Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: Terenia on December 27, 2009, 09:34:00 PM
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Is it ever okay?
Throughout over fifty books the Animorphs fight for the freedom of earth. The freedom to decide, the freedom to speak, the freedom for humans to exist on their own terms. After the war, the Yeerks are exiled into nothlitism and a new era of humanity begins. Slavery has been beaten down, rah rah rah.
Okay. So, let's say a few Yeerks stick around in their slug-like form. In the past we've mentioned using Yeerks as a method of controlling mental illness, or a possible sentence for law-breakers. Rob a bank? Here's a Yeerk-in-the-head who will not only make sure you complete your community service, but ensure that you will be a model citizen for the rest of your life. Kill someone? Why bother with the death sentence when you can shove a slug in their ear and be absolutely certain that they will never hurt another person?
Not to mention the possibilities when it comes to war. Interrogation techniques have been long under question, especially in the US with the whole torture thing under scrutiny. By infesting your enemy involuntarily, you'll get all the answers with none of the fuss.
Those are just a few possible scenarios, but the basic question is this:
Are there any circumstances that validate involuntary infestation?
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I don't think it's ever okay. Your points are valid, but (to me at least) not acceptable. Even if we could use Yeerks to turn criminals into "model citizens" it wouldn't be right because you might as well have killed that person, it would be more humane than making them a slave trapped inside their own body for life. Not to mention the fact that you can't guarantee that the Yeerk will NEVER commit a crime.
What's the point in literally forcing somebody to do community service when it technically isn't even them doing it? And I know not all criminals can realistically be rehabilitated into society, but by turning them all into Controllers you aren't even giving them a chance to change their ways. No crime is so terrible that the person responsible deserves to have their free will taken away.
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I don't remember talking about this a punishment for offense before....
but I like it!
Two things I'd look at in deciding though is one: the crime
rob a bank, I don't see what infestation would do. Literally, I there is a block for me seeing how that would be more of a deterant than any other punishment, and I don't see how a false role model is a model citizen at all. Murder, again, it gives the Yeerk a host fine, but that's still gonna show up and have a neg affect on the Yeerk if you try and but them back in society.
Interagation howevr, it'd be brilliant. Truly flawless, get an honest yeerk and it's bullet proof.
Except for the other point, which really should be asked first: When does it become okay to remove another persons rights of life? Infestation, imo, falls between prison and the death sentence, more complete but prison, but at least your not dead. And is it okay to do that to someone. Lock up and capital punishment are themselves debatable, and so you need to decide when it's okay to force a manner of living onto someone else. Some say never. Some say as soon as they stick their gum under the table. (I'm in the latter group ::) btw)
And, I suppose a third point: how much of a punishment is it?
Yes you lose control, and the majority of experiences in the series imply these to be the ultimate torment, but my mind always goes back to the relation of Allison and Edriss, where for a time there is a positive association b/w the two, and really that can't be the only case.
You spend ALL of your time with some, you will find some level of connection, even if you still don't like them.
This is why I can't see it working for something like community service. Yes it's on your time, you're body doing it, you'll feel it somewhat in the morning, but you don't have to force up the will needed to do it.
Your body does it, but the whole time you're on cruise control and can be in your head making small talk with the Yeerk or thinking about how the next football game is gonna turn out. I'd never want to live a life as a controller, but to say you're in mental agony all day everyday because of it, I don't really believe it.
Sometimes it'd be nice to have a co-pilot run my body while doing yard work. Will is half the effort
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Putting aside the civil rights arguments, there's still the issue of Yeerk reliability. How would we know if Yeerks decide to make a deal with the person they're suppose to punish? Also if we put Yeerks in the heads of criminals and psychotics, we could end up with a lot of Taylor situations. However, using a Yeerk instead of traditional interrogation methods is interesting. It's good to have the information, especially if it saves lives. But I don't think it should be used as evidence against the suspect at trial.
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I imagine that if humans did use Yeerks as a tool in any way it would be on a conditional basis. As soon as a Yeerk failed to do what it was supposed to, it would be forced into nothlitism like the rest of its kind. Which of course begs the question of how moral it is to force Yeerks to become nothlits. Staying on topic, though, I think it would ensure that the Yeerks listen to what the humans in charge say. Additionally, I imagine that the military or government or whoever would have control over the Kandrona source. Someone else controlling your only sustenance kind of makes you pay attention.
