We have enough problems on Earth trying to figure out what does and doesn’t qualify as weaponry.
And how do we do that?
Give them the technology to cure diseases, and you put them that much closer to making diseases. Or do we pay to staff an entire biological research facility just for them? If we do that, there’s no motivation for them to do anything.
How do we get rid of poverty? At its core, poverty is not an issue that can simply be “cured.” We can remedy one of the symptoms, but simply remedying a symptom can sometimes further exacerbate the problem.
How do we enforce equality? What if their society isn’t geared towards equality? What if their very biology doesn’t allow for it? What if the males or females only develop to the mental maturity of a 14 year old, where the opposite sex develops to be far more mature?
What if they have yearly litters of a dozen, and it’s quite normal for them to kill each other and only a hand full survive, and throughout youth they kill each other on a regular basis? This seems grotesque to you and me, but it’s also a perfectly valid form of biological population control.
Our values are not inherently better than other, unknown, values. You can’t be so condescending to assume that our social structure is the only one that’s worth it.
What about hive-type societies, where the drones have limited-to-no free will and are sacrificed on a regular basis?
They ignore them, except when it’s beneficial to them to do otherwise.
In the Star Trek Universe you also have the Ferengi, who, instead of the Prime Directive, have the Rules of Acquisition, i.e., their interaction with alien races – for that matter, their interaction with fellow Ferengi – is always based on short-term maximization of profit, and the social effects are considered irrelevant. The Ferengi appear to be marginal in political and military terms, apparently just because those are not their highest priorities – but it is debatable whether, if this played out in real life, the Ferengi might outgrow and marginalize the Federation, politically and militarily. Or it might not be so. Compare agrarian Rome and mercantile Carthage, and remember who won. (Of course, Rome was not hampered by any Prime Directive.)
I think the Prime Directive is a pretty good rule. It has two very different use cases, though:
1. Pre-warp. If a civilization has not yet achieved Warp flight on its own, then you quarantine it from the outside universe until it does so. This is a nice, concrete rule, that is qualitatively different from other technological advances. If we were to equate it to uncontacted island societies on Earth, we’d have to say that the equivalent would be achieving long-distance flight or sea travel (a much fuzzier distinction from Warp, since tiny boats can still make transoceanic journeys, whereas sublight spaceships are not really practical). Other things—iron, gunpowder, antibiotics, etc.—are just too much of a continuum of technological advancement to pick one out. But Warp actually puts that society out into the space lanes, where they can start interfering with OUR business. Might as well welcome them at that point (rather than have them stumble onto someone in a less-friendly encounter).
The advantages to noninterference, to my mind, are that (a) we don’t know enough to be playing God with their civilizations (b) the destruction of unique cultures via our interference is likely to be catastrophic; again, perhaps other species will be radically different, but from our own case, it’s pretty clear that less-advanced societies often jettison their culture quite quickly in favor of the more technologically advanced society’s culture… which I think is sad.
2. Post-warp. The thornier prospect with the Prime Directive comes with societies that have already achieved Warp. The other case is pretty clear-cut, and is the more common occurrence during the Picard era of ST. But there are many times when Picard refuses to intervene in Klingon affairs, etc. (or has it thrown back in his face that his PD doesn’t allow him to, so he’d better mind his own damn business) where the PD is invoked.
On the one hand, this is a convenient way of dealing with other civilizations. Much like Earth-based nation-states, one could say (as many Americans have advocated doing so over the course of our nation’s history), “let them govern their own affairs; we have problems of our own, and as Washington said, ‘avoid foreign entanglements.’” We have problems of our own, who are we to judge their situation, live and let live, etc.
But … those post-warp civilizations’ internal affairs could very rapidly become OUR affairs. Just as Germany’s internal politic struggles eventually led to WWII. So I have more difficulty endorsing case #2 as a hard-and-fast rule. But #1 seems wise to me.
