SDN: Industrial Capacity and Territorial Holdings

[Praeothmin]

What I was refuting is Jedi Master Spock's claim that fertility rates will naturally increase just because we discovered more planets. I'm saying that there is no evidence for that and that currently fertility rates are more connected to the level of development.

Ah, ok, no more arguments there then... :)

Therefore a company that grows food the old fashioned way would actually have a competitive advantage over a company that does it with replicators as far as energy costs are concerned.

Really?
Hhhmm, let's see...
To get replicated food, all you need are base molecular components: water, amino acids, proteins, and a few other "slushes" of elements that the replicators break down and reassemble to create food.
All you need is some storage space, and some Phaser resistent crates... ;)
You stock what you need, and never need to touch it again, until you need to refill.

To get the real thing, for example, still using Voyager, they had to modify an entire cargo bay into a hydroponics area where they could grow food, and Neelix had to occupy the Captain's Galley to create his kitchen.
Then you have to tend the "gardens",make sure nothing bad happens to the crop, make sure the food doesn't spoil (you need freezers, fridges, etc...), take time to cook the food, clean the pots and pans afterward, etc...

What you save on energy, you waste in "human energy".
Which is why a ship that had access to refuelling stations, or a Major Federation world, for example, will find it easier to simply replicate food if they can't grow it for some reason (lack of arable lands, lack of material ressources to tend gardens, etc...).

The only reason people still go to restaurants, such as Sisko's father's, is because replicated food doesn't taste as good as the "real" thing.
So in a society (such as ST Earth) where all the basics are taken care of, luxury is having lands to grow food, and having restaurants that still cook so you may get a "real" meal once in a while.
The rest of the time, you can have all you need through replicators.

Again wormhole is the only thing that connects Dominion to the Alpha Quadrant and if they are so good (they did claim to be able to figure out Damar killed Ziyal from his eye movement or something after all) they should've at least take it into consideration.

Taken what into consideration?
"OK guys, lets try to predict to future of the Federation based on the data available:
Bla bla... Dominion have more ships... Bla bla... tried to block the wormhole, it failed... Bla bla... will have high loss of life... Bla bla... Oh, and by th way, the Aliens of which we know next to nothing about could turn the tide of war in our favor, we just have no clue how, because, shall I repeat, we know next to nothing about them and what they believe in or what they want or even if they care that the Federation wins or loses..."

Yup, you're right, they should have predicted that... :)

"In your opinion" cannot be bigger than average sized? Well there you go it's your opinion. I would hope you would agree that your opinion should not outweigh the explicit statements of the diameter of SW galaxy in other sources.

Of course, let's forget about what I base my opinion on, and just concentrate on those words...
Should I repost the definition of the word "modest"?
Should I explain how, if something is limited, it should never be considered greater then the average, or else, it would not be limited or called "modest"?
You usually like to call us on our interpretation of semantics, and yet the only words you chose to reply on were "In My Opinion", and you ignored all the rest...
Hhhmm.
The Dictionary tells me that Mount Everest is over 8.8 km high.
IMO, it is a tall mountain.
Oh, but wait, I cannot say that, it cannot be accepted, because this is just "my opinion"... :)

Personally I tend to disregard the statement because it’s just C-level canon, and thus the newer material takes precedence over them.

Is the newer material C-Canon as well, or higher?
And honestly, I always liked the 120 000LY interpretation of the SW Galaxy, but I just hate it when people brush stuff aside because they don't like it, and then just can't give a reasonable explanation as to why they do... :)

[l33telboi]

Is the newer material C-Canon as well, or higher?

Newer material is C-canon as well. But since it's newer, it's safe to assume that it reflects the current thoughts of the creators better then the old stuff. Of course, in this case it's worth noting that Kane would most likely argue that novelizations are G-canon (even the stuff that doesn't come directly from Lucas). If that's so then he'd have to go with what's said in the novelization rather then the EU.

[Praeothmin]

Well, like I said, I agree with the bigger SW Galaxy interpretation, I just don't like cherry picking without logic or thought...

[PunkMaister]

OK here are my 2 cents. Even if the SW galaxy is a modest sized one, ours is large but actually pretty average (just FYI there are galaxies that are 6 to 8 times or more bigger than our own as well) the numbers in personel and resources would still favor SW by far and wide, even if you add the mining, agricultural colonies in the federation they would be outnumbered probably 10 to 1.

[Jedi Master Spock]

I'm not too clear on the 150 thing. How many times has it been pronounced?
What do we have besides this? Kirk's 1000 colonies?

We actually have three quotes. Kirk's 1000 worlds, which presumably includes colonies, Sisko's alliance of "over 100" worlds, and Picard saying it is made up of "over 150" worlds, several years later.

Even if there were 80 species, or 100 species, claiming 150 as major worlds instead of member worlds would still allow more than enough homeworlds for all of them, and thus citing 150 as major planets would obviously, and by default, include all member worlds, which would represent a fraction of that 150.

Y/N?

It's possible; it's just not nearly as likely. There are three big issues with that.

One is that it's an unlikely interpretation. Picard would need to be making an essentially arbitrary judgment call, for which he needs up-to-date information on the demographics of the Federation. For the interpretation I favor, we merely need to be using the literal definition of federation:

1. the act of federating or uniting in a league.
2. the formation of a political unity, with a central government, by a number of separate states, each of which retains control of its own internal affairs.
3. a league or confederacy.
4. a federated body formed by a number of nations, states, societies, unions, etc., each retaining control of its own internal affairs.

A federation is a union of separate states. So when we talk about what it is, we refer to the number of states that are participating. It's possible that there are multiple predominantly human Federation member planets, but I think that's unlikely because of the politics of the situation. You don't want to create a situation where member species are competing for political influence by generating independent colonies.

Second is that while we have 70 identified species that we're pretty sure are part of the Federation (with 40 indisputables), many of those we simply don't see. What are the odds there are many more than we simply haven't seen - or that we have seen, but haven't been identified as Federation members? Quite good in both cases as a statistical issue.

Third is the issue of growth over time. The Federation grows in spurts and fits. By the end of the movie era, i.e., a generation after TOS, we have 30 definite members and 2 probables (including Coridan, which we know became a member eventually, there's just no in-era confirmation that all the paperwork was done by then). We have four known founding members (Earth, Tellar, Vulcan, and Andor) a hundred years previously.

We see more growth in probable and proposed members (29) than definite members (10), but this is probably just because we haven't had the sort of situations in ST:I,IV,VI that displayed so many of the rarely-seen member species.

A quick look at the growth rates for Europe (highest average quality of life) would actually prove this idea erroneous.
North America is hindered by Mexico, but you can pick the USA and Canada, or Japan.

How so? I would say we need to look at the population of the entire world as a system, and it has been almost completely exponential, with a few brief exceptions, for the past few centuries. It is beginning to taper to a logistic curve, with the expected peak population projected by demographers being right around what is probably the peak supportable population given current technology (~10 bn).

It doesn't matter. In pure probabilities, you limit the combinations and chances of mating when you divide population numbers.

