Fermi Paradox: The Prime Directive
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- One solution to the Fermi Paradox, the big question of where all the aliens are, is that extraterrestrials might hide from us to avoid altering our society, a concept we see in Star Trek called the Prime Directive. Is such a policy ethical, and if so, should we follow it?
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Credits:
The Fermi Paradox: The Prime Directive
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Episode 264a; November 15, 2020
Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur
Written by:
Isaac Arthur
Editors:
Darius Said
Jerry Guern
Keith Blockus
Cover Art:
Jakub Grygier www.artstation...
Graphics:
LegionTech Studios
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound epidemicsound.c...
attention aliens: we have had enough of this “figuring it out for ourselves”. can you please come down and show us how cold fusion works?
WHAT! NO! GIVE US KUGELBLITZ REACTORS, NOT COLD FUSION!
If your empire needs a bunch of belligerent, adaptable crazy people to fight wars, we've got plenty of those. Just give us the plasma rifles and mech suits and let us loose. We need to get all of our pent-up aggression off-planet.
It's alright, we are only 20 year away from mastering that....
@@ericcomstock3237 oof. like giving a baby something like a power drill... not a good idea to jump in that deep
@@CharlesUrban yeah, just name it religion and you can make humans do anything... (not all, but most)
A note on morality: it is possible to deeply believe in moral values, hold others accountable to them, set up society around them, and fight those who impinge upon them, while also believing your moral views are subjective.
Anything otherwise is a little silly tbh
Subjective meaning what in this context ? That your moral values are personal ? What would be the measuring stick you use to compare moral values in this case ? Meaning who has the right to impose his moral judgements on other people ? If you don't believe in the transcendance of your moral system, it makes no sense to hold other people accountable to your personal judgements.
I don't even think "objective mortality" is a rational concept but I have no issue calling things wrong. Why? Because *everyone* saying something is wrong is actually stating *they* believe it's wrong.
Morality is by definition subjective as morality is nothing but the judgement of a conscious being.
@@MrPoster42 you can base moral laws on objective reasoning but your end goal will always be subjective
@@herscher1297 Exactly. Once you subjectively agree on a moral goal then certainly objective measures of achieving it can be determined.
If killing animals for food is agreed to be wrong then plans for all vegetarian diets can be made. However whether it's wrong to kill animals for food cannot be objectively determined.
How to enforce quarantine in a region of the universe without supervision:
Limit the maximum speed to under natural expansion of space. (Or you have to create spacial expansion that's faster than the maximum possible speed)
None can get in, none can get out. Those who try get "stuck".
For the time being, I'm still a believer in the rare Earth theory.
Pat yourself on the back because you're one of the few *non-idiots* on TH-cam
Me too but some kind universal laws mathematical and physical keeping us from finding out other civilizations
@@hiqhduke i would not call most people on youtube idiots
@@herscher1297 most people who watch channels like this one believe in aliens and human space travel & colonization
@@hiqhduke i dont think they believe in it, they just think its possible
I usually image that the solution to the Fermi Paradox is that we are the first born. We are the first intelligent life in the universe and that all extraterrestrial life is less advanced than us, so less advanced that we would consider them to be wild animals. This is assuming that there are animals on other planets, because it could be that all extraterrestrial life is nothing more than plant life or bacteria. Why does life on other planets have to evolve like life here did? Why does life on other planets have to evolve to the point of becoming intelligent enough to build technology of any kind? Why does life on other planets have to evolve beyond plants or beyond bacteria? Why can't we be the first of our kind of life in the universe? This type of solution to the Fermi Paradox is a solution that is very friendly to a religious viewpoint. In fact, the objective right and wrong could exist in a religion we already know of. So remember that.
Great video, keep up the good work. God bless.
----------------------------------------------------------------- sincerely a nerdy Christian.
A very thought provoking episode. However I think you would have to be pretty dedicated to the Prime Directive to forgo the benefits of building a Dyson Sphere just to avoid influencing a civilization 500 light years away. Remember, the Fermi Paradox is not just about why advanced civilizations are not talking to us, its about why we don't see any sign of them at all.
" I died to save a million people" is a great epitaph.. only if there's a million + beings left to appreciate it. Otherwise, maybe just enjoy what you have left, and be sad for a million people.
That's survival. And sometimes, one survivor is all that is needed to keep life moving along.
I actually liked the way Stargate approached this vs Star Trek, the Gua'old wanted to keep tech of their slaves low so they'd be revered as Gods/Goddesses though really didn't care what happened to them and wanted to destroy anyone who was a threat to them (both to keep their position and their survival) The Tollans when we first meet them introduced more advanced tech to a less advanced race and not only did the less advance race destroy themselves but also disrupted the Orbit of their homeworld and so without the aide of their tech and the Stargate on their world they'd of died too. The Asgard were the peers of the Gua'old technologically speaking (and being superior in many regards) but maintained their non-interference of lesser advanced races by incorporating planets into a treaty that kept them safe often without the less advanced race noticing though it was "Standard custom to have a representative of the planet in question involved in the negotiation." but stipulated that they were not able to interfere via natural occurrence (in the case of an asteroid hurtling towards Earth SG-1 appeals to the Asgard for help and gets turned down because of it). Likewise the Atlantiens once ascended kept the MilkyWay Galaxy hidden from the Orai similar to the jammer idea postulated here.
Star Trek is definitely more of a cultural icon than Stargate, but I think the Federations concept as a whole of non-interference with less advanced races/species isn't practical coming into existence so much later The Vulcans didn't have an official practice, but generally didn't coming from their own history. The Romulans wouldn't overtly interfere but they would manipulate if it suited them. The Klingons thirst for combat means they flat out don't care, the Borg only will initiate assimilation only if there is something distinct about the species in question, if what they find is either redundant technologically or biologically and it's not a threat to them they are generally indifferent to the whole affair.
Is it Thursday?
No? ... Bonus, Dude!
Thank you Isaac Arthur.
Loved the Bonus segment.
I noticed the Hades 9 animations in this video. What ever happened with that project? Some people online say it's dead. That would be a bummer, it looked so awesome
It’s pretty much dead, they ran out of money.
I absolutely love watching SFIA while cooking dinner 🍲 ❤️ 1 of my favourite parts of this episode was: (paraphrasing btw) “They might not be just 1 species, if such a concept even exists to a civilization that’s mastered genomics, cybernetics & AI 🧬 before you got done playing with flint stones 🪨 “ LoL 😄
As a biologist, I think that looking at life on earth might help us to understand how life on other planets could look like. All life forms on earth contain cells in order to overcome the second law of thermodynamics which states that everything in the universe becomes more unordered over time (and life is highly ordered). However, the simple fact that cells have membranes and highly complex biochemical reactions helps to overcome this issue. Moreover, life always contains a stable molecule as a storage device (such as DNA), reproduce and undergo evolution (I just made a video about life on earth and other planets). Other life forms should theoretically also contain cells, a storage molecule, reproduce and change over time!
Life does not overcome the second law of thermodynamics. It exploits the hell out of it. After all, it's only in the process of spreading energy around that you can harness some for your own use.
I agree overall.
I'm a genetics major. I have a hypothesis based on observations of how genetic sequences arrange themselves in a primordial soup set up in the presence of specific sound waves.
