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.

Quite well done. I've usually excused the capricious way in which the "prime directive" ended up being a placeholder for "I need the heroes to be conflicted about resolving a major issue by doing something trivial so there's dramatic tension", but he really nails them to the wall.

The real problem is that after Gene Roddenberry died, you had that awful, awful travesty known as Star Trek: Voyager, where following the Prime Directive always meant doing something hideously awful.

The other series got sketchy about it at times, but ST:Voy is really the issue here.

I was really impressed with this. This really puts the ethics embedded in star trek that I really enjoyed under the microscope.

One of the difficulties of lifting the underlying ethics out of the series is that the series itself spans its creation over an incredible period of time; I'm not sure Gene Roddenberry was thinking 30 years ahead when he first came up with it =P. Also, Gene died shortly into the 4th season of start trek TNG...he wasn't around to be really involved with deep space 9, voyager, or enterprise. This is reflected in TOS vs. TNG; in TOS, the goal was to, "explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." TOS was about adventure; they had the people fly out to find a new world, fly down 'n meet 'em, and then get in all kinds of trouble. They seemed to focus on meeting civilizations that were approximately as technologically advanced as starfleet's. In TNG, the stated mission is the same, but the show has a much stronger anthropological sentiment to it. They actually fly down to places where they would be considered gods (and occasionally are, when they screw up).

From the anthropological perspective, the prime directive really does make a lot of sense...to a point. Suppose that you do come across some relatively underdeveloped civilization, and you have the chance to immediately save a lot of citizens of that civilization. Your direct interference with that civilization will indeed mess up your experiments concerning the study of how civilizations develop, so it's something that you generally want to avoid. Trying to save a civilization from one problem necessarily induces another problem. By solving a civilization's problem, their behavior may change to become reliant, and therefor dependent, upon you. Then, what are the ethics of *not* stopping your mission to explore out new civilizations? What are the ethics of *not* creating a supply line to suit the needs of your newly dependent civilization? Should you try to make that civilization self-sufficient to solve their own problems, what are the ethics of giving them technology without the social infrastructure for them to be able to deal with that technology? Finally, after all that, suppose that you give a new civilization new technology and a new social infrastructure to be able to deal with that technology responsibly; you've just committed a much more interesting and philosophical upset, and you've essentially wiped out an entire culture, and replaced it with another. From an anthropological standpoint, that's complete disaster.

That said, there are still times when it's a much bigger disaster to let things fall their course. Suppose a natural disaster is about to occur in which an entire planet will be destroyed. In this case, by not intervening, the entire culture and population will be eradicated, which is completely unacceptable from both anthropological and humanitarian standpoints. What do you do? In one episode of TNG (I can't remember which one), the solution was to transport the entire civilization to their holodecks, and transfer them to a new planet, all the while they believe that they are migrating to some new location on their homeworld. They preserved both the life and the culture, and satisfied both standpoints, which is a great and rare solution.

This video illustrates this caveat and many others by showing that the prime directive should *not* be considered a dogma that should be followed by every anthropologist blindly, but rather should be a rule of thumb. In a tough spot, it'll get you the best outcome most of the time. At other times, advanced levels of thought are necessary in order to fish out the actual best solution. For someone to break this rule of thumb very frequently might raise some eyebrows about what they are doing, as is the case seen in the clip where the senior officer was putting Picard in the hotseat about breaking the directive on 9 separate occasions in a short span of time.

The fact of the matter, though, is that it is *not* treated as a dogma in the series; it *is* treated as a rule of thumb. The fact that Picard broke it on 9 occasions in a short span of time truly shows this. In several other clips that was shown in this video, they actually *did* end up breaking the prime directive.

I believe that the person who created this video was just upset that he was never issued a starfleet academy textbook on the prime directive which spells out every detail and nuance of the directive =P. Of course they don't go into high levels of detail on it; the mass wouldn't be interested, or would just take a course on ethics & philosophy instead. Instead of going into high detail, they did as entertainers do, and just presented the rule in its most frustrating (and therefore interesting) fashion, by showing all of the situations when it makes us violate our own compulsion to follow our own set of moral standards. I believe that the prime directive in the series does come close to that which the author of the clip wants, but is merely stifled in its presentation by drama and intrigue.

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.

"Oooh, there's some people in trouble, but we judge ourselves to be superior to them, therefore we won't help them, we'll just sit back and study them for a bit then move on." - The prime directive of the ass-hole.

In reply to this comment by kasinator:
In reply to this comment by csnel3:
This is some good stuff, I'm going to listen again, lots to take in.
On a side note: I would like to follow MY Prime Directive, and violate Capn Janeway.

Thanks for your thoughts on this. I was thinking about putting this in the discussion board but IDK.

It would make for a great discussion, I assume you are talking about the Prime directive, and not my my feelings for Captain Janeway, Both would be interesting to me.

Your video, Star Trek talks on foreign affair policy AKA prime directive, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Star trek, prime directive, forien policy' to 'Star trek, prime directive, foreign policy, rules, laws' - edited by ant

Certainly not. Forcing your influence on an alien civilization is just as bad as keeping them ignorant.
>> ^kulpims:

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

are you saying Federation should copy US foreign policy?

>> ^gwiz665:

The Prime Directive is immoral.
quality doublepromote


are you saying Federation should copy US foreign policy?

>> ^gwiz665:

The Prime Directive is immoral.
quality doublepromote


well like he said, it isn't entirely, it really needs a middle ground. Thanks for the promotes guys!

The Prime Directive is immoral.

*quality *doublepromote

I think the Prime Directive is one of the best, most hard-sci-fi aspects of Star Trek.

I would hope that any interstellar civilization we create or join would have the same policy.

In reply to this comment by csnel3:
This is some good stuff, I'm going to listen again, lots to take in.
On a side note: I would like to follow MY Prime Directive, and violate Capn Janeway.

Thanks for your thoughts on this. I was thinking about putting this in the discussion board but IDK.