Re: Modern Sci-Fi - the enslavement of scientific reality to religious delusion
wond...@phreaker.net
> It can be rather discouraging trying to sift through much that is called
> "science fiction" these days. At least if you're a realist. Even that which is
> not specified as "science fiction/FANTASY" often contains overabundant use of
> the supernatural, for what reason I really can't say.
>
> It seems that one can't even escape the trappings of religious delusion in a
> genre that's -supposed- to be devoted to scientific speculation. There is
> nothing even remotely scientific about psychic abilities or empathic connections
> between dragons and riders. It's all just watered down witch-doctoring
> pitifully disguised in the languistic garb of rationality.
>
> Just about any science fiction story you pick up from your average bookseller
> will contain at least a -hint- of some underlying supernatural reality -
> religious hogwash, in other words. It's really quite annoying when one is
> interested in -realistic- scientific speculation.
>
> No psychic phenomenon has ever been scientifically verified on even the remotest
> level - no remote viewing, no telepathy, no telekinesis - NONE of it.
Neither had been faster than light travel, teleportation, artificial
intelligence or extraterrestrial life.
If you wanted to be limited to a "verified phenomena", you can write
about builiding a Moon base or expedition to Mars - and thats all.
So why
> does such crap keep showing up in "science" fiction?
Because people like to read it?
It's like the brainwashed
> religious freaks can't even escape their own past when they've left their
> religion behind - they've still got to keep clinging to "something" or another
> about their former magical thinking worldview or they'll just simply -explode-.
> Or some such. I can see it in stories which fall under "sci-fi/fantasy", but
> not just plain "science fiction".
>
> What science fiction stories (sans the "fantasy" qualifier) have you read that
> truly seem to deserve the label? Even stories which involve futuristic
> technology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic.
used to -trick- someone into thinking something "magical" was
> happening would be better than those which treat magic alone as though it were
> real.
>
> Just curious...
> --
> L8r,
> Uncle Clover
> ************************************************
> The true mark of a civilized society is when its
> citizens know how to hate each other peacefully.
> ************************************************
> "A disappearance is when someone has vanished.
> A tragedy is when they were photogenic."
> - a.t-c's Bo Raxo, paraphrased.
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> "If you look at the whole life of the planet,
> man has only been around for a few blinks of an
> eye. So if the infection wipes us all out,
> that _is_ a return to normality..."
> - Sergeant Farrell, "28 Days Later"
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Anthony Cerrato
<wond...@Phreaker.net> wrote in message
news:1158013966....@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> Uncle Clover wrote:
[snip]
Much of A.C. Clarke (viz. the space elevator book.) Most of
the old Hal Clement stuff (viz. Mission of Gravity etc.)
Thas'all I can think of at the moment...
...tonyC
Gene Ward Smith
wond...@Phreaker.net wrote:
> If you wanted to be limited to a "verified phenomena", you can write
> about builiding a Moon base or expedition to Mars - and thats all.
Maybe we could define subgenres in terms of what you can't write about.
For instance, the
non-vampire subgenre, the non-telepathy subgenre, the non-FLT subgenre,
and so forth.
Erik Max Francis
> Maybe we could define subgenres in terms of what you can't write about.
> For instance, the
> non-vampire subgenre, the non-telepathy subgenre, the non-FLT subgenre,
> and so forth.
I particularly like that last one. It cuts out a huge percentage of the
sci.math cranks.
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
But you're not going to be there tomorrow. And it's all about
tomorrow. -- Montgomery Brogan
Gene Ward Smith
Erik Max Francis wrote:
> Gene Ward Smith wrote:
>
> > Maybe we could define subgenres in terms of what you can't write about.
> > For instance, the
> > non-vampire subgenre, the non-telepathy subgenre, the non-FLT subgenre,
> > and so forth.
>
> I particularly like that last one. It cuts out a huge percentage of the
> sci.math cranks.
Not to mention Star Trek.
Sea Wasp
I don't recall Star Trek having anything involving Fermat's Last
Theorem.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
Gene Ward Smith
Sea Wasp wrote:
> I don't recall Star Trek having anything involving Fermat's Last
> Theorem.
As they say, Google is your friend:
The Royale
In this episode, Picard is studying Fermat's Great Theorem, and says it
has remained unsolved for 800 years. Five years after the episode was
made the theorem was actually solved, by Andrew Wiles and Richard
Taylor from Princeton University. In the Star Trek universe, this was
referred to in an episode of Deep Space Nine, and is considered as a
subtle correction for Picard's statements.
When I saw this episode, I yelled at the screen that everyone knows
that Fermat had been proven in the 21st century. So, I was wrong also.
My reasoning was that Ribet had very recently proven that
Taniyama-Shimura implies Fermat, and I thought sometime in the 21st
century Taniyama-Shimura was likely to be proven. It didn't seem like
1987 was a very good year to commit to the proposition that Fermat was
still going to be open by Picard's day, though I doubt very much anyone
connected with the show knew of Ribet's work, which was not yet
published.
bm2...@eve.albany.edu
wond...@Phreaker.net wrote:
> >
> > No psychic phenomenon has ever been scientifically verified on even the remotest
> > level - no remote viewing, no telepathy, no telekinesis - NONE of it.
>
> Neither had been faster than light travel, teleportation, artificial
> intelligence or extraterrestrial life.
>
> If you wanted to be limited to a "verified phenomena", you can write
> about builiding a Moon base or expedition to Mars - and thats all.
>
Quibble here: there are rather strong scientific/laws of physics
reasons for dismissing psychic phenomena, teleportation, and FTL
travel.
For extraterrestrial life, we have only a _statistical_ argument: we
haven't seen any so far. And it's a weak one for non-sentient life.
(After all, _we_ exist, so there is at least some probabilty of life
arising elsewhere, unless you're a creationist).
We don't even have a statistical argument against artificial
intelligence, since we don't have any other history of science than our
own. You can certainly argue artificial intelligence is hard to do -
there's plenty of evidence in that direction - but that it is "magical
thinking" strikes me as dubious unless you think there's something
supernatural about the human brain or that technological advancement is
going to stop dead aaaany day now.
Bruce
Erik Max Francis
> It didn't seem like
> 1987 was a very good year to commit to the proposition that Fermat was
> still going to be open by Picard's day, though I doubt very much anyone
> connected with the show knew of Ribet's work, which was not yet
> published.
Betting on anyone connected with the show pretty much knowing much of
anything is probably a bad idea.
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
When in doubt, win the trick.
-- Edmund Hoyle
Robert Carnegie
> When I saw this episode, I yelled at the screen that everyone knows
> that Fermat had been proven in the 21st century. So, I was wrong also.
> My reasoning was that Ribet had very recently proven that
> Taniyama-Shimura implies Fermat, and I thought sometime in the 21st
> century Taniyama-Shimura was likely to be proven. It didn't seem like
> 1987 was a very good year to commit to the proposition that Fermat was
> still going to be open by Picard's day, though I doubt very much anyone
> connected with the show knew of Ribet's work, which was not yet
> published.
Well, you were wrong about "everyone knows" in 1987. I think that they
did check details like this, didn't they? Absent Google, they would
phone someone who should know. Just to make sure it hadn't /been/
proved.
Now I'm not sure if UK TV has yet shown the story where Data explains
that Britain conceded the War Against Terrorism to the IRA in 2030 or
something. This while the Enterprise apparently is fighting Irish
terrorists in space who have kidnapped Dr. Crusher, or was it Dr.
Pulaski. Well, there's still time for that one.
pete
I'm seeing this...
In sci.space.policy, on 11 Sep 2006 15:32:46 -0700, wond...@phreaker.net sez:
` Uncle Clover wrote:
` > It can be rather discouraging trying to sift through much that is called
` > "science fiction" these days. At least if you're a realist. Even
` > that which is not specified as "science fiction/FANTASY" often
` > contains overabundant use of the supernatural, for what reason I
` > really can't say.
I agree wholeheartedly. The increasing difficulty in finding science
fiction that actually contained any science is why I pretty much
gave up reading SF around 1972.
As a minor digression, that year also happened to be the year I spent
a lot of time at the SF club at UBC, picking through their paperback
library as I had time. I would often take my lunch breaks there. This
resulted in me spending three months hanging out with Philip K. Dick,
who had been brought in by the club for the Vancouver SF convention,
and who stayed behind afterward and also frequently visited the club.
I knew little of PKD at the time, the only novel of his I had read was
Ubik, which I read specifically in anticipation of his visit, so I could
say I was at least somewhat familiar with his work. In truth, I don't
remember a lot about our conversations, just that he was a gruff old
guy with a greying beard who looked like he had had a pretty rough life.
Other than that he was affable, not particularly arrogant nor cranky,
and quite happy to talk generally about life the universe and everything
as we sat around and I chewed through a couple of sandwiches, in a room
the size of a medium one-occupant prof's office, usually with about three
other people occupying the chairs ranged around the bookshelves along one
wall.
` > It seems that one can't even escape the trappings of religious
` > delusion in a genre that's -supposed- to be devoted to scientific
` > speculation. There is nothing even remotely scientific about psychic
` > abilities or empathic connections between dragons and riders. It's
` > all just watered down witch-doctoring pitifully disguised in the
` >languistic garb of rationality.
I don't think any of that is particularly "religious", unless you
also think fairy tales about elves and goblins are also a religious
theme. I don't. Fantasy is fantasy, and people don't generally confuse
it with a valid world model, though they relentlessly pollute SF
with it.
` >
` > Just about any science fiction story you pick up from your average
` > bookseller will contain at least a -hint- of some underlying
` > supernatural reality - religious hogwash, in other words. It's
` > really quite annoying when one is interested in -realistic- scientific
` > speculation.
` >
` > No psychic phenomenon has ever been scientifically verified on even
` > the remotest level - no remote viewing, no telepathy, no telekinesis -
` > NONE of it.
Personally, I think a little bit of dabbling in various themes
of telepathy can make for some fairly good SF, within reason.
A. E. Van Vogt, Alfred Bester, etc come to mind...
` Neither had been faster than light travel, teleportation, artificial
` intelligence or extraterrestrial life.
` If you wanted to be limited to a "verified phenomena", you can write
` about builiding a Moon base or expedition to Mars - and thats all.
Well, that's a bit extreme. There are a _lot_ of things which can
be done with existing technology, they would just require an
extraordinary expenditure of time and energy; improbable for our
current society, but not impossible. And nothing in this limitation
prevents the appearance of hypothetical ETs in a story who use
known physics for their technology but with a different set of
social limitations which allow the sort of heroic scale project
efforts required for physically legal star travel.
` So why
` > does such crap keep showing up in "science" fiction?
` Because people like to read it?
