There’s an old folk thingy from Borneo that claims Orangs can, in fact, talk. But they don’t, because if humans found out they’d be forced to get jobs and pay taxes.
Makes sense to me. If I got to spend my whole life chilling in the forest and some weird bald fuckers came and tried to make me work and pay taxes I’d do whatever needed to convince them I’m just another ape and continue to chill in the forest
work and pay taxes
I’m just another ape
Colonialism: “Why not both?”
And yet they put them to work gathering palm nuts for palm oil anyway
Based and Ankh-Morpork Unseen University librarian-pilled
This is like in Liu Cixin’s 3BP when some human try to make the population more stupid in order to devolved from being an advance civilization to not get destroyed
plays stellaris once
why can’t i make the bonobo population into a client state?
Imagine trying to enforce our volcel rules here in a world where bonobos are posting
ah but they dont have butts, us ass-ed hominii will dodge all their ass related horniness
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
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.
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
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
Yeah you right, I’ve gotta read more of those tbh
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.
My thought too. Isn’t this the prime example people think of when they think of uplifting in scifi?
The Uplift series begs to differ.
Would you bother reading/watching/playing scifi media that didn’t have some sort of conflict, like everything just went great?
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
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.
I’ve read a couple utopian novels where the conflict is largely interpersonal drama against a backdrop of an ecologically sustainable world.
They used to extract value from animals on industrial scales, like horses and stuff. They still do now of course but it’s very grisly (watch dominion) because it’s more about getting their flesh, skin, oil, etc.
Anyway, we used to use them in “jobs” but it turns out machinery and mechanization was way more profitable, dumbass.
Ah, but what if we forced them to work for Uber before chopping them up?
“sorry George, you only have 4.5 stars on Uber. Drive to the monkey nugget factory for reassignment”
you are describing a horse cab
We don’t need more workers you fucking idiot, like half the Western population pushes around numbers on a spreadsheet for living. If we want more productivity maybe we should force these assholes onto an assembly line building stupid bullshit before we fuck with porcupines.
Yep, if we weren’t burdened by the Protestant work ethic that dictates that everyone should work, we could have a society where everyone takes turns working on a farm once a month and can do whatever the fuck they want the rest of the month. We’d still be able to feed everyone and society wouldn’t collapse.
Those Planet of the Apes movies are all about how this is a super great idea
Leave the animals alone you ghouls
bring me the one they call Ryan McEntushlol we should focus on uplifting humans
Please stop, the Indonesian commisar sent to uplift Estonia is still hard at work to this day.
How brave even as the threat of being obliterated by a Dongfeng missile looms over them.
Wot if animals paid taxes
Wot if they didn’t and the police came to put them in prison?
Really? Dolphins are by far the obvious candidates for first uplift. (They will be immediately sent the the Hague for perpetrating a genocide against porpoises)
The problem is dolphins would have a hard time using tools or, like, building stuff underwater
The 12th Working Group on Adaptive Cybernetics (Posadist) of the Socialist World Republic will design highly advanced prosthetics for our dolphin comrades. Don’t worry.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
That’s what you think but if we gave them opposable flippers they would rule the sea.
prehensile penis
Anyone who considers something like this seriously has to die immediately. This is pure evil in like the way Michael Myers is described by Dr Loomis. It has to be destroyed.
“OOK!” - Head librarian of Unseen University
What’s the business model?
:gulag:
Liberals can’t even lift people out of poverty, what do they think they’re gonna do to help animals exactly?
Who said anything about helping
What? The cutting edge of domestication science was a Soviet fox project, genetic engineering is in its infancy, and a comprehensive understanding of the brain and sapience is nowhere in sight. How the fuck would we uplift an animal even if we wanted to?
You put a chimp in a lift and press the button for the top floor.
