Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by Serafina »

And YOU are the one who claims that OA is realistic, hard science fiction? :lol: :lol:
-God hammers are what you get when an excessively large neutron star or pulsar is artificially forced into firing a tremendously powerfull beam of energy into a wormhole, where they instantly hit a target (at least, depending on how far away the exit wormhole is from the target). They can release up to 1x44 Joules of energy in a narrow, focused beam, like the death star, only 1 million times stronger. The beam is delivered by a fairly tiny flying wormhole which is invulnerable to anything short of massive spacetime distortion weaponry. And I mean invulnerable. You could hit it directly with the Death Star and it wouldn't do anything, the beam being diffused when it goes out the 'feed' end and hitting things which aren't affected by massive energy gradients anyways.
Again, proof that you have to rely on stars in order to produce your energy.
Furthermore, this is utterly USELESS for any sort of attack against Star Wars, simply because you will need thousands of years to get anywhere - and the ship can easily be stopped along the way.
-Dark angels are ships which are not only completly solid (I.E, no flesh and blood crew), but made of a superdense material. Through the use of some exotic form of tractor beam, they can tear apart the crust of a world, decelerate RKKS (ultra high-power kinetic impact munitions) into harmlessness, and spray swarms of sub-nanotech weapons. The outer hull of the sphere acts as a multi-frequency phased array capable of transmitting energy across the entire EM spectrum at a range of energies from weak radio broadcasts to multi-terrawatt lasers. Finally the outer hull of the central sphere seems to be capable of taking on the properties of the godtech material, ylem, able to convert incoming EM energy to matter with virtually 100% efficiency. In addition to that, dark angels have enough control to quite accurately throw your crew around the ship, or even better, throw your ship components around the ship.
Since there is no such thing as 100% efficiency, simply firing turbolasers at it will do the job.

-Things, I must note, that little in SW can stop. Shields are nice, but they die when your sun goes OMGWTFNOVA. Admiral daalas fleet of star destroyers were forced to abandon their attack when kryp durron stole the sun crusher and used it to mine a couple of stars with resonance torpedoes, or else they would have been destroyed (one of the star destroyers was, in fact). I believe that the sephirotics would hit a SW star system with a conversion bomb, while simultaneously (or perhaps as a cover) swarming their ships with dark angels, preventing an escape. DA can prevent escape with their tractor beam thingys (serving as a duplicate of the interdictor field).
But you can't get into any SW-system, because you don't have FTL. Well, unless you want to fly for hundreds or thousands of years.
Hence, you are just forced to defend yourself and play sitting duck.

-They also have ten centimeter spheres of death which mass millions of tons and can ram ships with rather extreme kinetic energy. When the AI Gods use them, these are planet cracking impactors, easily. As in twenty of them causes a planet to turn into rather interesting patterns of tiny asteroids flying around rapidly. Dark angels are built to stop hundreds of them. And in a minor skirmish between gods, they use thousands. Just to open up an assault. Thats why the artifints so rarely go to war, the collateral damage is horrific.
Did i mention your lack of FTL?
Oh, and just FYI, SW has tractor beams, too, and just slightly diverting your impactor is enough to make it miss.

-Archailect computers (this is the high end stuff) are capable of predicting the future to a rather extreme extent, even the lesser ones. They due this by throwing massive computational power to a problem and finding a solution. One should also consider the fact that naked circuitry on the OA side survives inside stars, it's pretty damn impressive to live in the core of a fusing star, without any armor protection. Its not just the temperature, 15 million degrees celcius (a grain of sand at this temperature would burn you to death from 150 kilometers away), but the pressure, which is 250 billion bar. Not even the sun crusher has handled that kindof force.
Idiot. They can't predict without information, and they don't have information about SW. Intelligence is only useful when you have information to work with, otherwise everything is just mere speculation.
As an example, you can not predict where the enemy will strike next when you have no information about said enemy. You could try to calculate the next logical target, but that depends on your enemy acting logically. If your ability to do so is know and the enemy can strike wherever he wants, this ability becomes utterly useless, since he will just strike in random pattern.
In contrast to that, force-sensitive beings in SW have precognition that actually collects information of them - they actually work when they have no information about the subject.

So, basically - just another "ai can do everything"-drivel.


You know, i would love to see some actual calculations on OA-resilience, rather than just throwing impressive-sounding feats around. Go ahead, actually use your brain for something.
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by asedra »

'No the sun puts out enough energy in 8,000 years to supply the death star for one shot. You would need approximately 3 million Dyson spheres, all powering the same source, to equal one Death Star reactor. A single Dyson sphere catches about the same amount of energy as a mere Star Destroyer's reactor generates.'
-Your obviously some kind of idiot. Orions arm is set 10,000 years in the future, and dysons spheres have existed for a long time. One of them could easily have stored up 7000 (yes, its 7000, not 8000) years of energy by now. You saying that 3 million dysons spheres would be required is just moronic. And yes, I know that the death star can put that out in one blast, and recharge in about 24 hours, so what? OA have much better WMDs, as my previous page indicates.

