Wtf dude? Not cool.

 

[Piers]

Kid Icarus Uprising does delve a bit into the question of what makes humans so special. I don't think the game really gives a satisfying answer, actually. Kinda easy to see things from the genocidal loli's point of view

According to Palutina, "Humans are closest to us gods."
Loll aptly responds with something like "Wait, what? What the hell does that even mean? :|"

 

[Massa]

I thought this thread was about the player community in Rainbow Six Siege.

 

[FlyingSaucer]

I thought this thread was about the player community in Rainbow Six Siege.

I thought it was a thread about politics or religion created by a liberal in his first year at univ.

 

[ATXAlchemy]

To be fair, I regularly ask the dog I pass by daily if he wants to write a game story for me. He always ignore me.

 

[Nottle]

What irks me the most about this stuff in fictonal worlds with multiple races is that the other races are usually depicted as a singular, monolithic cultures (because they usually act as stand-ins inspired by some real life human culture), while humans are usually depicted as more diverse and split up.

I think that trope is called planet of hats or something to that effect. It's because as people we observed a chicken and can paint out its specific characteristics quite easily. Bird, flightless, they have patriarchal groups etc. They basically have been doing this for ever. Then we apply what we know to our made up race of aliens inspired by chickens.

I mean, we could probably do the same for humans too. For the most part all people across all cultures have basic similarities that can be boiled down to but, as people we are complex enough to claim to be individuals.
While Mass Effect is brought up, the first game does a good job setting up the stereotypes of the alien cultures and the second game subverts these expectations by giving us a cold ex soldier Salarian, a unnatural and more intelligent Krogan, and more confident and badass asari.

Also earths conditions facilitated the necessity for diversity. People look the way they do because their ancestors survived due to having the most beneficial traits for the region they lived it. I doubt many writers think of this but if a snow planet had people living there and they were hairless lizard people with no clothes, that makes no sense because we know lizards typically live in warmer climates. Typically Mass effect was pretty good at telling us that evolution shaped the way the races developed.

 

[Dame]

Did you seriously bump a 6 month old thread for this? Wtf dude? Not cool.

The OP linked back to it in a new, relevant thread. If I and these new comments broke a posting rule, I'll gladly take it down.

 

[Fergie]

Humans creating fictional stories. Of course want to win.

Are you a traitor OP?

 

[ViridianHues]

If you really hate the human race and want something quick to read, then read "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream". Good times.

People say the game based off of it is great, but I've never played it and it seems quite different from the short story.

 

[nkarafo]

 

[derExperte]

Old thread but if OP is still sick of human scum I suggest Plague Inc. Kill em all.

 

[Labrynian Rebel]

I find it strange how human is often referred to as "race" when really it is "species".

Probably so humans can have babies with sexy alien chicks.

 

[The Artisan]

Probably so humans can have babies with sexy alien chicks.

hybrids? that sounds cool to me.