A specific song (row, row, row your boat) says that life is but a
dream. But I believe that life is more than a dream. Life is
excistence, and all life has a value. However, that value is not
something measureable. Data is life, but is he less worth than Worf?
Or Picard? Picard obviously don't think the latter; he risked his
life when he saved Data when Data was captured by the borgs. It is
wrong to say that a specific person is less worth than another. If
one say so, one think in the same way as the nazis did -- and still
do. That is diversity-destroying, and completely wrong. I recently saw the TNG episode "A Measure of a Man", in which Data's rights is put on
trial. The questions brought up in that episode was: "Is Data a
lifeform" (or even more extreme: is artificial life/a program
with self-conscioness and independecy, real life), "Does he have
the same rights as anyone else, or is he Star Fleet's property",
and "Is it right to make a whole army of Data-copies" (an
army of slaves, using Guinans words). I believe that Data is a
life-form. According to many, his value is probably that he is so
unique. If there had been millions of Data-like androids, it would
have, in many situations, been easy to sacrifice one of them. Data
has a value to those who know him, but not to others. It would endeed
be easy for those who make decisions in Star Fleet to send thousands
of Datas on a Mission where they do not return in their original
shape -- alive and well. When one say that a specific person (e.g. a
president, a friend, a rich person) has more value than another
person, one might mean that:
*The person has money, and therefore has a higher value than others
(in this case, the value is in the money, not in the person),
*The person has power, and peoples life might be depending on the
person (the value is in the power, and in the actions the person
might do in the future; in what he can do)
*The person are wise (in this case, the value is in the intelligence
and the knowledge)
*The person is a friend (the friendship is what dictates the level of
value in this case)
Basically, all life is worth just as much as other life. The
different qualities and advantages of a lifeform -- power, intelligence, knowledge, etcetera -- is what makes that lifeform more valuable to others. Another aspect is that it is generally believed that animals and insects have
a lower value than people have. But is that the truth? To us peraps.
The "crowd" says that the level of intelligence and self-conscioness
dictates a certain lifeforms value.
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