The idea is that the movements of the planets in a solar system cause a kind of music in the atmosphere of some early planets. This music induces the arrangement of genetic sequences which, after enough time's assembling, eventually give rise to self-replicating biology. In this model, the virus form would actually come first, as some kind of molecule that's trying to appropriate other molecules to be more like itself.
From there, the types of life that would emerge would depend on the types of environments we have. For example, here on Earth both cyanobacteria and halobacteria developed. Both still exist to this day, but cyanobacteria succeeded to become the basis of photosynthesis on Earth. In fact, the chloroplasts of plants share a common ancestor with cyanobacteria, which I personally verified with a DNA fingerprint. My model suggests that the reason why cyanobacteria took this role is because it was most suitable for the role. If anything would have appropriated Halobacterial it would have been out completed because it targets frequencies of light that are not suitable targets for this planet. However, on another planet with a different primary set because it targets frequencies of light that are not suitable targets for this planet. However, on another planet with a different set of light frequencies, things could have been different. And plants could have evolved with purples and Reds instead of greens.
This suggests that a multitude of models will develop in the early primordial soup leaving only a few at the end to develop further. Which we actually see an example of here with cyanobacteria bs halobacteria.
In fact, on earth ee have at least 4 models. Cyanobacteria and halobacteria are competing models of photosynthesis, while chemosynthesis and radiotrophs are competing models for life on a world without light. The chemotrophs depend on seismic activity while radiotrophs depend on sources of radiation. As a side note, I once designed an exoplanet model that shows how life could thrive around a gamma ray pulsar using the radiotrophic model.
Now, let's take a more extreme example. Our biology is carbon-based because carbon is the most suitable atom in this group for what is needed at Earth conditions. There has been speculation of silicon-based life, but this is largely been ruled out because it wouldn't be suitable. For Earth. this is largely due to the fact that if you were to try to replicate cellular respiration with silicon you'd end up with a solid instead of a gas . However, at extremely high temperatures in which carbon based life could not survive because organic chemistry doesn't work silicon-based life might succeed. so, in the early primordial soup set up, we would end up with a silicon-based model. we don't have any examples of this on Earth, but that could be because extremophiles ended up being sufficient for that niche. and there could have been other models too, not that we would be able to verify if such life ever existed on Earth, but if model is correct then it should have at least briefly appeared.
so, overall, what I'm basically suggesting is that genetics is an intrinsic function of the universe that will give rise to things very similar to life on Earth if the conditions were identical and we would only see differences to what is most suitable for the planet they evolve on.
my hypothesis could potentially be tested if you were to expose space music to a primordial soup set up and leave the setup running for multiple years. if you get even to the point of molecules Scavenging material from other molecules it would verify my hypothesis.
@@Elliandr elaborate! I’m interested!!
Legend has it the tentacled faced monster in Isaac's videos is still trying to find the right beaker.
He's looking for the Pale Ale.🍺
Nah Isaac just keeps him locked in his basement and feeds him food scraps.
@@pflernak sometimes I wonder what his name is or if we can even pronounce it.
I’ve seen this clip in other people’s videos. I think he may be one of those free use non copyrighted aliens
Science Squid is still trying to figure it out.
One of the main issues of the prime directive is that either every single independent power agrees to it and actively enforces it, or the ones who came up with it have to enforce it with strength. There's really no reason for, let's say, the Ferengi Alliance not to exploit pre-warp species, especially if their planet has something they want.
Another issue is, how would you apply it to a species that managed to build non-FTL, generational ships and had sensors sophisticated enough to receive and decode FTL transmissions, thus being aware of the galaxy being a busy place?
The bench mark for warp drive is to specific. As you say, what if they build a generation ship, or passive technology.
Star trek addressed this in one of the Titan novels. Riker discovers a planet with a world ocean. While they are exploring the planet they realize that the giant squid is actually an advanced civilization. They never developed space flight because both the planet, and solar system environment hindered advancement in that direction. However Riker sees that these squid people had highly advanced technology and understanding of science. Riker comes to the conclusion that singling out warp tech as the sole bench mark for contact is limited and does not reflect other equivalent advancements.
The Ferengi are not a UFP member so it can be assumed they do that in their own space. There is even evidence because we have a Voyager episode where two Ferengi pose as prophets to a civilisation to exploit them.
I got it that warp technology are the general limit for it but sure thing if a generational ship have managed to cross the void between stars then that should be taken into consideration. Also there are other non warp reliant FTL methods in Star Trek.
@@michaelpettersson4919 Take into consideration the ancient Bajoran solar sail ship that reached Cardassia. That alone should have been an exception to the rule. Sure, they weren't FTL but they could, under certain circumstances, reach warp speed.
Well, the Federation does not enforce the prime directive outside of its borders and the operating space of its own ships. Also, yeah, the rule doesn't make sense because it is just a TV show.
One correction about the Borg: they don't want to assimilate *everyone*. They have standards which not all species meet. Specifically, some species are considered unworthy of assimilation because their biology and technology would detract from the Borg's quest to achieve their concept of "perfection". The Kazon are the only one we're told about, but there are presumably others.
“How did your species survive in Borg space for millennia?”
“We were so worthless, it wasn’t even worth the effort to assimilate us.”
“That’s...good?”
@@jasonhenry8067 On the other han Seven mentioned that the Borg captured a Talaxian vessel and the crew became excellent drones. So we know that the talaxians are worthy of the honor.
@@michaelpettersson4919 Talaxians are very accommodating, so apparently that translates to being a drone.
@@jasonhenry8067 wait, aren't they exterminated if not assimilated? (I hadn't watched every series yet)
Humanity is safe then from assimilation:
1) We got Windows and its tiny preinstalled games.
2) We got B and C starlets
3) We got reality TV
I do think the Borg wouldn't even be able to distinguish us from rocks and trees.
Well, maybe not be able to... but they wouldn't want to.
@7:30 "It is entirely possible our whole Oort Cloud is one big swarm of mines and anti-ship batteries". Damn! Now I'll never think the same about the Oort Cloud ever again😱💣 #mindblown
It was at that moment that minds exploded like those entirely possible mines.
It would make sense. When you're playing on a 3D Battlefield that's the only shape that would make sense. Unfortunately it's also the most natural shape in the universe so would be hard to spot
The Prime Directive is my go-to excuse for being an introvert.
Lol
It has been my reason for not telling stupid people, they're stupid.. If someone doesnt have the intelligence to know they're not too bright then they are by definition out of bounds.
@@radicaledwards3449 You know, it's hard to resist making a mean joke when you leave us an opening like that. :-)
@@jbtechcon7434 I admire your restraint!
Exactly. Who am I to change people's futures? I only make contact every 7 years during Pon Farr.
The only way the Prime Directive could ever work would be with FTL travel. Otherwise, all the issues arise with maintaining a coherent civilization/society over large parts of a galaxy let alone chunks of the universe. Imagine a small group of aliens giving us the knowledge/technology to end scarcity, cure all diseases, and never die. We would see them as the greatest heroes in history. Then a couple centuries later more of their species show up to punish our saviors for helping us. The only viable option would be to have an armada at every solar system that may develop life to prevent any ships from approaching and this assuming that none of the armadas have cultural/ideological drift over millions of years.
