Intelligence is the Answer

[Wyrm]

GETTO (sp) EDIT: a lower mass of the proton would mean that its apperances in Feynman diagrams of electromagnetic interactions (as well as the entire particle zoo) are more frequent, therefore contribute more to the final result.

[Junghalli]

But I think it would actually make life more likely to happen, and in more contexts. This would be consistent with the incredible diversity and sheer density of wierd and wild life-forms. As compared to the current Fermi Paradox.

It would also mean that life would be very different. Life as we know it is essentially a continous chain of chemical reactions, and you're suggesting a change in physics to make chemical reactions much easier. Living things would have to consume much less food, and could be much more active. I'm sure an evolutionary biologist would have a field day predicting would this would do to developing lifeforms, but I'm not an expert in the subject. But I do think the radical changes in biology this would create would make the evolution of anything remotely like a human, anywhere, supremely unlikely.

Everything has an effect on intelligence. Well, I should say, everything has an effect on attributes that sit on top of a nonlinear dynamical process like evolution, so long as there is a causal relationship. But it would be unpredictable, and probably too late in human evolution to make a difference, agreed.

Technological progress in a universe with the Trekverse's more unstable spacetime would be equally difficult until you get to the stage of developing FTL, transporters, or antigravity. Common things like electricity would work the same way there as they do over here. Likewise the development of life probably wouldn't be too effected since chemical reactions would work the same way for the most part.

it would be difficult to explain a Science officer scanning for materials and announcing the presence of aluminum, when bauxite deposites existed... but colloqualism is a powerful thing, and I've certainly see such terms transposed.

You'd be suprised how often you here references to, say, aluminum or tungsten deposits instead of bauxite or wolframite deposits in RL. Besides, we could argue Federation science officers apparently aren't too well trained in some cases (back to the communism argument). I'd swallow that before I accepted the idea of spacecraft hulls made out of naturally existing transuranic elements (transuranics BTW are very unstable AFAIK and therefore would be an absolutely shit material to make ANYTHING out of).

I am referring here to several episodes (which I am potentially conflating) where global changes occur within a star in very short timescales. A star 'going nova' because of an event after less than a day is a profound difference from this person's understanding of stellar mechanics.

What was the event you refer to? Was this a natural nova or somehow artificially induced, or induced by weird Trekverse radiation or subspace phenomena?
BTW you're earlier point on how the change in physics you suggested might make life evolve earlier would explain how we can have habitable worlds around stars like Acamar and Mintaka, which in RL would be too short-lived for anything more than bacteria to evolve on a planet there. I'll grant you this.

Also, in one of these stellar explosions a big 'chunk' is thrown out at the Enterprise and somehow being 'hit' by this chunk is more dangerous (or in front of) the radiative explosion. I can explain this chunk, and potential faster stellar changes if most Trek stars contain degenerate matter, which would be a consequence of my theory.

Or we could simply say that this chunk is what you'd expect to come off the surface of an exploding star: extremely hot plasma. No need to resort to fancy explanations, the simple fact is getting hit with what effectively is a piece of the sun probably just isn't good for Trekverse ships.

Yes, it would in fact. Unfortunately, we dont' know what aliens look like in real life, so we can't compare them to Trek.

I was more thinking of Trek humans actually, and how their metabolism doesn't seem any different from ours. They seem to eat the same foods as us, in the same portions. A fact which doesn't fit very well with your theory at all.

However, we do have several examples of entities existing without any known food or power source, as well as photosynthetic organisms doing things that are out of proportion with what they could do in our universe(the nano-things in the lab).

That's true.

well, interestingly, in terrestrial evolution anyway, how much you have to eat is actually determined in large part by competitive pressures. You see, certain animals are extremely efficient digestors, because the effort required to get a certain volume of food-energy is much higher.

Humans seem to have a similar evolutionary history in Trekverse as in RL. There's no reason to think they would be supremely inefficient digestors. Considering the effort it requires to feed a large animal like a human that would be an enormous survival disadvantage and would almost certainly never evolve. Let's put it this way, if your theory were true Trekverse humans could probably get all their energy needs met by eating a sugar cube for every meal (they'd still need to eat more for protein and calcium, but they'd probably eat like lizards-one meal a week).

But generally yes, I would imagine so. Of course, we see crew members eating for social reasons and in some places to add flavor, but we can't really tell whether humans in star trek eat 3 meals a day the way modern americans do.

