The Great Star Wars Logic Fault Problem, droids and cockpits

[DudeGuyMan]

Hey, we're doing that thing again where "TIE fighters swoop around like 50 feet from the Falcon at a relative velocity of about 10 miles an hour while Han and Luke clumsily pew-pew at them from manually controlled ball turrets" suddenly becomes "TIE fighters hurtle past the Falcon at substantial fraction of lightspeed while Han and Luke shoot at them with incredibly sophisticated targeting systems (fuck you it had a screen) that would totally own Star Trek! TOTALLY! FUCK YOU VERSUS TREKKIES WHO HAVEN'T EXISTED IN LIKE 8 YEARS NOW!" Sweet, I love Internet Debate Star Wars. It's way more dramatic than the real movies, even if 75% of the running time consists of Imperial officers pointlessly telling each other how many gigatons their guns put out.

[PeZook]

No, we're doing the thing where people go "aesthethics based on WWII footage" = "everything works just like on a WWII bomber". A bomber that can go to orbit.

The turrets could've had some sort of computer targeting system without spewing 80 gigasaurotons per shot, no?

[Marcus Aurelius]

No, we're doing the thing where people go "aesthethics based on WWII footage" = "everything works just like on a WWII bomber". A bomber that can go to orbit.

The turrets could've had some sort of computer targeting system without spewing 80 gigasaurotons per shot, no?

Yes, and they certainly do have screens just like DGM pointed out. However, the message of the scene is that considerable individual skill is sill required to shoot down the fighters. WW2 defensive machine guns had sights as well, albeit usually fairly primitive and difficult to use. Except of course for the B-29, which had remote controlled turrets and a very advanced targeting system (for the time):

http://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_bombers/b29_2.html

The General Electric system featured stationary, non-retractable turrets operated by remotely-situated gunners using computerized gunsights. There were five turret positions: upper-forward, upper-aft, lower-forward, lower-aft, and tail. Each turret contained two 0.50-inch machine guns, with the tail position containing an additional 20-mm cannon M-2 Type B cannon with 100 rounds. All guns except the tail gun were aimed and fired remotely by a set of gunners. There were four gunner sighting positions, one in the extreme nose operated by the bombardier, and three at the position in the waist where the rear pressurized compartment was located.

Reflector gunsights were placed at each of the four gunner's sighting positions. Each gunsight was wired into the electrical system, and it sent electrical commands to direct and fire the guns. In order to direct the guns, the gunner operated the sight by grasping two round knobs on either side of the sight. The sight swiveled horizontally at the base and the upper section rotated in elevation by a forward and backward twisting of the wrists. The sighting mechanism included an incandescent light source that projected a pattern of dots upward through a lens from inside the sight. This pattern was focussed onto a piece of clear glass as a circle of bright dots with one dot at the center. By twisting the right-hand sight knob back and forth, the gunner could make the circle of dots shrink or expand. There was a dial on the back of the sight where the wingspan of the attacking aircraft could be set. With the computer switched on, a target could be tracked smoothly. Gyroscopes scanned the enemy plane's wingtips, and those electrical signals were sent to the turret, allowing it to lead the target and to elevate the guns to compensate for range.

Most cold war era bombers had a similar system with increasing sophistication if they had defensive armament at all. So no manned turrets or turning chairs

[jollyreaper]

The distance between Citizen Kane and what you're proposing is immense. You're proposing sticking to a narrow view of science fiction, that prescribed by Singularitarians, and forcing all other sci-fi into this mold.

It's not so much a narrow view of what should be, it's just wanting some self-consistency within the logic of the film's universe. With Lord of the Rings, there's the question of why they didn't just send the hobbits with the eagles to drop the Ring into Mt. Doom in the first place. I can accept the argument that doing so when Sauron was not distracted simply would have gotten them a reception from nazgul on fell beasts. The only reason why the eagles made it in when they did was because Sauron had already been struck a mortal blow and his creatures were all fleeing for their lives at that point. That's a good explanation. "Because then we wouldn't have a story" is true but not very satisfying.

Citizen Kane holds its acclaim because of its use of cinematography, symbolism, and all the other parts of cinematic artistry to create an excellent movie with depth. It does not have its acclaim as an in-depth simulation of the times that William Randolph Hearst lived through. Such is a commendable quality in film, but even there it sticks to the past, which is known. The future is not.