Population numbers are always divided. People selecting mates from more limited pools (e.g., small towns and villages with low migration rates) show no signs of reproducing less than those with a large pool to pick from (urbanites who move from city to city).

Moving people around on ships, putting them on worlds where everything has to be built, and then redividing these populations into smaller groups and landing them on even more remote planets with even more work to do is not going to boost numbers much.
I think it would even hinder reproduction rates to such a point you'd get below the rates you'd obtain if you let people on fewer and already established and organized worlds.

It's not a matter of planning small failure-prone colonies; that's a matter of adventurous people striking out on their own, and occasionally (within a couple generations) those colonies picking up.

You should add it to the sample, not treat as an exception. I just forgot about it, but while NYC is not that much smaller than MC, the whole metropolis absolutely dwarves that of MC.
Same if you'd consider Saitama, Chiba and else for the complete urbanized area in Kanto, comes under NY's, but also completely tramples Mexico's, just as much as the greater area around Tokyo comes far far on top when it comes to population numbers, and New York is the metropolitan area in the USA with the most people.

But here's the point. Major cities can look completely different from one another even if they have the same population. Are we looking at industrial buildings? Office buildings? Condominiums, or efficiency apartments?

China --which would be a better indicator than India, if only for the question of wealth-- is only highly populated because of its large territory with inhabitable lands.
When you look around for population densities, you'd go for Europe, you'd find Paris, with greater urbanized areas than NY, with albeit a smaller greater urban area by a few thousand square kms, that is, not much. So basically, New York, Mexico City, Tokyo and Paris, plus their glued larger urbanized areas --any alien wouldn't know where a city starts and where another one begins-- would have a relatively similar pool of huge urban zones.

Picking a country in such a way is meaningless, since frontiers would be unknown as we're considering the point of view of an alien who'd just stare at urban landscapes. If that alien were to look at Moscow, it would fit with other examples I cited, and that's the point.
The largest cities, examples of your population demographics in relatively more or less developped countries, are all within the same ballpark.

In spite of radical differences in population dynamics and overall population density, urban areas in two different places can also look much the same.

When you look at Vulcan, you see an obvious clean state, an advanced society, but a very low population density, and not a single clue pointing to greater Vulcan population centers at all.
Same for the Andorians.

I don't think we've seen enough to be sure of that - or that they simply don't work hard to preserve the natural beauty of their planets.

They're healthy individuals. If population has been drastically reduced, which I doubt, it could only be through massive genocide, which the UFP would reject.

Have you seen the episode in which Gideon was introduced? The rulers of the planet were introducing a planned plague as part of a radical population reduction program.

Indeed. But it's an extreme outlier. We could be talking of an ecunemopolis here.
As much as for Star Wars, people don't judge averages based on Coruscant. Now, sure, the adhesion of Gideon would clearly boost numbers up dramatically, but could also, on its own, explain the 900 billion casualties.

Some people do. It's a terrible idea.

Gideon could explain 900 billion casualties on its own, but given the peaceful nature of the planet, I doubt the Dominion would make an example of it.

They were known. Now, were they inhabited?
More importantly, were those worlds terraformed?
Because it's rather easy to settle a colony. You can put a base on an asteroid for all we care, really.

Colonizable, I think, obviously means both potentially habitable and uninhabited. M-class, I think, is a probable distinction; some M-class planets need work to be habitable, e.g., Archer IV.

You can have a population pressure if you have to place ten people on a small island with four coconut trees.

Despite their expansion, Vulcans and Andorians would start from low population numbers.

EDIT: I realized that I'm almost asking the same questions as Kane regarding some of your points. Feel free to cut through it, I'll bell you if I think there's something that needs to be addressed.

Might start with relatively low population numbers due to relatively inhospitable planets, yes, but critically, they've had hundreds of years to plant colonies and expand before humanity.

I think the open landscapes we've seen in Vulcan ceremony, especially, are the result of centuries of careful planning to preserve the ecology of Vulcan.

[Jedi Master Spock]

I never disputed there are 40 identified species. What I do dispute is the unfounded leap from 40 species to 150 species. There could be 150 species and there could be 41.

41 is rather less likely. Going up to 150 is not unfounded; it's the logical extension of what a federation is to say 150 is the count of member worlds, and political considerations make it highly unlikely that one species gets to have many more member worlds than another.

Yes I know that Federation is comprised of members , the question is who is included in the membership? You are claiming only homeworlds are memberships and no major colony no matter how developed is. Seeing as how Tasha Jar's colony had the right to secede it is obvious that even planets created by the Federation have autonomy and would likely be included into the count.

Autonomous is not the same thing as being able to qualify for separate membership. The political considerations here are key, just as the statistical considerations.

I would not be surprised if in theory a colony world could qualify for membership, and it may even have happened a couple times. However, it's not likely to have happened many times, due to the political considerations. ("You're just aiming for more representation in (GOVERNING BODY) - we have just as many citizens on our home planet as you do on your three colonies you're claiming as independents!")

It's also very likely that there are many more species within the Federation we simply haven't seen, on the basis that most of the species that we've seen, we've seen only very briefly. So we have circumstantial evidence suggesting that (A) your interpretation is unlikely to have a significant effect and (B) my interpretation really is justified.

As I just explained to Mr. Oragahn above, we also have the issue of the growth of the Federation. All indications ("Yesterday's Enterprise," for example, and the numerous members and allies the Federation reached out to during the Dominion War) are that the Federation, in the TNG era, is in a period of substantial growth. Yet the Federation by the end of the movie era has at least 30 definite members. We simply haven't had the same sort of opportunities to see Federation governing bodies as we did in ST:I,IV, and VI in the TNG era.

So if we ask the question "Does it make sense for the Federation to have passed 100 member species in the TNG era, and 150 by FC?" the answer is yes. The Dominion War probably expedited applications from groups that were on the fence or stalled on technicalities.

I would rather you provide some evidence. Quibbling over whether guesses are "informed" or "uninformed" doesn't change anything.

I have provided evidence. You're not paying it any heed.

You still provided no evidence that fertility rates of European settlers suddenly jumped when they reached America as opposed to already being higher than those of current Europeans and Americans.

I have to say I don't have Old World colonization-era fertility rates on hand.

Which hardly encompasses every piece of equipment. What does "easily" mean? You keep ignoring the fact that Voyager demonstrated: many things are more cheaply done the old fashioned way than using replicators. Kira also was convinced Bajor would become food exporter after it's soil is cleaned. With widespread replicators how would this be possible unless replicating food costs more?

More cheaply in terms of energy, perhaps. There's also the issue of the luxury market, as others have mentioned.

Where replicators shine is not, I think, in providing food cheaply, except in situations where space is limited or foodstuffs themselves are inaccessible; it is in manufacturing nearly any needed device when you discover you need it.

They can use their technology to overcome adversity sure. It doesn't change the fact that a planet rich with natural resources and arable land will provide conditions for a much larger economy than a barren one regardless of technology.