'So does OA have any way of utilizing that power beyond a WMD that is dependent on using a nearby star. Really you don't see the difference between a Battle Station/Ship that generates its own power and can fire repeatedly, and a mere stellar bomb?'
-LOL. And can be destroyed by simply droping a fusion bomb down its thermal exhaust port. Good one, mate. You've got me. And you seem to forget, conversion bombs are not restricted to destroying just stars, they are more eversatile than that. Not to mention that the sephirotics have alot more than just one, and actually had the foresight not to focus all their resources into one rather easily destroyed ship, which is more than the empire can say.
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by Stark »

If anyone needed a lecture on why OA sucks, that was it.

However, everyone already knew OA sucked. That's not relevant to an vs. However, since they claim stochastic capability, I guess that means all vs with them must be in a deterministic universe. :lol:

All I can say is 'rather'.
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by asedra »

Imperial528:
'This strategy is unlikely to work when facing a foe such as the Empire, since there are dozens of people with high command ranks, tens of thousands who have slightly lower command ranks, and hundreds of thousands of officers. Each of these persons is going to think differently and interpret their doctrine in their own different ways.'
-I will agree with this statement, as long as I make it clear that a transapient general would be able to adapt to (and predict) a baseline humans tactics with much greater speed and accuracy than another human could. That is to say that an imperiel general would have less tricks up his sleeve, and would not be able to play as many hands against a transapient before it is able to outpredict him every time (sort of like how in real life, opposing generals could, after a log war against one another, predict the others movements and decisions). I would also like to tell you a story to pit into perspective the kind of enemy the empire is going up against. It goes with an AI researcher saying how, every time he brings his cage to take his pet cat to the vetrinarians, the cat, knowing what is in store for it, makes a run for the cat door. The animal finds it the most inconceivable of bad luck that the cat door happens to be closed. 'Yes, but we are people, not cats. We wouldn't fall for the same trick twice' one might argue, ignoring the fact that once is all the AI needs to kill you, and you would thus be unavailable for a rematch (not that it would matter anyway, it would simply outsmart you again, in a differant manner).
-We humans, because we are the smartest of animals on this planet, are under the arrogant (and suicidally false) assumption that no creature can really be that much smarter than us, that we can always have some chance of surviving the pursuit of a smarter enemy. After all, as the great thomas hobbes once said some 350 years ago: 'Nature hath made men so equal, in the faculties of body and mind, as that though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man and man is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself. And as to the faculties of the mind . . . men are . . . [more] equal than unequal.'

'Also, it would be helpful if you can define "super intelligence" because right now you're claiming it puts your AI far above and beyond any human, but when asked why it does you simply say that it does because that is what it does (circular argument), or at least that's what it seems like to me.'
-I am knowledgable in the subject. What would you like to know? Alot of people outside the field (not that I'm really IN it, more like a weekend warrior) are under the assumption that superintelligence basically means human style and power thought, just run at a higher speed, and with total recall (I.E, perfect memory). That is a very dangerous misconception. What they are actually thinking of is weak superintelligence. As soon as we are able to upload a human mind and run it at a higher speed, you've got weak superintelligence. Boom. Strong superintelligence is faster thought, and higher proecssing power. Some argue (and I agree) that in order for it to qaulify as strong superintelligence, it must have more than just stronger and faster thought: It needs to exhibit qaulitively superior thought. Indeed, strong superintelligence is often envisioned as being more sapient, more sophont, and more self aware than a human is. This is just what strong AI in the near term (30 or so years) is expected to be capable of. OA takes place 10 thousand years in the future.
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by Stark »

Amazingly pretentious, but still useless. What if you have problems that can't be parallelised or crunched through faster?

Props for the hilarious repetition of OA's moore's law crap. Can you at least use your superintelligence to learn how the quote tags work? :lol:
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by Serafina »

-Your obviously some kind of idiot. Orions arm is set 10,000 years in the future, and dysons spheres have existed for a long time. One of them could easily have stored up 7000 (yes, its 7000, not 8000) years of energy by now. You saying that 3 million dysons spheres would be required is just moronic. And yes, I know that the death star can put that out in one blast, and recharge in about 24 hours, so what? OA have much better WMDs, as my previous page indicates.
Can they even STORE such an amount?
That's like claiming that nuclear power plants have been around for 50 years, therefore we can assume that a couple of them stored the entire energy they produced during that time :lol:
-LOL. And can be destroyed by simply droping a fusion bomb down its thermal exhaust port. Good one, mate. You've got me. And you seem to forget, conversion bombs are not restricted to destroying just stars, they are more eversatile than that. Not to mention that the sephirotics have alot more than just one, and actually had the foresight not to focus all their resources into one rather easily destroyed ship, which is more than the empire can say.
Yet another idiot who doesn't get the destruction of the Death Star. Just FYI, the second Death Star did not have that flaw.
And for what else can your conversion bombs be used? What effects do they have on conventional starships?