**Caveats: **You would have to make exceptions to case #1 when
the primitive civ. has developed subspace (i.e., FTL) “radio” communication - assuming there isn’t some advanced scrambling system that makes subspace transmissions look like white noise to the uninitiated, we have to assume that they’ll be listening to post-warp radio messages within a short span, and thus will have punctured the ban on their own.
the ban on contact has been broken from the outside either intentionally or accidentally; this is sort of the nightmare policing scenario—for instance, the Romulans say, “screw you, Feds–we’re going to enslave this planet and make them mine their planet’s rich dilithium ores for us!” Then, I guess, you wind up with your Neutral Zones and spheres of controlled space, and each post-warp civ. would deal with its primitives in its own way. A bigger problem might be renegades or profiteers like the Ferengi—or activist groups within the Fed., akin to a PETA or Greenpeace, who want to bring modern medicine and humanitarian aid to uplift primitive worlds—who try to make contact/sneak in and steal stuff on primitive worlds within your own sphere of influence.
a generation ship or other sublight vessel has left the solar system and is likely to make contact with post-warp civilizations (although, in this case, you might have to decide whether to simply contact the ship alone, and leave the planet-based civilization still in the dark)
the pre-warp civ. has somehow stumbled upon a technology that could destroy/impact other worlds— I’m thinking some sort of device that accidentally destroys their own planet as well as nearby ones, or accidentally disables passing warpships, etc. Sort of akin to an island society on earth developing nukes before contact, and endangering the entire biosphere with radioactive fallout.
We dont’ always have to be sharing technology. Something like a hypospray would probably seem like magic to a 20th century human, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that we could give them, or help them develop technologies they are on the cusp of
If someone offers you the cure to all disease, the first thing you think about is that there would be no motivation to do anything? I guess we have to agree to disagree because if aliens offered us a panacea, the first thing scientists and doctors around the world would do is to try and get a sample to understand how it works. From there, maybe native ingenuity could lead medical research to whole new directions not imagined by Federation medical staff. With most diseases eradicated, it would be a huge boon to the population. No longer would the poor and destitute have to fear dying from some random ailment. I think that would be a huge net gain for everybody.
Poverty is the lack of resources to go around. With Federation replicators, even though they cannot replicate everything, I could certainly see the basics of food, shelter, and clothing being made available freely to every person on that planet.
The Federation has come into contact with these kinds of cultures before. Maybe not in as radical a way you suggest, but you’re ignoring the fact thatt among the thousands of member worlds, there would be more than a handful with strange cultural standards of equality. I imagine the Federation would offer them a choice: their help comes with the cost of developing ethics to minimal Federation standards. Otherwise, Star Fleet can pull up anchors and leave the planet.
No, but our help can come with caveats. I know only a few dozen members of the Federation even had episodes devoted to their culture, but it seems that most of them readily accept that membership, along with the help, protection, and technology of the Federation requires members act civil by our standards
They’ve already encountered races like these. If they want help, they’ll have to behave.
I think you raise good issues but nothing new that haven’t already been dealt with by the writers, nor by the Star Trek logic itself. The biggest failing I see with the PD is that it arbitrarily limits the contact of pre-warp civilizations. All of the problem with the hypothetical races you’ve mentioned can and does happen to post-warp civilizations as well. How the Federation deals with those is simple: Offer friendship, help, and cultural exchange in the hopes that they might someday be persuaded to come to our side. Even with a race such as the Borg, Picard at first offered peace, and refused later to destroy them with a virus when he had the chance. I don’t think it’s that big of a stretch to think that the PD is too uncompromising when it comes to these primitive civilizations.
Humans were not so different from these types of people when the Vulcans first spotted us. Remember, its not like the Earth was some kind of galactic society just because one guy had one ship that could travel faster than light. This was after the Eugenics War, the people of Earth were still fractured. But like Picard related in Star Trek: First Contact, the meeting of aliens changed humans so much that it brought everyone on the planet together. Nowhere did people simply abandon medicine because the Vulcans did it better. I doubt Zephram Cochrane stopped work on warp engines after he discovered Vulcan technology more advanced. Earth was, with the exception of one guy, a pre-warp civilization. There’s no guarantee such a thing can’t happen again when it is the canon history of your own civilization.
