I’m not disagreeing with any of that. My disagreement was on how the Krogens were developed, whether or not the problem was realistic, and whether they were consistent within the lore itself. Since we aren’t given enough information to make such judgements, using pieces of information to extrapolate the answers you want grates against my logic processors.
Whether the moral problem is a good one or not is a different problem altogether, and never had anything to do with what I was talking about. If you’d rather concede my points and move on to another, more related subject then I’d be happy to do so.
You're right. We simply aren't given enough information to make an informed analysis, and what information we are given simply doesn't make any sense because there were too many writers and they didn't talk enough.
Pretty much every logical explanation I can contrive breaks the dilemma by making the krogan look like callous killing machines and so stupid that they would prefer to invade inhabited planets rather than use condoms.
(Also, the whole situation requiring the krogan to be uplifted in the first place doesn't make a lot of sense to begin with. On modern Earth our military is becoming increasingly robotized, so it stands to reason that future wars won't need anywhere near as many soldiers as past wars did. Not to mention the existence of weapons of mass destruction like relativistic kill vehicles that can turn the crusts of planets into molten hellscapes. It doesn't really make much sense to send krogans into rachni colonies to kill their queens when you can incinerate or disintegrate the planet itself. Since element zero is just unobtainium that makes the Alcubierre drive feasible by letting you arbitrarily manipulate gravity irrespective of mass, then you can use a regular warp drive to barbecue the planets in question because the mathematical equations concerning real warp drives show that is possible.)
Regardless of whether one can contrive a logical explanation, the moral dilemma is both a false dichotomy and blatantly sadistic because it only gives you an absurd binary choice between "commit genocide against the krogan" or "commit genocide against everyone who is not krogan."
Andromeda pretty much kills the dilemma by having the expedition bring krogans along with absolutely no concern for their supposedly rapid reproduction. Guess it must have been racist propaganda, right?
Dear God, I hate
Mass Effect so much. Bioware did not think through the consequences of their writing. How difficult would it have been to hire a proofreader to maintain continuity and to consult actual scientists and ethics professors rather than read Wikipedia?
I simply used it as an example of one possibility. And even so, all it takes to become technologically advanced as a species is to continually build upon the generations before. Once certain breakthroughs are made and the technique widely spread, overall technology advances. The specifics of the society in question doesn’t matter. Sure, some societies work BETTER for this, but that doesn’t mean others won’t, and there simply isn’t enough information given to truly discount the Krogans as a viable race where the tendency towards overpopulation is a problem.
I find it highly unlikely that a species would develop a complex social structure without raising their own offspring.
Every single species on Earth with a complex social structure engages in the raising of their own offspring (or other relatives). This ensures that their genes survive in future generations. In a species where the adults do not raise their own offspring, there would be absolutely no selection pressure to develop a social structure without child rearing since they gain vastly less benefit from it compared to a structure which allows them to identify their own offspring. Since instructing unrelated children doesn't pass the teacher's genes, and they have no way to ensure their genes are passed in their social system (like human teachers do; i.e. their paycheck helps them to raise their own children), then there would be no pressure to develop complex social behavior since it provides no benefit to passing on your own genes.
What little we are told of the krogan social norms claims that they conceive and raise offspring similarly to how humans do. This was obviously written by a different writer than whoever claimed krogans lay a thousand eggs a year.
I'm having difficulty imagining an intelligent civilization with an overpopulation problem on the same level as the krogan supposedly had. Earlier you used human overpopulation as an example, but the problem with that is that human population growth is driven by poverty and lack of birth control. Our rate of growth actually peaked years ago and is steadily decreasing due to increasing affluence. Our current rate of growth is 1.07% per year for 2018-9, which decreases by 0.02% per year. That means in about 50 years our population will stop growing and then decline. That's assuming that no technological, economic or environmental change occurs over that time, which is unlikely.
In order for humanity to be placed into a similar position to the krogan, when all of the population growth is occurring among the poor, then you need special socio-economic provisions. Space travel needs to be cheap enough that you can just casually ship billions of those overpopulated poor people off-world, and the rich people in charge need to care enough about the poor to bother helping them get off-world and fight wars with other intelligent species to get new habitats (as opposed to building arcologies, ignoring the problem or engaging in mass murder of the poor). That state of affairs doesn't seem believable for humanity, since the political parties that denigrate birth control are the same ones who express extreme contempt for the poor.
I could understand if the aliens were some "devouring swarm" type deal like the tyranids or zerg, but at that point there's no room for a dilemma because they're trying to eat you.
