One of many insane things about the TNG PD is that people in-universe don't seem to have a shared interpretation of it. In "Pen Pals", Pulaski and Geordi both seem genuinely shocked and appalled by Picard's "let them burn" interpretation, Troi tries to dismantle it, and Data didn't seem to expect the conversation to go that way either.
You'd assume everyone in that room received roughly the same instructions regarding the PD at the academy, yet some of them seem to think it obviously doesn't mean what Picard thinks it means, while Picard and His Contemptuous Lickspittle, The Snivelling Crony William Riker launch straight into "but maybe god wants us to do nothing" while everyone else in the room wonders if they're having a stroke.
