How many people before it becomes wrong?, Star Trek Insurrection

The Federation owns the planet because it's within Federation space.

The Federation do not own the planet because they never settled upon it.

The Baku own the planet because they settled it pre-Federation.

The Baku do not own the planet because they're not indigenous to it. Rather, the Baku would own the planet upon which they originated.

Pick any or all of the above.

Though if the Baku own the planet then I would claim that unless they sign a treaty with another power, they're responsible for its defense.

 

In my specific case, Dutch, but there are many countries that use ',' as the decimal mark as can be seen in for example this illustration. I'm somewhat less sure about which countries use . as a thousands separator, too.

That's not to say I am unaware of English conventions, it's just easy to mix these different systems up if I forget to pay attention. Through years of computer use, I'm used to the decimal point, but I still find ',' used as thousands separators a somewhat weird sight (I suppose I see those less when reading English).

 

I suppose one way to afford confusion is just to drop the comma or decimal point and go with 391 929.

 

How many people can be helped by the particles before it becomes wrong for the Baku to keep the particles secret for centuries?

1. 1 person
2. 5 people
3. 30 people
4. 100 people
5. 200 people
6. 600 people
7. 1,000 people
8. 50,000 people
9. 1,000,000 people

 

Wouldn't that cause confusion in that we wouldn't know whether there was intended to be a decimal point or comma?

 

When you look at the dates, it looks like the Baku have rights to settle there. They were there long before the Federation even came into existence.

The Federation comes into existence years later and seems to claim the planet is theirs, and then speculate about removing the original settlers already there.

That's basically hard core colonialism.

 

It's never been established that the Federation isn't colonialist. If anything, since we know they can and do establish colonies, there seems to be evidence to the contrary...

 

I believe it is in fact a recommendation (or standard convention) advised by some SI committee, to use spaces for thousands separators, and either a . or a , as the decimal mark, of course provided you are consistent once you've chosen one of these.
So 123 456 would always be an integer, and both 123 456.78 and 123 456,78 would be acceptable.

Yeah, but that's something that has bothered me more in general. There seems to be some kind of "definititon" what Federation space is, and what not, and I suppose that within that space, the Federation is free to take any planet they like.

But suppose in the middle of Federation space there is an inhabited planet, stone age level. Another planet or asteroid belt in that very same solar system has an insane amount of rare resources. Is the Federation allowed to exploit that, or should it by right belong to the stone age people in whose solar system it is, for the era in which they do develop space travel, even if that period won't come for at least a few thousand years? They can't negotiate with the inhabitants, because that would be violation of the prime directive.

 

Or so they say.

 

You know, from a moral perspective, the Federation would be doing its citizens a disservice by NOT taking this immortality planet and figuring it out. It is justifiable that 600 people be allowed to prevent trillions from being helped.

Of course, I also sided with the humans in Avatar for similar reasons. If Earth is dying, and there is something on another planet that can fix the problem, and a group of people are refusing to help, you're fighting for your life, and it makes sense to do whatever it takes to save your people.

 

My implicit understanding has been that the Federation would leave a system alone if there was a Prime Directive-protected planet within that system...but that could get dicey if another planet within the system achieves warp drive (that actually sounds like it could have made for a worthwhile episode).

That being said, that understanding only extended to a race's homeworld, not what would essentially be their colonies. As Dougherty indicated, I would say the Baku are not protected by the Prime Directive because they have warp drive capability and clearly are aware of the larger universe, even if they've essentially turned their backs on it. Put another way, once a race has reached the point where the PD no longer applies, the only way it might reapply would be if that race somehow managed to lose all knowledge of interstellar travel (if the Cardassians had had their way with Bajor for another century or so...).

As for "Avatar", I suppose my issue there is that we're never quite shown how dire things are on Earth (even in the extended edition things don't seem to have reached the tipping point just yet), and the humans' approach to the situation is by and large so unethical that they forsake any high ground they might have had. Note that there's no discussion of any offers to relocate the Na'avi at any point (not that they would have accepted, but that's not the point).

