Oh, heh, missed that part. Hmm, well, I suppose it could be argued somehow that imperialism ultimately helps people...or something, but that's not for me.
Anyway, for a moralistic society, I think the rules would be even simpler:
Ignore them until they have significant space flight abilities, enough to find you.
If they are going to be wiped out by something they can't stop and you can (natural disaster of some kind, another space-capable nation, etc.), save them with as little fuss as possible. If your presence is unavoidably made known, try to educate them and bring them up to a level ready to join galactic civilization, but only if that's the only other option.
Tragic wrote:so they can ultimately learn from their mistake. How are they gonna learn to do something on there own if you hand feed them everything.
Let's cut aid to developing countries too, so that they can learn to be self-sufficient and participate in a global economy where the wealthy nations get to make all the rules.
Stofsk wrote:I like Traveller's take on the matter:
"Prime Directive? The hell is that? We're goddamn free traders, not Scouts."
To expand:
The Imperium isn't so bad either. The Emperor controls the space between stars, and of course starports are Imperial territory and fall under Imperial jurisdiction. But for the most part planets retain their autonomy. As such societies are many and varied.
The Imperium will intervene in crisis situations or outbreaks of war or other calamities, but day-to-day governance is left to the natives. Trade and communication is all the Imperium is interested in, and it has a liberal attitude to both. Non-interference is ludicrous, but full-on imperialism is also not practiced.
For non-imperial worlds you send the Scouts in, who are basically happy-go-lucky explorers. Sometimes the natives are hostile. Which is why the Scouts are good at running away, as opposed to nuking the shit out of the pygmies.
xammer99 wrote:It really depends on the nature of the universe. Specifically, are planets that can easily support terrestrial life common?
If such planets are uncommon/rare, then slag'em early. Today's cute cuddly new friend is tomorrows real and dangerous competition for planets and resources.
This is just retarded; we've already got starships, we clearly have better technology than any sapients on the planet. The sensible thing to do would be to offer our help to a nation state on the planet in exchange for our benevolent rule and laws, pacify any war torn areas and then start an expanding empire, neutralising any uncooperative or warlike nations. Then we can employ them when they're brought up to speed under our law after a few generations.
If such planets are common then it depends on the type of species they are:
a. Aggressive: Slag'em.
I don't think that's necessary, we can build empires and orbitally assault any organised resistance against our hegemony, and perhaps try gene fixing them if they prove too troublesome.
b. Non violent but with concepts of it: Study'em and if it looks like they could potentially turn aggressive, then bottle'em up in their own system. Otherwise welcome'em with open arms.
Violence is fairly common in human society, it would make more sense to just deal with it via genetics if they're too violent to be reasoned with. If we can't reason with them with a better society with freedom, justice and superior technology, and they're not violent we may as well leave them be.
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Engaging in large scale alteration of more primitive civ's has two dangers.
1) other advanced civ's might object to us making clones of ourselves. Example: say the neighbours are Klingon-like and respect warrior cultures. They might object to us engaging in alterations that make warrior cultures non-existent in another species.
2) we'd need a model to use. Are we really thinking that we can judge the best social model for another species to have that finely? We can't even agree for ourselves. What if we were laissez-faire capitalists at the time alteration starts with strong ideals of personal freedom. 100 years later we might be more communistic with strong state control. What do we do now with the altered aliens who don't fit in anymore?
Also theres the difficulty of managing change in totally different systems. What do you do if they are insectile expansionists with a Queen bee style leadership? You can't build "individual freedoms" into such a system without killing it entirely, its based on the suppression of individuality and co-operative effort.
If we in more primitive times were assessed in this manner then an alien race might well have wiped out or altered us. But for all our willingness to chop each other up in historic times our civilisation has changed a lot - and of its own accord (I assume). So you can't expect todays medievalists to be the same when they get into space, and changing them assuming that they will is arrogant and short-sighted.
Personally I say leave alone, but guard them and study. If they get to the planet altering stage of development (ours or a bit better) where they are able to affect their world immensely, it might be worthwhile establishing some quiet official contact and offer help with one or two pressing problems (i.e. nuclear fusion or some-such). It lets them know they aren't alone and gives them incentive to get their populace more ready for such things, and also gives us some good PR. At the same time we aren't turning them into cargo-cultists.
The latter is probably the biggest danger with "upgrading" an alien culture. Who want's be to be a scientist or fund R & D when an alien might just give much more advanced tech for free or low cost instead?
Fuck that noise. Move in, take their shiney, if they get outa line, blast 'em.
