Is the Prime Directive good policy?

It seems a bit arbitrary to measure a civilization’s state of advancement based on the development of an arbitrary spaceship-go-faster technology.

What if they don’t care about that shit or don’t even have the raw materials to fill out the branch of that tech tree?

Shopping Cart Returner Shirt $21.68

The Kind of Tired That Sleep Won’t Fix Shirt $21.68

Shopping Cart Returner Shirt $21.68

  1. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    >Is the Prime Directive good policy?
    No, it's anti-colonialist dogma, and at its core absolving oneself of responsibility for others' suffering. It's profoundly immoral, as it's repeatedly shown to be during the show.

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      agreed

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      They are only responsible for the suffering if they somehow caused it in the first place.

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice

        • 3 months ago
          Anonymous

          >if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice
          by that amazingly moronic logic, you are responsible for every single bad thing that's happened, is happening, and will happen that you could possibly have changed

          • 3 months ago
            Anonymous

            To some degree duh.

            • 3 months ago
              Anonymous

              yep

              that's silly. if a lady gets mugged down the road from you, you could've bought a gun and spent your free time patrolling that street instead of sitting here and jerking off to anime porn. you could've prevented it, but you didn't. ditto with literally every single person who's died of kidney failure who you've been a compatible donor with since you became old enough to donate a kidney. you could've saved any one of their lives, but you didn't. same with how you could be devoting your life to getting junkies to get off heroin - most of them would ignore you, but eventually there'd be one you get through to, but since you didn't, that person's death is on you. it's a ridiculous standard AND it doesn't even get into unintended consequences.
              inaction is not an action, they're actually literal opposites. choosing not to act is not the same as choosing to act, in the same way that choosing to kill someone is not the same as choosing not to kill someone.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                You're blowing it way out of proportion, you only said you're responsible for the things you have the ability to change, how am I supposed to know every woman getting mugged in my vicinity? Or that I won't need that kidney at some point? I also said it is only true to a degree. On a certain level we as an uncaring selfish society are equally, slightly responsible for the drug problems in the world. That's something important to understand and accept as a part of life.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                >On a certain level we as an uncaring selfish society are equally, slightly responsible for the drug problems in the world.
                >That's something important to understand and accept as a part of life.
                No it fricking isn't. It's communism and evil to suggest this.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                >how am I supposed to know every woman getting mugged in my vicinity?
                because you could be patrolling that street in case someone gets mugged. you're spending that time on here
                >Or that I won't need that kidney at some point?
                people are dying right now who you could save. every single time a compatible would-be recipient dies, by your logic it's on you. you could save at least one right now. you don't know what will happen, medically, thirty years from now, but you do know that you can save a life right now and you're not.
                actually, that "needing that kidney" part is a good point. you might develop kidney disease later in life and die from it, where if you'd had two you could've lived. you can't predict all the consequences of your actions.
                >equally, slightly responsible for the drug problems in the world
                you could be counselling junkies right now. if just one listens you will have saved their life. but you're not, you're on here. by your logic you are responsible for that person's suffering and death.

                OR
                you're actually not responsible for actions you don't take. inaction is not action. further, you can't know what other consequences will happen because of actions you do take. the lady you save from getting mugged might end up meeting the next hitler's dad that night. you might turn out to need both kidneys, or a beloved family member who you would've donated to could need that kidney the next week. that junkie who lives might run over a kid. you can't know if the suffering you act to prevent won't turn out to cause worse suffering down the line. we can't know.
                we're not responsible for stuff we don't do, unless we voluntarily take some position that by definition requires us to act, like a firefighter or a doctor (and that's just the result of the action of committing to that obligation)

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                And maybe there's someone here ready to kill themselves and I have to be here to talk them out of it. Why do you assume every human is omnipotent, able to stop all wrong around them without rest? The things you can stop, you should feel some guilt over not stopping I already said everyone is a bit responsible for the drug addicts.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                >Why do you assume every human is omnipotent, able to stop all wrong around them without rest?
                because the concept that we're responsible for bad things we don't prevent requires that, and it's silly. if you patrolled the sidewalk all night rather than screwing around on Cinemaphile, you're basically guaranteed to eventually help someone who otherwise wouldn't be. you could save a person's life right now by donating your kidney, but you won't. a number of people will die this year that you could have saved and you won't. there are a thousand things you could devote your time to that would prevent suffering and save lives, but you're not doing them.
                what I'm saying is that it's ridiculous to say that you are responsible for any of that death or suffering just because it's possible for you to have acted to prevent it. inaction is not action, and again we can't know the full consequences of actions we do take. wouldn't it suck to donate a kidney to a stranger and then the next week it turns out a beloved relative who's also a match is going to die without a transplant? or you save someone's life who then goes onto do something terrible?

