Prime Directive Influenced by Marvel Comics The Watcher?

[Richard S. Ta]

Nonsense. You don't need to be a predator to be driven to expand territory. I suggest reading up on the "generalist specialist" theory of hominin evolution:

I think what’s being referred to is the Fermi Paradox which is a little more complicated than having to be an apex predator to get to space.

According to the theory set forth in Fermi’s view, all the races capable of interstellar travel evolved aeons ago and are constantly on the lookout for other species evolving to a point where they are capable of space-travel. When they find evidence of one, they extinguish it.

In other words, the apex predators are already out there, invisible and waiting to swat any fly that gets too big for its boots. Theoretically in order to protect their own interests then they just extinguish a given species parent star or whatever when a species starts looking lively.

YMMV of course. I don’t think anyone can state with any certainty to know for sure. Basically you don’t have to be an apex predator to get into space, but once you’re there it’s considered possibly wise to tread carefully and not make too much noise because it’s likely that not every species out there is friendly.

I think Stephen Hawking said we should be a lot quieter in the kinds of messages we send into the void because we don’t know that any given receiver is benign.

For further reading, Cixin Liu’s “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” is well worth a look.

 

[Christopher]

I think what’s being referred to is the Fermi Paradox which is a little more complicated than having to be an apex predator to get to space.

According to the theory set forth in Fermi’s view, all the races capable of interstellar travel evolved aeons ago and are constantly on the lookout for other species evolving to a point where they are capable of space-travel. When they find evidence of one, they extinguish it.

Wow, that is absolutely wrong. Fermi never said anything remotely like that. Fermi just asked a question: "Where is everybody?" Fermi's argument was simply that intelligent, spacefaring life must exist and logically should have visited us already, so the paradox is that we haven't seen proof of it. He offered no conclusion as to why we haven't seen proof -- that's the whole reason it's called a paradox. A paradox, by definition, is a question we can't answer, a premise that results in a contradiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Original_conversations

The closest Fermi and his confidantes came to proposing a solution to the paradox was the suggestion that we might simply be "in the sticks" galactically speaking, far removed from other civilizations. But it was just a guess.

The idea you're proposing is one of many conjectural solutions that other people have proposed over the decades, but you're absolutely wrong to attribute it to Fermi himself. And you're wrong to call it a theory. A theory is a proposed solution to a question; Fermi merely defined what the question is. It's not a paradox if you have a solution.

YMMV of course. I don’t think anyone can state with any certainty to know for sure. Basically you don’t have to be an apex predator to get into space, but once you’re there it’s considered possibly wise to tread carefully and not make too much noise because it’s likely that not every species out there is friendly.

I think you've been reading too much science fiction that uses that premise as a way to generate danger. Just because something is a good way to generate stories doesn't mean it's applicable to real life.

I think Stephen Hawking said we should be a lot quieter in the kinds of messages we send into the void because we don’t know that any given receiver is benign.

The thing about Hawking is that his reputation as a supreme genius is much greater among laypeople than among his fellow physicists. Just because he says something, that doesn't mean it must be true. I find his views about both alien life and AI sentience to be overly fearful and cynical. It's one thing to be alert to possible dangers; it's another to let your fear blind you to better possibilities.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

@Christopher

Yes, sorry, I was tired. I was talking about the Dark Forest Idea of why we don’t hear from alien life and got it mixed up.

I have to say you could modify your tone to be a bit more friendly. We are having a discussion, not winning points, and I don’t particularly welcome being patronised.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I have to say you could modify your tone to be a bit more friendly.

Welcome to the world of arguing with Mr. Bennett.

 

[Ssosmcin]

This whole thread makes my brain hurt

 

[MAGolding]

The idea of not interfering with alien socities or in some cases not even contacting less advanced cultures on other worlds has been used in science ficiton before TOS.

