@NetRunner

I am a little confuzled about calling @Skeeve and my conversation both true and a non sequitur. I guess because I am addressing a more theoretical, man kind building question and you a more practical one. Your talking about the more practical, of making things work now, I am talking more about how I want things to work, for always. A the difference between the tangible and the ideal I guess.

The examples you pose are actually the exact ones I was thinking of when I think of the brutality of democratic things, at times. I have been considering the statement "the needs of the many..." for the course of a few weeks now. Forgive me, about to go on a tangent, but I want a trial by fire to so speak if you have the time. This will be a wall of text for the uninterested.

When I was first exposed to this phrase/idea, it was from Spock. And from then on, I always took it as the rational position one has to take to help the whole at the cost of the one. It was a profound idea in my youth. It had such a charity to it. It seemed to speak to the core of what is good. Everything that is good about man was contained in that one simple phrase. The devil is in the details, though, so I decided recently to examine my long held Vulcan heritage.

Over the past couple of years, since my fall from Grace, I have been increasingly interested in the role of evolution in the social development of our species. We have a lot in common with our animal kin, especially the social nature of mammalia. The role of emotions and intuitive social orders with post rationalized rule set changes are the order of our creed. For an animal that has a very long gestation period, few offspring per litter, and long maturation periods, certain social orders HAD to be developed or we wouldn't survive. Many of our longest held evolutionary advances aren't because they are "good" morally, but are good for survival when being chased by tigers. In that, I think the democratic pricible is actually as old as social creatures, and even more basic, as force.

I think the reason Spock's words stung so true in my heart of hearts is it spoke to millions of years of culture beyond my ability to fully comprehend. It spoke past my reason to the core of my being. Now, when I examine the phrase "the needs of the many..." and take into light the core being, I find a much different sentence. Let me tell you what I found that I didn't expect.

I find that the statement of "the needs of the many..." very closely relates to the Democratic position. When your tribe is 20 people, and the fate of your people all hang in the balance of routine decisions, evolutionary speaking, to survive, it is easier to remove the rational component of this choice. The rational implications of every choice you make determining the fate of your entire race is a burden that doesn't aid in decision making. It is much "better" to program in an emotional response and have that being post-rationalize later, intelligence is actually more of a burden than a tool in this area. This way, we remove the impotence one might face in the light of such a larger than life issue, and set in that mind a continuing sequence of emotional ties to the event through post-rationalizations.

I think the reason Democracy works so well, given this situation, is it very closely mimics the "rules of the jungle." By that, I mean force. Democracy is an interesting formalization of the rules of the jungle. Instead of the force being a stick or a knife, it is a vote. We might not consider our vote a weapon, but essentially, when you boil it down it is our most trusted language. So much so, that every animal we face understands it. We have subjugated nearly every animal on this planet via force, and now try our hands at the very planet itself. All the while, we never asked ourselves the question, is using force right?

When being chased by a tiger, you can't ask that question. Even more so, it is the application of force that seems to drive the evolution on this planet forward. However, it only advances the flags in the due course of force. Any being that comes after HAS to play by these rules or be defeated before it can flourish. But is this the way it HAS to be? Does humanity find itself on the precipice of being able to change the entire course of evolution on the planet? Perhaps so. Slowly, we have taken the cunning, and brutal wolfs of the winter lands to being the noblest of companions. And cats, wait, never mind, fuck cats.

Humans might soon, within perhaps our children's, children's lifetime, find themselves in the unique position to change the rules of the game, for good. Weather or not we want to will be the only question. So the question is, why? What is so wrong with Democracy and the underlying shreds of managed force something to be concerned about? Let me bring on my final point.

The course of discovery seems to be without end for man. It seems inevitable, that in time, each human will have access to such a level of technology that any one person could end all life on the planet with little to no effort. Our only current solutions for it are that of liberty, which would only take one crazy person to end it all, or regulations, of which would have to be of the most extreme kind to protect against knowledge that is easy to acquire and use. It seems that the current rules that bind this planet along with mans advancement in technology have set us on a collision course with a cruel destiny. While not a certainty, I do believe it is certain that the tools of Democratic force will not save us from our own self imposed destruction.

While I have still not made all my points, like why I also think the democratic position is actually bad (perhaps even morally bad); in spite of that, I do suppose that it is insufficient to manage our path. It isn't that I want it to be wrong, it is that we truly need something else if we intend to survive past an infant species. If we lose the game, the cycle of force will most likely continue on without us, spawning forth new entities of force. But if we win, we will rewrite the rules for all existence on the planet. No longer bound to rules that keep up from being eaten by tigers, but by rules that extend us to the furthest reaches of our dreams.