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                You're wrong about that first part I live in rural bumfrick nowhere and if I walk around all night the most I'll get is yelled at by one of the boomer farmer neighbors who all wake up at 5am. I'd have to walk ten miles to find anywhere with crime. We're in agreement here anon you are absolutely not responsible for all those things you have no control over. And you are responsible for the things you do.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                >I live in rural bumfrick nowhere
                but you're not in prison, you're choosing to live there. by not moving to a high-crime area to patrol, are you therefore responsible for the muggings that happen where you have chosen not to live and thus can't prevent? it's madness
                >And you are responsible for the things you do.
                you could be doing all sorts of things to help others - by spending your time here, that help is not happening. are you responsible for that?
                inaction isn't action, not doing something is not the same as doing something. if you do nothing and something bad happens, you didn't cause the bad thing to happen (usually it's someone else's actual action)

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                I'm just saying it doesn't matter much to the point, we just disagree on what things a person can control, I'm okay leaving them.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                well I'M saying I enjoyed this conversation and I like you

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                >inaction isn't action, not doing something is not the same as doing something. if you do nothing and something bad happens, you didn't cause the bad thing to happen (usually it's someone else's actual action)
                You are once again missing the bigger picture about knowledge/preknowledge of bad things being the decider of what you are responsible for

                You are conflating passive actions/non-actions with active actions/non-actions
                Choosing to post on Cinemaphile instead of helping with an active situation that could be solved in the time you spent on Cinemaphile would mean you had some responsibility that you shirked off, but the criteria you laid is out wasn't that, what you laid out was browsing Cinemaphile rather than looking for a situation, not already having known one exists that could also be solved.

                You're being extremely bad faith and incredibly extreme with your example

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                But you aren't in that thread and are engaging in this conversation. But we are really really getting past the point, the Prime Directive is 100% a good and moral policy because it deprives humans the mindset of their superior technology making them a superior being.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                The difference is that in this scenario you're also robocop but only save the federation citizens while that lady isn't one

          • 3 months ago
            Anonymous

            yep

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        Here, here. Wish we could prime directive all the shit ass countries we send money to and let them sort their own misery out.

  2. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    Beverly was a stupid b***h in every episode. She should keep her dumb opinions to herself and stick to doctoring.

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      Ok Dr.Pulawksi, calm down, it's ok, Data isn't in the room

  3. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    >dude, just uplift the culturally and technologically backwards civilzations giving them the power to destroy entire planets and other civilzations, what could go wrong?

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      Shepard.

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        Best alien sidekick of any piece of media ever

        • 3 months ago
          Anonymous

          Garrus mogs Wrex

          • 3 months ago
            Anonymous

            homosexual

          • 3 months ago
            Anonymous

            What the frick did you just fricking say about me, you little salarian? I'll have you know I graduated top of my clan when I was 20, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Turian space, and I have over 3000 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top battlemaster in the entire krogan armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the frick out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Tuchanka, mark my fricking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the exonet? Think again, fricker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the milky way and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fricking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the normandy and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the galaxy, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fricking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all
            over you and you will drown in it. You're fricking dead, kiddo.

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        ...I should go.

        • 3 months ago
          Anonymous
    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      but it's not about uplifting, it's about a policy of interference
      this shit extends to asteroids on a collision course, they have the power to obliterate that rock but the prime directive says no, the universe did the math and decided life on that planet drew the short straw
      which is why the prime directive gets ignored every five minutes

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        helping fledgling civilizations in ways they'll never know happened isn't forbidden by the prime directive.

  4. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    >seems a bit arbitrary

    Yeah that was the point Black person.

  5. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    >arbitrary spaceship-go-faster technology.
    How is this arbitrary?

