Leo D.M.J. Aurini - March 16, 2013


Why Do People Love Star Trek？


Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

119.8786

Word count

1,896

Sentence count

135

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

14

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Why are Trekkies so obsessed with Star Trek? Why do they love it so much? And why do they care so much about it? Why does it have so much to do with economics? Is it because it's post-scarcity and post-modernity? Or is it because they don't need to work?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 You know, Star Trek, if you want to be cynical, really isn't that good of a show.
00:00:13.820 The science fiction is derivative, inconsistent, the philosophy and moralizing is fairly childish,
00:00:24.240 and yet it's gained an immense popularity, hasn't it?
00:00:36.680 This is a question worth examining.
00:00:38.720 Why is it so popular, despite being such bad science fiction?
00:00:42.960 The thing is, Trekkies, on average, Trekkies are a few IQ points above the general population,
00:00:49.740 and they've probably read a lot of other sci-fi.
00:00:52.480 They've probably read the stuff that inspired the Star Trek episodes.
00:00:57.240 Some of them riffing off of better sci-fi, other episodes outright stealing the ideas
00:01:02.780 from better sci-fi, and yet these people remain Trekkies.
00:01:06.800 Why?
00:01:09.180 You know, a while back I said that there's certain people, and, like, you guys out there listening
00:01:21.840 to my videos, I can tell just by reading the comments, are clearly amongst this group.
00:01:27.600 They're the sort of people that, if any of us won the lottery, we wouldn't spend it on 0.99
00:01:35.160 hookers and blow. 1.00
00:01:36.600 We wouldn't waste it all in one year. 0.65
00:01:40.600 We wouldn't build a giant monster truck stadium and destroy cars that people better than us
00:01:48.360 built.
00:01:49.360 It's not what we're interested in.
00:01:55.040 We'd keep doing what we're doing.
00:01:56.360 Except that we'd be able to quit our jobs and do what we really want to do, full-time, to
00:02:03.120 the fullest extent of our ability.
00:02:06.120 Without buying a brand new car or a thousand shiny toys, we'd go out and become that 18th 0.69
00:02:14.120 century intellectual back in the heyday of science and mathematics and culture.
00:02:22.800 The natural aristocracy.
00:02:27.800 Those people who aren't just interested in some economic benefit in the rat race and obsessing
00:02:34.100 over these petty little details, but the people that actually want to better themselves, that
00:02:40.920 want to culture themselves, that want to study science, that want to go and make a difference
00:02:47.800 in the world.
00:02:48.800 It just comes naturally to us.
00:02:52.980 And who do you think makes up Starfleet?
00:02:56.180 The natural aristocracy.
00:02:59.100 So the thing about Star Trek, two important things to notice is, first of all, it's post-scarcity.
00:03:10.440 They've got the technology in the Star Trek universe that they can have anything they want.
00:03:16.320 They can live in a big bubble of orgasmium. 0.74
00:03:19.200 They don't need to work.
00:03:20.540 They don't need to risk their lives out exploring space and fighting aliens, and yet they do anyway.
00:03:27.500 It's what they want to do.
00:03:29.860 Their highest calling in life is to study quasars or learn alien languages or study archaeology
00:03:37.220 or learn an archaic instrument even though right in their quarters.
00:03:43.100 They have a computer with every MP3 of every song performed better than they could ever
00:03:48.980 do.
00:03:49.980 Right there to listen to.
00:03:50.980 Except these Star Trek people, they'd actually rather put on their own play with members of
00:03:55.840 the crew.
00:03:56.840 They'd actually rather play their own instruments and tend forward.
00:04:01.080 And I'll bet you they also play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons coming up with brilliant, very, very
00:04:06.480 heart-wrenching scenarios.
00:04:09.160 There's very little mass media on the holodeck.
00:04:12.500 Most of it seems to be amateur.
00:04:18.320 And as for glory, they do occasionally seek glory in combat, but they don't seek glory the
00:04:27.640 same way somebody that wants to be a football player or a basketball star.
00:04:34.760 They don't seek the empty glory of accomplishments in sports, but rather the personal and transcendent
00:04:44.540 glory of being amazing at what they've practiced at for years.
00:04:56.260 Post-scarcity, yet they choose to work.
00:04:59.480 Natural aristocracy. 0.78