No, although that is true to an extent, people are generally not
particularly paragons of taste, they'll mostly buy into anything
that's offered - witness american commercial television; the real
reason is that writing proper "hard" SF requires a good physics
and technology education in addition to creative impulse and good
writing skills. The authors of crappy "science" fantasy are simply
lazy and scientifically uneducated, they want to tell a story,
make some money, and can't be bothered to do the necessary work
to do it properly. The generation of hard SF writers who worked
in the 1930s to 60s had a better work ethic. Of course you could
argue that to some extent the advances of science had closed off
some plot options since then, but I don't think that is a point
of major significance.
--
==========================================================================
vincent@triumf[munge].ca Pete Vincent
Disclaimer: all I know I learned from reading Usenet.
Gene Ward Smith
pete wrote:
> I agree wholeheartedly. The increasing difficulty in finding science
> fiction that actually contained any science is why I pretty much
> gave up reading SF around 1972.
Increasing? Have you read much golden age science fiction?
> The generation of hard SF writers who worked
> in the 1930s to 60s had a better work ethic.
Eh? What the heck are you talking about?
Gene Ward Smith
Robert Carnegie wrote:
> Well, you were wrong about "everyone knows" in 1987. I think that they
> did check details like this, didn't they?
I very much doubt it. I suppose someone may have asked if it had been
proven yet. However, they don't fact-check the science, so why the math?
Joe Strout
vin...@triumfunspam.ca (pete) wrote:
> I agree wholeheartedly. The increasing difficulty in finding science
> fiction that actually contained any science is why I pretty much
> gave up reading SF around 1972.
You gave up too soon -- there is still a lot of good hard SF out there.
I'm currently reading Eon by Greg Bear; it's an old work but the science
in it is quite good (physics beyond our current understanding, yes, but
coherent and reasonably plausible -- and no FTL travel). You might also
enjoy The Golden Age trilogy by John C. Wright. This is a very complex
series, with no punches pulled on reasonable extrapolations of
technology -- but no fantasy physics, either. It's one of the most
believable views of the future (on the scale of a millenium or so from
now) I've seen anywhere.
Best,
- Joe
RichA
over from the hard scifi writers and started catering to the duller
classes out there. It's typified by Star Wars where instead of using
your BRAIN and technology to fight, escape, etc, you use "The Force."
It reminds me of a line from a movie that went, "Art doesn't belong to
the people, it belongs to the people who can truly appreciate it."
Sea Wasp
> pete wrote:
>
>
>>I agree wholeheartedly. The increasing difficulty in finding science
>>fiction that actually contained any science is why I pretty much
>>gave up reading SF around 1972.
>
>
> Increasing? Have you read much golden age science fiction?
Probably he has... and has the lovely "WHEN I WAS YOUNG" meme going.
>
>
>>The generation of hard SF writers who worked
>>in the 1930s to 60s had a better work ethic.
>
>
> Eh? What the heck are you talking about?
>
Probably the change in *flavor* for SF. It really doesn't have much
to do with whether the science content is greater, but on whether it
FELT like science fiction.
Wayne Throop
: I'm currently reading Eon by Greg Bear; it's an old work but the science
: coherent and reasonably plausible -- and no FTL travel).
Two words. "pi meter".
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Sea Wasp
> Science fiction fell to pieces in the 1980s when the fantasists took
> over from the hard scifi writers and started catering to the duller
> classes out there.
Yeah, yeah. And they stopped making good movies in the 50s, consarn
it, and you can't get good ice cream any more.
The fact is that there's just A LOT MORE STUFF published these days
than there used to be, and finding the small amount -- which was
always very small -- of the stuff which is hard SF is harder to do
because you can no longer be reasonably sure of actually SEEING
everything that's published. In the 1940s and 50s, one person probably
COULD read most, or all, of the SF published each year. They could
certainly skim for the stuff they really liked and be reliably sure of
finding all or most of it. You can't do that now.
Rand Simberg
Strout <j...@strout.net> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:
Not to mention Scalzi and Stross.
Wayne Throop
: The fact is that there's just A LOT MORE STUFF published these days
: always very small -- of the stuff which is hard SF is harder to do
: because you can no longer be reasonably sure of actually SEEING
: everything that's published. In the 1940s and 50s, one person probably
: COULD read most, or all, of the SF published each year. They could
: certainly skim for the stuff they really liked and be reliably sure of
: finding all or most of it. You can't do that now.
OK, but I don't think that effect accounts for the shift in what
we might call "hard-feeling sf" (or what I called "locally hard" in
previous threads). (And note, actual-hard (or even hard-ish) sf is far
FAR more rare than hard-feeling SF.)
Lots of SF authors aren't even *pretending* to be hard,
like Niven and Asimov did. Not anymore.
So I think the shift is at least partly "real", and possibly even the
absolute numbers, as well as the proportions, of hard-feeling SF is
lower. I blame the young whippersnappers for it, myself. Thinking and
education, and even for many purposes technology, seem to be even more
out of fashion than back when I was walking to school through the snow
uphill in both directions.
No, seriously. It really seems like thinking and education are out of
fashion. Even among that fine minoroty which we might call "readers",
where that seems anomalous.
Though... if I were to depart from my usual custom and try to be fair,
there are a lot of CSI-like shows (awful though they may be), and in
general crime shows where actual education and thought rather than car
chases are sometimes used, or even serve as the primary gimick. So
maybe it's not as bad as it seems. And telecom related gizmos are still
very popular. Though CSI is pretty bad. And KyleXY used the old "we
only use ten percent of our brains" ploy, sigh.
Hm. So where was I going with this again? Ponder, ponder. Not sure.
I guess I wonder how one could quantify the cultural zeitgeist wrt how
favorably thought and education are regarded as worthwhile pursuits.
Preferably in a way that would reinforce my preconceptions. You know,
show a graph of something, proving it's declining dangerously and
Something Must Be Done, that sort of thing.
Erik Max Francis
> You gave up too soon -- there is still a lot of good hard SF out there.
> I'm currently reading Eon by Greg Bear; it's an old work but the science
> in it is quite good (physics beyond our current understanding, yes, but
> coherent and reasonably plausible -- and no FTL travel).
The big stinker there is the device they have which measures the values
of physical constants that could be changed by the anomaly ... including
pi, which isn't a physical constant at all. (In fact, trying to suggest
that it does make sense as a circumference-to-diameter ratio measurement
indicates a deep misunderstanding of how space curvature works, because
that value would be a function of the size of the circle!)
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
But in matters fundamental / We are patterned on an old design
-- Oleta Adams
Wayne Throop
: The big stinker there is the device they have which measures the values
: pi, which isn't a physical constant at all. (In fact, trying to suggest
: that it does make sense as a circumference-to-diameter ratio measurement
: indicates a deep misunderstanding of how space curvature works, because
: that value would be a function of the size of the circle!)
Plus the fact that if your pi meter (as in, a circumference-to-diameter-
of-some-size-of-circle measurer) gives you a noticeable result, you should
be already squished to puree by the tides. Or maybe frapee or something.
And in general, naict I *think* it's feeding into the "pi has a different
value in alternate universes" meme, conflated with the "relativity says
space is warped" meme, which is altogether a Bad Thing, imo.
In short, it doesn't seem like "science we don't understand yet",
it seems much more like.... just plain vanilla "wrong".
Or at the very least, wrong-headed, and misleading per above.
Erik Max Francis
> Plus the fact that if your pi meter (as in, a circumference-to-diameter-
> of-some-size-of-circle measurer) gives you a noticeable result, you should
> be already squished to puree by the tides. Or maybe frapee or something.
>
> And in general, naict I *think* it's feeding into the "pi has a different
> value in alternate universes" meme, conflated with the "relativity says
> space is warped" meme, which is altogether a Bad Thing, imo.
>
> In short, it doesn't seem like "science we don't understand yet",
> it seems much more like.... just plain vanilla "wrong".
> Or at the very least, wrong-headed, and misleading per above.
Yes. It's pretty clear, at least from context, that he was trying to
get at the idea of an instrument which measured space (and/or spacetime)
curvature. However, that isn't what he described at all; what he
described indicated that he didn't really understand the interplay
between curvature and the circumference-diameter ratio of circles in
curved space.
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
Light ... more light!
-- (last words of Goethe)
Mike Schilling
"Wayne Throop" <thr...@sheol.org> wrote in message
news:11581...@sheol.org...
>
> Lots of SF authors aren't even *pretending* to be hard,
> like Niven and Asimov did. Not anymore.
<rant>
And Hal Clement? That's not "pretending" to be hard, that's what Hard SF
means. Period. If you wish it meant something stronger, good on you, but
it doesn't. Sorry.
It takes colossal arrogance to take a term that's been used for over 50
years with specific meaning and referents, insist it should mean something
else, and then complain that no one does *that*. Honestly.
</rant>
Gene Ward Smith
Mike Schilling wrote:
> It takes colossal arrogance to take a term that's been used for over 50
> years with specific meaning and referents, insist it should mean something
> else, and then complain that no one does *that*. Honestly.
> </rant>
What are you ranting about? Wayne didn't say Clement wasn't hard sf. I
think a continuous scale of increasing local hardness is arguably a
better conceptual model, but Wayne didn't say that either. Rant at me
if you must for bringing it up.
Howard Brazee
>For extraterrestrial life, we have only a _statistical_ argument: we
>haven't seen any so far.
Not a very good statistical argument. One example is insufficient in
statistics.
pete
` wond...@Phreaker.net wrote:
` > > No psychic phenomenon has ever been scientifically verified on even
` > > the remotest level - no remote viewing, no telepathy, no telekinesis
` > > - NONE of it.
` >
` > Neither had been faster than light travel, teleportation, artificial
` > intelligence or extraterrestrial life.
` >
` > If you wanted to be limited to a "verified phenomena", you can write
` > about builiding a Moon base or expedition to Mars - and thats all.
` >
` Quibble here: there are rather strong scientific/laws of physics
` reasons for dismissing psychic phenomena, teleportation, and FTL
` travel.
Well, mostly. Quantum entanglement suggests that there is at least
the possibility that some Cleverdick may hit on a devious scheme
to cheat the limitations by doing some sort of end run that no one
has realized is legal, yet.
` For extraterrestrial life, we have only a _statistical_ argument: we
` haven't seen any so far. And it's a weak one for non-sentient life.
` (After all, _we_ exist, so there is at least some probabilty of life
` arising elsewhere, unless you're a creationist).
` We don't even have a statistical argument against artificial
` intelligence, since we don't have any other history of science than our
` own. You can certainly argue artificial intelligence is hard to do -
` there's plenty of evidence in that direction - but that it is "magical
` thinking" strikes me as dubious unless you think there's something
` supernatural about the human brain or that technological advancement is
` going to stop dead aaaany day now.
Well, there is a lot about the human _mind_ which is outside the
reach of the physical world, but calling it "supernatural" is just
a self-defeating non sequitur which very effectively obscures
the reality and biases the speaker against understanding that
which is natural yet not physical. If you don't think that is true,
then I suggest that you must believe that no one is home in
any of the beings on the planet, including yourself, ie you're
just an empty golem added to my experience of the world to bulk
out the crowd scenes. If you dispute that, then you are supporting
the notion that there is something which is natural but beyond
physical. I, however, am fully cognizant that someone is home,
here.
