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Having been on both sides of the fence on playing them, I realized they're nothing but intergalactic cockroach/locust hybrids. A pest, and a vermin, spreading disease causing spores that cause mutations and illness, not to mention they're annoying, however, I love dropping their numbers in a game from 100+ to just a couple of gaunts.

All in all, they're considered a cancer to the imperium for a reason.

warpgrenade wrote:Are Tyranids (or, the Tyranid, when speaking of the hive mind) ethical? Is it ethical for them (it?) to ensure their (its?) survival at the expense of humanity?

My understanding is that, without consistent planetary exploitation, the Tyranid would die. If so, I posit that it is ethical, under these circumstances, to strip planets for their biological matter.

They are big bugs, animals basically. Animals get hungry from time to time so they eat. When they get out of food they move on to another location.
It's ethical like Lion eating Zebra, and that is ok. As soon as that Lion start eating Humans all ethnicity stop to exist and the lion become an enemy that must be killed.
The only difference is that Tyranid fleets have Hive Mind to lead them, witch is essentially because Hive Mind use tactics and strategies against it's enemies.
It is a simple choice: we or them.

P.S. so little things in 40k are ethical...

Azure wrote:No, they have a practice of extreme gluttony. As with anything in nature, there is a natural cap of things that can inhabit a certain area, over reaching that cap will lead to some dying due to lack of food/water/space. What the Tyranids do is completely strip planets down before moving onto the next as they refuse to accept the population cap, much in the same way that humans do nowadays by finding cures for diseases and adjusting the planetary lifestyle to meet our needs. For the moment we are ok as we've yet to hit the new cap that we have created for ourselves, but once we do we will need to expand to other planets, like the Tyranids, in order to keep everyone alive

Win!

Do you think it would ever be possible for the Nids to reach a balance, to consume just enough for what they need to survive (and evolve) and no more?

Or are they predisposed to simply keep consuming until this Galaxy like others is bereft of all biomatter.
Dosent seem very Darwinian assuming such things apply in the 40k universe.

Ratius wrote:Do you think it would ever be possible for the Nids to reach a balance, to consume just enough for what they need to survive (and evolve) and no more?

Or are they predisposed to simply keep consuming until this Galaxy like others is bereft of all biomatter.
Dosent seem very Darwinian assuming such things apply in the 40k universe.

You are using a common misconception people have about what animal populations do. They do not eat "just enough" to maintain their population. They don't magically or consciously regulate themselves for sustainable consumption. Cattle don't decide to stop grazing just because they are numerous and wolves do not hold back from hunting if the prey grow too few. That is why populations can have massive booms, overpopulation and then crashes. A prey population with insufficient predators will grow until it exhausts the food supply or until disease and stress from overcrowding cause their populations to crash. Predators that grow too numerous hunt their prey to extinction or to tiny levels and then starve.

The Tyranids consuming more and more, because more food is available, and growing ever more numerous is entirely in keeping with Darwinian principles.

Ratius wrote:Do you think it would ever be possible for the Nids to reach a balance, to consume just enough for what they need to survive (and evolve) and no more?

No. It's like rich people, you have the money - but you always need more of it.

You are using a common misconception people have about what animal populations do. They do not eat "just enough" to maintain their population. They don't magically or consciously regulate themselves for sustainable consumption. Cattle don't decide to stop grazing just because they are numerous and wolves do not hold back from hunting if the prey grow too few. That is why populations can have massive booms, overpopulation and then crashes. A prey population with insufficient predators will grow until it exhausts the food supply or until disease and stress from overcrowding cause their populations to crash. Predators that grow too numerous hunt their prey to extinction or to tiny levels and then starve.

The Tyranids consuming more and more, because more food is available, and growing ever more numerous is entirely in keeping with Darwinian principles.

Interesting stuff.
However, cattle or wolves are different to the Nids in one very important fact: The Hive Mind. It has the ability to regulate and control its populace yet it "lets them run wild".
Assuming it is aware there is only X amount of biomass in the Galaxy, why does it continue to feed so voraciously?
Surely it has learned its lesson from other Galaxies and stripping them bare?

From what we know of the Tyranids, the intelligence behind the entire species is defined by one word - hunger. Excessively feeding your hunger, as appears to be the case with the Tyranids, is gluttony. And Gluttony is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Related to Gluttony (I want to consume it all) is Greed (everything must belong to me). And it's clear that the Tyranids are quite greedy as well.

Finally, it's unknown whether or not the intelligence behind the species derives pleasure from the consumption of worlds. But if it does then it's also guilty of Lust (which doesn't need to be connected to something sexual). So the Tyranids are guilty of at least two, and possibly three, of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Yes, they have an ethics problem...