For a potentially larger economy, perhaps, but we're not talking about the economics. We're talking about the population dynamics. If anything, your arguments are aimed towards saying less economically developed areas grow population faster, so I don't know why you would want to suggest that most Federation colonies are economically underdeveloped regions. That's playing into my claim that they probably have higher birth rates.

Federation has colonized Moon and Mars. What makes you think that only Earth like planets would be considered acceptable to them and that Data wouldn't include other planets in that count?

I don't. In fact, we've seen multiple colonies established within the same system, and multiple worlds inhabited within the same system. In the case of the Rigellians and Rigelians, we even seem to have two different (remarkably different) member species native to the same star system, who are native to two different worlds (Rigel IV and Rigel V).

Not that it matters since you still haven't shown how acceptable for colonization means plenty of arable land and natural resources. That is the whole point: some planets will be much more suitable than others as well as in a better strategic locations therefore they will be fought over regardless of the population.

I haven't shown, because it's not relevant to my argument. I have shown that population growth occurs even under adverse circumstances that planned colonies do not normally suffer ("Ensigns of Command").

The fact is that one of the planets we've seen disputed near the Andorian-Vulcan border required terraforming, and terraforming technology is available.

Again you assume that population count was considered important by either Bashir or the patients without providing a shred of evidence. Seeing as how Jem'Hadar would have total space superiority and no qualms about exterminating unruly populations there are far more important considerations than population. Unfortunately they never go into any details.

Far more important than the number of people who might join such a rebellion? Face it: The model showed no difference at five generations' remove whether the Federation surrendered or fought. In order for the model to show no difference, one of the big parameters - population - needs to be quite close to even for it to make sense.

I never said I did have evidence. Picard simply gives the number of "planets" in the Federation when he answers Lilly. We actually don't even know whether he includes Jupiter or Saturn in the count. But I assume he, at the very least, filtered out any uninhabited planets and the outposts with a few hundred people. You go even further and assume that he actually only included homeworlds and nothing else regardless of how developed. Therefore you use more assumptions than me and are more generous than necessary considering Picard's statement.

You're actually assuming a lot - that he's counting certain colonies and not counting certain colonies. That he's making some arbitrary distinction based on significance. That he is not making the logical distinction of what a federation is. That other species would not object to additional human worlds being counted as members.

Your interpretation is also dated. It does reflect some apocryphal materials and older semi-canonical materials ... that have been contradicted in the Enterprise season finale, which showed only four founding members of the Federation.

I count at multiple unfounded assumptions that I have not made. Every one of my assumptions has a foundation to it (e.g., the definition of the word "federation") and is thoroughly checked against available evidence (e.g., the frequency distribution of observed Federation members in the canon).

What I was refuting is Jedi Master Spock's claim that fertility rates will naturally increase just because we discovered more planets. I'm saying that there is no evidence for that and that currently fertility rates are more connected to the level of development.

This is not my claim. My claim is that population growth should be modeled as purely exponential when carrying capacity is limited.

I've also suggested that colonies would have higher birth rates than homeworlds. This is largely based on self-selection, and also on the fact that homeworlds will probably have reached their carrying capacity and be restricting population growth in a planned or "natural" fashion.

Whether that growth rate has increased from what we see today (close to 2% globally) is unclear.

[Kane Starkiller]

Really?
Hhhmm, let's see...
To get replicated food, all you need are base molecular components: water, amino acids, proteins, and a few other "slushes" of elements that the replicators break down and reassemble to create food.
All you need is some storage space, and some Phaser resistent crates... ;)
You stock what you need, and never need to touch it again, until you need to refill.

To get the real thing, for example, still using Voyager, they had to modify an entire cargo bay into a hydroponics area where they could grow food, and Neelix had to occupy the Captain's Galley to create his kitchen.
Then you have to tend the "gardens",make sure nothing bad happens to the crop, make sure the food doesn't spoil (you need freezers, fridges, etc...), take time to cook the food, clean the pots and pans afterward, etc...

What you save on energy, you waste in "human energy".
Which is why a ship that had access to refuelling stations, or a Major Federation world, for example, will find it easier to simply replicate food if they can't grow it for some reason (lack of arable lands, lack of material ressources to tend gardens, etc...).

The only reason people still go to restaurants, such as Sisko's father's, is because replicated food doesn't taste as good as the "real" thing.
So in a society (such as ST Earth) where all the basics are taken care of, luxury is having lands to grow food, and having restaurants that still cook so you may get a "real" meal once in a while.
The rest of the time, you can have all you need through replicators.

Regardless of the loss in human time Voyager crew still considered it cheaper to construct the garden and cook the food the old fashioned way. Cooking and heating for the garden would still consume energy though obviously not as much as replicators would. Again my point that it costs more energy to create food with replicators than the old fashioned way stands.

Taken what into consideration?
"OK guys, lets try to predict to future of the Federation based on the data available:
Bla bla... Dominion have more ships... Bla bla... tried to block the wormhole, it failed... Bla bla... will have high loss of life... Bla bla... Oh, and by th way, the Aliens of which we know next to nothing about could turn the tide of war in our favor, we just have no clue how, because, shall I repeat, we know next to nothing about them and what they believe in or what they want or even if they care that the Federation wins or loses..."

Yup, you're right, they should have predicted that... :)

Taken the fact that wormhole is the only connection to Alpha Quadrant and is populated by an intelligent species of unknown capabilities into consideration. It's not at all difficult and impossible as you make it out to be. The wormhole was central to the entire war effort and a scenario in which wormhole is taken out of the equation should have been included into their prediction.

Of course, let's forget about what I base my opinion on, and just concentrate on those words...
Should I repost the definition of the word "modest"?
Should I explain how, if something is limited, it should never be considered greater then the average, or else, it would not be limited or called "modest"?
You usually like to call us on our interpretation of semantics, and yet the only words you chose to reply on were "In My Opinion", and you ignored all the rest...
Hhhmm.
The Dictionary tells me that Mount Everest is over 8.8 km high.
IMO, it is a tall mountain.
Oh, but wait, I cannot say that, it cannot be accepted, because this is just "my opinion"... :)

By all means explain why something "limited" should not be considered above average. Really I can't see what the problem here is. Someone might call Russia a vast or huge country yet refer to Earth as a speck of dust in space or as a small planet. It all has to do with perspective and the point we are trying to make.
And yes in your opinion Mt.Everest is a tall mountain. For a martian living near Olympus Mons which is 27km tall Mt.Everest would be small or, dare I say, modest.

41 is rather less likely. Going up to 150 is not unfounded; it's the logical extension of what a federation is to say 150 is the count of member worlds, and political considerations make it highly unlikely that one species gets to have many more member worlds than another.

The full name of the organization is United Federation of Planets not the United Federation of Members. So even taking political considerations into account I still don't see why the 150 count would only or mostly include homeworlds.

Autonomous is not the same thing as being able to qualify for separate membership. The political considerations here are key, just as the statistical considerations.