If Aliens ever do land on us before we land on them, what makes any of you think the experience will be any different than that of New Spain or the British East India Company?
You can wank about non-scarcity economy nerd-rapture singularity bullshit all you want, but the only reason to go to another planet is that you want something. Unless they show up just to get their kicks by going "boo!" (well, maybe thats what crop circles are...) they're gonna move right in. Which is what we'll do, IF we get there first. Sell 'em blue jeans and coca-cola, and opium for that matter, buy up all their specie, then put 'em to work in fissionables mines. Imagine the profits. It will be entrepeneurs stomp on the piss-ant prime directive, not governments.
GunDoctor wrote:Fuck that noise. Move in, take their shiney, if they get outa line, blast 'em.
If Aliens ever do land on us before we land on them, what makes any of you think the experience will be any different than that of New Spain or the British East India Company?
You can wank about non-scarcity economy nerd-rapture singularity bullshit all you want, but the only reason to go to another planet is that you want something. Unless they show up just to get their kicks by going "boo!" (well, maybe thats what crop circles are...) they're gonna move right in. Which is what we'll do, IF we get there first. Sell 'em blue jeans and coca-cola, and opium for that matter, buy up all their specie, then put 'em to work in fissionables mines. Imagine the profits. It will be entrepeneurs stomp on the piss-ant prime directive, not governments.
Wow, you're a retard. What, precisely, is going to be so valuable on a planet when we have asteroid belts to mine? Or is this too complex for your infantile worldview?
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GunDoctor wrote:Fuck that noise. Move in, take their shiney, if they get outa line, blast 'em.
If Aliens ever do land on us before we land on them, what makes any of you think the experience will be any different than that of New Spain or the British East India Company?
You can wank about non-scarcity economy nerd-rapture singularity bullshit all you want, but the only reason to go to another planet is that you want something. Unless they show up just to get their kicks by going "boo!" (well, maybe thats what crop circles are...) they're gonna move right in. Which is what we'll do, IF we get there first. Sell 'em blue jeans and coca-cola, and opium for that matter, buy up all their specie, then put 'em to work in fissionables mines. Imagine the profits. It will be entrepeneurs stomp on the piss-ant prime directive, not governments.
Wow, you're a retard. What, precisely, is going to be so valuable on a planet when we have asteroid belts to mine? Or is this too complex for your infantile worldview?
World views like GunDoctor's make a convincing argument as to why an advanced civilization would leave a more primitive culture alone until it demonstrates the maturity and presence of mind needed to found interstellar colonies. The ones at our level are still getting over the imperialistic/nationalistic mindset, and while we're too stupid to effectively shoot back, we're sufficiently arrogant that we'd try it anyway.
Any sort of intervention is probably best carried out when a species hits the stone axes and spears phase of their development. And if a civilization wanted to spend the time and resources to manage the development of said species, they may well find a reasonably habitable planet nearby and transplant a genetically viable colony of paleolithic sapients and a representative sample of their biome to this new planet (or planets! One could potentially accomodate protecting really primitive sapients from extinction, and the possible desire to not interfere in their development by founding a number of colonies on terraformed worlds.) That way, an alien species can carry out uplifting/sociological experiments to their heart's content without damaging the original sample (and, if such efforts backfire horribly, they can nuke the estabished colony from orbit, secure in the knowledge that the original species is stiill around.)
Hre'Daak ("like minds"): they do not expand. They have high nough tech that anybody expanding that meets them will not be a threat. When they meet the new race, they inform the new race that it will be absorbed into the Hre'Daak empire. If the race resists, the Hre'Daak will conquer them, and absorb the survivors. Either way, the new race eventually becomes part of the government. Kinda like the Borg, but on a cultural level.
Star Union: Central government, that raises up other cultures. They believe that the facet the see of god is a small part, as it is impossible for anyone to know the full truth. So whenever they meet another religion, they want to learn all about it, as the new religion may have a few more bits of the truth. For military purposes, the member systems pay half the maintenance for fixed defenses in their systems.
They key things to thnk about when meeting a new race (from Atomic Rockets), is that:
1) their survival will be more important than yours
2) They did not become top of their world by being a wimp
3) They will assume the same about you
If you have time, you would want to look over the culture, to determine if it is a threat to you. If it is a threat, you can leave. However, if you make contact, you are a threat to the locals. You have far higher power supplies, interstellar capability, and the likely firepower that would allow.
They will want some way to know that you will not damage their planet or annihilate them, even by accident (see 'Kzinti lesson'). You could provide civilian gear to assist them, medical knowledge, and the basic information on how to build them. This provides the planet with immediate benefits, and provides a basic essence of trade.