See above. If your theory were true they'd eat only for nutrients basically. They'd have eating habits similar to our cold-bloods in all likelyhood, one meal every three or four days at most.
BTW you were wondering how your theory would effect whether or not you'd like to be plopped down in Trek or Wars? If it was true you couldn't survive in the Trekverse. The second you entered that universe your metabolism, designed for a universe where chemical reactions are much harder to initiate, would go into catastrophic overdrive. Your brain protein would be denatured by your own body heat and you might even spontaneously combust! Interestingly enough this would also mean that, assuming Wars physics is similar to our physics, Wars could never conquer Trek (except maybe with droid armies, and they'd have to be specially designed droids probably). Wars people would also die they second they crossed over.
Incidentally though I was wrong about internal combustion engines being more efficient in such a universe. Oil would be much easier to ignite, but it would release the same energy when burned. Which reminds me, another effect of your theory would be that fire would be much more dangerous in the Trekverse, as things would combust far more easily. It would be as if everything was covered with white phosphorus dust; light a match in the woods and drop it on the ground and you'd have a raging inferno in a matter of minutes.

These are good explanations, for each case. But they fail to address the many races encountered in TOS and TNG who are 'in the midst' of major conflicts, 'scientific golden ages' and otherwise in very results-oriented situations, and they have the exact same problems.

Examples?

In fact, they usually have significantly inferior technology, processes, political systems, and design philosophies to the Federation!

The Federation has pretty good technology actually, they just don't know how to apply it properly.

Another point which I meant to bring up earlier is the fact that every single species in Trek is a monoculture. This makes very little sense if they're just as smart and contentious as we are, but much more if they's just a little less personally effective.

If we're talking about starfaring species that's not difficult to explain. A planet that has cheap air travel and communications will eventually develop a planet-wide culture. And, especially with those "one episode wonder" species you really only get a very quick glimpse of their society. How would Earth look like if all you knew about it was from a one hour TV episode?

I'm going to have to withdraw the theory, though, in light of the few sticking points I think have been raised

It was interesting, but I think simpler explanations that don't involve huge changes in the laws of physics can be thought up.
Also, no offense, but I don't think you realize just how thoroughly any change in a major law of physics will mess up the physical world as we know it. For instance, with chemical reactions much easier to initiate fire would be incredibly dangerous, as things combust much more easily. This would have a huge impact on the development of society in primitive times (imagine trying to make a camp fire in a world where everything goes up in flames at the slightest heat, as if it were coated in gasoline).

[Wyrm]

I reach different conclusions, though, because I believe that it's simpler to imagine a general factor, than many many special cases that happen to be so.

That's not what Occam's razor buys you. Unlike this spurious concept of "stronger chromodynamic forces" yet to be seen, we can see the Klingons taking "honor" too far than is healthy (and we know examples of honor being taken too far on our own planet), we can deduce the communism in the Federation and we know communism is Bad for Progress, we've seen Cardassian "justice" at work, and we know that oppressive governments don't breed innovation, and so on.

When deploying Occam's razor, first you round up the usual suspects, then you go after the more unusual suspects before going after the sweet little granny-lady knitting on the porch!

I'm going to have to withdraw the theory, though, in light of the few sticking points I think have been raised

It was interesting, but I think simpler explanations that don't involve huge changes in the laws of physics can be thought up.
Also, no offense, but I don't think you realize just how thoroughly any change in a major law of physics will mess up the physical world as we know it. For instance, with chemical reactions much easier to initiate fire would be incredibly dangerous, as things combust much more easily. This would have a huge impact on the development of society in primitive times (imagine trying to make a camp fire in a world where everything goes up in flames at the slightest heat, as if it were coated in gasoline).

And that's just for starters! A universe with stronger strong force interactions would be basically helium, and not much else. I already explained that a stronger strong force would result in a universe depleated of hydrogen (the principle fuel of stars), but it would also be depleated of everything else.

True, it seems ST humans have some doo-dads added to their physiology, but, I note, they're still made of carbon! If the strong force ("chromodynamic forces") act even fractionally different, then carbon could not form from the triple-alpha process:

...the beryllium-8 ground state has almost exactly the energy of two alpha particles. In the second step, Be-8 + He-4 has almost exactly the energy of an excited state of C-12. These resonances greatly increase the probability that an incoming alpha particle will combine with beryllium-8 to form carbon. The fact that the existence of carbon depends on an energy level being exactly the right place, has been controversially cited by Fred Hoyle as evidence for the anthropic principle.

Link from Wikipedia.

These resonances depend sensitively on the binding energies of nucleons, which depend on the strong force. Stars couldn't get energy from nuclear fusion at all, and would simply collapse into white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes over the course of a few million years.

Changing the strong force interactions would, as I said in a previous post, mess everything up!

