TNG - Homeward

[TGLS]

It would be immoral for the Federation to usurp the mantle of parenthood for that species merely because they have less technological power. They're given the freedom of absence from interference, and allowed to determine their own destiny. In this case, that destiny was to all die in a natural disaster.

Either you understand this... or you do not.

I mean, if you assume that only one's parent should a child out of traffic, and by "determine their own destiny" you mean "make decisions that have no bearing on the fact the atmosphere will unpredictably disintegrate", then yeah.

[Riedquat]

It would be immoral for the Federation to usurp the mantle of parenthood for that species merely because they have less technological power. They're given the freedom of absence from interference, and allowed to determine their own destiny. In this case, that destiny was to all die in a natural disaster.

Either you understand this... or you do not.

Being wiped out by a natural disaster you can't do anything about is not being free to determine your own destiny. It's just sheer plain bad luck. Stepping in and preventing that if it's within your reasonable power to do so and you happen to notice it (I wouldn't say there's any need to go around scouting out such situations) is just basic decency.

And before you ask, yes, there's a huge difference between not getting involved in a whole other planet where an individual might die, and where the planet dies out.

In the unlikely event we found somewhere on Earth we hadn't messed up, let's say a small island with unique fora and fauna (not even talking people here), and that was threatened by something that would make it all extinct, would you try to save any of it?

[Frustration]

Stepping in and preventing that if it's within your reasonable power to do so and you happen to notice it (I wouldn't say there's any need to go around scouting out such situations) is just basic decency.

Just like people once considered taking away the children of "savages" and ensuring that they received a proper education with a proper language and proper food, clothing, and religious instruction was just common sense, basic decency.

Either you understand this, or you don't.

[Riedquat]

Stepping in and preventing that if it's within your reasonable power to do so and you happen to notice it (I wouldn't say there's any need to go around scouting out such situations) is just basic decency.

Just like people once considered taking away the children of "savages" and ensuring that they received a proper education with a proper language and proper food, clothing, and religious instruction was just common sense, basic decency.

Either you understand this, or you don't.

No, not just like that, not in the slightest. They are not remotely comparable situations. Either you understand this, or you don't.

You appear to be following this line of though: "Well it's all interference isn't it, and I know some examples of interference are bad, therefore interference == bad therefore this == bad." That approach (which is disturbingly common) is the antithesis of thinking. It's finding a set of rules and applying them dogmatically. What is actually going on - no consideration given. Dogma says X, therefore X it is.

[Frustration]

The Enterprise couldn't fix the problem without revealing themselves to the natives, so the problem goes unfixed. They couldn't gather enough natives to maintain their species, not to mention perpetuate the plants and animals that they live off of, so they were left on the dying planet. The only reason they dropped off the aliens on an uninhabited world was that they weren't willing to kill them and they couldn't keep them on the holodeck indefinitely.

They are not remotely comparable situations

People generally say that when their own hypocrisy is pointed out. "Oh, that's different." No, it's not.

Rules aren't made casually, they're made for very important reasons, and the Prime Directive is the Federation's highest and most important rule. A story in which that rule is agonized over, then kept, is just as much a story as one where that rule is agonized over, then broken.

What ethical understanding could possibly demand keeping the rule? One more advanced than yours.

What else is there to say?

[TGLS]

Rules aren't made casually, they're made for very important reasons, and the Prime Directive is the Federation's highest and most important rule.

Or it was created by an oversexed producer who wanted to inject more tension into his script, so he made up a rule that could be used to justify (if not command) his hero just up and leaving, so his hero could reject that.

The Federation is a fictional society with many rules that grew organically. Many important rules are the whim of a scriptwriter who figured the rule could just be forgotten the next week.

[clearspira]

Rules aren't made casually, they're made for very important reasons, and the Prime Directive is the Federation's highest and most important rule.

Or it was created by an oversexed producer who wanted to inject more tension into his script, so he made up a rule that could be used to justify (if not command) his hero just up and leaving, so his hero could reject that.

Yep. And you can see this in the subtle difference between how those PD episodes are executed between the TOS era and the TNG era.
Kirk's PD episodes are about him as a man, his ethics, his morals, his sense of justice.
Picard and Janeway's PD episodes however come off (as Chuck notes) as a religion that was handed to us from up on high which we dare not question. All descent is shut down quickly. ''Pen Pals'' being one of the only notable counter examples (and not coincidentally was a season 2 episode which puts it still within the days of Gene Roddenberry).

[Riedquat]

They are not remotely comparable situations

People generally say that when their own hypocrisy is pointed out. "Oh, that's different." No, it's not.

No hypocrisy at all. People also say it's different when it is different. You only appear to think it isn't because you're taking the aforementioned simplify-to-the-point-of-ridiculousness approach.

Rules aren't made casually, they're made for very important reasons, and the Prime Directive is the Federation's highest and most important rule. A story in which that rule is agonized over, then kept, is just as much a story as one where that rule is agonized over, then broken.

Sounds like you're worshipping at the altar of "follow the rules and don't engage the brain, is someone's made a rule then it must be kept." Which is why I'm calling it dogma.

What ethical understanding could possibly demand keeping the rule? One more advanced than yours.

What else is there to say?

Quite a lot. More advanced than mine? Really? Because a lot of what it's used to justify is pretty darned unethical, and from the out-of-universe point of view it's a plot device set up to be a strawman (until later writers started treating it as dogma).

[Frustration]

All descent is shut down quickly.

Dissent, perhaps?

There are worse things than death, after all. The people on that planet died quickly and relatively painlessly. The poor fellow who found out where he was, had his entire worldview shattered, and killed himself out of culture shock experienced a comparatively large amount of anguish before he went.

TNG is about the triumph of rationality and reason over human vices. These arguments you're forwarding are founded in a sort of incontinence of sentiment. The aliens aren't sophisticated people from the future, or even normals from the real-world present day. They're medieval villagers who can't begin to comprehend the nature of our protagonists and would be destroyed by the knowledge.

Ignoring for the sake of argument all the practical problems with being dropped off on some life-bearing world, those aliens so ignorant that they think it's plausible to go through a cave system and end up in a place they don't recognize at all with an entirely different ecosystem. They're going to take it for granted that they'll make contact with other people at some point in the future. And as they establish themselves, they'll be sending scouts out to look. By the time of their great-grandchildren, they may have gotten used to the idea that they're alone in the world.

Revealing that their world is dead, they're the last of their people, and are being taken to another world by friendly monsters would destroy them. And that's the risk posed by every moment they're in the holodeck simulation.

[clearspira]

All descent is shut down quickly.

Dissent, perhaps?

Indeed. And it is.