I would not be surprised if in theory a colony world could qualify for membership, and it may even have happened a couple times. However, it's not likely to have happened many times, due to the political considerations. ("You're just aiming for more representation in (GOVERNING BODY) - we have just as many citizens on our home planet as you do on your three colonies you're claiming as independents!")

It's also very likely that there are many more species within the Federation we simply haven't seen, on the basis that most of the species that we've seen, we've seen only very briefly. So we have circumstantial evidence suggesting that (A) your interpretation is unlikely to have a significant effect and (B) my interpretation really is justified.

As I just explained to Mr. Oragahn above, we also have the issue of the growth of the Federation. All indications ("Yesterday's Enterprise," for example, and the numerous members and allies the Federation reached out to during the Dominion War) are that the Federation, in the TNG era, is in a period of substantial growth. Yet the Federation by the end of the movie era has at least 30 definite members. We simply haven't had the same sort of opportunities to see Federation governing bodies as we did in ST:I,IV, and VI in the TNG era.

So if we ask the question "Does it make sense for the Federation to have passed 100 member species in the TNG era, and 150 by FC?" the answer is yes. The Dominion War probably expedited applications from groups that were on the fence or stalled on technicalities.

Again you are entering into speculations for which you have zero evidence like this example of political power plays within the Federation or some unknown species we have never seen. Your speculations however do not change my simple point: that there is absolutely no evidence that Picard counted only members. Even if Federation doesn't extend membership to colonies this still doesn't mean Picard would omit them from the count when telling Lilly how many "planets" there are in the Federation.

I have provided evidence. You're not paying it any heed.

No you haven't. You said "in Kirk's time, the Federation has fewer members. If I were to guess based on the TNG era growth rates and the starting member list, probably only 20-30.". To which I replied "90% of your argument about Fedration size and scope are pure guesses". After that you claimed they are actually "informed" guesses as if that changes the fact that they are guesses. Again what evidence do you have for membership count in Kirk's era? And no growth rates 100 years later are not evidence since there could easily be spurts of higher growth. Witness EU.

I have to say I don't have Old World colonization-era fertility rates on hand.

And yet you made the claim that fertility increased.

More cheaply in terms of energy, perhaps. There's also the issue of the luxury market, as others have mentioned.

Where replicators shine is not, I think, in providing food cheaply, except in situations where space is limited or foodstuffs themselves are inaccessible; it is in manufacturing nearly any needed device when you discover you need it.

I never even discussed that. The point is that replicators do not create some new situation in which there is no scarcity. They need large quantities of energy and input materials.

For a potentially larger economy, perhaps, but we're not talking about the economics. We're talking about the population dynamics. If anything, your arguments are aimed towards saying less economically developed areas grow population faster, so I don't know why you would want to suggest that most Federation colonies are economically underdeveloped regions. That's playing into my claim that they probably have higher birth rates.

You were questioning why two interstellar powers would fight wars over planets unless there is population pressure. I showed the reason by explaining that not all planets will have the same amount of resources and be placed in equally strategic positions. That was my entire purpose of discussing about arable land and natural resources. Secondly while more developed countries tend to have lower fertility rates than those that are less developed that doesn't suddenly mean that if a developed country goes through a period of adversity the birthrate will suddenly jump. Just look at East Europe or Russia. Their fertility levels were already near replacement in the late 80s which corresponded to their education and economic levels but after the fall of communism and a period of uncertainty fertility rates dropped sharply.

I haven't shown, because it's not relevant to my argument. I have shown that population growth occurs even under adverse circumstances that planned colonies do not normally suffer ("Ensigns of Command").

The fact is that one of the planets we've seen disputed near the Andorian-Vulcan border required terraforming, and terraforming technology is available.

I never claimed it is hard to have a high population growth. Just look at Somalia: even amidst starvation and civil wars they still manage to have 6.6 children per woman. All you have to do is not use any contraception really.

Far more important than the number of people who might join such a rebellion? Face it: The model showed no difference at five generations' remove whether the Federation surrendered or fought. In order for the model to show no difference, one of the big parameters - population - needs to be quite close to even for it to make sense.

Who ever said the prediction makes sense? Yet again you showed no evidence what they considered to be adequate population. You keep pretending that their prediction must be completely rational in every respect yet they and Bashir acted anything but rational in that episode.

You're actually assuming a lot - that he's counting certain colonies and not counting certain colonies. That he's making some arbitrary distinction based on significance. That he is not making the logical distinction of what a federation is. That other species would not object to additional human worlds being counted as members.

Your interpretation is also dated. It does reflect some apocryphal materials and older semi-canonical materials ... that have been contradicted in the Enterprise season finale, which showed only four founding members of the Federation.

I count at multiple unfounded assumptions that I have not made. Every one of my assumptions has a foundation to it (e.g., the definition of the word "federation") and is thoroughly checked against available evidence (e.g., the frequency distribution of observed Federation members in the canon).

The problem here is that you keep insisting on treating "member species" as interchangeable with Picard's planet count even as we are discussing whether Picard counted only species homeworlds. The Federation was founded by four member species which themselves did not appear to be "federations of planets" so each species signed the papers individually. That says nothing about the evolution of the Federation.

This is not my claim. My claim is that population growth should be modeled as purely exponential when carrying capacity is limited.

I've also suggested that colonies would have higher birth rates than homeworlds. This is largely based on self-selection, and also on the fact that homeworlds will probably have reached their carrying capacity and be restricting population growth in a planned or "natural" fashion.

Whether that growth rate has increased from what we see today (close to 2% globally) is unclear.

The growth can always be modeled as exponential. The question is whether the exponent is positive, zero or negative. You showed no evidence that colonies will automatically have higher fertility nor that colonies have enough population to even matter in the big picture.
Finally the current world population growth is 1.188% according to CIA factbook. According to census.gov world's population is expected to grow from 6.7 billion in 2008 to 9.5 billion in 2050. A yearly population growth of 0.83%. In fact the growth rate actually continues to fall so between 2049 and 2050 the population is expected to increase by 0.5%.
So the primary question is not whether the growth rate will increase but whether it will stop decreasing.

[l33telboi]

Regardless of the loss in human time Voyager crew still considered it cheaper to construct the garden and cook the food the old fashioned way. Cooking and heating for the garden would still consume energy though obviously not as much as replicators would. Again my point that it costs more energy to create food with replicators than the old fashioned way stands.

One thing I started wondering here is why exactly you're trying to peg this an energy scarcity? Later in this very same post you're saying that replicators also need input material, well, what if these input materials are what's lacking from the ship and not the raw energy?

All in all, there might've been some things that could've been done more cheaply without replicators, but clearly not everything, since Neelix sometimes replicates some of the ingredients. Plus, when you go pick some food from a tree, you're bypassing one of the stages of what went into creating that food in the first place.

Like was said in the beginning, using Voyager as a benchmark for the rest of the Federation is a very bad idea. You even have to stretch just to be able to say that producing some foods on Voyager was cheaper in terms of energy then using the replicators.