I'm bet one day when we finally learn what the underlying cause of the Fermi paradox is it'll wind up being something irritatingly simple and unremarkable that was right in front of us the whole time. Lol 😆
I think it's just that complex life is super rare, which is why we see nothing.
Its space hitler
@@Sir_Budginton From my own thinking, this only makes the Fermi Paradox worse. The first civilization to appear on the galactic stage will find the galaxy completely empty and ripe for colonization, possibly for quite a long time. If complex life is super rare, it only means they'd have even more time for taking over the whole galaxy for themselves. And now we need an explanation why we haven't seen anyone do that.
So it's either we are the first or the first civilization hides its existence from us.
@@Nethan2000 But isn't that only applicable if complex life is common enough to occur within the distance that another complex life form does. If complex life is so rare that they basically never occur in the same area, so detecting each other is basically never going to happen. The other aspect is time, space is so big that even if we had been able to send an extremely powerful signal at the start of our civilization the distance that would have covered given the scale of the universe would be basically nothing. I'm with the OP on this one, complex life is rare and the universe has a lot of spacetime for it to hide in
@@Nethan2000 Well supposedly our Earth is among the first 4% of Earth like planets expected to ever form in our galaxy. We are pretty early to the party.
You know, the prime directive doesn't necessarily have an ethical motivation. Some of the worst attempts at the trope seem less like a moral dilemma and more like some advanced civilization "farming" less advanced civilizations for culture/innovation.
Farming us for innovation? There are still several barely contacted tribes of humans, why don't we farm them for innovation?
Well we have a much larger popluation of innovators, and its easier to innovate when you already have access to all the best tools, textbooks ect. And we know what the cutting edge of what we actually need innovating is. If the primitives find a slightly better way to chip flint hand axes, we don't care much, we aren't chipping hand axes.
Of course, advanced aliens would have intelligence enhancement as well as a larger population and better tools.
@@donaldhobson8873 Usually this kind of 'innovation farming' is either of a "different way of looking at a problem" type, where the Big Alien Intelligence is too stuck in their ways after millenia of being Super Awesome and it's up to the lowly primitive human to be dumb enough to try the thing that works. See Asgard for an example of a species who valued humans for being dumb enough that they didn't really give much technology until the very end.
The other type is art/cultural, mostly. You don't need super awesome lazors and phased beaming technology to make a good soap opera!
@@Descanlin Cultural is more plausible, kind of. The aliens still have a vastly larger population. They also have better simulations. They probably are more intelligent. They likely want media made for sensory modalities that we don't have. They probably don't speak any human language when interacting with other aliens. They might have vastly different emotions, never mind social conventions.
If they are here for our culture, then the alien world is >99% alien culture, but a few of them like to watch an odd documentary about humans.
Various animal species have "culture" in the sense of learned info passed from parent to offspring. It gets an odd nature documentary.
Actually @humiecrusher
is correct. In Enterprise we learn that Vulcans introduced this rule because some of they early contacts ended badly. Invention of Warp Drive is moment when contact become unavoidable, as such you basically need make contact in hope that civilization grow enough to become part of the community. There is good TNG episode about that, where Enterprise crew is coincidently revealed and civilization decide to cancel they Warp project as they culture put them in center of the universe and they would need time to change they society. Of course there are also dumb episodes debating if it is justified to redirect asteroid and save civilization (of course it is because they would not find that). Also best example of how cultural pollution can end are the Ferengi. For reminder they bough Warp Drive from traveling merchants and as result develop cult of money. It take them some time to finally recognize rules of heathy bussines any normal civilization develop over time.
@@OfficerHotpants There are a bunch of different ways to turn electricity into light, incandescent bulbs, florescent tubes, LED's ect. That humans invented. There are plenty of other cases where we have multiple techs that do basically the same thing. If the aliens are somehow having a problem with this, they can give more grants to blue sky research.
This argument only works if the aliens really want to know new and different ways to do the same thing (or they wouldn't be research farming us) But don't want to invent it themselves.
Also, I suspect that anything we could hope to invent at all would be fairly easy for them to invent. And that almost all of our inventions would be useless to them, because they have a better way of doing things. How much use would a slightly more efficient design of vacuum tube be now?
TL;DR: I'm all for interfering (a.k.a. uplifting) so long as it's done intelligently and with the proper finesse.
I imagine the idea of the prime directive was borne from the real-world historical events and effects of colonization and cultural manipulation in the Americas, Africa, etc. and the general stigma and criticism we put on them today. However, in my opinion, the notion that less advanced civilizations should be left alone and let fate or Darwinism sort it out, while quaint, is naïve, wasteful and could arguably be immoral. Obviously, humans in the distant future shouldn't just throw themselves at other worlds with less advanced species, haphazardly giving them whatever diseases we carry and handing them all sorts of technology they can't understand, much less treat with respect. That said thousands of years of conflict and natural disasters have certainly cost humanity its fair share of lives; the idea of helping another species avoid that can be rather appealing. I'm not suggesting we interfere in every aspect of a less advanced society, because then we'd just be controlling them like science experiment. But, it would have been nice if when we finally figured out nuclear energy, some alien entity 'interfered' to let us know "Hey, good work on the splitting atoms thing; you should definitely use this for energy production and not for creating weapons of mass destruction that will almost certainly doom your species" (Yes, we can tell ourselves that already, but clearly it hasn't sunk in since we still have far more nuclear warheads than we do nuclear power plants. Mainly, I'm talking about the broad fundamentals; teaching a Neolithic-era species that's just learning agriculture how to farm more efficiently, showing an antiquity-era species dealing with plagues how to produce better medicinal treatments; helping a newly industrialized species operate cleaner and more environmentally-friendly; you know, 'teach a man to fish' kind of stuff, not hand them laser rifles so they can fight for you as auxiliaries. And obviously each one of those endeavors would have ramifications of their own (For instance, we saw how the creation of the cotton gin prolonged slavery in the US which in turn led to the Civil War; what the hell would have happened if tractors and combines were suddenly introduced in the late 18th Century?). But, a species capable of interstellar travel is almost certainly going to also have the technology and knowledge to mitigate negative effects. A.I. that can analyze and simulate millions of scenarios to determine the best course of action; stealth technology to observe and interfere without being noticed; hell, we'd probably be able to create biosynthetic bodies in another species likeness (the Day the Earth Stood Still style) to interact with them without them even realizing its true nature and thus avoid the risk of deity worship and such.
"Good work on the splitting of atom, there. Now, just don't use that to make weapons. "
"Wait... We can use this to make weapons?"
"OH! UHM!.. Crap!"
@@NarwahlGaming Lol. to be fair we figured that part out on our own pretty quick, within like 5 years.
Not to mention, humans, as adaptable and innovative as we are, do have a disturbingly impressive capacity for turning anything into a weapon.
Ahhhhh, the Star Trek law that gets violated constantly
The prime directive was essentially an allegory on global interventionism. The stated premise of it is anti-interventionist; the in-practice execution of it is interventionism, weighted by how serious the crisis is against the capacity of the civilization to deal with it. If an asteroid was going to wipe out their civilization(and they were pre-spaceflight), the various captains of the Star Trek universe air to save them, since a pre-space flight civilization couldn't reasonably be expected to deal with an asteroid.
The overall message was basically "not intervening at all is bad policy; but so is excessive intervention when its not 100% necessary". You gotta remember Star Trek started airring *during the early Cold War* where interventionism as policy was a hot topic; and continued to be a hot topic for decades.
