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As we grow older and wiser it seems like the problems of the world get greater and greater. With the current situations like the ongoing pandemic, upcoming climate crisis, and governmental control of its citizens it’s clear to see that many sci-fi issues are just the same in our daily lives. If we were to try to fix these issues or at least make them less impactful we could look to the works of sci-fi for answers and guidance.
For example: My favorite and what I see as the most important lesson a sci-fi movie could give to our own lives is the one from WALL-E. The central issue is of the earth overcome with trash. The lesson we can learn from this is that in order to avoid that situation to the point of abandoning the earth entirely we can focus more on managing the resources we have and reducing the amount of waste we produce each day. We still have time to fix the earth and heal it back to its thriving self but there are many things that need to happen, from groups of people coming together for the common good to companies and governments focusing more attention on efforts to reduce waste and improve renewable energy funding and innovation. There are so many things everyone can do, it starts on the individual level and should grow bigger and bigger. We need the earth and we should focus on protecting it and saving ourselves.
Please discuss what a thought-provoking or important lesson humanity could learn from science fiction? What issue could it solve today and if we were to implement this lesson, when would be the best time to do so? Or is it too late?
One of the most important lessons I’ve got from a Sci-fi movie is to always be wary of too much control over your life. I’ve seen this in the Matrix and the I, Robot movie, as well as countless others that I’m forgetting right now. Implementing this lesson will allow us to stay in control of our own lives. The easiest way to do this is to hold the Government or corporations or whatever is trying this to intense scrutiny in order to make sure that they do not have control over your life, because once that control is there, it’s much harder to get rid of. I’d argue that this plan is being implemented now and is doing an acceptable, although certainly improvable, job. Some would certainly argue that it is too late, but even then, we just will have to fight harder then, should that be true. There is no obstacle on this earth that is insurmountable.
Great example Tallis! I can really see those issues in the government now. There are so many ways that people are controlled in our modern society. Even smaller instances of employees in companies or children in a family. Even the education system we have today is somewhat controlling. There are certainly ways to combat this, but it may be increasingly more difficult as time goes on.
This is an interesting and thought-provoking question about sci-fi and society. If I had to choose just one sci-fi story that I think we could learn from to improve society I would choose the Fallout series. I know it may seem cliche but there is something major to be learned from Fallout about nuclear war and it’s consequences. We see with our current national and social climate that our leaders seem to be inching closer and closer to all out war. Fallout gives us a best case scenario for nuclear war as weird as it sounds. Currently we do not have vaults that could save the lives of civilians and it is unlikely that if the world went into nuclear war that anyone would be able to survive it for 50 years, let alone 200 as stated in Fallout. If we were to launch nukes at each other, then humanity is over, there is no more history and even if there were any survivors their DNA may be damaged from the fallout of the bombs. The final nail in the coffin is that after the bombs went off there would still have to be enough survivors to have a wide enough genetic pool that prevents a genetic bottleneck even without the possibility of damaged DNA. Fallout paints almost a happy picture (at least as happy as you can be after nuclear annihilation) but also makes sure that you know it is still a sucky time to live in. Raiders, mutants, disease, and many other hazards await in the Fallout universe that are not all possible in our world, but those are mostly just for the game. I guess what I am trying to say is that we need to learn how to broker peace between the nations of the earth and Fallout is our warning. Now is the best time to do it, and I am afraid that if we wait any longer then it may be too late. Peace is important, far more important than some people seem to realize and we need to achieve peace to better ourselves and save our planet.
Wall-E is the story I will be focusing on as well.
My family is from Peru and even though I was born here, I also have a citizenship in Peru due to my parents. I went to visit Peru in the summer of 2019 for a month and although it had extremely beautiful views, I wasn’t really shielded from the not so clean areas. Since I was not a traditional tourist living in a nice hotel (I was living with my grandparents in a ‘neighborhood’ in Lima), I was able to witness how dirty the streets could get. People left trash on the streets, the ‘roads’ actually used to just all be dirt while my parents lived there (the government has built sidewalks and actual roads now), and overall people just did not seem to care about the environment. The lesson I learned from Wall-E is that if we don’t begin to take care of our planet, it will soon lead us to an inevitable path down to destruction of the Earth. It is important to take the necessary measures us as individuals can do for the Earth. Throw your trash away. Let garbage trucks take your weekly bags. Use less water. Recycle as much as you can. And although I know a lot of the problem with this trash has to do with the Peruvian government not caring, we as individuals should care. Especially seeing as the threat of forest fires, which are a direct effect from climate change, are capable of destroying one of the seven wonders of the world- Machu Picchu, which I had the privilege to witness myself in Peru. This important piece of my heritage could be wiped out by forest fires and I hope us as individuals can recognize there are steps we can take to try and do our part in saving the Earth. We do not have another Machu Picchu.I think this is an interesting topic to talk about. When I read this, I thought about the game The Last of Us. This is a game that is based on a disease that causes a person to turn into a zombie. In addition, the disease can mutate and causes other types of zombies to form. The lesson I learned is that disease can cause chaos and can alter the lives of everyone. When I think of this I thought of COVID-19 and how the world had to change it operated. When it first came out, everyone was concerned about the side effects and if it could cause death. People were forced to stay indoors for a while and work from home using video chat. Also, we have seen countries where they have successfully contained the virus, while others have seen record numbers of cases daily. Another thing that I learned is that once we know there is a virus, we need to contain it before it can cause global destruction. If we do not contain it, then it will change everything. This was seen in The Last of Us when people were in hospitals dying from the virus and mutating into zombies. People in the game were shoplifting in stores to get supplies, weapons, etc. In the case of COVID-19, restaurants have been forced to close due to customers wanting to do drive-thru and takeout. People go online to do their shopping because it minimizes the risk of catching the virus. For COVID-19, people should wear masks, listen to scientists, and do research about the virus so you can stay informed in preventing the spread of COVID-19. Order takeout or cook from home, and for outdoor activity, go walking around your neighborhood or do workouts at home. As long as people can follow protocols given by the health departments we can defeat this virus together.
