SCP-3554 / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-3554.

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SCP-3554

Lazar Lyusternik 10 Jan 2018 01:20

Hey, here comes another draft about the intersection of history and awful, awful ethics. When the Ethics Committee won't make the right decision, who else can you turn to?

Thanks to Taylor_Itkin, Kalinin, Zyn, ModernMajorGeneral, and all the others that took a look at this in its drafting period!

Thanks to djkaktus for showing me the image, found here : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:K%26M_Candles_Brockholes_UK,_1972_(RLH),_KIWI_Shoe_Polish_Canning_Machine_02.jpg

ID Strashun quote is an extension of an actual quote by ID Strashun.

Last edited on 04 Jan 2019 20:46 by Lazar Lyusternik Show more

fieldstone 10 Jan 2018 01:36

Alexander Narmanov. Kliment Zeborov. Nina Sebwinsky. I don't know who these people are. I just know that I killed them this week for their ration cards.

Damn. +1

djkaktus 10 Jan 2018 01:42

This is an interesting prospect; you've basically traded in the idea of writing an anomaly with writing an ethical dilemma. The article itself is structurally sound, the pace is well metered. Even though a factory that produces borscht is pretty mundane itself that obviously isn't the point of the article.

The larger issue, for me, is the dialogue between the EthCom members. I've never been super keen on members of a numbered committee addressing themselves and each other by those numbers (the Overseers get a bit of a pass on this because of the nature of their position). It might be headcanon but I don't see the Ethics Committee as being too much different than other panels within the Foundation, and definitely not deserving of that kind of crypticism. A minor complaint, but one worth mentioning either way.

The larger issue here for me is that this is pretty well trodden ground. "Maintain normalcy" or "protect the population" isn't something new, and since all of the arguments being made by the committee members are essentially just variations on this ("we could've helped before but didn't, and thousands died", "it's not our job to interfere", etc), the entire dialogue comes across feeling a little bland.

What would've been really interesting here is a discussion about, if the Foundation is unwilling to aid in the humanitarian efforts in Leningrad, then what is the purpose of the Foundation? If their mission statement includes the word "protect", but they are unwilling to do something for the obvious benefit of mankind, then can they really claim to be on the same side as mankind? Especially in this case, where something like this could be pretty easily accomplished in a way that wouldn't pull back the veil or what have you.

I guess what I'm saying here is that my singular complaint is the missed opportunity. Not that what's there is bad; on the contrary, I plan on upvoting this article. What's here could have been more, and that's definitely something to think about moving forward. Really good work otherwise, though.

Lazar Lyusternik 10 Jan 2018 01:56

The intended takeaway from the Ethics Committee dialog is that they are remarkably flawed people and have no oversight. They vote based on their whims. E-5 condemns a city of a million people out spite for E-2's condemnation of his. It's petty grudge-holding writ large - the fate hundreds of thousands of people hang in the balance, and the Ethics Committee, the one thing that might save them, is tainted by petty conflict.

Last edited on 10 Jan 2018 02:03 by Lazar Lyusternik Show more

djkaktus 10 Jan 2018 02:07

I actually really like that angle too, though I didn't get enough of that to sell me on the idea from this reading alone. Honestly, if that's what you're aiming for, I would really, really ramp up the petty bickering. Just like internet fights, boardroom fights can just as easily descend into name calling and the worst kind of mud dragging.

That takes away from the ethical issue I was talking about, but actually introduces on that's even crazier: what mind boggling bullshit is it that this group of morons is given authority to condemn a million people?

Lazar Lyusternik 10 Jan 2018 02:17

The final vote actually originally had E-5 directly blaming E-2 in the final vote, but some people found that to be too abrasive. Better to put it back?

Your second point is left as an exercise for the student relies very much on headcanon - depending on your interpretation, the Ethics Committee is the very tippy-top of the Foundation pyramid. Even the O5 have to respect their rulings. What kind of protections do you have in place to prevent that power from being influenced by the outside? Draconian, I'm sure.

Are E-1 through -5 even dumb? They may just have different priorities. E-4 is reasonably sane. E-1 and -3 are just ideological purists with no conscience - E-2 tries to fit in with this category but falters when his own countrymen are on the line, but he's crafty - he knows E-4 and E-5 will vote aye, because they're humanitarian-leaning. E-5 is grossly offended by this - it's my intepretation that E-5 would have voted Aye if E-4 or himself brought it up first. E-5 voting nay is purely a spite vote against E-2, and a message to say "We're even now", written with thousands of bodies. No one has any leverage against any EC member, except each other.

Last edited on 10 Jan 2018 02:19 by Lazar Lyusternik Show more

djkaktus 10 Jan 2018 02:22

You're right, "morons" maybe isn't the right word. In the headcanon you've presented, it's likely a more appropriate descriptor would be "out of touch". If they have as much authority as you say they do, then they don't actually face any consequences. They're free to make any decision they like for whatever reason, and are hindered only by the other people in the room. As tensions grow, their reasons for distrusting and disliking each other begin to concentrate and they become almost caricatures of what they were when they started.

