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Comment by tqi | Hacker News Reader

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

I disagree, Captain Picard was a role model for me as a young boy and really helped me understand what a good leader, a good man, and what wisdom looks like. My dad died when I was young and this character very much helped me. Books, movies etc can inspire people including on leadership principles.

People seem to forget that stories and acting were the primary way of passing along critical lessons for surviving and building civilisation and human best practices befoee we came up with self help books and entertainment

That's actually a major function of fiction. Remember, it's written by real people.

And science fiction in particular: it is meant to be a reflection on reality.

I’ve often wondered if The Office inadvertently trained people to be bad managers.

People tend to follow examples they’ve seen before, even if they know it was a bad one. When faced with a new situation, they might just parrot the bad behavior because it’s the only example they know.

> I’ve often wondered if The Office inadvertently trained people to be bad managers.

Maybe it exacerbated it, but The Office was mostly a documentary of preexisting behavior.

This is a classic breakdown:

https://ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-t...

The nice thing about Michael Scott is that while he is a self-absorbed and very flawed manager and human, he also genuinely cares a great deal about his employees.

What? Like his main character shtick is that he's a selfish asshole that will abuse his workers on a whim.

How do you watch that show and not notice that he's supposed to be the worlds worst, selfish, narcissist ?

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) worked in an office for many years, and so he had credibility in making funny observations about it.

It's hard to imagine anyone not understanding the value of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory but here we are I guess.

There's value in allegory. I don't think there's value in modern mainstream television or film.

Would you have said the same thing in Shakespeare's time?

Or Homer’s?

Yes, mostly?

My feeling is that while enjoyable and thought provoking, TNG is still a work of fiction, and as such favored entertainment and legibility within a 45 minute window over nuance or subtly. That meant there were clear distinctions between "good" and "bad" sides, and scenarios often felt like they were constructed backwards from an outcome/clever solution.

I think that in turn causes people to view the real world in the same way, except they are always the "good" side and solutions that require compromise and tradeoffs are seen as unacceptable failures.

Most things are to some degree works of fiction. The public personas of the rich and powerful are generally curated representations of how they want you to see them, and that isn't a new phenomenon.

And most of Shakespeare is similar. The good guys and the bad guys are obvious just like in fables. But it's a hierarchy. It's useful to teach very young children fables even though they're silly. It's an easy way to introduce concepts around how we treat each other fairly. TNG and Shakespeare are the same way. Just a step on the hierarchy. Yes, as a person reaches adulthood, it's obvious that it's simplified. But you've at least seen examples in art of what might be worth aspiring to in life when young. It's why we've been telling each other hero's journey stories since Homer. What are the alternatives? Examples of self-interest and power grabs with no consequences? To a young person that can be rapidly demoralizing.

Totally agree on the 45 minute window limitation though. That's why I've always liked DS9 where they took what could have been one episode about a culture and conflict and made it 7 seasons.

Shakespeare is not similar to Start Trek. He has way more nuanced and realistic takes then Star Trek. Most TV shows have more nuance and psychological realism then Star Trek. Even Odyssey which is thousands years old has way more complex morality and takes then Star Trek. It does not have that super simplistic white white good against badly bad evil that will admit mistake and change into good person because Picard said a sentence.

> It's why we've been telling each other hero's journey stories since Homer.

Homer is nothing like Star Trek and its story is not a moralizing adventure.

> TNG is still a work of fiction

Fiction in the case of TNG is an excuse to spam aphorisms. The whole scifi setup is not the point of the stories.

For between 5000 and 25000 years (at least), humans have used storytelling to preserve, develop and disseminate their culture(s).

If you want to critique the stories and the storytelling of TNG or whatever else, please do so - there's plenty to get into. But "still a work of fiction" is not a critique worthy of anyone's time.

The fault with taking lessons from fictions is the writer can make any outcome seem plausible.

A far better method of learning leadership is by studying actual leaders, both good and bad ones. For example, if you want to know why Rommel was able to lead a small group of men to victory after victory, read a biography of him.

Studying a fantasy whose entire purpose is to make money entertaining people? You're wasting your time.

Are any of the script writers of Star Trek successful leaders of men? If not, what credibility do their "lessons" have?

A historian can make their interpretation of history plausible. A group of historians can reinforce a narrative that is then undercut by the next generation of historians. What made Rommel a good commander is a complex question and we might not yet be done exploring the answer.

Picard the character was derived from the writers’ understanding of historical leaders. Saying the writing of him was solely for money or entertainment is like saying that a historian is only writing for a paycheck and prestige.

If you read the writings of the TNG writers, they were quite caught up in the ethical dilemmas they were presenting. Art that is purely for money is contrived and one dimensional.

Science fiction has an interesting and irreplaceable role in art: it can take a situation out of its immediate context and put it under another lens, clear of its modern cultural baggage. What makes science fiction interesting or not interesting is what it does with that ability: does it promote a simple good vs evil scenario, or does it explore the rich shades of grey that play out in real scenarios?