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      Rkkv

  6. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    You'll note they don't find Stargate stuff in 99% of pedo raids.

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      Honestly the pedo merch argument could have been made for any nerd shit, pre big bang theory "geek culture

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      they are a diseased folk

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        >rangers fan
        big fricking surprise
        >rags

      • 3 months ago
        Valley Forge

        Those Diamond Select figures mint in the box are worth a shit ton of money now, especially if he had the whole crew
        Also, always sanitize Star Trek toys you buy on ebay and dispose of the boxes like they’re a potential biohazard

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      the federation is the "civilization of the gods" rolling around the galaxy, except they're benevolent. the US military, that somehow manages to school ancient advanced civilizations with their p90s, in stargate, is a revolutionary force, freeing people from oppression. This happens a bunch of times in star trek too, by the way.

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        >the US military, that somehow manages to school ancient advanced civilizations with their p90s,
        "Aliens didn't spec into the war tech tree but we did" is a kino trope.

  7. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    I think the point is that their default stance is non-interventionism, but that goes out the window when a space-faring race is entering the intergalactic community no matter what. The Federation just makes first contact to get ahead of things and establish a positive relationship.

  8. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    >they now show up on your planet because it's nicer than theirs all because you gave them the ability to travel to it

  9. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    Of course it's good. You can't know the long-term results of your actions, so the best action is to take no action.

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      >so the best action is to take no action
      Can't build civilization like that coward.

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        I already built civilization if I'm in the position to bestow it on another population. Now it's their responsibility to build their civilization.

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      You can't know the long term results of "inaction" either.

  10. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    It's called Seerows Kindness. Look it up

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      This guy gets it

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      This guy gets it

      >shit from a YA novel, copied from star trek

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        Google will not save you

  11. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    If your spaceships can't reach my part of space then you are irrelevant. Simple as.

  12. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    It was a good policy when the Federation first started. Instead they'd like Cardies rape and murder women and children in their colonies, and wouldn't do anything. No wonder people resigned their uniforms and joined the Maquis

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      They were just interventionists and moralists.

      Bajor was quite literally not the Federation's problem until the wormhole was discovered. The fact that only after that did they decide to get involved should tell you that their motives aren't altruistic.

  13. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    Let’s see how well the Prime Directive holds up when there’s a galactic lithium shortage and a vast untapped source on a planet inhabited by intelligent preindustrial beings.

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      He who controls the lithium, controls the universe.

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      don't they have duplicators or some shit? Just duplicate a bunch of lithium. or even just steal the lithium without ever interacting with the locals. they're like gods, im sure they could figure something out

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        replicators are energy intensive and their main power source is rarer than the material they would be replicating
        its not feasible to replicate materials except when there is a need for speed or convenience which outways that of efficiency

        • 3 months ago
          Anonymous

          Just how much are these earl grey teas costing the taxpayer?

        • 3 months ago
          Anonymous

          anon. energy isn't scarce. replicators don't need to be powered by matter/anti-matter reactions. canonically, they aren't even. its canon there's multiple reactors on a starship. the engine that allows exponentially faster than light travel is the only thing that needs the energy produced by a regulated matter/anti-matter reaction. random colonists don't have anti-matter just lying around to make their tea. they have generic reactors.

        • 3 months ago
          Anonymous

          anon. energy isn't scarce. replicators don't need to be powered by matter/anti-matter reactions. canonically, they aren't even. its canon there's multiple reactors on a starship. the engine that allows exponentially faster than light travel is the only thing that needs the energy produced by a regulated matter/anti-matter reaction. random colonists don't have anti-matter just lying around to make their tea. they have generic reactors.

          the energy-matter conversion isnt 1:1, some energy is used in the process to convert the rest of the energy to matter, it is never more efficient than having natural raw material on hand
          if this werent the case, there wouldnt be ore mines for anything but energy sources in universe, but star-trek has several mentions of ore mines that arent specificially for dilithium
          and its the case for any energy source regardless of reactor type, there exists some threshold for which natural sources are more energy efficient to refine, transport, and shape

          on a starship there is no need to consider the threshold because carrying all the possible materials needed to provide for every necessity would require a monsterously big ship OR constant pitstops for resuply which is not conducive to the timely exploration or transportation, here the lack of efficiency is not an obstacle