But this is all off-topic for s.s.policy, and I don't feel strongly
motivated to move to another group to pursue the discussion, as
it usually turns into a perfect example of people with wildly
dissimilar world experiences talking past each other, unless
you have something exceptional to bring to the discussion.
Wayne Throop
:: and Asimov did. Not anymore.
: "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com>
: <rant> And Hal Clement? That's not "pretending" to be hard, that's
: what Hard SF means. Period.
Right. And if what Clement did was "hard SF", which I pretty much agree
with (and you can throw some Clarke and Heinlein in there, depending,
yada yada), then I'd say Asimov and Niven fall considerably short of
parity, hardness-wise.
I mean, really; Zelazny is not hard, right, we agree?
So, what's different between Zelazny with Agni's wand which dispenses
the Universal Fire, and Niven with a tnuctpin digging tool that
"suppresses the charge on the electron"? Or, say, the Soft Weapon.
Both are.... well... very not-hard-at-all. What's different between
getting your brain sucked out through a bendy straw and having your
pureed RNA reconstitute your mind in another body, and the reincarnation
machines? Hard, schmard.
( Heh, xref the venture brothers second season startup, where
Venture explains to Morpheus that his magic powers don't mean
diddly squat to him; zombie from the grave, clone body from a tank;
recover a lost soul, read out mental state and store it in a computer,
all the same thing, really. Just because Morpheus likes to use
spooky terminology doesn't impress Dr Venture, no siree. )
: It takes colossal arrogance to take a term that's been used for over
: 50 years with specific meaning and referents, insist it should mean
: something else, and then complain that no one does *that*. Honestly.
: </rant>
Oooookey. Well, I didn't say nobody did it. I said Niven and Asimov,
while being held up as exemplars, aren't really good examples.
However, sure, if you want to tinker to grandfather in terminology, fine.
I don't think "hard sf" is really all *that* standardizable a term (I mean,
even "sf vs fantasy" is already problematic), and if you want to use
"real-hard" or "ultra-hard" to mean "the kind of hard that Niven isn't,
even though you'd have to say he's still hard because that's what lots
of people point at when they say "hard"", that'd be fine with me.
Point remains, "Niven-hard" is not really the same as "Clement-hard".
And this difference seems well worth taking note of, some way or another.
Erik Max Francis
> Not a very good statistical argument. One example is insufficient in
> statistics.
Well, statistically it's not a very good argument, that's true. But one
example proves it's possible, and the mediocrity principle suggests it
should be possible elsewhere.
But you're correct that that isn't a statistical argument as the
original poster suggested.
Wayne Throop
:: reasons for dismissing psychic phenomena, teleportation, and FTL `
:: travel.
: vin...@triumfunspam.ca (pete)
: Well, mostly. Quantum entanglement suggests that there is at least
: the possibility that some Cleverdick may hit on a devious scheme to
: cheat the limitations by doing some sort of end run that no one has
: realized is legal, yet.
OK, arguably, maybe, possibly. But this "possibility" is not really all
that large, given that entanglement is pretty definitely correlation
and not causation. QM is lorentz invariant, so the notion of one
spacelike-separated event causing another by entanglement is fundamentally
ambiguous; fundamentally enough to render FTL via this route somewhat
implausible, seems to me. I think essentially, you'd have to find out
that QM is wrong, not that QM is right and somebody gets very clever.
Howard Brazee
I think reality was the cause of this move to fantasy. All the old
stories about rockets to the planets and stars became soft SF. We
knew more about what colonization of Mars is like, and how unlikely
interstellar empires are.
Since SF that we loved is now fantasy, (and the SF we loved included
Psi powers), our definitions changed.
pete
` In article <ee7cnp$idq$1...@nntp.itservices.ubc.ca>,
` vin...@triumfunspam.ca (pete) wrote:
` > I agree wholeheartedly. The increasing difficulty in finding science
` > fiction that actually contained any science is why I pretty much
` > gave up reading SF around 1972.
` You gave up too soon -- there is still a lot of good hard SF out there.
No doubt this is true, to some degree. There was certainly an
apparent drought period, when I quit reading in something
resembling disgust, and I haven't subsequently been motivated
to go back to the genre to see if it's changed, but the point
I was making, that I think was agreeing with the OP, is that
when you go to the "SF" shelf in a bookstore and randomly
pick something out, even in those stores which don't commit
the vile crime of having a mixed "SF and fantasy" shelf (grrrr),
you are likely to find it full of touchy feely nonsense, and
no wonderful gleaming machines extrapolated from the bleeding
edge of the best of our technology.
` I'm currently reading Eon by Greg Bear; it's an old work but the science
` in it is quite good (physics beyond our current understanding, yes, but
` coherent and reasonably plausible -- and no FTL travel). You might also
` enjoy The Golden Age trilogy by John C. Wright. This is a very complex
` series, with no punches pulled on reasonable extrapolations of
` technology -- but no fantasy physics, either. It's one of the most
` believable views of the future (on the scale of a millenium or so from
` now) I've seen anywhere.
Thanks for the recommendations, I will quite likely pursue them.
One of the few SF books I read since the early '70s was a Greg
Bear that someone passed on to me, a novella in one of those
pocket twofers.
Douglas Berry
posting the following on 12 Sep 2006 15:52:43 -0700 iin alt.atheism?
http://www.worldcon.org/hy.html#80
Oh, yeah. All complete crap there.
--
Douglas Berry Do the OBVIOUS thing to send e-mail
Atheist #2147, Atheist Vet #5
Jason Gastrich is praying for me on 8 January 2011
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the
source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a
stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as
good as dead: his eyes are closed." - Albert Einstein
rja.ca...@excite.com
> Uncle Clover wrote:
> > It can be rather discouraging trying to sift through much that is called
> > "science fiction" these days. At least if you're a realist. Even that which is
> > not specified as "science fiction/FANTASY" often contains overabundant use of
> > the supernatural, for what reason I really can't say.
> >
> > genre that's -supposed- to be devoted to scientific speculation. There is
> > nothing even remotely scientific about psychic abilities or empathic connections
> > between dragons and riders. It's all just watered down witch-doctoring
> > pitifully disguised in the languistic garb of rationality.
> >
> > will contain at least a -hint- of some underlying supernatural reality -
> > religious hogwash, in other words. It's really quite annoying when one is
> > interested in -realistic- scientific speculation.
> >
> > level - no remote viewing, no telepathy, no telekinesis - NONE of it.
>
> Neither had been faster than light travel, teleportation, artificial
> intelligence or extraterrestrial life.
>
> If you wanted to be limited to a "verified phenomena", you can write
> about builiding a Moon base or expedition to Mars - and thats all.
I haven't reviewed recent provisions of science fiction, but there's a
lot that /can/ be done without going beyond the feasible. Verifiable,
perhaps not so much. One book by an old-timer - James White - I did
look at, of short stories, I noticed a remarkable, or perhaps not
remarkable, thing: every one of the stories did have a spaceship in it.
But you can go elsewhere, metaphorically rather than literally. Write
the story of the bird flu pandemic. Discuss robot sex toys and whether
you'd want to leave the house if you had one.
Mike Schilling
Hard SF is a style of SF that focuses on technology, not a guarantee that
everything in the story (which is, after all, a story) makes prefect
scientific sense. Asimov thought of himself as a Hard SF writer, as did the
rest of the field at the time.
Wayne Throop
: Hard SF is a style of SF that focuses on technology,
You'd better update wikipedia then, since they say
Hard science fiction, or hard SF, is a subgenre of science fiction
characterized by an interest in scientific detail or accuracy,
Note "accuracy" (although one could lawyer much into the use of "or" there).
Also... what does it mean to "focus on technology"?
Why doesn't, say, Lord of Light qualify?
Or Weber's Honorverse?
Gene Ward Smith
Mike Schilling wrote:
> Hard SF is a style of SF that focuses on technology, not a guarantee that
> everything in the story (which is, after all, a story) makes prefect
> scientific sense. Asimov thought of himself as a Hard SF writer, as did the
> rest of the field at the time.
That Doc Smith thought of himself as a hard sf writer doesn't mean it
necessarily makes sense to agree with him. But you seem to be blaming
this on the hard-sf skeptics, who are merely reacting to the sort of
trumpeting of the wonderful scientific hardness of hard sf as verses
the flab of soft sf one often hears. That's really more or less like
the people who hate fantasy, because it isn't based on real science,
like science fiction. Faced with that, you start to analyze. And when
you start to analyze, you find a continuum of sorts.
Gene Ward Smith
Wayne Throop wrote:
> Also... what does it mean to "focus on technology"?
> Why doesn't, say, Lord of Light qualify?
> Or Weber's Honorverse?
It doesn't get much harder than the Honorverse if that's the criterion.
But that's what you get by analyzing...
Wayne Throop
:: say, Lord of Light qualify? Or Weber's Honorverse?
: "Gene Ward Smith" <genewa...@gmail.com>
: It doesn't get much harder than the Honorverse if that's the
: criterion. But that's what you get by analyzing...
Well... I was looking for cases with nigh-fantasy technological
props, where the "focus" was arguably on something else, frex myth
in the former, and angst in the latter. Other than missile counts
and discussions of imaginary physics, structured to get sailing
ships, Weber spends most of his time with heroes' eyes glinting
with determination/regret/anger/whathaveyou, and their fists clenced
white-knuckled while they keep their voices controlled so that only people
who know them well realize how upset they are, yada yada. And getting
lots of loved ones killed, of course. Anyways, it's just not
clear to me what "technological focus" really is. But I digress.
Bottom line: I think I can be forgiven for supposing that "accuracy" in
some form is part of the base meme for "hard SF", since it gets touted
that way so often. But I'm flexible. Yet not flexible enough not to
choke when a review of the lastest Honorsaga said that Weber could be
used in the future to plan space warfare, hey, it's *that* detailed and
well thought out and relevant and all. Yeesh. Go figure.
Erik Max Francis
> You'd better update wikipedia then, since they say
>
> Hard science fiction, or hard SF, is a subgenre of science fiction
> characterized by an interest in scientific detail or accuracy,
Anytime you quote a dictionary or encyclopedia to back up a point,
you're engaging in a semantic argument. Every time you quote
_Wikipedia_ in order to back up a point, you instantly lose the argument.
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
Of all the perversions, chastity is the strangest.
-- Anatole France
Stephen J. Rush
> : "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com>
> : Hard SF is a style of SF that focuses on technology,
>
> You'd better update wikipedia then, since they say
>
> Hard science fiction, or hard SF, is a subgenre of science fiction
> characterized by an interest in scientific detail or accuracy,
>
> Note "accuracy" (although one could lawyer much into the use of "or" there).
