My experience with the original Star Trek was like yours with TNG. I was a huge Star Trek fan when TNG came out, and it captured all of Gene Roddenberry's original optimism. I loved each episode of TNG, and I always seemed to side with the writers and Picard on what was good and just.
As I've gotten older, I've binge watched all the Star Trek series and movies, but like you I couldn't get into Picard, and I even found some of the later movies wanting.
There is one big area of change in my thinking that resonates with Picard. In the TNG episode Measure of a Man, the one where Data is given those precious human rights that are taken away at the beginning of Picard, I cheered for Data's humanity. Brent Spiner created one of the most human characters on the show. Unfortunately, philosophically, I believe the show jumped the shark.
My problem with granting rights to androids is the same reason that Ii would side with the "reformers" in Picard. Bruce Maddox was right. Data is not human. Data lacks consciousness in any form. Data is not a man. Data, and potential androids of the future, will be able to pass the Turing Test. We will not be able to distinguish them from human. Androids will ape human behavior so accurately, we won't be able to tell them from real people. However, androids will always lack the primary measure of consciousness - subjective experience.
Androids are simulated people. A simulation is not reality. Even though androids may act like they are having real experiences, they are not. Humanity will embrace them as slaves because they lack the subjective experience to actually feel the horrors of being enslaved. We will react to them as if they are people because as a species we are very good at suspending our disbelief and very poor and distinguishing fantasy from reality.
The classic illustration of this lack of consciousness is John Searle's Chinese room experiment. It's a brilliant thought experiment where he shows that it's possible to mimic knowledge and understanding without actually having any. Similarly, it's completely possible to pass the Turing Test, be completely indistinguishable from humanity, without actually possessing the most basic characteristic of humanity, subjective experience.