Now if you don't have time, likely due to a local disaster, you skip most of the steps, explain the disaster that is about to occur, and provide information so they can confirm the details. However, you then offer them the option to leave. If they don't trust you, they can stay, and get destroyed. If they wonder why you are being so generous, you would explain that if the situation were reversed, you would want a similar response.
Coalition wrote:Now if you don't have time, likely due to a local disaster, you skip most of the steps, explain the disaster that is about to occur, and provide information so they can confirm the details. However, you then offer them the option to leave. If they don't trust you, they can stay, and get destroyed. If they wonder why you are being so generous, you would explain that if the situation were reversed, you would want a similar response.
Of course, a more cynically minded regime could engineer a disaster and make it look like a natural occurence, to gain trust...
"I do not understand why everything in this script must inevitably explode."~Teal'c
I think the trick is not to give them anything, but rather let them earn it on contact. You don't want to fly in learn the lingua and immediately start upgrading their society. I don't think good can come of that in the same way giving 15th century Earth access to a weaponized nuclear infrastructure is a smart plan, simply because they'll almost certain use it to bomb the living shit out of each other, even if they could manage the technology.
I think the way to go is to ease into it. Make the ability to learn readily available and make fair trades every time. Give them respect and dignity, don't just hand them knowledge, make them work for it. On top of that show ease them into how your culture operates and offer to be moderators for their disputes, allowing a way out for war. Facilitate exchange programs. Provide education and conduct humanitarian work. Let them know that the universe is a dangerous place, and humanity is one of the things that make it dangerous, but we are still going to help them survive it as long as we can maintain a relationship. Always be ready to go if they don't want you there anymore, but always leave a way for them to call you back. Defend them against the dangerous parts of the universe until they can spread out and defend themselves. Don't let them exterminate themselves and offer to be arbiters of disputes, but let them figure it out themselves if they want to.
I suppose it is taking it slow and taking it by ear, since any alien contact isn't going to be so simple, but there you go.
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I forsee the need for political commissars to make sure they use the technology in moral ways. Except in this case they'd be technosars. Hm maybe a good starting point for a science fiction universe, people who go around helping other societies and try to spread their world view. Huzzah!
Giving people money without ensuring they're spending it responsibly is stupid. Giving away technology should come with huge strings attached.
TOS' version of the PD wasn't so bad —you essentially left a primitive culture alone. But if they have something you need, you contact them and make a deal. They may be changed by the knowledge of other worlds and space travel, but they still get to determine the changes to their own society for themselves.
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SirNitram wrote:
Wow, you're a retard. What, precisely, is going to be so valuable on a planet when we have asteroid belts to mine?
Farming space springs to mind. Be far easier to just land on a planet and convert it to farmland to support your fleets and hive/industrial worlds than to build an equivalent amount of space in habitats in the habitable zones around a star, especially since there'd already be a planet in that habitable zone.
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SirNitram wrote:Wow, you're a retard. What, precisely, is going to be so valuable on a planet when we have asteroid belts to mine? Or is this too complex for your infantile worldview?
Well, I was talking space opera, so... Tyberium?
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GrandMasterTerwynn wrote:Any sort of intervention is probably best carried out when a species hits the stone axes and spears phase of their development. And if a civilization wanted to spend the time and resources to manage the development of said species, they may well find a reasonably habitable planet nearby and transplant a genetically viable colony of paleolithic sapients and a representative sample of their biome to this new planet (or planets! One could potentially accomodate protecting really primitive sapients from extinction, and the possible desire to not interfere in their development by founding a number of colonies on terraformed worlds.) That way, an alien species can carry out uplifting/sociological experiments to their heart's content without damaging the original sample (and, if such efforts backfire horribly, they can nuke the estabished colony from orbit, secure in the knowledge that the original species is stiill around.)
So, you're down with TOS' preservers (The guys who made all those lost human colonies the Enterprise found every other week) ideas then?
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SirNitram wrote:
Wow, you're a retard. What, precisely, is going to be so valuable on a planet when we have asteroid belts to mine?
Farming space springs to mind. Be far easier to just land on a planet and convert it to farmland to support your fleets and hive/industrial worlds than to build an equivalent amount of space in habitats in the habitable zones around a star, especially since there'd already be a planet in that habitable zone.
What would be so difficult for any civilisation which can already build whole fleets of FTL starships to build hydroponic farms in solar orbit? There's the added benefit that you don't have to loft anything out of a planetary gravity-well.
When ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets.