Another definition I've read (John Campbell?) is fiction that obeys all of
the constraints of mundane fiction, but includes one wild premise that
contradicts physics as now understood, and its logical consequences. You
can also extrapolate current technological or social trends, but that's
distinct from the wildcard, which is frequently FTL travel or telepathy.
You don't see much SF that meets this standard. Usually, you find FTL
combined with some way to snatch momentum out of nowhere.
Mike Schilling
This is the first I've heard of the continuum. Your original complaint was
that no SF was hard, so you invented the term "locally hard" to remind
people that none of it met your requirements.
Gene Ward Smith
Wayne Throop wrote:
> Anyways, it's just not
> clear to me what "technological focus" really is. But I digress.
Doc Smith would tell you how huge the bus bars are, and toss out some
adjectives on the stupendous currents they are carrying. That's
technological focus. Weber would tell you the exact dimensions of the
bus bars in SI units, and tell you the current in amperes. That's true
hard sf, I guess.
It's hard to find more technological focus than in some James Hogan
books, actually. Technological focus is exactly how some authors get
themselves into trouble, for that matter, like Keven J. Anderson in
Hidden Empire. Is that hard sf, soft sf, or just dumb sf?
Gene Ward Smith
Mike Schilling wrote:
> This is the first I've heard of the continuum. Your original complaint was
> that no SF was hard, so you invented the term "locally hard" to remind
> people that none of it met your requirements.
Interesting revisionist history, but none of that happened.
Mike Schilling
You from January 15 of this year, denying that there's ever been an
appreciable amount of hard SF::
(http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_frm/thread/dba5eaa185785625/b06b18077cdc63bd?lnk=st&q=locally+hard+group%3Arec.arts.sf.written&rnum=14&hl=en#b06b18077cdc63bd)
I wasn't saying not enough is being written, I was suggesting not
enough is being or ever has been written to qualify as a subgenre. What
gets called "hard" is normally what Wayne Throop termed "locally hard".
Sometimes, that becomes "locallly very hard", as in a Robert Forward
novel. But it isn't actually "hard" in my view if it screws around with
science or math, no matter how locally hard it may be. Moreover, if
there isn't enough science in it to even manage to be wrong, there
isn't enough science for it to be called "hard" either. As a
consequence, we aren't left with much, and I don't think we have a
subgenre.
Gene Ward Smith
Mike Schilling wrote:
> Gene Ward Smith wrote:
> > Mike Schilling wrote:
> >
> >> This is the first I've heard of the continuum. Your original
> >> complaint was that no SF was hard, so you invented the term "locally
> >> hard" to remind people that none of it met your requirements.
> >
> > Interesting revisionist history, but none of that happened.
>
> You from January 15 of this year, denying that there's ever been an
> appreciable amount of hard SF::
Mike, I'm a mathematician. We never confuse zero with a positive
number.
(http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/browse_frm/thread/dba5eaa185785625/b06b18077cdc63bd?lnk=st&q=locally+hard+group%3Arec.arts.sf.written&rnum=14&hl=en#b06b18077cdc63bd)
>
> I wasn't saying not enough is being written, I was suggesting not
> enough is being or ever has been written to qualify as a subgenre. What
> gets called "hard" is normally what Wayne Throop termed "locally hard".
And here we see that, contrary to your claim, I did not invent the term
"locally hard".
Wayne Throop
:: complaint was that no SF was hard, so you invented the term "locally
:: hard" to remind people that none of it met your requirements.
: "Gene Ward Smith" <genewa...@gmail.com>
: Interesting revisionist history, but none of that happened.
As far as I know, I coined the term, and the notion of a continuum
was prominent in the very same post. Further, Gene wasn't saying
"there's no such thing as hard" at that time, but rather that he was
having problems figuring out what qualified as hard, and what qualified
as "more hard" or "less hard" (ie, continuum, from the start). See
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=11226...@sheol.org
If you take away the fact that I sneer at Niven's "hardness" a lot,
some might say overmuch, that post sounds to me like agreeing that
"focus on technology", fuzzy though it may be, is what lots of people
mean by "hard"; specifically:
But Dick, or Bradbury, or Donaldson (eg, the Gap series) are, to my
mind, noticeably "less hard". Asimov and (another example often
puzzlingly called "hard") Niven are what I might call "locally
hard", even though they are soft as warm butter in the large. When
absurd things are introduced, they are given appropriate labels, and
the things you would normally worry about for hard SF (forces,
materials, engineering, whatever) are worried about except for these
labeled things. As opposed to *completely* ignoring such trivia,
and introducing whatever you wish and labeling it with spaceshipy
chrome-covered names.
In short, "locally hard" is a way to account for and/or understand
the fact that Niven is, indeed, normally counted as "hard".
So anyways. A continuum. A line one can walk, step by step, from
Donaldson, through Asimov and Niven, and at the end, Clement.
"Does he write hard SF?"
"Niven? I don't know. I used to ask that. About Known Space for
example. And whenever I asked that question, people would always say,
'the short answer is yes'. And then they'd give the the long answer.
And it always seemed to me that the long answer really meant 'no'.
So... I don't know."
--- Rowan and Willam discuss SF
Eivind Kjorstad
> Uncle Clover wrote:
>> No psychic phenomenon has ever been scientifically verified on even the remotest
>> level - no remote viewing, no telepathy, no telekinesis - NONE of it.
> Neither had been faster than light travel, teleportation, artificial
> intelligence or extraterrestrial life. If you wanted to be limited to
> a "verified phenomena", you can write about builiding a Moon base or
> expedition to Mars - and thats all.
Sure. But there is a difference.
There is no evidence that extraterrestrial life (for example) exists.
But everything that we up until now have found out about life is
compatible with extraterrestrial life existing. There is no fundamental
property of life (that we know off) that requires "must be on earth" for
the rest of the mechanisms to work out.
Indeed, our current best-guess understanding is that life arose
spontaneously under a given set of conditions. We have some idea what
those conditions are, and we are starting to get some idea if similar
conditions may exist, or have existed, on other planets.
So, it's a case of "We are reasonably convinced it happened here. Let's
assume it also happened elsewhere under similar conditions."
Telepathy, on the other hand, is something that we have no indication
whatsoever that *ever* happened. And lots of good reasons to assume that
it *didn't*.
Telepathy is by definition magical "un-physical". We are, as a matter
of fact, able to to some degree carry ideas from our heads into other
peoples heads over a distance. We call it speach. It works fine, but
it's physical, so we don't call that "telepathy".
It would be perfectly physically possible to do more or less the same
trough different mecanisms. I don't know any physical reason why
creatures cannot exist that communicate by say radio. We *do* know
radios are physically possible. Still, this ain't what people mean when
they say telepathy.
Eivind Kjørstad
Gene Ward Smith
Eivind Kjorstad wrote:
> Telepathy, on the other hand, is something that we have no indication
> whatsoever that *ever* happened. And lots of good reasons to assume that
> it *didn't*.
So you say, but some people claim otherwise:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld
No matter who is right, the issue remains controversial.
> Telepathy is by definition magical "un-physical".
Again, so you say. In any case, this claim seems almost
self-contradictory if presented as an argument against telepathy--it
only makes sense if thought is nonphysical, yet if thought is
nonphysical, you've already admitted the existence of the nonphysical.
Eivind Kjorstad
> Eivind Kjorstad wrote:
>> Telepathy is by definition magical "un-physical".
>
> Again, so you say. In any case, this claim seems almost
> self-contradictory if presented as an argument against telepathy--it
> only makes sense if thought is nonphysical, yet if thought is
> nonphysical, you've already admitted the existence of the nonphysical.
I've never claimed thougths are nonphysical. There's no indication
whatsoever that they are.
As far as we reckon, thougths consist of chemical and electrical signals
in the brain.
Eivind Kjørstad
Erik Max Francis
> So you say, but some people claim otherwise:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld
>
> No matter who is right, the issue remains controversial.
The hilarity of quoting Wikipedia trying to back up a scientific claim
aside, the way science works is that the results of experiments have to
be reproducible. No matter what results a particular scientific
experiment brings, if they can't be reproduced in laboratory conditions
then they don't count.
There's no evidence that it happened if _one_ experiment appeared to
produce some results but all attempts to reproduce it, and all previous
attempts to uncover the effect have failed. Because the false positives
of that one experiment can always be chalked up to a bad protocol,
experimental error, bias, or just plain random chance.
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
Will I disappoint my future / If I stay
-- Sade
Gene Ward Smith
Erik Max Francis wrote:
> Gene Ward Smith wrote:
>
> > So you say, but some people claim otherwise:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld
> >
> > No matter who is right, the issue remains controversial.
>
> The hilarity of quoting Wikipedia trying to back up a scientific claim
I'm not trying to back up a scientific claim, and I am going to grow
surly if you keep this sort of thing up. I'm backing up the claim the
question has people arguing on both sides of it, which is true.
>... the way science works is that the results of experiments have to
> be reproducible. No matter what results a particular scientific
> experiment brings, if they can't be reproduced in laboratory conditions
> then they don't count.
Did you read the freaking article?
> There's no evidence that it happened if _one_ experiment appeared to
> produce some results but all attempts to reproduce it, and all previous
> attempts to uncover the effect have failed.
But that's not at all what is being claimed. Again, you don't even seem
to have read the Wikipedia article.
Gene Ward Smith
Eivind Kjorstad wrote:
> I've never claimed thougths are nonphysical. There's no indication
> whatsoever that they are.
Yet you claimed that telepathy, which is thought transference, is *by
definition* nonphysical. If thought is physical, then it would make
more sense to claim that telepathy is by definition physical.
Eivind Kjorstad
> Eivind Kjorstad wrote:
>> I've never claimed thougths are nonphysical. There's no indication
>> whatsoever that they are.
> Yet you claimed that telepathy, which is thought transference, is *by
> definition* nonphysical.
This seems to be the actual case among those that believe telepathy
exists at all. I never claimed that made sense.
I just observe, that in actual fact, these people (indeed nobody) talks
about verbal communication as telepathy. It *does* suceed in transfering
ideas from one mind to another -- but it isn't telepathy, because it
works by a well-understood physical mechanism.
Discussing on a news-group, using radio, or using a mobile phone is
*also* not telepathy. (and wouldn't be even if the radio was a part of
your biology) for the reason that that is just communicating over
well-understood physical channels.
So it seems to me, to the degree these people have a definition of
"telepathy" at all, it must mean something akin to: "transfering
information from one brain to another without using a physical method."
(atleast they rule out all the physical methods we know of, and all that
currently known physics allow)
I agree that it makes no sense whatsoever to claim that something
"nonphysical" affects something physical, since affecting something is
pretty much the definition of physical. Nevertheless this is what the
crackpots do. Similarily they also claim that "the mind" or "the spirit"
or whatever are separate nonphysical entities that exist outside of the
physical processes that happen in our brain.
