Defending Suspension of Disbelief

[Majin Gojira]

Over on another board, I found myself in a debate about the vailidity of Suspensionof Disbelief methodology. I thought I had a grasp of it until:

My fundamental problem is with the approach in the article:

Think of it as being dumped into a parallel dimension in which the rules still generally apply (eg- humans still breathe oxygen and iron is still heavier than wood), but there are extra phenomena which are unknown to us (eg- subspace, hyperspace), and which you must now research based on what you see and read.

Why? Making an assumption of this magnitude is entirely un-scientific, and it makes no sense. Why should I assume, given how different these extra phenomena are that do not apply in our universe (or not necessarily, depending on the phenomena), that everything else is the same? It's one method, sure, but it's not a blank slate. You're taking this universe and selectively applying patches, patches that don't mesh well with current scientific understanding.

And with that, I was stumped. It's a vaild question, AFAIK...so, what are your thoughts on it? My science background isn't strong enough to form an effective defense against it.

The original thread is here for reference to see how bad I am at debating...

[Spoonist]

Why?
Because many valid and nowadays respected theories has come from "out-of-the-box-thinking".
If the nutcases would be wrong all the time, then he'd have a point, but since history is full of scientific theories that did go contrary to the established science and where later proven 'right', thus we need to sometimes take on the 'nutcase' hat ourself and reason from a totally different perspective to see the yield.
Most scientific progress doesn't come from proving things to be 'right' but to prove things to be 'wrong'.
To test 'nutcase' claims/theories is also science. Not testing them isn't.

So " Suspension of Disbelief methodology" is a complimentary procedure which has a well established track record of sometimes producing results. Usually not in the expected field but results nonetheless.

[Majin Gojira]

Bump

Hopefully, the initial post against Suspnesion of Disbelief will garner more...interest in this debate.

The problem with the stardestroyer.net scientific approach is that it does have some problems when applied to a universe that has no scientific continuity of its own to apply it to. Application of the scientific method, as we understand it, would lead to the conclusion that all the evidence presented was digitally doctored in an attempt to fool investigators. There's not much you can do about this.

The problem lies in trying to fit rules that work in our universe to another universe that has not been consistently designed, and trying to make them work. Usually this problem only occurs in the background, but attempting to fit everything on screen into the same framework, and trying to sew the universe together with our current knowledge, can be a waste of time.

For instance, take several factors that they clearly don't string together, the existence of the anti-gravitational repulsorlift technology (and anti-gravity technology in general), and their calculations for the destruction of Alderaan. Trying to fit these together provides you with a major pain.

First, in our universe, there is no anti-gravity. This is because gravity is carried by the graviton, which is essentially its own antiparticle (defining antiparticle as the wave state you get when operated on by the CP operator, something ridiculously technical). But the graviton cannot repel, because it is a spin-2 tensor particle, and thus has no repellant mode (note that this is contrast to the photon, a spin-1 vector, that is also its own anti-particle, but can attract and repel). So, in the SW universe, clearly gravity is not as we understand it, and is either carried by a spin-1 (or possibly some strange spin-3) boson, of interacts in a fashion consistent with higher dimensional theories of some sort. This however creates complications in the Big Bang and star formation in general, we no long have any idea how atoms in this universe might be held together, or how the electroweak force works, or anything. So all their calculations regarding how much energy it took to blow up Alderaan is useless, because we have no idea how planets form in a realm governed by non-tensor gravity. For all we know, planets fall apart if you hit them with a nuke.

If you're going to tackle this from any other position than from the suspension of disbelief, you'll get a headache. It would be a worthy Ph.D. thesis topic to investigate the properties of non-tensor gravity, but not the sort of thing that will give good answers to your analysis of a Star Wars screenshot.


Bottom line-suspension of belief is going to have to come in at some level for every work that is not one of hard sci-fi. Sure, the internal discrepencies can be swept under the rug, certainly at the level that is needed for most of the work at stardestroyer.net, and for most fiction writing work, but you should be aware that there are problems lying around there. Otherwise you're spending all your time mounting pictures in a house that doesn't have any walls.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Over on another board, I found myself in a debate about the vailidity of Suspensionof Disbelief methodology. I thought I had a grasp of it until:

My fundamental problem is with the approach in the article:

Think of it as being dumped into a parallel dimension in which the rules still generally apply (eg- humans still breathe oxygen and iron is still heavier than wood), but there are extra phenomena which are unknown to us (eg- subspace, hyperspace), and which you must now research based on what you see and read.

Why? Making an assumption of this magnitude is entirely un-scientific, and it makes no sense. Why should I assume, given how different these extra phenomena are that do not apply in our universe (or not necessarily, depending on the phenomena), that everything else is the same? It's one method, sure, but it's not a blank slate. You're taking this universe and selectively applying patches, patches that don't mesh well with current scientific understanding.

And with that, I was stumped. It's a vaild question, AFAIK...so, what are your thoughts on it? My science background isn't strong enough to form an effective defense against it.

The original thread is here for reference to see how bad I am at debating...

I would think that parsimony would be a good reason to assume that everything else is the same. There's no evidence for extra differences, so we do not consider them unless they are neccessary for explanations.

His attitude of "assume, with no evidence, that there will be unseen differences" is the unscientific one here.

[McC]

He's making the fallacious (I think) assumption that anti-gravity technology requires the use of "anti-"gravitons, or that it's based on gravitons at all. Says who? Technology that defies gravity need not be based on gravitons.

[Surlethe]

The problem with the stardestroyer.net scientific approach is that it does have some problems when applied to a universe that has no scientific continuity of its own to apply it to. Application of the scientific method, as we understand it, would lead to the conclusion that all the evidence presented was digitally doctored in an attempt to fool investigators.

He's being a sophistic bullshitter who claims, "It's another universe; thus, nothing in our universe applies to the other universe." He also doesn't understand the scientific method, which takes observations, hypothesizes, and describes those observations; he apparently thinks the scientific method exists to rationalize away discrepancies by handwaving "digital doctoring" by some intelligent designer, rather than treating the screenshots as visual proof.

[drachefly]

He's making the fallacious (I think) assumption that anti-gravity technology requires the use of "anti-"gravitons, or that it's based on gravitons at all. Says who? Technology that defies gravity need not be based on gravitons.

Anyway, they're called REPULSORLIFTS, not ANTIGRAVITY. Sheesh.

[Darth Wong]

Over on another board, I found myself in a debate about the vailidity of Suspensionof Disbelief methodology. I thought I had a grasp of it until:

My fundamental problem is with the approach in the article:

Think of it as being dumped into a parallel dimension in which the rules still generally apply (eg- humans still breathe oxygen and iron is still heavier than wood), but there are extra phenomena which are unknown to us (eg- subspace, hyperspace), and which you must now research based on what you see and read.

Why? Making an assumption of this magnitude is entirely un-scientific, and it makes no sense.

On the contrary, it is eminently scientific, since it relies only upon observed in-universe data, not out-of-universe speculation about creators' motives etc. as literary methods do.

Why should I assume, given how different these extra phenomena are that do not apply in our universe (or not necessarily, depending on the phenomena), that everything else is the same?

Human beings live in this universe. Ergo, virtually all of the laws of physics and chemistry must be identical otherwise human beings could not function. There would only be a tiny amount of room for varation, and only in regimes where these changes would not affect the behaviour of physics and chemistry at normal scales (much as Einstein's Relativity only differs significantly from Newtonian physics in extreme conditions). This person obviously doesn't realize how little alteration in physical constants or principles would cause the human biochemical machine to stop working.

It's one method, sure, but it's not a blank slate. You're taking this universe and selectively applying patches, patches that don't mesh well with current scientific understanding.

Funny ... that could have been said a century ago about the idea of nuclear fusion. What's this crazy new idea?

[The Silence and I]

I think he has a point in his first statement:

The problem with the stardestroyer.net scientific approach is that it does have some problems when applied to a universe that has no scientific continuity of its own to apply it to. Application of the scientific method, as we understand it, would lead to the conclusion that all the evidence presented was digitally doctored in an attempt to fool investigators. There's not much you can do about this.

Now I doubt there are so many problems when investigating Star Wars, but how about Star Trek? All I personally can conclude is that the visuals are doctored, the dialog is largely made up, either to fill gaps in the recorded events or to keep certain things classified. If you take Star Trek at face value you are left with engineers who clearly must know how to operate their technology--both quickly and effectively, covering an absurd amount of areas of expertese too--yet cannot get so simple a concept as power or energy right! We could say they are simply stupid, but then we can't begin the fathom how these morons effectively communicate their ideas to each other and how these said ideas actually work.

We get visuals that clearly show huge starships making extremely risky flybys on routine meetings--how often have you watched the Enterprise fly so close to another starship you wonder why proximity alarms aren't screaming? Seriously, it is apparently routine to get so close that raising shields could be a kind of attack! Why does no one care that both parties have been inside the repulsor fields of each other's navigational deflectors the whole time, or that a minor helm glitch (don't these happen ALL THE TIME?) could easily send your multi million ton ship right into the ship you're talking too?

Or how about weapons? Photon torpedoes can accelerate from high orbit to planet surface in a second or less--or they can spend a few seconds sluggishly covering a kilometer or two...
Explosions are quite impossible; watch Skin of Evil or The Die is Cast--in both cases you have planet-side explosions that are large enough to justify GT to multi TT or higher yield--except they are not very bright, expand orders of magnitude faster than any shockwave can in atmosphere, and tend to last a second or so, implying low KT yield. Or you can watch Generations and notice that sun light is FTL... or how about destroying stars to make a magic ribbon move? The reason given is it changes teh gravity on a huge scale which moves the ribbon... ok, but doesn't the mass-energy of a supernova = the original mass? The long distance gravity should not change quickly, and more to the point it shouldn't change quickly AT ALL, not matter what! Gravity is not FTL! Destroy a star and you don't change the path of something lightyears away until years later!

Don't even open the can of worms that is "radiation" or other technobabble.

As far as I can tell there is no scientifc continuity, no visual continuity, no dialog continuity, and as can be expected, none of these three areas agree with each other. I would definately agree with the author if talking about Star Trek.

[Darth Wong]

The thing is, even when dealing with a poorly written universe like Star Trek, I don't see any other method of analyzing the evidence which meets the criteria of producing objective data. And without objective data, any conclusions you come to are essentially vapour: subject to personal feelings and desires as much as they would be subject to anything else. When you use literary methods, pure speculation carries just as much weight as anything you see on the screen; there is no clear hierarchy, and no way of resolving disagreements. Everything boils down to whatever "feels" appropriate from the POV of a given viewer.

[The Silence and I]

The thing is, even when dealing with a poorly written universe like Star Trek, I don't see any other method of analyzing the evidence which meets the criteria of producing objective data. And without objective data, any conclusions you come to are essentially vapour: subject to personal feelings and desires as much as they would be subject to anything else. When you use literary methods, pure speculation carries just as much weight as anything you see on the screen; there is no clear hierarchy, and no way of resolving disagreements. Everything boils down to whatever "feels" appropriate from the POV of a given viewer.

I sympathize and agree--I just cannot ever really be satisfied with the objective data either, because at some (or maybe many) point it almost certainly has been clearly contradicted. So you either don't have a method for getting objective conclusions (which sucks) or you get objective conclusions that rely on not looking at the larger body of evidence. I don't personally think there is a solution for something like Star Trek.

[LordShaithis]

I get flamed whenever I suggest this, but it's a fact that some fictional universes are just too muddled and self-contradictory to properly quantify. Most often those of comic books, where the writers not only gratuitously crap on physics, but then crap on their own made-up physics as well.

Physics should be warped only where the story requires it (FTL, for example) and even then, the story should stick tightly to it's own set of fictional physics. When it doesn't, and internal consistency goes out the window, you're left rationalizing to the point of absurdity.

[brianeyci]

Well, most discussion isn't about whether an Enterprise would destroy an ISD, or whether B5 would defeat neo-BSG, in other words a technical discussion. If you're not doing a technical discussion, SoD can be defended, because any writer worth his salt will have internal consistency at least within episodes. This is more a hard and fast rule for print rather than television. If Star Trek was all books rather than television, nobody would have gone through Voyager shitting on evolution and so on because readers are far more thoughtful and demanding than television viewers. In books if you make a rule like "The wizard needs to sacrifice blood to cast a spell" and in the same book or even in the same series of novels break that rule for no reason, there will be readers who notice, and you'll be fucking them over and they might just throw your book across the room since you shattered their SoD. They'll never buy another book of yours again probably.

And yes I realize with non-technical discussions you don't have quantifiable data and it's all subject to feeling and opinion more than anything, the so-called "no wrong answers", but the thing often overlooked about the "no wrong answers" approach is that there are better answers than others, namely the ones that can draw more evidence from the source material rather than just plain bullshitting. Even with non-technical discussions you still need objective data to support your argument, hence SoD, and with non-technical discussions you don't run into things like "Enterprise fires phasers from a warp nacelle".