Any historical drama (or a movie that was contemporary but now represents a very long time ago) has the luxury of actually being based on real history. There's a reason for everything you see on the screen, even if nobody goes into it. Gaslights for urban lighting? You can't argue about that in a Jack the Ripper movie, that's how they did it in London. Judges wearing ridiculous, silly wigs? That's the way they did it. Pirates fighting with cutlass and pistol? Of course. Pistols took a long time to reload, were unreliable, and could fail you in a fight. You fired your shot and then started swinging with the cutlass. With the introduction of more advanced firearms, you saw less and less hand-to-hand fighting. Blackpowder rifle vs. blackpowder rifle, you could charge a man to stab him with your bayonet before he could reload. That's less likely with a multiple-shot cartridge rifle.

So if you wanted to have a space romance with blasters and laser swords, there would have to be a rationale for why guns are ok but you also want to have swords. Dune's explanation was a personal protection shield. Lasguns would cause atomic explosions, projectiles would bounce off, and the only way to get through that shield was to stab a sword just slow enough to penetrate but hard enough to do some damage. You can call it an elaborate rationale for interstellar wars to be settled with swords but that's the setting Herbert wanted.

A sci-fi version of Citizen Kane would get most of its depth from its use of the futuristic milieu to examine the human condition, and its use of all the parts of film to achieve that end. It would not get it from its "realistic" depiction of cyborg furries or the other brainchildren of Singularitarians.

I'm not so much a proponent of the singularity as someone wanting to find a good way to refute having it in a given setting. There are some very good singularity stories and some very bad ones. It's much like the rationale for wanting manned starfighters. If we're not even likely to have them on Earth in fifty years, why would we have them in space? At best we would have to reimagine what our concept of a starfighter is which most likely won't be just like a fighter jet but in space.

From a broader perspective, Singularitarian views conflict with the essence of Star Wars. Star Wars is space opera, a genre that focuses on grandiose conflicts, harsh moral differentiation, and most importantly, the actions of individuals. Removing individuals from warfare and conflict would severely

I agree. But why would droids not be useful? If the Force were a power not just for a few elite but broadly used by biological life, droids would be at a severe disadvantage. They would be limited to using weapons that follow the rules of physics and the force users would have a greater range of powers. Now certainly the Jedi we saw knocked the droids down like nine-pins but few warriors across the galaxy were Jedi. A droid army should thus be perfectly effective against normals. Now if there were a great outcry against arming droids in general, the same way the ancient world recoiled at the idea of using slave armies because it gave them the training and means to rebel, that would be a good, consistent in-universe explanation.

damage that. If Luke does not destroy the Death Star, and instead it is a machine without personality, where is the hero? Oh, it looks like Star Wars just fell apart! While it's not any more ignorant of the foundation of Star Wars than a lot of EU, we really don't need more awful EU.

Yes, but you could just as easily go back to magical myth thinking where you have destiny, people pulling swords from stones, and the divine right of kings. So the question is just how fantastic do you want things to be? One of the things people hated about the midichlorian thing is it took being a jedi from being something you could work hard at to become and something more akin to a birthright. Of course you'll be king, your father was a king. You'll be a great warrior as well. Oh, and your father had a bunch of bugs inside making him a Jedi so you'll be a Jedi. You don't have to earn any of it. If you don't have the bugs then too bad, you're relegated to sidekick status.

Finally, I reject your idea that "getting the fussy details right" means adhering to a specific set of ideas about the future. There is merit to be found in parts of the ideas of Singularitarians (perhaps a Marxist or postcolonial look at how they would turn out, which would profitable from the rage induced alone). There is also merit in space opera, and in a Gernsbackian view of a utopian future, and a dystopian corporatist future, and views stranger still.

Of course there is. I just want to have a self-consistent explanation for how a singularity wouldn't happen rather than just saying "I don't like that so it doesn't."

We will almost certainly never have FTL. That's less probable than a space fighter or human-operated spaceships- at least those are possible. It's also unlikely that the Singularity (as opposed to a hypothetical technological singularity, which is much different) will occur as prophesized by Vinge and Yudkowsky either.

i'm not sure I'm getting your definition there. I thought the singularity by definition was technological. The only distinctions within the tech singularity would be between whether it was a strong singularity (nerd version of the christian rapture, everything is ginchy keen and awesome and we all become gods) and a weak singularity (tech gets pretty wild but the human condition doesn't change, just become weirder.) What's your take on regular singularity vs. tech singularity?