Great example Darius! I also completely agree with the preventative measures you highlighted. It is so important for all of us to stay informed and cautious. It is also very surprising to me that some people still blow off the virus, despite the death that has been caused by it. Those people should not die in vain, the families of those affected by the virus may not have a loved one around for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or any other important family gathering and that is a very sobering thought to have. It is so important to follow all guidelines from the scientists who have spent their entire lives studying things like this. Failure to do so will only cause more death and hardship. Great example and application to a very recent and scary issue.
Good example and fascinating personal experience Jean-Paul! There is an increasing problem with the state of the world and the impact we directly have on it. There are so many things and locations that could be lost if we continue on our way like we have been. There must be action taken! The problem like you suggested was with the government’s lack of care. Individual work and progress are so important, but nothing much will be changed unless the government and companies change their ways. I know it’s difficult to change, but we all must do it before we don’t have the chance to. Great lesson!
I feel like being the contrarian here. Not because I necessarily agree with anything in this post, but because challenging the sci-fi genre in a class about sci-fi seems amusing.
Can we truly learn anything from Sci-fi? Science fiction is inherently, well, fiction. It’s a set of non-real events created to explore the ramifications of a specific idea the author had. However, the less immediate ramifications are often quite incomprehensible. There are a number of factors that an author could miss, making their story completely miss the mark. Sci-fi is prediction, not divination. Not only that, but it predicts the impact of technologies that don’t exist yet, meaning the entire work is based off the author’s assumptions of how the technology will work. Arguments depend on evidence, and the only real evidence sci-fi supplies is speculation. Therefore, any argument based on sci-fi is inherently invalid.
Now, occasionally sci-fi does get it right. You could compare sci-fi to the infinite monkey theorem. The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey given an infinite amount of time hitting keys on a typewriter at random will eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Applying this to sci-fi, if you make enough guesses at random you will eventually get one right.
Turning back to the question this thread is discussing, “what a thought-provoking or important lesson humanity could learn from science fiction?”, I’d offer a question in response: Can we truly learn anything from semi-random predictions, made largely without evidence?
Now again, I don’t actually agree with the view I just proposed. I think sci-fi can teach us things… but devil’s advocate is an important part of the argumentative process. (Also, playing devil’s advocate is fun.)
Good point. I see sci-fi as a predictor or a possible prediction. Yes, this may be true or false when it comes to the real world, but if we ignore the lessons from sci-fi we might end up as they do in the stories. Sci-fi is based on futuristic science, although some are completely fake, there is more sci-fi that relates to the world in more ways than we think, all it takes is digging a little deeper and connecting those dots.
With Endless Space, Endless Legends, and Stellaris being my most recent sci-fi gaming experiences, I would like to focus on them. I believe that the themes of xenophobia vs. xenophilia can be heavily related to the racism we see today and movements like Black Lives Matter. For those who havent played these games before or other like them, generally you can choose to be friendly, neutral, or aggressive towards alien races (bird-people, insect-people, etc.) More than not in these games, when you choose to act aggressively towards other races or refuse to make alliances with you (just in general making peace) than thousands of alien and “non-alien” lives are lost as well as empire and civilizations. Alternatively, if a few groups of organisms were to make an alliance and establish trade routes, and etc. , then they have a better chance of surviving. If humans could just learn from this example and understand that everyones the same in the way that we just want to live and be happy and healthy and that or ethnicity shouldn’t mean abuse or death then the world would be a better place.
