Mobile emitter - ethics of using it

[locutus101]

Can you imagine someone from the 1900's figuring out how to reverse engineer an iPhone?

Not only would they lack the necessary tools, they'd not even have the necessary background knowledge of the technology to know where to start.

True, but apparently the problem wasn't to understand the technology which was likely self-explanatory BTW, like "computer, tell me how you function!"

No the problem was to use that information to make something so incredibly primitive. It would be like people finding the blueprints of a 747 and using them to design a paper kite.

 

[uniderth]

But I need to treat anything that visits me "from the future" as merely being from a *potential* future - not from the written in stone FUTURE - or I have to give up on the idea that I have any sort of free will or control over my destiny at all, because everything that I do and that happens around me is going to lead to *that* future. I don't care how fond I may be of Crewman Daniels or Captain Braxton and his crew or whomever, that's still just BS.

I disagree. From the perspective of the time traveler you are in their past, which cant be changed. So your future can't be changed. I don't think this negates free will, becasue that future/past would have been made as the result of our choices not in spite of them.

As for control. I don't think anyone has control. Control is an illusion. You could choose to go to the Mall today, but if a freak tornado happens you won't, no matter how much you really want to. I may choose to keep typing on this keyboard but if I suddenly have a heart atta.....

What is really interesting is the idea of a lying time traveler as Guy Gardener mentioned. I believe this idea was explored in an episode of TNG. How would you know that what you are experiencing is the truth? For that matter how do we know that what we are experiencing right now is the truth?

 

[locutus101]

I disagree. From the perspective of the time traveler you are in their past, which cant be changed. So your future can't be changed. I don't think this negates free will, becasue that future/past would have been made as the result of our choices not in spite of them.

As for control. I don't think anyone has control. Control is an illusion. You could choose to go to the Mall today, but if a freak tornado happens you won't, no matter how much you really want to. I may choose to keep typing on this keyboard but if I suddenly have a heart atta.....

What is really interesting is the idea of a lying time traveler as Guy Gardener mentioned. I believe this idea was explored in an episode of TNG. How would you know that what you are experiencing is the truth? For that matter how do we know that what we are experiencing right now is the truth?

I think @Guy Gardener has a point there. From our point of view anyone coming from the future is of a possible future only, among an infinite number of them and it really doesn't matter to us if that future ever comes to pass. For all you know future guy's existence depends on you dying in ten minutes. Would you be willing to die immediately so that he may live. I wouldn't. One potential future is as good as another.

 

[uniderth]

I think @Guy Gardener For all you know future guy's existence depends on you dying in ten minutes. Would you be willing to die immediately so that he may live. I wouldn't. One potential future is as good as another.

If future guy's existence truly did depends on me dying in 10 minutes (after I already had a heart attack while using my keyboard no less) it wouldn't matter whether I was willing or not. I would probably choose to go down with a fight, but all of that would have already been part of future guys history, so I WOULD die. And everything would happen as it already did but we haven't reached yet.

This is how I see it going down. Future guy appears, "You must die in ten seconds so that I will exist." Me, "Oh yeah?!" I make a break for my car. I slip and crack my head on the concrete and die. Future guy looks at holographic record of my obituary which confirms to the audience that all my actions where what happened in the past of the future, then shrugs before vanishing into the future.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Braxton should have paradoxed out the moment that he fragged Voyager, if he had fragged Voyager, which he didn't, since if Earth is not destroyed in the future, then "this version" of Braxton, trying to stop our 29th century Solar System from blowing up, should not exist anymore.

 

[φ of π]

Admiral Janeway messed with her own timeline by getting Voyager home early in Endgame. That alone should have removed Admiral Janeway from the timeline herself.

The Queen's idea that killing Captain version would remove Badass version and revert the damage done to the collective was being proven false at the exact same time she was trying to do it.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Paradoxing doesn't work most of the time.

Notable points where paradoxing did work is Time and Again, and Year of Hell "sorta". Temporal Shields (Standing outside of time) protect you from Paradoxes/Time reboots.

If the USS Aeon was temporally shielded, or Braxton was personally "inoculated" against paradoxes, then he'd be good with killing his own gandpa, or Kathryn Janeway.

 

[φ of π]

They should call it paradoxxing. A denial of continuity attack.

 

[Mytran]

The timeline has proven itself to be remarkably durable throughout Star Trek and why shouldn't it? To think that the actions of tiny creatures like ourselves could unravel or change the course of the entire universe shows remarkable hubris.

More than likely it is the time traveller's perspective itself which is at fault on those occasions where it seems otherwise.

 

[jmidnight_99]

I think Janeway kept and used that 30th century mobile emitter instead of returning it so that more story lines could be written for the very popular Doctor character, which would increase ratings and syndication worth, and therefore increase profits for all of the associated corporate entities. I think this trumps the temporal prime directive.

 

[jmidnight_99]

I disagree. From the perspective of the time traveler you are in their past, which cant be changed. So your future can't be changed. I don't think this negates free will, becasue that future/past would have been made as the result of our choices not in spite of them.

As for control. I don't think anyone has control. Control is an illusion. You could choose to go to the Mall today, but if a freak tornado happens you won't, no matter how much you really want to. I may choose to keep typing on this keyboard but if I suddenly have a heart atta.....

What is really interesting is the idea of a lying time traveler as Guy Gardener mentioned. I believe this idea was explored in an episode of TNG. How would you know that what you are experiencing is the truth? For that matter how do we know that what we are experiencing right now is the truth?

You might consider that if there was indeed a big bang, that everything that has occurred since and everything that will occur hence is deterministic. Every particle that ever collided with another, every atom that became a molecule, everything that ever reacted to another thing is exactly where it is supposed to be in the universe, and where it is now was determined at the big bang.

So, there is no free will. To believe in free will is to believe in randomness, to believe in randomness is to believe that events (such as the collision of any two particles in the universe) can occur for no deterministic reason. To believe that events can occur for no deterministic reason is to denounce science. It is to say that science can't predict the nature of physical things. if science can predict the path of every particle in the universe, God's computer can predict the very next thought you'll have in your head, which was inevitable, not something you have control over.

https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/finding-quantum-way-make-free-will-possible

 

[Mytran]

You might consider that if there was indeed a big bang, that everything that has occurred since and everything that will occur hence is deterministic. Every particle that ever collided with another, every atom that became a molecule, everything that ever reacted to another thing is exactly where it is supposed to be in the universe, and where it is now was determined at the big bang.

So, there is no free will. To believe in free will is to believe in randomness, to believe in randomness is to believe that events (such as the collision of any two particles in the universe) can occur for no deterministic reason. To believe that events can occur for no deterministic reason is to denounce science. It is to say that science can't predict the nature of physical things. if science can predict the path of every particle in the universe, God's computer can predict the very next thought you'll have in your head, which was inevitable, not something you have control over.

https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/finding-quantum-way-make-free-will-possible

Great article! I tend to favour the predetermination model myself - it even helps making sense of Star Trek time travel episodes (the majority of which I believe can be seen as predestination paradoxes)

And as for free will? Luckily, we wouldn't know the difference - we were predisposed not to ;-)

 

[jmidnight_99]

Great article! I tend to favour the predetermination model myself - it even helps making sense of Star Trek time travel episodes (the majority of which I believe can be seen as predestination paradoxes)

And as for free will? Luckily, we wouldn't know the difference - we were predisposed not to ;-)

Ha! Good point.