And just to point out, all you're saying points to the fact that growing food takes a strain off the energy production on the ship. Not that this is a more efficient way to make food. Growing food in a hydroponics bay would require space, time, people dedicated to it, etc, to make it possible. It's a re-allocation of where you want to put the resource drain. You're shifting it from the main power-grid of the vessel to something else. In this case the operation of the hydroponics bay, which requires more resources then just energy from the ship. Indeed I don't think it does require all that much energy from the ship at all.

Taken the fact that wormhole is the only connection to Alpha Quadrant and is populated by an intelligent species of unknown capabilities into consideration. It's not at all difficult and impossible as you make it out to be.

It really is rather difficult for a species existing in normal time to be able to accurately judge what a species with unknown abilities existing outside of normal time would be capable of doing. Most likely they pegged the wormhole aliens as an unknown but assumed they wouldn't interfere with the war, since they hadn't done so already. To say you think it's not impossible to figure out that these things will step in at the exact right time and whisk away the enemy armada is... more then a bit of a stretch.

By all means explain why something "limited" should not be considered above average. Really I can't see what the problem here is. Someone might call Russia a vast or huge country yet refer to Earth as a speck of dust in space or as a small planet.

That's not the problem. If someone says Russia is a vast or huge country, then we'd assume Russia is a vast and huge country compared to other countries. Just like when Vader says the galaxy is modest in size, he was comparing it to other galaxies. What we wouldn't do is jump to the conclusion that he was saying Russia was a vast and huge country compared to the size of his stereo. Because that'd be quite illogical, without him actually saying what he's comparing it too.

[Jedi Master Spock]

The full name of the organization is United Federation of Planets not the United Federation of Members. So even taking political considerations into account I still don't see why the 150 count would only or mostly include homeworlds.

Which tells us each signatory to the Federation is a planet, yes. That's why Memory Alpha lists "Tellar Prime" and "Andoria" rather than "Tellarites" and "Andorians." I'm aware of that already. In the case where the homeworld is unknown, but the species is known or suspected to be a member species, it lists it as "____ Homeworld." Also for good reason. We know the Grazerites are in the Federation; we don't even know the name of their homeworld.

However, in favor of conflating planetary members and member species, no fully canonically explicitly identified member has been a colony planet. (The quasi-canonical Federation Day data from a prop but not seen onscreen, is the closest exception, identifying Alpha Centauri Colony as a founding member. This information does not match with the portrayals of the founding of the Federation in Enterprise.)

I've also mentioned the very logical political difficulty in admitting colonies as members. These are both good reasons for rejecting your hypothesis that some significant number of colony worlds are included in the count of 150.

Again you are entering into speculations for which you have zero evidence like this example of political power plays within the Federation or some unknown species we have never seen. Your speculations however do not change my simple point: that there is absolutely no evidence that Picard counted only members. Even if Federation doesn't extend membership to colonies this still doesn't mean Picard would omit them from the count when telling Lilly how many "planets" there are in the Federation.

Zero evidence? Deliberative bodies work like this all the time. And it does mean Picard would likely omit them from the count, especially when coming up with the 150 figure requires not only including colonies, but also excluding other colonies, on an essentially arbitrary basis.

Again, see the definition of Federation. See also the definition of alliance, the term Sisko uses to describe the Federation. All these are points in my favor or points against your interpretation, which requires numerous and completely unjustified assumptions.

I've asked you multiple times now to provide even a modicum of evidence. Your argument in favor of your interpretation of Picard's words has boiled down to "Why not?"

In fact, all the evidence in favor of your claim of colonies being included in the member count mentioned so far - the quasi-canonical "Federation Day" album - has been brought up by me. So I'll give you your next-best piece of data:

Memory Beta refers to a total of eleven human, or partially human, planets as Federation members. Out of a total of 175 total identified Federation members.

No you haven't. You said "in Kirk's time, the Federation has fewer members. If I were to guess based on the TNG era growth rates and the starting member list, probably only 20-30.". To which I replied "90% of your argument about Fedration size and scope are pure guesses". After that you claimed they are actually "informed" guesses as if that changes the fact that they are guesses. Again what evidence do you have for membership count in Kirk's era? And no growth rates 100 years later are not evidence since there could easily be spurts of higher growth. Witness EU.

I've given you the explicit known count for the end of the movie era (30 definite + 2 probable) about a generation after TOS. We also know the explicit starting count a century earlier (4).

Assuming that the Federation passed 100 members during the early TNG era (which would make sense given Sisko's comment and Picard's comment) and then rapidly passed 150 members, I personally want to lean towards minimizing the TOS era members, and suggest that some number of those identified movie-era species decided to apply for membership during the Organian Peace. Not getting shot at by one of the more aggressive dominant powers in the region is an incentive to join.

I'm hypothesizing Federation membership grows in fits and spurts, frankly, and 20-30 is perhaps low.

And yet you made the claim that fertility increased.

I made the claim that population growth is higher when a population is nowhere near its carrying capacity. This can happen due to increased fertility or decreased mortality.

I never even discussed that. The point is that replicators do not create some new situation in which there is no scarcity. They need large quantities of energy and input materials.

They create a new situation where 90+% of traditional manufacturing infrastructure can be eliminated. You don't need to have toilet factories, phaser factories, textile plants, et cetera; you simply need energy, raw materials, and a few replicators.

There's no indication of energy scarcity within the Federation and its planned colonies, and the raw materials are required regardless of how they are processed. So yes, a replicator economy is going to behave very differently.

You were questioning why two interstellar powers would fight wars over planets unless there is population pressure. I showed the reason by explaining that not all planets will have the same amount of resources and be placed in equally strategic positions.

The border is only a strategic position assuming pre-existing conflict between the two. As far as agricultural resources, that can be created on nearly any colonizable world via terraforming; as far as mineral resources, you're better off mining asteroid belts than planets. Asteroid mining operations are seen in TOS, IIRC.

That was my entire purpose of discussing about arable land and natural resources. Secondly while more developed countries tend to have lower fertility rates than those that are less developed that doesn't suddenly mean that if a developed country goes through a period of adversity the birthrate will suddenly jump. Just look at East Europe or Russia. Their fertility levels were already near replacement in the late 80s which corresponded to their education and economic levels but after the fall of communism and a period of uncertainty fertility rates dropped sharply.

See, what I pointed out was that the colony seen in "Ensigns of Command" grew quite quickly in spite of having unusually adverse conditions. Because of the unusual situation, it's not a rate we should assume applies to all colonies, but it's a possible outer bound situation we should consider.

Who ever said the prediction makes sense?

The episode did. Again, your argument in this case boils down to the claim that Dr. Bashir is not only unwise - he makes foolish mistakes all the time when it comes to emotional matters - but an uneducated sap as well, and the high-IQ augmented Jack Pack stupid - not merely socially maladjusted.

These are absurdities. Reductio ad absurdum.

Yet again you showed no evidence what they considered to be adequate population. You keep pretending that their prediction must be completely rational in every respect yet they and Bashir acted anything but rational in that episode.