Ratius wrote:

You are using a common misconception people have about what animal populations do. They do not eat "just enough" to maintain their population. They don't magically or consciously regulate themselves for sustainable consumption. Cattle don't decide to stop grazing just because they are numerous and wolves do not hold back from hunting if the prey grow too few. That is why populations can have massive booms, overpopulation and then crashes. A prey population with insufficient predators will grow until it exhausts the food supply or until disease and stress from overcrowding cause their populations to crash. Predators that grow too numerous hunt their prey to extinction or to tiny levels and then starve.

The Tyranids consuming more and more, because more food is available, and growing ever more numerous is entirely in keeping with Darwinian principles.

Interesting stuff.
However, cattle or wolves are different to the Nids in one very important fact: The Hive Mind. It has the ability to regulate and control its populace yet it "lets them run wild".
Assuming it is aware there is only X amount of biomass in the Galaxy, why does it continue to feed so voraciously?
Surely it has learned its lesson from other Galaxies and stripping them bare?

What lesson? There is no lesson. There are thousands of galaxies in the universe. Food is plentiful and travelling is no real obstacle to the Hive Mind as it can be patient. There is absolutely no reason to hold back and restrict itself to just one galaxy.

It is analogous to asking why doesn't all life on Earth just photosynthesize and make its own food gradually? Why go and eat others? Because it is faster and you can get more than if you just sit there making your own.

Define 'ethical'.

Is it ethical for a sapient to knowingly kill another sapient? If the Hive Mind is sapient, and realises that its prey is sapient, then no, it's not ethical by this measure.

Vegan or vegetarian ethics? The Hive Mind clearly falls way short, but this does raise a relevant argument.

When it's pointed out to vegans that plants display a small degree of sentience, one retort is Robert A. Freitas Jr's sentience quotient. Basically, it puts things that process information on a logarithmic scale, with plants at a very low end, computers near the middle, animals near the top and humans at the peak.

The vegan argument here is that the most sentient plants - venus flytraps and the like - are several logarithmic steps below a computer. Whilst cutting a leaf off a lettuce may cause observable reactions comparable in some ways to animal pain, the degree of "pain" is thousands of times lesser than the "pain" inflicted on your computer by pulling out a memory stick without dismounting it properly. In other words, it's so minor as to be utterly insignificant.

From this, if the Hive Mind's sentience quotient is as many logarithmic steps greater than a human's, then it could potentially make a utilitarian argument that consuming us all is simply contributing to the greatest overall good.

Utilitarians might reject that as an extreme distortion of the theory, and opponents of utilitarianism might hold it up as an example of a flawed theory being taken to its logical conclusion. But there you go.

lindsay40k wrote:
From this, if the Hive Mind's sentience quotient is as many logarithmic steps greater than a human's, then it could potentially make a utilitarian argument that consuming us all is simply contributing to the greatest overall good.

Utilitarians might reject that as an extreme distortion of the theory, and opponents of utilitarianism might hold it up as an example of a flawed theory being taken to its logical conclusion. But there you go.

It's only a "distortion" when one is not at the top of the food chain.

Void__Dragon wrote:

-Loki- wrote:Immortality is not dying in the first place, not being reborn. Not only that, only the Swarmlord, a very recent addition, gets reborn with it's memories intact. Everything else, when it's dead, it's dead. They just melt it down and make another new one.

However, Tyranids are at least not discriminatory. Everyone has equal right to be melted down and used to make a spore, or as a swarm lord.

Actually, all Hive Tyrants have their memories restored, the Swarmlord is just the oldest and most experienced Hive Tyrant.

So nids... are cylons?

Randomonioum wrote:

Void__Dragon wrote:

-Loki- wrote:Immortality is not dying in the first place, not being reborn. Not only that, only the Swarmlord, a very recent addition, gets reborn with it's memories intact. Everything else, when it's dead, it's dead. They just melt it down and make another new one.

However, Tyranids are at least not discriminatory. Everyone has equal right to be melted down and used to make a spore, or as a swarm lord.

Actually, all Hive Tyrants have their memories restored, the Swarmlord is just the oldest and most experienced Hive Tyrant.

So nids... are cylons?

That goes a long way to explaining a lot...

purplefood wrote:

Randomonioum wrote:

Void__Dragon wrote:

-Loki- wrote:Immortality is not dying in the first place, not being reborn. Not only that, only the Swarmlord, a very recent addition, gets reborn with it's memories intact. Everything else, when it's dead, it's dead. They just melt it down and make another new one.

However, Tyranids are at least not discriminatory. Everyone has equal right to be melted down and used to make a spore, or as a swarm lord.

Actually, all Hive Tyrants have their memories restored, the Swarmlord is just the oldest and most experienced Hive Tyrant.

So nids... are cylons?

That goes a long way to explaining a lot...

GW originality...

lindsay40k wrote: Define 'ethical'.

