Click HERE to see this thread with all of the graphics, features, and links.

Basically think of the prime directive from Star Trek. They aren't supposed to really interfere with a species development if their technology is primitive in comparison. If you've seen the latest Star Trek movie you know it begins with Kirk and the Enterprise saving a tribe of primitive aliens from a volcano. He ends up being seen by the natives and later on Starfleet pretty much says the right thing to do would of been to do nothing and let the planet die, even though they had the capability to save them.

So let's say one day in the future we master space travel and find there are a whole bunch of aliens on different worlds with different cultures. Should we take on the same approach Starfleet does?

We'll cross that bridge when(if) we get to it. A policy of non-interference would probably be best, at least not overt interference.

^^^this seems about right.

Capitalists would exploit them with sweat shop labor.

We should tell them about Jesus, at least.

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
We should tell them about Jesus, at least.
And bang their women.

I think it would be interesting to see what they develop into. So I would help them, but make my presence unknown and undetected.

Originally posted by Tattoos N Scars
Capitalists would exploit them with sweat shop labor.
Originally posted by Lord Lucien
We should tell them about Jesus, at least.
Originally posted by ArtificialGlory
And bang their women.
These. It's what we do.

Oh, and take their land and resources.

"God bless humanity,
Species that we love.
With our spaceships
And blasters,
We come down from the skies
Up above."

(As rendered by Colonel Miles Quaritch)

Originally posted by ArtificialGlory
We'll cross that bridge when(if) we get to it. A policy of non-interference would probably be best, at least not overt interference.

Okay but remember this definitely includes potentially letting entire civilizations die even though you can easily save them. Though remember Starfleet has flat out tried to help other advanced races..that were advanced, just not as advanced as Starfleet, but they still were ill equipped to deal with certain situations.

So it's almost like you need to reach a certain level of technology before you even deserve help.

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
We should tell them about Jesus, at least.

This reminds me of a hilarious story from the "Ancient Aliens" show. There was a supposed crashed ship the government found..with dead aliens in it and one alien that was very near death. So what do they do? They quite literally say they bring a priest with to give this thing it's "last rites".

I just can't get over the arrogance of that, even though it's most likely not true, it just seems like something we'd do.

I remember reading this short story about some priests that go to Mars(or some other planet) to preach the word of God. Only to find out they wasted their trip because the Martians are energy beings and had no need for religion because they'd evolved to a point where they were above sin.

Originally posted by Surtur
Okay but remember this definitely includes potentially letting entire civilizations die even though you can easily save them. Though remember Starfleet has flat out tried to help other advanced races..that were advanced, just not as advanced as Starfleet, but they still were ill equipped to deal with certain situations.

So it's almost like you need to reach a certain level of technology before you even deserve help.
Fear of unintended consequences, I suppose. I'm not very familiar with Star Trek, but what was the Starfleet's rationale for their policiy of non-interference?

They just don't want to interfere with a planets natural development. I think they reach out to people once they invent the warp drive, but until then they stay away.

Originally posted by Surtur
They just don't want to interfere with a planets natural development. I think they reach out to people once they invent the warp drive, but until then they stay away.
So what do they do if a primitive civilization is under the threat of extinction?

Originally posted by Surtur
Basically think of the prime directive from Star Trek. They aren't supposed to really interfere with a species development if their technology is primitive in comparison. If you've seen the latest Star Trek movie you know it begins with Kirk and the Enterprise saving a tribe of primitive aliens from a volcano. He ends up being seen by the natives and later on Starfleet pretty much says the right thing to do would of been to do nothing and let the planet die, even though they had the capability to save them.

So let's say one day in the future we master space travel and find there are a whole bunch of aliens on different worlds with different cultures. Should we take on the same approach Starfleet does?
The real question is if we could even avoid interfering with other civilizations. I don't think we could tbh. Even if governments gave orders to lay off, private companies and individuals would start mucking around.

Originally posted by Surtur
They just don't want to interfere with a planets natural development. I think they reach out to people once they invent the warp drive, but until then they stay away.
This is correct, although in the shows there's a Prime Directive violation once every other week.

Originally posted by ArtificialGlory
So what do they do if a primitive civilization is under the threat of extinction?

Well in the movie Kirk attempts to help a civilization when a volcano is going to go off and he hides the starship underwater and sends in a small shuttle to the volcano that wouldn't be seen by the people, then they drop in some cold fusion grenade. But along the way shit goes wrong and they have to expose the spaceship to the primitives in order to save Spock.

Basically when Kirk's mentor at Starfleet finds out he essentially says he wouldn't of put his crew in the situation to begin with, meaning he was essentially saying he'd of let them die. Starfleet even knew in advance about the volcano and that primitives lived there but had only sent a team to "survey" it.

Spock, who pretty much knows every Starfleet regulation, says there is absolutely no exception to the rule of the prime directive. To the point where technically the right thing to do as far as regulations go would even be for a captain to allow one of his crew members to die.

But we could even take it a step beyond stepping in to prevent outright extinction. In Star Trek they have food replicators, so they can utterly do away with hunger. If we had this technology would we share it with other species that might need it?

Teach them the ways of the Forever King, and his tenets of Islamic Communism.

Originally posted by Omega Vision
The real question is if we could even avoid interfering with other civilizations. I don't think we could tbh. Even if governments gave orders to lay off, private companies and individuals would start mucking around.

True. I specifically remember Voyager violating the Prime Directive a few times.

We probably shouldn't but you know we will, we gotta swing our big space dicks at them because we can.