Daystrom Institute
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Episode Guides
The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:
- Kraetos’ guide to Star Trek (the original series)
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- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Darth_Rasputin32898’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- OpticalData’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
- petrus4’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
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I don't think I would agree with the claim that "natural, biological systems are actually often perfect models for ... efficiency." Natural, biological systems tend to get the job done (natural selection at work), but often do so in bizare, highly inefficient ways.
For example, most of us have eyes. Our eyes generally do an extraordinarily good job absorbing reflected light and allow us to perceive an enormous amount of visual information regarding our surroundings. So far, so good.
Look a little deeper, though, and the structure of our eyeballs quickly shows the vestiges of it's bogosort design process: vertibrate eyes all have a blind spot where the optic nerve blocks some incoming light from reaching our photoreceptor cells. We generally don't notice this because we have two eyes, and our brains are pretty good at merging the images we get from each one to cover for whatever the other missed (including constructing some outright fabrications where needed). Essentially, the human eye is a camera with the power cord routed across the lens: an obviously idiotic design decision that persists because it wasn't quite bad enough to be completely debilitating and could be mostly compensated for. Cephalopod eyeballs, which evolved independently of ours, do not have this particular weakness (although they do have their own suboptimal quirks).
It's not hard to look at the bevy of ingenious yet plainly stupid constructs that evolution has created and decide that they fall well short of any idealized standard of "perfection." Why should the Borg accept a visual sensor with such a glaring flaw, when they know they can do it better?
You might still disagree with this, but I guess the main thing I mean by efficiency in the case of biology is that natural systems seem to take the shortest route in response to stimuli. So perhaps there is a difference between optimization and efficiency in the case of the Borg, and I would say that an unintended consequence of their advanced tech is that it would start to behave like an organic system as they adapt to new circumstances.
I think there is a problem the Borg maybe haven't acknowledged which is that they want an organized and optimized system, but progress or evolution means having a system which is good at responding to favorably to current conditions which may or may not exist in the future. Obviously the Borg are trying to also control their environment to be as predictable as possible, but they still encounter the unexpected (species 8472, for example) and have had some HUGE weak spots/ liabilities (Data can put a whole cube to sleep, their ships are subject to easily being infiltrated, etc). The Borg may believe in perfection, but I think they are on a fools errand.
Not necessarily. Evolved systems take the first route available. If a more efficient route is encountered by chance, and proves to be enough of an advantage to win out over the original, then that is where it will continue. But it cannot easily account for situations where that fundamental strategy is no longer viable (particularly if the part is highly conserved), or plan ahead, taking a less favourable strategy for a better one later on.
For example, in mammals, the recurrent pharyngeal nerve is conserved from our fishy origins, looping around the aorta and back up. This was fine in the fish days, where that route was easier, due to the different internal structures, but it is no longer efficient, egregiously so for giraffes and humans, where it extends down the neck, only to go back up again
Since it is a highly conserved vital structure, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible for us to evolve a more efficient path for it to take, even though keeping it all inside of the head would be far more efficient. We might be able to evolve alternative uses for it, but it is a long and convoluted chain that we would need to develop in order to shorten it at all.
I'm not sure that some of those weaknesses of the Borg are really weaknesses.
Data had access to a privileged drone. Locutus was acting as a mouthpiece for the Borg, and was a special case, having a name, and having their knowledge be in active use by the Collective.
A conventional drone would likely be overridden by the rest of the Collective, and the Borg would be hard-pressed to allow most drones to go along without a fight.
That's not really a weakness for the Borg. If you're not trying to attack them, they don't particularly care. They have nothing to hide, and the opportunity would allow them to study you just as much as you are studying them.
It's much the same reason why they don't use cloaking devices, or otherwise hide their presence. The intimidation factor is far more useful.
They would be, if they were controlling all aspects of the environment, as the nature of the Borg makes internal development difficult. Individuality is not readily acknowledged, and the Borg do not actively try and improve themselves. They are almost entirely reliant on external stimuli to that end.
If the Borg were ever to win, then the galaxy/galactic cluster would stagnate, putting a stop to their ability to develop further, making it an undesirable goal. There is no winning for the Borg, even if they assimilated the entire supercluster, not without major changes to how they work.
@[email protected] 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.