This still leaves me wanting more of this kind of interaction, though. If nothing else, I would find it hard to believe that an EthCom discussion over something so grave a concern would be handled as quickly as this is.

Unless they don't even see it like an issue, in which case that is super fucked.

fieldstone 10 Jan 2018 02:44

I like to think it was followed by another seven and a half hours of conversations just like the one in the article.

Last edited on 10 Jan 2018 06:07 by fieldstone Show more

ModernMajorGeneral 10 Jan 2018 02:23

I also feel like there are some missed opportunities here, as I mentioned in the draft review, but it's still engaging enough for a +1.

Re: getting rid of the bit where E5 blames E2 directly, since that might have been my influence, I think it would be ok for him to say it at some point during the discussion, just not as the explicit reason for his vote.

Ikonovich 10 Jan 2018 06:04

The Ethics committee that fits in to my headcannon is much larger than this, and consists of part timers who also hold a wide variety of positions in the Foundation and are somehow pseudo-randomly selected and anomymized and changed somewhat regularly. It's in that way that they are able to act as a counterbalance to the O5 - They ARE the Foundation at a systemic level.

Having a 5 man ethics committee means you just have two sets of O5s, and that's a terrible way to run an organization.

Mr Carbon 10 Jan 2018 07:05

That's how 'my' Ethics Committee works, too, more or less. One of the reasons that I liked this article was that it presented an alternative take on the EC; and maybe, too, a reason that the EC had to become the way it is in our respective headcanons?

+1 to the skip, though. It's better than it was in draft, and it was still very good in draft.

Lazar Lyusternik 10 Jan 2018 16:51

O5 is 12 members, I believe, and the origins of this particular committee are intentionally left ambiguous - maybe the EC is just a bunch of ideologues, or maybe this just the portion that deals with 'minor' cases, or maybe they are selected randomly, but for a term of years rather than per case.

Ikonovich 11 Jan 2018 08:00

12, 5 - small enough that interpersonal conflicts and regional play a very substantial role in decisions. In this case the story revolves around that, but I just can't from an effective ethics committee that works that way. The O5s avoid the problem to some extent by staying aloof, but the Ethics committee can't have that luxury. And there's still enough of them that two squabbling members or one that happened to live in the affected region can't alone swing a vote.

I just feel like this particular Ethics committee would have the Foundation committing horrible travesties if the break room ran out of coffee.

psul 10 Jan 2018 12:37

I read the draft on the forums - sorry I didn't get to comment in time.

I quite like the angle you have, but I think it could use more substance and elucidation. kaktus' suggestions are very good, so I have just two others to add:

1) As well as being petty, the EC members here don't come across as very *creative*. The arguments are limited to "hand over the anomaly" or "allow people to starve", without much in the way of nuance. Why does no-one consider trying to supply food, but without revealing its source? What about revealing the source, and planning to amnesticize anyone from the Russian government once they're done? Does 80,000 cans per day actually make an appreciable difference to the famine? If the city falls, Adolf Hitler might get his hands on an unlimited supply of free food. Should that not be taken into consideration? Does revealing it to the Soviets make it more likely that Hitler will find out about it, if he does capture Leningrad?

You obviously don't need to flesh out all of these factors, but unless the angle is that the EC is so inhumane that they don't bother to think at all (and I didn't get that sense from the text), then it would help to make this more of a real debate, and less of a sketch.

2) I didn't find the initial call-in excerpts terribly convincing. While they are dramatic, I wondered at the realism of both the language (is the equivalent of "fucking" a commonly used profanity in Russian?) and the people who call in to a government help line to confess to crimes and reveal their opposition to a totalitarian regime. That could be made a lot more believable.

As an aside, this might be one situation where having a level of security over the Addendum is justified - I can't imagine the Foundation wants just anyone seeing how petty the EC acts (even if some way in the past).

Lazar Lyusternik 10 Jan 2018 16:48

For 1), it is entirely possible to extend the debate further - this is indeed possible, I just didn't want to lengthen the article out much more than necessary.

For 2), actually, yes, as I understand it. There's a particular set of vulgar language in Russian called mat, and it doesn't translate particularly well to English. Best translation usually does involve a lot of 'fuck'. The confession of state crimes is to the point that Leningrad is the most dire of straits, and he's confident in his privacy and in that they have their hands too full to be running around trying to figure out who he is. He just wants to vent.

I'll toss it into a collapsible.

Last edited on 10 Jan 2018 16:49 by Lazar Lyusternik Show more

MrWrong 10 Jan 2018 13:27

I am keen to say that this falls utterly flat for me. The dilemma and the anomaly feel like two separate affairs, and I am puzzled as to how they are connected. The dilemma proposed feels generically tied to any war or major conflict since the 20th century, making it less unique than what it seems to be.

And you have to tie Nanjing to this. It is truly unnecessary to the article, other than perhaps making this dilemma grander in scale. Perhaps that idea can be explored, but that should be in another place. As it is, Nanjing is a sideshow while the main bulk of the article remains waddling in itself.

