Testing Chat IV: A New Hope

[Losonti Tokash]

Well, yes. I was just giving a quick and dirty summary of it.

[Stofsk]

Another post I wrote in that SB thread:

Yes, this definitely seems like a good critique of TNG to me. It may even qualify for the OP, as you could argue there is a certain hypocrisy involved - on the one hand I'd speculate Star Trek's noninterventionist ethos and ideal of cultural tolerance is very much informed by seeing what the opposite attitudes got us historically, on the other hand it presents a vision of the world that is in line with the premises upon which the White Man's Burden was founded; other cultures (like the Ferenghi, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, various weird planets of the week etc.) are portrayed as barbaric and inferior, and the Federation pretty much comes off as the light of the world. Arguably, this makes Star Trek's tolerant messages come off as rather hollow. I think you could make a pretty solid critique that Star Trek still reflects a fundamentally White Man's Burden view of the world, with other cultures being "half devil and half child", and sees the flaw in the imperialist project as fundamentally being one of trying to bring the savage heathens to the light too forcefully and too quickly, rather than with the fundamental imperialist assumptions (one culture is the light of the world, the rest are savage heathens, and the light of the world culture has a charge to bring its light to the savage heathens).

The Culture has been mentioned, and from what I've heard of it on SB it makes me uncomfortable for similar reasons - there seems to be more than a little of the ring of the White Man's Burden in its actions and vision of its place in the universe; it sees itself as a superior culture with a right and duty to bring other cultures more into line with its own values.

I mentioned TGG earlier - one of the frustrating things about that project was in a way its premise might arguably have made better TNG than actual TNG - if you want to present a utopian vision while questioning the notion that a single culture and set of values is clearly the best and should be adopted by everybody, groups like the ADN and the Talorans would have made a much better foil for that utopian vision than the kind of alternatives to the Federation TNG+ Star Trek actually gave us (cartoonish space capitalists! violent space Vikings! space fascists!).

Any thoughts?

How does the Prime Directive gel with your idea of the Federation striving to bring light to the savages via 24th century White Space Mang's burden? They purposely don't go out into the galaxy to spread the light of the perfect civilisation to the great unwashed who are living in darkness and despair for want of a Federation replicator and holodeck. The episode 'First Contact' even points out that their policy towards pre-warp civilisations is a hands-off thing until that civilisation is on the verge of cracking the warp barrier. At which point they invite them to join their all-inclusive club. And it's totally voluntary.

For that matter, how does your criticism of the Federation gel with the idea that there's at least 150 member worlds to it, and thousands of other colonies in total, and essentially everyone gets along well with everyone else? One of the Vulcan philosophies is IDIC and it encapsulates this idea - infinite diversity in infinite combinations. Especially when their closest and traditional competitors/adversaries are all monolithic races. The Romulans don't appear to have any other member race in their Empire other than the Remans, who are really just Romulans with a bad case of nosferatuitis and vitamin D deficiency. The Klingons are the same, so are the Cardassians, so are the Ferengi. What about the Dominion? They're a multi-species state that seem to run on a Federation-style governance. But they're like the mirror mirror version of the Federation. Run by a xenophobic people who purposefully engineer client races to adopt certain characteristics, including reverence for them as gods. They represent a pretty good foil for the Federation, with its transhumanist ideals and multi-species coalition where things are swell right up until you tell the Dominion 'no'. Then the next thing you know you're getting a friendly visit from the Jem'hadar.

EDIT Or the Borg. They're another dark mirror to the Federation. They're a society that's taken technology and run away with it, with all the monstrous results that entails. This is in contrast to how technology is presented in the Federation, where it's a tool for good but ultimately only one tool out of many that has allowed the Federation to become the kind of utopia it's described as. Like the Federation, the Borg are made up of countless species, but all of them have had their identity stripped away and sublimated into one faceless, collective whole. Why would this be anything but horrifying to a culture that prizes individuality and self-determination?

Less cynically, I suppose it might present the vaguely communism-ish utopianism we got, but critically examine it more and present it as a society that is radically different and better than ours but still has serious issues.

One idea I kind of like is the Federation's society works because their highly advanced neurosciences and psychological science allows them to manipulate human behavior very effectively. The entire culture is scientifically engineered to instill Federation values into people via extremely sophisticated, pervasive, and subtle propaganda and incentive systems. Their doctors are very good at treating mental illness, and over the centuries the classification of mental illness has expanded into stuff we'd consider well within the normal range of human temperament; there are very few lazy, selfish, cruel, violent, antisocial, or congenitally unhappy people, because they mostly get diagnosed and treated back into being good and happy Federation citizens, the way we'd try to treat somebody with paranoid schizophrenia or clinical depression. They get a genuinely prosperous society full of genuinely happy people out of this, and most of them would think of it as doing for public mental health what modern sanitation and medicine did for public physical health, but it would also be easy to make a critique that it's a culture that stifles individuality, and you could have an interesting debate about whether the huge improvements in quantifiable quality of life this program has created is worth the sacrifice of human diversity and freedom.

Interesting idea y/n?