-I will agree with this statement, as long as I make it clear that a transapient general would be able to adapt to (and predict) a baseline humans tactics with much greater speed and accuracy than another human could. That is to say that an imperiel general would have less tricks up his sleeve, and would not be able to play as many hands against a transapient before it is able to outpredict him every time (sort of like how in real life, opposing generals could, after a log war against one another, predict the others movements and decisions). I would also like to tell you a story to pit into perspective the kind of enemy the empire is going up against. It goes with an AI researcher saying how, every time he brings his cage to take his pet cat to the vetrinarians, the cat, knowing what is in store for it, makes a run for the cat door. The animal finds it the most inconceivable of bad luck that the cat door happens to be closed. 'Yes, but we are people, not cats. We wouldn't fall for the same trick twice' one might argue, ignoring the fact that once is all the AI needs to kill you, and you would thus be unavailable for a rematch (not that it would matter anyway, it would simply outsmart you again, in a differant manner).
And again - intelligence is only useful if it has information to work with. Your information on the GE will be very limited to non-existent.
-We humans, because we are the smartest of animals on this planet, are under the arrogant (and suicidally false) assumption that no creature can really be that much smarter than us, that we can always have some chance of surviving the pursuit of a smarter enemy. After all, as the great thomas hobbes once said some 350 years ago: 'Nature hath made men so equal, in the faculties of body and mind, as that though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man and man is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself. And as to the faculties of the mind . . . men are . . . [more] equal than unequal.'
This is a complete non-sequitur, since it doesn't relate to this debate at all. Yes, i get it, you are saying "ai is smarter than humans". Too bad that this is a strawman argument, since no one has been saying that they aren't. What we HAVE been saying is that you are an utter idiot who doesn't get what intelligence actually is, including it's inherent limitations (such as being useless without information to work with).

-I am knowledgable in the subject. What would you like to know? Alot of people outside the field (not that I'm really IN it, more like a weekend warrior) are under the assumption that superintelligence basically means human style and power thought, just run at a higher speed, and with total recall (I.E, perfect memory). That is a very dangerous misconception. What they are actually thinking of is weak superintelligence. As soon as we are able to upload a human mind and run it at a higher speed, you've got weak superintelligence. Boom. Strong superintelligence is faster thought, and higher proecssing power. Some argue (and I agree) that in order for it to qaulify as strong superintelligence, it must have more than just stronger and faster thought: It needs to exhibit qaulitively superior thought. Indeed, strong superintelligence is often envisioned as being more sapient, more sophont,[/b] and more self aware than a human is. This is just what strong AI in the near term (30 or so years) is expected to be capable of. OA takes place 10 thousand years in the future.
More of the above. And for fucks sake, if you are too dumb to spell better than a 6-year old, at least use a god-damn spell-checker - i marked all your spelling errors in red.
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by asedra »

Serafina:
'OA is in the same situation if they want to build SW-hyperdrives. They don't have the necessary materials. They don't have any factories that can build it. They don't have the materials necessary to build these factories. They don't have the factories to build these materials.'
-You misunderstood me on purpose. Why do you keep taking my arguments out of context? I was gunning for the archailects ability to make superior tactical and strategic level judgements, and to manage logistics better, not pull a hyperdrive out of their ass.

'The difference is, obviously, that a hypermatter-reactor is not a static object like a sun. Essentially, you are comparing a power plant to an engine - building an engine with the same power output as a power plant is quite impressive and a good indicator that your technology is more advanced, especially when your engine is much smaller.'
-Yes! I agree. Thank you for this insight.

'Hey, moron - you can have it one of two ways: We arbitrarily disallow technologies from either universe. If we do that, then we can't have a discussion. It doesn't matter which is more "real", especially since OA is no more real or plausible than SW. We treat both universes technologies as working universally. No "but it doesn't work in OA"-bullshit, and vice versa. Evidently, you do not understand the purpose of an illustration.'
-Once again, you have misunderstood me on purpose: ALL TECHNOLOGYS WORK AS ADVERTISED.

'So, tell me - how exactly does super-intelligence allow you to build things that you have no knowledge about? Knowledge and intelligence are two different things, the latter helps you acquiring the former, but not without input. OA lacks the abilities to get any notable input on "how to build hyperdrives".'
-There you go again. The problem with you is your preocupation with the idea that all science fiction universes must conform to star wars level of soft science technology in order to be taken seriously, ignoring the fact that all sci fi franchises have capabilitys and qaulitys completely differant from those exhibited on star wars.

