Is the Prime Directive Just?

Author: Jeff_Goldblum

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I think this question is too given to speculation to make for a good debate, but it still interests me.

Basically, Star Trek's heroes must abide by the Prime Directive, an order that forbids them from interfering in the affairs of primitive civilizations. Hardcore fans could probably argue it's more complicated than that, but let's assume it is this simple for the sake of this thread.

I suppose you could make two basic arguments in favor of the Prime Directive: an argument from utility and an argument from principle.

The argument from utility would contend that interference in alien cultures - no matter how benevolent in intention - will likely backfire and cause more problems than it solves.

The argument from principle would contend that interference in alien cultures is wrong simply because a species has a collective right to self-determination and unfettered development. According to this line of thought, there is something intrinsically desirable about a species charting its course without the guidance/influence of extraterrestrials.

But, if one were to adopt a policy of strict non-interference vis a vis primitive alien civilizations, one would commit oneself to the following:
-Permitting genocides and highly destructive wars.
-Permitting plagues, disease, general poor health and misery
-Permitting extinction events

It seems that although the Prime Directive has good intentions, it could result in unjust outcomes, at least some of the time.
drafterman
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The prime directive is one of those things that started out with good intentions but got pushed to the extremes as it developed over time. It's purpose is to protect the integrity of a civilization, but - originally - not at the expense of its existence:

SPOCK: Captain, our Prime Directive of non-interference.
KIRK: That refers to a living, growing culture. Do you think this one is?
TOS, Return of the Archons

Clearly, Kirk saw that the existence of a society takes precedence over its development. After all, if a society doesn't exist, it can't develop to begin with!

Somehow this principle got lost, and Starfleet Captains considered the prime directive to forbid interference even to save a civilization from extinction (even if said interference could perform without the civilizations knowledge!)

Inactive is still a moral decision, and the decision to led an entire civilization die is an immoral one.
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@drafterman
I appreciate your reply. For the Archons episode, I just figured Kirk was creating a loophole for the sake of the plot. I never took Kirk's (frequent) circumventions of the Prime Directive seriously, at least not in any philosophical sense.

Stepping aside from direct examples from Star Trek, what do you think about strict non-interference? You said that allowing a civilization to die is immoral. I agree. What about less clear cut situations?

For example, what if a technologically superior alien race had come across Earth while the Black Plague was ravaging humanity - would it have been morally justified for them to unobtrusively intervene by deploying an airborne cure to the disease?

What if technologically superior aliens had encountered Earth in the midst of WWII? Would they have been justified in forcibly ending the hostilities, in order to save lives?
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I think it only extends to events likely to bring about the end of that civilization. So those events wouldn’t qualify.
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@Jeff_Goldblum
Permitting genocides etc.

Based on the assumption that primitive alien civilisations are likely to develop in exactly the same way as human civilisation.

Which is a fair assumption I suppose. Universal constants and all.

Though based on these simple criteria, it would also be fair to assume that other universal civilisations are unlikely to be any more or less developed than our own.

Nonetheless, meddling in other peoples affairs does seem to be a human par for the course. 

So the Prime Directive would no doubt be interpreted to suit.

Beam me up Scotty.
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Based on the assumption that primitive alien civilisations are likely to develop in exactly the same way as human civilisation.

Which is a fair assumption I suppose. Universal constants and all.

Though based on these simple criteria, it would also be fair to assume that other universal civilisations are unlikely to be any more or less developed than our own.

Even if we assume aliens generally develop like us, there is good reason to expect we'd encounter extraterrestrials vastly more advanced and vastly less advanced than us. Human civilization is about 10,000 years old, which is like the blink of an eye on the cosmic timescale. Considered from this perspective, the odds that we would encounter aliens on par with our technological advancement actually seems low. What an incredible coincidence it would be if, in a galaxy that is billions of years old, we found aliens that were in the same basic place as us, technologically speaking.
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@Jeff_Goldblum
Though:
If all matter began and then evolved simultaneously.  