Nationalist Chinese

Not sure why you specifically use this term. Nothing technically wrong, but odd terminology.

The Nationalists, for the most part, was the legitimate Chinese government at the time. Using 'Chinese' should be enough, or 'Kuomingtang' (if you insist on focusing on the political group).

Lazar Lyusternik 10 Jan 2018 16:42

I'm used to the terms Nationalists and Communists to differentiate between the sides of the Chinese Civil War and their respective parts of the United Front. If it's confusing, I can change it.

The factory is, admittedly, not the focus of the piece. It's meant to provide the dilemma to the Ethics Committee, which is whether to use a totally benign anomaly to aid a civil population, but while directly aiding a belligerent nation.

I think Nanjihg and Leningrad are pretty much unprecedented in the modern era in the scale of civilian lives on the line. The point of including Nanjing is twofold - it shows that the Foundation has done this before, and it gives E-5 something to be spiteful about when it comes down to voting. The article isn't intended to be about the ethical question. it's about the Ethics Committee is full of flawed people (or has a tendency to exacerbate people's flaws), and has no oversight, To the point where, to some, condemning an entire city to starvation is the obvious, logical solution, and that the entire process is tainted with petty politics between members.

(account deleted) 11 Jan 2018 03:48

Tentative upvote. The core concept ("Ethics committee squabbles over food-maker as Leningrad starves") is great; the execution is solid — that being said, I feel like this article ought to have either been significantly longer or significantly shorter. Some thoughts:

+ show block

Some of the recordings are great, but their usage here felt a bit out of place. Also, although I quite liked the inner squabbling of the EC (the antagonism between E-5 and E-2 over Nanking vs Leningrad felt credible, to me), the lack of discussion over alternative solutions made the proceedings feel flat. I understand that there's probably a good reason they can't distribute the cans anonymously, or amnesticize government officials afterward — but the fact that no one even brings it up made it feel less credible.

One thing that came up that I liked: Mentioning the political fallout of discovery. I think this in particular is how you sell the opposition as having a credible point. Yes, we can amnesticize officials; yes, we can distribute food anonymously. But what if GRU P notices? Maybe not all records of SCP-3554's existence were destroyed. Maybe they know something about a food-producing anomaly that's been lost, and a sudden surplus of borscht — with these particular labels, no less! — would clue them in. I mean, they're not idiots; they're going to notice if Leningrad doesn't starve. And maybe the Foundation can't afford to have GRU P sniffing around.

Then the conversation becomes less 'we have to hide anomalies at all costs' and more 'what's the consequence of having GRU P discover we're hiding anomalies from them right under their own noses?'. That, to me, is a far more interesting discussion — because it's one where you can actually see the opposition's point of view. Maybe early-40s Foundation isn't equipped to handle an antagonistic anomalous government organization. Maybe they've got a prior agreement with GRU P and this containment is violating it. Maybe they need GRU P's cooperation for another project, or containing other SCPs — and losing it could be catastrophic for the Foundation as an organization.

Either way, I feel like this would have worked better if we either 1) Never got to see the conversation where they condemned Leningrad to starve, or 2) Saw that conversation expanded and more focused on why letting Leningrad starve might be the Foundation's only politically viable option.

That being said, it's always fun and neat to see skips focused both on history and ethics, so — again! — tentative +1.

Zyn 11 Jan 2018 06:10

Noting that I've resized the image (with permission) so it's no longer over 1 MB.

SARJ 29 Mar 2018 18:59

+1. This article deserves way more attention.

Regarding "nuance":

+ show block

The question of nuance is kind of a non-issue for me. The Foundation is talking about whether or not to expose SCP-3554 to the ChD AKN because that's what Bessonov requested. It's an all or nothing issue because that's what the request at hand is. The Foundation deals in anomalous phenomena.

The question of whether or not the Foundation can aid Leningrad using SCP-3554 without exposing SCP-3554 has undoubtedly been considered by both Bessonov (who is the one making the request in the first place) and the Ethics Committee. It's difficult to imagine the Foundation could even attempt this without ChD AKN/GRU "P" becoming aware that, for example, tens of thousands of civilians had gotten food supplies from a source they could not remember or identify, and then proceeding to investigate. The conversation between the EC members states that this is the last day they have to vote on this issue, implying previous, more nuanced conversations have taken place. My disbelief is sufficiently suspended.

The question of whether the Ethics Committee should be more "creative" is odd to me. This is not a committee designed to implement strategies. Furthermore, again, this only seems like a logical course of action if we assume GRU "P" is incompetent, honestly. Otherwise, the logistical challenges necessary to conduct active anomalous programs right under GRU "P"'s nose obviously preclude further consideration of "creative" strategies designed by a committee whose purpose has never been to strategize anything, but to review the ethics of existing or proposed strategies.

The question of whether or not the Foundation should design and enact a non-anomalous humanitarian program is an entirely separate issue that doesn't generally fall under the Foundation's purview. There's no real precedent for such a thing on this site in general, so I don't expect this article to start it.

Airtight for me. Love it.

Last edited on 29 Mar 2018 19:13 by SARJ Show more

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