What's your explanation for early TNG prime directive violations?
- Thread starter hxclespaulplayer
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It was Naomi Wildman, but she was probably correct. The fact wasn't challenged by Seven with whom she was having a conversation. And the term was "sub-orders."
I'm not big on the prime directive anyway so I don't mind them breaking it. If I was one of those prewarp people and found out some advanced race was withholding tech because they considered us too immature to handle it, letting civilizations rise and fall thinking they are alone in the universe, I'd consider the federation far from a friend.
I very much doubt that. The UFP consists of about 150 member cultures that supposedly all are starfaring, and all have had access to replicators for about a century already. If Earth were to make contact fifty years from now with something like that (that is, a 24th century UFP lookalike without an Earth already in command), Earthling initiative would simply be crushed.
There's nothing to innovate for the next 200-300 "years of development" (that is, stuff invented between the 21s and 24th centuries by the Federation) - it's all there already. An Earthling might want to devise the ultimate non-polluting automobile, say; a visit to the library in search for hints would provide him with the full blueprints instead. Or there might be an Earthling initiative to cure cancer, and a discussion with the family doctor would reveal it's available in both strawberry and pineapple flavors.
Inventing something beyond the current level of the interstellar community would necessarily mean climbing on the shoulders of the giants. Invent a better transwarp drive, with all those great Earthling ideas of ours? You have to study up on the current transwarp drives first, and sink in the swamp that is 300 years of existing knowledge, jargon and thinking on the subject.
...And then rudely terminate it when they learn about the interstellar community and their factual place in it. There's no way a bit player could dictate its own destiny against the big guys, not even if pampered by the UFP (and especially not if thus pampered!).
That's not a membership requirement, though: Feds hate each other passionately enough, as seen in "Journey to Babel" already.
It's still better to have a far-from-a-friend than an actual enemy.
Timo Saloniemi
In the day, asking whether there should be a Prime Directive was like asking whether the Unites States should have been involved in the Vietnam War.
And what if your civilization WAS too immature for the technology? You might not like the fact, but a fact it might be regardless of how you feel about it. Imagine if tech were handed to us for free from aliens several decades, centuries, or millennia ahead of us. Our entire economic system of technological progress would collapse. No one in technology would have employment or have a means to make a living without continued handouts from the gifting race. Why would we create jobs to try to improve that technology when the aliens are already doing that for us? And what kind of race wants to be responsible for a welfare world? We would need something to contribute in exchange. What would that be? The gifting of technology to explore the universe would be cool, but you would have to also propose a way to fully consider and not fatally undermine our civilization with its introduction.
To me it's more like the US sending medical aid to an underdeveloped country. I'm optimistic that humans could learn and adapt at a quick pace, and would be better off for it. The federation seems to have worked out their economy so that people aren't overly worried about money or jobs.. probably due in a large part to the technology they have.
Learning the advanced technology even exists might be a huge step in the right direction for those civilizations. Otherwise they'll be stuck in a cycle of war after war. After all it's not like Earth developed warp out of being more wise - Cochrane wanted money & women.
Learning the advanced technology even exists might be a huge step in the right direction for those civilizations. Otherwise they'll be stuck in a cycle of war after war. After all it's not like Earth developed warp out of being more wise - Cochrane wanted money & women.
Heh, well, that was "First Contact's" spin on it. I don't necessarily hold it above the more respectable version of the character from TOS in canon.
Imagine all of our technology instantly worthless and all the ramifications thereof.
Finally, technology doesn't solve wars; it makes war more convenient, destructive and efficient. Guiding human nature toward more constructive and productive activities might have a chance, and that's not at all about technology. The exception is warp drive, making colonization possible to relieve the load on this planet.
Imagine all of our technology instantly worthless and all the ramifications thereof.
Finally, technology doesn't solve wars; it makes war more convenient, destructive and efficient. Guiding human nature toward more constructive and productive activities might have a chance, and that's not at all about technology. The exception is warp drive, making colonization possible to relieve the load on this planet.