[jollyreaper]

Dune isn't really a good counter-example though, because the society was built up so that Paul could win and Herbert could make his larger points about resource dependence. Star Wars is similarly set up, and just because Herbert dedicated about 50 pages total of a 600+ page novel to the handwaves of his setting doesn't mean that Dune is better than Star Wars- just that he paced his novel to allow plenty of exposition. Star Wars could not throw in massive amounts of exposition without losing the thread of the movie, just like Indiana Jones couldn't stop and spend 20 minutes on a philosophical discussion between Sallah and Indy about the ethics of exhuming the Ark or the question of whether only a Levite can touch it.

Well there's also the vast difference between a book and movie. Books by their very nature have more room for exposition, the sort of thing you can't do well on-screen without destroying the pacing.

Any scifi or fantasy or otherwise imaginary setting is tailored to tell the story the writer wants to tell. The ONLY point I'm getting at is how convincing the whole affair is. That's all. Look, it's along the lines of the Cylons from the original Battlestar Galactica. So you have robots, right? And they fly ships. Right. But they are humanoid and sit in seats and use manual controls. Right. And use their visual scanners to read data off of computer screens. Right. To fly their fighters. Right. And why is it like this? People won't relate to non-humanoid opponents. Ooookay. And you also want to make it so our heroes can steal one of those ships at some point. Right. That was one of the things that the new Galactica got right before it went off the rails. The centurions are humanoid because they're fighting in human environments and need to move places we can move. Ok, I can buy that. The raiders are space fighters and don't need a robot sitting inside, they just built the damn thing into the whole ship. The ship is the robot. Ok, that's cool. Silly wank to give it a cylon head hood ornament but whatever, I can forgive them.

Now obviously if you don't care about that sort of thing you don't care about that sort of thing. But it's a geek thing and that's the kind of detail I pay attention to.

[Uraniun235]

I understand what you're saying but where do you draw the line for standards? The common defense of bad movies from Hollywood is "It's supposed to be a big, dumb, fun action movie for the summer. It's not supposed to be Citizen Kane." Who said it should be? But shouldn't we expect a bit of fun to be given care and craftsmanship just like Oscar bait movies?

And as I already said, Star Wars was just used as an example of the trope. We're all nerds here so we presumably care about getting the fussy little details right.

But there is care and craftmanship going into Star Wars and other works. George Lucas wanted WW2 air combat in space, so the Death Star throws out a huge amount of jamming that forces the starfighters to engage at very close range. Nick Meyer wanted submarine combat in space, so the Enterprise lures the Reliant into a "nebula" where they'd be forced to fight at close range and slow speed. My point is that deviations from realism and technical accuracy are not necessarily errors, and some of them are deliberate.

It's not a "trope", it's an entire sub-genre. Eschewing technical accuracy in favor of familiarity, as well as visual and aural excitement, is pretty inherent to space opera. It doesn't make it bad or wrong, it's just more fantastical. You do realize that not all media are created equally, right? That a story told in a book might not work as well when told on a screen, or vice versa? In a movie, especially one that's action/adventure-oriented, more weight has to be given to visual and aural excitement. Some of that might even come down to a desire to not look too similar to other movies or to the present-day (so rather than just using modern assault rifles, they hoke up some future-guns to use).

Yeah, I enjoy being able to recognize that thought was put into the details of a production, but it doesn't mean I can't also enjoy a series where the hero starship has tri-barrel battleship turrets and a galleon stern.

If you really need criteria by which to evaluate such decisions, here's one possibility: does this decision (or, perhaps, accidental coincidence) make for a more entertaining story as told in this medium? When I apply this to aerial combat in Star Wars or submarine combat in Star Trek, I find the answer is yes.

[Stark]

I'd be perfectly fine saying "it doesn't occur because it is bullshit".

Are you saying Moore's law isn't an actual physical law?

[jollyreaper]

It's much like the rationale for wanting manned starfighters. If we're not even likely to have them on Earth in fifty years, why would we have them in space? At best we would have to reimagine what our concept of a starfighter is which most likely won't be just like a fighter jet but in space.

Nah, space fighters are actually one of the most realistic space war concepts out there, if your action takes place in a relatively small radius, which is arguably the most realistic of space settings.