Is it ethical for a sapient to knowingly kill another sapient? If the Hive Mind is sapient, and realises that its prey is sapient, then no, it's not ethical by this measure.

Killing another Sapient is only unethical if the Hive Mind has either decided for itself, or been told by another, that doing so is wrong.

Since this obviously hasn't happened the Tyranids arn't being unethical.

lindsay40k wrote:
Vegan or vegetarian ethics? The Hive Mind clearly falls way short, but this does raise a relevant argument.

When it's pointed out to vegans that plants display a small degree of sentience, one retort is Robert A. Freitas Jr's sentience quotient. Basically, it puts things that process information on a logarithmic scale, with plants at a very low end, computers near the middle, animals near the top and humans at the peak.

The vegan argument here is that the most sentient plants - venus flytraps and the like - are several logarithmic steps below a computer. Whilst cutting a leaf off a lettuce may cause observable reactions comparable in some ways to animal pain, the degree of "pain" is thousands of times lesser than the "pain" inflicted on your computer by pulling out a memory stick without dismounting it properly. In other words, it's so minor as to be utterly insignificant.

From this, if the Hive Mind's sentience quotient is as many logarithmic steps greater than a human's, then it could potentially make a utilitarian argument that consuming us all is simply contributing to the greatest overall good.

Utilitarians might reject that as an extreme distortion of the theory, and opponents of utilitarianism might hold it up as an example of a flawed theory being taken to its logical conclusion. But there you go.

Again, this requires someone to have arbitrarily decided that pain is the measure of what is ethical to eat. Who decided this and by what authority?

This is like asking if Orks are ethical. Orks are designed to fight and kill, Nids are the same. The Hive mind might understand it is killing things to satisfy its hunger, but who knows what it thinks of the matter? Perhaps it justifies its actions by resurrecting the dead as Nids

Tyranids are pure in their single-minded purpose. They exhibit perfection in being the Great Devourer.

lindsay40k wrote:Define 'ethical'.

Is it ethical for a sapient to knowingly kill another sapient? If the Hive Mind is sapient, and realises that its prey is sapient, then no, it's not ethical by this measure.

Vegan or vegetarian ethics? The Hive Mind clearly falls way short, but this does raise a relevant argument.

When it's pointed out to vegans that plants display a small degree of sentience, one retort is Robert A. Freitas Jr's sentience quotient. Basically, it puts things that process information on a logarithmic scale, with plants at a very low end, computers near the middle, animals near the top and humans at the peak.

The vegan argument here is that the most sentient plants - venus flytraps and the like - are several logarithmic steps below a computer. Whilst cutting a leaf off a lettuce may cause observable reactions comparable in some ways to animal pain, the degree of "pain" is thousands of times lesser than the "pain" inflicted on your computer by pulling out a memory stick without dismounting it properly. In other words, it's so minor as to be utterly insignificant.

From this, if the Hive Mind's sentience quotient is as many logarithmic steps greater than a human's, then it could potentially make a utilitarian argument that consuming us all is simply contributing to the greatest overall good.

Utilitarians might reject that as an extreme distortion of the theory, and opponents of utilitarianism might hold it up as an example of a flawed theory being taken to its logical conclusion. But there you go.

The Hive Mind is sapient (beyond sapient if there's such a thing) and knows its prey is sapient so it is unethical. Theoretically the Hive Mind could only target planets that contain only mushrooms but in fact they purposefully target planets with the most intelligent creatures they can because they have those delicious advanced genes.

I think that the Tyranids being 'Beyond Sentient' is an apt description for them, hence our conception of ethics is meaningless and inapplicable.
I mean, consider the ethical questions people can draw from the emperor's crusade. It can be reasoned that deliberately taking the life of another sentient being is unethical, unless "the ends justify the means". I.e. It will contribute more good overall than allowing the being in question to live. It seems reasonable that a planet can be exterminated, if the population of the Galaxy greatly benefits from it, or if the galaxy is hindered and hurt by the planets existence.

So what is the overall good that the Emperor is striving for? What is his cause? What purpose could justify the countless lives lost in the crusade? The unification of mankind of course. That was his ideal goal. That man should no longer be stuck fighting amongst itself, like orks, struggling for control over small fractions of the galaxy. The Imperium of Man, united with common purpose.
But of course the Tyranids are already there! They're united towards the will of the hive mind such that each individual no longer seems sentient to us. They are indeed, logarithmically ahead of man in terms of sentience. Each one is more like a node of the brain, or a digestive enzyme of the larger organism. To say that they understand nothing but hunger, would be like the individual cells of a braised steak accusing mankind of knowing nothing but hunger, after encountering only it's teeth. It certainly seems that way when you only encounter the beast in the face of it's open jaws, but really the will and purpose of the hive mind is beyond mans understanding.