But:
Is everything a chance one off event. Or is everything purposeful and perhaps sequential?

if there is purpose and sequence, then maybe the universe only requires us.




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@Jeff_Goldblum
My first thoughts of the "Prime Directive" were 4 Robotic laws.  My bad.  Either way the following ---in bold---  applies in both cases.

....."Well, my MIRI colleague Luke Muehlhauser summarized it well when he said that problems often move from philosophy, to math, to engineering," Helm says. "Philosophy often asks useful questions, but usually in such an imprecise way that no one can ever know whether or not a new contribution to an answer represents progress. If we can reformulate the important philosophical problems related to intelligence, identity, and value into precise enough math that it can be wrong or not, then I think we can build models that will be able to be successfully built on, and one day be useful as input for real world engineering."

.....Helm calls it a true hard problem of science and philosophy, but that progress is still possible right now: "I'm skeptical that philosophy can solve it alone though since it seems to have failed for 3,000 years to make significant progress on its own. But we also can't just start attempting to program and engineer our way out of things with the sparse understanding we have now. Lots of additional theoretical research is still required."

I.e. I like Spocks approach more than I do Kirks, however, both have to be taken into account ---accounting ergo math---.

Kirk will respond impulsively from his gut of what is the correct thing to do.

The more complicated the situation the more philosophical, theoretical, and mathematical considerations must go into any violation of a human made "prime directive".  Desperate times call for desperated measures i..e the prime directive may be overridden depending on circumstances.

Remember it is human policy/directive and not a cosmic physical law/principle.

Statistical maths --via super-commputers--   can better gauge{ run } many outcomes{ scenarios } of action or inaction by the more superiorly engineered civilization. Once their run, then Kirk or a committee can reconsider action{ interference } or no-action, or many possible varibles of action{ interference }.

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@Jeff_Goldblum
The Prime Directive is foolhardy. If they develop naturally, they could turn into a bloodthirsty militaristic civilization which develops spaceflight and then starts attacking everybody else. If somebody had been around the block to rehabilitate the Klingons 2000 years prior to the start of the series a butt ton of death could've been prevented.
In addition, the Prime Directive does not prevent the Klingons or Romulans from intervening in a primitive civilization. Their intervention would doubtlessly be much worse so the humane thing would be for the Federation to make sure first contact happened on their benevolent terms.

15 days later

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@Jeff_Goldblum
I fully agree with this:
For the Archons episode, I just figured Kirk was creating a loophole for the sake of the plot. I never took Kirk's (frequent) circumventions of the Prime Directive seriously, at least not in any philosophical sense.


I got to say, I strongly dislike that the new movies turning the Prime Directive into a joke.

Similarly, I love The Orville actually exploring issues of what happens to a culture when the Prime Directive is violated.
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@Barney
Come on it's just entertainment Jim but not as we know it.

It's Cowboys and Injuns in outer space.

Phasers locked and ready.

Any warty headed bad guy is gonna get it.

F**K the directive.
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The idea of the Prime Directive is inherently immoral, not just the way it is applied. The very idea itself should have been scrapped when the Federation was founded. I would rather see if anyone is interested in debating the topic before going into detail as to why I think this but there are a lot of very good reasons.

11 days later

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@Jeff_Goldblum
The prime-directive is based on exactly the same principle as personal-sovereignty.

I don't want anyone coming into my home without my express consent.

I don't want anyone spying on me in my home.  Whether I find out about it or not.

I certainly don't want anyone trying to tell me what to do in my own home.

In the exact same way,

We should respect the sovereignty of a foreign country.

We should respect the sovereignty of a foreign planet.

Whatever they do in their country or on their planet is their own business.

But when they venture out into the interstellar neighborhood (develop "warp" technology), that's when they should be contacted and introduced to their neighbors.

People love to try and scare everyone with the old, "appeal to atrocity".  Genocide this, murder that, extinction, injustice, pineapple-pizza, etcetera.

OOoooOOOoohhh, so scary!!!

It's all just a smoke-screen they use to "justify" violating your personal privacy.