Two ideas that might favour the prime directive:
- Isolation maximises divergence, and therefore novelty. A later inducted civilisation has greater chances to provide novelty for longer, as their quirks could develop for longer.
- waiting ensures compatibility. A civilisation that could learn a concept might lack the biological functions to embody that concept. Teaching a species with an extreme hunting instinct pacifism is likely not going to work, so they need to evolve further.
Which is really telling, when you think about it.
It's more what you'd call a guideline than actual rules^^
It gets violated, UNLESS it means we get to genocide a vulnerable species through inaction! Hooray, we're ethical!
(seriously, even assuming interfering with a war is bad, that doesn't necessarily mean that interfering in natural disasters like a 'sploding sun or an asteroid, or even biological disasters like a viral plague, is bad!) (the difference being you can pretty easily get away with fixing the problem and not being noticed, but distributing medical supplies or inspiring a medical breakthrough is a bit harder and you'll likely get noticed with the kind of half-assed tech Star Trek tends to use*)
(*seriously, star trek has all these neat dang technologies, powerful forcefields, guns with teleporting bullets, insanely strong metals... And they send in their troops with a lego phaser rifle and prayer as armor. What the hell, guys! You could have the most amazing power armour, and yet you literally only wear red shirts! Is it red so we don't see all the damn blood from your incompetence?!)
9:00 you bungled the philosophy of morality. Individuals making “ought” claims is not evidence that they believe those claims are objective. It’s evidence only for their own subjective moral beliefs. Morality can be objective but you first have to agree on a foundation e.g. wellbeing.
I think it is coming from assumption that prime directive would ever become a thing
@@junholee4961 huh? What is coming from that assumption?
@@PhysicsPolice "morality might be objective" part
@@junholee4961 how? How does that follow? I’m bewildered.
@@PhysicsPolice For prime directive to make sense, you need that kind of singular principle many would converge to I think
9:15 As sad as it may be, morality IS a matter of perspective (cultural bias, laws, etc.), there is NO absolute right and wrong. Evil and good are social constructs.
There must be a few universal "evil" things, though. I'm not an expert, but "killing people randomly while laughing like a maniac" seems to be categorically bad.
@@CharlesUrban Consider your preference over ice cream flavours. Which flavour of ice cream you prefer is a particular fact about you. (Ice cream preference is a predictively useful abstraction, as it predicts what you will do when faced with a choice of ice cream flavours) There is no objectively nice, or objectively nasty ice cream. The preference is part of the person. This doesn't stop you picking your favourite flavour.
Humans are somewhat similar to each other. Most humans would agree that dog poo ice cream is crap. This wouldn't apply to aliens with totally different taste buds.
The same goes for morality. Peoples moral preferences are a specific fact about that person. Again, predictively useful as it can predict actions in a range of moral dilemmas. This doesn't stop people behaving according to their morality. Human moralities are similar to each other, there are some actions that almost all humans think is immoral.
@@CharlesUrban Except what you are killing and whether it's wrong to do so is dependent upon one's subjective view.
Some say killing animals for food is wrong. Some say it's completely fine. There is no objective fact that can show one "right" and one "wrong".
It's also situational because someone may be against killing for food when they have plenty but when left facing their child starving then finds it okay to kill the animal that is the only source of food.
An alien civilization might not even find us worthy of moral consideration in the same way we don't consider whether we're wiping out an ant colony when deciding where to build things.
Morality is mostly based on logical processes that are genetically programmed into us
@@donaldhobson8873 im pretty sure nearly every person on earth would not choose rotten meat as thair favorit ice cream
13:30 This sounds like a variation of God, Heaven, Earth and mortal life, Judgment, Afterlife consequences. There're a lot of tangents.
Damn, for a second I thought it was Thursday. My sense of time is definitely screwed.
You must be living in the same 2020 timeline I'm going through rn then! :D
...
... sorry to hear that actually.
silly goose, its clearly Friday.
Your warp drive may need alignment, a slight non-resonance in a coil can do odd things to the timeline.
Prime directive is quite unrealistic in general.
A plot device that was sinply that, a plot device that has been glorified to seem galaxy brained.
𝔉𝔬𝔯𝔠𝔢𝔰 𝔬𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯 𝔠𝔦𝔳𝔦𝔩𝔦𝔷𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫𝔰 𝔱𝔬 𝔰𝔬𝔩𝔳𝔢 𝔰𝔬𝔩𝔳𝔢𝔡 𝔭𝔯𝔬𝔟𝔩𝔢𝔪𝔰.
ℌ𝔞𝔯𝔳𝔢𝔰𝔱 𝔲𝔫𝔦𝔮𝔲𝔢 𝔰𝔬𝔩𝔲𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫𝔰, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔢𝔯𝔞𝔰𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔲𝔫𝔬𝔯𝔦𝔤𝔦𝔫𝔞𝔩.
𝔑𝔢𝔴 𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔰𝔭𝔢𝔠𝔱𝔦𝔳𝔢𝔰 𝔞𝔯𝔢 𝔟𝔢𝔠𝔬𝔪𝔢 𝔞 𝔯𝔢𝔫𝔢𝔴𝔞𝔟𝔩𝔢 𝔯𝔢𝔰𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔢.
Yeah, if aliens express individuality - like we do - then it is completely unworkable.
I especially love when they try to justify it for civilizations that are going to be wiped out. It's either "smart people thought about it and concluded it's the right thing" (i.e. a non-argument) or "but what if that civilization birthed the next Hitler?" which is a terrible and among other things actually antinatalist argument.
I mean, I get the whole prime directive thing as a response to colonialism but had the Americas been on the brink of being hit by an asteroid and Europe had been some kind of super advanced Wakanda with the means of saving everyone, I think it would've been hard to argue that colonialism had been the greater of the two evils. So the prime directive is at best contextual.
You have to be quiet the psychopath to be willing to let a race of intelligent species go extinct in the universe, especially when as far we know life is extremely rare because it boils down to the fact that you don't want to be a intergalactic baby sitter.
Consider the African tribal people. There are some demographics who would likely still be in the stone age 500 years from now such as Pygmies if the rain forest encroachment of man were to completely stop at this moment & continue to be until the end of time. As in the pygmies on their own merit without outsider help developing the knowledge to lift themselves from the stone age to the bronze age.
Scientist have a policy now where they try to interact as little as they can with these primitive people.
Imagine how much a monster you would have to be as a trained surgeon to tell a primitive person that you won't operate on his or her father when you have a burning hunch that the issue is an appendix that's about to burst, and when you know that you could get the victim to a hospital in 20 minutes where you personally could do surgery to save a life.
If you saved that person's father's life you're opening to the doors to the possibility that the primative person who've requested help would become a doctor themselves.
All because of some policy.
ET doesn't have to give humanity physical fusion reactors. All that they would have to do is drop a few hints such as how much pressure in a vessel it would take to sustain fusion reaction, or what materials are required to producer room temperature & low pressure super conductors. They don't have to tell us the exact manufacturing that would be required to produce the cookies, but they could tell us the ingredients.
@@jmd1743 I feel like you gloss over a lot of reasons people don't try to contact isolated groups these days for the sake of your metaphor. Like diseases or exploitation.
