There are still plenty of foreign visitors on the Enterprise, not to mention all the literal children living there. I always found the reasoning provided by Picard there rather silly.
I don’t think “reasoning” is the right perspective to examine Picard’s comment from. He’s not making a debate point, Picard is politely telling Ralph that he’s acting like an assclown and that it WILL stop.
Plus the computer can figure out who is using it, and lock them out as necessary. “Hero Worship” has Data point out to a child that he couldn’t have blown up a starship by leaning on the console, because it can detect that, and not register the controls. And we know that there are ship functions that are keyed behind an authentication code, like the self-destruct system.
But he probably doesn’t need to explain that to Ralph, since it’d not be that relevant. What’d be more important in that moment to get him to stop causing trouble.
There are still plenty of foreign visitors on the Enterprise, not to mention all the literal children living there. I always found the reasoning provided by Picard there rather silly.
I don’t think “reasoning” is the right perspective to examine Picard’s comment from. He’s not making a debate point, Picard is politely telling Ralph that he’s acting like an assclown and that it WILL stop.
Plus the computer can figure out who is using it, and lock them out as necessary. “Hero Worship” has Data point out to a child that he couldn’t have blown up a starship by leaning on the console, because it can detect that, and not register the controls. And we know that there are ship functions that are keyed behind an authentication code, like the self-destruct system.
But he probably doesn’t need to explain that to Ralph, since it’d not be that relevant. What’d be more important in that moment to get him to stop causing trouble.
The rod was still firmly crammed up his chiseled ass at that time. After the Borg and Data’s 1st death, he became a touch more grounded and cynical.