This is the entire *basis* for the typical explanations offered for
stuff like telepathy and life-after-death. Your physical brain may be
isolated, or indeed decomposed. Nevertheless the non-physical
mind/spirit can go on, or can communicate with other similar entities.
I certainly never claimed any of this makes sense. It doesn't.
Eivind Kjørstad
Eivind Kjorstad
> I'm not trying to back up a scientific claim, and I am going to grow
> surly if you keep this sort of thing up. I'm backing up the claim the
> question has people arguing on both sides of it, which is true.
There are people arguing all sorts of stuff. I'm not sure what that is
supposed to signify.
There are people arguing that all mental disorders (and many diseases)
are caused by the billions of ghosts of aliens that cling to your body.
These ghosts wander the earth since the galactic ruler Xenu solved his
overpopulation-problem by dumping a few gazillion (one presumes,
extremely small) aliens in a volcano on Hawaii, followed by a few nukes.
If your point is supposed to be that there are lots of crazy people in
the world, I doubt you'll find much opposition in any of these groups.
That is not the same thing as claiming that *ANY* idea which have people
arguing in favour of it is equally reasonable though.
Eivind Kjørstad
Mike Schilling
You == "Gene and Wayne".
Howard Brazee
<genewa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Telepathy is by definition magical "un-physical".
>
>Again, so you say. In any case, this claim seems almost
>self-contradictory if presented as an argument against telepathy--it
>only makes sense if thought is nonphysical, yet if thought is
>nonphysical, you've already admitted the existence of the nonphysical.
No, he said it only makes sense with the magical "un-physical". If
such exists, then telepathy could exist.
It's like saying Santa Clause's north pole home only makes sense with
a solid foundation. It doesn't mean we believe such a foundation
exists.
Howard Brazee
<eiv...@inbusiness.no> wrote:
>I just observe, that in actual fact, these people (indeed nobody) talks
>about verbal communication as telepathy. It *does* suceed in transfering
>ideas from one mind to another -- but it isn't telepathy, because it
>works by a well-understood physical mechanism.
There was a very good story where we see a post-apocalyptic tribe
where apparently one person is telepathic, able to determine emotions
that nobody else could, as well as know about stuff which is happening
from a distance. The punch line was that everybody else was deaf,
and she could hear.
Eivind Kjorstad
I actually thougth about that.
It's quite plausible, I think, that someone who has no idea what sound
is, will conclude that beings that communicate (or take in information)
from sound have some supernatural ability.
I remember talking with a blind friend of mine once about seeing. She,
having *always* been blind said, directly, that to her, "seeing" sounded
like something out of Harry Potter. It has many strange and mysterious,
properties;
* You can sense stuff at a distance, with amazing detail.
* There are devices that can re-direct your sensing around corners, mirrors.
* You can even see *trough* stuff that feels totally solid.
She has, offcourse learned to accept that seeing does indeed exist, what
capabilities it has, and what limitations. But really, to her, it sounds
just as implausible as oh say telepathy or remote-viewing does to us.
The difference being offcourse, that there *is* an explanation for
seeing, and one that fits with currently known physics. There are also a
large number of experiments that any doubting blind person could easily
do to establish that other people do, infact, see.
Similarily, 17th century human beings who met an intelligent species
communicating by biological radio could easily come to believe the
species where telepathic, while to the species themselves, it'd be no
more mysterious than talking is to us.
Eivind Kjørstad
r.r...@thevine.net
wrote:
I'm trying to figure out how being able to hear would allow her to
determine emotions nobody else could. The only time I would think it
could would be if you heard someone laughing/crying when they were out
of sight, but that only works if you read the line as "other people
can't if they aren't in the same location".
Rebecca
Wayne Throop
: I'm trying to figure out how being able to hear would allow her to
: determine emotions nobody else could. The only time I would think it
: could would be if you heard someone laughing/crying when they were out
: of sight, but that only works if you read the line as "other people
: can't if they aren't in the same location".
As I recall it, the people were all deaf, and had very poor eyesight.
From a few feet away, they couldn't make out expressions.
(This seems plausible to me, since from a few feet away,
without my glasses, faces are a total blur to me.)
Gene Ward Smith
Howard Brazee wrote:
> On 13 Sep 2006 01:30:53 -0700, "Gene Ward Smith"
> <genewa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Telepathy is by definition magical "un-physical".
> >
> >Again, so you say. In any case, this claim seems almost
> >self-contradictory if presented as an argument against telepathy--it
> >only makes sense if thought is nonphysical, yet if thought is
> >nonphysical, you've already admitted the existence of the nonphysical.
>
> No, he said it only makes sense with the magical "un-physical". If
> such exists, then telepathy could exist.
That's not what he said. What he said was that it was *by definition*
something which [only makes sense as] un-physical. But let's take your
formulation--if thought is physical, how can telepathy entail the
nonphysical? If Voltaire and Diderot were presented with
walkie-talkies, would they conclude that they must work by means of
something magical and un-physical on the grounds that the
walkie-talkies were clearly physical objects?
Gene Ward Smith
Eivind Kjorstad wrote:
> > Yet you claimed that telepathy, which is thought transference, is *by
> > definition* nonphysical.
>
> This seems to be the actual case among those that believe telepathy
> exists at all.
Evidence? Certainly some people claim this. Quite likely a majority of
people who believe in telepathy think it is nonphysical. However, that
is certainly not universally the case, and it most definitely is not
the case when we come to science fiction, which often "explains" it in
terms of some kind of brain function or whatever.
There's also the question of what "nonphysical" means. Did Berkeley
think that matter was nonphysical? Does your claim even make sense when
applied to an idealist or neutral monist ontology?
> So it seems to me, to the degree these people have a definition of
> "telepathy" at all, it must mean something akin to: "transfering
> information from one brain to another without using a physical method."
When in doubt, consult a dictionary:
Random House:
te‧lep‧a‧thy /təˈlɛpəθi/ Pronunciation[tuh-lep-uh-thee]
–noun
communication between minds by some means other than sensory
perception.
American Heritage:
te·lep·a·thy (t-lp-th) n.
Communication through means other than the senses, as by the
exercise of an occult power.
The key idea seems to be "extrasensory".
> I agree that it makes no sense whatsoever to claim that something
> "nonphysical" affects something physical, since affecting something is
> pretty much the definition of physical. Nevertheless this is what the
> crackpots do.
Very dissmissive of a long and involved philosophical argument which
has been going on for thousands of years here. I hate to break it to
you, but people who disagree with your personal metaphysical beliefs
are not necessarily crackpots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind
> Similarily they also claim that "the mind" or "the spirit"
> or whatever are separate nonphysical entities that exist outside of the
> physical processes that happen in our brain.
Certainly some of them would. How did you discover all of them
do--telepathy? Because I don't see how normal sensory means would work
here.
> This is the entire *basis* for the typical explanations offered for
> stuff like telepathy and life-after-death.
Again, this is what *some* people who believe in telepathy or
life-after-death think. Other people are likely to go on about quantum
mechanics, etc.
Samuel Penn
> On Wed, 13 Sep 2006 03:57:14 +0000, Wayne Throop wrote:
>
>> : "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com>
>> : Hard SF is a style of SF that focuses on technology,
>>
>> You'd better update wikipedia then, since they say
>>
>> Hard science fiction, or hard SF, is a subgenre of science fiction
>> characterized by an interest in scientific detail or accuracy,
>>
>> Note "accuracy" (although one could lawyer much into the use of "or"
>> there).
>
> Another definition I've read (John Campbell?) is fiction that obeys all of
> the constraints of mundane fiction, but includes one wild premise that
> contradicts physics as now understood, and its logical consequences.
FWIW, I tend to view hard SF as taking a technological premise, and
basing the story on the consequences of that premise. For example,
Baxter's 'Light of Other Days' or McCarthy's 'Collapsium' series.
Something like the Honorverse or Lensman is about a story, and any
technology is used to enable the story to make sense. The technology
and science may be believable and accurate, but at the end of the
day it's not the point of the story.
Which came first, the Science or the Fiction? If the first, it's Hard,
if the latter then it's Soft.
--
Be seeing you,
Sam.
David Johnston
<eiv...@inbusiness.no> wrote:
>Gene Ward Smith wrote:
>> Eivind Kjorstad wrote:
>
>>> I've never claimed thougths are nonphysical. There's no indication
>>> whatsoever that they are.
>
>> Yet you claimed that telepathy, which is thought transference, is *by
>> definition* nonphysical.
>
>This seems to be the actual case among those that believe telepathy
>exists at all. I never claimed that made sense.
>
>I just observe, that in actual fact, these people (indeed nobody) talks
>about verbal communication as telepathy. It *does* suceed in transfering
>ideas from one mind to another -- but it isn't telepathy, because it
>works by a well-understood physical mechanism.
>
>Discussing on a news-group, using radio, or using a mobile phone is
>*also* not telepathy. (and wouldn't be even if the radio was a part of
>your biology) for the reason that that is just communicating over
>well-understood physical channels.
>
>So it seems to me, to the degree these people have a definition of
>"telepathy" at all, it must mean something akin to: "transfering
>information from one brain to another without using a physical method."
No. The truth is the people with the biological radios would count as
telepaths except for one thing. They wouldn't be able to read our
minds or project their messages into them. The mechanism by which
telepathy operates is often physical in science fiction and amenable
to being duplicated or at least blocked by the right technology. But
telepathy at its base concept is something that can be used even on
the people who aren't telepaths.
Samuel Penn
>
> On Wed, 13 Sep 2006 19:04:54 +0100, Samuel Penn wrote on Re: hard sf
> in the good old days:
>
>>FWIW, I tend to view hard SF as taking a technological premise, and
>>basing the story on the consequences of that premise. For example,
>>Baxter's 'Light of Other Days' or McCarthy's 'Collapsium' series.
>
> You probably mean Bob Shaw as in
> http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/shaw/shaw1.html
Nope, Stephen Baxter (actually, with Arthur C Clarke).
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Light-Other-Days-Arthur-Clarke/dp/0006483747
Gene Ward Smith
David Johnston wrote:
> No. The truth is the people with the biological radios would count as
> telepaths except for one thing. They wouldn't be able to read our
> minds or project their messages into them. The mechanism by which
> telepathy operates is often physical in science fiction and amenable
> to being duplicated or at least blocked by the right technology. But
> telepathy at its base concept is something that can be used even on
> the people who aren't telepaths.
In the Lensman series, telepathy is "philosophical" in nature, yet
amenable to blocking via technology. Powerful and complex
atomic-powered screening can even block third-level thought. The
Eddorians understand all this, but still are less enthusiatic about it
since at heart they are materialists, and the Arisians are not.
In Slan, the tendrils of the slan are like antennas for thought.