Even though being polar opposites, the prime directive is just as dumb as the dark forest directive
Extremes are usually like that. Rule #1: There are exceptions to every rule.
What is the dark forest directive?
@@adeptuspotatocus6451 its on this channel vid list basicly exat opposite of prime directive
@@adeptuspotatocus6451 Kill on sight
@@captainstroon1555 So treat every civilization you come across as a threat and kill them basically
Love your work, Isaac. Keep it up!
Damn it Jim, you just stunted our ride!
Aliens watching this questioning there own mortality: bruh
They'd think we were crazy, not question themselves. Considering the meaning of the word "alien" nearly mandates that different species would have fundamentally different mortality and ethics. Hell, that happens among different human civilizations. We're just so close together that we have to deal with each other, different or not
@@johntheherbalistg8756 Don't take that for granted. The modern west is always in a hurry to doubt itself, annoyingly
@@imperialofficer6185 Look around the planet. We're the only ones so full of self doubt
@@johntheherbalistg8756 Out of how many? Not counting cavemen, there were only maybe half a dozen of human civilizations
Your planet is hidden from most species in a tangent timeline to keep you like cattle to serve the reptilians banking cartels deep under the surface.
You can have optimistic nihilism, ie living your life despite nothingness awaiting. And having morality based on consequences and consent.
Non-interference is often for avoiding the awful things we do to native civilisations
Not care if someone conquers other civilizations? Remember that such an attitude will grow, gain resources, and eventually turn a wanting eye to you.
Hubris begats the fall.
Rather than a "Prime directive," it's probably more of a, "Do not get corrupted by--" rule.
Like some sort of deep, cultural taboo?
@@deewagner4817 Well, it just might be common sense to them. It stands to reason that a galaxy-spanning (or traversing) civilization grows more sophisticated. Such systems could, in theory, endure more destruction from more "erroneous" information put into them.
6:22 should have cut to a picture of every Starfleet admiral
One thing that I never saw discussed was the completely hypocrisy of picard in some episodes - sometimes it is all "we have to do anything ANYTHING to save those people", other times is "yeah, prime directive says no, let nature runs its course, what is the genocide of 10 billion conscious beings"
People can't follow a simple order to wear masks and we expect entire civilizations to not poke earth's airspace
Their is an episode of TNG where Worfs brother interferes with a primitive society. He got a few talkings to but I don’t think he gets in trouble much. He was a private citizen of the federation with a ship
My girlfriend is expecting me to sit down to breakfast AND I'm in the middle of interfering with affairs on the planet of Kerban. SFIA is forcing me to multitask.
Kerban? Isn't that the planet with the Kerbal Space Program game?
@@CharlesUrban Kerbin is the planet that KSP is set on. Still, only 1 letter off.
@@ericcomstock3237 I...was joking. Okay.
Two Kerbals are now dead. I just validated General Order #1.
@@cocoabutt1711 That's a pretty small sample size, better keep going just to make sure!
Refusing to assist newer species is only gonna lead to strife.
Imagine an alien race telling us they could have uplifted us and prevented untold suffering, but did not because of some lack of a random achievement.
It's almost like the Federation is actually constantly committing atrocities by omission! Every single disease they could have cured, every war they could have prevented through being able to replicate the resources that both sides desired and pushed into post-scarcity peace, every genocide and cultural/ethnic purge they sat back and allowed to happen, all of that blood and death and suffering is on their hands. There is *no* moral or ethical argument for refusing to help someone who wants/is receptive to your aid.
And don't anyone give me that "Uhhhh but whut if u give nukes two hitlur????" Oh I'm sorry, I was working off the assumption that we would do the legwork and investigate things before we hand out the tech blindly. You know, interact with *governments* not individuals. And if it does blow up in the advanced species faces, you know what you do? You acknowledge that you made a mistake, and you fix it. You don't just not help people out of an irrational fear that it *might* go wrong for unforeseen reasons. If that's how you think anyone should operate, I have to wonder how you get out of bed in the morning. Aren't you too afraid of the minute possibility of tripping as you get up and cracking your skull open?
@@Shenaldrac You expressed my abject rage at the concept of the Prime Directive better than I myself could. I think it's profoundly immoral and that we ought to uplift every form of life and eliminate suffering of all kinds from the universe. Starting on our own planet and working outwards.
Not a fan of a prime directive, and if we are "first born" hope we don't take that path with those that follow us...
Okay well put you on the list for genetic manipulation, brain implants and mind altering drugs. You just arent capable of understanding and safely handling the technology without a little boost to the brain. *Borg cube jumps in
@@Shenaldrac To be fair, I wouldnt want to give us nukes either. Especially considering that our strongest radio signals originate from around the time of WW2. Nice call card we have.
And we are always at war with ourselves somewhere, imagine the "disagreements" we would have with someone more alien.
You know, if they can stop an asteroid that is going to destroy our planet, can't they just stop it without our knowing it?
Your moral arguments sound awfully theistic.
I know what you mean. I think he needs to study philosophy a bit more before venturing outside his area of expertise.
@macsporan Wow, silencing critical feedback. How's that working out for you in your life?
Honestly, the point of the prime directive was supposed to be "think before you interfer and don't interfer if you aren't at least quite sure". I personally think leaving a people to die because they don't have the necessary tech to protect themselves is morally wrong if you are in a position to do something about it. I.e. Captain Kirk might not be able to educate and help every planet he encounters but he should be able to report to the federation about a planet suffering a plague that doesn't have warp drives and they can send a dedicated team for helping them.
I think the real point of the prime directive is more like this: what if an alien civilization a billion years ago prevented the extinction of dinosaurs? Our own civilization would never have arisen.
13:20 I'm having a hard time imagining a more evil act, honestly.
It's very likely that we are living in a simulation.
Well he's neutral, he deals in possibilities not morality, that's our job here in the comments
I think that the prime directive is evil, but how is doing it with virtual reality more evil?
@Fred Nurke I disagree. what if I was to digitize your consciousness, in such a way that you were immortal but trapped inside an environment of my design, and I decided for whatever reason to maximize the possible suffering that could occur? that's worse than genocide.
@Fred Nurke that's not the point dude, maybe an automated system gets a crosswire and increase the suffering instead of decreasing it it doesn't matter. the point is there's things worse than death and fucking with people's minds is among them.
also, Hitler? nah that idea came from the Shrike:
th-cam.com/video/cLy_ksIjaq8/w-d-xo.html
In Star Trek, it's all about subspace. Creating a warp shell by manipulating subspace is how you get your ship FTL, but it's also the primary method of all communication. That, more than anything, is why they use warp technology as the keystone tech for First Contact.
I never really understood why it's even a paradox. We've only been transmitting radio noise for a couple of hundred years (and seriously listening for 50). Anyone further than that in light years doesn't even know we're around, yet, they'll start catching early radio, then TV sometime in the future. And when we started we'd be blasting out megawatts of energy to talk to someone on the other side of the planet on the radio.. but our technology got more frugal, now we're using milliwatts on our cellphones and undersea cables to do the same. Any advanced society with limited resources will aim for most efficient use of energy, couple of hundred years, and it's possible nobody will hear us because we're not wasting energy just slinging it around. That seems to be what happens with all our tech, it gets smaller, lighter, more powerful, uses less energy. Unless an alien culture happens to be relatively close, and at a similar level of technology, neither will notice each other.. like two ships passing by just beyond the horizon.
