
Why Peter Thiel Fears “Star Trek” - the_decider
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/why-peter-thiel-fears-star-trek
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tokenizer
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBleglF94CA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBleglF94CA)

TLDW: Star Trek is exactly what Thiel describes: Utopian drivel.

DS9 actually abandoned a lot of that idealism for something more realistic,
and confronted this issue in an episode called: "Treachery, Faith, and the
Great River".

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devoply
Star Trek in many ways does not make any sense. You have all these crew
members on a ship that are miserable. They could be living much more happier
lives somewhere else. But out of some weird lost sense of duty they are all
alone on this star ship running around doing the federation's bidding. Why?
What's so compelling to get these people to make themselves miserable when
they could do anything else at all that they wanted to. Like in DS9, the
captain's father is running a creole restaurant. That's a much better way of
making a living than the shit these idiots are doing. And they complain about
being lonely and miserable more than once in TNG and TOS. But yet they keep
on. For years, if not a lifetime. No family. No purpose but the trek.

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namlem
How are they miserable? Most of them seem happy to be there. There are a
number of examples of crew members choosing to remain on the Enterprise
instead of taking cashier jobs because of the adventure of it.

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devoply
The Enterprise is either a military vessel or a business vessel. The
federation is a hierarchical corporate entity. In rhetoric it is benevolent.
In reality they are constantly fighting wars. The Enterprise and its crew are
constantly put in harm's way. They should all have some sort of PTSD by now,
but magically don't. So yes they seem happy, but really what are they living
for? Exploration and adventure, well that's all nice but eventually you
actually want a life. Work is not life, and living on the Enterprise is not
really living. It seems that you are on duty 24/7.

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chmaynard
Peter Thiel strikes me as a sucessful investor and deal-maker posing as an
intellectual. His opinions carry a kind of gravitas in the Valley, but his
constricted world view seems rather cold and one-dimensional.

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lhnz
The reason he's considered an intellectual is that he has intellectual
achievements. It's not posture since one can read his Wikipedia page and
quickly realise that he's more intellectual than most other VCs. Likely better
at Chess, Philosophy, etc.