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My main question however, is whether or not that could be considered on par with enslaving the Yeerks - forcing them to do actions they may be unwilling to do with only a threat of punishment as motivation.
Also, I do not feel that forcing criminals to be hosts is productive in any way at all. The criminal learns nothing - they'll just go dormant in their minds and let the Yeerk do the community service or whatever, only to strike back with a vengeance if/when they are freed. Using them for interrogation is brilliant, but seems to invalidate human will in my opinion.
Yeerks still aren't evil. Visser Three doesn't represent his species any more or any less than Stalin represents humans. Nor do the Germans influenced by Hitler to hate Jews differ from the Yeerks taught by the Visser to value conquest and the crushing of a host's will.
I still think that getting the Yeerks something Parallel to the symbiosis the Iskoort utilize would be the ideal solution for the Yeerks. Nothlitism would be optional for Yeerks who want to escape dependance on Kondrona altogether.
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Well, I agree that forcing the Yeerks to do something against their will may be as bad as what the Yeerks are doing in the first place. But isn't that what happens when they're all forced to become nothlits anyhow?
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I mostly agree with RYTX. auto-pilot would be nice sometimes, especially when I have to do something I don't want to.
as for the yeerk reliability thing in interrogation, well is any method 100% reliable at all? not as far as I know. torture, just ask tobias. confession, he could've been lying. using yeerks would just be less of a hassle.
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I would rather have a heinous criminal infested than have them rot in jail leeching tax money, or pay the outrageous expenses that come with the death penalty. Though I would have concern for the Yeerks whose jobs bring them so close to such twisted individuals. It might not be healthy for the Yeerks.
I would label it as being sometimes justified, but a bit on the immoral side.
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I don't think it's ever okay. Your points are valid, but (to me at least) not acceptable. Even if we could use Yeerks to turn criminals into "model citizens" it wouldn't be right because you might as well have killed that person, it would be more humane than making them a slave trapped inside their own body for life
still, it's a just punishment for some terrible crimes.
plus, a free host body for a needy yeerk!
win win.
we'd only have to worry about the criminal rubbing off on the yeerk.
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is it weird that the only thing I think about when picturing your scenario is "what incentive does the Yeerk have to do all that?"
It's like double involuntary infestation, enslaving a human with a Yeerk who himself has no free will. WEIRD.
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a really great and interesting and controversial topic that really gets you thinking.
I say yes, there are situations where i wold have no problem with using a yeerk. there are some people i know atm who are scum who more then deserves it. some deserve worst imo.
Especially for interrogation techniques on spies, traitors and terrorists, and for finding out if criminals and supposed criminals are guilty or not. And also for murderers. So they commit first degree murder, they gona get executed anyway. why waste them? why not give them to a yeerk, and then have the yeerk be a productive member to society, like maybe a cleaner or a engineer researching and improving fuel efficiency for cars with their technical knowledge?
Its simple. if you do not want to be given a yeerk permanently, then don't do the wrong thing. This way, only those who are evil would have something to be concerned about.
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Right. It's more productive than having someone sit in a cell for decades because we can't trust them to be outside.
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[...] Its simple. if you do not want to be given a yeerk permanently, then don't do the wrong thing. This way, only those who are evil would have something to be concerned about.
To be honest, I've found that things are rarely that simple.
What about a situation where someone was wrongly accused and the Yeerk did not want to give up the body, so lies when questioned? True, the host can claim innocence every three days -- it doesn't mean anyone'll believe 'em.
I mean, that's just one possible scenario how it could go awry.
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It is possible that a Yeerk could commit a crime, but it's also possible to get inside a Yeerk's head and go through its memories. Like in Visser.
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What if a job was created in which humans would acquire and then morph into Yeerks to enter the heads of the human accused and figure out what really happened? Again, there are all sorts of potential abuses of power that could occur, but humans might be more comfortable with the idea of being momentarily controlled by other humans rather than Yeerks, who have so much to gain from a host body.