          >hospitals, schools, medicine, international goods, technology to eliminate countless dangerous and menial jobs, trade and a far superior replacement to our stone age social structure? NOOOOO
          why do people pretend colonialism was le bad?

          because there is nothing wrong with being an ooga booga in the jungle, there exist ways to quantify health and comfort but no way to quantify happiness, you'll do nothing great but maybe its better to let those who can live in ignorance and bliss, elevating them certainly hasnt helped anyone else

          • 3 months ago
            Anonymous

            >it is never more efficient than having natural raw material on hand
            so you've just defeated your own argument. furthermore, energy efficiency isn't an issue when you're generating billions of terawatts casually.

            • 3 months ago
              Anonymous

              in what way, z
              my argument is that raw material is used in all instances where there is no need to be quick in action, when you can plan for development it will be better to spend the less energy intensive resource
              energy efficiency is always an issue and will always be an issue, resources are not inexhaustible and efficienctly using them delays the constant need for expansion and even higher consumption, a civilization that does not invest in efficient material usage will burn itself out, they're self-defeating

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                energy expense doesn't matter if the materials aren't on hand. thus, argument defeated. The universe has more resources than could ever be used, by anyone or anything. Just as energy can't be created or destroyed, if energy can be converted into matter, then matter is energy, and then matter can't be created or destroyed.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                there is always loss in matter energy conversions, the energy lost is a conversion of one energy type to another which is no longer useable as a source of energy, such as heat

                consider all attempts at perpetual motion machines, what stops them from going forever is friction, friction converts motion into heat, that heat is converted energy is no longer able to be used to sustain motion
                there exists no possible way to create a system with 100% efficiency, some energy will always be lost in the conversion process, by virtue of there being mines for resources which are no strictly energy resources in star-trek, it must be the case that it is more efficient to use raw material instead of replicated matter, otherwise they wouldnt do it at all, for any situation

                SO if its always more efficient, and if you have the ability to plan for future usage of material and have an exact account of how much material you expect to need, then its always better to use raw material
                the reason why starships dont use exclusively raw material is that they are constantly being sent on priority or long term missions and dont have time to break from their missions to get new raw materials
                examples of situations where raw materials are better to use are: probe construction, shuttle construction, new spaceship construction, shipments for colony development, bulk advanced materials production (such as polymers), etc.
                if you can expect the plan for future usage of materials or the location where said materials will be used to remain constant, there is no reason to waste energy with energy-matter conversion, and it is instead easier to just transport natural matterial to where it is needed

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                >there is always loss in matter energy conversions
                yes, you've said this already. you haven't said what you're basing this assertion on though.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                if there isnt any loss then how is the energy being assembled into matter, does the machine warp the fabric of reality to create this effect or does it follow the same principle as every other energy-energy or matter energy conversion
                in fusion and fision the energy is lost as heat and EM waves
                either there is an energy loss which is significant enough to warrant resource mining or there isnt and the miners are just doing it for fun and the love of the work, the federation is knowingly torturing sentient holograms for shits and giggles, and the replicators are basically magic, which invalidates any discussion series wide about any topic contained within the show

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                you seem to be applying current understanding of physics to fictional technology. you should think about the flaw in that for a moment.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                the series proposes to be based on our universe and an expansion of our future path, that means its physical constants are our physical constants, entropy is an immutable law of our world, and if ever it stops being that there are no more struggles, there is no more scarcity of any kind, and no more limits
                its not a matter of whether or not I subscribe to it, the world of star trek cant have perfect energy conversion because there arent any evidences of what perfect energy conversion would entail within the source material

                terraforming wouldnt be a decades long process with a manned stage, you could directly convert innert material to living material and all that is needed to sustain that life in an instant with a machine
                there wouldnt be traditional shipyards, ships could be formed in a similar way to how the holodeck renders holo-images
                the story itself and what it presents eliminates the possibility of there being an ideal conversion system in the canon
                the only alternative is that you think that everyone in the universe of star-trek is so moronic that they dont understand the machines they have made and what their potential is

  14. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    On it's face is some kind of peaceful benevolant choice. But really you're just not trying to arm a planet against you, while also providing no measure of protection against other hostiles. It's all somewhat silly.