I think it will all start by eating all the cats, because anything that will bite you in your sleep isn't fit in this new world. And I yield my time back to an audience that is most likely not interested in my thought processes that go to solving less than practical problems. I will only continue on request as to not come off as pedantic, well, more so.


edit, grammar

that chick isn't bad at all...chances are she's not giving "Spock" the "Vulcan Death Grip" though.

Regarding whether or not the mission was to kill him... based on the information we've been fed, isn't the answer clearly yes? To accept that they would've taken him alive if possible, wouldn't we also have to also accept that this elite SEAL team was incapable of a non-lethal takedown? Tranquilizer dart, gas, taser, shoot him in the kneecaps, Vulcan neck pinch, whatever. It's not like he took cyanide at the first sign of trouble. They shot him in the head.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Cracked, oboma, CHANGE, election, Nerd, fuckkin nerd, Barry obama, vulcan sign, the fonz' to 'Cracked, obama, michael swaim, Nerd, fuckkin nerd, Barry obama, vulcan sign, the fonz' - edited by brycewi19

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Cracked, oboma, CHANGE, election, Nerd, fuckkin nerd, Barry oboma, vulcan sign, the fonz' to 'Cracked, oboma, CHANGE, election, Nerd, fuckkin nerd, Barry obama, vulcan sign, the fonz' - edited by brycewi19

>> ^BoneRemake:

Sexy and Smart. I wonder what her pitfalls are.


She doesn't want you, but wants me.

You should know that not everyone has the perfect control over their emotions that Vulcans and (apparently) you do, they lose their shit in situations like this. She was probably sure they dog would die then and there, who would have thought the trainer knew doggie CPR?

>> ^visionep:
You are right that most people, including myself, really love their animals and that some people potentially would have a hard time containing their grief or fear when the animal is in a bad situation, that's not what I was commenting on. When the dog started recovering the lady kept up her hysteria and really showed that she doesn't understand or care how dogs think which in my mind shows that she was putting her own feelings before the dogs well being.

Another reason why I think he has schizophrenia rather than bi-polar: he has his kids with the porn stars and him. Even when they party! (Although, I must admit it could be bi-polar as mania can get REALLY bad accompanied by psychotic/hallucinatory type situations and grandeur; and this happened after a binge...)

The porn stars have even said publicly that the children don't belong there. Charlie sounds like he's having some disconnects with reality. Most likely due to drugs (which is why bi-polar is popular, because of it's typical "self-medicating" issues, but this isn't self-medication as that entails that there is a lacking in mood, and Charlie never seems depressed. Plus during the interview he said he was clean for quite sometime; he didn't sound like it.

This all sounds like schizophrenia (if it is bi-polar, I'm guessing it's more drug related than anything else, due to his own words): ranging from psychotic, to normal, to semi-delusional or completely delusional; the drugs would increase the effect and also create more issues if the use is heavy. I personally think he's created this psychotic, semi-delusional state most likely from the "hardcore" drugs (his seven rocks, and self created non-terrestrial based logic). That stuff is like a Vulcan mind meld with a potato if you use it non-stop; it'll force your mind to neurologically connect itself in all sorts of ways it shouldn't. That's assuming there isn't some damage in there (like plaques, causing shifts in personality; that's a determination only the closest to him, or himself, can make).

I like how he sues Warner Brothers for firing him. The other actors on the show should counter-sue him.

@Gallowflak

I would argue that it does require at least a greater intellectual maturity to stay an atheist and live with the conviction that there is no big brother in the sky to help you or alleviate your suffering. For example, Jesus said the suffering will be alleviated only when you die, but most Christians ignore that part and think that prayer acts in this world, hence the strong placebo effect seen in some. Now I am much more impressed by the Buddhists monk who, after years of training, can use this placebo effect almost on demand, but you have to wonder if at that point religion is necessary at all. It seems more like mental discipline. Religious belief may help to persevere in your attaining this mental discipline, but I very well doubt that it is beyond science's grasp.

Also, you seem to have missed a crucial part: the atheist says that his understanding of that experience must change, not that it will (automatically) change. Herein lies the shortcomings of the human mind. But the potential for change, the openness, is there. Of course, if you think that I mean that "openness" also means openness to religious ideas, then you are sadly mistaken. Religious ideas have been rejected by the atheist because they do not adhere to the basic premise of trusting only experience (I could broaden this to accommodate the odd rationalist atheist but they are so rare in my experience that the effort would not be consistent with the Pareto principle to do so).