In every aspect? No. Models and forecasts for chaotic systems are inherently unreliable to a certain degree. It's very easy to get wrapped up in a good short-term approximation and miss something important (e.g., the aliens in the wormhole). However, in order to be remotely plausible on an intellectual level, there have to be a few basic conditions. You're assuming Bashir - who is a genius, canonically speaking - is not only foolish, but stupid.

Now, if you have evidence contradicting the episode, you might start throwing out bits and pieces of it. However, we don't. So we make the reasonable assumption: The Jack Pack's forecast was plausible. Inaccurate, as it turned out, but plausible. As it is supposed to be.

The problem here is that you keep insisting on treating "member species" as interchangeable with Picard's planet count even as we are discussing whether Picard counted only species homeworlds.

A conflation justified by the enumerations of member worlds

The Federation was founded by four member species which themselves did not appear to be "federations of planets" so each species signed the papers individually. That says nothing about the evolution of the Federation.

Right. The four central governments, at least three of which represented multi-planet dominions, signed on as four member planets. They already were engaged in planetary colonization before becoming members.

The growth can always be modeled as exponential.

Wrong. Exponential models diverge rapidly from reality over time as the population approaches its carrying capacity. If conditions are static, a logistic model is called for; if and only if the carrying capacity is nowhere near the current population (as is the case in the Federation, where many perfectly habitable planets have tiny colonies on them), an exponential model is appropriate for that span of time.

The question is whether the exponent is positive, zero or negative. You showed no evidence that colonies will automatically have higher fertility nor that colonies have enough population to even matter in the big picture.
Finally the current world population growth is 1.188% according to CIA factbook. According to census.gov world's population is expected to grow from 6.7 billion in 2008 to 9.5 billion in 2050. A yearly population growth of 0.83%. In fact the growth rate actually continues to fall so between 2049 and 2050 the population is expected to increase by 0.5%.
So the primary question is not whether the growth rate will increase but whether it will stop decreasing.

I feel dated now. OK, to clarify, for the greater part of the 20th century, the middle of it anyway, the world's population growth was close to around 2%. As demographers would tell you, we've started diverging substantially from the exponential model.

Now, as I've indicated, we have little clue what the growth rate will be like in the Federation. Mortality is low, but we know next to nothing about fertility relative to mortality. Different species probably have different population growth rates.

The Jack Pack's estimates really do suggest higher rather than lower growth rates relative to modern developed worlds, as for that matter do humans' extensive colonization efforts, but we really don't know. I've told you, however, what different growth rates mean for the Jack Pack's model, and the scenario you want (low Federation population with high percentage human and low human population growth rates) is not one you're going to be able to make plausible given all the canonical data.

[Praeothmin]

Again my point that it costs more energy to create food with replicators than the old fashioned way stands.

Ok, reviewing everything, I think you may be right, about the cost of replicating things compared to the cost (in energy) of growing things and cooking.
In other words, yes, I conceed this part of the point... :)
But the cost, in manpower and manhours is way higher for the natural way.

So my original point stands:
On a major Federation world, where there is no energy crisis (unlike on Voyager), it will be easier to replicate things, and a limited capacity to grow food will not necessarily mean a limited capacity to feed people.
On major Federation worlds, life is made easier by the replicators, and oridary people have all their basic needs covered.

The wormhole was central to the entire war effort and a scenario in which wormhole is taken out of the equation should have been included into their prediction.

Which had been tried and failed to work.
They mined the entrance to the wormwhole, but it only slowed the Dominion for a while, because they were eventually able to reopen it.
Planning on unkown aliens is just plain stupid...

Someone might call Russia a vast or huge country yet refer to Earth as a speck of dust in space or as a small planet.

As l33telboi has stated, you need to compare apples to apples.
What you're trying to do is compare apples to oranges...
Compared to other, "average-sized" galaxies, the Milky Way is big, so a 2modest-sized" galaxy would not, in any logical way, be bigger then the "average".
And this is from the Novelization of ANH, so it is just below G-Canon.
But, as I have also said to l33telboi, I much prefer the 120 000LY interpretation myself, it's just that we can't simply pick and choose what information we use while ignoring all other.
That's dishonest.

Even if the SW galaxy is a modest sized one, ours is large but actually pretty average (just FYI there are galaxies that are 6 to 8 times or more bigger than our own as well)

You know, just because there are Galaxies out there larger then ours, it doesn't make ours an "averaged-sized" one.
I know a guy who's 6'4'' tall.
Would you call him off average height just because there are guy out there who measure 7' tall?
I don't think so... :)

[Kane Starkiller]

Which tells us each signatory to the Federation is a planet, yes. That's why Memory Alpha lists "Tellar Prime" and "Andoria" rather than "Tellarites" and "Andorians." I'm aware of that already. In the case where the homeworld is unknown, but the species is known or suspected to be a member species, it lists it as "____ Homeworld." Also for good reason. We know the Grazerites are in the Federation; we don't even know the name of their homeworld.

However, in favor of conflating planetary members and member species, no fully canonically explicitly identified member has been a colony planet. (The quasi-canonical Federation Day data from a prop but not seen onscreen, is the closest exception, identifying Alpha Centauri Colony as a founding member. This information does not match with the portrayals of the founding of the Federation in Enterprise.)

I've also mentioned the very logical political difficulty in admitting colonies as members. These are both good reasons for rejecting your hypothesis that some significant number of colony worlds are included in the count of 150.

I would ask is there even canonical evidence for a formal institution of "member species" in the Federation? What would that make immigrants? Second class citizens? If a Bajoran is born and raised on Andor can he not represent Andor on the Federation Council?

Zero evidence? Deliberative bodies work like this all the time. And it does mean Picard would likely omit them from the count, especially when coming up with the 150 figure requires not only including colonies, but also excluding other colonies, on an essentially arbitrary basis.

Again, see the definition of Federation. See also the definition of alliance, the term Sisko uses to describe the Federation. All these are points in my favor or points against your interpretation, which requires numerous and completely unjustified assumptions.

I've asked you multiple times now to provide even a modicum of evidence. Your argument in favor of your interpretation of Picard's words has boiled down to "Why not?"

In fact, all the evidence in favor of your claim of colonies being included in the member count mentioned so far - the quasi-canonical "Federation Day" album - has been brought up by me. So I'll give you your next-best piece of data:

Memory Beta refers to a total of eleven human, or partially human, planets as Federation members. Out of a total of 175 total identified Federation members.

Again you showed no evidence that Federation members would opposed the addition of colonies to the membership list. For all we know it's in the Federation constitution to add colonies when certain conditions are met.
I already gave you the definition of Federation: an alliance of planets.
Finally don't pretend that when Picard states "150 planets" this automatically implies homeworlds. It doesn't and you provided no evidence that it does. We can assume that he only meant inhabited planets, further assume that he only meant major inhabited planets or finally assume that he only meant homeworlds. Your assumption is the last and is unnecessarily generous, something I pointed out many times.

I've given you the explicit known count for the end of the movie era (30 definite + 2 probable) about a generation after TOS. We also know the explicit starting count a century earlier (4).

