Re:Why Peter Thiel Fears Star Trek
by pavel_lishin on Friday January 20, 2017 @01:01PM
(#13445574)
> So why does anyone need to go anywhere. You can stay wherever you want, safely, and be wherever you want to be and explore whatever robots or holograms running around in ships have explored.
Why do people climb Mount Everest? Why does Elon Musk want to go to Mars, instead of spending the rest of his life in an alcoholic haze, hip-deep in supermodels? Why do people enroll in West Point?
Some people want real adventure; the knowledge that they're in a holodeck would ruin the experience, no matter how interesting it was programmed to be.
People like to contribute, and to have value - that's why there are peons scrubbing Jefferey's tubes, and showing up to 3rd shift in the Astrometrics lab, even if they know that they personally won't be making some great discovery that Picard and Riker seem to every month.
> And also the ship blows up all the time like no one's business.
That's just factually wrong; while the Enterprise-D is in danger a lot, it's also at the frontier of Federation exploration, and the people on it know the risk. You can be a Federation officer and stay close to home.
Why do people climb Mount Everest? Why does Elon Musk want to go to Mars, instead of spending the rest of his life in an alcoholic haze, hip-deep in supermodels? Why do people enroll in West Point?
Some people want real adventure; the knowledge that they're in a holodeck would ruin the experience, no matter how interesting it was programmed to be.
People like to contribute, and to have value - that's why there are peons scrubbing Jefferey's tubes, and showing up to 3rd shift in the Astrometrics lab, even if they know that they personally won't be making some great discovery that Picard and Riker seem to every month.
> And also the ship blows up all the time like no one's business.
That's just factually wrong; while the Enterprise-D is in danger a lot, it's also at the frontier of Federation exploration, and the people on it know the risk. You can be a Federation officer and stay close to home.