Brian

[brianeyci]

To expand, I'm not trying to bash technical discussions, I'm just saying for me personally an essay concerning the morality of the Prime Directive was far more enlightening than let's say an essay about how many TJ of firepower the Enterprise has, and if you look at literary analysis as a whole, then there has to be SoD, no matter what. This might be a more successful approach Majin, I'm not sure though. If you didn't have SoD, you would have to do a historical, biographical, mythological, sociological, psychological or so on, in otherwords bullshit reading of a text or analysis of a film. New Criticism all the way baby, there's a reason why we're trained in the methods of New Criticism in high school. And for New Criticism you're looking at only the text itself, in other words you suspend disbelief.

Brian

[Ghost Rider]

The cold hard truth is if you cannot get any sort of objective evidence, then the debate is meaningless except as an exercise of wills.

So if the supposed proofs that you find are too muddled an inexpicable, then you're back to square one of how to give any true idea of power.

[brianeyci]

The cold hard truth is if you cannot get any sort of objective evidence, then the debate is meaningless except as an exercise of wills.

So if the supposed proofs that you find are too muddled an inexpicable, then you're back to square one of how to give any true idea of power.

You could possibly get objective evidence without SoD (which the op is talking about), bringing in the writer, interviews he did, the writer's intent kind of thing. My lit professor talked about a 6 page poem where a guy wrote a 350 page book on, going through everything the poet read and drawing inferences and connections to what he read.

But you can't really do a versus like this obviously.

Brian

[drachefly]

... though it would be funny to see someone try.

[Wyrm]

If a series is too muddled to get a true idea of what's going on in regards to any particular issue, then if everyone recognizes that, then they can just pack up and go home.

This is not in itself a bad thing. The problem is that wankers don't do this, which makes playing the SoD card necessary. The best you can hope for is a Royal Imperial Smackdown.

[Darth Wong]

I get flamed whenever I suggest this, but it's a fact that some fictional universes are just too muddled and self-contradictory to properly quantify. Most often those of comic books, where the writers not only gratuitously crap on physics, but then crap on their own made-up physics as well.

Physics should be warped only where the story requires it (FTL, for example) and even then, the story should stick tightly to it's own set of fictional physics. When it doesn't, and internal consistency goes out the window, you're left rationalizing to the point of absurdity.

That's OK as long as you admit that you cannot draw logical conclusions. The problem with people arguing about what is and isn't true in a fictional universe is that certain kinds of people always claim that you can draw logical conclusions, even when they freely admit that the source material is irrational. That's where the mountains of bullshit come from.

[Majin Gojira]

I'm sorry, but I'm bumpin' it again...this one has to be shared...

My point was there's a limit to which you can put to today's science, or our attempts to make sense of it. I doubt that there is even one person on all of sd.net, or possibly all of them put together, who have the depth of knowledge about the fields of physics that someone like Murray Gell-mann has, a man who is considered exceptional even compared to other Nobel lauretes. Or someone like Hans Bethe (who is now, unfortunately, deceased) who seemed to be an expert in every field in the department. There are dark places where nobody knows the answer. Sooner or later, no matter how careful, you find a hole.

One thing that I've found that makes technobabble so compeling is the fact that it can't be easily disproved. Additionally, nobody wants to go and actually do the research. There's just a level where your science breaks down (if you're writing) or your analysis breaks down (if you're analyzing) unless you refuse to use any technology not already under intensive design.

For instance, I can object to the energy calculations of the Death Star Superlaser based on a hypothesis that, at high energies, you enter the GUT scale, and it may be possible that this will result in release of all the potential energy normally stored in atomic nuclei (which is actually equivalent to most of the rest mass of an atom). This might result in a chain reaction that would actually tear the planet apart.

Now, I don't know if that's likely at all, but it's possible. Nobody on earth knows anything about this, and to solve that problem would take dozens of years and billions of dollars, at best. Even the most powerful particle accelerators in the world are orders of magnitude below the energy scale needed to investigate that. So there's really no point in quibbling about it, because nobody can give a real answer, but I can still complain about the problem.

That's a big problem with futuristic physics, virtually everything is possible, but the side-effects are huge, and sometimes very difficult to calculate.

Emphasis mine. I don't think I've seen that explination for Alderan's destruction--I don't even know what a GUT state is, to tell the truth. I think this was covered in one of the hate mail pages...but I don't kno which one...

[Surlethe]

Emphasis mine. I don't think I've seen that explination for Alderan's destruction--I don't even know what a GUT state is, to tell the truth. I think this was covered in one of the hate mail pages...but I don't kno which one...

GUT stands for "Grand Unified Theory", and he's using it to reference the benchmark energy where three of the four forces behave the same way, according to the GUT.