But back to the morality of this issue, I think it's grey at best. I believe Chad's concern about how hosting only the most scummy of human bodies might be hazardous to the human race is valid. The Yeerks' system of morality is divergent enough from humans' and Andalites', as it is. Who's to say they're right or wrong for using others as host bodies, within their own system of morality? If the humans and Andalites are attempting to integrate Yeerks into peaceful galactic society through moral imperialism -- which, it looks like they are trying to do by the end of the series -- they should be very careful what they let them learn. The moral ambiguity of these actions on the humans' part is already questionable; humans have been flirting with imperialism for a while now, but are starting to see its negative consequences.
As far as using criminal bodies for hosts, human morality has tended to agree in recent history that absolute slavery is not okay. For the Yeerks, enslaving other species is completely natural. If, however, they're forced to live by human standards of right and wrong, I agree with Anijen: it's as if we're enslaving criminals and the Yeerks who control them.
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As far as using criminal bodies for hosts, human morality has tended to agree in recent history that absolute slavery is not okay. For the Yeerks, enslaving other species is completely natural. If, however, they're forced to live by human standards of right and wrong, I agree with Anijen: it's as if we're enslaving criminals and the Yeerks who control them.
I agree. However, from what I understand the Yeerks are already being forced into bodies that are not their own via nothlitism. How is that different from forcing them to take a human host? At least then they get to have opposable thumbs, eh?
The idea of having humans morph Yeerks to interrogate is an interesting one, and actually makes sense. I doubt humans would ever trust a Yeerk implicitly, not after the whole invading-earth thing.
I guess ideally some sort of a deal would be made in which the Yeerks and humans both have something to gain...however, I don't see the Yeerks having much of a say in anything in a post-54 world. It isn't like we can just open up a link with the Emperor and ask his permission. I almost feel like the Yeerks become the slaves of humans regardless, just in different ways.
Which isn't wrong, of course, because it's Yeerks being enslaved/forced into a lifestyle, not humans. Which is wrong. ::)
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However, from what I understand the Yeerks are already being forced into bodies that are not their own via nothlitism. How is that different from forcing them to take a human host? At least then they get to have opposable thumbs, eh?
Opposable thumbs are pretty rockin. :D
I don't know that it's necessarily crueler or more wrong to give Yeerks criminal host bodies while requiring them to adhere to human standards of right and wrong than it is to turn Yeerks into nothlits. To me, neither one seems particularly fair to the Yeerks -- again, I mean by their own system of morality and by their own standards of what is natural.
This is what I see as the problem: on a fundamental level, humans and Yeerks simply cannot coincide. These two races cannot agree with each other or understand each other on some very basic levels. Some of those virtues to which humans cling the tightest are not even applicable to Yeerks, and vice versa.
All that aside, even if we look at the idea of involuntary infestation from a strictly human moral compass (and I realize that human morality is far too varied for me to understand much less analyze here, but bear with me :D), slavery is something I imagine many people wouldn't endorse quickly -- or ever.
I, for one, don't think I could ever feel okay with involuntary infestation, even if it does superficially transform murderers into model citizens. And here's why:
- As several folks have pointed out, this doesn't necessarily do anything to rehabilitate criminals.
- Also, some hosts can regain control of their bodies from time to time, so who knows what a criminal could do if it overpowered its Yeerk; this system could potentially put the public in danger.
- Finally, I think there is a reason humans ferociously resist the loss of autonomy and identity. Think of a grandparent who rages at being rendered unable to drive, an ALS patient who can no longer control his own body and is trapped in his own head, or a customer who is reduced to a number rather than a name. This stuff is terrifying to us! We want to be ourselves, and in control of our bodies. Even criminals placed in the strictest prisons still have autonomy over their most basic identity and bodily functions. They can still pace their cells and speak when they wish, even if they are stripped of all else. To become an involuntary Controller violates basic human rights that I would argue even the most vile of humans possesses.
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Finally, I think there is a reason humans ferociously resist the loss of autonomy and identity. Think of a grandparent who rages at being rendered unable to drive, an ALS patient who can no longer control his own body and is trapped in his own head, or a customer who is reduced to a number rather than a name. This stuff is terrifying to us! We want to be ourselves, and in control of our bodies. Even criminals placed in the strictest prisons still have autonomy over their most basic identity and bodily functions. They can still pace their cells and speak when they wish, even if they are stripped of all else. To become an involuntary Controller violates basic human rights that I would argue even the most vile of humans possesses.
