[wpm]

They were better off being left in dreams, because there you never have to actually think of the consequences.

Like Star Trek holodecks. They seem amazing at first, but only because the weirdest it ever got was a sweaty Lt. Barclay, a creepy Cmdr. LaForge, and a safe-for-TV sleazeball named Quark.

In reality, if you could "jack in" to a self-controlled Matrix, or walk onto a holodeck and make anything you wanted feel real, it would be 24/7, 100% the unhealthiest invention since the nuclear weapon.

[expedition32]

One thing people don't get right about Star Trek is that the Federation is not supposed to be "us but with a post scarcity economy".

The entire society in Star Trek has moved beyond greed and sadism.

[TeMPOraL]

Also Starfleet is the hypercompetent overachieving side of the Federation, and the show itself is aspirational to the core of its DNA, so this kind of biases the sample. It's not supposed to be us today, but rather what we could plausibly become as people (even subtracting the post-scarcity / scifi bits).