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      >But really you're just not trying to arm a planet against you
      No, it's to not arm a planet against their neighbors. I imagine they don't want another Romulan issue where they frick up a planet of lesser developed beings and enslave them.

      They were just interventionists and moralists.

      Bajor was quite literally not the Federation's problem until the wormhole was discovered. The fact that only after that did they decide to get involved should tell you that their motives aren't altruistic.

      Weren't they arming the rebels years before and were at war with the Cards for other reasons?

  15. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    The only good space philosophy is this one
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis

    It's the only realistic approach

  16. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    Imagine an alien race giving humanity advanced technology. Except it’s not humanity, it’s human leaders and they’re all shit one way or another. Better to just watch and wait till we get it together, then appear.

  17. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    There is probably already a story like this but would be fun to see some madman flying around giving two medieval societies free techs and get rich and have endless sex being the Steve Jobs inventing everything. Well eventually they get advanced weapons and space travel and there is another planet the madman guy sells too and they are about to have an interplanetary war that will wipe out ALL life on both planets so Picard needs to use Data the ultimate technology to erase all the schematics and plans for all the tech they were gifted and also Picard works out a peace treaty.

    Like TLDR its a prime directive fantasy episode that goes as far as you can in the premise about why its good to have it.

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      I remember watching Sesame Street as a kid, and some of the characters were going to a carnival or something, but one had to stay behind to watch the place. They were so sad, because they really wanted to buy donuts at the carnival. So all their friends bought donuts for them, and at first the character was happy, and they ate all the donuts, and then they got sick, and the lesson of the episode was that too much even of a good thing can be bad. That moderation in everything is key.

      Your post is so fricking stupid that it makes sesame street, a show for literal toddlers who can't even count, look too high-brow for you.

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      Sounds like a cross between VOY 3x05 False Profits and VOY 3x08 and 3x09 Future's End

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      Yea Stargate knocked it out in 44 minutes. It was kino and Rodney did nothing wrong.

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        Kino episode
        Just makes me want to play civ

  18. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    >we can't uplift them, they could destroy themselves and we would be responsible!
    >this means that if theres a giant volcano or asteroid coming we can't secretly stop it without anyone ever knowing about it because...we just can't ok!

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      65 million years ago:
      >xargog! that giant asteroid is about to hit that planet and those dinosaurs are cute!
      >we can easily use our flying saucer to steer it away and save them all!

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        That would be completely ok in Star Trek as well actually, they're only prevented from interfering if theres intelligent life

        • 3 months ago
          Anonymous

          well, I'm glad xargog said no, because otherwise we wouldn't exist

        • 3 months ago
          Anonymous

          raptors are highly intelligent tool users

  19. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    was that from the episode where one planet is selling an addictive drug to another planet and picard refuses to intervene ? In this case the prime directive was right frick saving junkies.

  20. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    >orville did a better job explaining the prime directive than nu-trek
    Based Seth

    ?si=cSkVO7xMdnDV-Pzy

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      >oh no they had borders!
      gay shit.

  21. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    If they have FTL they're going to come into contact with other spacefaring civilizations anyway.
    Of course that doesn't make it correct, but basing it on FTL is not arbitrary.

  22. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    It should only apply to electric-age civilizations where aliens appearing could conceivably lead to mass chaos. Otherwise who cares about “interfering” with stone age savages by saving them from a volcano and letting them see your spaceship.

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      >Otherwise who cares about “interfering” with stone age savages by saving them from a volcano and letting them see your spaceship.
      Because if some aliens steered the dinosaur killing asteroid away from Earth, we wouldn't exist

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        Says you. Maybe we'd have cool pet dinosaurs.

        • 3 months ago
          Anonymous

          Fair
          >tfw no pet raptor

          Was about protecting all life or just higher forms of civilization?

          I think the rule is "Until someone on a planet figures out how to go faster than light, you can't interfere in any way with its development"
          It's a good rule. If some aliens had thought the Neanderthals were cute and protected them against sapiens, we wouldn't exist. Same with the dinosaurs, or the beginning of oxygen-producing life that caused a massive die-off as all the other life were poisoned by all the oxygen

          • 3 months ago
            Anonymous

            >or the beginning of oxygen-producing life that caused a massive die-off as all the other life were poisoned by all the oxygen
            That's why I'm pro climate change. It could be cool.