I'm going to address just this last part because I feel lazy.
I would argue that certain criminals may NOT retain their basic human rights, and that society has shown this point of view by practicing the death penalty. I mean, one of the most fundamental rights we have as human beings is our right to life, correct? Well, perhaps being infested removes your autonomy, but it sure as hell is better than being dead, IMO. If you're infested, there's still hope. AND, if there was some sort of a rehabilitation process put in place, who better to tell if the person is truly rehabilitated than the Yeerk in the persons head?
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I would argue that certain criminals may NOT retain their basic human rights, and that society has shown this point of view by practicing the death penalty. I mean, one of the most fundamental rights we have as human beings is our right to life, correct? Well, perhaps being infested removes your autonomy, but it sure as hell is better than being dead, IMO. If you're infested, there's still hope. AND, if there was some sort of a rehabilitation process put in place, who better to tell if the person is truly rehabilitated than the Yeerk in the persons head?
Ok, I definitely agree with your last point.
Re: the death penalty, you're right that it strips people of what some might say is the most basic of human rights: the right to one's own life. Two things here. One, I personally think capital punishment is immoral in and of itself... but I really don't want to initiate an off-topic and sensitive debate here, so I'll just leave it at that. Two, even for someone who is executed, we can at least claim all of his actions and emotions and words and thoughts during his life as being his own. Even in death, humans are recognized as individuals. Don't you wonder if, for some people, being infested is worse than being dead? Isn't that the freed Hork-Bajir motto: "Free or Dead?" For those who feel this sentiment, involuntary infestation is remarkably cruel. For those who don't... would this make them voluntary hosts?
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I think different people have diferent opionions on what defines a basic right. Funny thing is that Liberty is supposed to be a basic right but is the first thing you lose when you commit a crime. You lose liberty when they throw you in jail, right? Or is that something else?
You can get out if someone pays bail, but you still won't be able to leave town.
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Chad28: it is called the social contract (read Rousseau if your lazy, Locke, Hobbes and Thomas Paine if your not as they are far better than Rousseau who is that fool responsible for the concept of the noble savage) the basic argument or Hobbes (who was the first as he lived during the English Civil War) was that humans are naturally evil in a state of nature (sorta paraphrasing) and that without society human life is short brutish and horrible (the book is called Leviathan) and we band together to protect ourselves leading onto a few other concepts of the social contract (been a while since I studied all this-Rousseau wrote the book on the social contract, but I think Locke discussed the concept of social contract as well).
Oh dear I have forgotten where I was, and how this applies to the topic, except to say to Chad: read Hobbes Leviathan, anything by John Locke, and Thomas Paine's Common Sense (which was very significant in the American revolution) as well as Rousseau's Social Contract (but take a few of Rousseau's concept with a grain of salt-there is an argument that Rousseau's ideas, lead onto the tyranny of the french revolution (we must force them to be free) and even onto communism so he is quite different from Hobbes, Locke and Thomas Paine (despite the fact that Hobbes believed in the divine right of kings and Rousseau believed in the goodness of man) it's all very interesting but it has been awhile since I studied them. I don't know how to get back on topic.
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Ok. If I get some free time and remember to, I'll read up on them. This is supposed to be relevant to basic rights? Or what i posted earlier about what really counts as treason or betrayal?
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I just keep thinking about the poor Yeerks. They want bodies too. Voluntary infestation would probably be hugely stigmatic in this time, so the Yeerks are stuck with what few Gedds they can get their hands on. From a Yeerk perspective, I say involuntary infestation is always okay. They've as much right to a body as you do- it's not their fault they weren't given one to begin with :P
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well to be literal, they were given bodies. just not physically...capabl e bodies.
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And they were given the ability to use those physically "capable" bodies. Is it right for us to insist they remain confined to a blind existence in a tiny pool when they are capable of so much more?
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And they were given the ability to use those physically "capable" bodies. Is it right for us to insist they remain confined to a blind existence in a tiny pool when they are capable of so much more?
I agree! +1!
