so let me get this straight, Starfleet recruits the best, the brightest, the most idealistic... and then ships them offworld and gives them a red shirt.

INTERESTING

@rygorous would you prefer them running around topless??

@dngrs @rygorous i think he's suggesting that starfleet accidentally acts as a selection mechanism that, over a span of some number of generations, would eventually reduce the amount of idealism in the general population.

(the old joke is that "red shirts" are the ones most likely to die during an away mission, which is a thing that happened a lot in TOS episodes)

@nothings @rygorous @dngrs i mean... they _do_ learn that risk of death is a part of the job at the academy (e.g. the kobayashi maru simulation), so...
@JamesWidman @rygorous @dngrs BTW, FWIW, I haven't seen Starfleet Academy so I don't know current lore, but at least during TNG it seemed like most crew were enlisted which mean they didn't go to Academy. But during TOS it felt more like intent was even the lowliest crewmember had been through the Academy (or something like it). So this is aimed at TOS-era lore (and of course that's the redshirt-iest era).