So, I’m watching a Star Trek episode, and once again much of the plot centres on just how much they’re breaking the prime directive this time.
(The Prime Directive being a rule on the show that we should not interfere with the culture, conflicts and progress of other sentient species.)
The question is: should there be a prime directive or anything like it for when we genuinely meet other sentient races?
On the one hand, hiding scientific knowledge from a less advanced species would be like hiding scientific knowledge from less developed countries on earth. (As long as it’s clear that the aliens would have discovered the knowledge themselves, eventually).
And if we met a more advanced species, I doubt there’ll be many saying it would be wrong to acquire any of their knowledge or technology.
OTOH, we’d look a little stupid if the seemly pacifist Blorgonians decide to use our technology against us. Or, say, we offer them financial expertise and end up starting a credit crunch on another planet
Is it simply not worth the risk?
Star Trek aliens tend to be Human in everything but name plus a browplate/ears/whatever.
Even the sentient gas clouds and energy fields seem to think very like us.
I suspect that any real aliens encountered are going to be just that,though we maybe able to recognise them as intelligent we may not even be able to communicate with them in any real sense.
Try passing on information to a scorpion or an amoeba.
Being alien their reactions and motivations may not be readily apparent to humans,give them the local equivalent of a cure for cancer and they might commit mass suicide,dye themselves purple or start dancing before smearing themselves in mud,who knows?
I think that a version of The Prime Directive would be a very good idea for our own sakes.
Welll, there are many forms of communication, in many morphous transmogrifications, that live outside of your head. I can think of at least 3 ways to communicate…
On the one hand, we’d hate to send over an astraunaut with a cold, have him sneeze, and cause genocide among an alien race unable to resist our germs, for example. Worse would be an alien sneezing and infecting us with alien germs we can’t resist.
Also really don’t like the notion of setting ourselves up as gods…even unintentionally.
On the other hand, we may be able to learn all sorts of things even from less advanced races. Maybe they don’t have much technology, but they’ve been visited by other sentient races before, or maybe chewing alien tree bark cures cancer.
Here is my plan for relations with alien sentinent species which is emphatically opposed to the Prime Directive.
1: Less Advanced Species-Technologically advance them. Set up the more humane rulers in their society as the new leaders, root out any cruel and insentient practices in their societies and make them into economic colonies like what we did to South Korea, Taiwan, and now China. Also make sure they become client states. It’s a win-win.
2: Equally Advanced Species-Negotiate with them, maintain peaceful relations if possible and generally be good friends. If they prove incapable of doing so crush 'em like a bug.
More Advanced Species: Much like #2 although if they try to conquer us we must choose between a guerilla war to bog down the aliens or submit.
No, we gotta have several MAS to play of against each other.
“I was just speaking to the Ceti Alpha V ambassador, and he said that you guys are all gay.”
