Yes, I think I saw that but it was some time ago. It involves alternate futures if memory serves, right?
I remember someone tossing a piece of paper with an important message through the gate or something like that...
Why is uplifting lower species a bad thing?
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Yes, I think I saw that but it was some time ago. It involves alternate futures if memory serves, right?
I remember someone tossing a piece of paper with an important message through the gate or something like that...
Ah but, if an alien race had given us energy alternatives, none of the climate damage would have happened. We see in TNG they can actually control weather to a large degree. We are stuck continuing to pollute because our lives are based around it. The average person doesn't really want to pollute, but we really have no choice unless we "go green" and ride the bus. The average person has to wait for better technologies to be invented.
I disagree that species have to be enlightened someway to deal with advanced technology. It's not like the Federation would have to just drop off the tech and leave, they could stay as friendly advisors.
From the movie First Contact it really didn't seem like humans were all that enlightened when Cochrane invented warp drive. They just stumbled upon it and then learned to adapt. Their first action when seeing new life (data) was to shoot him with a machine gun.
It took almost complete deforestation before we started using fossil fuels, it apparently is going to take the exhaustion of all fossil fuels before we seriously undertake the development of alternate sources of energy. A few tips by an alien (hypothetical though it might be) species could have avoided all that waste, not to mention the massive pollution that resulted.
More than ride the bus, for many people it would involve staving and freezing in the darkness.
America (lot's of other places too) employ a very mechanized form of agriculture. Without those, in all honesty polluting, machines the incredible amount of food we produce simply won't get harvested and processed and transported.
More than ride the bus, for many people it would involve staving and freezing in the darkness.
America (lot's of other places too) employ a very mechanized form of agriculture. Without those, in all honesty polluting, machines the incredible amount of food we produce simply won't get harvested and processed and transported.
True. Going "green," in the strictest sense, would mean no more carbon emitting machines at all (e.g., airliners, automobiles, etc.). It would completely change our economy and way of life, not to mention put us at risk from foreign enemies who do not choose to go "green."
Sol Roth disagrees with you.
More than ride the bus, for many people it would involve staving and freezing in the darkness.
America (lot's of other places too) employ a very mechanized form of agriculture. Without those, in all honesty polluting, machines the incredible amount of food we produce simply won't get harvested and processed and transported.
I think I read somewhere that more than half of the food we buy ends up in the trash.
There was one episode in a future where the Aschen had been welcomed to Earth and successfully sterilized 90% of the population, so they sent a message back in time so they wouldn't meet the Aschen. But, the message wasn't very specific and told them only not to go to their home world. So they actually met the Aschen later on another planet they had sterilized and converted to farm land and had to discover at the last minute what their plans were.
It's true it's impossible to 'Go Green' without basically living like the Amish. It's more likely that people will discover less destructive forms of energy than it is anyone will ever change their behavior. I suppose, you could argue that once those methods are discovered it'd be good to provide those methods to planets using carbon fuels.
Yes, suppose we had skipped the burning wood and coal age and gone directly toward the non polluting form of energy we could have spared our environment, avoided rising the carbon dioxide level in our atmosphere with its bad consequences to our environment. There are a lot of advantages in skipping technological stages.
I'm not aware of anything like this in Trek but I think it'd be cool to have an anti-prime directive race. One that tries to go around the federation and uplift primitive cultures in a friendly way. Would be interesting to see how the Federation would handle that. Although I think they would end up being painted as bad guys.
The Klingons did it in TOS "A Private Little War." And yes, they were obviously the bad guys, for turning the tribe they backed into murderers.
Weird thing is, that episode aired only a couple of months before 2001: A Space Odyssey was released.
IIRC there was already enmity between the two group, prior to the coming of the Klingons.
IIRC there was already enmity between the two group, prior to the coming of the Klingons.
And....? By the way, I said that, not Kobayshi Maru.
The problem with such jumps in technology is that the culture that gets the uplifting doesn't learn the lessons it would take to get those technologies naturally. Some hard lessons are useful in preventing things like them from happening again, or to prevent strick religous laws that have no context behind them anymore (a law like "thou shalln't eat pork". It likely made sense 3000 years ago to write that down. Unprepared pork has worms that can kill you, and it is far easier to tell people that it is a sin to eat that, rather than have to explain it. But after 3000 years, you have people who will blindly follow that law without context or rational thought as to "why" one should not eat pork.)
Other lessons are the brutal ones of wars and death. If there was no Holocaust, there would be 6 million or more Jews on the planet. Okay. But then there would not be the warning if someone tried to do something similar until it did happen. Thus while the loss is tragic, it is a leason that humanity needed to learn at some point. It is just that it happened in the 1940s.
If humanity skipped the stages of progression from wood burning to fusion power or even antimatter reactors...we'd have little concept of conservation. We would not know when to stop using resources. We'd have no concept of recycling as it is known today. We might not even have an understanding of the steam engine if that step is skipped by jumping from 1500s tech to (Trek based) 2200s tech.
Not every bit of technology introduced will be bad, nor are all skipped steps going to be problems, but such things are not as clear as we think they are. Improved hygen and medicines. Probably for the better. But can they be introduced without causing religious upheaval? Can the skipped steps cause a problem in the culture's base of knowledge?
Other lessons are the brutal ones of wars and death. If there was no Holocaust, there would be 6 million or more Jews on the planet. Okay. But then there would not be the warning if someone tried to do something similar until it did happen. Thus while the loss is tragic, it is a leason that humanity needed to learn at some point. It is just that it happened in the 1940s.
If humanity skipped the stages of progression from wood burning to fusion power or even antimatter reactors...we'd have little concept of conservation. We would not know when to stop using resources. We'd have no concept of recycling as it is known today. We might not even have an understanding of the steam engine if that step is skipped by jumping from 1500s tech to (Trek based) 2200s tech.
Not every bit of technology introduced will be bad, nor are all skipped steps going to be problems, but such things are not as clear as we think they are. Improved hygen and medicines. Probably for the better. But can they be introduced without causing religious upheaval? Can the skipped steps cause a problem in the culture's base of knowledge?
Well put.
You missed the entire point. Let me summarize in two words: UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCES.
my bad
"In a postindustrial society, the practical application of theoretical or empirical knowledge is able to compensate for a shortage of labor and, in many cases, can even replace labor. Thus we suggest that knowledge, in a general sense that encompasses science and culture, is likely to be most highly prized by an advanced civilization. This could be formal, codified knowledge, or experiences whose value we have not yet appreciated. Furthermore, this resource is one that grows with time. We believe that there is a critical phase in this. Before a certain threshold is reached, complete contact with a superior civilization (in which their store of knowledge is made available to us) would abort further development through a "culture shock" effect. If we were contacted before we reached this threshold, instead of enriching the galactic store of knowledge we would merely absorb it. Consider, for example, that the motivation a terrestrial researcher (or research funder) might have for pursuing new ideas would be considerably diminished, as the best human minds could be occupied for generations digesting the technology and cultural experiences of a society advanced far beyond our own. Thus, by intervening in our natural progress now, members of an extraterrestrial society could easily extinguish the only resource on this planet that could be of any value to them." - Extracted from Searching For Extraterrestrial Civilizations by T.B.H. Kuiper & M. Morris (Science, 6 May 1977).
Interesting movie, with an interesting premise. And maybe a lot of that is true.
But things like natural disasters, disease epidemics, droughts, and famine can have the same effect on a culture lacking the proper technology..
That's when things like medicine, vaccinations, warning systems, and so on becomes valuable.
Would the other alternative be to regress back to simple living, and be at the mercy of diseases, food shortages, boredom, etc?
