Riedquat wrote: ↑Tue Apr 05, 2022 8:53 pmEven if it's to do with what you say that still doesn't excuse standing by whilst they get wiped out by natural disaster. Anyone who can do that with a clear conscience is a messed up excuse of a person.
There are lots of pre-contact worlds in Star Trek. On each and every one, there are people, cultures, and species dying in ways that the Federation could prevent.
Let's make this perfectly clear: is the Federation morally obligated to prevent any suffering and death that it is technologically capable of preventing?
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows." -- George Orwell, 1984
Frustration wrote: ↑Tue Apr 05, 2022 9:02 pm
I 100% guarantee that there are people dying, right now, who could have lived if you or I had decided to act differently. Are we responsible for their deaths?
Depends; were you there with the ability to save a bunch of people?
EDIT: Hell, let's take it to a natural conclusion. The Federation is already playing god deciding who lives and who dies. They decided that Nikolai lives, and everyone else on the planet dies.
"I know what you’re thinking now. You’re thinking 'Oh my god, that’s treating other people with respect gone mad!'" When I am writing in this font, I am writing in my moderator voice.
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I've honestly never had much ulterior issue with the prime directive as a narrative device in or out of universe until this episode. I'm sure it'll happen again, but this really is the only time where it's humanely violating in so far as how the protagonists handle the issue.
Ultimately it's like, yeah, these people are basically beating this guy with bags of soap for what he did.
Last edited by BridgeConsoleMasher on Tue Apr 05, 2022 9:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
TGLS wrote: ↑Tue Apr 05, 2022 9:19 pmDepends; were you there with the ability to save a bunch of people?
You and I are both here, and we have the ability to save a bunch of people. If you have the time and resources to mess around with this board, I absolutely guarantee that you could have saved people who are now dying or dead.
So: do we have responsibility for the lives that were lost, the suffering that was endured, because we chose to act and not act in particular ways?
Don't change the subject or tangent off; answer the question.
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows." -- George Orwell, 1984
Riedquat wrote: ↑Tue Apr 05, 2022 8:53 pmEven if it's to do with what you say that still doesn't excuse standing by whilst they get wiped out by natural disaster. Anyone who can do that with a clear conscience is a messed up excuse of a person.
There are lots of pre-contact worlds in Star Trek. On each and every one, there are people, cultures, and species dying in ways that the Federation could prevent.
Let's make this perfectly clear: is the Federation morally obligated to prevent any suffering and death that it is technologically capable of preventing?
You wanted a down to earth question. Am I morally obligated to save you if your car ran off the road? Or a tree fell on you? I mean the tree is nature so obviously it is as God intended by this logic. Of course if we follow the whole as God intended bit then we should not have any medicine. Of course we also should not have houses since God did not build them and neither did you. Same with I would guess most of your possessions.
This is not an extreme argument from me. This is a mirror held up to what you are projecting here. "Let everyone die." Because you just don't know.
The antivenom question? I have so much I would give it to the woman. And I would try to get her to aid. Because it isn't the Federation or Star Fleet I admire. It is people like firemen that run into danger to save others.
Am I responsible for the thousands of people I don't help because I am not there? No. I help where I can.
Back to the fiction. Is the Federation or the Enterprise responsible for everything that happens where they are not? No. They are not there. Is it a tragedy? Yes, yes it is. Should they help if they can? See previous arguments. Because I don't think the Enterprise if it were in orbit of Earth right here and now. Should stop the fighting in the world. Stop diseases. Or solve global warming. These are things we need to learn to handle. But a Federation probe knocked comet Q31 off course and it will hit us in a few months. I damn well believe they should fix that.
Nealithi wrote: ↑Tue Apr 05, 2022 9:31 pm
Am I responsible for the thousands of people I don't help because I am not there? No. I help where I can.
You're lying. Whether you're trying to deceive us, or trying to deceive yourself, I don't know - but it doesn't actually matter. You do NOT help everywhere you can. You engage in all sorts of luxurious self-indulgence instead of helping where you can. I know this, because you're a frequent poster here.
Are you responsible for the lives lost and suffering endured because you did not choose to help?
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows." -- George Orwell, 1984
Riedquat wrote: ↑Tue Apr 05, 2022 8:53 pmEven if it's to do with what you say that still doesn't excuse standing by whilst they get wiped out by natural disaster. Anyone who can do that with a clear conscience is a messed up excuse of a person.
There are lots of pre-contact worlds in Star Trek. On each and every one, there are people, cultures, and species dying in ways that the Federation could prevent.
Let's make this perfectly clear: is the Federation morally obligated to prevent any suffering and death that it is technologically capable of preventing?
That's asking a very different question; it's quite a different thing to say you should throw the drowning person the lifebelt that's right there next to you and to say you should wander around next to waterways, devoting your time to finding people to save with it. Trying to equate the two is intellectually dishonest.
No, it isn't. The Enterprise can only be in one location at a time; the Federation can be anywhere within range of its ships.
Let's re-ask the question in yet another form: in the modern world, there are ethical principles that physicians are expected to follow; some of these principles require physicians not to act to preserve life in certain situations. What is the difference between physicians whose ethics require them not to intervene, and Federation starships whose ethics require them not to intervene? (Besides the first case being real and the second case being purely fictional, of course.)
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows." -- George Orwell, 1984
I like to go to the source. In this case, I point to the TOS episode, The Paradise Syndrome. In that episode, their mission is to save a planet from getting hit by an asteroid which would kill the population, who appear similar to Native Americans. It wasn't until they got there that they realized someone had actually set up a deflector and created a mythology around it. However, the last person with the knowledge died before passing on the procedure to his heir.
It's clear that preventing disasters, when encountered and possible, was not the original intent of the Prime Directive. Of course you can't spend all your time looking for disasters to prevent, but simply abandoning people to death when you can prevent it is not an ethical choice.
However, in the case of this episode there's the question of genetic variability. Is one village sufficient to make the surviving population viable?
It's been suggested that as few as one thousand humans would be enough to ensure a stable genetic base without catastrophic inbreeding or excessive uniformity. If the genetics were carefully selected, maybe fewer.
These are aliens, yeah, but let's assume they're fairly human-like. Then it depends on the size of the village and the number of people saved.
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows." -- George Orwell, 1984
