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On the other hand, what a world. I can ask a question about pattern matching function signatures in Kotlin, cross a city street, and read a little tutorial by the time I’m on the other side. (For now, Claude cannot tell me if cars are approaching, so I have to keep my head up.)

I’m not quite sure if I will be a permanently necessary part of the loop here. We always did wonder exactly why the Enterpise couldn’t just explore space on its own

@annika Star Trek is clearly not about having fun, it’s a naval adventure + humanist allegory, with zap guns

In some ways its view of the military was already outmoded on arrival

In the future, if we have one, we will probably all have resources like today’s billionaires and the only reason to do stuff would be for fun, megalomania, impressing others. So yeah I can imagine a flying group home of bohemian aristocrats just trying not to be bored

@neilk I very much get the sense people in Star Trek are doing the things they want to do, as opposed real life where we do what is demanded of us by capitalism

It's a minor point, there's just that general sense some want "AI" to automate all the fun things so we have more time to do the dishes, which feels very wrong

@annika I can’t imagine anyone voluntarily joining a uniformed service with real, kill you very dead, courts-martial for disobedience

It makes so much more sense if it’s advanced LARPing by bored post-humans. Maybe “the Federation” is just part of that group’s canon and the fact that they tell other civilizations it really exists is just their commitment to the bit

@annika Although I guess people do exactly that today, volunteer for an organization that can kill them for disobeying. Tradition and honor is important to some people. I believe Napoleon boasted of how he could get men to kill for a scrap of ribbon

I guess I am ignorant and IDK what post-scarcity post-colonial military could look like