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Comment by petermcneeley | Hacker News Reader

In the Star Trek future isnt everyone basically a Phd? I always thought this is what we wanted? Perhaps the issue is elsewhere.

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If you mean literally the future depicted by Star Trek, then, certainly not. It's not stated for sure, but I'd bet money on the activity directors on Risa [0] not having PhDs or equivalent.

But, if, by "Star Trek future," you just mean a post-scarcity future, then, maybe? There would be no reason everyone should need to be a PhD, but also no reason why everyone couldn't be [1].

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[0]: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Risa

[1]: Everyone with the intellectual capacity, that is. One certainly wouldn't expect severely developmentally delayed individuals to possess graduate-level knowledge of any subject. Gradeflation only goes so far. :-P

I would say if you have space faring society and you put them on star ships like the Enterprise, you put those Phds on the super expensive ships.

In the "Star Trek" you don't see broad society, sometimes you see normal people, but series is mostly officers.

You don't want Phds only society because that is a lot of waste. From my point of view bachelors or engineering degree is mostly what will be needed in the future.

Because for me Phds are mostly on thought level of someone who has done bachelor. Staying in academia is a career choice and not that you are chosen to become Phd because you were super smarter than others. It also turns out that to be successful Phd it is more about politics at the university that "beeing ultra smart". True that you still have to be smart to play politics but don't have to point fingers at stupid politicians that handle that as well without having even masters degree.

Ph.D.'s are not just bachelor-level. A Ph.D. teaches you the ability to learn to become an expert. A bachelor's teaches you how the field thinks, which is not the same thing. I tried doing research for my Master's, it was (in retrospect) total amateur hour. My professor suggested I write a summary paper of the literature the next semester, and I learned how I didn't know a thing. Recently I've noticed that my dad (Ph.D.) goes about learning things completely differently than me; I just bumble around and read stuff, he figures out who the important people are and reads that (among other things).

How it is different from what I described as a career choice?

I chose career in building web applications, this is what I am proficient at and I learned it on the job/on my own.

If I would choose to follow Ph.D. I would optimize different things just like your father. Well I believe your father is not proficient at building web applications and I don't think he could be as proficient as me in 6 months. The same for other things I could not become professional football player in 6 months or conduct research in proficient way.

In the actual space program of the time pretty much everyone was a Ph.D. as well as a peak physical specimen.

In Star Trek's future, space travel is commonplace and there are almost certainly non-experts in starship crew roles; Ensign Redshirt, who gets killed by the planetside monster, probably doesn't have an advanced degree.

Yes, we should basis reality on a fictional story... totally makes sense. If we're going to go that route, I say we start throwing politicians in volcanos as the starting point. It worked against Sauron.

>"I say we start throwing politicians in volcanoes as the starting point."

Maybe you're on to something....

Jokes aside, whenever people point to "Star Trek" as an example of post-scarcity society I recoil at just how over-simplified and not well thought out the comparison is.

So what % of the population was farmers in 1500? probably like 80%. Today its 2%. Eventually a similar thing has and will happen to all manufacturing. Today we have instead millions of programmers and teachers etc etc. This trend towards increased education is due to the technological support structure.

If you run this trend forward even 50 years what jobs do you really think will exist that wont basically be scientifically or academically inclined?

Except trends dont account for humanity and general shit hitting the fan. We are living in the safest times ever. Even the world wars aren't enough to topple off the last 100 years are the safest in human history, on average. We are due for a massive war or two really soon if we are relying on trends. Covid is a small, kinky lovetap on the ass when it comes to pandemics of the past. Most countries haven't seen a famine in like 2 or 3 generations. What we saw the last 1.5 years wasn't famine, just hoarding mixed with logistical failures.

Intersaller is probably more on the mark. Blight striking nearly every staple food is the real horror in the night. Cavendish bananas are under massive threat of a fungal disease wiping them out, forever. The same thing can happen at anytime to other overproduced mono-crops.

But then let's take humanity at it's current state. If everyone believes working with their hands is beneath them, are we really going to reach automation peak? Ignoring the scifi fantasy of skynet ai, you really think there wont be exploitation? The one thing humans are brilliant at, it's exploiting a system. You have to pacify a human to stop them from min-maxing. It's what we do. We are already seeing the adverse affects of too many systems online. Ransomware is not a problem, it's a goddamn well oiled industry. The future luddite wont just break a loom or two. They can stop fuel for tens of millions of people. Turn off cooling/heating to homes. And if wireless bots run farms... well, I dont think you need a good imagination to figure out what will happen there.

I mean, it's not like it's bad to daydream the "what if", then work backwards to see if it's even possible in the real world... but what irks me is how anyone imagines any form of gov, society, or industry just needs a Thanos snap to fix them. Like Jesus Christ, watch an overview video that explains the difficulty of grocery store logistics. That's a sliver of the difficulty to run a city, state, province, country or the goddamn planet. To imagine a writer or two, with zero political, business or logistics background "figured it out"... I won't use the r word only because that insults the mentally handicapped with how stupid this line of thinking is. We're talking about the same people who get basic physics and electronics wrong on their show all the time. "Its okay, we figured out how to create the perfect society in our fictional tv show." And people take it seriously... these same folks should watch Vikings and vote for that society to be implemented. I'd enjoy that.

Totally agree.

I do find this illuminating, though, because if someone fundamentally believes problems are caused by a lack of resources - or more specifically a lack of access to resources - then it makes perfect sense to them to think post-scarcity will be a paradise. They're looking at the problems in a fundamentally different way than you or I are.

A long time ago, when the whole reality tv thing was taking off, there were a lot of those rich wife of wherever shows. You want post-scarcity examples, check out them bitches. A coworker back then told me he thinks it has something to do with no real problems, thus they're bored. That boredom from real, actual problems, causes people to be... well, batshit crazy. 10+ years later, I see it repeatedly in real life. If you have no strenuous issues, you turn either crazy or a depressive lump. Humans need difficult goals. Making sure you have good livable conditions is an easy one, but obviously this shouldn't be insanely difficult either. I also believe that's why men at a certain age are perpetually doing home improvements. It fulfills that instinctual need to strive for better living conditions. I think other lofty goals are important too. But this is a massively huge topic beyond HN posts.

> 22. If our society had no social problems at all, the <people> would have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss.

Anytime anyone posits post-scarcity society I cringe a little. Human wants are infinite; atoms on Earth are finite (and take considerable time and energy to move around).

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