'And it's cute that you still think that OA is scientifically plausible.'
-Whether or not OA is harder than SW (which it absolutely is) is outside the scope of this argument, especially seeing as how you hate the low score your side got, and are under the mistaken assumption that SW was targeted by a jealous cousin website of orions arm. QQ

-Sure, the jedi can see the future, but these visions are quite vague in detail, and by no means manifest with any regularity. Your attempting to portray the jedi like the freaking pre-cogs from the minority report, able to consistantly obtain highly precise forewarning on the enemys movements. Even if they (I'm assuming there are more jedi than poor luke, who has yet to have even a single precognitive vision by the time of ROTJ?!) were anywhere near that effiency level, which they absolutely are not, so what? Remember the story about the man and his cat? When the AI gods realise that their plans are being predicted -unfailingly- before they have even been executed, guess what? They will modify their plans accordingly, and suprise the warsies even as they walk into whatever trap they attempted to set. The jedi prescient ability is a non-factor, especially if one considers that the archailects probably have more accurate future predication machines that what the jedi can do.
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by Serafina »

-You misunderstood me on purpose. Why do you keep taking my arguments out of context? I was gunning for the archailects ability to make superior tactical and strategic level judgements, and to manage logistics better, not pull a hyperdrive out of their ass.
You WERE arguing that they could do that, liar. You have no refutation for it, which is why you are relying on red herrings.
No amount of intelligence will allow your ships to go faster than they can, and when we are talking about such an enormous difference, no amount of planning will save you if your opponent can outmaneuver you with speed alone.
-There you go again. The problem with you is your preocupation with the idea that all science fiction universes must conform to star wars level of soft science technology in order to be taken seriously, ignoring the fact that all sci fi franchises have capabilitys and qaulitys completely differant from those exhibited on star wars.
So i am arguing realism (that you need information, and that no amount of intelligence can conjure information out of thin air), and you are accusing me of doing the exact opposite?
Yeesh - get some reading comprehension.
-Whether or not OA is harder than SW (which it absolutely is) is outside the scope of this argument, especially seeing as how you hate the low score your side got, and are under the mistaken assumption that SW was targeted by a jealous cousin website of orions arm. QQ
Hey, YOU are the one who brought up the "mine is harder than yours, so i win"-argument. Don't complain if your idiocy gets ripped to shreds.
-Sure, the jedi can see the future, but these visions are quite vague in detail, and by no means manifest with any regularity. Your attempting to portray the jedi like the freaking pre-cogs from the minority report, able to consistantly obtain highly precise forewarning on the enemys movements. Even if they (I'm assuming there are more jedi than poor luke, who has yet to have even a single precognitive vision by the time of ROTJ?!) were anywhere near that effiency level, which they absolutely are not, so what? Remember the story about the man and his cat? When the AI gods realise that their plans are being predicted -unfailingly- before they have even been executed, guess what? They will modify their plans accordingly, and suprise the warsies even as they walk into whatever trap they attempted to set. The jedi prescient ability is a non-factor, especially if one considers that the archailects probably have more accurate future predication machines that what the jedi can do.
:lol: You didn't get my point, did you?
You can NOT predict the future, no matter how much computational power you have available, without information to analyze. The accuracy of your information inherently limits the accuracy of your predictions.
Force abilities can give you that information, while OA won't have any useful amount of information about SW at all.
How are your AIs going to know that their plans were foreseen? Oh, right, you think that "AI=magic"
How can you surprise someone who sees your move before it happens? Oh, sorry "AI=magic"

It's actually quite fitting that you are calling them "AI-gods", since you are treating them as such - gods. All-powerful, infallible, unquestionable - and you are certainly worshiping them mindlessly. You don't realize and of the limitations of intelligence, and you counter everything i say with "AIs are smart".
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"The world owes you nothing but painful lessons" - CaptainChewbacca
"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." - Wilhelm Stekel
"In 1969 it was easier to send a man to the Moon than to have the public accept a homosexual" - Broomstick

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by asedra »

Stark wrote:Amazingly pretentious, but still useless. What if you have problems that can't be parallelised or crunched through faster?

Props for the hilarious repetition of OA's moore's law crap. Can you at least use your superintelligence to learn how the quote tags work? :lol:

-AI researchers are under the assumption that its the software (not the hardware) which is lagging behind. For example, lets say you need to crack a 125 bit code. You have two options:
A 2007 era supercomputer, with 1977 software or,
A 1977 era computer, with 2007 software,
Which one cracks the code faster? Suprisingly, its the 1977 computer (the apple 2). It can do it twice as fast as the modern day supercomputer. Of course, breaking a code doesn't require sapience, but it gives you an idea. A couple of AI researchers are under the impression that neural connectivity has nothing to do with it, but I doubt that. Its the one thing we have in abundance that machines don't, after all, so would that not be a good place to start?