Hypospray’s also have a completely lethal use as well.
The ability to inject a poison into someone with no evidence of where/how it was injected. Great technology for assassinations or getting rid of dissidents.
No, actually, if someone offers me the ability to live, free, in a decent house, being fed decently, with all the free time to do whatever I please… I’d certainly do something unproductive with my time (like playing video games or hanging out with friends, maybe growing a little garden that only required an hours or so work a day) rather than working.
Right, but there in lies the problem.
By offering them this new technology that they didn’t have access to before, we’ve opened up a field of science that they may or may not be ready for. With the ability to create things that do good to the human body comes the ability to create things that do harm as well. The ability to create weaponized anthrax wouldn’t and probably couldn’t have first occurred without first the ability to create vaccinations, for example.
Which is where the idea of unproductivity comes from.
“Here’s the choice, scum suckers, do it our way and abandon your evolutionary tendencies, dooming yourself to overpopulation, disease and a variety of other problems that come along with adopting an entirely foreign set of value systems, or we wont give you super cool technology.”
Of course they’re going to take the technology. That doesn’t mean it’s the correct choice for them to do so… or for us to offer it to them.
More morally superior crap.
You’re not talking about letting them ask for help. You’re talking about offering it to them with strings attached.
There’s a subtle, but very important difference.
Assume you’re in Japan, and you have 2 quarts of milk. You want one, and there’s a small orphan who looks like he’s starving. You don’t want, or need, the other one.
So, you have two options. 1) Offer him the milk. 2) Don’t offer him the milk.
You offer him the milk, and of course takes it and drinks it after you’ve explained that it’s not poison and is a great source of nutrition. He vomits, gets terrible stomach problems, begins crap liquid for a week and dies. Why? Because you didn’t know that Asians are far more prone to be lactose intolerant than Europeans are.
You don’t offer him the milk.
A) He asks for it, you give it to him, and he drinks it and dies.
B) He doesn’t ask for it, and he either lives or dies – you don’t know.
It’s important, because in situation 1, you’re entirely responsible for the consequences. In situation 2, you’re not.
Now, I’m not saying that they should never give technology to anyone, but interfering with their development, as a matter of course, is a terrible idea. We can’t manage to lift Africa out of poverty, warfare and genocide, and they’re our own specie. How do you suggest we impose our morality on an entirely alien being?
Limiting contact with prewarp civilizations isn’t arbitrary any more than limiting driving to those who’ve passed the drivers test is arbitrary.
The development of warp is the point where it’s now impossible not to have some level of interference. They’ve taken a step in which they’re now a member of the galactic community, they’re no longer an isolated island.
Before warp, they’re not a member of the galactic community.
Yes, they do. Only the federation isn’t offering post-warp societies the ability to travel off of their planet and colonize other worlds.
Post-warp, the issue comes to a head and is unavoidable. Before then, it’s possible to avoid the issue, in hopes that they come to a solution of their own.
And I’m fully for that. After it’s necessary to do so. However, until they need to be contacted, there’s no need to interfere in their society.
If their society is facing certain demise, I’m for taking steps to prevent it, deflect an asteroid, whatever. Even if it’s something they’re at fault for, but they don’t have a way of preventing it, I’m for making the introduction, offering our help in fixing it/relocating them, and letting them continue on their own natural development. Despite the terrible intrusion it has in their society, at least they’ve survived.
I don’t disagree, that there should be some room for saving the doomed… however, I don’t think that the choice should be arbitrary and the introduction should be made to every society we meet.
Actually, Cochrane didn’t stop working on the warp drive because the vulcans refused to give us technology.
I don’t see this as a given. The Federation already has plenty of people and resources and has the ability to synthesize resources from energy (which apparently they also have plenty of). What exactly would they have gotten from all these other planets?
Yes. Much of popular SF, and star trek in particular deals with aliens as proxies of humans. That’s what makes that kind of SF interesting. It allows whole worlds filled with all kinds of straw men. The other kind of SF that has really alien species is only interesting when it deals with how we humans would deal with those aliens. We are a self-centered species with little imagination.