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Hobbes, Locke, Thomas Paine and Rousseau are all about rights and the social contract (and our ideas about human rights are based upon the social contract)....
Do you have a right to make other people totally miserable for you own happiness.
We can use Thomas Jefferson as an example: he knew slavery was wrong, but he continued on owning slaves as he was a terrible spendthrift and was always in debt.
The yeerks are similar in some ways: they know they cause absolute misery to others, but they put their own needs ahead of others.
I don't see why the yeerks need sight/bodies/hearing etc: they are not evolved for sight, or movement so why do they crave them? parasitism in nature tends (we must not think of yeerks as humans trapped in a slugs body after all) to be practical: creatures infest to reproduce, to feed off their hosts etc but for a conceptual (not sure this is quite the right word) non practical thing such as seeing or freedom? who evolves that?
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The Yeerks don't do to their hosts what most parasites do, though. They reproduce without host bodies, and they don't gain nutrients from hosts either. The only reason they're called parasites is because the benefits between Yeerk and host are almost completely one sided. Though not absolutely one sided if the Yeerk is willing to work with the host. The Yeerks could have actually done a lot to help the Hork-Bajir society if they worked with the Horks instead of enslaving them.
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But that is the point: nature is all about the practical: reproduction, food and so on. so what is the point of giving an organism mind controll (like a few real life parasites) if they are not going to use it to reproduce or feed.
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nature not only evolves for reproduction and food, but also for survival. we don't know what animals exist on the yeerk home world, but the infesting thing could be a sort of defense mechanism, or at least originated as such. some kind of cross between moving from one body of water to another, and looking bigger than you really are.
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Using a Yeerk for interrogation would work. Other than that, not much benefit tbh.
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Certainly Yeerks must be the most effective interrogators in the universe, making torture devices totally unnecessary for them unless they use it Morphed things (hawks with small brains that can't be infested) or yeerks already in hosts, but the primary need for torture is gone.
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I agree that areas of human-yeerk cooperation are going to be pretty narrow, and I'm with those who are saying that no realistic scenario justifies involuntary infestation, but you can actually get a lot of the benefits of the schemes outlined here without that nasty involuntary bit. Short of the sorts of ticking time bomb scenarios that are put forward when discussing torture, I don't see that involuntary infestation gets you much that voluntary infestation doesn't.
Take law enforcement. You don't force people to undergo interrogation by yeerk. You offer suspects the opportunity to be interrogated by yeerk. You take three yeerks who don't know each other very well and who have no interest in whether or not the suspect goes free, and you let them each have five minutes with the (willing) suspect. Then you get their stories, confirm that they match up, and talk to the suspect to make sure that the yeerks weren't passing messages through the suspect's memory. If they all say that the suspect is innocent, then s/he almost certainly is. And almost all innocents would be reported as innocent, so it's a nearly perfect test. Pretty soon, juries get used to this, and refusal to undergo investigative Controlling is seen as pretty self-incriminating - like pleading the fifth. The issue in the near-term is that lots of innocent people would refuse because it's creepy, but one expects that people who grow up aware of this sort of option would have less of a problem with it. And juries wouldn't give refusal much weight if they themselves would refuse even if innocent.
As for punishment, I'm with Marie - involuntary yeerking is clearly worse than slavery from the perspective of the person you're doing it to, and we're not willing to make absolute slaves of even the worst criminals. There are perhaps some slight efficiency gains to be made from freeing up space in prisons, and this would use criminals' bodies to benefit society, but in that respect it's no different than taking all of the hardened criminals and making them into delicious meat pies.
But what do the yeerks get out of it? That's easy. There were plenty of willing Controllers in the books, and they were working to enslave the human race, plus they only had something like an hour off every week. Make being a willing Controller slightly less evil and provide reasonable dental benefits and you'd get a whole lot of applicants. It wouldn't be hard at all to find people willing to become occupational Controllers - they'd put in a 40-hour work week same as everyone else, but their work would be providing hosts for yeerks. They could either work for 40 consecutive (waking) hours, or go in 8-hour shifts (or something else entirely, as negotiated by their union). The yeerks are probably just looking to do "human stuff", just as Ax was fascinated with food when he morphed a human, and a lot of people would find going along for the ride while a yeerk uses their body to go skiing to be hugely preferable to sitting behind a counter at the DMV all day. You make sure that those yeerks who are looking to do something dangerous or exotic (mountain climbing, boxing, sex) are matched up with humans who are willing to allow those things, and you have a pretty strict system in place for punishing yeerks who break the rules. Maybe there would be a bit of stigma, but compare this to prostitution.