I agree. The question seems to be more like: "Why isnt there an alien Dyson swarm around the Sun?"
Problem is, they might have dyson globed majority of star if they are born millions of years earlier.
@@junholee4961 Problem is Dyson swarms should be easy to pick out. They are basically infrared beacons.
Unless of course the aliens have found some other means to get rid of waste heat than radiating it away.
Although they might be directionally radiating it - variation of a Shkadov thruster.
Define foo(x:Person, y:Action) as a function that takes a person x, and an action y, and returns whether x thinks that y is right or wrong.
This is pretty well defined. We can imagine showing the person a description of the action, and asking then if the action was right or wrong, if they would encourage the action, or try to stop it. (There is still a little fuzziness if the persons answer depends on exactly how the question was phrased, or the answer given is "um maybe a bit, im not sure" )
Now define bar(y:Action) as foo(Me, y)
and define buzz(y:Action) as foo(Typical human, y)
Now the question of whether morality is objective or subjective depends on whether we define morality as foo, bar or buzz.
This is entirely a silly argument about word definitions.
All the objective questions are settled.
There do exist moral arguments that, translated into a suitable language, will convince most neurologically intact humans.
There don't exist moral arguments that will convince all possible arrangements of neurons that could exist.
You can in principle write a formal definition of buzz, with terms counting human life and wellbeing amongst other things. You could program that into a computer, and get the computer to behave morally. You could program the same definition into a dozen different computers, and they will all agree on the morality of some action.
This doesn't stop another AI with different code from going on a killing spree. This other AI could calculate that its actions are given a low score by function buzz, but this AI doesn't care about function buzz.
But likewise, you can write a formal definition of what actions make the most paperclips, and program that into a computer. You could program the same definition into a bunch of computers, and they would agree on how many paperclips are made.
www.lesswrong.com/s/9bvAELWc8y2gYjRav/p/eDpPnT7wdBwWPGvo5
I'm happy someone said this, I knew it violated some CEV-type principles, but it may not be the easiest for people to parse.
I'm not sure how not seeing them moving about the universe and them not contacting us is related though...
I mean we would see them if they were there, flitting about, abusing stars... and we haven't seen any evidence of them in nearby galaxies, whether they contact us or not!
The prime directive is the stupidest thing in star trek, as an idea it is based on flawed logic and the requirement of warp isn't logical. It's also morally flawed in so many ways. Also it just wouldn't work in reality, someone would break it and if it's not covered up, once someone does it without a negative outcome the whole system would be ignored. And with multiple races it definitely won't work.
If you have a large civilisation and have rivals of equal size (like with the federation), you'd want to gain as many worlds as possible, so ignoring the prime directive would be a better strategy.
18:04 to 20:13 is the most awesome and savage segment I've ever seen on this channel.
OMG
Thank you for using Voyager for the thumb nail.
It really is my favorite Star Trek ship.
A solid tie between Voyager and Defiant... but Capt. Janeway certainly dealt with the Prime Directive more than Sisco did.
Akira class for me. Practical, adaptable cruiser design, and I love the ongoing fight over how many torpedo launchers it's supposed to have.
@@jimkrupp3835 Sisko was certainly one of the cooler captains, but I can't take a ship shaped like a sea turtle seriously.
This episode misses an important survival reason to enforce the prime directive: You'll never have realistic values with which to accurately parameterize the Drake equation if you allow anyone to pollute potential civilizations before they finally prove themselves menaces or decent citizens of the galaxy (good thing your head start makes them no match for you)! And so without resolving the Fermi Paradox, you'll never know if you're being paranoid or prudent to worry about a raid from another galaxy - or whether there might be an "enforcer" out there who will label your own behavior a menace after you cross some line, for you have no idea of the odds of such a spacefaring raider or enforcer with a head start on you arising.
Couldn't you run a bunch of simulated civilizations to do that? It gives you more control and it's faster, too. A Matrioshka Brain could probably run all of human history to today in a few weeks.
Sitting here listening, and all of a sudden I was like"Oh my gawd! Did Isaac just come for TNG??!!" Now I can't refocus. Smh.
Teenage Ninja Gophers?
@@Andrew-zq3ip are you just pretending or really dumb? Star Trek, The Next Generation.
@@seriousmaran9414 Thats really not nice of you to say, maybe they dont watch that crap and there is no S for Star in TNG so trek next gen isnt the most obvious
@@therese369 true but he could be joking, the front of this video clearly shows a Star Trek ship. The series is normally put as ST:TNG amongst fans.
@@seriousmaran9414 you've been trolled sir
Also I am memorized by and admiring and fascinated about theoretical physics.
I think about these ideas literally all the time, it's fun for me to imagine. It's all essentially some form of information, in which existing in certain states of environmental conditions, or as energy signiture's.
I seen in nature a lot of similar things, like up above and so below. Most things need balance and a flow of moving energy states. Like the cells and planet's and galaxies. Also like torus Field's, or like alternating currents, or like x points, or like the laws of thermodynamics, or the coriolis effect, or probability wave forms.
The keys to the universe, or a physics engine, or a matrix processing device. Physics would be neat to understand further. Basically either through pattern's and like algorithms and of language of sorts, or yea a energy signiture.
One could theoretically exceed speed of light, by changing the internal relationship to the outer exterior space of the universe. Their is essentially nothing really stopping the circumference their of, in which space time from changing.
As such physics would also not be locked and could change, they could create artificial controlled environments, in which adjusting physics, or the underlying code of the universe, as they see fit. ((( The circumference their of, could theoretically be anything.))) (())
Things like pokeballs, or dragonball bulma's capsules, or dragonball's hyperbolic time chamber, or the tardis in doctor who. Even the hyper cube in Jimmy neutron, or even rick's portal in Rick and Morty. Or even the warp drive, or artificial controlled gravity on sci-fi spaceships.
Think of them all having environment's, where it's underlying code, could be what they desired the outcome, of such probability wave, of such the condition's to be.
What's most interesting and entertaining thought discussed, is that the field circumference could either like align, or unalign with the matrixe's of underlying code information of a environment.
.
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So in theory a star trek like HoloDeck room, in which the internal space. Could technically be big as you want such space to be and not a illusion of trickery. It could technically be with real people and real objects, like the tardis internal space has .
The answer to the Fermi paradox is quite simple. Intelligent life is rare, or at the very least we’re one of the first to develop to this level.
We don't have to be first either. The Fermi Paradox rests on many assumptions, not a single one being substantiated in any way shape or form.
The paradox requires species to be willing to spread across the galaxy - but why would they?
It requires civilisations to exists over geological time scales while we observe on Earth that even single biological species rarely manage to do so.
Finally it also requires members of technological species to be numerous even if current research suggests the opposite to more more likely ( arxiv.org/abs/1503.07804 )
@@totalermist It also assumes that high intelligence is inevitable in evolution when that’s likely not the case. An intelligence of our level is so far known to have only evolved once in 4 billion years, and kinda did so by accident.
High intelligence may very well be an evolutionary dead end.
@@TheNightWatcher1385 Make that like a dozen.
There are numerous specues currently around that posess near human intelligence, but are prevented by various factors from becoming technological.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 I’m curious. Which animals are these?
