Seriously though, what did you think of the Chee?

[Snakie]

One thing I really loved about this series is its serious handling of a wide variety of moral dilemmas.

In the series, one of the most serious and (among the characters) controversial dilemmas is that of the Chee.

The Chee are a remarkably powerful group of androids, and its made extremely clear that they have the power to defeat the Yeerks (a single one of them single handedly takes down an elite Yeerk battalion).  Its also made very clear that they COULD have chosen to change their programming to allow them to excercise this power, but they choose not to to protect their non-violent nature and the legacy of their doomed creators.

What do people think of this?  I guess I have a few questions related to this:

1) Are the Chee selfish for refusing to save the race they've grown to love, or are they selfless in their refusal to cause harm to other living beings in order to see the outcome they wish to happen (IE, the defeat of the Yeerks)?

2) Do they have the right to allow the suffering of a good race when they could have had the power to stop it?  Should they have felt a sense of obligation to do more to fight the evil?  Does the ability imply any sort of obligation given how much of themselves the Animorphs and others sacrificed to this fight?

3) Their choice not to enter the fight arguably resulted in a lot of pain, death, and suffering in and of itself.  Given this, is inaction morally distinguishable from action where suffering is the result?

4) The last and most important question is more or less a culmination of the other 3, as it more or less establishes how the Animorphs feel about all of these issues: 

                How did you feel about the way the Chee were used at the end of the series?

I'd love to hear others thoughts on these issues.

[Chad32]

Like the Free Hork-Bajir and Yeerk Peace Movement, the Chee were cool and could have been used more. I think they should have started covering for the animorphs at home in book 11, instead of book 25 or something, and Eric should have been brought on more missions. The idea that there's no way to dump memory implies that they have infinite memory, or can't learn anything new after a certain point. The first should be impossible, and the second is a big design flaw.

I think if Eric can produce kandrona radiation for his captive Yeerk, they should have been able to make their own Yeerk pool for the YPM. In fact it would be cool to find out they started the YPM themselves.

As fpr their views on violence, I would expect the decimation of their parent race should have firmly convinced them that some things really are worth fighting for. Unfortunately it didn't. Probably because they're robots, and can't do much about their programming.

[Snakie]

Probably because they're robots, and can't do much about their programming.

The books indicate (in my opinion) that they aren't simply robots.  They have genuine intelligence, free will and emotional capacity, and of course the impetus of Book 10 (the book they're introduced in which their fundamental nature is established) makes it pretty clear that they COULD have changed their programming and simply chose not to.

[Chad32]

Yeah, I know they're really meant to be sentient machines. I just don't really know why they'd choose to be completely unable to fight even if they wanted to, after what I assume was a hugely traumatic event where the only reason they weren't able to defeat the Crayak's army is because of said programming. Martyr without a cause, I guess.

[Snakie]

Yeah, I know they're really meant to be sentient machines. I just don't really know why they'd choose to be completely unable to fight even if they wanted to, after what I assume was a hugely traumatic event where the only reason they weren't able to defeat the Crayak's army is because of said programming. Martyr without a cause, I guess.

I always took two things from it:

1) As traumatic as it was to see their people destroyed they still truly and completely believed what their creators did- that violence was never the answer.  They felt compelled to keep their creators alive by continuing the emulate them and represent what they stood for.

2) They made this choice understanding the consequences that it might have for others around them.

Hence, I asked the four questions I asked, which all revolve around the justification of those 2 points.

[Chad32]

Most of my original post was honestly just an answer to the title question, before reading the actual body of your post. I'm not really sure if it's justified or not. It's a similar problem I have with Cassie: The refusal to change. People do change, and it's ok to do that. Sticking to your beliefs in the face of annihilation doesn't seem reasonable to me. Either letting something horrible happen again, because you want to stick with your initial programming, despite the fact that you could end the war just by keeping the Yeerks from having a planet based kandrona generator, or infiltrating their ships and wrecking the generator there.

[itw2009]

i'll give you my personal answer to the abstract, subtext question: if you have the ability to eliminate an entity that acts contrarily to your understood morality, why would you choose not to eliminate said entity on behalf of your interests?

the first parallel that comes to my mind is nuclear and/or chemical warfare. it's not the best example because the chee were well-equipped to be more exacting, so then think of the controversy with the flaws of drone design and use. (ironic- or apt- that i'm comparing drones and, well, droids.)

here's my beef: morality is a very wishy-washy and subjective thing. when you start toeing the line, especially in the realm of whether or not to kill someone - for whatever reason  - the stakes laid for "do or do not" increase exponentially.