-Hey, I'm sorry man, but the qautes feature just doesn't do what I am asking of it. I just came on stardestroyer.net a couple days ago, and I've been in the heat of battle the whole time. Maybe I'm missing some key. Anyway, could you PLEASE tell me why the members of a soft science fiction group like star wars considers itself harder than orions arm? I mean, you clearly know some little secret that I don't. Help a brother out.
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by Vendetta »

asedra wrote:Anyway, could you PLEASE tell me why the members of a soft science fiction group like star wars considers itself harder than orions arm? I mean, you clearly know some little secret that I don't. Help a brother out.
Has anyone actually made that argument? Or are you as easily confused by the nature of a vs scenario as you are by the standard BBCode quote tags that every single forum software on the internet uses?

People here are saying that Star Wars is "harder" than OA in the colloquial English meaning that it can kick the shit out of it. Not in the fat greasy nerd definition that it is closer to "real science".
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by Stark »

When asked the applicability of intelligence to problems that don't involve number crunching, is a number crunching example really helping? :lol:

When did I join the 'soft science fiction group' like Star Wars? Is there a decoder ring in the mail?
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by asedra »

Serafina wrote:
-You misunderstood me on purpose. Why do you keep taking my arguments out of context? I was gunning for the archailects ability to make superior tactical and strategic level judgements, and to manage logistics better, not pull a hyperdrive out of their ass.
You WERE arguing that they could do that, liar. You have no refutation for it, which is why you are relying on red herrings. No amount of intelligence will allow your ships to go faster than they can, and when we are talking about such an enormous difference, no amount of planning will save you if your opponent can outmaneuver you with speed alone.


-Obviously it doesn't, silly. I already said way back there that strong super intelligence doesn't equal instant hyperdrive copying, just that it will help a lot. Provided that they can capture one, the toposophics will be able to dissect the engine, and build an architecture to support its production and mass deployment. Remember, they don't just have stronger and better thoughts, but faster ones too. Computations which take a human lifetime can be done in seconds by a toposophic. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't even be discussing hyperdrive retro-engineering, because otherwise, any attempt to do so would be limited to human work speeds (which we circumvent with super AI). I don't believe you can entirely rule it out either.
-In fact, if you give me a figure for how long it took the original warsies (the guys who lived way before zim the despot) to perfect the hypedrive, I can give you an estimate for how long it will take the artifints to retro-engineer it.
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by asedra »

Stark wrote:When asked the applicability of intelligence to problems that don't involve number crunching, is a number crunching example really helping? :lol:

When did I join the 'soft science fiction group' like Star Wars? Is there a decoder ring in the mail?
-LOL, yeah, well that just goes to show you how deep in the shithouse the AI researchers of today are. Their computers are not yet capable of any true sapient insight. But it is a bit of a hint at the significance software has to play in the issue.
-Hmmm. Maybe I will earn such a decoder ring in the future. A boy can dream, can't he?
-Sorry if some of my comments seem sloppy and rushed (they are), but I'm just trying to score a few quick points in this bout. I've always wanted to learn about (and teach to people) the deadliness of strong AI, like the fictional computer defence network called skynet. The worrying thing is that there is nothing preventing the emergance of such machines in the distant future.
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by asedra »

Stark wrote:Will it be based on simple division, thus demonstrating you have no idea what you're talking about? :lol:
Yes. I'm thinking of estimating the time it will take a toposophic to complete the lab work (time which can be cut down by the simple fact that it not only has more processing power than the entire internet does, but it also thinks millions of times faster than a human, does not get fatigued, can multi-task and hold multiple trains of thought). If you have anything smart to add, now would be the time.
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by asedra »

Vendetta wrote:
asedra wrote:Anyway, could you PLEASE tell me why the members of a soft science fiction group like star wars considers itself harder than orions arm? I mean, you clearly know some little secret that I don't. Help a brother out.
Has anyone actually made that argument? Or are you as easily confused by the nature of a vs scenario as you are by the standard BBCode quote tags that every single forum software on the internet uses?

People here are saying that Star Wars is "harder" than OA in the colloquial English meaning that it can kick the shit out of it. Not in the fat greasy nerd definition that it is closer to "real science".

HAHAHAHAHA, you aren't serious, are you?! Hardness is based on scientific accuracy and realism, nothing else!
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Stark
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by Stark »

That'd help if no actual manufacturing, testing, travel, experimentation, or other fixed time elements are involved. I'm not even sure how you think this time figure is relevant to OA, but estimates aren't evidence. Do you have any idea what is actually involved in technology development? Hint - it isn't 'get 200 research points in propulsion'. :lol:

I guess who needs testing, you're really smart, right? lol
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by asedra »

-Whether or not OA is harder than SW (which it absolutely is) is outside the scope of this argument, especially seeing as how you hate the low score your side got, and are under the mistaken assumption that SW was targeted by a jealous cousin website of orions arm. QQ
Hey, YOU are the one who brought up the "mine is harder than yours, so i win"-argument. Don't complain if your idiocy gets ripped to shreds.