Now, you may think that compartmentalization can give you the best of both worlds: I use religious ideas in some domains (like morals and ethics) and science in others (basically everything else). But that is wanting to eat your cake and have it too. Religious ideas presuppose some weird metaphysics that will creep in your science sometime or another. Plus, counting on religion to guide your morals blinds you to the actual psychological underpinnings of those judgements. And really, if you change some of your religion's moral teachings because they do not agree with you, can you still say you are of this religion, nay that you are even religious at all? If you do compromise your religion's teachings in a kind of modern pragmatism, then you are misguided about religion: you do not need it. What I think is that many prominent religious figures come to this conclusion, that they do not need religion since they are "beyond" those kinds of petty worldly matters. But since they think they are special and that everyone else is below them, they think the masses still need religion. But really how they come to this conclusion, by falsely believing themselves superior, is ultimately irrelevant, and in fact many lay religious persons reason the same way with regards to their fellow citizens: others need religion, not me, so I need religion to protect me from them, etc. They do not see that a rational discourse about morals/ethics is possible, so they stick to religion as a default answer because they were educated that way.

Now, if we were perfect reasoning machines it would not matter whether we were "religious" or not, "theist" or not: we would never base our reasoning on false or unproven assumptions except as a way to partake in thought experiments, i.e. we would not base our actions on those thought experiments, except to verify the validity of their conclusions. That is the kind of perfect reasoning the atheists want. Of course, a perfect reasoning machine that has religious beliefs would suffer quite rapidly from extreme, possibly debilitating, cognitive dissonance. That is why I think religion must be erased if we want our reasoning to evolve towards something like perfection. You may not like the prospect of becoming a Vulcan now, but will you even be able to mind when you will have become one? No. Of course, those who will become Vulcan-like will be our descendants, not us, so they will care even less.

Agreed, but religion is a special consideration because it claims to know of a divine, metaphysical truth of enormous importance. Being an atheist, I've no issue with people subscribing to religion - not at all. I take issue with religion being imposed on children, inserted into the wrong canals of education and being so significantly involved in politics and government.

You've just said, in so many words, that you have no problems with religion, as long as it's invisible and has no effect on society. Children are incapable of making rational, informed decisions (same with a lot of "adults"). While Bertrand Rusell is correct that children's religious beliefs is installed at the mother's knee, there's not a better way. The State has no morality.

Like Karl Marx said, religion is a drug. But what I would add is that instead of being opium, it's a mild performance enhancing drug. At least that's what religious people think. But it's simply a placebo: religious people think that by believing in god they are protected/doing good/gaining eternal afterlife/etc. and so they feel better. Classic self-fulfilling prophecy type of thing. The problem of course is that this changes their mental balance, and if something comes that challenge their world view they will get angry, like the addict you try to reason with. If something happens to make their religious worldview crumble, they get depressed, i.e. withdrawal syndrome.

You've also just described liberalism. Liberals believe they are doing only good and that liberalism is altruistic. Who's going to argue against caring for the poor? But when the latest social program not only fails to reduce an evil but instead legitimizes and expands it, it's depressing. It has to be the fault of The Other. It's the Republican/Devils' fault--or lack of money--when the real answer is flawed human nature.

On the other hand atheists are always on neutral. If new scientific evidence challenge their worldview, they'll just say "well, my experience of the world is the same, but my understanding of that experience must change". This is exactly to the contrary of the religious, who always thinks that his experience of the world itself is at stake. Religious people think their experience of the world includes a god, when in fact only their understanding of the world - gotten from the Bible or whatever source of authority - includes a god to explain Everything Else. This is why, I think, the theological debate hasn't advanced in two thousand years: religious types try to prove or disprove the experience of a god - which with the way they usually define god is impossible either way - whereas scientific types say with Laplace that a god is a superfluous hypothesis in the understanding of the experience we have of the world.

Atheism is not neutral. It is a declaration that there are no deities and no supernatural influences, because they have never been scientifically proven. Yes, the religious are 'dependent' on their God/s, but the idea that atheists are Vulcan geniuses is equally absurd. Man remains a vicious animal with only a thin veneer of reason. If a stranger struck your child for no reason, rare is the fellow who would stop and say, "This stranger is obviously mentally unbalanced or just having a bad day, that's why he did that." The other 999 out of a thousand would have to be restrained to keep from killing the SOB.

So atheists are more mentally stable and view the world and our experience of it in a more reasonable, detached manner. These, I think, are two things needed for humankind to not destroy itself with its own technological marvels. With this in min, it is no wonder that fundamentalists think global warming and weapons of mass destruction are "necessary" : they think the world is ok as it is and all is well with their god's plan, whereas they must also protect themselves against the guys that do not believe in their own god (the atheist commies and the islamic terrorists).