Yeah it is, but it's still a cynical look at the Federation. I don't see the evidence for 'sophisticated, pervasive, and subtle propaganda', I don't see a culture that stifles individuality or lacking diversity and freedom. Jake didn't have any trouble setting down on a path towards becoming a writer, even though there's gonna be no profit motive for doing so. I mean, not that writers necessarily get into the business with the intent to make money, but they certainly do want to reach an audience (and it couldn't hurt to have that audience pay them). Jake's grandad had his own restaurant - what the fuck for? Replicators could feed you in five seconds, and at voice command. Yet people frequent his establishment. Picard's family owned a vineyard. Again, why would anyone have a vineyard in a society where you could literally order a bottle of the finest? There's obviously a great degree in which people are free to pursue all kinds of interests that have no economic benefit, so they must be deriving some other kind of benefit from it. And the only thing I can think of that could substitute for that is socialisation.

[Jung]

How does the Prime Directive gel with your idea of the Federation striving to bring light to the savages via 24th century White Space Mang's burden?

To be clear here, this isn't about the Federation's in-universe attitudes, it's about the implicit worldview presented by Star Trek the television show. The point isn't necessarily that the Federation believes itself to be superior to its neighbors, but that the show itself implicitly presents this view; a lot of the alien societies we see come off as deeply and obviously flawed in ways the Federation simply doesn't. Look at the other major powers we see: the Klingons are violent space Vikings, the Romulans appear to be some kind of vague dictatorship, the Cardassians are space fascists, the Dominion are nasty space imperialists, the Borg are space zombies who want to turn you into another space zombie. Looking at this pattern, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that the Federation is being implicitly portrayed as the light of the world and alternatives as largely evil or inferior.

Now as to how non-interference and non-aggression might fit with this, one of the things I said was that the show arguably questions historical imperialism's coercive methods while still embracing its fundamental worldview. That it views the problem with imperialism as a matter of trying to push the savage heathens to the light too forcefully and too quickly, of trying to achieve through coercion what should be achieved through persuasion, rather than with that fundamental view of the world. The Prime Directive and general nonagression could fit with that; the savage heathens aren't ready for the word until they have reached a certain level of development on their own, and the word should be spread by persuasion, not by guns. Arguably this is consistent with Star Trek's brand of optimistic humanism, which sees humanity's problems as largely being ones of lack of knowledge and has faith in the power of the human intellect. Since the true right way to organize a society is logically better than any alternative, persuasion alone should suffice to bring rational people around to it eventually.

For that matter, how does your criticism of the Federation gel with the idea that there's at least 150 member worlds to it, and thousands of other colonies in total, and essentially everyone gets along well with everyone else? One of the Vulcan philosophies is IDIC and it encapsulates this idea - infinite diversity in infinite combinations. Especially when their closest and traditional competitors/adversaries are all monolithic races.

This is true, though I can think of some angles for this.

One is to look at a kind of cultural imperialism that I'd say is very common in the modern West, in which certain fundamental institutions of Western society (democracy, egalitarianism, capitalism) are concieved of as universal goods that should be adopted by all cultures in roughly the same form they exist here, but cultures may retain such surface differences as their own dress, language, religion, food etc.. Such a vision would not be incompatible with a relatively tolerant Federation with great superficial diversity.

Yeah it is, but it's still a cynical look at the Federation.

I'll point out here that was post was made in a thread where the OP was, more-or-less, directly asking for a less utopian take the Federation.

[Aaron]

Hes 28 and wants to date a 17 year old in his therapy group.

What could possibley go wrong with asking out someone ten years their junior, in front of her parents at a mental health course?

[evilsoup]

eh, the age gap is pushing it, but if this was in another situation then it'd basically be fine
that it's a 17-year-old who is in therapy with him does make it an obviously bad idea

[Aaron]

Totally

[adr]

Yeah, but as the film is, I can see why they might have thought it was better not to go there.

I haven't actually seen the film so idk about details, but it just bugs me because more white people is so lame, especially when it is Khan of all people.

[adr]

radically different [...]One idea I kind of like is the Federation's society works because their highly advanced neurosciences and psychological science allows them to manipulate human behavior very effectively.

Is that really radically different? The real world has all kinds of propaganda and incentive systems, and people who doubt it are often labeled crazy. I think this would be more like exaggerating real world stuff and/or changing the mode of enforcement than being really all that different.


certainly could be interesting - the way I see it, this is kinda inline with how Star trek villains are made!

[Aaron]

Lol, metahive posts just make me want to post a gif of Stig flipping a table.

[Veef]

http://blip.tv/nostalgiacritic/nostalgi ... ot-6590499

dude must be having some writer's block if he has to spend ten minutes mansplaining something

[Infinity Biscuit]

Haha that's really painful to watch I have to keep pausing

how do women find him attractive

things don't go his way and he's not manly

though honestly the implication that female sexuality comes entirely from crass manipulation by men earlier in the clip was worse but it was painful in a bad way

Is this how most of his videos go?

[Veef]

Not really. Most of his videos have a lot of screaming and shooting his fake gun.

[adr]

wait loki?

[Glass Fort MacLeod]

Well, yes. I was just giving a quick and dirty summary of it.