            • 3 months ago
              Anonymous

              Sadly I'm now all in on the cosmic rays hypothesis, which is the only replicable thing that also explains why Ice Ages have been happening basically since we got liquid water

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                ice ages happen because the sun has hot/cold cycles.

        • 3 months ago
          Anonymous

          Get a parrot. Then you still can.

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        Was about protecting all life or just higher forms of civilization?

  23. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    It’s funny how it’s basically indistinguishable from John Wayne’s “educating the Black to the point of responsibility” line.

  24. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    Wouldn't there be a civilization that colonizes other planets by converting them into vessels for the express purpose to expanding an inter planetary empire?

    Wouldn't the federation experience an existential threat by being overwhelmed by sheer numbers of recently uplifted civilizations that now have access to weapons of mass destruction?

    That would be an interesting series.

  25. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    Well look what human interference did to Africans. They're all living in mudhuts and need welfare and foreign aid just to keep existing.

  26. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    >What if they don’t care about that shit or don’t even have the raw materials to fill out the branch of that tech tree?

    Then they would need to independently the existence of bumpy forehead aliens. Like, a crash, or just calling them on a phone and the alien on the other end doesn't just hang up because they themselves have a "don't bother the sentient wildlife" policies.

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      >planet has made even more advanced medical technology
      >more advanced robotics, AI
      >more advanced leisure and arts
      >no ftl so we can’t say hi now

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        yeah. ftl requires enough energy to just completely destroy a planet.

  27. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    The prime directive is absurd and dumb as hell. Imagine if humanity went through constant disasters, plagues, and other shit, and when we finally reached the stars we find out that actually there were millions of civilizations that knew we existed, knew we were searching for intelligent life, and knew we needed help with problems they could've easily solved at no effort to themselves, and just chose not to.

    At best you'd want nothing to do with those frickers.

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      you'll never learn if you cant do it yourself
      imagine you gave a continent of people all the food they could ever want or need and then they ate and fricked so much they ran out of what was allotted for their present and not their future population
      imagine you gave them the farming tools to do it themselves but they never used them because they are perfectly happy with as much food as they have or do not have, and see no correlation between the production of food, food security, and population size
      if you never have to work to solve your problems you will be conditioned never to solve them, you have to want to be better, nobody can make you intelligent or capable

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        you don't need to use those lines anymore. They never worked in the first place because the response is simply "there's more to civilization than food." You can, on the other hand, just point to afghanistan. 20 years of "nation building," every aspect, from food to infrastructure to economy to construction, undone the second the US isn't there to maintain it.

        • 3 months ago
          Anonymous

          >20 years of "nation building," every aspect, from food to infrastructure to economy to construction, undone the second the US isn't there to maintain it.
          Black person Afghanistan has been one of THE poorest countries in the world for the last few decades, US moving away legit didn't change shit on that front

          • 3 months ago
            Anonymous

            >Black person Afghanistan has been one of THE poorest countries in the world for the last few decades
            try centuries if not millennia

          • 3 months ago
            Anonymous

            and 20 years of nation building didn't change anything and was undone in a day.

          • 3 months ago
            Anonymous

            you don't need to use those lines anymore. They never worked in the first place because the response is simply "there's more to civilization than food." You can, on the other hand, just point to afghanistan. 20 years of "nation building," every aspect, from food to infrastructure to economy to construction, undone the second the US isn't there to maintain it.

            >getting onto the helicopter, the US ambassador takes one last forlorn look at Kabul's unfinished Holocaust Museum

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        >you'll never learn if you cant do it yourself
        OK then stop using a computer, you didn't make it by yourself
        Stop driving a car, you didn't assemble that car by yourself
        Stop using 0, you didn't invent the concept of 0 by yourself

        • 3 months ago
          Anonymous

          and you haven't noticed that user friendliness has done nothing but reduce technological literacy?

          • 3 months ago
            Anonymous

            Lead by example and stop using things you yourself did not make or discover on your own

            • 3 months ago
              Anonymous

              I have built circuit boards, calculators, and have been using computers since you needed to know programming languages to do anything with them.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                Did you invent calculators or did you follow an online guide?