Except, slan don't actually need them. Just how physicial, or in what
way physical, slan telepathy is is murky. Bester's telepathy is an
inherited trait, which sounds physical. In Stranger in a Strange land,
telepathy is an inherent human power along with many others, which you
can develop by learning to think in Martian.
Obviously, this doesn't add up to a very coherent picture.
Uncle Clover
>Uncle Clover wrote:
>> It can be rather discouraging trying to sift through much that is called
>> "science fiction" these days. At least if you're a realist. Even that which is
>> not specified as "science fiction/FANTASY" often contains overabundant use of
>> the supernatural, for what reason I really can't say.
>>
>> It seems that one can't even escape the trappings of religious delusion in a
>> genre that's -supposed- to be devoted to scientific speculation. There is
>> nothing even remotely scientific about psychic abilities or empathic connections
>> between dragons and riders. It's all just watered down witch-doctoring
>> pitifully disguised in the languistic garb of rationality.
>>
>> Just about any science fiction story you pick up from your average bookseller
>> will contain at least a -hint- of some underlying supernatural reality -
>> religious hogwash, in other words. It's really quite annoying when one is
>> interested in -realistic- scientific speculation.
>>
>> No psychic phenomenon has ever been scientifically verified on even the remotest
>> level - no remote viewing, no telepathy, no telekinesis - NONE of it.
>
>Neither had been faster than light travel, teleportation, artificial
>intelligence or extraterrestrial life.
Teleportation has been done. It may only have been on the scale of electrons
and such, but it's a phenomenon we at least have verified as being a reality.
As for AI, the evidence that it is possible is that intelligence, itself,
exists. "Artificial" intelligence, as we call it, is simply intelligence
evolved via a different route - i.e., already "intelligent" species. In our own
selves, we've come to realize an intelligence that's apparently emerged from
nothing. There is no reason to believe that it couldn't possibly emerge again,
or that it -has- to emerge from "nothing" (i.e., that it couldn't also emerge
from prior intelligence). Unless someone can pinpoint a factor that would
prohibit intelligence from evolving through an already intelligent species -
unless there's some reason that intelligence -MUST- only evolve from
"nothingness" - then there is every reason to believe that synthetic
intelligence is entirely workable, even if we haven't figured out the
particulars yet.
Faster-than-light travel - we haven't verified that is even halfway possible
yet, and so I wouldn't be the least bit heartbroken to see science fiction
without it. Many perfectly interesting sf stories have been written in which
ftl travel does not occur - it is not even slightly necessary for good sf.
However, the two components of ftl travel are known to be a reality - those two
components being motion and accelleration. Both of these things occur, and we
haven't yet been able to conclusively pinpoint anything that would prohibit
accelleration from carrying an object beyond light speeds. There are
theoretical reasons for postulating that it's highly -unlikely-, or that at the
least it would do some very "strange" things, but there is no reason yet to rule
it out as a practical possibility.
It's not nearly so big of a stretch to assume ftl travel may be possible as it
is to assume that psychic powers are real - there are no observed mechanisms on
which for psychic phenomenon to occur. None. Zero. Zilch. Humans have
thoughts, but there is not now nor has there ever been any reasonable indication
that thoughts can exist beyond the confines of a physical brain. We can produce
the appearance of psychic phenomenon technologically - telephones, radios,
implants, etc... etc... etc... but in most if not all of those books where
psychic phenomenon are leaned upon heavily, they make no effort to imply that
it's technologically produced. Psychic phenomenon 100% free of technological
assistance is not even remotely possible as far as anyone's been able to
demonstrate. It's not even in the same ballpark as teleportation or ftl travel,
and certainly unrelated to ai.
>If you wanted to be limited to a "verified phenomena", you can write
>about builiding a Moon base or expedition to Mars - and thats all.
"Verified phenomena" isn't even necessary as much as is phenomenon for which
there is no known reason as to why it couldn't occur. There's plenty of reason
as to why psychic phenomenon as it's commonly touted cannot occur, and no route
around these limitations that anyone, anywhere has ever been able to
demonstrate. But even with just "verified" phenomenon, there is plenty more one
could write about than what you suggest. Our scientific knowledge far exceeds
our technological abilities at present. What we know in the realm of science
can make for a far, -far- more interesting tale than what you suggest.
>> So why
>> does such crap keep showing up in "science" fiction?
>
>Because people like to read it?
I've no problem with people who like "science fiction/fantasy" - in fact, I like
that genre, myself. I'm not griping that people like that subject matter so
much as I'm griping about the misapplication of the genre name. There's no
"science" to psychic phenomenon, it doesn't belong in "science fiction".
"Science fiction/fantasy", yes, but only because of the "fantasy"
acknowledgement.
--
L8r,
Uncle Clover
************************************************
The true mark of a civilized society is when its
citizens know how to hate each other peacefully.
************************************************
"A disappearance is when someone has vanished.
A tragedy is when they were photogenic."
- a.t-c's Bo Raxo, paraphrased.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"If you look at the whole life of the planet,
man has only been around for a few blinks of an
eye. So if the infection wipes us all out,
that _is_ a return to normality..."
- Sergeant Farrell, "28 Days Later"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Wayne Throop
: Teleportation has been done
No, it hasn't. Not really. There are several reasons why what is called
"teleportation" by the lurid pop-sci media outlets isn't. First,
because it's a particle *state*, not a particle that moves. Second,
because a particle to carry the entangled state has to move from the source to
the destination, to act as proxy for the state transfer. And third, because there's absolutely no indication of how to scale it to multiple particles.
In short, this is no more "teleportation" than the electron beam in
a CRT "teleports" electrons to the phosphors. And is no more likely
to lead to trekporters.
Interestingly, in Skylark Valerion, there's a scene where tractor beams
are used to move objects fast enough to appear to be trekporter-like
teleportation to naive observers (iirc -- it's been a while since I
read it). Small downside is, you have to make a hole in the roof.
Of course... tractor beams aren't really likely... but they are several
orders of magnitude more likely than any route from quantum state
"teleportation" to anything like trekportation.
Gene Ward Smith
Uncle Clover wrote:
> Teleportation has been done. It may only have been on the scale of electrons
> and such, but it's a phenomenon we at least have verified as being a reality.
A common misconception. Quantum teleportation isn't teleportation.
> However, the two components of ftl travel are known to be a reality - those two
> components being motion and accelleration. Both of these things occur, and we
> haven't yet been able to conclusively pinpoint anything that would prohibit
> accelleration from carrying an object beyond light speeds.
Yes we have. That way won't work, which is why the smart money is on
stuff like wormholes or Alcubierre drives. Those don't seem to work
either, of course, but you can at least figure the bugs might get
worked out.
> There are
> theoretical reasons for postulating that it's highly -unlikely-, or that at the
> least it would do some very "strange" things, but there is no reason yet to rule
> it out as a practical possibility.
Wrong. It's just plain ruled out. We've had plenty of opportunity to
observe what happens when you accelerate matter up to near-light
speeds, and what it does is behave in the way relativity says it should
behave. You might as well claim that it's unlikely you can get to the
Moon by putting flubber in your Air Jordans, but there's no reason to
rule it out as a practical possibility.
> It's not nearly so big of a stretch to assume ftl travel may be possible as it
> is to assume that psychic powers are real - there are no observed mechanisms on
> which for psychic phenomenon to occur.
Says you. And yet, more scientists seem to think psychic powers are
real than think FTL is possible as near as I can tell.
Gene Ward Smith
Wayne Throop wrote:
> Of course... tractor beams aren't really likely... but they are several
> orders of magnitude more likely than any route from quantum state
> "teleportation" to anything like trekportation.
You don't think "beam me up, Scotty" is quantum teleportation?
TBerk
> Uncle Clover wrote:
> > It can be rather discouraging trying to sift through much that is called
> > "science fiction" these days. At least if you're a realist. Even that which is
> > not specified as "science fiction/FANTASY" often contains overabundant use of
> > the supernatural, for what reason I really can't say.
> >
> > It seems that one can't even escape the trappings of religious delusion in a
> > genre that's -supposed- to be devoted to scientific speculation. There is
> > nothing even remotely scientific about psychic abilities or empathic connections
> > between dragons and riders. It's all just watered down witch-doctoring
> > pitifully disguised in the languistic garb of rationality.
> >
> > Just about any science fiction story you pick up from your average bookseller
> > will contain at least a -hint- of some underlying supernatural reality -
> > religious hogwash, in other words. It's really quite annoying when one is
> > interested in -realistic- scientific speculation.
> >
> > No psychic phenomenon has ever been scientifically verified on even the remotest
> > level - no remote viewing, no telepathy, no telekinesis - NONE of it.
>
What is the connection between Religion and Telepathy?
It was my understanding that one of the prerequisites for _good_
Science Fiction was to add _one_ new thing (like FTL or telepathy) and
hold the rest of the Universe to the current existing reality, and see
what develops.
Where does religion come into any of this? It seems the original poster
has added his own 'harrumphs' onto the subject.
Granted, I find Dragon stories in the Sci-Fi section to be just, well-
wrong.
TBerk
Grendels as written by Niven were Dragons of a sort....
Sea Wasp
> Uncle Clover wrote:
>
>
>>Teleportation has been done. It may only have been on the scale of electrons
>>and such, but it's a phenomenon we at least have verified as being a reality.
>
>
> A common misconception. Quantum teleportation isn't teleportation.
>
>
>>However, the two components of ftl travel are known to be a reality - those two
>>components being motion and accelleration. Both of these things occur, and we
>>haven't yet been able to conclusively pinpoint anything that would prohibit
>>accelleration from carrying an object beyond light speeds.
>
>
> Yes we have. That way won't work, which is why the smart money is on
> stuff like wormholes or Alcubierre drives. Those don't seem to work
> either, of course, but you can at least figure the bugs might get
> worked out.
What about Heim theory? I had heard that Heim's approach allowed for
a possible FTL drive that actually existed in the realm of "we could
achieve those requirements in a few decades" rather than "we would
need to have 40 Dyson Spheres completed before we could think about
TESTING it." Or has someone blown holes in the theory that sank it
without a trace?
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
Gene Ward Smith
TBerk wrote:
> What is the connection between Religion and Telepathy?
Haven't you ever received the transmissions of the Christian Telepathy
Network (CTN)?
> Granted, I find Dragon stories in the Sci-Fi section to be just, well-
> wrong.
Is Worsel OK, do you think?
Gene Ward Smith
Sea Wasp wrote:
> > Yes we have. That way won't work, which is why the smart money is on
> > stuff like wormholes or Alcubierre drives. Those don't seem to work
> > either, of course, but you can at least figure the bugs might get
> > worked out.
> What about Heim theory?
I don't think the smart money is on Heim, but obviously it has to be
good for science fiction. The idea of explaining physics in terms of
higher dimensions is of course far broader and more popular than just
Heim, and also seems like a good approach to the right kind of
handwavium.