Pffty you'll never get anywhere in this world unless you develop a habit of peddling minutae. It got me where I am...

wait.. nevermind. Forget I said that.

honestly though it isn't so much the 17 thing that creeps me out, although its certainly stupid because of legal issues. Its the maturity issue that really bugs me: EG he's totally ignoring it. Along the lines of what Havok says I've known some very mature people younger than 18 (or at least, mature in some ways if not others) whilst I've known tons of 'legal' adults who are more immature than children.

In a way its ironic, because he's really not acting in a mature way about this himself (the whole 'consideration for others' thing, the 'thinking if this is legal', or anything of that vein) and that makes it even more bizarre to me because he SHOULD be thinking in these terms, rather than 'OMG I want to score a catch'.

I suppose if you really read into it there's a certain element of dehumanization in it too because he's being totally self-centereda bout it as well, which adds to the creep factor.

Edit: Plus this is all starting with 'therapy group' to begin with. That screams 'misplaced priorities' to me as well, and can really enhance that 'predatory' aspect.

[joviwan]

I am jack's predatory frustration

[evilsoup]

dating a 17-year-old - weird & possibly a bad idea (power dynamics/relative maturity issues), but could be OK depending on the person & your local age of consent laws
dating someone in your therapy group - you might both re-enforce whatever damaging behaviours you are in therapy for, but depending on the individuals it might be OK

dating a 17-year-old in your therapy group - lol I can see why you need therapy if you think this can end well

[Veef]

how do women find him attractive

things don't go his way and he's not manly

also jeez Nostalgia Critic don't count out the men who also like men!

They can like cool movies too.

[Jung]

Haha that's really painful to watch I have to keep pausing

how do women find him attractive

things don't go his way and he's not manly

People's attractions more diverse than cultural normative standard indicates

Shocking

Though if he provokes this kind of response more than the heroes, who are more presumably more conventionally likeable, I think that is kind of legit interesting.

[Infinity Biscuit]

Though if he provokes this kind of response more than the heroes, who are more presumably more conventionally likeable, I think that is kind of legit interesting.

Well I know my taste in fictional characters and actual humans are very distinct. It seems similar to how interesting characters are: the ones who'd be good to have as friends make boring as shit characters.

[Jung]

Well I know my taste in fictional characters and actual humans are very distinct. It seems similar to how interesting characters are: the ones who'd be good to have as friends make boring as shit characters.

I was thinking about how this contrasts to my own experience and it occurred to me that I don't think I really think about fictional characters in terms of "would I want to have sex with them/have a romantic relationship with them".

Thinking about it, most of the female characters that are the first ones to pop into my mind as interesting characters are definitely not people I'd want a romantic relationship with. Pardon me while I contemplate in terror the idea of having somebody like Lennie Clark from Peter Watts's Rifters novels or Sil from Species as a girlfriend.

[adr]

so I've written an html library

in strict mode it throws exceptions at anything that isn't well-formed xml syntax. this part of the parser is relatively straightforward

but in garbage mode, it is a hideous mess. there's all kinds of if(!strict) { ugly assumption laden workaround }


but over the years of using it on random real world websites every single one of these things has been necessary, and while it actually works on the majority of websites, some problems still come up even today


it is unbelieveable the amount of crap people write. so a user sent me a bug report yesterday, it is segfaulting on this file. at first glance i'm like dat don't make sense but on second glance I suspected a stack overflow

and yup, this file had code that looked like this

<font color=red><font color=red><font color=red><font color=red><font color=red><font color=red>........

and so on repeated about 90 times. the parser used a 64 slot stack (that was supposed to be able to grow, but had a bug, hidden for years since it was never actually needed, wherein it would grow but fail to copy over the existing data to the new memory. so after it got out of this mess, it forgot where it was)


just got another bug report today, it threw a range violation because someone ended a html file like this:

Code: Select all

<html><body>
stuff....</body>
<div

and that's the end of file



if the download got cut off I might understand it, but there was a closing body tag right before it so what the hell


oh well, now the code can handle these bizarre scenarios too. btw here's one of the most fun ones I had to deal with in a bug report a couple months ago:

Code: Select all

<b><a href=sdsa <img


alt
src='about:blank"> hey</b>

blank lines were there originally.... how sloppy is this author? not even MS Word (which makes some ugly fucking html) would do that, someone must have written this by hand

wtf

but now the parser can make sense of it

[evilsoup]

maybe a whole bunch of different wysiwyg html editors messing up the page in their own ways over time?

[adr]

I don't think so cuz they would need to be able to understand the code to display it and as such shouldn't break tags open....

[Dooey Jo]

probably it was written by an idiot taught by an idiot

it's what happens when for decades you've had browsers that do their best to make sense of any bizarre crap instead of throwing up a big red sign saying "nope"

then someone thought "holy shitballs bizarre crap is awesome let's invent php"

and that's why the internet is a horror show on all ends

[adr]

yeah

that's actually one reason why it has the strict mode: when i write stuff it is parsed in strict mode and will just throw if i fuck up. but the suck is browsers dont do it so if im reading other ppls crap i have to accept CRAP