HN

Comments (201)

• Menu

  legitster
  As an aside, Jean-Luc Picard's character was explicitly based on Horatio Hornblower (Stewart was given a stack of Forrester novels to prepare for the role).In comparison between the two, Hornblower was a rather unimaginative person bound by his deep sense of duty and the extreme pressure of the Navy. Picard (as a character) replaces duty with the Prime Directive, and pressure came from feeling with the unknown.I have a deep affection for stories where people are depicted as good, or even just good at their jobs. I appreciate for actors and writers it's a much harder ask - it's much easier to make a story of relatable bumbleheads, especially if you yourself are somewhat uninteresting and never got much life experience. It's much harder making believable characters that we can look up to and respect.
• Menu

  dabinat
  The danger is that we give good leaders too much power, and they’re then replaced by someone who abuses it. And that’s why we need to be careful how much power we give someone, even if we’re sure they will use it wisely.
• Menu

  vigilantpuma
  Big fan of Star Trek and Picard is my captain forever, but this credit seems more due to Gene Roddenberry.
• Menu

  tomaytotomato
  I should do a write-up but my Claude Code and Pi have been personalised to assume the persona of Jean-Luc Picard for almost a year. I find the output generated to be more useful and of a higher "quality".I also enjoy the occasional salted phrase that is included in generated out e.g. "Tea, Earl Grey, hot!", when I have been Claude'ing too much.Here is a gist of my Claude.md file if anyone is interested:https://gist.github.com/tomaytotomato/87d83265be1a22ba96454f...
• Menu

  ralgo
  The essential Picard Episodes of TNG The Measure of a Man (S2E9) Q Who (S2E16) The Best of Both Worlds (S3E26 & S4E1) The Drumhead (S4E21) Darmok (S5E2) The Inner Light (S5E25) Tapestry (S6E15)A pretty good use of six hours.
• Menu

  gadders
  I think Picard was a good example of positive masculinity. Strong and not a wimp without being overbearing or a bully.
• Menu

  Veliladon
  One of the most interesting things about the clip where Picard defends Data's humanity is the pronouns. Picard consistently uses he/him to refer to Data while Maddox uses it/them. Captain Louvois uses he/him during her ruling. Then, once all is said and done, Maddox finally calls Data by "he".
• Menu

  MitPitt
  Patrick Stewart or the show writers? I'm not a fan of equating TV character personalities to actors.
• Menu

  prhn
  So odd the arguments I've been reading when this is brought up since his death.> He's fictional thoughAren't most of our heroes? Yes, we create scenarios in art to exemplify extraordinary human behavior. To explore humanity.> Patrick Stewart or the show writers?Both, but mostly Patrick Stewart. Let me give you the same material and crew and see if you can evoke the same cultural reaction.
• Menu

  umvi
  He's fictional though... It's easy to make a fictional ideal leader. How about real life examples? "Dalinar Kholin taught us what good men do with power" vs. "George Washington ..."
• Menu

  arjie
  Bit of a pet-peeve of mine with people confusing fiction with reality. Reality has constraints that fiction doesn't. Every group of people greater than one encounters a misalignment issue at some point. Fiction is useful. Narratives guide our understanding and help bring ideas to people.But real life has friction. CA HSR would fund PEPFAR for 40 years. So...PEPFAR or CA HSR? Is the guy who chooses the former the good man with power or the latter? Or is it a third guy who pays for both through increased taxes so that the United States middle class pays the higher proportion of total taxes that Norway does? Groups of people have priorities and they have their own objectives.Labor unions are generally fairly xenophobic. They were at the forefront of restricting Indians and Chinese from being citizens and the mob Hoffas held power there even till just a few years ago. A Georgian union got a bunch of Koreans deported. Who's the villain here? The Koreans? The union? The Indians? The Chinese? The people who want to employ them? Who's the good man?Constraint-free optimization is trivial. I can do it with no problem. In fact, I shall do so here with a single line: "Make everyone happy".
• jstummbillig
  More than anything, what struck me was the excellence of the team -- a striking combination of morals, skills, sense of responsibility and purpose -- that existed in TNG around Capt Picard.Whatever was done to get that going was an act of absolute geniuses. (Granted, it helps when the hard parts can be explained through fantasy.)
• rolph
  What good men do with power..; what power does with good men..
• Menu

