6 ms·

It's important to both suspend disbelief to enjoy fiction from reality and take fiction with a big grain of salt that it's often missing considerations of reali

It's important to both suspend disbelief to enjoy fiction from reality and take fiction with a big grain of salt that it's often missing considerations of reality. It's when people confuse and conflate fiction with reality minus critical thinking that hobgoblins of the mind get let loose to draw unrealistic conclusions. Reality and fiction slightly intersect as a fuzzy Venn diagram, to a degree, but their more often echoes of imagination than of experience.

krapp 8y ago
>It's important to both suspend disbelief to enjoy fiction from reality and take fiction with a big grain of salt that it's often missing considerations of reality. Ironically, this happens in the utopian case with Star Trek, which gets invoked as an example of a valid and functioning "post scarcity" society based on fabrication and automation, despite the technology in that series being essentially magic.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  The core of the Star Trek post-scarcity is a) near-free energy, and b) ubiquitous access to matter replicators. The replicator is kind of magic, but not total impossibility, and rough approximations are within realm of conceivable "future technology". But I think first and foremost, Star Trek is being brought as an example of post-scarcity so often because it's pretty much the only story that presented such society and reached general audience. It's pretty much a lone beacon of hope in the sea of dystopia. Still, I agree with your point. Star Trek is a nice dream, but not a good source of information for reasoning about reality.
  - ctchocula 8y ago
    Trekonomics is a nice non-fiction book about the utopian ideas presented in Star Trek and especially TNG. There, they treat the replicator as more of a metaphor for post-scarcity rather than recipe (i.e. Star Trek technology is sufficient but not necessary). I would say I'm more optimistic than you about post-scarcity. Bertrand Russell makes a case for the insanity of modern society by noting that during WWI half of British populace was sufficient to produce enough for all of Britain. Even if we allow for some margin of error in his statement, since that time productivity in the US has increased 4.5x since then. To me the show is increasingly relevant. For example, it presents a clear answer to a popular criticism to UBI: what is to prevent everyone from staying home to play video games and leeching off society? The optimistic answer is that once society can produce enough goods for everyone, the traditional value system of society (material wealth => proxy for contributions to society => virtue) loses meaning and will be overtaken by new ones (contributing to society => virtue). I agree with most of your summary except the end. What if the problems in the US and around the developed world are more due to how society is organized rather than technological? I think the Star Trek value system is appealing and IMO something we ought to strive for.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      My comment didn't present my full view on the topic - I was seconding the warning that "don't reason from fictional evidence" applies to both dystopia and utopia visions. In truth, I am more hopeful about the post-scarcity scenario than that comment might have implied. I am (currently) in favour of UBI, though there are two things that I'm not sure about. One, what's to prevent prices immediately rising to eat the entire UBI, returning everything to status quo but with no welfare budget? Two, how to deal with migration from countries with no UBI to countries with UBI? As for Star Trek itself (the TNG/DS9/VOY timeline, at least), I do consider it a good vision of what the world could be like. The question that's always in my mind is "how do we get there". I dream humanity can get to a post-scarcity era; the trick is surviving the transition.
      - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        As for prices rising - increased demand in a flexible commodity do not result in prices rising, but falling. Economies of scale, right? So many of the things that folks spend UBI money on, will get cheaper.
        TeMPOraL 8y ago
        But will there be increased demand? For the basics - food, shelter - the demand is pretty much proportional to population. With more money around and same demand, will competition on commodities be enough to keep the prices where they were? My naïve expectation is that they'll in fact rise, and tie up most of the UBI.
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        So folks will spend their money on other things. I just don't get it - how does "people have money" lead to "I know how they will spend it, and it will be on housing and food"? In a competitive market (I can go to any grocery store I like) the prices are not set to what people have to pay but on what the other stores are selling for. The offerings may depend on that - more caviar if folks have more spendable income. But that's called Standard of Living, and if it goes up well that's the whole purpose of UBI

krapp 8y ago

>It's important to both suspend disbelief to enjoy fiction from reality and take fiction with a big grain of salt that it's often missing considerations of reality. Ironically, this happens in the utopian case with Star Trek, which gets invoked as an example of a valid and functioning "post scarcity" society based on fabrication and automation, despite the technology in that series being essentially magic.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
The core of the Star Trek post-scarcity is a) near-free energy, and b) ubiquitous access to matter replicators. The replicator is kind of magic, but not total impossibility, and rough approximations are within realm of conceivable "future technology". But I think first and foremost, Star Trek is being brought as an example of post-scarcity so often because it's pretty much the only story that presented such society and reached general audience. It's pretty much a lone beacon of hope in the sea of dystopia. Still, I agree with your point. Star Trek is a nice dream, but not a good source of information for reasoning about reality.
- ctchocula 8y ago
  Trekonomics is a nice non-fiction book about the utopian ideas presented in Star Trek and especially TNG. There, they treat the replicator as more of a metaphor for post-scarcity rather than recipe (i.e. Star Trek technology is sufficient but not necessary). I would say I'm more optimistic than you about post-scarcity. Bertrand Russell makes a case for the insanity of modern society by noting that during WWI half of British populace was sufficient to produce enough for all of Britain. Even if we allow for some margin of error in his statement, since that time productivity in the US has increased 4.5x since then. To me the show is increasingly relevant. For example, it presents a clear answer to a popular criticism to UBI: what is to prevent everyone from staying home to play video games and leeching off society? The optimistic answer is that once society can produce enough goods for everyone, the traditional value system of society (material wealth => proxy for contributions to society => virtue) loses meaning and will be overtaken by new ones (contributing to society => virtue). I agree with most of your summary except the end. What if the problems in the US and around the developed world are more due to how society is organized rather than technological? I think the Star Trek value system is appealing and IMO something we ought to strive for.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    My comment didn't present my full view on the topic - I was seconding the warning that "don't reason from fictional evidence" applies to both dystopia and utopia visions. In truth, I am more hopeful about the post-scarcity scenario than that comment might have implied. I am (currently) in favour of UBI, though there are two things that I'm not sure about. One, what's to prevent prices immediately rising to eat the entire UBI, returning everything to status quo but with no welfare budget? Two, how to deal with migration from countries with no UBI to countries with UBI? As for Star Trek itself (the TNG/DS9/VOY timeline, at least), I do consider it a good vision of what the world could be like. The question that's always in my mind is "how do we get there". I dream humanity can get to a post-scarcity era; the trick is surviving the transition.
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      As for prices rising - increased demand in a flexible commodity do not result in prices rising, but falling. Economies of scale, right? So many of the things that folks spend UBI money on, will get cheaper.
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        But will there be increased demand? For the basics - food, shelter - the demand is pretty much proportional to population. With more money around and same demand, will competition on commodities be enough to keep the prices where they were? My naïve expectation is that they'll in fact rise, and tie up most of the UBI.
        JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        So folks will spend their money on other things. I just don't get it - how does "people have money" lead to "I know how they will spend it, and it will be on housing and food"? In a competitive market (I can go to any grocery store I like) the prices are not set to what people have to pay but on what the other stores are selling for. The offerings may depend on that - more caviar if folks have more spendable income. But that's called Standard of Living, and if it goes up well that's the whole purpose of UBI