sure, the chee could have come in and kicked butt. but what exactly would the consequences have been? with the revelation of the chee's existence to the rest of the universe, they'd suddenly have been among the most powerful, near-free-will-less weapons in the animorphs' world. perfect for universal domination. everyone with an ambitious bone in his body would have wanted a piece of that. they likewise would have done all sorts of things to get their hands on this limited resource (or, knowing what exists, would have taken extra lengths to produce this technology from scratch). think cold war- how quickly did technology advance because two entities knew what the other was doing and felt a need to go further? or acquire for itself?

in my opinion, the chee's electing to largely stay out of things minimized long-term damage. it scaled back the war (and technologically set back future wars).

i also think about the long-term cost of ending a life. sure, one person might suck and suck hard. but what about all the people who might be affected for the better because that person exists? sometimes someone needs a good example of the bad in order to strive for the good. a lot of us don't solidify our own morals until something challenges them. what about the children of someone "evil"? if you kill an evil person, those children might not ever be born. if they're not born, they will never have a chance to live a more redeeming life. because - hypothetically - they could realize how terrible their parent is and live a life so good that it overwhelms the evil done by said parent.

and i can't even start with how against xenocide i am. that's like creating a giant black hole in the universe: so many secondary and tertiary things could be sucked in and destroyed- good things. and no one has any way of knowing or quantifying or qualifying what's being lost. all you know is that potential resources are gone forever.

anyway. summarily: accepting the sum responsibility associated with messing around with anyone on a large scale is not something that i'd recommend. if i were weighing a few million immediate casualties and untold losses over centuries... i'd stick with the few million. the risk with that unknown is way too vast for me, haha. but that's me. i don't blame the chee for sitting the Big War out.


...not sure if that's what KA was going for, haha, but that's what i got out of it (or mulled on as i read it).

[RYTX]

Holy hell you all wrote a lot. And rather than process any of it, I'll just spit on own contemplations on the original questions posed.

1) Are the Chee selfish for refusing to save the race they've grown to love, or are they selfless in their refusal to cause harm to other living beings in order to see the outcome they wish to happen (IE, the defeat of the Yeerks)?

I don't see these as mutually exclusive. The Chee were introduced on this note: how can they do nothing, yet won't it be nice to say there's a race that has done no evil, and to point it's excepted that they do both. I think Erek, who's the only one we really look at for this conflict, made the decision rather selfishly, he changed back his programming because of what harming others did to him, it's effects on his psyche, rather than empathy, or at least not primarily through empathy.

2) Do they have the right to allow the suffering of a good race when they could have had the power to stop it?  Should they have felt a sense of obligation to do more to fight the evil?  Does the ability imply any sort of obligation given how much of themselves the Animorphs and others sacrificed to this fight?
3) Their choice not to enter the fight arguably resulted in a lot of pain, death, and suffering in and of itself.  Given this, is inaction morally distinguishable from action where suffering is the result?

Lumping this together, and putting aside for a moment the argument about any race being good: Absolutely they don't. Sorry uncle ben, but power does not carry any responsibility unless you assign it. I have the power to pull a moth away from a swarm of ants, and give the ants bread in it's place, but where on earth is there any logical, moral or ethical obligation for me to do so, just because I can. Now if at some point I vowed to use all my abilities to help insects in need, maybe, but intrinsically power does not equal duty-that's a societal contract that all parties have to enter into. The Chee made no promises to protect, and other than their person interest, why should they just because they can? Inaction is very distinct from any action they would have taken,  but I think from the Chee's POV, they have no moral dilemma. On raw philosophy, letting bad things happen is bad, yes, but since you say different from action, I assume this means malevolent action, and that's worse, imo. They are both bad, but they are different forms of bad.

4) The last and most important question is more or less a culmination of the other 3, as it more or less establishes how the Animorphs feel about all of these issues: 

                How did you feel about the way the Chee were used at the end of the series?

I'd love to hear others thoughts on these issues.

Since this is a pretty charged moral thread, I'm assuming don't mean, using them as covers when they leave down, but like the blackmail to bring down the ships I'm fine with that. It was a war, they were tools, sentient or not, that's how it was at that point. Rachel was a tool for pete's sake. Had they been willing or forced to take more direct actions, things would have been different, but in the end you use the tools you have as best you can. That's why I've been using a wrench to crush ice lately.