 

At the risk of going off topic, is it so unethical to survive though? Avatar and Insurrection had very similar themes, so it would apply to both movies. Avatar, if anything, had an even more justifiable cause because unlike the Federation, Earth was in very bad shape and this was needed to survive. In both movies, the alien race was preventing something even though the first attempts from Earth was to go for a peaceful solution--something that was arguably unreasonably withheld by the aliens.

In Insurrection, the Baku were not even indigenous to the planet. In Avatar, the aliens were, but Earth tried the peaceful path first.

Look at it this way--let's say you were poisoned and I had the cure. You offer me $1 billion for the cure. I say no. Not because giving you the cure would hurt me, but because I have some belief that makes me decide not to help you. Wouldn't you at that point, with your life on the line, be justified to take it by force?

Change it to be more selfless and make the victim your family, or the entire human race.

 

In Avatar, wasn't it basically they needed to uproot a tree to get the resources underneath? If Martians came and told me their planet was dying and all they needed to save it was the dirt under my house I'd let them have it.

 

Looks a bit like the Heinz dilemma from Kohlberg, which has no single 'moral' answer but rather is used as an example to illustrate various 'stages' in moral reasoning.

 

Let's make it everyone on Earth - except for you - could I personally justify taking it? Of course.

Would it be legal?

Given the numbers involve that wouldn't matter.

 

So...it's okay to be unethical as long as you try being ethical first?

As I said, how bad a state Earth is really in isn't made clear in the film. Characters make allusions to it, but there's no indication, for instance, that the wealthy and powerful have already abandoned the planet. Without having a better understanding of how bad things actually are, it's hard to weigh in on how justified the humans' evident desperation is.

I don't believe there's any indication in INS that anyone made any attempt to work with the Baku. The only plan the Federation appear to have been involved with appears to be moving the Baku to the holoship without their knowledge. Not exactly ethical. I'm not sure we can blame the Baku for being a bit obstinate when it's revealed that the people who suddenly want their help started out with deceit.

 

What if you believed your God lived in that tree?

Or, to put this in more Trekkian terms, if it was discovered that the existence of the Bajoran wormhole was harming the Cardassians (handwavium radiation, subspace isoprotons, etc.), do we think the Bajorans would let the Cardassians destroy the wormhole? Would the Cardassians be justified in destroying it with or without the Bajorans' assistance? How would the Federation weigh in on this?

 

I didn't actually watch all of Avatar and I didn't enjoy what I did see so I'm not familiar with all the details. I thought it was their house tree that had to be cut down, not their holy tree.

 

I think you answered your own question--if your life is on the line, who cares if it's legal?

How is it unethical if billions of lives were on the line, and this was a viable solution, withheld because of a tree (or in Insurrection's case, people just don't want to move?

We know that on Earth, there is a severe energy crisis due to natural resources being depleted. That would certainly indicate a bad quality of life for Earth's people. Imagine the chaos that would exist if we even had to give up electricity. Heating, cooling, hunger, medicine--all of that would be dramatically impacted. And this is a solution that would revitalize the planet.

Definitely not ethical, though didn't they try to get them to move by other means? Given the benefits to trillions and trillions of people, the idea that 600 people could get in the way of that is ridiculous if you think about it, and at that point, it is justifiable.

I think this is a significantly different fact pattern, because there are beings in the wormhole.

Cardassians also occupied Bajor. So why don't we make it a little different.

There are no living beings in the wormhole as a matter of fact. But the Bajorans do believe they are there despite the reality that no, there is nothing there.

The Cardassians are not occupiers. They live on a nearby planet, and there is radiation suddenly emanating from the wormhole that will harm all Cardassians.

The Cardassians would have every right to act in the name of self preservation.

 

So, to go with the Avatar example, you would be cool if some aliens sidled up into Earth's orbit and let us know that their planet is screwed up because of their own mismanagement of it, so they have to dig up a special mineral that happens to reside under Jerusalem, Mecca, Vatican City, or any other major religious center?