I beieve that "Between the Thunder and the Sun" (1957) by Chad Oliver is set in a future Earth which has that rule. But a situation arises when the rule is violated to save an alien society.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?56967

The Vortex Blaster is a collection of three science fiction short stories by American writer Edward E. Smith. It was simultaneously published in 1960 by Gnome Press in an edition of 3,000 copies and by Fantasy Press in an edition of 341 copies. The book was originally intended to be published by Fantasy Press, but was handed over to Gnome Press when Fantasy Press folded. Lloyd Eshbach, of Fantasy Press, who was responsible for the printing of both editions, printed the extra copies for his longtime customers. The stories originally appeared in the magazines Comet and Astonishing Stories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vortex_Blaster

The stories included are:

"The Vortex Blaster" (1941) http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?57156
"Storm Cloud on Deka" (1942) http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?98831
"The Vortex Blaster Makes War" http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?98830

When I read the book The Vortex Blaster there was a plot where the protagonists visited a planet and did some (literal) troubleshooting. And afterward they were ciriticizedd for introducing more advanced weapons to a planet but said they didn't break the rules. So apparently their society, which modestly calls itself "Civilization", considers it alright to openly visit less advanced worlds but a no no to introduce more advanced technology (or maybe merely more advanced weapons).

I don't know whether that bit about not spreading advanced technology around iin less advanced worlds was in the original stories in the 1940s or was introduced in the 1960 book edition.

This article: https://www.tor.com/2021/07/19/five-sf-stories-about-disobeying-non-interference-directives/

Mentions five science fiction novels or stories where a non interference rule is disobeyed for various reasons. And one of them is a story from 1949 in L.Sprague DeCamp's Viagens Interplanetarias series.

Additionally, Colleen Power has pointed out that "the overwhelming concern ... to prevent modern technological humans from influencing or interfering with the normal development of native cultures" in the Viagens novels "predat[es] 'Star Trek's' 'prime directive' by nearly twenty years."[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viagens_Interplanetarias

According to this entry some forms of non interference rules may go back to stories in the 1930s:

https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/prime_directive

 

[Richard S. Ta]

This whole thread makes my brain hurt

Basically the answer to the original question is “no”.

 

[MAGolding]

I just found some other and earlier examples of non interference rules, which are listed in my answer at:

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/que...ective-non-interference-concept/264919#264919

 

[Christopher]

I just found some other and earlier examples of non interference rules, which are listed in my answer at:

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/que...ective-non-interference-concept/264919#264919

Neat. I'm not surprised it goes back even further than I knew; pretty much everything is based on something that came before it. But it's still interesting to discover these early examples.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I was talking about the Dark Forest Idea of why we don’t hear from alien life and got it mixed up.

I'm not worried about the dark forest. I think civilizations of any stripe, let alone advanced technological ones, are extremely scarce in the galaxy, and if there are any others in the Milky Way besides us, they'd be so far away, they might as well not exist:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis

I'll bet if we somehow had "warp-driven starships," we could explore the nearest 2000 solar systems with a fine-tooth comb and find a whole lot of nothing. We'd classify the systems into categories and types. We'd end up with a catalog of gas giants and lifeless rocky planets, and it would make for some dry reading when we were done.

Also, I don't think we need to worry about "keeping quiet" in any case, because our radio signals fade to nothing in the distance of interstellar space, due to the Inverse Square law. We can't be heard, meaning we most likely won't be found.

On top of that, there seems a very good chance that physical reality doesn't permit anybody, no matter how advanced, to build faster-than-light ships. So even if an alien James Webb Observatory picks out our watery Earth in the Goldilocks Zone, and the Earth looks sexy as hell, they aren't coming for us because they can't. There is no Fermi Paradox.

 

[Maurice]

There are potential ways t travel interstellar distances using known physics, but we're talking one-way trips taking a lifetime. If we learned of a sapient civilization within a dozen light years it is theoretically feasible to get up to 20%x and visit, but the travel time one way would be upwards of 60 years.

 

[MAGolding]

....On top of that, there seems a very good chance that physical reality doesn't permit anybody, no matter how advanced, to build faster-than-light ships. So even if an alien James Webb Observatory picks out our watery Earth in the Goldilocks Zone, and the Earth looks sexy as hell, they aren't coming for us because they can't. There is no Fermi Paradox.

Insn't it true tha tthe most desirable discovery of all would be eternal life.