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People pray so that God won't crush them like bugs.
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Oil an emergency?! It's about time, Brigadier, that the leaders of this planet of yours realised that to remain dependent upon a mineral slime simply doesn't make sense.
—The Doctor "Terror Of The Zygons" (1975)
"The cost of FTL is going to make it so you don't piss around when you reach a inhabitable star system. You're either going to colonize, conquer, or establish trade. Non Interferance is a waste of money, and 'UFO' observation, unless it's prior to first contact, is too"
So I'd either
1 - If there's sentient's, observe for a short time (2 years to 5 years, depending on world situation) and make contact.
If they have electricity, formal contact
Then again, if I have cloning technology, or they are low tech, biological weapon them off and begin moving in my citizens. I've got an Empire to expand.
Solauren: Why do you want to exterminate them? If you've got an FTL drive, there are plenty of places you can colonize that don't involve massacring some natives for their land.
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Patrick Degan wrote:
What would be so difficult for any civilisation which can already build whole fleets of FTL starships to build hydroponic farms in solar orbit? There's the added benefit that you don't have to loft anything out of a planetary gravity-well.
On reflection, I think it would be good to build them overall, but that's going to take time, and of the empire's at war, I would rather not be reliant on out of system food drops while they're being built. It'd be much safer to farm on the planet to provide food for that system's workers, while you build up the hydroponics, ore refineries and so on to be as self sufficient and defended as possible.
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Patrick Degan wrote:
What would be so difficult for any civilisation which can already build whole fleets of FTL starships to build hydroponic farms in solar orbit? There's the added benefit that you don't have to loft anything out of a planetary gravity-well.
On reflection, I think it would be good to build them overall, but that's going to take time, and of the empire's at war, I would rather not be reliant on out of system food drops while they're being built. It'd be much safer to farm on the planet to provide food for that system's workers, while you build up the hydroponics, ore refineries and so on to be as self sufficient and defended as possible.
What's wrong with attaching engines to the farms and bringing them with you?
People forget, absolutely everything you build in space is portable. Perhaps it's slow, but it's portable.
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It might be good to take a look at what happened when Western civilizations contacted cultures or species which had been isolated from them for centuries beforehand: I'm thinking Japan and the Indians.
In the latter case, Europeans, who possessed tremendous technological and tactical advantages, landed, and wiped out the indigenous cultures. While, as pointed out above, our modern society doesn't have the immediate incentives the Europeans did, there was one major asset the Europeans didn't realize they had which did most of the work in destroying the American Indians: disease. If you land on a primitive planet, set up a base of operations, and don't keep yourself sealed up in Vorlon-like environmental suits, then eventually (assuming our soft sci-fi hasn't wiped out illnesses yet), diseases will be transmitted between civilizations. Because of advanced medical technology, we'll be looking at superbugs which are resistant to normal antidotes; they'll go through the native populations like a fire through a hay barn.
In the former case, technology was transferred to the Japanese, who formed a racist, militant, expansionist empire; I would think it possible that if you gave godlike power to the leaders of an equally primitive culture, they'd use it to exploit the lower classes of society and establish a brutal regime, if not anything which is a threat to astronomically close civilizations.
Given these considerations, I would tend to agree with GrandMasterTerwynn's initial assessment of the situation: wait until they're technologically on par, or close to it, with you. If you keep them under surveillance, you don't have to necessarily leave them alone; you could simply disguise intervention as divine intervention, or do it very subtly. Open contact, however, should wait.
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SirNitram wrote:Wow, you're a retard. What, precisely, is going to be so valuable on a planet when we have asteroid belts to mine? Or is this too complex for your infantile worldview?
Wow, you're sooo convincing. If something is possible, an expansive tool using sapient will do it eventualy. You're right, there are tremendous resources is space, and they will be exploited. Is that any reason to let a perfectly good planet go to waste? If there's profit to be had from making contact with those primitives, and there's really no way to know untill you do, someone's going to go for it. And once there's trade, everthing else follows. Trade mission, embassy, embassy guards, etc. Once an investment has been made, there will be powerful voices in society saying, "send some lads to guard my shit!"
It's not about what is neccesary, it's about what is profitable. It wasn't neccesary for Europe to colonise anywhere else, but they did. 'Course I can't convince you of that any more than you can convince me that any species that gets into space suddenly becomes hippy peace-niks singing kumbya and passing a joint.
Oh my god, another bunch of savages might use the technology we trade with them to off each other or get high or some shit, what'll we do?! Sounds like oppertunity knocking to me, you got a ship with cargo capacity?