I really thought the Prime Directive was there to keep unscrupulous Starfleet personnel from exploiting the natives, especially for economic gain (Ron Tracey, I'm looking at you), but also for other abuses, like showing up and claiming to be the Arcangel Gabriel.
Only Vorlons are allowed to do that.
That stuff about not interfering in the Bajoran War or Klingon Civil War should be under another directive, because you wouldn't want to give people, no matter how good intentioned with the firepower of even a small starship to intervene unilaterally in other nation's internal affairs.
Only Vorlons are allowed to do that.
That stuff about not interfering in the Bajoran War or Klingon Civil War should be under another directive, because you wouldn't want to give people, no matter how good intentioned with the firepower of even a small starship to intervene unilaterally in other nation's internal affairs.
We already stand on the shoulders of giants whenever we innovate stuff with computers these days, but it still happens. Does it kill innovation have access to the technology to begin with? Or should we start from scratch and build a computer from the ground up whenever they have an idea? IMO I don't think so.
Today we have people that worked on the original machines or people that learned from those people around. They in turn taught the next set of people. And so on. Innovations are made on top of each innovation, or because of a need that the current system cannot handle. Each step builds on the previous step.
Now put an alien's version of a Starfleet 24th century computer system in front of an computer engineer from today. How long will it take them to figure out how it works enough to properly tinker with it outside what it can already do? How long before they will find a need to innovate at all that doesn't involve something like language translation or adjusting to fit human eyesight and finger lengths?
How long before they can even begin to understand the sciences involved with the machine enough to properly reverse engineer it and make their own? We are talking about tech that no only doesn't exist, but is built from tech also doesn't exist within our sciences.
This is far beyond medical aid and food relief to an under developed country (note that those don't uplift their receivers either, it just makes them dependant on the provider). This is tossing tech at someone that is several hundred years more advanced than anything they have. Sure they might figure it out, but not without a lot a problems.
A historical example. The modernizing of Japan. Europeans force their way into the Japanese markets and introduce 19th century tech to the country. There are massive rebellions and other problems as a result. The Japanese Empire rises out of the chaos and buys hardward and training for military goods from the British (naval) and Germans (army). They continue to do for roughly 50 years until the local industry can copy more or less what the British and Germans have in terms of production ability. Within 30 years of this there is World War II. Another Western Power, the United States, take over and dictate how Japan will be run from now on. They also rebuild the country and provide a source of support for continued industrial learning. Add another 30 years and the Japanese have started to innovate on current era technology invented in those 30 years. Japan becomes one of the leading producers of computer technologies. A technology that did not exist when they were first forced to open up to the Europeans and Americans in the 1850s.
Now put an alien's version of a Starfleet 24th century computer system in front of an computer engineer from today. How long will it take them to figure out how it works enough to properly tinker with it outside what it can already do? How long before they will find a need to innovate at all that doesn't involve something like language translation or adjusting to fit human eyesight and finger lengths?
How long before they can even begin to understand the sciences involved with the machine enough to properly reverse engineer it and make their own? We are talking about tech that no only doesn't exist, but is built from tech also doesn't exist within our sciences.
This is far beyond medical aid and food relief to an under developed country (note that those don't uplift their receivers either, it just makes them dependant on the provider). This is tossing tech at someone that is several hundred years more advanced than anything they have. Sure they might figure it out, but not without a lot a problems.
A historical example. The modernizing of Japan. Europeans force their way into the Japanese markets and introduce 19th century tech to the country. There are massive rebellions and other problems as a result. The Japanese Empire rises out of the chaos and buys hardward and training for military goods from the British (naval) and Germans (army). They continue to do for roughly 50 years until the local industry can copy more or less what the British and Germans have in terms of production ability. Within 30 years of this there is World War II. Another Western Power, the United States, take over and dictate how Japan will be run from now on. They also rebuild the country and provide a source of support for continued industrial learning. Add another 30 years and the Japanese have started to innovate on current era technology invented in those 30 years. Japan becomes one of the leading producers of computer technologies. A technology that did not exist when they were first forced to open up to the Europeans and Americans in the 1850s.
