Everything about The Inner Light's probe is stupid:
• It is designed to transmit its information to one person, one time. This person could be an imbecile who is working for a salvage operation. The person could be evil. The person could die immediately after it happens and no one would ever know. It destroys itself after a one-time use, meaning that the information cannot be preserved by other people experiencing it and sharing what they found out.
• It shows one snapshot of a culture that is going to die out from one perspective on one place on the planet and gives no regard to the culture's obviously rich history. The planet also probably had more than one culture, although monoculture is a thing in Star Trek.
• It gives the person who is experiencing the lifetime no way to record what is going on as it happens.
• They could have at least added a summary text to the probe to let everyone else know what is going on.
• They could also have added any other information about their culture(s) in text. Anything. At all.
• They could have also included A BOOK INSTEAD OF A FUCKING FLUTE.
• It wasn't even a very interesting flute. It could have been ornately carved or something. Maybe even carvings of what the people who made those flutes looked like? Which reminds me-
• THEY COULD HAVE INCLUDED A PICTURE OF THEMSELVES.
The Pioneer plaque is a more useful transmitter of information about a species than that probe.
Beautiful episode in terms of a storyline but really stupid in terms of a plot device.