00:05:00.480 The second big thing to notice about Star Trek?
00:05:06.920 We never see what Earth looks like.
00:05:11.380 Moldbug posted an article recently, a re-examination of economics.
00:05:16.620 The link is down below.
00:05:17.780 It's a very long article, but read the whole thing.
00:05:21.360 It's brilliant.
00:05:23.360 One of the things he points out is that an aspect of modernity, one aspect, is that we
00:05:33.600 measure everything in dollars.
00:05:37.100 It's all money at the end of the day, eudelons, utilitarianism, hedons, the hedonic treadmill,
00:05:44.240 you know, like a faster, better, higher resolution iPod, more porn for everybody.
00:05:52.520 This is the measurement of the modern man, his product as an economic worker.
00:05:59.080 And whether you're talking about capitalism or communism, this is the measure of a man.
00:06:05.640 That's all they care about.
00:06:10.220 Second aspect is the negative utility worker.
00:06:15.040 Again, this is a product of modernity.
00:06:19.720 In historical times, for most of human history, there were very, very few negative economic
00:06:27.760 workers. 0.65
00:06:28.680 Oh, there's the occasional cattle thief or rapist. 1.00
00:06:32.940 You hang those ones. 1.00
00:06:34.400 They're a negative utility. 1.00
00:06:35.400 You hang them.
00:06:36.960 But ever since the introduction of the factory method, we are becoming increasingly overwhelmed
00:06:44.180 with negative utility workers.
00:06:49.920 And what the hell do we do with these people?
00:06:53.240 These people that you would actively pay not to have their diversity quotient on your job
00:06:59.240 site.
00:07:00.240 What do we do with these people?
00:07:05.840 Moldbuck points out that he's a little bit more liberal than most, that he'd be okay with
00:07:11.080 a king.
00:07:12.640 But that not even he would be okay with a computer king who only measured people as economic units.
00:07:20.200 Take these negative economic workers, the ones currently that we either lock up in prison
00:07:25.260 or keep in the ghetto.
00:07:28.120 Take these people and instead make them productive. 0.81
00:07:30.160 Chop them up, sell their organs, grind the rest up for cat food.
00:07:35.720 Mencius is pretty liberal, but he's not that liberal.
00:07:41.040 That's not really a viable future.
00:07:45.240 And the current status quo is not particularly viable either.
00:07:49.900 Pay them off, give them welfare, give them socialism.
00:07:52.960 It creates resentment amongst those people.
00:07:57.000 It creates resentment amongst the non-aristocratic people.
00:08:03.100 The people that do need jobs, do need to have some sort of meaning in life.
00:08:11.260 They get resentful about paying all of this welfare.
00:08:14.560 Now, the upper classes, the ideological liberals, the intelligentsia, you know, like all these
00:08:21.040 lovely little leftists that have bought in hook, line, and sinker to the blue kool-aid,
00:08:25.120 they love this solution because it makes them feel self-righteous.
00:08:29.240 But the problem is, there's maybe, what, 10, 15% of the population, that's the natural aristocracy,
00:08:38.440 that percentage can't be working to support the other 85, 90% with the constant heroin drip
00:08:46.700 and widescreen TVs and on-demand pornography.
00:08:54.660 We've got a problem here.
00:08:57.580 We can't just go and genocide these people.
00:08:59.820 That's just not an acceptable solution.
00:09:02.060 That's not a politically likely or possible solution.
00:09:07.460 Not to mention that I think we all find it personally abhorrent.
00:09:13.940 But we need to do something with them.
00:09:19.820 Let's go back to the Star Trek universe.
00:09:22.380 So you have the natural aristocracy.
00:09:25.580 These geniuses and these soulful, sensitive people and these people with curiosity and
00:09:31.140 a sense of valor in their hearts out on their trek to the stars.
00:09:36.660 What are they doing with all the people on Earth?
00:09:40.940 Well, to a certain extent, most of them are locked up in holodecks. 0.97
00:09:44.940 You know, like, go have your midget gangbang orgy on the holodeck. 1.00
00:09:48.820 You know, go do this and don't breed. 0.99
00:09:54.660 We don't need more genes like yours in the environment.
00:09:59.820 But the other thing, the other thing that's telling about Earth is that Jean-Luc Picard's
00:10:07.700 family runs a winery, which makes me suspect that back on Earth, there's actually a lot
00:10:15.700 of people doing the handicrafts.
00:10:17.700 Again, this is something Moldbug talks about.
00:10:20.700 Ban plastic toys. 0.96
00:10:21.700 All of a sudden, these non-productive, useless people, most of them can whittle wood.
