Stile writes:
Choice A:
-100 billion people die (within the current generation)
-unconditional surrender to the Dominion (within the current generation)
But... what does the surrender entail? Becoming complete slaves? Or simply living under their social rules of conduct?
And how long does this last? Is there no chance, ever, of becoming free again?
According to the Changeling, Earth was to be completely scorched to prevent any chance of uprising in the future after the war is won. The humans will be hunted to extinction. So, whatever the future holds for the Federation and the Dominion, after the war is lost there won't be any human left to speak of. The 100 billion plus casualty will include human and alien members of the Federation.
Choice B:
-surrender right away, save 100 billion lives (current generation)
-10 generations later, an uprising occurs and humanity forms even stronger than before and destroys the Dominion
But, again, what does "surrender" entail? Are the terms slightly better in some way?
When Cadassia surrendered to the Dominion, they retained all their social structures and all their military organizations. The only thing that changed was that they would now have to fight for the Changelings (Founders) whenever they are called to do so. The Dominion extended this offer to the Federation. Surrender now and pretty much the only thing that will change is the Federation will need to fight for the Changelings whenever they call.
Do I have the information correct?
Pretty much.
As you can see, the writers of Star Trek made sure that the offer of surrender seemed like a very very good deal and that not surrendering right away will mean a very harsh end for humanity.
In general, I suppose we'ed have to know "how good" these Think Tank guys are. Are they ever wrong? Are they ever fooled? Can they possibly understand exactly how things are going to unfold... 10 generations into the future?
According to Star Trek, these think tank guys are the smartest humans to have ever lived. They were genetically engineered solely to foresee the future.
No, they can't actually see the future. We later find out that they are not infallible because, like most things, the events that lead to the future are a chaotic system. There are just too many variables for anyone/anything/any organization to wrap their heads around.
These think tank guys everything right in the much nearer future. But the result of their calculations of the far future was but one branch of possibility among many. They simply arrived at the most probable future.
1. The Think Tank is undisputable. For purposes of this scenario, they will be taken as perfect, absolute predictors of the future.
Well... according to Star Trek they can out-calculate even the best computers the Federation had to offer. If you give them a problem to solve, they'd solve it with their minds faster than the fastest computers of the Star Trek universe could solve. But no, they are not absolute predictors of the future. They can only foresee the most probable future timeline.
2. It will be assumed that losing to the Dominion in Choice A will entail complete slavery of the worst conditions, with absolutely no chance of ever being free again, for eternity.
As well as the extinction of the human race. So, if the Federation will ever recover, it will be headed by another race like the Vulcan or the Xindi.
In this case, I'd easily opt for Choice B. I don't see how anyone couldn't. It's then simply the difference between choosing future freedom over the loss of eternal freedom.
Well, I'll tell you this much. The hardheaded Starfleet Command decided to fight it out. Turned out that the think tank didn't put into account the god-like alien race called The Prophets. Captain Sisko pleaded The Prophets to help the Federation. In a blink of an eye, The Prophets wiped some 3 thousand Dominion warships out of existence. Didn't win the war for the Federation, but it did even the odds out a little bit.
The two assumptions are key, of course. Any unknowns on either of those two assumptions would add to leaning towards Choice A over Choice B.
TADA!!!!
Which brings back to my original point. The reason why I called the raping little girl questions bullshit questions is because (1) while there are answers to them those answers are essentially meaningless due to practicality, (2) we will never ever encounter such a scenario with raping the 10 year old girl to save humanity thing... I mean... come on for goodness sakes..., (3) there ain't enough information attached to those questions for anyone to make any morally consistent decision either way, and (4) the moral implications of those questions (if they have any) are completely useless in the face of reality.
Would Ted Haggard rape a boy... ok bad example.
Would president Bush eat a unicorn to win the war in Iraq? You can't answer that question without saying "wait a minute... huh?" to yourself.
Disclaimer:
Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.
He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!
™ Version 4.2
