https://nitter.net/rmcentush/status/1731050675923239268

  • KarlBarqs [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    this is a classic sci fi plot

    And every single fucking time it goes bad for the people involved

    Like literally every single instance of a species being uplifted in sci fi is a cautionary tale about interference with others, and usually has the uplifted species be violent/used as a weapon

    Literal fucking Torment Nexus bullshit

    • TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      All (good) sci-fi is an exploration of issues that already exist in our world, just with the added distance of future/tech that allows those issues to take an even greater shape.

      This whole "uplifting primates" bs is just sci-fi talk for neoliberal development economics, it's just saying the quiet part out loud, in that people from poor countries are an inherently inferior species.

    • QuillcrestFalconer [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      The Culture Series would like a word. Although sometimes when they interfere things do go bad and that's part of the narrative, but the majority of time they don't interfere it results in self destruction of civilizations

      • Dolores [love/loves]
        ·
        1 year ago

        i dont think the Culture ever engaged in anything so crude as this suggestion. they do really fantastical manipulations of biology and physics but just to themselves and minds. the less intelligent animals are still pets

    • regul [any]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Stuff doesn't go bad per se in 2001, where it's heavily implied that humans were uplifted. It just gets real trippy and then the sequels sucked.

      • CarbonScored [any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        My thought too. Isn't this the prime example people think of when they think of uplifting in scifi?

    • Lodespawn@aussie.zone
      ·
      1 year ago

      Would you bother reading/watching/playing scifi media that didn't have some sort of conflict, like everything just went great?

      • iridaniotter [she/her]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I've actually read some utopian literature. It's cool to see what people in the past saw as an ideal future. We could use a little rebirth of the genre tbh

        • Lodespawn@aussie.zone
          ·
          1 year ago

          Maybe you're right, maybe the Tomorrowland concept is what the world is missing right now? Everything is a conflict to be overcome, noone imagines everyone just working together to achieve amazing things.

          • regul [any]
            ·
            1 year ago

            I've read a couple utopian novels where the conflict is largely interpersonal drama against a backdrop of an ecologically sustainable world.