# Ethical or social problems caused by Star Trek tech **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** star-trek-paramount\ **Created:** [April 10, 2021, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759 "2021-04-10T17:56:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/41 "2021-04-11T20:55:27Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > given the opportunity to do anything that interested them, most people would find that the only thing that interested them was doing nothing? This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. No one has ever said what the population of Earth is. Let’s assume at least 5 billion. You need to keep people busy so they don’t screw up civilization. That many people in a post-scarcity society can get into a lot of trouble. So “letting” them spend 24/7 in a private holosuite is better for society. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/42 "2021-04-11T20:57:32Z")
I imagine that most people will always do little things like cooking. knitting, and gardening for their own enjoyment, but I expect not so many would be motivated to engage in activities that require more effort and bring fewer benefits. There will always be some who appreciate material rewards more than attention from an admiring public. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/43 "2021-04-11T22:44:50Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Assuming that some people will be motivated to follow creative urges and produce brilliant works of art and science, how do you reward them for it if they can have literally anything they want just by ordering it from the computer? Social Credit. Everyone can get what all s/he needs and a lot of what they want but not everyone can just get absolutely _ **anything** _ s/he **wants** with no limit or restriction, just for the asking. If you contribute very good things to the common well being, you get a preferential turn at the replicators more often and for more and better things per visit, and you get to access the premium levels of holodeck program. > [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > If holodecks are that good, they could create any fantasy partner you wanted, from any source. What’s the chance that your sexual ideal is among your co-workers when you have all of time and space to choose from? If you had the hots for a psychiatrist from a twentieth-century TV show, the holodeck can whip her right up for you. More seriously one would consider that under the principle that you hold the “copyright” to yout likeness and identity, it would be no problem to program into the system that no simulation other than legit training exercises may include the likeness of crewmates, unless they explicitly authorize so. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/44 "2021-04-11T23:20:17Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > > given the opportunity to do anything that interested them, most people would find that the only thing that interested them was doing nothing? > > This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. > > No one has ever said what the population of Earth is. Let’s assume at least 5 billion. You need to keep people busy so they don’t screw up civilization. That many people in a post-scarcity society can get into a lot of trouble. So “letting” them spend 24/7 in a private holosuite is better for society. If you look at the rest of what I said, I think it’s quite clear that I’m not saying that most people would want to do nothing. I’m saying that most people would want to do something; not all of them the same something(s), of course. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2021, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/45 "2021-04-12T16:00:59Z")
If you’ve watched “The Orville”, which is basically Star Trek without being Star Trek, they sort of address this with Bortas and the Cove of Pleasure. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2021, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/46 "2021-04-12T16:18:52Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > “Those poor people…” And their “historical documents”. > [@GreenWyvern](#): > > _The Orville_ has an episode where Bortus gets hooked on alien porn on the holodeck. That causes a problem when his mate tries to kill him. Wasn’t the alien porn one where he manages to upload a porn virus onto the ship’s system and the ship nearly falls into a star? > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > No one has ever said what the population of Earth is. Let’s assume at least 5 billion. IIRC at the beginning of _First Contact_ Data gives an Earth population of 9 billion (“All Borg”). That’s probably a good ballpark figure for Earth’s non-Borg population under “normal” circumstances. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2021, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/47 "2021-04-12T16:56:34Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Social Credit. > > Everyone can get what all s/he needs and a lot of what they want but not everyone can just get absolutely _ **anything** _ s/he **wants** with no limit or restriction, just for the asking. If you contribute very good things to the common well being, you get a preferential turn at the replicators more often and for more and better things per visit, and you get to access the premium levels of holodeck program. You’ve got the right idea, but you’re using it the wrong way. You don’t quite get that energy is, per hypothesis, no longer scarce or, at least, it isn’t scarce until you’re running up against the kinds of limits that prevent you from replicating your own weaponry. No, the scarce factor in any post-scarcity economy is _the attention of your fellow sophonts_. Want a bowl of chili? OK, replicate it. Want a human cook to make you a bowl of chili to your specifications, as opposed to dinking around with talking to a non-sophont replicator? _That_ costs Whuffie, or Credits, or whatever the society is using to gatekeep access to scarce resources. We’re already there in the software world, or at least some parts of it. Want a web server? Grab Apache or nginx. They’re free. Want someone to set it up for you and make you a custom setup, maybe with some server-side stuff you can’t just grab? _That_ is where a paid consultant comes in. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2021, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/48 "2021-04-19T22:27:26Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > No one has ever said what the population of Earth is. Isn’t it mentioned by the computer when the Borg take Earth in “First Contact”? ---