-LOL. This from the people who define scientific accuracy as the ability to destroy other sci fi franchises. Your an awesome bunch.
-Sure, the jedi can see the future, but these visions are quite vague in detail, and by no means manifest with any regularity. Your attempting to portray the jedi like the freaking pre-cogs from the minority report, able to consistantly obtain highly precise forewarning on the enemys movements. Even if they (I'm assuming there are more jedi than poor luke, who has yet to have even a single precognitive vision by the time of ROTJ?!) were anywhere near that effiency level, which they absolutely are not, so what? Remember the story about the man and his cat? When the AI gods realise that their plans are being predicted -unfailingly- before they have even been executed, guess what? They will modify their plans accordingly, and suprise the warsies even as they walk into whatever trap they attempted to set. The jedi prescient ability is a non-factor, especially if one considers that the archailects probably have more accurate future predication machines that what the jedi can do.
:lol: You didn't get my point, did you?
You can NOT predict the future, no matter how much computational power you have available, without information to analyze. The accuracy of your information inherently limits the accuracy of your predictions.
Force abilities can give you that information, while OA won't have any useful amount of information about SW at all.
How are your AIs going to know that their plans were foreseen? Oh, right, you think that "AI=magic"
How can you surprise someone who sees your move before it happens? Oh, sorry "AI=magic"

It's actually quite fitting that you are calling them "AI-gods", since you are treating them as such - gods. All-powerful, infallible, unquestionable - and you are certainly worshiping them mindlessly. You don't realize and of the limitations of intelligence, and you counter everything i say with "AIs are smart".[/quote]

-Alright, I'll grant that you've floated out my theory on information gathering by the AI. They are (until the mass production of a retro-engineered hyperdrive) limited to the light speed barrier, after all. But you still went ahead pretending that luke (who has yet to have even a single precognitive vision) is the quivilant to an entire team of minoirty report pre-cogs! He is no such thing, he can't even have visions yet, so give it up. Unless the war takes place before vader and palpy died, you'll have to concede this point to me.
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by asedra »

Stark wrote:That'd help if no actual manufacturing, testing, travel, experimentation, or other fixed time elements are involved. I'm not even sure how you think this time figure is relevant to OA, but estimates aren't evidence. Do you have any idea what is actually involved in technology development? Hint - it isn't 'get 200 research points in propulsion'. :lol:

I guess who needs testing, you're really smart, right? lol
-Never said that, bro. My estimate refered strictly to the lab phase of development. The other phases of hyperdrive implementation are unpredictable at best, as you so aptly pointed out.
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by Stark »

So how far will the initial run of labwork go before it runs into hard limitations? Turn out 'divide by intelligence' is stupid in the extreme.
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by asedra »

So yes, in summary, there is much that is limited by orions arm restriction to light speed. Information gathering, placement of mines, launching of attacks, etc. Its a shitty way to loose a fight (just because the other side is scientifically weaker), but there it is. Good time drilling it into me, much appreciated. Still...
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by asedra »

-Was it not the administrator who said: 'In the 2nd scenario, the Galactic Empire at its height attempts an invasion of the Terragen Sphere, with the FTL technology of the SWverse researched and assimilated in the early part of the conflict by the OAverse,giving the SWverse an initial transport advantage. Any difference in the outcome?'
-We've already got the hyperdrive implemented from the sounds of the setup, you guys are just stalling it at stage one so it doesn't get out of control. Lame. You are the ones casting red hearings. Pick some arbitrary date at which hypedrive is duplicated, describe the progress of the war, and lets have at it. Otherwise, you guys are just playing it safe in the shallow end of the pool. I won't have any part in such pussy footed (if you'll excuse my french) debates. I'll come back when you have made progress towards that. Till then...
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by Darth Hoth »

We will all die . . . But the stupidity will live on!!

