From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Nov 02 1999 - 19:26:40 MST
On Tue, 2 Nov 1999, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> The only way the Prime Directive works is if you assume the first
> species to attain power imposed the Prime Directive by force on all
> other species.
Horse puckies. I'm surprised that you would make such a statement.
Convergent conclusion (evolution) is an equally valid way to
get to the prime directive. If the galaxy is rife with
broadcasts (directed at emerging species) of "The History
of Failed Contacts" then "rational" species would never attempt
contact. (Or the might attempt one or two to confirm that
the broadcasts are accurate).
You don't go out into the environment and see hyenas attempting to
take down lions. Why? Because it simply doesn't work in
the average case. If knowledge of the average case not
working is available, and civilizations trust it, then
they will not attempt the average case.
For the Prime Directive *not* to be "in practice" you have
to make a very strong case that the overlords can "salvage"
a contacted species without "poisoning" it. If you destroy its
will to survive/evolve (because of an awareness of how
pointless it is) then you do not want contact. If you
do have contact and they are aware of it, how do you
salvage the goals of "uninfluenced" evolution?
The "Prime Directive" is not so easily circumvented as you might
like and may be a very natural conclusion by rational thinkers.
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:41 MST