**Author:** ![Ponderoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponderoid/32/19221_2.png) [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2021, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/49 "2021-04-20T00:48:57Z")
That was the current population of Borg after they’d held Earth for 300-odd years. One can’t expect the Borg population growth to exactly equal Humanity’s. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2021, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/50 "2021-04-20T07:00:51Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Should they be tolerated, or penalized for not contributing anything to society? > > Why should they contribute if they have no motivation? In a true post-scarcity society, why would anyone care? Yes, they should be tolerated. “Contributing” is a meaningless term then, a useless holdover from a scarcity mentality. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2021, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/51 "2021-04-20T08:06:17Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > the Xindi “Temporal Cold War” It’s not the Xindi Temporal Cold War. The Xindi were a pawn of the Sphere Builders, who were one of the 4 main (known) factions in the TCW - the others being the nonspecified entity the Suliban worked for, the Na’Kuhl (the ones who helped the Nazis in the alternate timeline they created) and the 30th century version of the Federation (who mostly worked through manipulating earlier versions of the Federation to keep the other factions from changing things). ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2021, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/52 "2021-04-20T13:32:57Z")
I’m pretty sure choosing to not participate would earn you an endless string of visits from a “counselor” (pshrink/psocial worker) until you “saw the light” and got off your ass to do _something_. _ **TNG** _ had that kind of a bullying society. After all, “it’s for your own good,” right? ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2021, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/53 "2021-04-20T13:44:53Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > If holodecks are that good, they could create any fantasy partner you wanted, from any source. I’ve said before that the holodeck would be humanity’s last invention. . (I’d bet I heard that somewhere, but I’ve quoted it during many a drunken ‘future tech’ or ‘past TV’ discussion) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2021, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/54 "2021-04-20T14:01:11Z")
I wasn’t answering for what would happen in Trek, but for what _should_ happen, as that was the question you asked. In Trek, who can say? We have no real idea how their civilian society operates other than brief glimpses of Sisko and Picard’s families and various colonies. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2021, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/55 "2021-04-20T14:12:07Z")
> [@digs](#): > > I’ve said before that the holodeck would be humanity’s last invention. I don’t know about that. Some would abuse it, but I think there would still be people that wanted to have real experiences rather than just in the holodeck. And no one has mentioned my line about the TV psychiatrist; was it too obvious or too obscure? ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2021, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/56 "2021-04-20T14:28:44Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Some would abuse it, but I think there would still be people that wanted to have real experiences rather than just in the holodeck. As mentioned earlier upthread > [@Derleth](#): > > No, the scarce factor in any post-scarcity economy is _the attention of your fellow sophonts_ . Want a bowl of chili? OK, replicate it. Want a human cook to make you a bowl of chili to your specifications, as opposed to dinking around with talking to a non-sophont replicator? _That_ costs Whuffie, or Credits, or whatever the society is using to gatekeep access to scarce resources. As for the replicators, so for the holodecks. Though one does also wonder about the social values that could be imposed on holodeck use – one could imagine Federation-era Earth having come to the point of not even allowing the holodeck to simulate some things that are “immoral” (or would that be socially unenlightened?) by their value standards, or to “red flag” your usage if it favors some unsavory kinds of simulation. ---
**Author:** ![gonzoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a6a055/32.png) [@gonzoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzoron)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2021, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/57 "2021-04-20T14:29:50Z")
The obesity problem should be dead simple to solve with transporter technology. Simply beam the excess carbs and fat out of your digestive tract before your body absorbs them, but after they’ve triggered satiety. If you’ve been lazy and haven’t kept up with that process daily and start packing on a few pounds, beam out the resulting fat for a no-incision liposuction. ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2021, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/58 "2021-04-20T18:17:42Z")
There’s an episode of _Deep Space Nine_ where O’Brien roasts 20th century people as being greedy and self centered. The implications of this statement is that sometime in the next 200 years mankind will evolve. That’s right! The Star Trek universe is being run by mutants! ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2021, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/59 "2021-04-20T18:39:49Z")
BTW, I wonder about Benjamin Sisko’s father’s restaurant. As far as I can tell from reading the Memory Alpha wiki, it served seafood dishes, which suggests that the 24th century hasn’t adopted vegetarianism or veganism. Also, I wonder if it’s a novelty to go to a restaurant like that where food is prepared the old-fashioned way, rather than via a replicator. ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2021, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759/60 "2021-04-20T18:46:24Z")
Of course there are more than a few people living in the 21st century that believe that the ancient Egyptians were incapable of building the pyramids without alien help. So O’Brien could’ve been an elitist. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ethical-or-social-problems-caused-by-star-trek-tech/939759.md?page=4)