There has never been a successful State sans religion. Remove God and the State becomes god, and the results of that are never good. Put another way, "As long as there is poverty, there will be gods."

@csnel3
@kulpims
@GeeSussFreeK
@NetRunner
@draak13
@gwiz665
@budzos
@Bidouleroux
@everyone else here
And while it is true the vulcans have emotions which if left unchecked can perpetuate acts of chaos, even logic could condone the acts of intervention under certain circumstances. Like what was mentioned earlier with transporting the inhabitants of an entire colony to another planet. Logic would dictate that saving a lives rather than having them face extinction, especially when taking such action takes minimal effort on the part of those who intervene is a far better outcome than ignoring them and moving on. some of those ants Q steps on could have made great stides, some Q are even cautious enough to look out for ant hills so they would not step on them. Remember that Q himself does not represent the continuum and the entire Q as a whole.

Now just so I am entirely clear here, I am not against the principles of the prime directive, it does have its importance. But it seems whenever this debate is drawn both parties in which are for or against the directive are under the impression the directive has to be the one sided stance. That is what I am against. It should indeed be a directive, a consideration to keep in regard, but upholding to a non debatable stature leaves no room for leniency, any more than abandoning it and following a reckless moral compass as those pro directive would imagine it to be. What the directive needs is a middle ground. A set of further principles which leaves room for making a rational and logical decision to intervene under appropriate circumstances.

I was going to save this for a future sift, but this seems like the best time to place this:



I fear that point the most. Is it really free thinking if everyone shares the same idea? Unity may bring about a positive force, but it will always need quarrelsome debate to establish its principles, When people need to resort to an order, to establish the prime directive as a one way street, is it unified logic, or a dictated mindset? And if it is either one, what happens when everything else becomes a one way street? even in the optimistic future Roddenberry Imagined, his future did not have a perfect race. Every race had its own strengths and weaknesses. And some of their strengths to others seemed like their weaknesses, but when they worked with and learned with one another, it provided a harmony of thought, principle and the idea that even Their "enlightened" principles needed adjustment from others.

So my point to all this is the prime directive should be seen as a recommended precaution which leaves room for debate, not a dogma, and certainly not something that should be taken lightly. With that said, I think I am past the point of sharing the video, and this should really be moved to sift talks so we can further *discuss this in greater detail.

@kasinator

Replicating weapons is not a theory. In fact, all weapons and ship are replicated except for those parts that use materials that can't be replicated (like latinum). Of course, normally there are safety lockouts that prevent you from replicating weapons, plus you would need a replication pattern.

But anyway, my point concerning the Prime Directive was that, as a Vulcan precept it is not primarily concerned with morality per se. When Spock tells Kirk that his holodeck solution is logical, he is not saying in any way that it is a "good" or "bad" solution. Spock doesn't take morality into consideration, only logic. Thus, while Kirk's solution is "logical" in light of the moral dilemma he faces (that he created for himself) it is not a situation that Spock would get himself into because Spock would not have deliberated on whether or not he must try to save the natives in the first place. And it's not like Spock doesn't have emotions. Even pure-blood Vulcans have emotions, they just shove them aside most of the time. To a Vulcan, acting on emotions invites chaos sooner or later and chaos is inherently unpredictable. Instead of trying to predict the unpredictable and play god, you decide not to interfere.

But then we kind of see the reverse with the Q for a while. They are so high-up in the food chain that they do not consider their interventions as disruptive any more than we consider our destroying of an ant colony disruptive. After all, ants as a whole will adapt and survive in one way or another. But still, even they must admit that they cannot predict what will happen to their own continuum and so they realize they can't stop themselves from evolving without losing what made them Q in the first place. Their "Prime Directive" of not artificially ascending lower lifeforms (except Riker for a while) into Q stems mostly from apathy towards non-Q things but also from self-preservation, as they cannot predict what would happen if non-evolved Q arrived en masse. Thus the same could be said of the Federation's Prime Directive, even if the self-preservation aspect is unavowed.

Let me be the mediator between you two. The prime directive was indeed from the vulcans. But dismissing the outcry of a race can be simply heartless. Letting the person die in the fire just because you dont know them is just a grotesque out of sight and mind excuse. handing out to those in need the means help is always a good thing. but you have to remember it still has consequences. the replicator idea for instance. Who is to say that they will just replicate food? they can replicate weapons just as easily in theory. and it can certainly cause a culture clash if they are like the native american type species.

The problem is not about if the prime directive is unfair, SFdebris pointed out it turned unquestionable, dogmatic. there is no negotiation anylonger when it really needs ore of a middle ground between helpiging and ignoring.