(Cookiee to whoever gets the obscure reference.)
asedra wrote:-No, it means we can kick your ass to the moon. Seriously, though, femtotech aside (yes, the very idea is laughable if you read up mike wongs post on nanotech wank),
MIke Wong's page does not even address such rampant stupidities; why would it, when no one sane would bring them up? The ordinary nanotech-wanking is bad enough, but femtotech? What are they manipulating on that scale? How do they avoid running afoul of such inconsequential little things as the uncertainty principle? Perhaps they have a Heisenberg Compensator like Star Trek transporters? :lol:
OA sets the bar for hardness a lot better than SW or ST have managed.
With all the wanktech you (and other OA wankers in the past) have been and still are listing around here, I am quite sure that one could present at least a halfways plausible argument that this is indeed not the case. Of course, that is pointless, since ST/SW fans will not give a shit whether some OA nerd with a homepage think that they are "hard" or not, and it is in any case not germane to the discussion at hand.
No FTL travel or communications,
True, as far as I can tell. This also seems to be mostly the only basis OA wankers have for their hardness-wanking, though.
no magic hypermatter,
No, instead you have magic matter-to-energy conversion. Which is, I will grant, marginally harder than hypermatter (which is indeed quite magical), but still pathetically "soft" in nerd lingo.
no ultra efficient heat radiators (thermal exhaust ports, anyone?),
No, instead you have magic, "effectively 100 percent" conversion of EM to matter(?). Which is much "harder" . . . :roll:
no energy shields,
No, instead you have nanowank (or, even worse, pico-/femtowank) that fills broadly the same function. Which is much harder, to be sure . . .
no anti-gravity, etc.
Were you not only some pages later talking about tractor beams, reactionless drives, gravity wells and whatnots? How is that not gravity tech?
And what is really hilarious is that star wars has all this stuff, and yet, they don't also have *genetic engineering, nanotechnology, toposophic AI, biological immortality, etc. That is soft sci fi. Your civilisation should have had this (by comparison) simple technology LONG before they began manufacturing hyperdrives.
First, can you define your concepts? By nitpicking word definitions alone I can say we have genetic engineering and nanotech today, and using even freer definitions we have had them for much longer (basic materials science and animal husbandry).

Second, let us take a look at the SW setting. Not to argue some pathetic "mine is harder than yours" competition, but simply to set straight some apparent misunderstandings:

Genetic engineering - They have it. They can make whole new species with their tech. Welcome to the EU, which also gave us the Sun Crusher.

Nanotechnology - They have it. Albeit in applications where it makes sense (say, medical tech) rather than wankofacturers.

AI - Not sure what "toposophic" means, so I will convert the technobabble to "avuncular sophist" AI because I feel like it. Which they have; witness C-3P0.

Immortality - Sadly, they have it. Some (much-maligned) EU stories even feature full AI-wank "uploading" into human-like robot bodies.

Of course, not all/none of these are applied consistently or logically, but they do exist. A large pop-sci fi phenomenon like SW cannot help but to pick up most of the clichés of of sci-fi chic. To the grief of us older fans, who would rather have an interesting setting than a lot of derivative, "plausible" (note scare quotes) futurist BS.
Midiclorians, much? How about the force, or hand blasters which generate enormous energy from such an implausibly small power pack?
The Force is magic even in the setting. So if its presence ruins "hardness" for you, fine.

However, I really do not see why blaster-type weapons (which pretty much only require high-end room-temperature superconductors to store the energy and perhaps some other handwave material for heat resistance) are so much less "hard" than femtotech-wank, reactionless drives, total-conversion processes . . .
Not to mention the ecological absurdity of a city planet (Coruscant) maintaining a breathable atmosphere. Lame.
Coruscant has an offscreen super-intelligent avuncular sophist AI that magics away the environmental problems, so it absolutely cannot be anything but perfectly hard. It only uses physics so far developed as to be impossible for non-avuncular, non-sophist intelligences to understand.

Or maybe the word I was looking for was rather "author's fiat" or the like, but they are essentially the same, anyway . . .
So don't try to sell me your garbage theory on OA soft science, take a look in the mirror before you go spouting such nonsense. You are the weaker party in regards to hardness, and that is all there is to say about that.
It would be utterly hilarious if someone were to show this to be wrong. :lol: But then, that cannot be done, since this distinction is mostly entirely arbitrary and style-over-substance anyway, as your quoted web page amply demonstrates. So, anyone can call whatever they want "hard" or "soft" however they like. You think you are the first one peddling this bullshit? People have ranted and raved about how everything from Xeelee to Night's Dawn to the Culture to freaking Star Trek is "hard" science fiction. By doing so, they think it scores points over SW (which they usually not even refer to as "soft SF" or "space opera," but rather the even more supposedly derogative "science fantasy") in some way.

Newsflash: No one gives a shit whether SW is "soft" or "hard" or "diamond core" or whatever. We just enjoy the setting like it is. However, people do like to make fun of OA's supposed "hardness" for the very reason that its fanboys obsess so pathetically over it (while nevertheless being hilariously dim on the whole "laws of physics" bit).
And while some may baulk at the idea of an OA cousin page grading science fiction hardness (for whatever biased reasons that person may have), the guy actually does a very good job, and I challenge anyone who has a fault with it to do better (or even come up with a valid complaint, go ahead). From the comments I have heard, you seem to be under the vague impression that he was singling you out or shit. Complain all you want, though. I heard not a single valid attack from you. Your just sad he gave SW the low rating it rightly deserved :(
While I cannot, of course, speak for Bakustra, I am not sad at all, but rather rolling on the floor laughing. That web page really is comedy gold, if you know the creator you should tell him that he ought to sell it to the funny papers. Reactionless drives and femtotech are "hard" and "plausible" sci-fi ideas, but something like a blaster is "sillytech"! :lol:
"But there's no story past Episode VI, there's just no story. It's a certain story about Anakin Skywalker and once Anakin Skywalker dies, that's kind of the end of the story. There is no story about Luke Skywalker, I mean apart from the books."

