TNG - Birthright

[Yukaphile]

I've seen his stuff! He's the guy with the speech impediment, yes?

[Rocketboy1313]

Star Trek's "Stay with your own kind" issues bother me more and more when I recall how cultural exchange is such a fun concept.

That's one side to the coin. The other is chaos, upheaval, violence...

The base reason for xenophobia can simply boil down to the fact that contact with strange groups of people for tens of thousands of years resulted into the introduction of new pathogens ones own group might have varying resistances to.

There's also another aspect of it of things like the chaotic effects of forced migration or slavery, something pertinent here given the involuntary isolation and containment of this group of Klingons.

Finally, the great medium of cultural exchange through human history has been empire, something I'd hardly think many moderns on this would look on as something of a good thing though it is part of why I do despite the deep, deep costs that come with that exchange and diffusion for both sides of an empire.

"Fun" as in "good to explore in the space of a science fiction television show".

As in, you can still do the plague, slavery, and chaos... But I, the audience, get to watch and enjoy how the culture clash teaches us all lessons in cultural relativism while enjoying an entertaining TV show.

Like, what point are you making here?

[clearspira]

Finally, the great medium of cultural exchange through human history has been empire, something I'd hardly think many moderns on this would look on as something of a good thing though it is part of why I do despite the deep, deep costs that come with that exchange and diffusion for both sides of an empire.

The problem is that modern people are too comfortable to understand why ancient empires were formed and were typically the best places to be. The fact is that resources that we take for granted today were extremely rare or hard to obtain given how ''the spade'' and ''the axe'' was the limit of our mining tech. Having a large amount of land meant having a large amount of food, water and resources. And add to that, stable governments were mostly found in empires because they had the military might to resist the barbarians at the gates who wanted to literally do nothing else but rape, murder and pillage. There is a reason why we still remember Greece's democracy, law, philosophy, mathematics and art 4000 years later - it was a shitty place, but it was shitty place that was considerably less shitty than almost anywhere else and largely thanks to the fact that it killed anyone in its path.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

So is Pt 2 going to get its own thread? I think it should.

We should just call this thread Birthright - DATA, and the next thread Birthright - WORF. That would KICK ASS

[Darth Wedgius]

I've seen his stuff! He's the guy with the speech impediment, yes?

He's a guy with a speech impediment, and probably the one you're thinking of.

[Yukaphile]

Excellent. I want to check out more of his stuff.

[Robovski]

The problems I have are less of the "AI gains self-awareness and rebels" stereotype, but rather an AI programmed with a strict outlook that then blindly enforces it as the programmer sees it. Great and mighty AI are set up with the framework of something like a Marxist (or really any other) outlook and then go on to enforce it repeatedly despite the failures of the system that simply brought collapse when done by humans, instead doesn't because it's is constantly maintained and repaired at the expense of Mankind because of the lack of frailty in a machine that allow any tyranny to eventually decline and fall.

The result would be something like Ellison's AM, only not self-aware and filled with misanthropic hatred but instead enforcing a Procrustean hell on Earth because its creators wanted their ideology to reign and make Man and the reality bow to their beliefs rather the other way around.

No disagreement here!

The YouTuber Isaac Arthur (who is generally great and anybody here should watch his stuff) has mentioned a "paperclip maximizer" which can be as intelligent as all get out, and who has the goal of making as many paperclips as possible. If eliminating humanity will help it make more paperclips, and if it can do so, then...

I've wondered if an AI with a hard-coded goal of minimizing human suffering would make itself very, very helpful in all areas of life... and then wipe out humanity, preventing millions of untold generations of human suffering.

When you're making a mind that thinks a thousand times faster than yours, it pays to be very careful indeed.

Just dipping my oar in to say in agreement that Isaac Arthur does excellent videos. I've been watching his videos for years after I saw an early one he did on generation ships. His channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

That also lends itself to the fantasy peril of be careful what you wish for when people make too lofty of requests. Also more realistically it applies to government policy. I've come to think it's not so much of a dilemma as long as you avoid making aspirational protocols in favor of more discrete ones that have more direct agendas (not open to interpretation).

[Thebestoftherest]

I do wonder if Data could make a bird body for himself.

[Yukaphile]

Probably, and then transfer his consciousness into it. Or, you know, redesign himself to be a Transformer. I guess Chuck's predictions were right...