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                you're floundering. clearly upset at your own ineptitude.

                the simplest form of the prime directive is give/teach a man to fish. the issue comes where the civilization becomes utterly dependent upon the instruction from more advanced species, and therefore can't develop its own identity.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                Did you invent calculators or did you follow an online guide?

                not this anon
                and by teaching them how do fish, how do you know that you are teaching them anything more than how to fish
                how do you know that they can adapt what you teach them into the ability to learn more than just fishing
                you can give them the warp drive but after they master it will they discover new things or will they continue to iterate on the design
                you cant impart ingenuity or the drive to create it

  28. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    It’s a good policy if you presume more-advanced communities are under no obligation to assist in the advancement of other less-advanced communities. It’s a terrible policy if you believe otherwise. I personally believe the emotion that tells us not to interfere and “civilize” others is the same one that drives morons to not assign their children as male or female at birth. It’s a destructive shirking of one’s duties as a person. Occasionally causing accidental trauma when pursuing said duties is not an excuse for abandoning the duties altogether. Learning how to speak, read, and write sucks as a small child, but we’re all better off for having learned those skills, and you would resent your elders if they’d purposefully raised you without those skills. Same goes for civilization imo. And yes, nation-building is just as frustrating and tiresome as parenthood.

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      >let me tell you about this subject i'm completely obsessed with, bring up all the time, and see everywhere

      there's no parallel. civilizations aren't children. children need structure. civilizations need to define their own structure. afghanistan is real world proof that you can't build a civilization/nation for other people.

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        >afghanistan
        The exception proves the rule, turd worlder.

  29. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    The way Star Trek puts it, humanity just doesn't want to be responsible for the unforeseen consequences of giving primitive cultures advanced technology or meddling in their development.

    What's really at play here is an almost comical insistence on natural selection, i.e. the cultures and organisms that advance to spacefaring technology are most fit to do do. The Great Filter as it is popularly known, in other words: you will either become a spacefaring civilization or go extinct on your home planet. There have been situations where they intervened, though. Generally it's seen as acceptable to interfere to reverse the effects of someone else's interference, or if a species would get wiped out by a natural (cosmic-scale) disaster they have no ability to predict or respond to.

  30. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    The point is that for a civilization to be deemed not a-holes they have to have worked together well enough to have accomplished something. Once they can reach us, let's welcome them but giving them more than they can handle will ruin them

  31. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    >hospitals, schools, medicine, international goods, technology to eliminate countless dangerous and menial jobs, trade and a far superior replacement to our stone age social structure? NOOOOO
    why do people pretend colonialism was le bad?

    • 3 months ago
      Anonymous

      The Federation act like a bunch of goody two shoes. Its the idea of the intervening chaos from colonialism that is the reason for the Prime Directive. Basically they don't want to be responsible for raping and killing a bunch of them to pacify them and they don't want to introduce them to Christianity to tame them. If they don't get involved they can pretend they're noble for not doing it. They want to be blameless advocates of progress, it's just the typical cowardice that stems from such a progressive liberal mindset.

      Picard is fine with you starving to death or being stoned in a religious ritual because hey, he didn't do it.

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        >they don't want to physically/mentally rape people into submission, that makes them homosexuals

        • 3 months ago
          Anonymous

          It's definitely a form of cowardice, yes. They could uplift them. Prevent them from killing each other. Prevent them from starving. Cure their diseases. They could do many things for them, but the idea of having to get violent at all to do it scares them. Even if you had to genocide half their population and all their leadership and squash their "culture", every one born after that would live a better life. No no it's far more courageous and noble to let them suffer for thousands of years instead, billions dying from simple things like infections or measles, can't help sorry, you need 10,000 years of uncertain doom for your entire planet first. You've got to make nuclear weapons and then not have a nice day with forces you can't even fully comprehend and your leaders must be permitted to hold their entire planet hostage for generations with world ending weaponry before you're allowed to enjoy the holodeck.

          • 3 months ago
            Anonymous

            its a form of not wanting to be forever cleaning up the whoopsies of species unable to develop their own civilizations. a people protected from all forms of suffering will know nothing of suffering, and thus, have no empathy.