...unencumbered and protected, because of the requirements of their surrender after World War II, by the wasteful and massive military spending of cold war nations and other aggressive political entities.
You make it sound like each step forward is closely connected to the last one but I don't think it's necessarily the case. A lot of it is disconnected and has to be learned through books and even sometimes re-learning old stuff that has fallen out of use. People still study and learn long dead languages with no one around from the actual time.
People can innovate with computers without even knowing anything about machine language. Many people use tools everyday that they have very little idea about the low level mechanics of how they work. And those people use the tools they have to create other things. Give an artist photoshop and he doesn't need to know the code behind it, he'll just draw.
Even still presumably the technology would have instruction to go along with it and they wouldn't completely be in the dark.
In the process of adapting the technology to our needs and reverse engineering, other innovations would definitely be made. Even if it trickles down to the general population slowly as the scientists try to figure out how it works, that's a good thing.
I don't think colonization can realistically relieve our load. How many people per year would have to emigrate to reverse the present birth rate, not to mention significantly reduce the population? How many, how large, and how often would the ships and flights have to be? And that's aside from the questions of finding planets to colonize, and setting up colonies that actually have the resources and infrastructure to receive the people.
...What you can do with colonies is deport those who want to breed freely when you want to establish a semi-benign regime where rampart breeding is banned. It's the soft alternative to simply gunning down the rebels or starving them and their illegal children to death. But I don't see great odds for the Goldilocks culture that would choose to be exactly this benevolent and this harsh.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
IrishNero
Commodore
Infinite population growth coupled with finite resources to sustain that growth eventually leads to a resource shortage and eventually, population decline. That exact same scenario has been played out in hundreds of labs for many years using everything from bacteria to mice. The human population of our planet has doubled in the last 35 years. How many mouths can you feed with a planet the size of Earth? 20 Billion? 400 Billion? The answer is most definitely not 'infinite' because our resources are not infinite. Without population control, we eventually will exhaust one resource or another, and a major portion of the population will starve or be killed in a war over the remaining resources. I'm not conjecturing. It's provable.
So how do we stave off this exhaustion? You can:
1. Increase your resources (perhaps through expansion via colonization, or mining on other planets)
2. Decrease or eliminate your population growth.
That's it. Every scenario will have you employing one or the other, or both of these. No, we are not mice or bacteria, but we are subject to the same forces of sustenance. And no matter how much we fancy our own intellect, that is an incontrovertible truth that we cannot avoid. -Stop or dramatically slow your population growth, or increase your resources outside the boundaries of the planet at a rate commensurate with the needs of uncontrolled population expansion.
So how do we stave off this exhaustion? You can:
1. Increase your resources (perhaps through expansion via colonization, or mining on other planets)
2. Decrease or eliminate your population growth.
That's it. Every scenario will have you employing one or the other, or both of these. No, we are not mice or bacteria, but we are subject to the same forces of sustenance. And no matter how much we fancy our own intellect, that is an incontrovertible truth that we cannot avoid. -Stop or dramatically slow your population growth, or increase your resources outside the boundaries of the planet at a rate commensurate with the needs of uncontrolled population expansion.
Population growth in Western countries has reduced. Most site it as the education of women that has caused this result. Mixed with a lack of need of large families due to better medicines. Less infant mortality and less labor forces needed around the home. It is suspected that education of women in what use to be called the Third World might also reduce population growth, but this has hit several walls, some of them religious.
On bacteria and mice. What needs to be taken into account is the ability for the pawns to think ahead, though. That's something that has never existed on Earth before, does not exist in parallel to us, and isn't simulated all that well by computerized abstractions, either. Malthus was wrong - but only because he didn't know Haber and Bosch, and Pasteur, would one day be born. Those running simulations today cannot know who will be born, either; they can only guess at how many.
Timo Saloniemi
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