I don't think that's amoral, I think that's decidedly immoral. Like @ryanbennitt says above, the Federation is keeping people stupid, allowing genocide, famine, wars etc. At the very least, they could introduce their replicators to all friendly states they met and given them INFINITE food and materials. Not doing that, is intentionally keeping them down.

Because it is a post-scarcity world, there is no limit to supplies in the advanced races, but there is in the simple ones and some people will starve, some people will die because of the inaction of the Federation. I think this is immoral. (Morality is obviously different from person to person, but I think the "least harm principle" is almost universal.)

They should of course be careful when introducing new technologies, and do it gradually, but to make an arbitrary decision like "all pre-warp civilizations get nothing" is immoral.


>> ^Bidouleroux:

>> ^gwiz665:
The Prime Directive is immoral.
quality doublepromote

The Prime Directive is amoral. It comes from the Vulcans. It is a rational directive so as to not be squandered by moral dilemmas (when two options seem equally "good" or equally "bad"). The Prime Directive is neither good nor bad, it's just a directive to cut the moral Gordian Knot. That the application of the Prime Directive is debated so much shows why it exists : to cut the crap debates around morality. Because it's easy to think you won't interfere when you're far away but not so easy when you're in the middle of a situation. Hence the directive and hence the fact that they can't really punish you when you ignore it in the heat of a situation, unless you committed an actual crime like genocide. And I say "committed", not "let happen". You can let happen a genocide if by doing so you are respecting the Prime Directive in regard to a pre-warp civilizations' internal matters. If its two warp capable factions of the same civilization, it's a matter of whether there is ground to recognize them as two different civilizations, which is a political decision more than a moral one.
In Voyager they sometimes had good reasons to ignore the Prime Directive, for example with the Ocampas they were aware that they were being protected by an alien (the Caretaker). Also, the Kazon were warp capable and were interfering anyway so that's a good reason to beat the crap out of them (plus they were hostile from the get go). You can refrain from interfering in the internal matters of a civilization, but you can't use that excuse when it's not an internal matter (e.g. Picard and the Romulans vs. the Klingon civil war : don't interfere with the Klingon's own internal affairs but also keep the Romulans from interfering because that's not an internal matter).
The Prime Directive is not an absolute, but a code of conduct. Also, the only way I could see to get punished under it would be to give warp technology to a pre-warp civilization. That's a inter-civilization incident because you effectively wilfully bring a new player (de facto ally since you control their level of technological progress) on the galactic table, skewing things in your favor by artificial means. That's why you don't see the Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians or even the Ferengi giving warp technology. You just can't do that without facing consequences from other warp-capable civilizations.

>> ^gwiz665:

The Prime Directive is immoral.
quality doublepromote


The Prime Directive is amoral. It comes from the Vulcans. It is a rational directive so as to not be squandered by moral dilemmas (when two options seem equally "good" or equally "bad"). The Prime Directive is neither good nor bad, it's just a directive to cut the moral Gordian Knot. That the application of the Prime Directive is debated so much shows why it exists : to cut the crap debates around morality. Because it's easy to think you won't interfere when you're far away but not so easy when you're in the middle of a situation. Hence the directive and hence the fact that they can't really punish you when you ignore it in the heat of a situation, unless you committed an actual crime like genocide. And I say "committed", not "let happen". You can let happen a genocide if by doing so you are respecting the Prime Directive in regard to a pre-warp civilizations' internal matters. If its two warp capable factions of the same civilization, it's a matter of whether there is ground to recognize them as two different civilizations, which is a political decision more than a moral one.

In Voyager they sometimes had good reasons to ignore the Prime Directive, for example with the Ocampas they were aware that they were being protected by an alien (the Caretaker). Also, the Kazon were warp capable and were interfering anyway so that's a good reason to beat the crap out of them (plus they were hostile from the get go). You can refrain from interfering in the internal matters of a civilization, but you can't use that excuse when it's not an internal matter (e.g. Picard and the Romulans vs. the Klingon civil war : don't interfere with the Klingon's own internal affairs but also keep the Romulans from interfering because that's not an internal matter).

The Prime Directive is not an absolute, but a code of conduct. Also, the only way I could see to get punished under it would be to give warp technology to a pre-warp civilization. That's a inter-civilization incident because you effectively wilfully bring a new player (de facto ally since you control their level of technological progress) on the galactic table, skewing things in your favor by artificial means. That's why you don't see the Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians or even the Ferengi giving warp technology. You just can't do that without facing consequences from other warp-capable civilizations.