The yeerks pay for all of this themselves, with the salaries that they earn doing yeerk-specific jobs like the one I described in law enforcement, or doing any of a variety of things that they could do in less problematic bodies - what if one inhabited a shark and gave rides? Can yeerks inhabit unintelligent creatures? Surely some race out there has the technology to give them prostheses to speak and use a keyboard - they could do IT work when not in hosts.
Sure, those yeerks who are just in it for the rush of controlling people against their will lose out, but I'm not going to lose sleep over them. I think it's a mistake to look at this as a difference of perspective (that is, that it's "right for them" to enslave other races). Or, at least, it's a mistake to think that humans have any obligation to respect that sort of difference. Cutting away the complication of Controller-dom, if an alien race showed up which just wanted to kill us all in order to please their gods, it wouldn't be meaningfully unfair to them to do our damnedest to stop them, no matter how important the extermination of all other intelligent life is to their culture. After we kicked their asses, they probably wouldn't find enough voluntary sacrifices to satisfy demand, but we'd still be fully justified in taking steps to make sure that they didn't go find involuntary sacrifices. It simply doesn't matter that it's "part of their nature" to go out and kill other intelligent beings - if we're allowing that as a reason, then we can just as easily say that it's "part of our nature" to react very negatively to natures like theirs.
I have a problem with forcing all yeerks into nothlitism, on the assumption that there actually are yeerks that would be perfectly happy inhabiting voluntary hosts and otherwise contributing to society, but I've no problem forcing all yeerks who abuse their hosts (or who take involuntary hosts) to choose between nothlitism or simple imprisonment.
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Gotchaya: your post is proof that capitalism can find a solution to any given problem. The problem with all the yeerks becoming nothlits is that they would commit voluntary genetic genocide. the downside of allowing yeerks to be used for interrogation etc would be that you would always worry about "the second yeerk wars"
Using yeerks in interrogation would be preferable and faster to making suspected terrorists wear womens underwear/pile up in piles of nudity and be frightened by dogs, much less waterboarding or actual nasty methods of torture (iron maidens and what not)
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It probably would be faster and more effective. But I think it's hard to argue that even temporary involuntary yeerking is on firmer moral ground than rape. This is obviously fixing to go afield into a real-world torture debate, but your position on how far is too far matters quite a bit here.
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Sorry, I think I'd rather have a slug crawl in my brain and get all of my memories out than be tortured into providing information through physical means. As far as using Yeerks as a form of interrogation, it isn't a permanent loss of freedom (as with the prisoner situation).
Another scenario I've kind of tossed around deals with mental disorders. Is there any way that placing a Yeerk in a person with....say...a severely debilitating phobia...or someone who is a serial rapist due to unhealthy fetishes...could actually benefit the person? Let's keep it a bit simpler and use an alcoholic as an example. Instead of joining simply talking about how you feel in an AA meeting, you can have a Yeerk who will physically keep you from going back to the bottle for long enough to remove any physical addiction your body may have created.
As far as curing psychological defects through a Yeerk, obviously hormone imbalances and whatnot can't be fixed, but could other disorders be approached with a Yeerk in mind?
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Well, can they beat alcoholism? Yeerks don't seem to mind indulging in or sustaining the bad habits of their host, even if it's bad for them (i.e. Jenny Lines and...lines. Partially to keep her quite, but V1 would be there for the rush too) I doubt every member of the sharing who smokes suddenly kicked the habit on full membership. Tied in to the brain that deeply, got to wonder if they can seperate themselves from those urges any better than the host
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You gotta figure they could. They can do a lot to prevent parents from working to save their children's lives, and that's pretty hard-wired too. Motivation is an issue, but if you can motivate a yeerk to actually try to keep someone away from alcohol, I imagine that it could do a pretty good job. Obviously you'd never want to force a yeerk on someone just to kick a bad habit, but if the alcoholic agrees to it then it should work out pretty well all around.