Great connections! I agree that in the same way these games have separate civilizations in one universe, we have separate civilizations on one earth. It is in our best interest to make alliances with other regions and races. No matter if we like it or not, we are all here together and great things could come out of humanity if we’d all work together. Great example!
One of my favorite SCI-FI movies is Ender’s Game. This movie, which was based on a book written by Orson Scott Card, is about a boy who lives in a future world that has been endangered by alien beings. The aliens attacked Earth, but one famous pilot risked his life to take out the mothership with hopes of disabling the other Aliens. It turns out the extraterrestrials were hive creatures, so the attempt worked. They were not safe yet, however. The aliens stationed on a planet not far from Earth, which gave Earth a heavy suspicion that they would attack again. The climax gives this movie’s theme, but I would rather not spoil the movie, so I will give the theme that I discovered without evidence. I believe a few of the corresponding themes that I gather from this movie have to deal with greed, corruption, and a lack of compassion for others. This movie highlights the ideas that are present in our society. For example, in the video discussing Geek Heresy, the author of the book relays that there is enough food in the world to feed everybody, but many people still starve. It’s near impossible to eradicate greed, corruption, and a lack of compassion, but these are things that we as humans need to strive for. Ender’s Game is an example of science fiction, giving its audience themes to think about.
What can be learned from sci-fi, you ask? So many things can be learned from fiction. A lot of fiction can represent our society today, so much can be learned.
Many different lessons can be learned throughout the Halo universe. Halo shows the dangers of futuristic technology that cannot be understood and technology where everything is known. The main character through the Halo games has an AI named Cortana. She is a machine that is based on a real human’s mind, Dr. Halsey. She is a brilliant scientist who invented the first high functioning AI. This AI, Cortana, is capable of many things, such as every possible calculation, showing love, thinking of new ideas, and so much more. These intelligent AI have a specific lifespan before they gain too much information, and they think themselves to death. Cortana is the companion to the Master Chief/John 117. She helps him battle his way through the alien attacks to save the Earth. At the end of the third game, Halo 3, John is lost in space with Cortana, so he goes into cryosleep waiting for rescue. When he finally wakes up due to some aliens interacting with his destroyed ship. He later realizes his AI is reaching the end of her lifespan, and she starts to break down. The Master Chief and Cortana stop the immediate threat of the Halo 4 series. Cortana put herself in an alien machine to sacrifice herself to save John. John does not know she actually survived due to this alien tech. He finds her in the 5th game, but she was corrupted. She takes control of ancient technology and gains control over the universe. She threatens all races with her giant guardians and her forerunner armies. \/ (A guardian) \/ \/ (Cortana)
What can be learned from this is Ai is a hazardous thing. Ai can be useful, but if something goes wrong, people can be in danger. Right now, our biggest issues with AI is facial recognition technology being racist and other misuses of AI. They do not have the power to do much harm as of now. With self-driving cars, AI may have the right to decide who is run over if there are people or creatures in the way. Accidents do happen, but AI will be blamed. If AI has the ability to rule countries, things could go very wrong or very right. Halo taught me that AI could be useful in helping the world, but also AI can cause harm if something bad happens.
Hey, at least AI cannot wipe out the entire universe, yet… \/ (Earth getting EMP’ed so Cortana can control Earth)
This is a fascinating question. I have so many different thoughts about this topic. It would be amazing to think that we could look at the media we create for the answers we need. In a way, I feel like that might even be the goal of most media we consume. Films and shows are supposed to make us connect with them but being relatable and good enough to escape from our own world. During this class, we have been asked to look at how sci-fi interacts with society. Movie and shows are always talking about real-world issues or something that its audience could relate to. An important life lesson I have to learn from sci-fi would be the importance of perseverance through difficult parts of the adventure, aka life. I learned this from Dark Souls, which is a game known for being extremely difficult and is known for making people rage quit. This game is very known among players and is seen as an accomplishment when you have finished it. I feel like this could be useful at any time to anyone in their personal life. I never think it’s too late to start putting in hard work to see the rewards of your labor. You just have to continue even when the path is blocked by some “enemies” of life. 2020 has felt like life on hard mode, but that doesn’t mean we as a society should give up fighting this pandemic. There will be a time after covid. It is easy to get caught up in all the crazy of right now and lose sight of the ending goal. Pushing through hardships will get us to a better world.
One of my favorite robot movies is chappie! Now this movie provokes a lot of thought throughout it and could even be seen as a possible future. In this movie, we see less ‘police death’ because they have this robot police to go in and do the jobs of police offers. That could be a major win as far as death goes but continuing on in the movie we meet chappie who has his own thoughts and ideas and is very impressionable. There’s even a scene in the movie where he steals items because those items were stolen from his “daddy.” My point of all this is that programming. Is. Everything. That’s the point I want to get out. That and test runs. While yes, they did want chappie to be his own ‘person’, was it worth the total mayhem?
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