Star Trek’s level of medical care is far more advanced than today’s. As Beckett says in LD, “Doc will wave a light over it.” Yet, in Star Trek people aren’t shown doing hobbies and pastimes that are much different from what’s done now. Still, I wonder about differences in a society where people know they won’t be laid up for months for doing or trying something that some folks of today might look at and say, “nope, too dangerous.” Injuries will still hurt, there’s a big difference between say, a broken leg taking months to heal and possibly multiple surgeries, and Star Trek’s healing of a broken leg in a matter of hours.
I’m trying to think of what I’d do differently if I had access to Star Trek level medical care. There are things I want to try, but I look at sideways because of the possible injuries. It’s mild, but one thing I think I’d try again is skating. I injured my knee roller skating at a rink years ago, and that knee is still a problem. That injury left me skittish of skating. If I knew an injury from skating (within reason) could be an easy fix, I would have given it another go.
Is there a pastime you’d be more willing to try, or try again, if Star Trek level medical care was available?
For me the medical care wouldn’t change much because you can still die a lot of ways and getting hurt probably still hurts a lot.
The big difference for me would be transporters. I hate traveling because for me the destination is the destination and the journey is just an annoyance. There are a thousand places I’d visit if getting there wasn’t such a pain in the ass.
Personally, I don’t see much of a difference between the 2 scenarios if your new hobby kills you and they clone you “back to life”. Particularly if you are scanned at the “hold my beer” moment (perhaps initiated by you) and they bring you back immediately, and nobody tells you(/thinks) that you’re a clone.
I could even see that as a psychological crutch. “No I didn’t die, they were locked on to my location and just used the transporter to save me when my parachute didn’t open! I was never in any danger.”
Sounds like my own private vat-of-acid episode.
Plus I’m thinking you’d need an unlicensed transporter to do that and disable whatever locks are designed to prevent people from doing exactly that. But then I’d forget to do some maintenance on a Heisenberg compensator and end up inside out in the mirror universe or something.