If we discovered a world that was inhabited by an intelligent but truly alien species, we would be interested, sure, but there would be no way to predict what our intervention would do to them - or us, if they were technologically on the same level as us. You can take that as an endorsement of the “no interference” principle, but I don’t think we as a species have the patience for that kind of policy.
I suspect there are areas of the universe where stars are close enough together to make a sublight spaceship reasonably practical. But leaving pre-starflight civilizations alone is best, as I said in post #9.
I don’t recall any mention of the PD applying to star traveling cultures in TOS. Any attempt at diplomacy is an attempt to interfere with another country, and I don’t see any practical galaxy without this. In the ST universe Earth came to star travel late, so Earth worrying about interfering with the Kiingons is kind of like the Duchy of Grand Fenwick debating about interfering with the US.
This exactly sums up a big hole in the PD in the ST universe - you have lots of races who ignore it. That private citizens are not bound by it is also extremely stupid. People trained in contacting a new race can’t but any bozo with a starship can. Really?
When should you make contact? I say when a civilization has shown it can accumulate the resources to do major projects, and often when it is unified. A generation ship is probably an indication of this. My physics are such that ftl travel is only discovered once a civilization builds a particle accelerator of interplanetary magnitude - something that can only be done when a planet is unified and does away with military spending. So, ft; travel and a civilized world go hand in hand.
This smacks too much of old sf movies where our bombs are somehow going to affect another star. I don’t buy it.
It also shows your inherent bias when you look at not only other cultures, but our own.
A military isn’t an inherently bad thing. Sure, what it represents is bad (factions), but there’s no reason to believe that FTL travel couldn’t be achieved by a faction of a planet, or even a non-faction (like a corporation or university).
Also, currently, there’s no known way to travel faster than light (with the exception of the theoretical Alcubierre drive (warp drive), which would require more energy than is in the universe to transport a small space ship (spaceshuttle sized) across the milky way galaxy at Faster than Light Speeds.
What utter anti-social rubbish. We’re not brutal murderous barbarians-we have established freedom and democracy as the ideal for our species and we have become more humane. Plus we have been ordained by God to spread the Gospel to (presumably) all sapient species in the universe. Plus for purely selfish reasons we have to surivie in case our Sun explodes or such disaster.
What’s so wrong with playing “god”? We improve their condition and they become economically productive.
Some cultures are better than others (ie Western to Aztec) and such cultures as those of the barbaric Indian or New Guinea tribes can be recorded in anthropology and go to museums. I can’t see what getting rid of some rubbish superstition so wrong.
In the ST universe warp drive was invented more or less in a garage right after a war. I was being specific to the form of ftl travel I use, which can’t be.
Plus, I’m far from being a pacifist, but you have to agree that military budgets applied to other things would lead to great advance. We could afford to go back to the moon for the cost of a few aircraft carriers. I don’t intend to argue about the size of our military budget, but with a united planet it would drop to police force and perhaps national guard size.
What FTL system did you use to reach us, anyway? :dubious:
Certainly, but more to the point it’s a lot of mind-power that could be applied to other things.
Yes, and we could dedicate a lot of life-military to a lot of life-science careers. This could lead to new breakthroughs.
However, that doesn’t mean that’s how it’d work out in reality. In reality, it’d more likely be a time of stagnation, throughout history it’s been conflict and despair that’s fueled technological innovation.
People were dying in groves, so we invented vaccines. People were dying in groves (in war), so we invented a more efficient ways to kill people; the repeating rifle, the poisonous gas, the nuclear weapon, the ICBM, etc.
Each and every one of those things lead to greater technological innovations later on.
It’s been a while since I’ve been in a Star Trek discussion, this is fun!
I would simply say that some good outweighs the bad. Its hard to think of any new technology that cannot be applied to military or harmful uses. Doesn’t necessarily mean that the technology’s positives doesn’t outweigh it’s negatives. What I get from your response is that we need to be more careful to make sure that technology and help the Fed offers to primitive peoples should be made, as much as possible, so that it cannot have a negative use. If the technology’s negatives are too great, then we withold.
