Slashdot Mirror
Star Trek PhD Thesis Wins Academic Prize
An anonymous reader writes "A PhD thesis based on Star Trek has won an Australian university's top academic prize. Dr Djoymi Baker's 90,000 word dissertation 'Broadcast Space: TV Culture, Myth and Star Trek' was awarded the University of Melbourne's Chancellor's Prize for Excellence in the PhD. Dr Baker watched over 700 Star Trek episodes — more than 624 hours — to investigate the relationship between ancient mythology and today's popular culture. American academics thought her research was 'superlative' and suitable for teaching."
It is nice to think that at least today we KNOW that our myths are made-up.
But there are still some people who manage to insist they are real, actual events! - UFO religions like the Scientologists or heaven's gate.
Nonetheless, despite the fact that our current mythology is fiction, Star Trek and the like are at least Science Fiction: not based upon the supernatural, but instead upon testable, and currently tested theories and ideas.
Amazing: even as culturally advanced as we fancy ourselves, we still retain those ancient urges to believe in the fantastic. But
perhaps that's because so much in this universe is actually fantastic; far more, in fact, than we ever imagined.
It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from the late, great Dr. Feynman: "Far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the
past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if
he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?"
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
...how important intelligent communication is. While a topic like 'TV Culture, Myth and Star Trek', in my opinion, does not provide a revolutionary breakthrough in the study of humanities, the fact that she intelligently and effectively enumerates and supports her argument is enough to merit the award she received.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
I've heard of "Measure of a Man" used in an ai class or something similar.
(For those unfamiliar, this was an episode early on in the series. Some random character at a space station wanted to disassemble Data to study him. After talking with this dude, Data decided that he hadn't the proper background knowledge to be able to reassemble him when he was done, so refused to undergo the procedure. The guy got an admiral to order Data from the Enterprise to go with him for the experiments, so Data resigned Starfleet. Starfleet responded by claiming that Data was its property and didn't have the right to resign, so Data went to a trial/hearing type thing so that a judge could decide. Picard argued that Data had the right to resign, and Riker was ordered to take the opposite side. (They didn't have any actual lawyers at this space station, so the top-ranking officials acted, though Riker against his will.) The episode was essentially about what constitutes life.)
You pose that as a rhetorical question, but it seems to me it's a legitimate one. I take it that your answer is "no"?
I would say that Picard's argumentation was that Data could not really be distinguished from a living, sentient being, so that the ruling should be in his favor. His vision was that if the judge would allow Data to be "enslaved" because he was ruled not to be sentient, the judge should be very clear about where the line is drawn, because that would open the door to the enslaving of all kinds of races.
The supposedly rethorical question is not legitimate (in this episode), because the existence of a soul is not brought forth as an issue by either Picard or Riker. It should not play a role in the judge's ruling. The answer should be "no" with or without Data having a soul.
And if you ask my personal opinion: I do not believe in the concept of a soul as a separate entity that occupies our bodies and can exist after death. So I say that I have no soul. And still I do not wish to be dismantled. The fact that I admit that I have no soul is no reason to dismantle me. The fact that I can express the genuine wish not to be dismantled should secure my rights in that respect.
But if I was just an entity in a Chinese Room experiment, with no other desires and wishes than just to translate scribbles to different scribbles, it seems to me that I am not sentient. So, if there comes a day that I am reduced to that, please dismantle me.