Why Do People Love Star Trek？
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
119.8786
Summary
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
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,
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and yet it's gained an immense popularity, hasn't it?
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.
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They've probably read the stuff that inspired the Star Trek episodes.
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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.
00:01:09.180
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
00:01:40.600
We wouldn't build a giant monster truck stadium and destroy cars that people better than us
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
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Without buying a brand new car or a thousand shiny toys, we'd go out and become that 18th
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century intellectual back in the heyday of science and mathematics and culture.
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Those people who aren't just interested in some economic benefit in the rat race and obsessing
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over these petty little details, but the people that actually want to better themselves, that
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want to culture themselves, that want to study science, that want to go and make a difference
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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.
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They don't need to risk their lives out exploring space and fighting aliens, and yet they do anyway.
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Their highest calling in life is to study quasars or learn alien languages or study archaeology
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or learn an archaic instrument even though right in their quarters.
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They have a computer with every MP3 of every song performed better than they could ever
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Except these Star Trek people, they'd actually rather put on their own play with members of
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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
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There's very little mass media on the holodeck.
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And as for glory, they do occasionally seek glory in combat, but they don't seek glory the
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same way somebody that wants to be a football player or a basketball star.
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They don't seek the empty glory of accomplishments in sports, but rather the personal and transcendent
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glory of being amazing at what they've practiced at for years.
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The second big thing to notice about Star Trek?
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Moldbug posted an article recently, a re-examination of economics.
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It's a very long article, but read the whole thing.
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One of the things he points out is that an aspect of modernity, one aspect, is that we
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It's all money at the end of the day, eudelons, utilitarianism, hedons, the hedonic treadmill,
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you know, like a faster, better, higher resolution iPod, more porn for everybody.
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This is the measurement of the modern man, his product as an economic worker.
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And whether you're talking about capitalism or communism, this is the measure of a man.
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In historical times, for most of human history, there were very, very few negative economic
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Oh, there's the occasional cattle thief or rapist.
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But ever since the introduction of the factory method, we are becoming increasingly overwhelmed
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These people that you would actively pay not to have their diversity quotient on your job
00:07:05.840
Moldbuck points out that he's a little bit more liberal than most, that he'd be okay with
00:07:12.640
But that not even he would be okay with a computer king who only measured people as economic units.
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Take these negative economic workers, the ones currently that we either lock up in prison
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Take these people and instead make them productive.
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Chop them up, sell their organs, grind the rest up for cat food.
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Mencius is pretty liberal, but he's not that liberal.
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And the current status quo is not particularly viable either.
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Pay them off, give them welfare, give them socialism.
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It creates resentment amongst the non-aristocratic people.
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The people that do need jobs, do need to have some sort of meaning in life.
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They get resentful about paying all of this welfare.
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Now, the upper classes, the ideological liberals, the intelligentsia, you know, like all these
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lovely little leftists that have bought in hook, line, and sinker to the blue kool-aid,
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they love this solution because it makes them feel self-righteous.
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But the problem is, there's maybe, what, 10, 15% of the population, that's the natural aristocracy,
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that percentage can't be working to support the other 85, 90% with the constant heroin drip
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That's not a politically likely or possible solution.
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Not to mention that I think we all find it personally abhorrent.
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These geniuses and these soulful, sensitive people and these people with curiosity and
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a sense of valor in their hearts out on their trek to the stars.
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What are they doing with all the people on Earth?
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Well, to a certain extent, most of them are locked up in holodecks.
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You know, like, go have your midget gangbang orgy on the holodeck.
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We don't need more genes like yours in the environment.
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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
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All of a sudden, these non-productive, useless people, most of them can whittle wood.
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Most of them can do something that's engaging, that grows the human spirit, that satisfies
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the soul and helps them be a real human being instead of a negative production economic consumer.
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I suspect a lot of these people on Earth are being forcibly pushed in to arts and crafts.
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Stuff that's, you know, a replicator could make a better toy.
00:11:01.760
Instead of just locking them up in the holodeck, they're actually engaged in some sort of productive
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But they have something productive to do with their days.
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They're not wasting away smoking heroin and shooting crack.
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You know, it's easy to criticize the Star Trek universe as communist.
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The funny thing is, though, that post-scarcity, this communism...
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See, the aristocracy can actually do communism.
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You and your friends can do communism with each other.
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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.
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Except when we see the under-man, the under-class doing this, you get the black ghettos.
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Where nothing ever gets built and things degrade ten times as fast as they should.
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Because whenever somebody does hit a payday, any time they do get a refill of their EBT card,
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they just blow it, sharing it with neighbors, irresponsibly.
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The under-class is the first one to vote in communism.
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But they are the least capable of dealing with it.
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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
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know, keep Stalin out of things, you actually have a functional little hippie commune for a
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It's only when you give it over to the masses that that sort of economic system really starts
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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
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too busy trying to work in jobs designed for the under-class.
00:14:00.680
Your modern office job, they don't want you to do efficient work.
00:14:06.680
Because that will put people out of work when this is really just a giant ditch-digging with
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.
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We'd be fine without the Industrial Revolution.
00:14:33.700
Everybody has a role prior to the Industrial Revolution.
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Machines are way better than most people at doing the work.
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And so what do you do with all the people out of work?
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Because there's not really any dignity in that.
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How do we get from here to that Star Trek arrangement where the under-class and the obedient
00:15:03.820
are put into jobs to actually fulfill their souls, give them some dignity, some self-respect,
00:15:11.780
Well the natural aristocracy is free to pursue their dreams rather than getting their dreams
00:15:26.020
The biggest challenges with talking to people in the natural aristocracy is that they have
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trouble believing there are people that do need rules and jobs and something to do with
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themselves because otherwise they'll watch reality TV 24-7.