Janeway's Decision to Kill Tuvix

[Sci]

^^Indeed. "It's for the greater good" is insufficient when we're talking about killing a sentient being.

Exactly. It's really very simple:

Tuvok and Neelix are dead and are never coming back. Tuvix is a sentient being, with equal claim to the rights the Federation recognizes and guarantees for all sentient beings -- including the right to live. Tuvix can be killed, but Tuvok and Neelix cannot be resurrected, only copied. So the choice is between respecting an innocent man's right to live, or killing him in order to create two new people who remind us of people who are already dead.

I've never been a parent, but I gotta say, I don't think I would kill an innocent man just to create a new copy of an already-dead son or daughter.

ETA:

So that justifies not bringing Tuvok back?

Nobody brought Tuvok back. Tuvok's gone. They created a copy of Tuvok; they did not resurrect him.

^^Indeed. "It's for the greater good" is insufficient when we're talking about killing a sentient being.

If everyone is simply a copy of a past self when they step off the transporter pad, then it clearly is a numbers game.

Once again, this argument has already been refuted. A properly-functioning transporter ensures continuity of consciousness -- the same person steps off the transporter pad who stepped onto it, and was merely transformed into still-conscious energy temporarily. Tuvok and Neelix did not experience continuity of consciousness -- their consciousnesses were ended and a new one created.

 

[Deckerd]

Yes you could. If you were a parent you would do it without blinking.

 

[R. Star]

Nah, I don't buy the transporter "killing" you simply because Barclay showed it was an uninterrupted stream of consciousness in Realm of Fear(though it would make sense why he's so afraid of the things! ). Though in another thread there was theory that in Faces when Torres was split into two people, that the original one was killed then copied by proxy. I guess the same logic could be applied in reverse here.

 

[Sci]

Yes you could. If you were a parent you would do it without blinking.

You know what bugs me? People who think they know what someone else would do. They don't; the fact of the matter is, parental love motivates a lot of different, sometimes conflicting, behaviors in people. Parents do not all react the same way to the same circumstances just because they are parents.

And no, I would not "do it without blinking." If I had a son, I rather think he would be ashamed of me if I were to kill an innocent person to create a copy of him -- not resurrect him; create a copy, a separate, different person who happens to merely possess his traits. To commit such a murder would be to profoundly dishonor his memory.

 

[BillJ]

The "uninterrupted stream of consciousness" argument is incredibly flawed. How can such a thing exist when your brain is disassembled and converted to energy at the subatomic level?

 

[R. Star]

Personally I'd hope that no one would kill someone "without blinking" no matter the circumstances. Though that's obviously a forlorn hope...

 

[teya]

Yes you could. If you were a parent you would do it without blinking.

I don't know a single parent who would kill an innocent person to bring back a child.

And, since it appears to be Kes's plea to bring back her lover (and Janeway's desire to have Kes avoid the grief she & the rest of the crew feel at being separated from their loved ones) that helps Janeway to the final decision, I can state categorically:

I could not and would never even consider killing someone to save my sweetie.

Perhaps, in the view of people here, that means I didn't love him enough.

 

[BillJ]

Yes you could. If you were a parent you would do it without blinking.

I don't know a single parent who would kill an innocent person to bring back a child.

And, since it appears to be Kes's plea to bring back her lover (and Janeway's desire to have Kes avoid the grief she & the rest of the crew feel at being separated from their loved ones) that helps Janeway to the final decision, I can state categorically:

I could not and would never even consider killing someone to save my sweetie.

Perhaps, in the view of people here, that means I didn't love him enough.

As far as that stream of thought goes: I'm not sure anyone knows with certainty what they would do in a situation like that until they were actually in that type of situation.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

The "uninterrupted stream of consciousness" argument is incredibly flawed. How can such a thing exist when your brain is disassembled and converted to energy at the subatomic level?

and yet its still canon. Heck we even see another example of it on Enterprise when the guy who invented the transporter's son was stuck has a energy cloud and seemed to be trying to communicate with them.

 

[Sadara]

well considering they probably already thought he was dead at the time....

So that justifies not bringing Tuvok back?

Nobody brought Tuvok back. Tuvok's gone. They created a copy of Tuvok; they did not resurrect him.

If you see them as copies, that's fine. I don't and I think Tuvok and Neelix have the right to be returned to their normal lives.

 

[BillJ]

and yet its still canon.

So is lithium crystals, anti-matter destroying the universe, being able to create two people of the same mass out of one person, being able to merge two being into one that has equal mass of the two and so on...

Just because it's canon doesn't mean it makes sense.

 

[Melakon]

and yet its still canon.

So is lithium crystals, anti-matter destroying the universe, being able to create two people of the same mass out of one person, being able to merge two being into one that has equal mass of the two and so on...

Just because it's canon doesn't mean it makes sense.

"The Enemy Within" presents a very similar situation, but I never see anyone arguing that Evil Kirk has a right to live. Except Evil Kirk's objections: "I wanna live!"

 

[BillJ]

and yet its still canon.

So is lithium crystals, anti-matter destroying the universe, being able to create two people of the same mass out of one person, being able to merge two being into one that has equal mass of the two and so on...

Just because it's canon doesn't mean it makes sense.