In startrekland they think it's "ok" to monitor civilizations as long as the civilization doesn't know about it?

I guess by the same reasoning it would be ok for you to put cameras in your neighbor's house as long as they never find out about them?

This makes no sense.  (IFF) you don't want other people or other countries doing the same thing to you (forcing their values and cultural norms on others) (THEN) YOU SHOULDN'T DO IT TO ANYONE ELSE EITHER.
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@3RU7AL
Would you be interested in a short (4k-6k character) debate about whether the Star Trek Prime Directive is ethical?
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Sounds good.
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@3RU7AL
Heading to work in less than an hour. Do you mind putting the resolution and rules together yourself and I will look over it tomorrow and decide whether to accept? Only stipulation I can think off off the top of my head is that it should be clear we are talking specifically about the Star Trek version.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Sounds like a good debate. Maybe I'll get to vote on it.

38 days later

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@blamonkey
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@Singularity
Bumping this thread to see if anyone else may be interested in debating this topic, my stance is detailed in post 12.

Tagging random ppl I think may be interested and disagree with me.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
My debate with oromagi has the same line of thinking I would apply here. The prime directive is stupid
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@Singularity
Well nevermind then, no point in debating something we agree on lol.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
I agree with you as well. The Prime Directive was immoral.
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@SirAnonymous
Goddamnit.

Any interesting people you can think of that might disagree with me?
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Alec is wrong about it is immoral though. None of our business if other societies commit genocide or are transphobic. They have every right to sacrifice virgins or do whatever they want that doesn't harm us. 
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@Singularity
wrong about it is immoral though.

To clarify, you agree with me that it is stupid but you disagree with my stance that it is immoral? (I primarily think it is stupid because of how blatantly immoral it is).
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@Discipulus_Didicit
I'm afraid not. I have no idea what positions people take on Star Trek politics.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
It may be useful to mess with alien societies so people friendly to us are the ones in power for example. 
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@Singularity
Well that may or may not be something I consider moral depending on the circumstances (though realistically if we ever meet another alien species either they or we are going to be so outclassed that this becomes a moot point... Most likely they will be the outclassed ones)

But do you think that preventing interference is immoral? I say it is.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Why? Let's say they sacrificing virgins every year maybe 1 million virgins, Would that be a thing you stopped? 

If so, would it be okay for them to come down and enforce pro life laws on us? 

If we prevent them from genocide, well a lot of people think we commit white genocide, if their analysis is the same is it okay for them to come here, enforce borders and immigration laws, or sterilize all people in mixed race relationships. 

We just cannot judge their morals as inferior to our own and enforce our customs of morality on them.


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@Singularity
Why? Let's say they sacrificing virgins every year maybe 1 million virgins, Would that be a thing you stopped? 

Sure, I would probably offer them things like nuclear technology to improve their standard of living too assuming I did not have reason to believe they would use it to wage a nuclear war among themselves.

The rest of your post is pretty well summed up by your ending quote:

We just cannot judge their morals as inferior to our own and enforce our customs of morality on them.

To which my response would be to look at you dumbfounded for a moment or two before innocently asking "And why the hell not?"

I'm not suggesting that we strongarm anyone or institute any kind of coersive policy. A policy of gradual and subtle indoctrination against the idea of sacrificing Innocents, perhaps over the period of 200 to 300 years if necessary, combined with a gradual technological uplifting to prevent unnecessary deaths from things like disease and famine and to increase their overall standard of living... That kind of thing would be expressly forbiden by the Prime Directive. And I think that is a damn shame.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Why would we care to make their lives better anyway? You saw how us attempting to do that opens us up to the same type of things where now superior aliens can just randomly declare their morals superior and try to coerce us into not allowing our women to shave their armpit hair. 

So besides opening ourselves up to alien cultures influencing ours in a way we wouldn't like, why would we assuming we would make their lives better, actually bother to do so?

I don't look at a mound of ants and wonder what I can do to improve their society, and they live on my planet, why would I care about some idiot persei Omicron 8