Assuming that the Federation passed 100 members during the early TNG era (which would make sense given Sisko's comment and Picard's comment) and then rapidly passed 150 members, I personally want to lean towards minimizing the TOS era members, and suggest that some number of those identified movie-era species decided to apply for membership during the Organian Peace. Not getting shot at by one of the more aggressive dominant powers in the region is an incentive to join.

I'm hypothesizing Federation membership grows in fits and spurts, frankly, and 20-30 is perhaps low.

This we know that Federation had at least 30 members in TOS and at least 40 members in TNG. That is all we know and it might be that Federation already had close to 40 in TOS and there was no growth or that it has 80 now so it doubled in size. But it's all assumption as are your attempts to seamlessly switch from the number of species to the number of planets as given by Picard, Sisko and Janeway.

I made the claim that population growth is higher when a population is nowhere near its carrying capacity. This can happen due to increased fertility or decreased mortality.

And I already disproven that claim citing examples like Canada which is nowhere near it's carrying capacity yet has much lower fertility rate than places like Nigeria or Bangladesh. Decreased mortality will only work so far, a doubled lifespan will mean double population for a certain amount of time. However if the fertility rate is below replacement (thus below around 2) population will ultimately fall.

They create a new situation where 90+% of traditional manufacturing infrastructure can be eliminated. You don't need to have toilet factories, phaser factories, textile plants, et cetera; you simply need energy, raw materials, and a few replicators.

There's no indication of energy scarcity within the Federation and its planned colonies, and the raw materials are required regardless of how they are processed. So yes, a replicator economy is going to behave very differently.

So how did Sisko use up his "transportation quota" when visiting his parents every day? Obviously there are still limitation which really shouldn't be hard to grasp since they hardly invented perpetuum mobile. You still ignore my point that replicators are known to cost more energy than other old fashioned methods hence you have no evidence that it would be less economically costly to produce them with replicators than the old fashioned way. Thus a civilization wit more fertile planet can grow it's food without wasting energy on replicators as well as do manufacturing thus having more energy to spare on, say, ship contruction. Therefore they will always be more powerful no matter what the technology level is.

The border is only a strategic position assuming pre-existing conflict between the two. As far as agricultural resources, that can be created on nearly any colonizable world via terraforming; as far as mineral resources, you're better off mining asteroid belts than planets. Asteroid mining operations are seen in TOS, IIRC.

You never know when hostilities might break out. And it's not the only strategic location. Closeness to other major planets, closeness to other resources like dilithium rich asteroids, closeness to wormholes etc.
Need I remind you that Cardassians invaded Bajor for the express purpose of stripmining it? Where were their fancy replicators and population pressure then?

See, what I pointed out was that the colony seen in "Ensigns of Command" grew quite quickly in spite of having unusually adverse conditions. Because of the unusual situation, it's not a rate we should assume applies to all colonies, but it's a possible outer bound situation we should consider.

So what? Somalia has a fertility rate of 6.6 in terrible conditions and with no need of fancy technology. When did I claim it's impossible for Federation to have higher population growth? My point was always that you are incorrect in assuming that human fertility will increase naturally because they found new colonies.

The episode did. Again, your argument in this case boils down to the claim that Dr. Bashir is not only unwise - he makes foolish mistakes all the time when it comes to emotional matters - but an uneducated sap as well, and the high-IQ augmented Jack Pack stupid - not merely socially maladjusted.

These are absurdities. Reductio ad absurdum.

What do you mean "the episode did"? The episode in fact showed Dr. Bashir seriously advocating immediate surrender because his asylum friends said that in 5 generations Federation will be free and in 1000 years Federation will enter golden age and the prince kissed the Snow white and they lived happily ever after.

In every aspect? No. Models and forecasts for chaotic systems are inherently unreliable to a certain degree. It's very easy to get wrapped up in a good short-term approximation and miss something important (e.g., the aliens in the wormhole). However, in order to be remotely plausible on an intellectual level, there have to be a few basic conditions. You're assuming Bashir - who is a genius, canonically speaking - is not only foolish, but stupid.

Now, if you have evidence contradicting the episode, you might start throwing out bits and pieces of it. However, we don't. So we make the reasonable assumption: The Jack Pack's forecast was plausible. Inaccurate, as it turned out, but plausible. As it is supposed to be.

Plausible to whom? Bashir? Yes he obviously considered their claim to be able to predict the future for 5 generations so plausible he actually advocated Federation surrender. That makes him foolish and naive no matter what the assumptions about population were.

A conflation justified by the enumerations of member worlds

How? Picard states 150 and you only provided proof for 40 species.

Right. The four central governments, at least three of which represented multi-planet dominions, signed on as four member planets. They already were engaged in planetary colonization before becoming members.

Which means they themselves were not federations of planets before they signed the document. Or that none of their colonies fulfilled any of the criteria to be independent. Or that Federation constitution has plenty of time to be amended.

I feel dated now. OK, to clarify, for the greater part of the 20th century, the middle of it anyway, the world's population growth was close to around 2%. As demographers would tell you, we've started diverging substantially from the exponential model.

Now, as I've indicated, we have little clue what the growth rate will be like in the Federation. Mortality is low, but we know next to nothing about fertility relative to mortality. Different species probably have different population growth rates.

The Jack Pack's estimates really do suggest higher rather than lower growth rates relative to modern developed worlds, as for that matter do humans' extensive colonization efforts, but we really don't know. I've told you, however, what different growth rates mean for the Jack Pack's model, and the scenario you want (low Federation population with high percentage human and low human population growth rates) is not one you're going to be able to make plausible given all the canonical data.

A actually never claimed that humans make up for a large percentage within the Federation. They certainly seem to make up the majority of Starfleet. So the situation could be similar to NATO where US has about 35% of population yet most of the Navy. Finally I don't accept that your assumptions about assumptions of mentally unstable individuals actually give us information about Federation fertility rates.

Which had been tried and failed to work.
They mined the entrance to the wormwhole, but it only slowed the Dominion for a while, because they were eventually able to reopen it.
Planning on unkown aliens is just plain stupid...

Yet this "stupid" thing would actually be correct. No one said they needed to predict exactly what would happen but merely produce a prediction scenario where wormhole became inaccessible.

As l33telboi has stated, you need to compare apples to apples.
What you're trying to do is compare apples to oranges...
Compared to other, "average-sized" galaxies, the Milky Way is big, so a 2modest-sized" galaxy would not, in any logical way, be bigger then the "average".
And this is from the Novelization of ANH, so it is just below G-Canon.
But, as I have also said to l33telboi, I much prefer the 120 000LY interpretation myself, it's just that we can't simply pick and choose what information we use while ignoring all other.
That's dishonest.

I already gave you an example with Mt.Everest and Olympus Mons. You still haven't linked modest and below average yet you claim they are linked. You say we can't pick and choose the information we want and I agree. The problem is the novel gives us no objective information whatsoever. You insist that we should somehow convert "modest" into 30,000ly or whatever. You are inventing information where none exist so you can pretend there is a contradiction with other sources.