            • 3 months ago
              Anonymous

              Virtually no one alive right now has any power to stop their civilization from being destroyed. A handful of sociopaths rule our planet right now. They have sex cults where they abuse children. Should you be atomized or killed with weapons you didn't make or want because your entire race "had to learn"? It's cowardice. Plain and simple cowardice, and it hides behind the idea they're so upright and civilized themselves, except when they're not and they show laser beams at each other and kill one another.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                what in the absolute frick are you rambling about? when did you get on this subject that advanced civilizations should just destroy less advanced civilizations?

                the long and short, is if we don't solve our own problems, the ones on our planet, ya know like the ones you listed, why should anyone help us? I mean, all we really have to do is kill those people. Its pretty simple.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                So you freely admit you and your entire family and everyone you love deserve to be killed horribly. What a compelling argument, cuck.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                >[word salad intensifies]

                Black person what set you on this rant?

            • 3 months ago
              Anonymous

              It's more they want to bypass the nastiness of it themselves. That way a few hundred years later some of the colonized aliens don't dye their hair blue and then say all the uplifters should give up their own civilization while reaping the benefits of it. They don't have BLM in Star Trek because they just decided to drive around Space Africa. Now if the Space Africans do manage to uplift themselves it means they get to be told they're special and join the club. The officers play it up because they're company men.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                so there's only upsides to the prime directive. cool.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                From the perspective of the Federation, absolutely. Sucks for the morons on the ground for sure. Sorry alien kid, you got the whooping cough, gotta die. It's literally "not my problem" oil going down the drain image. All the talk the command makes about why past that is just a form of propaganda really.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                >Sucks for the morons on the ground
                how do you figure? They won't have any animosity towards the federation, they solved their own problems, and needed no one's help to do so. they lifted themselves up and are now welcomed into an interstellar empire that freely offers all the technology they find/develop, and all they ask is for the members to help.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                In the interim it's definitely gonna suck for a whooooole lotta innocent lil nobodies. Consider Egypt was what? 6000 BC? Everyone from then to 1900 or so lived without penicillin. The Federation just washes their hands of it, but in theory they COULD give them penicillin. By the time the race in question is offered an opportunity to join up, all they're thinking about is how miraculous peaceful first contact is. There's no animosity so they integrate peacefully. Imagine a world where there were no minorities complaining about racism and telling you you owe reparations. It's a unique and clever form of indoctrination, they found out about the Federation and how they made the cut, buddy! So they're proud. Instead of angry.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                anon. if you were never hurt in your life, never struggled, never did anything for yourself, had everything handed to you, you'd be an entitled douche.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                We saw in ENT plenty of animosity that Earth had toward the Vulcans for doling our technology in piecemeal because humans weren’t ready for it yet.

              • 3 months ago
                Anonymous

                archer was just pissed the vulcans didn't magically cause his daddy's fruit trees to grow to adulthood faster so he could eat their fruit.

      • 3 months ago
        Anonymous

        >Picard is fine with you starving to death or being stoned in a religious ritual because hey, he didn't do it.
        it's almost as if an inordinate amount of suffering has been caused by people who think they know what's best for others

        • 3 months ago
          Anonymous

          And even more amelioration of suffering has been cause by the same, you child.

          • 3 months ago
            Anonymous

            >And even more amelioration of suffering has been cause by the same, you child.
            >there's no suffering in a mass grave!

  32. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    TimPool.jpg
    >the prime directive is bad!

  33. 3 months ago
    Anonymous

    >Today of course, we know imperialism and colonialism to be evil and exploitative concepts, but Churchill’s firsthand experience of the British Raj did not strike him that way. He admired the way the British had brought internal peace for the first time in Indian history, as well as railways, vast irrigation projects, mass education, newspapers, the possibilities for extensive international trade, standard units of exchange, bridges, roads, aqueducts, universities, an uncorrupt legal system, medical advances, anti-famine coordination, the English language as the first national lingua franca, telegraphic communications and military protections from the Russian, French, Afghan, Afridi other outside threats, while also abolishing Sati (the practice of burning widows alive on funeral pyres) thugee (the ritualized murder of travellers) and other abuses.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *