Trill personhood

[Pumpkin Bread]

I don't think a trill symbiont would appreciate being joined to a gorilla. They have much smaller brains than humans, even though their body size is larger. They seem to show less adaptability and awareness than humans. That seems to make them a poor choice.

It seems like an unethical action. On the other hand, the same could be said about joining Ezri... the show might have trivialized it because it only had one season to go, but a random joining with an unprepared host could cause significant psychological harm. Joran Dax shows us the potential result.

 

[Captrek]

It seems like an unethical action. On the other hand, the same could be said about joining Ezri... the show might have trivialized it because it only had one season to go, but a random joining with an unprepared host could cause significant psychological harm. Joran Dax shows us the potential result.

Joining with Joran wasn’t a problem for the symbiont, it was just an embarrassing problem for the Symbiosis Commission.

 

[FreddyE]

I don’t. People often ask, how can something like this evolve if it needs surgery to go from host to host?

My theory: they evolved in the oceans, using marine mammals as hosts, but the joining mechanism is general enough to work in other mammals, so people took them and surgically implanted them because we don’t have blowholes for entry. It doesn’t seem it could have evolved specifically for humanoids if it needs surgery to join with them.

Or maybe the symbionts just don´t have the teeth to get in thru any available orifice...and...lets just not follow along that train of thought before it gets into NSFW teritory... xD

 

[Captrek]

I like that idea for how the trill symbionts and hosts evolved.

I don't think a trill symbiont would appreciate being joined to a gorilla. They have much smaller brains than humans, even though their body size is larger. They seem to show less adaptability and awareness than humans. That seems to make them a poor choice.

In the case of this emergency joining, the alternative is the death of the symbiont, so maybe that will make it easier to appreciate. Certainly once joined the joined gorilla wouldn’t mind being a gorilla. I don’t imagine him thinking, “Man, I used to be smarter, this sucks,” any more than the symbiont complained about being joined to Verad. There is no indication that the symbiont needs the mental stimulation of being a scientist or diplomat, those needs seem to come from the hosts.

 

[Pumpkin Bread]

Obviously, the alternative was the symbiont's death. Which is why I regard joining any unsuitable host as "possibly unethical", because you have to balance the damage to the host and possibly the unbalanced whole created against the life of the symbiont. If the latter was NOT hanging in the balance, joining Ezri was certainly unethical, and joining a non-sentient would be criminal.

 

[Captrek]

Obviously, the alternative was the symbiont's death. Which is why I regard joining any unsuitable host as "possibly unethical", because you have to balance the damage to the host and possibly the unbalanced whole created against the life of the symbiont. If the latter was NOT hanging in the balance, joining Ezri was certainly unethical, and joining a non-sentient would be criminal.

Why would it be criminal? It’s not like the gorilla is worse off for being joined. It’s true that the gorilla can’t understand what’s being done and consent, but the same goes for spaying and neutering your pets. We’re weighing the life of the symbiont against the self-determination of a gorilla and choosing the latter?

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Interesting question.
Imo Gorillas, as well as Chimps, Bonobos, etc should alreay have personhood and protective status.
Doesn't mean they should have direct voting rights or stuff like that, but they should have representation that acts in their best interests.

 

[Captrek]

Interesting question.
Imo Gorillas, as well as Chimps, Bonobos, etc should alreay have personhood and protective status.
Doesn't mean they should have direct voting rights or stuff like that, but they should have representation that acts in their best interests.

“Personhood” is going a bit far. They are intelligent creatures capable of joy and suffering and their welfare should always be considered, but they don’t have the necessary understanding of law and morality to participate in society as people (unless they have symbionts that were previously joined to people, in which case they might, if they have the brainpower to understand at least the basics of what they learned from their previous hosts).

 

[Pumpkin Bread]

Why would it be criminal? It’s not like the gorilla is worse off for being joined. It’s true that the gorilla can’t understand what’s being done and consent, but the same goes for spaying and neutering your pets. We’re weighing the life of the symbiont against the self-determination of a gorilla and choosing the latter?

Reread my prior post. I clearly said that if the life of the symbiont was NOT at stake, joining Ezri would be unethical (because she was not vetted, not trained, and not carefully matched with a compatible symbiont). And, joining any animal with a symbiont just for a giggle would be like trying to create a Frankenstein monster.

Because the symbiont's life WAS at stake, joining Ezri was a judgment call: the life of the slug vs. the life of the young woman whose life they were going to turn into chaos.

 

[Captrek]

Reread my prior post. I clearly said that if the life of the symbiont was NOT at stake, joining Ezri would be unethical (because she was not vetted, not trained, and not carefully matched with a compatible symbiont). And, joining any animal with a symbiont just for a giggle would be like trying to create a Frankenstein monster.

Because the symbiont's life WAS at stake, joining Ezri was a judgment call: the life of the slug vs. the life of the young woman whose life they were going to turn into chaos.

An emergency joining is the subject being discussed. Of course you don’t put a symbiont into a gorilla just for giggles. Who suggested such a thing?

 

[kkt]

Interesting question.
Imo Gorillas, as well as Chimps, Bonobos, etc should alreay have personhood and protective status.
Doesn't mean they should have direct voting rights or stuff like that, but they should have representation that acts in their best interests.

I don't think it's clear that their intelligence rises to self-awareness.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

I don't think it's clear that their intelligence rises to self-awareness.

What is a person in your book?

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

This already happened once, the gorilla's name was William Riker.

Not this guy?

 

[kkt]

What is a person in your book?

Someone who's smart enough to get into a debate like that, but also smart enough not to.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Why would it be criminal? It’s not like the gorilla is worse off for being joined. It’s true that the gorilla can’t understand what’s being done and consent, but the same goes for spaying and neutering your pets. We’re weighing the life of the symbiont against the self-determination of a gorilla and choosing the latter?

Consent?

 

[Pumpkin Bread]

Joining an uninitiated Trill is ethically questionable because you they are almost certainty not properly prepared for the reality of having a bunch of fused personalities instead of one. I said "ethically questionable" because you have to weigh the value of the symbiont's life against the long-term harm you might do to the host. If the symbiont is not in imminent danger, then there's no question of what is ethical: don't put a slug is anyone who hasn't been properly prepared.

Joining a Trill with a gorilla would be even more ethically questionable, because of the sheer unpredictability of what might result. And if it wasn't done with the intent of saving the slug, it would be deemed a severe and possibly criminal violation of medical ethics.

 

[Captrek]

My theory: they evolved in the oceans, using marine mammals as hosts, but the joining mechanism is general enough to work in other mammals, so people took them and surgically implanted them because we don’t have blowholes for entry. It doesn’t seem it could have evolved specifically for humanoids if it needs surgery to join with them.

A sad postscript to this is that the marine mammals would probably evolve a dependence on pod leaders with centuries of experience and struggle to adapt to the loss of the symbionts.

 

[Captrek]

A sad postscript to this is that the marine mammals would probably evolve a dependence on pod leaders with centuries of experience and struggle to adapt to the loss of the symbionts.

Actually, it’s worse than that. You can’t easily tell by looking who has a symbiont and who doesn’t, so people looking for symbionts are just going to hunt dolphins and whales, cut them open, and look inside.

This (along with the expert fishermen with dolphin experience) leads to massive ecological transformation in the oceans until they can no longer sustain the unjoined symbionts, so now they live only in carefully tended pools.

 

[Tosk]

We have entered the "Captrek quotes themself multiple times" phase of the thread.