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 | Re: Who needs slaves when you've got robots? | |
| Posted By: Forrest of B.org | Date: 2/1/17 9:17 a.m. |
| In Response To: Re: Who needs slaves when you've got robots? (VikingBoyBilly) : I think you're forgetting that pfhor are not just slave owners, but slave
I actually mentioned that at the very start of my post, but that then raises the further question: why do those other higher-tech civilizations need slaves, assuming they're high-tech enough to build robots too? And even if not, if the Pfhor are capable of making robots (as they are), why not sell the robots instea... ...idea: Planned obsolescence. The species who buy from the Pfhor are not capable of building robotics themselves, but they still have labor needs. The Pfhor COULD sell them a better product, robots, but instead they sell them cheap, disposable flesh-beings that get used up and need to be replaced, meaning the Pfhor get to sell them MORE slaves over and over again. Perhaps the slaves are sterilized first to make sure that the customers can't "pirate" more "copies" of their slaves (by breeding them locally). The problem with that idea is that it would put the Pfhor's customers on a lower technological level than humanity, who the Pfhor see not as customers but as products. That actually raises even further questions: who is on such equal footing with the Pfhor as to be a trading partner with them and yet not at war with them? It seems that the Pfhor mindset is that either you are a slave, a Pfhor, or a threat to be destroyed by any means necessary. If the Pfhor could just take what the other species had to trade instead of trading for it, they would. If they couldn't, that implies the other species is more advanced than the Pfhor, and so probably have robots and so wouldn't buy slaves from the Pfhor. So we're back to square one. : The pfhor also need to assert power over worlds to colonize with their
You don't need to take slaves to conquer a planet. If the Pfhor just wanted to live on Lh'owon, they could have just killed the S'pht. That's the most logical course of action. So we need to figure out why they bothered keeping S'pht alive; what use are they? (Ok in this particular instance I already conceded that S'pht are genuinely useful as the Pfhor lack true AI, but the argument applies to the Drinniol, etc). : Machines also require resources to be produced, and they could pretty much
Yeah. That's the straightforward route. You build robots capable of doing everything you need, including building more robots, including traveling through space and disassembling entire planets for the raw materials if necessary. Given that you're able to program robots capable of such complex tasks in the first place, it's going to be indefinitely cheaper and easier than getting ugly bags of mostly water to do it for you. The only reason it hasn't happened here on Earth yet (putting all humans out of jobs at least, not the strip-mine-the-planet part) is that we haven't figured out how. But smart minds are working on it as we speak, and other smart minds are already terrified of the consequences if they succeed...
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