> Or has someone blown holes in the theory that sank it
> without a trace?
Peer reviewed publications with math in it that other people can follow
would be a good start.
Sea Wasp
> Sea Wasp wrote:
>>Or has someone blown holes in the theory that sank it
>>without a trace?
>
>
> Peer reviewed publications with math in it that other people can follow
> would be a good start.
>
I think your SECOND criterion there is against the law, at least for
any theory that even approaches being a GUToE. Especially when the
theory in question is mathematically predicting with accuracy the
masses of subatomic particles.
Logan Kearsley
news:4508AC3A...@sgeobviousinc.com...
To this relative layman, most of it looks pretty darn good. I just wish
somebody would get around to do the necessary experiments to test it- or at
least start seriously planning to.
The FTL bit with 'parallel space', however, looks to have frame-invariance
problems. Whether or not it actually has frame invariance problems I can't
say, but it seems to on the surface, and nobody has yet given me an
explanation for that. As far as I understand it, there would also be some
difficulties with actually managing to shift the entire ship into the same
level of 'parallel space' at the same time, rather than just ripping out the
engine.
-l.
------------------------------------
My inbox is a sacred shrine, none shall enter that are not worthy.
Erik Max Francis
> To this relative layman, most of it looks pretty darn good. I just wish
> somebody would get around to do the necessary experiments to test it- or at
> least start seriously planning to.
> The FTL bit with 'parallel space', however, looks to have frame-invariance
> problems. Whether or not it actually has frame invariance problems I can't
> say, but it seems to on the surface, and nobody has yet given me an
> explanation for that. As far as I understand it, there would also be some
> difficulties with actually managing to shift the entire ship into the same
> level of 'parallel space' at the same time, rather than just ripping out the
> engine.
It strikes me as so much wishful thinking. But I certainly encourage
people to try, provided he can write it up in a way that it actually
presents itself as a falsifiable theory.
--
Erik Max Francis && m...@alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
And I'd rather be damned if I don't.
-- Robert S. MacNamara
Logan Kearsley
news:eu-dnYHBWcDrJpXY...@speakeasy.net...
> Logan Kearsley wrote:
>
> > To this relative layman, most of it looks pretty darn good. I just wish
> > somebody would get around to do the necessary experiments to test it- or
at
> > least start seriously planning to.
> > The FTL bit with 'parallel space', however, looks to have
frame-invariance
> > problems. Whether or not it actually has frame invariance problems I
can't
> > say, but it seems to on the surface, and nobody has yet given me an
> > explanation for that. As far as I understand it, there would also be
some
> > difficulties with actually managing to shift the entire ship into the
same
> > level of 'parallel space' at the same time, rather than just ripping out
the
> > engine.
>
> It strikes me as so much wishful thinking. But I certainly encourage
> people to try, provided he can write it up in a way that it actually
> presents itself as a falsifiable theory.
It is presented as a falsifiable theory- hence my wish that someone would
get around to doing the appropriate experiments.
Spin a hydrogen-rich disk really, really fast in a 20+ tesla magnetic field-
if it's weight changes, Woohoo! Reactionless space drive! If it doesn't-
darn, the theory was wrong. Back to speculating about wormholes.
Gene Ward Smith
Sea Wasp wrote:
> I think your SECOND criterion there is against the law, at least for
> any theory that even approaches being a GUToE. Especially when the
> theory in question is mathematically predicting with accuracy the
> masses of subatomic particles.
Heim theory has an elliptic curve in it, so I like that part. If n is
the number of total dimensions and p is the number of "physical"
dimensions, then
n^2 - n = p^3 - 3p^2 + 2p
an elliptic curve. It's one of the three elliptic curves over the
rationals with conductor 92, and has rank one. So, it has an infinity
of rational points, but what's really wanted are integral points, which
are finite in number by Mordell's theorem. There seem to be only five
possibilities, with the only two live ones six dimensions and 57
dimensions.
Gene Ward Smith
> So, it has an infinity
> of rational points, but what's really wanted are integral points, which
> are finite in number by Mordell's theorem.
Sorry, I meant Siegel's theorem.
Wayne Throop
:: several orders of magnitude more likely than any route from quantum
:: state "teleportation" to anything like trekportation.
: "Gene Ward Smith" <genewa...@gmail.com>
: You don't think "beam me up, Scotty" is quantum teleportation?
Oh, heavens to Heisenberg, no, not at all.
Or rather... yes. But by "lead to" I don't mean
"adding technobabble to special effects".
Wayne Throop
: What about Heim theory? I had heard that Heim's approach allowed for
: achieve those requirements in a few decades" rather than "we would
: need to have 40 Dyson Spheres completed before we could think about
: TESTING it." Or has someone blown holes in the theory that sank it
: without a trace?
I dunno about "sank without a trace", but two major points make
me mighty skeptical that it's even worth pursuing.
First, in mathematics I am only an egg, so I'm going by popularized
accounts[1] but the whole "velocities greater than light are OK because
we're doing it by an "inertial transformation", and this (somehow)
makes the oddities wrt superluminal worldlines go away" thing doesn't
inspire confidence. They say things like this is because of the
"lorentz matrix"... which seems to be saying that lorentz invariance
doesn't apply because lorentz invariance applies. Um.... right.
Second, the whole inertial transform thing requires a special frame.
The claim is made that, because of energy and momentum conservation, when
you use a Heimwidget to reduce the inertial mass of your spacecraft,
the velocity must instantly jump larger, and this jump can take
you superluminal. But... "velocity" and "energy" and "momentum"
are not frame invariant, so this could only work wrt one frame.
Specifically, what *is* your velocity at any time? Well, in your
own instantaneous rest frame, it's always zero. So you increase your
velocity by a factor of thousands, or millions, and still get zero.
Indeed, you'll get a different predicted trajectory for any reference
frame you use for your calculation. And that's physically nonsensical.
So. It does not sound interesting at all to me, unless this issue
of *which* velocity gets multiplied, and why, is addressed.
It seems fundamentally ill-considered, and though I can't imagine
nobody has raised this objection before, I don't google any mentions
of it, nor resoltions of it.
Of course, as minor points in addition to those two, wiki notes that
among other problems with particle predictions, it predicts a neutral
electron to go along with postive and negative ones, and there's no such
a thing known, and that doesn't make me more confident of it, neither.
As to the gravitophoton inertialess spacedrive thingie, and the
cosmological effects of "modified newtonian gravity" which is supposed
to account for dark matter and dark energy and all... well, shrug.
I don't hear loud warning klaxons there as I do in the other things,
but the theory as a whole includes those klaxony things too, and
these points don't muffle the warning any.
[1] http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/aiaa2003-4990-Talk_Huntsville.pdf
among some other similar accounts.
r.r...@thevine.net
wrote:
Ah, well, that does make more sense. Because I was thinking that a
group of deaf people would probably be very good at reading emotional
expressions. But, it ruins the punchline of it being because she
could hear, seems to me.
Rebecca
Wayne Throop
: Ah, well, that does make more sense. Because I was thinking that a
: group of deaf people would probably be very good at reading emotional
: expressions. But, it ruins the punchline of it being because she
: could hear, seems to me.
I agree to a certain extent. Note that the major point of the story
as I recall it wasn't detecting emotional states, but clairvoyance;
knowing that something has happened at a distance, or out of sight,
or behind your back, recognizing somebody before they get in view, or
even that somebody's coming before they do, etc, etc. Oooooh, spooky.
Some of these folks got burned as witches, etc, iirc.
But *in* *addition* to that, most people had poor eyesight.
Anyways, as the story progresses (my memory sez), it just sort of dawns
on you what's really going on, by the descriptions people give of these
extrasensory perceptions. Fairly soon, all things considered, but still,
just a gradual dawning (my memory sez). Eventually, you realize that all
the dialogue is translated from sign language, etc, etc. At one point,
after the realization has sunk in, there's a mention that these rare
psychic kids are hard to raise, since they try to use telepathy with each
other, or even with regular non-psychic folks, and you have to be firm
with them when they are young, to get them to gesture instead of babble,
etc, etc. To help them fit in.
An intersting story. It would be nice if I could remember the author...
I almost have the idea that LWE will pop up and I'll go D'OH!
But... probably not.
Anthony Cerrato
"Samuel Penn" <s...@bifrost.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:7rtlt3-...@wotan.glendale...
I like the last paragraph--if the (accurate) science
dominates, it's hard otherwise it's soft. And this is close
to the Wiki definition too--at least in their intent
(everything about this definition reeks of the analogy to
law, i.e., the letter of the law vs. the intent (to achieve
total accuracy even though there is an absence of complete
scientific knowledge for the particular subject.)
The problem in defining hard SF is that, no one has total
scientific knowledge of the universe, so how could they
write "true" hard SF in the real world--if they did, it
wouldn't be SF, but rather just science fact! Therefore,
those characterized as mostly "hard" SF authors always
deviated from total accuracy in at least some detail--the
most accurate science at the moment might be written into a
story that uses one or two questionable ideas (like a
wormhole for FTL travel, or just FTL travel period)--this is
sometimes necessary just for literary license or just for
convenience to better move a story along...it doesn't, or at
least shouldn't. deny a story the appellation of hard
however in the intent of the original definition.
For ex., A.C. Clarke may have postulated orbiting satellite
communications or the space elevator using sci-tech of the
day, but he often used far-out aliens and/or spaceships
which still didn't exist. Ditto for Hal Clement, tho usually
less so than most. Then consider Alistair Reynolds who I
happen to be reading now. I am finding he is very hard SF
author when it comes to things astronomical (stars, planets
etc), cosmological, orbital mechanics, and so forth (he _is_
an astronomer)--but his biology and cybernetics are pretty
far out (brain implants, memetic viruses etc.) are slightly
far out..but that's the F part of SF, and I would still
definitely call him a hard SF author of today.
Conclusion: All hard SF is "Local" as defined by some
here--so why not just adjust our views and just call it hard
SF, period--as the original definition intended? Well,
that's my 2 cents anyway.
...tonyC
Eivind Kjorstad
> there are no observed mechanisms on which for psychic phenomenon to occur.
> None. Zero. Zilch. Humans have thoughts, but there is not now nor has
> there ever been any reasonable indication that thoughts can exist beyond
> the confines of a physical brain.
For me personally, there is one aditional reason to assume that psychic
phenomenon do not, infact, exist.
*IF* the phenomenons worked, it'd be a tremendous evolutionary advantage
to those that had them. Which would mean that once a few members of a
species had a weak version of it, there'd be tremendous evolutionary
pressure to have it, and to improve it.
So, if *anyone* had psychic powers at all, I'd expect ALL of us to have
it, and for it to be much more advanced than it seems to be. All we get
is some people claiming that some of the time this ability allows them
to guess the rigth card 30% of the time where random chance would
dictate 25%. Which is, to be frank absolutely *lousy* performance.