@@TheNightWatcher1385 Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Orcas, Dolphins, Octopie, possibly some smaller dinosaur species.
These are obviously not as intelligent as a human, but can reaxh the levels of avrage young children.
Certainly within an order of magnitude, with potential for reaching human levels.
Before I watch beyond the 6th minute I must stress these facts about Star Trek.
1. The Borg would not even bother to assimilate "primitives" as they want to enhance their collective
2. The Klingon want to conquer civilizations of similar power for bragging rights
3. The Romulans want to run the show. You don't run the show by wasting resources to primitives.
It's not just a Starfleet rule, it's the United Federation of Planets rule. No citizens are allowed to break the rule.
> No citizens are allowed to break the rule.
As if that ever stopped anyone anywhere at any point in time ;)
In the TNG episode AngelOne, it suggests otherwise.
Data: The Odin was not a starship, which means her crew is not bound by the Prime Directive. If he and the others wish to stay here, there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
@@totalermist Exactly. I'm not saying abduction stories are real, but they could be the jerks of alien society.
I also think it's less of a rule or a moral standard, and more of an intellectual position. With the entire point being, to see if any given civilization comes up with a creative unique solution. Crowdsourcing the Galaxy for good ideas. if you try to influence it too much you'll kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
At least that's my hypothesis for today.
@@barryon8706 I concede to your citation.
I guess it would be more accurate to say it's complicated. Particularly as the series went on and different writers added their own interpretations.
In the TOS it was implied several times all Starship captains had to be licensed by the Federation. I expect those license agreements include obeying the prime directive.
Though I guess it completely private enterprise, and willing to give up Federation citizenship, the Federation wouldn't have jurisdiction to stop them.
At least that's my headcanon.
@@jtjames79 That's reasonable. The nature of the Prime Directive seemed to change between TOS and later series anyway.
Whai if the few "people" who disobeyed the prime directive were: Mozes, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, the guy who taught us the harness of fire, the wheel, agriculture or even quantum mechanics...
First
If we assume all of life in the universe is assembled via DNA such as ourselves, you could say that all life evolves. Morality is just a mix of existential fear and altruism. You could therefore make the argument that any DNA-based life in the universe could have their morality measured by their culture and tradition. A culture and tradition we would share with them, being Darwinism.
Furthermore, any species that achieves the ability for space exploration must have altruism in their DNA by default. Lifeforms wouldn't survive and progress as far as space travel if they were constantly at each others throats.
0:24 good to see only real Trek in that slide. Just say No to STD and the other one. ;-)
But i did like enterprise
@@herscher1297 Twas ok. I think my feelings about Quantum Leap poisoned any good feelings about Enterprise that I had.
Terrific episode, Isaac. Except... what do you mean TNG wasn't the best of the franchise?? Did the zombies get to you?
Full disclosure is going to make a lot more sense once people understand this video. ;)
The Klingons have a similar policy where it's considered dishonorable to conquer a people who haven't yet expanded to the stars. It makes enough sense. I mean, where would the honor be in bombarding cavemen from orbit? What even would be the point?
I just finished Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix x)
Is there an episode on this common sci-fi scenario? "Planet colony is started but gets cut off from Earth for whatever reason. It then decays into a failed colony that has to learn to subsist on its own on a planet that is potentially only barely habitable without the use of heavy tech. I was watching "Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone" and was wondering what might actually happen to a colony under such circumstances.
This is my favorite one! As if a galactic and/or intergalactic civilization actually would be 'decent' enough to withhold itself from colonizing all the species -to bring the Freedom(!)- to make them servile and or integrated/assimilated. We all know we humans *would do it* (maybe will do that in the future poor Alpha Centaurians) Combine/Universal Union does it all the time(!)
I'm not 100% sure humans would definitely do that. Im not saying humans are inherently good, we're oftent not. But if you look at most human colonization of other cultures, its always for a purpose; resources, food materials, slave labor, theirs always something to gain; on the other hand, if we solved things like warp travel, virtually limitless energy, interstellar travel, it would mean very few resources would be needed from other planets. Most everything on this planet we need is actually just floating on rock in our solar system, and in much greater abundance than on earth. The only really good reason to conquer another planet would be for real estate, but only if the planet was almost exactly like earth. Same gravity, exact same mixture of atmospheric gasses, food that waz actually edible, same amount of solar radiation getting through the atmosphere, a million little things, basically a million percent unlikely. So most alien planets wouldnt be quiteas useful as you might think. The cost gain ratio, might mean its just not worth it to conquer other planets. Unless its 100% exactly like earth, than yeah we'd totally colonize. But the odds of that are low. Theres probably thousands of planets capable of sustaining life, but that doesnt mean any of them could sustain HUMAN life....
@@rrson648 space habitats™
Fermi Paradox solution: I would think most advanced aliens would want to choose who and when other species detect their home planet. They only need to ever so slightly bend the angle of very few photons that are on the long path towards our planet from their planet to essentially make them unseen. Have you explored this possibility in any of your Fermi Paradox videos?
The Prime Directive was meant to be a stand in for future development in morality. Roddenberry thought that we would continue to develop morally as we did technologically, and that future morality would be so developed it would be hard for us to understand it. Similarly, most humans over the last 8000 years would call wiping out a rival city and killing all its inhabitants moral, since presumably they would have done the same to us if they won. Our notion of genocide being a bad thing would have been hard to explain to Cato the Elder. Therefore, the Prime Directive doesn't have to make sense, and isn't meant to. It's a place holder for moral stands we can't imagine from our current perspective.
What if all alien civilization are just a variation of homo sapiens... But space travel eliminated the need for bones because more time is spent in zero gravity than planets and only use nano suits for a short while to conjure metal bones to withstand the Gravity of a given planet?
Two videos in one week? I must be in heaven, or I'm a simulation running on a Matryoshka brain.
Same thing, right?
I think it's more about that a civilization left on its own terms might generate new technologies the galatic community can profit from. After all if you think you discovered everything you are less likely to actually discover something fundamentally new.
Arthur: "We couldn't maintain a quarantine for centuries"
Gov.of Michigan: watch me
Oof I’m sorry man but u know I’m a moral relativistic, saying something is bad is saying you dislike it on the bases of your morality no fundamental morality needed. We just got are own, at least that’s my own view
You honestly think we’d resist getting in contact with aliens?
I wouldnt
No,.However, there are those who would keep it from us.
Do you honestly think I'm going to take that perspective in the episode? :P
@@isaacarthurSFIA :)))) spoiler alert
They may have gold, and we can offer to trade it for glass perls.
There is an objective ethical system... it’s called what’s advantageous for a species survival and wellbeing.
Maybe everyone sees contact with primitive civilizations, like child molestation. Something you just don't do.
Watching Star Trek TOS, I sometimes wondered how the prime directive would be applied to an alien civilization that did not have warp drive technology but was interstellar anyway by means of the sort of sub-light colony ships travelling at a high percentage of C that you find in early stories of Niven's Known Space series.
Under the current system we'd look at other life forms and give them value according to how much we can exploit them.
A civilizarion that reached the technological level allowing it to enforce a directive of non-interference would have definite problems in hiding its own existence from the galaxy at large.
