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Seth McFarland wrote a pretty great piece on Star Trek replicators and their relationship to the structure of society. The question it answers is "does the rep

Seth McFarland wrote a pretty great piece on Star Trek replicators and their relationship to the structure of society. The question it answers is "does the replicator allow for Star Trek's utopia, or does Star Trek's utopia allow for the replicator?" https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/13tpq18/heartbreaking_seth_macfarlane_actually_makes_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/13tpq18/hear... It is very thought provoking, and very relevant.

Jupe 3y ago
Thanks for sharing. This deserves a submission of it's own.
yadaeno 3y ago
Ive never seen Star Trek, but lets say you had an infinite food machine. The machine would have limited throughput, and it would require resources to distribute the food. These are both problems that capitalism solves in a fair and efficient way. I really don’t see how the “capitalism bad” is a satisfying conclusion to draw. The fact that we would use capitalism to distribute the resources is not an indictment of our social values, since capitalism is still the most efficient solution even in the toy example.
- deleted 3y ago
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- hayst4ck 3y ago
  If you are any kind of nerd I recommend watching it. It shows an optimistic view of the future. In many ways it's the anti-cyberpunk. Steve Jobs famously said "give me star trek" when telling his engineers what he wanted from iPhones. Star Trek has had a deep influence on many engineers and on science fiction. When people talk about Star Trek, they are referring mainly to "Star Trek: The Next Generation." "The Inner Light" is a highly regarded episode. "The Measure of a Man" is a high quality philosophical episode. Given you haven't seen it, your criticism of McFarlane doesn't make any sense. You are trying to impart a practical analysis of a philosophical question and in the context of Star Trek, I think it denies what Star Trek asks you to imagine.
revelio 3y ago
It doesn't answer that, it can't because the replicator is fictional. McFarland just says he wrote an episode in which his answer is that replicators need communism, and then claims that you can't have a replicator in a capitalist system because evil conservatives, capitalists and conspiracy theorists would make strawman arguments against it. Where is the thought provoking idea here? It's just an excuse to attack his imagined enemies. Indeed he dunks on conspiracy theorists whilst being one himself. In McFarland's world there would be a global conspiracy to suppress replicator technology, but it's a conspiracy of conspiracy theorists. There's plenty of interesting analysis you could do on the concept of a replicator, but a Twitter thread like that isn't it. Really the argument is kind of nonsensical on its face because it assumes replicators would have a cost of zero to run or develop. In reality capitalist societies already invented various kinds of pseudo-replicators with computers being an obvious example, but this tech was ignored or suppressed by communist societies.
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  I think you are caught up on the word communism. Communism as it exists today results in authoritarianism/fascism, I think we can agree on that. The desired end state of communism (high resource distribution) is being commingled with the end state of communism: fascism (an obedient society with a clear dominance hierarchy). You use communism in some parts of your post to mean a high resource distribution society, but you use communism in other parts of your post to mean high oppression societies. You identify communism by the resource distribution, but critcize it not based on the resource distribution but by what it turns into: authortarianism. What you're doing is like identifying something as a democracy by looking at voting, but criticizing it by it's end state which is oligarchy. It takes effort to prevent democracy from turning into oligarchy, in the same way it takes effort to prevent communism from turning into authoritarianism. Words are indirect references to ideas and the ideas you are referencing changes throughout your post. I am not trying to accuse you of bad faith, so much as I am trying to get you to see that you are not being philosophically rigorous in your analysis and therefore you are not convincing because we aren't using the same words to represent the same ideas. You are using the word communism to import the idea of authortarianism and shut down the analysis without actually addressing the core criticism McFarland was making against capitalist societies. Capitalism is an ideology of "me," and if I had a replicator, I would use it to replicate gold, not food for all the starving people in Africa. I would use it to replicate enough nuclear bombs to destroy the world, so if someone took it from me, I could end all life on the planet ensuring that only I can use it. So did scarcity end despite having a device that can end scarcity? No. Because we are in a "me" focused stage of humanity rather than an "us" focused stage of humanity so I used it to elevate my own position rather than to benefit all mankind. Star Trek promotes a future of "us" and that is why it's so attractive. McFarland was saying that "us" has to come before the end of scarcity, and I agree with his critique.