[outlawpoet]

Completely bogus. A slightly stronger coupling constant in strong interactions (that's what "chromodynamic forces" are called) would mess everything else up. And when I say "everything," I mean every other interaction in nature.

This is absolutely true.

In fact there are few other horrible potential effects, depending on how 'fractional' an increase we're talking about. Binding energy in some lattices, like iron, would be very different, leading to crystals of indeterminate size. The characteristics of metals in general would be very different, they might not be ductile anymore, I can't do the math for that.

But these huge differences are exactly what I was hoping for, in order to explain all the physical differences we see in Trek. I was postulating that matter and thus humans were living in an earlier period of universal history, when temperature was higher, and the input energy of reactions was less.

by our time period in the real universe, the whole neighborhood might well be degenerate matter and unreasonably stable large elements.

As I said above, theory retracted, but I think that it is interesting nonetheless.

[outlawpoet]

That's not what Occam's razor buys you. Unlike this spurious concept of "stronger chromodynamic forces" yet to be seen, we can see the Klingons taking "honor" too far than is healthy (and we know examples of honor being taken too far on our own planet), we can deduce the communism in the Federation and we know communism is Bad for Progress, we've seen Cardassian "justice" at work, and we know that oppressive governments don't breed innovation, and so on.

When deploying Occam's razor, first you round up the usual suspects, then you go after the more unusual suspects before going after the sweet little granny-lady knitting on the porch!

Your other points are good, but here you seem to confusing levels. I'm not claiming that communism, Klingon honor charges, or Cardassian leadership are more natural choices, or don't explain poor results. Those obviously affect the directions the races take, the decisions that are available to them, and so on. But what I was attempting to explain was why those kinds of governance, culture, and society design are universal in trek.

Communism has been Bad For Progress(except the examples I pointed out earlier) but it is also always accompanied by massive defections, underground black market, oppressive dictatorial control needed to sustain, opposition both within and without, and an increase in militarism. Where is this in Trek? They're smiling happy (previously mentioned Long Peace, stagnation of military) and in general appear to be in lockstep, despite a lack of overt command-control, political officers, gulags. It's true that we see 'free-thinkers' on remote outposts, but that's basically it. Communism doesn't actually seem to make people stupider, it's just a lower efficiency way of marshalling society production.

The same points apply to every other monoculture in Trek. They exist without serious internal complexity, don't appear to have strong stabilizing forces maintaining them (save for the Klingon hegemony) and engender societally negligible levels of protest.

These meta-points require explanation, unless we're willing to accept a universal coincidence of incompetent societies(with which the vast majority of their inhabitants are perfectly satisfied with). I don't think that my theory does it, but you can't invoke occam's razor to protect an ever escalating series of epicycles.

[Wyrm]

In fact there are few other horrible potential effects, depending on how 'fractional' an increase we're talking about. Binding energy in some lattices, like iron, would be very different, leading to crystals of indeterminate size. The characteristics of metals in general would be very different, they might not be ductile anymore, I can't do the math for that.

But these huge differences are exactly what I was hoping for, in order to explain all the physical differences we see in Trek. I was postulating that matter and thus humans were living in an earlier period of universal history, when temperature was higher, and the input energy of reactions was less.

The point being that the strong force is not an isolated interaction. A universe with a strong force consistent with what you're proposing would look NOTHING like our (or for that matter, the ST) universe. A fractional increase in the strong force would sooner have the cosmological consequence of having a universe that is made entirely of helium than affecting the chemistry of iron in that way, and iron wouldn't exist because fusion couldn't progress beyond helium without that C-12 excited state mentioned in my previous post.

by our time period in the real universe, the whole neighborhood might well be degenerate matter and unreasonably stable large elements.

There would be no transuranic elements at all, because fusion would not progress past helium and neutron capture would be a joke, and degenerate matter (white dwarfs, neutron stars) is worthless for any structural use.

And no carbon, so no carbon-based life-forms.

As I said above, theory retracted, but I think that it is interesting nonetheless.

No. You'd have a boring, featureless helium gas universe.

[Wyrm]

Communism has been Bad For Progress(except the examples I pointed out earlier) but it is also always accompanied by massive defections, underground black market, oppressive dictatorial control needed to sustain, opposition both within and without, and an increase in militarism. Where is this in Trek?

Funny you should mention that, as Great Leader Wong has a lot to say about the economics of the Federation, and he has pursuasive arguments that the Federation displays all of the above. (Actually, "massive defections" were not experienced with the Soviet Union, and are not experienced with China or N. Korea -- defections were and remain few and far between.)

These meta-points require explanation, unless we're willing to accept a universal coincidence of incompetent societies(with which the vast majority of their inhabitants are perfectly satisfied with). I don't think that my theory does it, but you can't invoke occam's razor to protect an ever escalating series of epicycles.

The thing is, we don't know very much about any of the Trek cultures, even the Federation, but what we do know about them would lend us to the conclusions others have arrived at, that the stupidity displayed in ST can be attributed to defective societies, rather than universally stupid individuals.

Besides, if you're looking for a Universal Trek Stupidity Principle, a stronger strong force is not it.

[outlawpoet]

Funny you should mention that, as Great Leader Wong has a lot to say about the economics of the Federation, and he has pursuasive arguments that the Federation displays all of the above.

An interesting paper. But it actually makes a point to mention that the concept of communism as presented in Star Trek is incoherent, because it lacks the heavy-handed consequences required to enforce it. (having your cake and eating it too, he called it). The oppressive dicatorial control is absent from the essay, although he does mention that the Federation nearly became one.

(Actually, "massive defections" were not experienced with the Soviet Union, and are not experienced with China or N. Korea -- defections were and remain few and far between.)

?

That would be why China, N. Korea and formerly Soviet Russia spend/spent so much time on border security? Why scientists and military officials were sequestered in Russia, and not allowed abroad? Why military units in Afghanistan faced problems keeping their soldier coming back? Soviet Russia had agreements with neighboring and Warsaw Pact countries to return expatriates. Even Finland got something like 135 people who tried to walk over the border.

You aren't familiar with the massive problem of Cuban immigre's who attempt to float, paddle, and otherwise escape their communist society and make it to the shores of capitalist america?!

The DMZ between North and South Korea has barbed wire on both sides. N. Korea is in no hurry to let it's loved workers escape to the arms of their southern bretheren, yet it continues to be an issue.
See: http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/28/news/korea.php

There is a lot of literature about defection from communist societies, and how much of a problem it was for them, particularly with critical personel, like designers and scientists, whose positions gave them wider latitude. If you believe that it didn't occur, I don't really know what to say about that.

http://intellit.muskingum.edu/russia_fo ... eftoc.html

/\ contains bibliography to books about famous cases in Russia. I can't seem to find any hard numbers on the internet for the incidence rates or total numbers. I'll keep looking.

Communist societies are very unstable. The Federation has no obvious dictatorial excesses, and yet has lasted for a very long time. (also, with no internal factional strife, except for infighting amongst what is essentially the politburo.)

The thing is, we don't know very much about any of the Trek cultures, even the Federation, but what we do know about them would lend us to the conclusions others have arrived at, that the stupidity displayed in ST can be attributed to defective societies, rather than universally stupid individuals.

Besides, if you're looking for a Universal Trek Stupidity Principle, a stronger strong force is not it.

Seemingly not. But at the risk of being repetitive, that wasn't exactly what I was proposing.

We're given, in many cases, internal views of suposedly the most important political issues in many alien societies, rules of succession, matriachal societies with uppity men, royal infighting, oppressive policing, etc. These societies, the Federation included, lack, as Wong pointed out, a relationship between social cause and effect, they seem to operate in a vacuum, where certain(even nonsensical) political theories just seem to work for some reason. Can we really assume that culture can submerge all the problems such societies have in our experience?

[Wyrm]

Communist societies are very unstable. The Federation has no obvious dictatorial excesses, and yet has lasted for a very long time. (also, with no internal factional strife, except for infighting amongst what is essentially the politburo.)

Given. But let me ask, where would the dissidents of the Federation defect to?

The thing is, we don't know very much about any of the Trek cultures, even the Federation, but what we do know about them would lend us to the conclusions others have arrived at, that the stupidity displayed in ST can be attributed to defective societies, rather than universally stupid individuals.

Besides, if you're looking for a Universal Trek Stupidity Principle, a stronger strong force is not it.

Seemingly not. But at the risk of being repetitive, that wasn't exactly what I was proposing.

Then what was it, if it's not "All Trek Culture Be Stupid by Universal Principle"?

See, I would think that star flight took a certain, minimum amount of competence, very unlike what you see with Stone Trek (If you haven't seen it, shame on you!), and you seemed to be proposing, as one called it, "Chimps with ships."

We're given, in many cases, internal views of suposedly the most important political issues in many alien societies, rules of succession, matriachal societies with uppity men, royal infighting, oppressive policing, etc. These societies, the Federation included, lack, as Wong pointed out, a relationship between social cause and effect, they seem to operate in a vacuum, where certain(even nonsensical) political theories just seem to work for some reason. Can we really assume that culture can submerge all the problems such societies have in our experience?

And you think dumbing down the population of the universe through cosmic fiat would solve the issue?

[outlawpoet]

Given. But let me ask, where would the dissidents of the Federation defect to?

That's a very interesting question, and one that deserves more careful attention, perhaps in a Trek-only thread. Assuming that there are no non-Federation human settlements(there seem to be some independent planets, the mining station Bashir's parent's hie from?) and there are of course the other species. Many of the other species are literally indistinguishable from humans(may be descended from commons sources? who knows) so I would imagine the Federation humans could live either peacefully there, or undetected covertly.

We may take a page from our own history, and also say that any foreign power would probably be happy to host a dissident who had access to intelligence and/or technology, if they could do it without forcing an incident.

It doesn't seem like it would take all that much to make a stable residence out amongst the stars with a small group, but the Federation seems to have a handle on the big keys, Starships and power generation. Of course, we've also seen people loaded into very makeshift vehicles and travelling interstellar distances.

See, I would think that star flight took a certain, minimum amount of competence, very unlike what you see with Stone Trek(If you haven't seen it, shame on you!), and you seemed to be proposing, as one called it, "Chimps with ships."

This is the primary incentive for the hypothesis which I came up with (now, I note again, withdrawn) in order to explain the advanced technology, and seemingly universal incompetence(even at applying said technology). I was attempting to rationalize some universal engineering lowering of the bar.

Haven't seen Stone Trek, new to online fandom, will check it out.

And you think dumbing down the population of the universe through cosmic fiat would solve the issue?

it would, but it seems to be a flawed hypothesis. I wasn't postulating physical law affecting the operation of brains per se, but simply altered evolutionary pressures, which would change the average intelligence required/reached by natural sapients.

[Xon]

outlawpoet, the problem is you really arent supporting your theory with referances to the source(aka 7 seasons of TNG, DS9 & VOY as well as ENT & TOS).

And this really should be in Pure Trek, it has almost nothing todo with starwars.

[astrosanguinus]

I think, and I'll be working out the math in a moment, that it means that a modern intelligent human, instantiated into the Trekverse, would have a better chance than one instantied into the Warsverse, given an inevitable conflict in the future between the two.

Yep. This is why I would choose a .45 over a phaser, and why a contemporary boarding party equipped to take over a merchant vessel would do even better against a Trek ship.

[LaCroix]

Alternate Explaination.

Technobabble radiation produced in the "Wake"(is this the correct term for "bow wave"? Im no native speaker...) of subspace-travel is affecting the brains ability to act properly. Thus, the faster they travel, the more stupid the grow.

Since maximum speeds have increased since TOS, these effects will have increased too... Isn't Voyager one of the fastest ship in the fleet?

I could also draw a nice graph correlating speed and stupidy and we will find a good correlation

Having seen Janeway, I think the effect must either be having an exponential correlation to speed, since she ist much more affected, OR she is more vulnerable to this effect. Seeing the usual behavior of some Females, it might be (like alcohol decay rates) a female characteristic.

Since Goerdi & his engineers (Would be a good name for a Band ) are not as affected (the can pull "working" ideas out of their ass in minutes), it might be that distance to the "wake" might be a factor, since engeneering is at the stern, and the brige is near the bow. Thus the radiaton must be decaying fast or is interacting with/blocked by matter.

So building the bridge inside the hull instead of atop of it could result in a much better tactical ability of the bridge officers.

[Darth Yoshi]

Wouldn't doing that require better tactical ability in the first place?

[B5B7]

Alternate Explaination.

Technobabble radiation produced in the "Wake"(is this the correct term for "bow wave"? Im no native speaker...) of subspace-travel is affecting the brains ability to act properly. Thus, the faster they travel, the more stupid the grow.

This sounds a more plausible theory than anything else so far produced.

The OP theory is clever but untenable - IQ 60 - no way - Kirk and others are clearly smart.
Also there is no causal link between intelligence and beliefs - there are smart & stupid communists, capitalists, nazis, etc.

The stupidity of their actions comes from the idiocy of the scriptwriters - ah, but that is not in-universe.

OK, in-universe explanation - its not lack of intelligence that exists in the Trek universe (& realize their faults exist on both individual level and institutionally) but rather blindspots.
So, they have the intelligence to see alternate solutions or more sensible procedures such as decent internal security, but its like they are equivalent to an hypnosis subject who can not look at a particular thing because of command of the hypnotist.

What could cause such behaviour - who knows?

[Ghost Rider]

Do not post in an old, inactive thread unless you have something genuinely new and interesting to add to it. This is known as thread necromancy.