00:10:27.580 Most of them can do something that's engaging, that grows the human spirit, that satisfies
00:10:34.580 the soul and helps them be a real human being instead of a negative production economic consumer.
00:10:42.580 I suspect a lot of these people on Earth are being forcibly pushed in to arts and crafts.
00:10:52.520 Stuff that's, you know, a replicator could make a better toy.
00:10:56.120 But there's a replicator ban on making toys.
00:10:59.020 Instead we get the incompetence.
00:11:01.760 Instead of just locking them up in the holodeck, they're actually engaged in some sort of productive
00:11:06.740 work, which they're capable of.
00:11:11.020 Everybody's starving.
00:11:12.640 Everybody has food.
00:11:15.900 Because it is post-scarcity again.
00:11:23.360 But they have something productive to do with their days.
00:11:26.640 They're not wasting away smoking heroin and shooting crack.
00:11:32.980 Or is it the other way around?
00:11:35.580 You know, it's easy to criticize the Star Trek universe as communist.
00:11:42.580 Because it is a communist environment.
00:11:46.880 The funny thing is, though, that post-scarcity, this communism...
00:11:51.200 See, the aristocracy can actually do communism.
00:11:57.520 You and your friends can do communism with each other.
00:12:03.080 When one of you is laid off of work, friends can chip in to buy the beer.
00:12:08.400 And you know that no one's going to exploit the system.
00:12:10.140 No one's going to be destructive. 0.79
00:12:12.140 Except when we see the under-man, the under-class doing this, you get the black ghettos. 1.00
00:12:22.660 You get the native reserves.
00:12:24.520 Where nothing ever gets built and things degrade ten times as fast as they should.
00:12:30.020 Because whenever somebody does hit a payday, any time they do get a refill of their EBT card,
00:12:35.860 they just blow it, sharing it with neighbors, irresponsibly.
00:12:44.740 See that's the odd thing.
00:12:45.740 That's the really funny thing.
00:12:47.640 The under-class is the first one to vote in communism. 0.94
00:12:51.580 But they are the least capable of dealing with it.
00:12:59.960 Meanwhile, the natural aristocracy can actually deal with communism extremely well.
00:13:08.080 If you took Marx and Engels and, well, possibly Lenin, that guy did have beady eyes, but, you
00:13:14.460 know, keep Stalin out of things, you actually have a functional little hippie commune for a
00:13:21.020 while there.
00:13:25.460 It's only when you give it over to the masses that that sort of economic system really starts
00:13:30.200 falling apart.
00:13:31.520 Especially in this era of quasi-scarcity that we're still in.
00:13:41.180 We've got this economic under-class and we've got this aristocracy which, sadly, are mostly
00:13:50.240 too busy trying to work in jobs designed for the under-class.
00:13:58.360 For people that can't think for themselves. 1.00
00:14:00.680 Your modern office job, they don't want you to do efficient work.
00:14:03.480 They don't want you to think for yourself.
00:14:04.680 They don't want you to innovate.
00:14:06.680 Because that will put people out of work when this is really just a giant ditch-digging with
00:14:15.300 shovels.
00:14:16.860 Even though we have a backhoe right over there.
00:14:19.120 The problem is the transition from where we are right now to there.
00:14:31.020 We'd be fine without the Industrial Revolution.
00:14:33.700 Everybody has a role prior to the Industrial Revolution.
00:14:37.660 Then you get machines.
00:14:39.240 Machines are doing the work.
00:14:40.240 Machines are way better than most people at doing the work.
00:14:43.600 And so what do you do with all the people out of work?
00:14:45.600 The people that are useless? 0.85
00:14:46.600 You make them all shoe-shiners? 0.99
00:14:49.600 All Walmart greeters?
00:14:51.600 Because there's not really any dignity in that.
00:14:56.400 How do we get from here to that Star Trek arrangement where the under-class and the obedient 0.53
00:15:03.820 are put into jobs to actually fulfill their souls, give them some dignity, some self-respect,
00:15:08.780 as opposed to the ghetto?
00:15:11.780 Well the natural aristocracy is free to pursue their dreams rather than getting their dreams
00:15:18.660 stomped on by the corporate environment.
00:15:26.020 The biggest challenges with talking to people in the natural aristocracy is that they have
00:15:31.500 trouble believing there are people that do need rules and jobs and something to do with
00:15:38.500 themselves because otherwise they'll watch reality TV 24-7.
00:15:45.000 That is why Star Trek is so popular.
00:15:48.040 Irini out folks. 0.80