Jupe 3y ago

Thanks for sharing. This deserves a submission of it's own.

yadaeno 3y ago

Ive never seen Star Trek, but lets say you had an infinite food machine. The machine would have limited throughput, and it would require resources to distribute the food. These are both problems that capitalism solves in a fair and efficient way. I really don’t see how the “capitalism bad” is a satisfying conclusion to draw. The fact that we would use capitalism to distribute the resources is not an indictment of our social values, since capitalism is still the most efficient solution even in the toy example.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hayst4ck 3y ago
If you are any kind of nerd I recommend watching it. It shows an optimistic view of the future. In many ways it's the anti-cyberpunk. Steve Jobs famously said "give me star trek" when telling his engineers what he wanted from iPhones. Star Trek has had a deep influence on many engineers and on science fiction. When people talk about Star Trek, they are referring mainly to "Star Trek: The Next Generation." "The Inner Light" is a highly regarded episode. "The Measure of a Man" is a high quality philosophical episode. Given you haven't seen it, your criticism of McFarlane doesn't make any sense. You are trying to impart a practical analysis of a philosophical question and in the context of Star Trek, I think it denies what Star Trek asks you to imagine.

revelio 3y ago

It doesn't answer that, it can't because the replicator is fictional. McFarland just says he wrote an episode in which his answer is that replicators need communism, and then claims that you can't have a replicator in a capitalist system because evil conservatives, capitalists and conspiracy theorists would make strawman arguments against it. Where is the thought provoking idea here? It's just an excuse to attack his imagined enemies. Indeed he dunks on conspiracy theorists whilst being one himself. In McFarland's world there would be a global conspiracy to suppress replicator technology, but it's a conspiracy of conspiracy theorists. There's plenty of interesting analysis you could do on the concept of a replicator, but a Twitter thread like that isn't it. Really the argument is kind of nonsensical on its face because it assumes replicators would have a cost of zero to run or develop. In reality capitalist societies already invented various kinds of pseudo-replicators with computers being an obvious example, but this tech was ignored or suppressed by communist societies.

hayst4ck 3y ago
I think you are caught up on the word communism. Communism as it exists today results in authoritarianism/fascism, I think we can agree on that. The desired end state of communism (high resource distribution) is being commingled with the end state of communism: fascism (an obedient society with a clear dominance hierarchy). You use communism in some parts of your post to mean a high resource distribution society, but you use communism in other parts of your post to mean high oppression societies. You identify communism by the resource distribution, but critcize it not based on the resource distribution but by what it turns into: authortarianism. What you're doing is like identifying something as a democracy by looking at voting, but criticizing it by it's end state which is oligarchy. It takes effort to prevent democracy from turning into oligarchy, in the same way it takes effort to prevent communism from turning into authoritarianism. Words are indirect references to ideas and the ideas you are referencing changes throughout your post. I am not trying to accuse you of bad faith, so much as I am trying to get you to see that you are not being philosophically rigorous in your analysis and therefore you are not convincing because we aren't using the same words to represent the same ideas. You are using the word communism to import the idea of authortarianism and shut down the analysis without actually addressing the core criticism McFarland was making against capitalist societies. Capitalism is an ideology of "me," and if I had a replicator, I would use it to replicate gold, not food for all the starving people in Africa. I would use it to replicate enough nuclear bombs to destroy the world, so if someone took it from me, I could end all life on the planet ensuring that only I can use it. So did scarcity end despite having a device that can end scarcity? No. Because we are in a "me" focused stage of humanity rather than an "us" focused stage of humanity so I used it to elevate my own position rather than to benefit all mankind. Star Trek promotes a future of "us" and that is why it's so attractive. McFarland was saying that "us" has to come before the end of scarcity, and I agree with his critique.