"The Enemy Within" presents a very similar situation, but I never see anyone arguing that Evil Kirk has a right to live. Except Evil Kirk's objections: "I wanna live!"

Yeah. I brought that up earlier in the thread but it doesn't fit anyone's pro-Tuvix arguments so it got ignored.

 

[teya]

Yes you could. If you were a parent you would do it without blinking.

I don't know a single parent who would kill an innocent person to bring back a child.

And, since it appears to be Kes's plea to bring back her lover (and Janeway's desire to have Kes avoid the grief she & the rest of the crew feel at being separated from their loved ones) that helps Janeway to the final decision, I can state categorically:

I could not and would never even consider killing someone to save my sweetie.

Perhaps, in the view of people here, that means I didn't love him enough.

As far as that stream of thought goes: I'm not sure anyone knows with certainty what they would do in a situation like that until they were actually in that type of situation.

You're kidding, right?

I'm sorry, but there was no question in my mind before I even met my sweetie that I would kill someone to provide a medical cure for someone I loved.

That's really a no-brainer, isn't it? Or is life so fucking cheap these days that there are actually people out there who would think it absolutely moral to kill someone to provide a kidney for their lover?

It's not often an argument on a Star Trek board leaves me speechless, but congrats! You just did.

Here's a news flash, folks. Death is the *only* thing we are guaranteed when we're born. And it's inevitable. We cannot avoid losing people we love. We certainly can't justify killing someone else to keep our loved ones with us longer.

 

[Sci]

The "uninterrupted stream of consciousness" argument is incredibly flawed. How can such a thing exist when your brain is disassembled and converted to energy at the subatomic level?

How can such a thing exist? Very well, apparently.

How do Heisenberg compensators work? How does warp drive work? Replicators?

Star Trek is full of implausible technologies, but they are part of the conceits of the ST Universe. One of those conceits, firmly established in the canon, is that a person who is beamed by a properly-functioning transporter, has complete continuity of consciousness.

Tuvok and Neelix, in this episode, do not. They are dead; the Tuvok and Neelix who are created at the end of the episode are copies, not the originals.

And, yes, I'm inclined to make similar arguments about the William Riker/Thomas Riker incident, and even the "Enemy Within" scenario. I think the original William T. Riker died in that accident established in "Second Chances," and that the two Rikers created by that are copies, not the original -- that, in other words, the William T. Riker born in Alaska should have been declared legally dead and his copies issued their own separate birth certificates backdated to the time of the transporter accident, given their own Federation Social Security Numbers (or whatever the UFP uses), etc. Same with the Evil!Kirk and Good!Kirk, and then with the resulting Reintegrated!Kirk. Etc.

 

[BillJ]

It's not often an argument on a Star Trek board leaves me speechless, but congrats! You just did.

I think you're taking the argument a little too seriously.

 

[spot_loves_data]

Yes but how many transporter accidents result in the creation of a new lifeform?

Meh. There's usually some new twist. It's still just a transporter accident, not anything worth tossing out years of canon over.

accepted as canon that mid-transport accidents result in the victim being held in a sort of stasis?

Does that look like stasis to you? Becuase that sure as hell looks like horrible death to me.

Actually, most of that clip showed people in stasis. So, yes, it looked like stasis to me. Notice how the crew didn't immediately assume their crewmates were dead when the transporter began to fail. They worked up until the last moment and only stopped when they were faced with mutilated corpses.

Transporter accidents in Trek are usually problems to be solved. Sure, there's the occasional fatality, but there are too many transporter accident survivors to believe that these situations are irreversible. If death were certain, we'd never have had entire episodes devoted to transporter malfunctions.

 

[Sadara]

So is lithium crystals, anti-matter destroying the universe, being able to create two people of the same mass out of one person, being able to merge two being into one that has equal mass of the two and so on...

Just because it's canon doesn't mean it makes sense.

"The Enemy Within" presents a very similar situation, but I never see anyone arguing that Evil Kirk has a right to live. Except Evil Kirk's objections: "I wanna live!"

Yeah. I brought that up earlier in the thread but it doesn't fit anyone's pro-Tuvix arguments so it got ignored.

Hmmm... I wonder if that's because evil Kirk was evil and therefore it's okay to bring regular Kirk back. Maybe if Tuvix had been evil, we'd be seeing more "sure, let's bring Tuvok and Neelix back."

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Hmmm... I wonder if that's because evil Kirk was evil and therefore it's okay to bring regular Kirk back.

In that case, Kirk needed to be integrated, because "good Kirk" was incapable of being a captain - without his dark side, as it were, he couldn't exercise command decisions. Also, "evil Kirk" was an evident threat to the ship. So those two things make it more obvious in Kirk's case than in Tuvix's.

 

[Sci]

Hmmm... I wonder if that's because evil Kirk was evil and therefore it's okay to bring regular Kirk back.

In that case, Kirk needed to be integrated, because "good Kirk" was incapable of being a captain - without his dark side, as it were, he couldn't exercise command decisions. Also, "evil Kirk" was an evident threat to the ship. So those two things make it more obvious in Kirk's case than in Tuvix's.

I'm more inclined to argue that the two Kirks were each new, unique persons who each suffered from mental illnesses requiring medical treatment, not death in order to create a new, fourth person.