TNG was particularly good at showing real moral and ethical dilemmas that were quite thought provoking. Their head writers, particularly Michael Pillar and Ronald Moore and Jeri Taylor were deeply interested in exploring the implications and moral contradictions of the plots they presented.

Waving it all away as money grabbing is a reductive history at best.

> Picard the character was derived from the writers’ understanding of historical leaders.

How do you know that?

As for TOS, is it acceptable military doctrine that the general and his staff are the ones taking point into danger, where the entire leadership layer can be easily erased? Did Eisenhower storm Omaha Beach on D-Day?

Well probably better to look to Picard than a literal Nazi…

> The fault with taking lessons from fictions is the writer can make any outcome seem plausible.

Agree but...

There is fiction also in stories of actual leaders (obviously even if 'non fiction') but more so in actual fiction (no matter who writes it even someone who has had the actual experiences). In a sense non-fiction more dangerous possibly (since it's taken more seriously and generally by many people unfortunately assumed to be true).

So even movies about real people or books have fiction ie creative license. How many times has the Steve Jobs story about 'the other side of the fence needs to be good (or whatever it was)' been told? Did it really happen (just because Steve told it or even his father related it?) Does it matter? Point is you might as well take most stories with a grain of salt. Even if again non-fiction.

What amazes me is how people are discussing a fictional character that they enjoyed watching and apparently learned from (because that character was entertaining). If someone had written a book (with the same info and credentials as the writers) most likely it would never have been taken seriously at all.

Maybe the take away isn't to use the word learn or taught but 'inspired me to think about' which happens in many situations and many places.

> Rommel was able to lead a small group of men to victory after victory, read a biography of him.

My point is also agreeing better than fiction writers but still who knows for sure the truth or what lucky events lead to Rommel being able to do what he did.

>The fault with taking lessons from fictions is the writer can make any outcome seem plausible.

the fault with taking lessons from history is to mistake what just happens to be the case for what could be, or as Rumi said:

"The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell and broke into pieces. Everyone took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth."

thinking the world exhausts itself in history is to mistake the particular for the universal. Shakespeare knew more about reality because, not despite writing fiction. Or put differently, if the actual leaders of our current world were characters of fiction we'd question whether the author wasn't taking the cheap route and was lacking some depth.

I disagree. I'm not a Trekkie, but the character was imbued with sufficient depth, by the writers as well as Stewart's performance, that I think the article works.

I completely agree, and I'm willing to bet that most people here would agree. The only reason you're getting pushback in this case is because HN is filled with Trekkies who're unable to separate their love of Picard from your statement. If you wrote this same comment about an article that focused on Don Draper from Mad Men, you'd probably be upvoted.

You're describing the idea that thought leadership should be based on individual character, regardless of [non]fictional status, which is exactly the point of the pushback.

How on earth could you come to the conclusion that the people pushing back believe all fictional characters are good models of thought leadership? The parent's implication was that none are.

The Americans elected a sub-par actor as their leader

Twice

Three times. Nixon was a stage actor and in fact that’s how he met his wife, Pat (she was also an actor).

reagan?

Reagan was mostly known as a film actor.

The other performer was, of course, Trump. He had a TV show.

Stories are like thought experiments. I agree that blindly trusting you should “be like this” is silly, but the story works through the preconditions and consequences with you.

I agree, but the counterpoint is that many people are influenced by fiction, so we should praise fiction that reinforces positive social values.

Yes it's much more important to look at real figures making impact today. Such as... um... wait a second, I'm sure there has to be a few...

I get my thought leadership from my LinkedIn feed.

Where do you prefer to look instead?

I mean, some of the richest most influential people of our time are operating from a handful of science fiction books. Star trek is at least tonally more humanitarian than Snow Crash.

Good fiction instils children with rolemodels. Then they can try to live up to those rolemodels as adults while the whole world runs on cynical and self-serving rules.

Why? To do so is to deny the power that fiction has in society.

An interesting question to ask: Is the world a better place because of the existence of Star Trek and the influences that it has on society?

How can we improve society with fiction?

Imagine this was an issue you were neutral on and someone proposed to you that culture is somehow isolated in a bubble, not interrelated with the rest of society. You'd laugh off that idea immediately. You'd go to bed still thinking about the guy who, faced with an idea he didn't like, pretended that culture in general should go away.

I'm not saying that it is isolated, I'm saying that it has too much influence.

Yeah, we should look to Shakespeare for thought leadership, since he's not popular.

Patrick Stewart as Macbeth ("Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZnaXDRwu84

  Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
  And then is heard no more. It is a tale
  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
  Signifying nothing.

Sci fi is not for "thought leadership".

In this case it's like a what if: what if humans were the best they could be.

And that couldn't be less silly.

Maybe it doesn't have to be.

It seems a more honest place to source your fictional characters to admire than the news or non-fiction, though. Makes it clearer that the character is fictional than when you try to pretend you're talking about a real person rather than the idea of one.

Or to put it bluntly: all paragons are made-up fictions, some just use real persons as framing devices, but that doesn't mean they're any more "real".

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