The tool he uses to make his point (technobabble sucks) is fine, but his point is wrong. Science Fiction explicitly throws us into moral and ethnical quandries

The tool he uses to make his point (technobabble sucks) is fine, but his point is wrong. Science Fiction explicitly throws us into moral and ethnical quandries we would not face without the fictional science making unusual situations possible. How, well ... when I was a physics undergrad, we all watched each new episode of Trek and separated into two teams, one rejecting the technobabble and one trying to justify it, with the latter being the harder task. The fictional science in science fiction will almost always comes up short later, and isn't relevant. Are there interpersonal relationships? Sure. You could put those on any sailing vessel. However, Trek still presents us with "Okay, but what if ..." situations that people can mull over. The fusion of Tuvok and Neelix into a singular entity, Tuvix, who was his own person and wanted to exist on his own rather than being split up again ... that won't happen on your Wagon Train to the Stars. Similarly, in some pirate television show, we are not going to find discussions of whether or not a thinking machine in a humanoid form can be considered mere property of the Fleet. What if that android wanted to reproduce? We explore alternate chains of ethnical decisions as well: while most people would kill out of rage and vengeance over a person being slowly and agonizingly disintegrated by a war-crimes-level Varon-T disruptor, we see a being devoid of emotion come to a similar conclusion as to what must be done, but in a way that is just not human. And so his italicized point -- that it doesn't tell us anything interesting about the human condition under science fictional circumstances -- is completely wrong. Some people still are salty about Tuvix, some people do ask, "What does the Federation do with someone like Bashir?"