Depends on the civilization and how they are orginized and what tech they have. If they only have one or two K1-2 planets and most are spread out as colonies then finding that planet will be like finding a specific needle im a field of haystacks all made up of needles while a tornado blows through and you are on fire.
As for radio waves, there are a vast number of reasons why they may not reach earth at all. Both natural and artifical. Additionally its very likely they use something higher bandwidth and faster then radio i.e lasers which would be near imposible to detect. And this goes for a lot of other communication methods we have.
Additonally it assumes they have vast populations. Its entirely posible that the resources to expand and make more are rare. I.E phospherious. And as a resut of this they heavily limit their own numbers to where a K2 civ is highly unlikely.
Theres also the option that we are in a "nature preserve" of a large vast empire and its rare anyone bothers to check the individual planets inside of it. We have been transmitting radio for all of a centry or so. Not enough time to reach even the nearest star god forbid further.
If they came through and did a long range survey say even 3000 years ago, we would have been very hard to detect as most "citys" were tiny and we had no real tech.
TBH i belive we havent seen aliens yet because they are smarter then to associate with us.
It's feasible that the BIG bads can be set in stone, but:
Small stuff will mostly stay a matter of perspective, generally more then one perspective.
Murder = bad
Stealing = bad, but what if >>>insert scenario here
I just hope we’re not the first intelligent species to develop. That would be really depressing.
The only code I can think of where prime directive is absolute is one in which individuals do not matter. only the planet as a whole
“Like a species that stole their technology from someone else”
pakled race from tng episode samaratin snare star sweating
We talk a lot about aliens in space with difference technology, appearance, smart,... but what about aliens as one smaller than Quark particle or near Planck size. Remember: humans are closer to the size of the observable universe than the Planck length.
biologists have proven life can not exist at that size
This is a huge theme in the book "Speaker for the Dead" its a very good book
I think the prime directive might have two extra explainations:
- isolation furthers novelty by lenghtening the time to create a divergent culture.
- only species biologicaly capable of embodying the moral system get contacted. Teaching a shark pacifism is not effective.
The genetical non interference goes back to the argument of novelty. There are little surprising solutions in a system you designed yours.
Could you make a Video on your thoughts on the technological advancement in the 1000 years between Star Trek Discovery season 1&2 and season 3. I find it hard to believe, that the technology is still so similar even though such a long time has gone by.
You have been stuck in a locked room your entire life, you have called out, attacked the door, and eventually you are old enough and strong enough to break the door down.
Beyond the door you find someone who could hear you the entire time and has a key to the door, but chose not to open it, or even tell you that he could hear you.
Is he moral for doing so?
You would probably kill them on the spot.
I ALREADY KNOW WHAT THE FERMI PARADOX IS SINCE LIKE AT LEAST A LITTLE MORE THAN A YEAR AGO THIS 1:16
When you reference another specific episode with "Hey, for more on that, check out this episode," maybe make it a "card" in the corner or put a link in the description? That would be nice.
a star trek based episode YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! not just referenced it.
Im genuinly surprised to hear Isaac say he believes in an objective right and wrong. But how can you derive ethics and morals from particles, matter, energi and physical forces? Thats why we believe in staying grateful and humble cuz all praise is due to Allah :)
18:45 This is a logical fallacy. A modern human transplanted into Neolithic world would not be able to do much besides dying pitifully - let alone conquering even a single tribe.
We are on average less fit than their hunters and we are probably less smart, because they have larger brain size. We all have a super-computer at our fingertips, but does it have any technological blue-prints for nano-weapons? No, mostly cat videos. The amount of infrastructure designed for our simple life support is staggering.
Maybe in Isaac's future everyone is a self-contained robot consciousness with a built-in Santa Claus machine, but that does not seem to be the direction we are involving in, judging by the last 10.000 years.
If you don't treat recent evolution as taboo (it has some awkward consequences) then there are studies showing among European population some minor increase of polygenetic score responsible for g factor (~IQ) in the last ~10k years. Though, because of weaker selection, the trend started to reverse during industrial revolution.
@@useodyseeorbitchute9450 i don't treat recent evolution as taboo. There are well documented studies on Iceland population for example, which show strong negative correlation between having higher education and reproductive success. Higher education is proven to be partially hereditary. So without extensive gene therapy and some quite drastic social changes, which i don't think are feasible, our prospects as a species are rather grim. That's probably part of the reason Isaac wants to digitize humanity ASAP :).
@@gvasilyev84"There are well documented studies" There's plenty of studies, just some people freak out when they understood that it also means that populations shouldn't have identical score. ;)
"Higher education is proven to be partially hereditary."
Education is just a moderately good proxy. Adult IQ in modern society is ~80% heritable.
"So without extensive gene therapy and some quite drastic social changes,"
There are effectively 3 main options:
a) genetically modified babies;
b) eugenics;
c) letting everything crumble enough so harsh selection is reintroduced (as it was on eve of industrial evolution).
Yes, plenty of tempting options. ;)
"our prospects as a species are rather grim" As a specie? Those are fine. A dark age or two is not a big deal from specie perspective. ;)
Isaac Arthur you forgot about the Alcubierre drive in your UFO video analysis. If you have anti gravity, then you can travel FTL by bending spacetime according to the theory of relativity. And UFOs display anti gravity.
The pilot wouldn't feel g-forces so they wouldn't need inertia dampeners. And they wouldn't need to accelerate, they could just pick a "speed".
Negative mass, not antigravity. Negative mass is not a real thing and we have no idea how it would behave.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 If the mass is negative then the gravitational effects would be opposite of normal mass which is gravity = Anti gravity. We obviously don't know whether it is possible or not, but what I'm saying is that UFOs makes it more likely to be possible.
Hearing that you think it's possible to find objective morality is kind of shocking tbh. It seems very counter to your normally intelligent stances. Morality can be objective if everyone started with the same priors but you cannot prove the priors are objectively correct. What mechanism could even theoretically figure that out?
The Golden Rule; treat others how you wish to be treated.
To me that is the best moral philosophy, but also can apply to the idea of why we haven't been contacted in that "Prime Directive" thought.
If we can't see/contact/visit them, they won't see/contact/visit us.
Thanks Isaac, Your videos have been a highlight of my week every week for several years now! I love your style.
Re: Republic or monarchy.
So the only active monarchist space program I know of with what wikipedia calls full launch capabilities, which doesn't even include crewed launch, is JAXA, and Japan is a constitutional monarchy like the UK, not even close to absolutism.
If we extend the definition to include every country to launch it's first satellite, we get the following list:
EU (multi-state confederation, not a monarchy even if it contains monarchies, includes Poland, which ironically CAN into space, at least, with a lot of help)
Russia and the USSR, (Republican Federation).
Ukraine (Republic)
China (People's Republic).
India (Republic).
Japan (Constitutional Monarchy).
Iran (Theocratic Republic).
United States (Republican Federation)
New Zealand (Constitutional Monarchy by Commonwealth)
Israel (Republic)
North Korea (Democratic People's Republic. Still not a monarchy even if it does have incidental hereditary power, monarchy is about structure of government, not just who's in charge, KJU ain't a king and his sister KYJ isn't a princess).
South Korea (Republic, very, very limited capability, payload efficiency of 0.07%)
So I count 2 monarchies, neither absolutist, on this list.
Wasn't that a Pac'ma'ra from Babylon 5 at 3:00?