Surviving Vulcan Elders.

[BillJ]

YARN wrote:

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Forget Vulcan. Again, forget time travel. Think forward.

I think the second sentence in my post deals with this...

BillJ wrote:

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It doesn't need Spock running around trying protect every person from every tragedy that is about to transpire.

You are walking by a house. You see a child drowning. You can swim. The gate is open. Do you intervene?

You know that there is a bomb in a building that will go off in three days. Do you warn the authorities?

You're walking next to a blind person who is about to step of a ledge. Do you warn him?

Do I have foreknowledge of these events, six months? Five years? What events am I changing down the road because I decide to change how the timeline unfolds?

The impulse to do things "in the moment" is far different than using foreknowledge to manipulate events so the outcome is more to your personal satisfaction.

[Awesome Possum]

YARN wrote:

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Forget Vulcan. Again, forget time travel. Think forward.

You are walking by a house. You see a child drowning. You can swim. The gate is open. Do you intervene?

You know that there is a bomb in a building that will go off in three days. Do you warn the authorities?

You're walking next to a blind person who is about to step of a ledge. Do you warn him?

But you can't remove time travel from Spock's issue. In his case, he knows his younger self dealt with those issues. He learned from them and caused him to become the person he became. By doing it himself, he's making it so his younger self can't.

[YARN]

Awesome Possum wrote:

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I can see Old Spock giving advice if Starfleet truly needed it, but I don't see him preemptively taking out every single threat to the Federation. Especially since this is a different timeline and his knowledge only applies to a timeline with ships that are smaller and seem to be less advanced. For all we know the new Enterprise could stop the Doomsday Machine will one shot. It would also limit the Federation and interfere with their development. They need to learn how to stop some threats on their own.

Like I said before, Spock has to do the risk/reward analysis with regard to this information. I don't think he's obligated to give up every fact about the future.

But why allow needless plagues and famines to be met without administrative support?

Why should Spock chance supposing that the new Constellation will pack enough of a wallop to stop the machine (she is of the same class as Enterprise) with Commoder Decker's first assault? Seeing how ineffectual the Enterprise was against a mining ship (along with the rest of the fleet), we know that the Federation is not advanced beyond Old Spock's level of technology (they didn't even have the formula for transwarp beaming!). And even if we supposed that Decker would take out the DDM with one shot. What about the countless star systems that will be destroyed so long as Starfleet is ignorant of this threat?

[BillJ]

YARN wrote:

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What about the countless star systems that will be destroyed so long as Starfleet is ignorant of this threat?

But what else changes in the process? That is the thing you can never determine until you've committed to interfering with an event that has already unfolded.

Take your drowning child in the swimming pool. Spur of the moment, I would rush in and save him without a second thought. But five years later? I remember Timmy having a bitching pool where he ended up drowning. So I decide to go back and save him so my younger self can keep using that sweet ass pool.

But, Timmy's parents decided to have another child after Timmy's death. Without Timmy's death that child would have likely never existed. So I saved one person but I sentenced another to non-existence.

[Awesome Possum]

YARN wrote:

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Like I said before, Spock has to do the risk/reward analysis with regard to this information. I don't think he's obligated to give up every fact about the future.

But why allow needless plagues and famines to be met without administrative support?

Why should Spock chance supposing that the new Constellation will pack enough of a wallop to stop the machine (she is of the same class as Enterprise) with Commoder Decker's first assault? Seeing how ineffectual the Enterprise was against a mining ship (along with the rest of the fleet), we know that the Federation is not advanced beyond Old Spock's level of technology (they didn't even have the formula for transwarp beaming!). And even if we supposed that Decker would take out the DDM with one shot. What about the countless star systems that will be destroyed so long as Starfleet is ignorant of this threat?

It isn't his job to protect the Federation from threats that it is capable to stopping. He won't be around forever and they can't depend on him to solve all their problems.

[Jackson_Roykirk]

YARN wrote:

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...But why allow needless plagues and famines to be met without administrative support?...

Right. So I suppose Picard should have given a list of cases of great suffering (such as famine, etc.) occurring after 2063 to Lily Sloane. Maybe she could have done something to ease (or even prevent) the suffering.

Heck, she could have set up a perpetual foundation that kept this knowledge and could continue easing/preventing these natural disasters even after Lily's death.

[YARN]

BillJ wrote:

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But what else changes in the process? That is the thing you can never determine until you've committed to interfering with an event that has already unfolded.

Indeed, everything Old Spock does with what he knows will undoubtedly cause a Borg incursion resulting in the end of the universe. Everything Nu Spock does, however, will turn out well when he acts on what he knows (which is much less).

What you fundamentally don't get is that Spock is not from their future. Spock came from a different timeline. There is no future here for Spock to destroy. Their future, at this point, does not exist yet. He is not changing anything that "already exists." What will happen in this universe cannot be determined until agents in his timeline (the nu timeline) decide what to do in response to the information they have. Spock is one of the agents in this nexus of decision. If Spock decides NOT to help this will have an impact on the future. If Spock DOES help, this will shape the future. Spock cannot "NOT influence the future" now, because he is a part of this timeline. It's not a question of whether he does participate, but how he participates in this timeline.