That’s the gist of what I want. Try to help. If we cannot, then don’t. But none of this blanket non-interference crap
Well you would. Not everyone would be like you. Even in a utopia such as Earth, there are still restaurants staffed with waiters. Presumably, every human would either be wired 24/7 to a sex hologram, or a scientist, or exploring the galaxy. But, and maybe this is the writers’ fault for not giving a good enough reason, there are still mundane things to be done in a cashless society with no poverty. Some people STILL want to be waiters, or at the very least do the job without complaint. So I think you would be wrong.
Again, when Vulcans contacted humans, it caused a radical but positive change within humanity that allowed it (us?) to, as Picard said, eliminate poverty and war and internal strife within a few decades. No reason why this canon history in Star Trek cannot happen again to another primitive race. Let’s face it, Cochran was the only post-warp person on Earth. We were not a post-warp civilization yet, but good did come out of it.
Going by the movie, if Cochran had somehow not gotten his ship off the ground and Vulcans still contacted the Earth, it would seem to have made little difference. Human civilization wasn’t helped by a warp drive, which Cochran admitted he was simply going to sell. Human civilization was transformed by first contact with the Vulcans. Picard said that for the first time, it made humanity realize they were not alone in the universe, and this feeling united humanity like nothing ever had before. That is what could happen again in another primitive world.
You make it sound so terrible
An offering of friendship is of course rescinded if they can’t live up to our standards. The Federation’s not going to stand by while one of it’s members makes war on another. I would hope the planet would understand that it is mutually beneficial to be a part of the Federation.
Being morally superior does not make the argument wrong.
The Fed expects certain behaviors out of its members. Thousands of planets have willingly submitted to Federation rule despite this. We can assume they benefit from the submission because I doubt the Federation has some kind of anti-secession policy. Therefore, yes, the Federation is morally superior AND provides superior benefits for member worlds that they would not want to lose. It is a win-win, and unless it makes you a target of the Borg, I don’t see a problem with that
First, because Africans aren’t being offered universal replicators and joining what is essentially a poverty-free, cashless society. By Star Trek standards, it would be like the Ferengi offering the Bajorans entry into their collective. Both sides have issues, neither is in a position to offer help to the other.
With your milk example, I would imagine Federation scientists would be a little more careful in offering phasers to people who still war over precious metals. Who’s to say I’d offer the kid milk? Maybe I’d offer him some sushi, which I can replicate, first, knowing that he can eat that kind of stuff. Give him rice, some new clothes, and a roof over his head because I can replicate all of that. Now maybe he grows into a shiftless slacker who stays in the home I gave him, eating sushi until he passes out in a drunken, sake-induced haze. Or maybe he appreciates how close he was to starving to death and becomes a philanthropist and helps other kids. The PD seems to assume the negative will be the result. I refuse to see things that way, especially since, again, it already happened to humans and we were better off for it
There’s a loophole though. The PD only covers Star Fleet and not the Federation. Either the writers close that or I’ll keep pointing it out. Having a pre-warp world close to or within Federation space is like asking for trouble. I doubt that out of the thousands of member worlds, somebody’s not going to take it upon himself to improve the lives of these natives, especially since it has been documented that it happens in several TNG episodes.
I think those societies are harder to ignore, but the problem remains the same. The PD says that natural development is good, or implies that, thus is how it justifies its non-involvment. Suppose a post-warp society faces some sort of calamity. By the PD, we could interfere, offer help. But why? How is our helping them not an interference of their natural development? If their Sun is going to go Nova, should we blockade their ships to prevent them from leaving their system? With a primitive society, we’d simply stand back and watch and claim their sun going nova’s not our problem, but why should it be with a post-warp civilization? It’s cowardice, I think.
The question is, if the Vulcans did give it to us, would Cochran simply abandon all work? Would everyone on Earth? Or would he try to apply his knowledge to the Vulcan technology?
The other kind of SF that has really alien species is only interesting when it deals with how we humans would deal with those aliens. We are a self-centered species with little imagination.