There are very few higher animals without eyes, or without smell, or
without hearing. (and those that lack one or more have obvious reasons,
i.e. animals living in eternal darkness lacking eyes). The advantages
are so great that if you live in an environment competing with those
that can see, you simply cannot afford *NOT* seeing.
You don't get any debates, not even with blind people if "seeing"
exists. It's just too blatantly obvious. With "psychics" all you get is
decades of smoke and mirrors and *tiny* statistical anomalies that
generally tend to shrink the more you scrutinize your experimental setup.
Eivind Kjørstad
Eivind Kjorstad
> te·lep·a·thy (t-lp-th) n.
>
> Communication through means other than the senses, as by the
> exercise of an occult power.
>
> The key idea seems to be "extrasensory".
Yes. So, fits my idea.
A "sense" is something that allows your brain to discover something, an
input-device for the brain if you like. In the words of the same
dictionary you quote;
+---
| Any of the faculties by which stimuli from outside or inside the body
| are received and felt, (...)
+---
A biological radio-receiver (for example) would definately fit this
definition, thus communicating by biological-radio would be
communication trough the senses, it would not (by any of your quoted
definitions) be telepathy. (because that is there defined to be
communication troug mean *other* than the senses.)
> Very dissmissive of a long and involved philosophical argument which
> has been going on for thousands of years here. I hate to break it to
> you, but people who disagree with your personal metaphysical beliefs
> are not necessarily crackpots.
No. Since you like dictionaries; a crackpot is 'a person who is
eccentric, unrealistic, or fanatical.'
Telepathy is unrealistic. We have no indication whatsoever that it ever
existed, nor does it, as commonly understood, even fit with our
understanding of basic physics.
> Again, this is what *some* people who believe in telepathy or
> life-after-death think. Other people are likely to go on about quantum
> mechanics, etc.
Those who go on about quantum-this nano-that or brane-such in the
context of telepathy typically do so to impress their audience,
overwhelmingly they don't have any real idea what any of the words mean.
Sort of like the "alternative" people who talk about "frequency", and
"energy" while obviously meaning neither.
It's nonsense to come with a long, convoluted explanation of *how*
something works when you haven't even demonstrated that there is a
phenomenon to be explained in the first place.
Eivind Kjørstad
r.r...@thevine.net
wrote:
>: Ah, well, that does make more sense. Because I was thinking that a
>: group of deaf people would probably be very good at reading emotional
>: expressions. But, it ruins the punchline of it being because she
>: could hear, seems to me.
>
>I agree to a certain extent. Note that the major point of the story
>as I recall it wasn't detecting emotional states, but clairvoyance;
>knowing that something has happened at a distance, or out of sight,
>or behind your back, recognizing somebody before they get in view, or
>even that somebody's coming before they do, etc, etc. Oooooh, spooky.
>Some of these folks got burned as witches, etc, iirc.
>
>But *in* *addition* to that, most people had poor eyesight.
>
>Anyways, as the story progresses (my memory sez), it just sort of dawns
>on you what's really going on, by the descriptions people give of these
>extrasensory perceptions. Fairly soon, all things considered, but still,
>just a gradual dawning (my memory sez). Eventually, you realize that all
>the dialogue is translated from sign language, etc, etc. At one point,
>after the realization has sunk in, there's a mention that these rare
>psychic kids are hard to raise, since they try to use telepathy with each
>other, or even with regular non-psychic folks, and you have to be firm
>with them when they are young, to get them to gesture instead of babble,
>etc, etc. To help them fit in.
>
I wonder how realistic that is? After all, these people don't _have_
a spoken language, and one of the "new" ideas in child care is to
teach young children a modified version of sign language, because
their cognitive skills tend to develop before their verbal skills do.
So the thought of these kids trying to communicate verbally seems
about as likely as the modern American kid spontaneously deciding to
use sign language instead of talking.
Rebecca
Wayne Throop
: Telepathy is unrealistic. We have no indication whatsoever that it ever
: existed, nor does it, as commonly understood, even fit with our
: understanding of basic physics.
Well sure, I agree, mostly. But to get back to the original point, how
does this differ from FTL, teleportation, and so on? One can handwave
about wormholes and spacetime bubbles and such, and mechanisms now unknown
for manipulating same, but then one can handwave about bio-eeg or fifth
(or nth) forces or other now-unknown mechanisms for manipulating same.
They really seem quite similar, in terms of unrealistic-ness.
Wayne Throop
: Conclusion: All hard SF is "Local" as defined by some
: here--so why not just adjust our views and just call it hard
: SF, period--as the original definition intended? Well,
: that's my 2 cents anyway.
Sure, but how much of the hardness in a given work, or typical of a given
author, is local vs global, is an interesting categorization. Leading
us to sort, say, Clement with Clarke, but Asimov more with Anderson.
The latter pair are more likely to have handwaves prominently featured
in many works, and the former less likely. Yet all four deal their hands
uniformly, whether they are waving or not. The technology has more of a
"live" feel to it than in a random sampling of SF, and is not treated
as just a far-background superficial support prop for the plot.
Or put it this way. The origin of the term "locally hard" is more
or less in response to "jeez louise, how can you can *this* stuff *hard*?",
the answer being, "it's still locally hard". Which is not an exhortation
to suddenly stop calling it hard; it's just a subcategorization,
or a way of characterizing a spectrum within the category.
Wayne Throop
: I wonder how realistic that is? After all, these people don't _have_
: a spoken language, and one of the "new" ideas in child care is to
: teach young children a modified version of sign language, because
: their cognitive skills tend to develop before their verbal skills do.
: So the thought of these kids trying to communicate verbally seems
: about as likely as the modern American kid spontaneously deciding to
: use sign language instead of talking.
That's a good question. But do deaf infants in a signing environment
make gestures the way hearing infants in our rehearse vocalizations by
babbling? And would hearing infants start out concentrating on sound,
even if it draws no reaction from adults about them?
Or putting it another way, are the linguistic centers of the human brain
preferentially associated with sound? Doesn't seem out of the question,
but I doubt close enough scenarios have been studied to say.
Joe Strout
wrote:
> : r.r...@thevine.net
> : I wonder how realistic that is? After all, these people don't _have_
> : a spoken language, and one of the "new" ideas in child care is to
> : teach young children a modified version of sign language, because
> : their cognitive skills tend to develop before their verbal skills do.
> : So the thought of these kids trying to communicate verbally seems
> : about as likely as the modern American kid spontaneously deciding to
> : use sign language instead of talking.
>
> That's a good question. But do deaf infants in a signing environment
> make gestures the way hearing infants in our rehearse vocalizations by
> babbling?
Yes, such infants babble in sign.
> And would hearing infants start out concentrating on sound,
> even if it draws no reaction from adults about them?
No, hearing infants in such an environment babble in sign too. However,
I strongly suspect that if you had a bunch of hearing infants, raised in
a community of deaf adults, the kids would spontaneously develop some
verbal language, albeit a crude one.
> Or putting it another way, are the linguistic centers of the human brain
> preferentially associated with sound?
No, the higher language centers are fairly plastic, though of course
they're supported by the appropriate sensory areas too.
Best,
- Joe
Joe Strout
> : Eivind Kjorstad <eiv...@inbusiness.no>
> : Telepathy is unrealistic. We have no indication whatsoever that it ever
> : existed, nor does it, as commonly understood, even fit with our
> : understanding of basic physics.
>
> Well sure, I agree, mostly. But to get back to the original point, how
> does this differ from FTL, teleportation, and so on? One can handwave
> about wormholes and spacetime bubbles and such, and mechanisms now unknown
> for manipulating same, but then one can handwave about bio-eeg or fifth
> (or nth) forces or other now-unknown mechanisms for manipulating same.
The difference is that FTL and teleportation and so on are clearly
*technologies* -- something that was invented and built through advanced
science and engineering. If you posit telepathy that works through
brain implants purchased from Audible Thought Inc., then sure, that's in
the same class as FTL and teleportation. But if you posit telepathy as
something that some people are simply born with, then that's magic, not
technology. And the resulting fiction is fantasy, not SF, I would say.
Cheers,
- Joe
Wayne Throop
:: hearing infants in our rehearse vocalizations by babbling?
: Joe Strout <j...@strout.net>
: Yes, such infants babble in sign.
Nifty!
:: Or putting it another way, are the linguistic centers of the human
:: brain preferentially associated with sound?
: No, the higher language centers are fairly plastic, though of course
: they're supported by the appropriate sensory areas too.
Note that I didn't say "exclusively", so being plastic, even highly
plastic, doesn't contradict the hypothesis that there's a preference.
On the other hand, the actual experience you note *does* seem to contradict
the upthread story scenario.
Michael Stemper
>TBerk wrote:
>> Granted, I find Dragon stories in the Sci-Fi section to be just, well-
>> wrong.
>
>Is Worsel OK, do you think?
As long as the flames only come from his Delameter, sure. If he starts
exhaling flames, out with him.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.
Wayne Throop
:: teleportation, and so on? One can handwave about wormholes and
:: spacetime bubbles and such, and mechanisms now unknown for
:: manipulating same, but then one can handwave about bio-eeg or fifth
:: (or nth) forces or other now-unknown mechanisms for manipulating
:: same.
: Joe Strout <j...@strout.net>
: The difference is that FTL and teleportation and so on are clearly
: *technologies* -- something that was invented and built through
: advanced science and engineering.
That's a difference all right. But why is it significant wrt plausibility?
: If you posit telepathy that works through brain implants purchased
: from Audible Thought Inc., then sure, that's in the same class as FTL
: and teleportation.
What if it's a discovered property of biological systems, but too weak
(or wrong environment, or whatever) and is bred for (or gengineered
for, or a select few can be found by technological testing/training, or
provoked by appropriate environmental cues)? Taking Telzey for example;
she and the other telepaths in the Hub can be considered part of a long
breeding experiment by the psychology service (well... not quite, but
close enough, since the Hub government is attempting to encourage them).
Or, what about Ethan of Athos?
Or hybrid scenarios, like the people in Cordwainer Smith's works, where
most of the population seems to have been gengineered to have telepathy,
but a few throwbacks such as Rod McBan have to use "hierng aids".
Point being, whether something is discovered, or created, doesn't seem
to affect its SFnal plausibility. If it does, why does it?
David Johnston
Something some people are simply born with sounds more like biology
than either.
Bill Steele
"TBerk" <bayar...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > No psychic phenomenon has ever been scientifically verified on even the
> > > remotest
> > > level - no remote viewing, no telepathy, no telekinesis - NONE of it.
The real criterion for science fiction is not "proven to be possible"
but "not proven to be impossible." I defer you to James Randi's
description of trying to prove that sheep can't fly: Take a bunch of
sheep up to the roof of a tall building and throw them off one by one.
No matter how many plummet to the street, it could be that you just
haven't gotten to one of the ones that can fly.
And don't get me started on the energy storage requirements for
hand-held phasers.