Quote Originally Posted by KariTheFox View Post
Maybe, but I don't think I could be considered a morally just person if I did so. Given the scientific consensus on dolphin personhood.

Although given the scales likely involved if the sacrifice was of non-sapient life, a better question to ask might be "Would you burn the entire Amazon Rainforest to the ground to save a loved one?" and... "do you think someone trying to stop you from doing that would be acting immorally?"
My point in making the post wasn't that the Ancient's sacrifices were morally good or acceptable, but rather that they were morally banal in a manner that's a far cry from Lyth's assessment of them as a culture anyone should understand as twisted. It is extremely normal for humans to prioritize human life at the expense of all other forms, sapient (dolphins, great apes, elephants, some birds) or otherwise. While they might be correct that not many people would directly slit the throat of a dolphin, my guess is that most would press an abstracted dolphin-killing button to cure their child of cancer.

That you bring up the Amazon is interesting because, well, we are 'burning it down', and not even to save lives, but just because it's useful in keeping the wheels of our industrial complex turning and preserving our current lifestyles. All over the world, real-world mankind is essentially doing the most extreme interpretation of what the Ancient's planned - killing the entire biosphere, intelligent and unintelligent life alike - for a much more flippant reason.

I think we can probably agree this is not a good thing, but with that said, would you be comfortable with having our whole civilization destroyed to put a stop to it? In the real world, how much effort and sacrifice do you, personally, put into trying to put a stop to it?

I think people are very hasty to judge the Ancients as an entire people for an action that is ultimately pretty unexceptional, wrong or otherwise.