[Chad32]

i'll give you my personal answer to the abstract, subtext question: if you have the ability to eliminate an entity that acts contrarily to your understood morality, why would you choose not to eliminate said entity on behalf of your interests?

the first parallel that comes to my mind is nuclear and/or chemical warfare. it's not the best example because the chee were well-equipped to be more exacting, so then think of the controversy with the flaws of drone design and use. (ironic- or apt- that i'm comparing drones and, well, droids.)

here's my beef: morality is a very wishy-washy and subjective thing. when you start toeing the line, especially in the realm of whether or not to kill someone - for whatever reason  - the stakes laid for "do or do not" increase exponentially.

sure, the chee could have come in and kicked butt. but what exactly would the consequences have been? with the revelation of the chee's existence to the rest of the universe, they'd suddenly have been among the most powerful, near-free-will-less weapons in the animorphs' world. perfect for universal domination. everyone with an ambitious bone in his body would have wanted a piece of that. they likewise would have done all sorts of things to get their hands on this limited resource (or, knowing what exists, would have taken extra lengths to produce this technology from scratch). think cold war- how quickly did technology advance because two entities knew what the other was doing and felt a need to go further? or acquire for itself?

in my opinion, the chee's electing to largely stay out of things minimized long-term damage. it scaled back the war (and technologically set back future wars).

i also think about the long-term cost of ending a life. sure, one person might suck and suck hard. but what about all the people who might be affected for the better because that person exists? sometimes someone needs a good example of the bad in order to strive for the good. a lot of us don't solidify our own morals until something challenges them. what about the children of someone "evil"? if you kill an evil person, those children might not ever be born. if they're not born, they will never have a chance to live a more redeeming life. because - hypothetically - they could realize how terrible their parent is and live a life so good that it overwhelms the evil done by said parent.

and i can't even start with how against xenocide i am. that's like creating a giant black hole in the universe: so many secondary and tertiary things could be sucked in and destroyed- good things. and no one has any way of knowing or quantifying or qualifying what's being lost. all you know is that potential resources are gone forever.

anyway. summarily: accepting the sum responsibility associated with messing around with anyone on a large scale is not something that i'd recommend. if i were weighing a few million immediate casualties and untold losses over centuries... i'd stick with the few million. the risk with that unknown is way too vast for me, haha. but that's me. i don't blame the chee for sitting the Big War out.


...not sure if that's what KA was going for, haha, but that's what i got out of it (or mulled on as i read it).

I highly doubt they'd have to reveal themselves in order to beat the Yeerks. Like I said, they'd just have to find the kandrona generators. Something that can travel that fast, and has superior cloaking technology, can be basically metal ninjas. Eric lived among Yeerks for years without them catching on. Infiltration is something they've been practicing for eons. Obviously the Yeerks are heavily inconvenienced if they can't get a generator on the ground, and once they figure out they can't seem to keep one safe, they'll be forced to leave. The Chee may not even need to infiltrate the Pool Ship or Blade Ship.

[itw2009]

the hole in the yeerk's knowledge and understanding of how they were defeated might take the shape of "chee", if you know what i mean. like a fingerprint at a crime scene.

when you consider what it would take to do what you describe... few things could do that in the way that the chee would do them. considering the far reach of the yeerk empire, that fall would also be highly publicized.

if the yeerks were smart, i'd be surprised if their kandrona fiascos on earth with the animorphs did not prompt them to take swift measures to upgrade their technology so to prevent the same thing from happening twice. now, come to think of it... perhaps the reason that the animorphs succeeded when they did was purely because the yeerks underestimated the animorphs' resources. i bet that the empire keeps their kandronas under heavier lock and key when they're in the midst of battle with the andalites halfway across the universe. i bet that technology is significantly more sophisticated.

the yeerks would just have to step up their game. you waste that many resources on a single planet, whose ego would demand that they stay the course until it was fully under control?

i can't imagine that chee involvement in "yeerk downfall on earth" would not escalate into widespread infiltration and immobilization of the empire.... no way that doesn't also end up on intergalactic headlines. and then it's a matter of guess-and-check: who can do this? what can do this?

[Chad32]

If they were smart. Unfortunately for them there's evidence that they're not always smart. Take book 31 for instance. A whole plot built around the idea that they don't take measures to ensure even relatively important Yeerks don't starve, in case their host's family needs to travel. They went straight from "I can't convince my host's parents not to go away for four days" to "Let's kill your host's parents so you don't have to go too far from the main pool complex".

Maybe I am oversimplifying it. Maybe it would be harder, even with advanced machines experienced with infiltration, to stop the Yeerks simply by detecting levels of kandrona radiation and making sure the enemy can't keep one on the ground. I'm not really sure. Yeerks can be competent, but they can also be stupid.

[itw2009]

hahaha. OK, that, granted. the yeerks have not always been smart. or common-sensical.

i have issues reconciling the actual yeerks with what's in my imagination. like... the potential of an evil, mind-infesting parasitic race. they could be so much more formidable.


