Odinkirk

A lot of my head canon around this and the notable lack of automation prevalent in Starfleet: it's a futuristic, post-scarcity jobs program. Yes, it's about exploration and rendering assistance and all that. But it gives people something to do, a way to serve the whole. Picard said as much to Geordi when Scotty was aboard. I've of the many things Starfleet does is give people a sense of usefulness.

I always got the impression that the medical staff doubled as life science experts and that was the reason for the blue.

Here's one: Trading cards are something you own. Skins are limited to a game you're licensing.

Here's another: trading cards are portable; they can be put in a collection for display, put in a safety deposit box, etc. When CS goes, all the skins go with it.

Another minor one: baseball cards are informational, the skins are cosmetic only.

Mind you, I think both are forms of unregulated gambling and trading cards as well as loot boxes should have better societal scrutiny, but they aren't identical.

Edited for typo

Were we watching the same speech? The one where she condemns them, but states that she doesn't have the freedom to kill someone that another might live (in this scenario, killing an alien for the sake of a crewman) and ultimately decides to turn them loose with a promise of reprisal if encountered again?

Janeway's own log started that Tuvix was better than the sun of the parts; a better cook and tactical officer. The point of a team is that no one person is a point of failure. Factoring in a hypothetical future scenario is spurious.

An extrajudicial execution (to be charitable) for no crime is beyond most ethical frameworks.

And not one person has even tried to reconcile the speech to the Vidiians.

I understand but disagree with that perspective. To me they were not alive at the time. However, you still haven't accounted for the rest. Reconcile the Majalis problem and Janeway's own speech to the Vidiians.

If you abandon your principles when things get hard then they're not principles; they're hobbies.

You'd fit right in on Majalis then.

The two crew members that were lost at the same time Tuvix appeared? The dead (not alive) ones? And again, square this with the speech she gave the Vidiians.

If you're going to refute, then address the whole thing.

This is not a trolley problem in that there is sequence involved:

1: Tuvok and Neelix alive before transport

2: Tuvok and Neelix dead and a new rational being in their place. This being had a moral blank slate and are thus blameless for the circumstances of creation.

3: Janeway decides that the speech she gave to the Vidiians was just hot air and that she will kill Tuvix to get the original two back. (Non lethal ways were explored, but quickly abandoned)

4: The blameless being makes an articulate case for their life, and even addresses the "needs of the many" argument by stating the truth: the other two are gone and the new being is there. (Raw, unalloyed utilitarianism is problematic at best, just ask the people of ~~Omelas~~ Majalis)

5: The doctor straight up says that the procedure is unethical and refuses to do it.

6: Janeway does it anyway.

Calling it a trolley problem is reductive and inaccurate.

(Edited for typo.)

"Meanwhile, Black Mirror presumably got back to the work of its horror-based arms race, as the show continues to try to find a doomsday prophecy that tech giants might still view as a warning and not a corporate benchmark for [next fiscal quarter]." -- AVClub

Why is it that even in the memes, O'Brien must suffer? 🥺