  skeledrew
  It's interesting how I've been seeing posts about how Steward-as-Picard exemplified goodness. Sure he was a really great actor, but he was... an actor, tasked to help bring to life a universe envisioned by Gene Roddenberry. And there's like nothing about the latter.
• mgdev
  They see everything. They see it all.
• Menu

  andsoitis
  Wasn’t his character’s power teeny tiny compared to those who ruled the Federation?
• Menu

  dofm
  So, class: what does this tell you about our current predicament and the people at the helm of it?
• croes
  I bet nowadays TNG would have been cancelled after the first season. How many episodes did they need to catch on?
• jonstewart
  I know it’s just a way people grieve, but it’s obviously a fallacy to conflate the character with the actor.
• Menu

  j45
  Patrick Stewart didn’t teach this.A character he acted did.Patrick Stewart on his deathbed referred being estranged from his children from always putting work before his kids in his own words.
• moralestapia
  Rest in peace, fleet admiral. See you in Valhalla!*makes salute motion*People make fun of this but cartoons and sci-fi series are great models to learn about and guide the development of society.We lost the best one, no good actors remain.
• Menu

  miiiiiike
  The worst person that I have ever worked with knew nothing about leadership that wasn’t on Star Trek or in an episode of The West Wing. They even referred to the site as “their ship.”Absolute, total, delusion.Inspired to be better? Of course. Taught? God no.If you’re finding that your leadership style, or really any part of your personality, is being lifted from an 80s/90s TV show, step back and reevaluate things.
• anon
  undefined
• Menu

  fnord77
  He was a fictional leader. In a fictional utopia.
• Menu

  AIorNot
  I mean forget Picard, the leadership we have in much of the world today is full of egotistical narcissistic, blowhard or mob style and courrpt people -it feels like no one cares that such people ascend to power either via populism or via corruption -forget shithole countries..it feels like we have become a shithole planetTrump, Putin, Erdogan, Netanyahu, Erdogan, ... and so many others. Social media has only intensified thisWhat is wrong with Humanity?
• 786562354238
  [dead]
• mmwon
  [dead]
• TacticalCoder
  [flagged]
• Menu

  _wire_
  Star Trek is cultish ideological juju in the form of swashbuckling egomania and theme park vacation.Look at the colors: a tribe of C-suite nerds zip around in an atomic powered space-faring Hyatt Regency trying to train the universe to Taylorize all production methods. Its protagonists are utterly entitled and classist, who teach war as the essential force by which their lives incur meaning.It's is a soap-operatic long tail of Western empire indulging in fatuous "adventure", which amounts literally beaming into alien realms to cause disturbance and justifying it through dominion or ignorance, while the executives try to believe they've moved beyond themselves so they can feel noble.As a dramatic art, the show offers some moments of transcendence, but these end up sequestered to the commercial dictates of the franchise, which is an epic advert for consumerist Americana.I feel deep suspicion about anyone who regards cosplay as instructive about what makes for "good men with power". And as Vox is a notable outlet in the great system of commercial attention-whoring that defines our culture, I feel double the suspicion.Also See:Phase IV (1974) Futureworld (1976) Lathe of Heaven (1980)
• Menu

  tqi
  I think looking to popular entertainment for thought leadership is silly.
• Menu

  jacquesm
  As opposed to Gorbachev?Gandhi?Mandela?
• throw8393038
  Star Trek and Jean-Luc Picard is horrible example of leadersnip! Every time he meets real danger, he gets his crew needlesly killed to make empty gestures!Like with Q, he has to give lectures to literal god! Perhaps shut up for 5 minutes to get more information?Or when meeting borg...?Patrick was great actor, he was still able to carry Star Trek. But writing was horrible! Vegetarian communist utopia tries to imagine real combat!
• decoydave
  So many smart people here on yc!
• zackmorris
  Our wealthy and powerful leaders seek to crown themselves nobles without nobility.