...well, okay. so i don't doubt that the chee could take the yeerk empire down. ham-fistedly destroy them: yes. cripple/deconstruct them while 'minimizing casualties': mmmmprobably yes. i think that they have that capacity.

i don't think that the chee can do any of that on the sly without alerting the universe to the existence of an extremely powerful and technologically sophisticated weapon.

to figure out "who done it", it'd be like an elimination game: the yeerks would eliminate all of their known enemies as being incapable of doing what the chee are doing and be left with an entity that can perfectly pass as a controller, hack and overwrite their security systems, and hold the empire hostage while remaining anonymous. i'm pretty sure that the chee are the only beings who can do that.



of course, this tangent of speculation gets very far away from the moral dilemma of the thing, which pivots around the chee's detrimental decision to step in and accomplish this at all.



....edit: wait. throw in the internal yeerk resistance. that might confuse the trail enough.

[Chad32]

The Yeerks don't even know what the Chee are, anyway. It's not like they're aware of a group of androids on Earth that are advanced technology, and the Chee are hiding from them to prevent capture.

We are kind of diverting the topic a bit. What really is the right thing to do? No species has ever lived indefinitely based on absolute pacifism. They tend to get wiped out as soon as some other group finds them. I believe there was a human tribe like that once, and a certain type of island parrot who doesn't fly, and if confronted will just stand still and hope the problem goes away. It's just not compatable with survival in the long run, and as soon as some group finds them it's pretty much over. Their pacifism won't help them once the Empire or whatever finds and captures them. Unless they took their ship and fled the planet, to start over in some other place with more primitive creatures.

Maybe the Chee would be fine with always taking the "flight" option of the fight or flight dilemma.

[itw2009]

i bet that we can find an existing 'pacifist' species. something vegetarian.

....guinea pigs. still in existence. defense mechanism? sheer adorableness. not killers. (i could have gone 'rabbit' and monty python as obligatory follow-up, but it seemed too obvious to me.)

uhmm... butterflies. pure "flight" instinct. still around.


sorry- i get what you're trying to get at, haha. the dodos did not last long, no.


anyway, now you're talking about species survival. but

a) the chee's survival isn't dependent on the outcome of the animorphs' war and

b) if the chee were to join any war for the sake of their survival, the chee are going to have to reprogram themselves. as androids having reprogrammed themselves, they may not even qualify as "chee" by definition (imho: rewritten programming, rewritten DNA, rewritten 'species'), thus philosophically defeating and undermining the goal of "species survival".

here's another parallel for my "the chee can't remain anonymous in war" theory:



the yeerks can see and combine the attributes of the something that can do what's been done to uproot their system. they know that none of their known enemies fits those attributes. no human, hork bajir, leeran, or andalite has the ability to do what the chee could- would- do to take the yeerk empire down.

they may not know what to call whatever fits into that hole (what color it is, how old it is, where it came from), but whatever it is will look like what a chee looks like. it will act how a (reprogrammed) chee acts. it will also look awfully inviting for the ambitious, intergalactic world leaders out there. i'm convinced that widespread knowledge of the existence of the chee would lead to temporary pandemonium and paranoia leading to accelerated weapons technology advancements. enter the intergalactic equivalent of the nuclear bomb- capable of taking out a populated world in one go. (argh- so "MD Device")

look at how paranoid humans are irl about hypothetical, super-powered, "free-thinking" androids. imagine the reality of such a thing landlocked on earth.... let alone set loose in space.


i'm going to stay with my original moral evaluation of this conundrum: i wouldn't do it. i stand by the chee's decision. i think that they knew what they were doing. ...or not doing.


(i also retract my edit to my previous post. the double-edged sword is inviting outside species to take part in helping the chee keep their identity secret from outside species. that's ridiculously risky and potentially self-defeating.)

[Chad32]

Ok yes, there are species where running away is their one option. Rabbits are great at running, and if you can't get into their holes they have something to hide him. Butterflies are so erratic they can be hard to keep track of. I don't even know if guinea pigs are found in the wild. Still, it's a bit sad to think of a sentient race that has all the potential in the world to scare away all opposition, relegated to hiding themselves.

I'm kind of reminded of the Iron Giant movie. That one guy that's paranoid enough to actually order a nuclear launch at his own location because of the death monster standing in front of him. Unfortunately it's not some wildly exaggerated caricature of a person for the sake of drama. I do know that if people found out about the chee, governments would not leave them alone.

I'm just a little optimistic of their chances of being, as I said before, metal ninjas that can infiltrate any Yeerk complex, smash a kandrona generator without harming anyone, and leave without a trace.

Of course there's also the idea that if the Yeerks can't take Earth, they'd find out enough about Humans to know it would be a frightening thing if the Andalites came and allied with them. They'd eradicate us from orbit to make sure the Andalites didn't recruit a few billion soldiers to fight the war against slavery. Now that I think about that, it makes wrecking generators a bit futile in the long run. The Yeerks wouldn't just leave. Given Andalite technology, we'd be too big a threat to leave alone.