Well, the second one is a direct result of their own and controllable actions. The first is entirely out of their control and just got dealt a bad hand lol
Yeah, I was presenting two opposite ends of the spectrum. But the Prime Directive is often interpreted to prohibit acting in both of those cases. The question is where is the line?
What about a civilization that has a unique fuel source and they created a massively progressive civilization based on it. But when their technology progressed they suddenly realized that fuel source had subtly poisoned their world and they were doomed to all die? They couldn’t have known before their tech advanced and their tech would never have gotten that far without that fuel source bolstering their progress.
Do you intervene?
We can create lots of hypotheticals that do this same thing and honestly a good % of Star Trek episodes are just this question in detail.
So the question the Prime Directive poses is: what aspects of the Great Filter do we leave in place?
Do we save a developing civilization from an asteroid they have zero way of stopping?
Do we defuse a political situation that will end in nuclear war and destruction of their civilization?
Well, the second one is a direct result of their own and controllable actions. The first is entirely out of their control and just got dealt a bad hand lol
Yeah, I was presenting two opposite ends of the spectrum. But the Prime Directive is often interpreted to prohibit acting in both of those cases. The question is where is the line?
What about a civilization that has a unique fuel source and they created a massively progressive civilization based on it. But when their technology progressed they suddenly realized that fuel source had subtly poisoned their world and they were doomed to all die? They couldn’t have known before their tech advanced and their tech would never have gotten that far without that fuel source bolstering their progress.
Do you intervene?
We can create lots of hypotheticals that do this same thing and honestly a good % of Star Trek episodes are just this question in detail.
Great filters are strictly hypothetical anyway.