Politically, it did do something. It was a useful wedge issue for republican politicians to take advantage of, at the cost of people’s lives.

The difference is that 9/11 was able to be channeled into xenophobia. The same can’t really happen with school shootings. The 40k mindset of hate being a valuable and limited resource hits way too close to home.

And it’s all a tragedy.

It might be a similar line of though as the Goa’uld weaponry from SG-1. They aren’t meant for accuracy or range. They use weapons of terror that create an absolute massacre when they do by chance hit.

The Ferengi, and especially of that particular group were Ferengi pirates of some sort, probably wouldn’t be above such tactics.

But also it was very clearly not a well thought out episode, so I’m absolutely applying meaning where there is none.

I think if you need to be payed to be loyal to Starfleet/The Federation, that kinda is a deal breaker given the philosophy of personal growth and societal enrichment.

Complete tangent, it’s probably not too hard to get around the limits of a replicator if they prohibit or limit alcohol. Presumably you could have it create all the supplies needed for fermentation and make your own batch.

It would take a bit, but you’d have as much as you’d ever want.

Overall seems to give a good picture how Treconomics, but I think he is wrong a in a few ways. The first being private property. There is definitely personal property, but no private property as “business” like the Sisko Family Restaurant and Picard’s vineyard aren’t charging anything from what we can tell. They operate like their customers are family, and you’re visiting them to eat/drink with/etc and then go home.

The second is his labeling of The Federation as a technically capitalist society. I don’t think that’s the case, as corporations don’t seem to exist aside from the ones that are owned and operated outside of Federation space. There are family “business”, but they don’t have stocks or a stock market. And because the “businesses” that do exist don’t charge or make profit, I don’t think it can be considered capitalist.

And they are indeed credited to and debited from each citizen’s “account.” However, the average citizen doesn’t even notice it, though the government does, and again, it is not measured in currency units — definitely not Federation Credits.

I think this idea of each Federation citizen having a welfare account is probably wrong. I think it’s more likely that it’s just assumed that you won’t abuse the replicators/transporters, with a set limit of how much of something a user can use it.

So you can maybe replicate only a handful of basketballs a day, a couple hundred hotdogs, etc. But there is an inbuilt limit to the machine and electricity provided to your home. But it’s not an account.

Sure, I agree that there is absolutely somebody/some governing body controlling and tracking energy use. But again, no personal account.

As for the rest of what he said there, I am pretty much in full agreement.

That’s assuming that they could understand Federation text books, and that their metaphor based thinking wouldn’t make it nigh impossible for them.

it’s possible that they only use that weird allegory reference pattern when speaking formally to strangers or whatever

It seems like an awfully bad idea to use a communication method that doesn’t transfer what you mean if you have a better option available.

It’s also possible that their language in the original version makes more sense and is more practical and it just gets mangled by the universal translator.

I doubt that’s the case. I don’t see how a non-metaphor based language would get turned into a metaphor based one through a software bug. Some big hand waving would need to happen for that.

IMO the Tamarians probably have brains that are structurally different such that their metaphors come far more naturally.

I think half of the episode is the Tamarians genuinely struggling with human language. If the federations translation software wasn’t up to the task, it isn’t surprising that the Tamarian’s software wasn’t up for it either.

Based on the episode, it was posibly the first time Tamarians ever had friendly and successful first contact. Because if they had it previously, they might have asked for help translating when meeting new races such as with the Federation. The episode would have went a lot different if they had an Adorian ambassador with them saying “Yeah these guys talk in metaphor and only metaphor”.

They’ve also run things like the pioneer plaques (or maybe it was arecibo) past other scientists, who often have difficulty discerning the meaning behind them. If human scientists have difficulty discerning the meaning, I can only imagine what kind of difficulty aliens who speak in metaphor would have, let alone if they weren’t linguists/scientists, which appear to be the case in the episode.

We evolved to hunt, and so it is suspected that as a result of that, we understand arrows to indicate direction. A species that hasn’t evolved in such a way might not understand the meaning of arrows. Apply that same principle to language and you potentially have your problem.

They may have tried that in the past to no avail. The episode specifically mentions there was several failed attempts at first contact.

A guide only works if you understand the guide. Think of it like this, if I sent you all 1679 ones and zeros from the arecibo message to you, but you didn’t understand the concept of zero, you’d have a hard time understanding what the message meant, even if the message itself was self explanatory.

Their language isn’t just grammatically different, it is uses a fundamentally different structure, and the Tamarian brain might be structurally different as well, able to easily account for language when young. So there may not be much of a “base language” that the metaphors are built on so to speak.

It boggles my mind how my conservative father even remotely thinks anything positive about star trek, let alone being obsessed with it.

Steve absolutely nailed it. Though I think his 4th point about optimism being a core part of star trek was missing a subsection. Almost all of the characters, and especially the ones the show wants you to root for have shit loads of empathy for the people around them, and often times it even extends to outright enemies.

Whenever a crew member is losing control of their behavior because of a mind control space entity, the crew’s first reaction is a level of concern people only have for close family members. When Sisko is doing arguably immoral acts for the greater good, he is wracked with grief and empathy for those he had to hurt. Janeway on the other hand just wants her coffee lol.

Voyager’s Living Witness

Not a bad choice at all

Jus out of curiosity, why is it that you connect with this one but not the TNG ones?

Not even measure of a man gets a slot?

All good things

https://www.npr.org/1204955269

If you think this description sounds suspiciously like Paradox Interactive’s Stellaris with a Star Trek Prime Directive attached, you’re not wrong. The mechanics of advancing your faction and winning the game (militarily, economically, or diplomatically) are nearly identical, and fans of Stellaris will recognize the game’s style in Infinite’s assets and artwork.

I want off Mr. Nightmare Fuel’s wild ride.

I’m fascinated to see what the next big move is for these businesses

They’re going to instill contracts just like cable companies did. Wanna watch XYZ show? Just sign this 2 year contract for noname streaming service!

People switching from service to service will not be tolerated for long. They must always extract more and more profit for their shareholders.

Also means you’d be able to completely manipulate memories, experiences, basically anything held in the brain.

That’s assuming you know which exact parts do exactly what. Kinda like an encrypted zip file versus an unencrypted one.

You edit whatever set of bits/bytes you want in both, but only in one of them will you actually know whats going on.

Replicator exist in this setting, which are seemingly capable of making everything from food to weapons, so presumably the original material isn’t needed.