I'm not sure why realism would call for allowing the device to use lethal force, though. A hail of machine gun bullets that hurt like hell but produce no wounds would be just as effective a training tool as a hail of bullets that tear your body apart. Today, we can't do that because a bullet that flies at a ballistically realistic speed isn't going to be nonlethal. A holodeck could give the bullet realistic flight characteristics, sounds, even taste, but then refuse to give it the penetrating power at the point of impact.safeties can be disengaged for simulating realistic combat scenarios/training I'd guess.
The few times we have seen safeties disengaged, this has been in order to ensure bodily harm (ST:FC) or to give the user an adrenaline rush (VOY "Extreme Risk"). We don't know what exactly was different from the safed holodeck, though. Did the computer normally have a routine that intercepted and aborted/modified any situation where the user might come to harm (with settings varying from "I don't want to get hurt" to "I don't want to die"), and now it stopped caring? Or did the computer start inserting extra risk to the programs (going from PG rating to R rating, so to say) which originally did not feature any elements that could jeopardize the user?
If the computer just stops caring about a holographic submachine gun, this shouldn't necessarily turn the weapon lethal, as apparently it's "just a hologram" to begin with, a silly prop in a make-believe game. Why would it not be? Similarly, if the computer stops caring about whether a character will jump from the top of a cliff, this shouldn't necessarily be lethal, as the character is in reality jumping from the height of one centimeter anyway. There has to be an active element to the jeopardy, more or less: the computer has to decide to suddenly construct a real gun, and to carefully utilize tractor beams that impose lethal forces when the user hits the ground "half a mile down".
It's a bit different if a user is to be strangled by a holo-character. Now the holographic element is capable of being lethal by default: its normal interactive capabilities that make its body feel real allow it to block the user's windpipe. If the computer stopped caring about whether the user playing action hero really manages to elbow his way out of the grip of the holo-villain, and simply kept running the villain character according to its logical behavior parameters, the villain would kill the user. Of course, there might be a separate routine that ensures that the user always wins, unrelated to any safety concerns...
Then there's a third level of risk. A putative moral routine would stop the computer from using a murderous character to kill the user. But what if the user wants to do something benign and fumbles it? What if he dives in a deep cave, enjoying the feel of real, replicated water - and has a seizure and drowns? What if he can't handle the facesitting 280 lb holo-woman he requested but isn't in a position to call it quits? Stopping from caring would be lethal there, too, and "secondary" routines dealing with morals or winning conditions or user preferences would fail to kick in as well.
But ST:FC seems to require the holodeck not just to stop caring, but also to actively start ramping up the risk, to "realistic" levels and perhaps beyond. How else could it know that Picard wants a lethal tommy-gun when he never says so?
On the other hand, if the holodeck was capable of giving Picard a real Thompson, why did he also key in this whole Dixon Hill charade? Why not just ask for the gun, or perhaps the gun plus twenty US Marines with twenty more guns and a sudden burning desire to kill some Borg? It would appear that keying in the Dixon Hill program was the easy way to get the gun. In which case we might speculate that Picard had carefully requested (for whatever reason) a real weapon for his holoprogram when originally creating it, and remembered this helpful tidbit now.
Many (if not most) of them are. And those tend to be the ones most likely to kill the user. Recreation and lethal risk are an acceptable and even desirable combination in the real world.Motor vehicles aren't principally for recreation
Malfunctioning alcohol kills you with the first sip. Or worse. Yet consumption of alcohol prone to malfunctions is significantly greater than consumption of carefully safed alcohol...Alcohol causes Impairment of things like alertness and coordination from the first drink, yes, but it's not going to put you in physical danger like malfunctioning holodecks. Again, not comparable.
Timo Saloniemi
The last part of your post about alcohol is meaningless nonsense as far as I can tell. And I'd like to see your data on motor vehicles being used principally for recreation. I suspect that the vast majority of people use their vehicles for necessary transportation. In my entire life, I have never met a single person who claimed to use their car principally for recreational purposes. Maybe there are some rich folks who can afford to do this, but not the vast majority of workers.