-George "Evil" Lucas
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Re: Galactic Empire vs Orions Arm Sephirotic Civilisations

Post by Imperial528 »

asedra wrote:-I will agree with this statement, as long as I make it clear that a transapient general would be able to adapt to (and predict) a baseline humans tactics with much greater speed and accuracy than another human could. That is to say that an imperiel general would have less tricks up his sleeve, and would not be able to play as many hands against a transapient before it is able to outpredict him every time (sort of like how in real life, opposing generals could, after a log war against one another, predict the others movements and decisions). I would also like to tell you a story to pit into perspective the kind of enemy the empire is going up against. It goes with an AI researcher saying how, every time he brings his cage to take his pet cat to the vetrinarians, the cat, knowing what is in store for it, makes a run for the cat door. The animal finds it the most inconceivable of bad luck that the cat door happens to be closed. 'Yes, but we are people, not cats. We wouldn't fall for the same trick twice' one might argue, ignoring the fact that once is all the AI needs to kill you, and you would thus be unavailable for a rematch (not that it would matter anyway, it would simply outsmart you again, in a differant manner).
You have a point here, but my main point was that if at least one of the command personnel (or hell, an astromech droid if it comes to that) in the Empire can figure out that the enemy adapts to the strategies of an individual command very fast, than the Empire can simply swap out command staff for campaigns at the rate which the enemy adapts, which is quite possible due to the fact that the Empire has the speed and number of commanding officers to do so. I could even imagine a fleet being commanded by more than one Admiral, so that during an engagement a fleet could use many strategies at once. Also note that the AI has far less time than it would be used to in regards to analysis, since Imperial fleet campaigns will not rely on the use of wormholes and STL for travel.
-I am knowledgable in the subject. What would you like to know? Alot of people outside the field (not that I'm really IN it, more like a weekend warrior) are under the assumption that superintelligence basically means human style and power thought, just run at a higher speed, and with total recall (I.E, perfect memory). That is a very dangerous misconception. What they are actually thinking of is weak superintelligence. As soon as we are able to upload a human mind and run it at a higher speed, you've got weak superintelligence. Boom. Strong superintelligence is faster thought, and higher proecssing power. Some argue (and I agree) that in order for it to qaulify as strong superintelligence, it must have more than just stronger and faster thought: It needs to exhibit qaulitively superior thought. Indeed, strong superintelligence is often envisioned as being more sapient, more sophont, and more self aware than a human is. This is just what strong AI in the near term (30 or so years) is expected to be capable of. OA takes place 10 thousand years in the future.
[/quote]

So, essentially you are claiming that they are superior to humans because they can think faster and are wiser than humans. While this would make sense in a way (because these are computers it had better be wiser, after living tens or hundreds of thousands of years), but I don't think it's a real game changer. The strengths in your AIs is in that they can think faster and process more as a result per individual unit (however, as I pointed out above, the AIs are now facing an enemy which makes its moves much faster), but your point about sapience I think is just not true. A human, as he or she goes through life, will gain experience from mistakes and observation, and thus become wiser (or more sapient) as life goes on. The problem with humans is that a human lives for an incredibly small amount of time. However, human civilizations and organizations do not have that constraint, so the collective knowledge and wisdom of the entire system increases over time and is available to the present and future members of the system. While this is a bit hard to see in general day to day living, if you go into a field such as science or engineering, you can learn in a few years what someone one hundred years ago could likely not comprehend, and with the same piece of hardware.
asedra wrote:-AI researchers are under the assumption that its the software (not the hardware) which is lagging behind. For example, lets say you need to crack a 125 bit code. You have two options:
A 2007 era supercomputer, with 1977 software or,
A 1977 era computer, with 2007 software,
Which one cracks the code faster? Suprisingly, its the 1977 computer (the apple 2). It can do it twice as fast as the modern day supercomputer. Of course, breaking a code doesn't require sapience, but it gives you an idea. A couple of AI researchers are under the impression that neural connectivity has nothing to do with it, but I doubt that. Its the one thing we have in abundance that machines don't, after all, so would that not be a good place to start?
I'd just like to point out here that software alone would be an incredibly inefficient way to make an AI, especially if it is all in the same package. If it extends to the point that the basic system commands are done by the AI, then I don't think that is an AI at all, merely a smart robot.
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