this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
26 points (100.0% liked)

Daystrom Institute

3453 readers
13 users here now

Welcome to Daystrom Institute!

Serious, in-depth discussion about Star Trek from both in-universe and real world perspectives.

Read more about how to comment at Daystrom.

Rules

1. Explain your reasoning

All threads and comments submitted to the Daystrom Institute must contain an explanation of the reasoning put forth.

2. No whinging, jokes, memes, and other shallow content.

This entire community has a “serious tag” on it. Shitposts are encouraged in Risa.

3. Be diplomatic.

Participate in a courteous, objective, and open-minded fashion. Be nice to other posters and the people who make Star Trek. Disagree respectfully and don’t gatekeep.

4. Assume good faith.

Assume good faith. Give other posters the benefit of the doubt, but report them if you genuinely believe they are trolling. Don’t whine about “politics.”

5. Tag spoilers.

Historically Daystrom has not had a spoiler policy, so you may encounter untagged spoilers here. Ultimately, avoiding online discussion until you are caught up is the only certain way to avoid spoilers.

6. Stay on-topic.

Threads must discuss Star Trek. Comments must discuss the topic raised in the original post.

Episode Guides

The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
williams_482@startrek.website
Equals@startrek.website
LibraryLass@startrek.website
khaosworks@startrek.website
26
Regarding the reversibility of assimilation (www.reddit.com)
submitted 1 year ago by commander_la_freak@startrek.website to c/daystrominstitute@startrek.website
11 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Couple of thoughts in response to this thread:

  1. I think the Borg, as a concept, somewhat falls apart when we considering that natural, biological systems are actually often perfect models for the efficiency that the Borg claim to strive for. And, to clarify, I'm not saying the concept falls apart from a doylist perspective - I think that the fact that Borg technology evolves independent of any particular intent and is highly automated to take the most efficient route to its endpoint kind of reveals the folly of the Borg, which would be super interesting to explore. They're just recreating systems which already exist in nature, from a certain point of view.

  2. Considering the miracle of dermal regenerators and similar technology, I actually think Assimilation is highly reversible. Just still really traumatic.

PS - I'm not really sure on what the policy is on linking topics from the subreddit but I'm trying not to post on Reddit so.i guess this is my way of transitioning. Remove if not ok, I guess?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] williams_482@startrek.website 4 points 1 year ago

The Borg may believe in perfection, but I think they are on a fools errand.

@T156@lemmy.world touched on this, but the whole point of the Borg's search for perfection is that it's an impossible task which will occupy them forever: a perpetual salve against boredom, for an entity which can (or at least thinks they can) trivially accomplish virtually any concrete task they attempt. I believe Seven even refers to this explicitly, although I am unable to find a quote.

From this perspective, stumbling into the Omega molecule was actually an unfortunate accident. Instead of the slow, inexorable march of incremental progress towards their nebulous goal, the Borg found something so "perfect" that they felt they actually could achieve "perfection" by harnessing it, and will pay virtually any price to get there. The is dangerous both because it risks leaving them without a purpose if they "succeed", but also at great risk from the more conventional disasters that Omega particles are so prone to.