[l33telboi]

Again you showed no evidence that Federation members would opposed the addition of colonies to the membership list.

You really should learn the difference between evidence and absolute proof. Evidence has been given by the truckload, the only thing that's missing is absolute proof. And you seem to be using that as an excuse to say absolutely no evidence has been given.

This we know that Federation had at least 30 members in TOS and at least 40 members in TNG. That is all we know and it might be that Federation already had close to 40 in TOS and there was no growth or that it has 80 now so it doubled in size. But it's all assumption as are your attempts to seamlessly switch from the number of species to the number of planets as given by Picard, Sisko and Janeway.

This is a good example of a variation of the above. You’re hiding behind the requirement of absolute proof whenever the person you’re arguing against says something. No matter how plausible what he says is, and no matter how ridiculous what you say sounds, you’re still hiding behind it, trying to avoid debate. But then again, hiding seems to be second nature to you, given you continuously ignore arguments. In the end, every race is likely to control more then one planet, just look to the humans, vulcans and andorians as evidence of this. Ergo, 40 species involved in the Federation is an absolute lower limit. Fact is that it's more likely there 150 species involved with the Federation then 40.

The episode in fact showed Dr. Bashir seriously advocating immediate surrender because his asylum friends said that in 5 generations Federation will be free and in 1000 years Federation will enter golden age and the prince kissed the Snow white and they lived happily ever after.

You're still trying to peg them as nothing but mental patients, downplaying their importance and abilities by neglecting to factor in the fact that they were quite literally inhumanly smart and made predictions that the best of the best in the Federation could. You're not making your argument any more believable by repeatedly doing so.

I already gave you an example with Mt.Everest and Olympus Mons. You still haven't linked modest and below average yet you claim they are linked.

It's how the english language works. If you say something is modest in size, you mean it's on the small side when compared to the average. What more is there to say?

So how did Sisko use up his "transportation quota" when visiting his parents every day?

To avoid abusing the system?

The problem is the novel gives us no objective information whatsoever.

Again, that's how the english language works. If someone says "that's a modest sized car", then the automatic assumption is that it's modest in size compared to other cars. If the comparison was in relation to anything else, then it would've been said. If the passage would've said the galaxy was modest sized when compared to large galaxies, then that would be so. But it didn't give any other reference point.

[Who is like God arbour]

I already gave you an example with Mt.Everest and Olympus Mons. You still haven't linked modest and below average yet you claim they are linked.

It's how the english language works. If you say something is modest in size, you mean it's on the small side when compared to the average. What more is there to say?

The problem is the novel gives us no objective information whatsoever.

Again, that's how the english language works. If someone says "that's a modest sized car", then the automatic assumption is that it's modest in size compared to other cars. If the comparison was in relation to anything else, then it would've been said. If the passage would've said the galaxy was modest sized when compared to large galaxies, then that would be so. But it didn't give any other reference point.

There are already two threads concerning that topic:

• • How big is a tiny portion of something, given in fractions?
  and
  • The STAR WARS galaxy

I recommend, that you use it to continue that part of your debate.

That way, other users, who will search this board in the future for that or a similar topic, will find one thread with all arguments instead of several threads, scattered throughout the board.

[Mr. Oragahn]

WILGA, thanks for those two links.

Now...


What did Picard says exactly about the 150 worlds again?
One would think that citing this number would imply a meaningful qualifier. The concept of 150 major worlds can work, as it could if within Fed circles, this number if often cited and admitted as a figure for the number of major worlds composing the UFP based on X and Y factors, just like economics often cite other numbers as part of a general consensus, like there were X third world countries in 1990, knowing that such numbers are re-evaluated every year or n years.
In light of this reasonnable necessity, there's no absolute necessity to consider that Picard mentionned member worlds. No matter how anal it is, 40~50 confirmed different species is not 100, even less 150.
Now, based on what I observed and my own research, I would consider that humans are the species the more likely to be the source of extra major worlds beyond their home world. But that's based on population number, and is not an admissible factor, for the simple fact that worlds like Vulcan and Andoria wouldn't classify as major worlds.
Which, in the end, would tend to point towards a large fraction of these 150 worlds being homeworlds, which in UFP terms, equals to member worlds, all colonies being affiliated to the member world.

Unless there is evidence that other species have also a couple of more major worlds. Considering the aspect of Vulcan or Andoria, it wouldn't take much to create other "major worlds" of their type from the moment we want to consider Vulcan and Andoria as major worlds.

So, who here would call them major worlds?

As for the modest galaxy, I already posted evidence that there's M101, 170K LY in diameter, nearly twice ours. In light of M101, our galaxy is literally dwarfed.
So 100K LY as "modest" actually works. And that could be nothing in comparison to the Seyfert galaxies possibly measured as millions of light years wide.

This would also imply that SW has a much more developped field of extra galactic astronmy than ours.

[Kane Starkiller]

You really should learn the difference between evidence and absolute proof. Evidence has been given by the truckload, the only thing that's missing is absolute proof. And you seem to be using that as an excuse to say absolutely no evidence has been given.

No evidence has been given that either Picard, Janeway or Sisko included only homeworlds into their counts. They all referred to the number of "planets" or "worlds". What you call evidence is nothing but assumption.

This is a good example of a variation of the above. You’re hiding behind the requirement of absolute proof whenever the person you’re arguing against says something. No matter how plausible what he says is, and no matter how ridiculous what you say sounds, you’re still hiding behind it, trying to avoid debate. But then again, hiding seems to be second nature to you, given you continuously ignore arguments. In the end, every race is likely to control more then one planet, just look to the humans, vulcans and andorians as evidence of this. Ergo, 40 species involved in the Federation is an absolute lower limit. Fact is that it's more likely there 150 species involved with the Federation then 40.

Here you simply declare my position (that Picard could be referring to all major worlds) as ridiculous and that JMS's position (that Picard is talking only about homeworlds) as plausible without bothering to explain why. Nor have you explained why 150 species is more likely than, say, 77 species or 62. I ignored your posts so far because they were pretty much the same arguments as those of Jedi Master Spock so I saw no reason to reply to the same points twice.

You're still trying to peg them as nothing but mental patients, downplaying their importance and abilities by neglecting to factor in the fact that they were quite literally inhumanly smart and made predictions that the best of the best in the Federation could. You're not making your argument any more believable by repeatedly doing so.

They were mental patients weren't they? They were clearly unstable trying to give classified information to the enemy in the time of war and they did utterly fail to predict anything. How then were they "best of the best"?

It's how the english language works. If you say something is modest in size, you mean it's on the small side when compared to the average. What more is there to say?

How about providing some additional evidence than "it's the way English works"? If Bill Gates talks about modest salary is he talking about roughly the same amount of money as a plumber in Zimbabwe?

To avoid abusing the system?

Then there are clearly limitations. It's not a paradise where eveyrones wish comes true. And Sisko used up his quota by beaming once a day to his parents. Hardly abusing the system by transporting around every few seconds.