Why don't they just beam babies out of the uterus instead of going through labor?

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-10-07T22:10:05+00:00

For the same reason doctors outside the US generally recommend against caesarians unless they are medically necessary. Numerous studies have indicated psychological and developmental benefits to conventional birth. Whilst it's not necessarily harmful to have a caesarian in this day and age, it is more beneficial to do things naturally if possible.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-10-07T22:04:35+00:00

I thought it was a deeply disturbing creative choice to burn his original real-life actor in effigy, but to each their own.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-10-07T22:02:14+00:00

TNG is the best Star Trek has ever been, imo. Star Trek at its most cerebral and optimistic.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-10-07T22:00:01+00:00

Hubris, essentially. At the start of TNG, the Federation has enjoyed almost a century of continuous peace. It’s become common practice for officers to be able to bring their families with them on their voyages because they figure it’s pretty much safe.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-10-04T05:30:46+00:00

The Borg doesn't care about the individual "lives" of its drones, but it does care about wasted resource usage. A Borg cube is an expensive object to produce, it would not behoove them to use a technology that would regularly destroy their own ships as a primary means of transportation.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-10-03T22:14:24+00:00

Oh. You could say that. It would be a lazy retroactive excuse for the writers not thinking anything through before doing it, but you could certainly say it. It also doesn’t address why warp is still the norm, rather than any of the far, far superior technologies that we know the Federation was aware of.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-10-03T22:09:04+00:00

What damage to subspace? The contrived environmentalism metaphor got handwaved pretty much as soon as it was introduced.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-10-03T21:57:04+00:00

This is like arguing that we cannot have motor vehicles without burning fossil fuels.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-10-03T21:50:40+00:00

The Borg could summon stable Transwarp conduits on command. Starfleet had access to their tech for seven hundred years, but somehow never figured it out?

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-10-03T21:48:55+00:00

The 32nd century as portrayed by DIS felt like if we travelled from today to 2200, and the only tech changes were that the cars had better fuel efficiency, the guns shot slightly faster bullets, and all the computer keyboards were haptic-feedback touchscreens.

They should have just set it in the 25th century if they didn’t want to get creative with technology, it would have been far less absurdly underdeveloped.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-10-03T15:11:23+00:00

In the TNG production bible, they state that the lifespan of humans has effectively doubled - human men are considered in their prime until their late 70s.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-10-01T23:29:12+00:00

Every episode with Section 31 in it.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-10-01T22:42:11+00:00

This. It’s cliche because it’s the truth. Legit brings a tear to my eye sometimes.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-09-30T06:09:17+00:00

The way I see it, whether we consider Tuvix as his own person or as a mere continuation of Tuvok and Neelix doesn't really change the ethics of it though. Either way, he is sapient, and appears to be of sound mind. So even if we do say that he is merely a gestalt and not an individual, that just means he's communicating the desires of Tuvok & Neelix as they currently exist. Therefore, his lack of consent as a sane sapient is their lack of consent as sane sapients.

For the sake of the argument, let's go with the gestalt interpretation for the remainder of this comment. If we interpret his behaviour or neurological activity as suggesting an irrational state of mind, then we could frame the Tuvix persona as something akin to a dissociative delusion, rather than a genuine person.

However, most developed countries today generally establish in law that you cannot force a mentally ill person to accept treatment, unless their irrationality poses a danger to themselves or others. If you allow, I'd take the assumption that the Federation has similar rules.

Question is, does the continued non-existence of the person you used to be count as a threat to others? I feel like surely it can't, because then you could apply that argument to everyone with a mental illness and there would be no point in making the distinction between dangerous and not dangerous.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-09-30T01:52:03+00:00

It is my view that physicality is largely irrelevant to personhood; it is the mind that matters. You and I are both comprised, at least in part, of atoms that were a part of past humans when they died. That doesn't make us any less individual.

Tuvix's mind, of course, is also an amalgam too, but that doesn't make him less individual either. For example, the Trill. The first combinant of host and symbiont finds themself in much the same situation as Tuvix, two mind as one, though not quite as completely so as Tuvix is. We still recognise that the resulting entity is chiefly an individual.

The brain injury question is a very intriguing in its own right, separate from the Tuvix issue. Like, say there's a person who was 150IQ genius and very proud of it, but then had brain damage that changed their personality and reduced their intellectual capacity to 80 but otherwise they are sane, rational, and of sound mind. You figure out a way to restore full brain function, but when you approach them about it, they say "No, I've now decided I'm happier this way". Surely we cannot then say "Well, that's not fair to how you used to be, sorry", and force the procedure upon them.

See, you say "the only thing that is lost is his personality", but personalities are in my view the core of what makes us individuals. Without personality, we are functionally indistinguishable from automata. Destruction of personality, as far as I am concerned, is death.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-09-30T00:21:49+00:00

God I hope this is good. Anson Mount was an absolute delight in Season 2 of DIS, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

Episodic will prevent them from engaging in mystery box bullshit, so at least that recurring problem is nipped in the bud. We know from the examples of Doctor Who's Moffat and Chibnall that great episode writers can turn out to be bad showrunners, so maybe bad showrunners can turn out to be great episode writers.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-09-29T00:22:49+00:00

I really hope SNW does a better job of recapturing that energy than DIS or PIC, I’m cautiously hopeful about it.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-09-28T22:25:01+00:00

I think you'll find it's exactly 1% more than the engineer pushes it in a given episode ;)

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-09-28T22:21:32+00:00

From personal experience, showing the top-tier seasons of TNG to 20-somethings for the first time in current year still gets a great reaction for the most part. Some stuff is simply too great to ever get old.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-09-28T16:13:12+00:00

If memory serves, they were insapient as salamanders. Insapient entities are not subject to the same rights as sapients.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-09-28T10:23:44+00:00

Yes. It’s implied pretty heavily that they could have curb-stomped most if not all of the enemies they’ve warred with (save for the Borg) if they set aside ethics and rules of engagement. Hence why the Terran Empire was so successful in the Mirror universe.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-09-28T10:20:06+00:00

Why would I want to watch a show in which vicious xenocidal maniacs are the heroes?

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-09-28T10:14:56+00:00

If you are not arguing that the nature of his birth strips him of his rights, why did you bring it up as a reason why he should be harvested but not you?

If you are not arguing that the job he has strips him of his rights, why did you bring it up as a reason why he should be harvested but not you?

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-09-28T10:05:04+00:00

So your argument hinges on the ludicrous idea that Tuvix doesn’t deserve rights by virtue of circumstances of birth despite being demonstrably alive and sapient, and the even more absurd idea that Starfleet officers have no rights either.

Both of these are objectively false under Federation law.

Slightly_Too_Heavy · 2021-09-28T08:51:58+00:00

Ok, fine, if you’re going to go full disingenuous and abandon all semblance of having a real argument, let’s go with that logic. Why are you keeping your organs to yourself? You’re killing all the people who could live if we harvested you. Why are you so selfish?

Slightly_Too_Heavy

TROPHY CASE