BillJ wrote:

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Take your drowning child in the swimming pool. Spur of the moment, I would rush in and save him without a second thought. But five years later? I remember Timmy having a bitching pool where he ended up drowning. So I decide to go back and save him so my younger self can keep using that sweet ass pool.

But, Timmy's parents decided to have another child after Timmy's death. Without Timmy's death that child would have likely never existed. So I saved one person but I sentenced another to non-existence.

This is butterfly wings nonsense. Not nonsense in that events have have unpredictable consequences, but nonsense in that we should allegedly suppose every positive act to assist the future should be presupposed to engender the worst consequences imaginable. This is hopelessly flawed, because NOT acting could also doom the universe!

Suppose you knew that a building had a bomb planted in it that was set to go off on a slow timer (6 months or 6 years). Would you warn the authorities or would you stand mute?

Your analysis on the proximity of the impact is exactly backwards. The more time you have to intervene and the more certainty you have of outcome (Spock has one the best epistemic vantage points in his universe), the greater responsibility you have to act.

[Awesome Possum]

Isn't this the kind of thing the Temporal Prime Directive was made to stop?

[Franklin]

I think in the movie Spock Prime gave us a big hint of what he'd do with all his "special" information. He took a gamble (he called it an act of faith) when he chose not to aid in stopping Nero, even though he could've been of great assistance. In this case, he wasn't even holding any future knowledge of events. His intervention could have been justified even with a temporal prime directive. But he opted out.

He risked the fate of billions of people on Earth that Kirk and Spock would succeed without his aid, just so Kirk and Spock could see all that they could accomplish, together.

If he was willing to allow that, then -- .

[BillJ]

YARN wrote:

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This is butterfly wings nonsense. Not nonsense in that events have have unpredictable consequences, but nonsense in that we should allegedly suppose every positive act to assist the future should be presupposed to engender the worst consequences imaginable. This is hopelessly flawed, because NOT acting could also doom the universe!

There are no good consequences in the scenario, either a little boy drowns or another child's existence is deleted (and it was your scenario). The point being, no matter how much Spock may try to assist in mitigating the damage... people are still going to die.

Should he tell the Federation about the Organians? So they can make sure they steer clear and can fight an all-out war with the Klingons and millions can die?

You can play 'What If?' til the cows come home. But if Spock misplays his cards or misremembers a key event, he could bring an even worse Hell down on the Federation.

[R. Star]

Awesome Possum wrote:

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Isn't this the kind of thing the Temporal Prime Directive was made to stop?

Given how often any of the Trek captains violate the Prime Directive when it suits them, and how often all of them have time traveled to suit their needs, I don't think they'll have any qualms about violating a Temporal version of it.

As for the temporal time agencies, they're sure selective in what they chose to investigate or fix.

[Awesome Possum]

What's more important? That Old Spock use his knowledge to help the Federation or that Kirk and Spock grow to become the heroes they are supposed to become?

[BillJ]

Awesome Possum wrote:

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What's more important? That Old Spock use his knowledge to help the Federation or that Kirk and Spock grow to become the heroes they are supposed to become?

I think the movie answered that pretty clearly.

[YARN]

Awesome Possum wrote:

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What's more important? That Old Spock use his knowledge to help the Federation or that Kirk and Spock grow to become the heroes they are supposed to become?

What is more important? Ensuring the that your younger self has a bromance with your old captain, or saving billions of lives?

No temporal prime directive applies in this case. Spock is not from their future. This is a branching timeline, remember?

You seem to be convinced that if Spock gives out ANY information Starfleet and Kirk and Spock will be hopelessly stunted in their development because of it. That's your claim, so offer the proof.

You also seem to be claiming that the original timeline is somehow the best of all possible worlds. The Prime Timeline certainly does not appear to be! There are many needless deaths we witnessed and have heard of in Trek (billions of them), which means that non-intervention hardly deserves presumption as being the best of all possible worlds. The question is, if you can make the world a better place and can foresee no significant counter-ramifications, do you do so? Everyone else in Star Trek and the Real World does so - this is that it means to be an agent, to be a reasoner - to use information to navigate to the best possible world which is reasonably accessible to us.

If you could stop 9-11 from happening (warning authorities weeks in advance), would you? America certainly changed as a result of 9-11 (e.g., roll back of civil liberties, never ending foreign wars, spiraling debt), but these are changes we could have done without. Spock can act, as much as he can, to prevent such regressions.

It is just as likely that if Denova can be saved, Kirk might be the better for it. He might be less closed off emotionally if more of his family members survive.

Moreover, there are many needless deaths Spock could prevent which would substantively contribute (positively or negatively) to exploration to the cultural development of the UFP. You can protest - "How do you know it would not! Maybe this is a butterfly!" But everything is a potential butterfly. In this altered timeline, maybe a slightly more immature Kirk attacks the Doomsday Machine head on and dies and dies if Old Spock says nothing. Who knows? Bare possibilities cancel each other out. We have to reason in terms of what we do know. The Doomsday Machine is out there and it will destroy many solar systems and end many lives. Possession of this fact outweighs any bare hypothetical possibility.

[Ovation]

The argument is moot. Spock can do any and all of the things YARN would advocate--it need not alter anything we see on screen one whit.