Terenia, you're right that yeerk interrogation isn't permanent, but I'm having a hard time seeing how it isn't at least as bad as rape. It's clearly a much more thorough violation of someone's person than anything humans have yet devised, and it pretty much does everything that makes rape so awful only moreso. Realistically, I expect that the long-term psychological effects of being forcibly Controlled would outweigh just about any benefit to the individual being Controlled, and, as an interrogation tool, it's at least on a level with, and is probably crueler than, any sort of torture which doesn't permanently disfigure the victim.
It seems to me that you thinking you would prefer involuntary yeerking to physical torture is somewhat irrelevant. First, it's really hard to have a good intuition about this kind of fantastic hypothetical - that's why it's important to break it down and find a real-life act which has many of the same effects to use as a basis of comparison. And obviously if you're in a situation where torture is an option for your interrogators, the last thing you want is for the questioners to have access to a perfectly reliable way of pulling information out of you that you can't do a thing about. Unless, of course, you're completely innocent of whatever it is they suspect you of, in which case it seems to me that we're back to using yeerks for exoneration as outlined in my first post in this thread. But if you're being interrogated for good reason, it's because you're trying to hide something.
I'm not sure that a yeerk can really do much about most disorders (those that aren't treated by refraining from certain activities for long enough). A yeerk can stifle the behaviors associated with the disorder, but do Controllers' minds actually change as a result of being Controlled? I only ever read to shortly past where Jake got Controlled briefly, but if I'm remembering right the yeerk had no effect on his mind but only on his mind's ability to influence his body. A yeerk trained as a psychiatrist could do some good as a ride-along therapist, but its rates would be sky-high. I'd guess that if yeerks could actually alter their hosts' preferences and beliefs directly, they'd have fewer issues with host-rebellion.
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I've always wondered about something like this. It's interesting stuff, I'm not sure if society as a whole would accept involuntary infestation, especially after an open war in which so many lives were torn apart by it. Can you imagine suddenly discovering your parents were controlled by these creatures, and your town was destroyed, or your uncle was killed in a battle under control of one of these aliens--and now there's a law being passed to allow mass murderers and rapists to walk around in public, based solely on trusting these aliens not to give in to their hosts' vile behavior?
I don't think many people would vote to pass something like that. Whether or not Yeerk interrogation would be acceptable (giving the debate about physical torture in the real world) is also iffy, in my opinion. Maybe interrogation is too strong a word, because it's more like a lie detector test than physical or mental abuse, as long as the Yeerks were trusted not to secretly open up a person's horrible memories or whatever. I like the idea that several Yeerks would be used to simply search for evidence of innocence or guilt in a person's mind, it seems much more failsafe than a jury, but again Yeerks could be corrupted or paid off just as easily as a juror. There would have to be a serious set of checks and balances in place to make sure the Yeerks' intentions were pure, and how are we to know that system wouldn't include threatening the Yeerks with starvation or imprisonment? Would Yeerks be considered second-class citizens, or would they have lobbyists working for their equal rights?
If a Yeerk is in the head of a long-practicing psychiatrist, who gets the salary and health benefits, or are there two sets, one paid by the government protecting alien rights? Would taxpayers want to support the livelihood of an alien, or would the price of a psych appointment double, putting pressure on insurance companies and people paying out of pocket? Then there's the idea that just a well trained Yeerk could act as a psychiatrist, diagnosing problems and using really vivid visual therapy in your own head. Would people really want to pay for a Yeerk trained to invade your privacy, or would some people be so desperate that they'd really need that kind of help? I'm afraid of heights and get panic attacks, and I have to say, it would be tempting to have somebody help calm me down or walk me through a tall building or a place where I might be nervous. It would be an invasion of privacy, but I'm sure lots of people would appreciate a no-drugs-needed option to help them, that really works.
My only issue with all of this is, what if a few Yeerks in some of these programs were to get together and decide that they could organize their own, second sneaky takeover of Earth? Take over some of the people in the program and their superiors, and it might be a real risk. Even if it wasn't, people might suspect the Yeerks of doing something like that. There could very well be some serious repercussions for the Yeerks involved, if people started to become suspicious or racist against them.