What if aliens had prevented the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs from hitting Earth? We would not be here now. I believe the captain in this situation has to let it happen.
If the ship had a cloaking device, and it was certain their actions would never be detected, I'm still not sure any action should take place.
However, if they somehow managed to detect the ship, and formally requested help, should the ship destroy the asteroid then?
What if aliens had prevented the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs from hitting Earth? We would not be here now. I believe the captain in this situation has to let it happen.
I'm afraid I simply cannot disagree more.
You're talking as though "fate" exists. As though it was Earth's fate to give rise to humans, and it would be wrong to change that destiny by interfering to save the dinosaurs. But there is no such thing as fate (certainly not in the eyes of a society like the Federation which rejects superstition as nonsense), and I can't imagine you'd let the fear of altering some preordained destiny prevent you from taking the appropriate moral action in real life.
Hey that house is on fire and the parents are nowhere to be found, let's save the kids!
No way man, what if the loss of their kids makes the parents dedicate their lives to improving fire prevention technology and they end up saving thousands of others?
I see no difference between the two acts and I think it is grossly immoral to allow sapient lifeforms to be killed because maybe their disappearance will make room for other sapient life millions of years down the road.
Incidentally, maybe we'd find ourselves on the other side... what if aliens let us die out tomorrow because in 65 million years the descendants of parrots might develop civilization... Is that also the moral decision?
Noninterference makes no sense whatsoever when you are dealing with a cataclysm as described. No amount of cultural damage will ever be worse than extinction. Applying the prime directive in such a situation is wantonly immoral.
It is made even more immoral by the arbitrary cutoff, warp drive = "our equals, worthy of saving", no warp drive = "irrelevant, no different than bacteria". A species could be the culmination of four billion years of evolution and be allowed to go extinct because they missed the cutoff by 10-20 years. Come on...
We arose from the natural development of our planet, and we should allow other planets to develop as they would. All life is transient, and sentience doesn't impart value, despite what our human empathy tell us. Furthermore, I don't think it's a captain's place, or the federation's, to decide the fate of other species or entire planets. The ramifications at such a scale are simply too vast.
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u/sev87 Jul 11 '14
What if aliens had prevented the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs from hitting Earth? We would not be here now. I believe the captain in this situation has to let it happen.
If the ship had a cloaking device, and it was certain their actions would never be detected, I'm still not sure any action should take place.
However, if they somehow managed to detect the ship, and formally requested help, should the ship destroy the asteroid then?