Of course there is. I just want to have a self-consistent explanation for how a singularity wouldn't happen rather than just saying "I don't like that so it doesn't."

I'd be perfectly fine saying "it doesn't occur because it is bullshit".

Do you have any more specific objections? One of the ones I've heard is that there's the fallacy of linear projection. If the rate of progress from the Wright Flyer to the Concorde remained true, we'd all be flying sub-orbital spaceplanes at this point. And as we've seen with computers, the clockspeeds of given cores aren't going up but the number of cores are. This won't make all operations faster, just the ones that lend themselves to parallel computation.

How would the classic singularity not happen in your view? Aside from just saying "it's bullshit." There's speculation, of course -- may artificial AI can never happen. Maybe we'll never genetically engineer human brains to be more than they are right now. But we don't know if there are hard limits so placing them right now as as speculative as saying there never would be any. As far as I can see, you can make an interesting argument either way as far as fiction goes but there's nothing that makes the argument air-tight.

[jollyreaper]

Yeah, I enjoy being able to recognize that thought was put into the details of a production, but it doesn't mean I can't also enjoy a series where the hero starship has tri-barrel battleship turrets and a galleon stern.

Space Battleship Yamato makes me inclined to suspend my disbelief from the neck until dead. lol

If you really need criteria by which to evaluate such decisions, here's one possibility: does this decision (or, perhaps, accidental coincidence) make for a more entertaining story as told in this medium? When I apply this to aerial combat in Star Wars or submarine combat in Star Trek, I find the answer is yes.

I have a sliding scale of rule of cool. Cowboy Bebop is a pretty good example. The show itself is great but the setting is completely illogical to the point of complete absurdity. But they pull the show off with such panache that I can simply accept what I see. The movie was nowhere near as good and so the oddball schizotech setting grated rather than being part of the fun.

As far as the original Star Wars goes, I still enjoy it. The nutrilogy is awful and so I find it impossible to accept anything I see on-screen there.

[jollyreaper]

When people are just pretty smart then yeah, it's office space. "I can't believe we're looking up money laundering in a dictionary!" But when you're talking scary AI smart, where are the limits?

The question of the singularity is really about the physical limits of computation in the universe. The human brain is the most complex self-aware reasoning computer we know of. Is it the most complex that's possible?

There are certain limits in the real world that cannot be worked around. We'll never see bugs the size of elephants. Why? You need lungs to properly oxygenate something that size. The oxygen exchange used by insects is unsuitable. Even if you could work around that problem, the exoskeleton couldn't support that kind of weight. It doesn't scale up.

So, are there similar limits to thinking? Is a god-brain impossible? That's the real question.

[Samuel]

Well, if you are only doing something once, than being superintelligent won't really help. I think things change if you are doing things a couple thousand times and can alter things that are fixed in the short run. I imagine this doesn't have an immediate effect but in the case of science fiction which has had over a century you'd get changes.

There's also a lot of us who just wouldn't bother with a lot of this "improvement" horseshit anyway. I die free. People don't always play along with people nor false gods nor ais lol.

Unless AIs are more efficient and get put in charge of the hiring departments and individuals who are troublesome get blackballed.

[Simon_Jester]

I think D-XIII is right; there really isn't much reason to expect (some) physical tasks to go much faster due to the existence of higher intelligences. On the other hand, a lot of things would definitely go faster, or be reorganized to be more efficient- you might have a transportation network that lets you get the stuff you order from the hardware store more quickly, for example. The hardware store might make deliveries, or something. If you happen to be a robot, you might well be able to work faster than a normal guy with an electric drill and a screwdriver, as assembly line robots often do.

There are efficiencies in this process that you could squeeze out. But most of them would come from the application of higher technology to the problem, not with making more intelligent use of the resources that D-XIII as we know him could bring to bear. And thus, most of them would come from having the whole society run by superintelligences: things that are inherently inefficient or time-wasting getting replaced by better systems on a society-wide level.

Even then there would be a lot of sources of delay, so this is still a very valid point he's making. One superintelligence in a society full of normal people will still take nearly the same amount of time to get a lot of stuff done as a normal person would.

[jollyreaper]

Ok, I think we're talking two different cases here. Let's spell that out.

Case 1: Lex Luthor super-intelligence

Ok. In your typical Superman example, there's the potential for some transcendent genius to invent super-tech. In the real world, that doesn't happen so much. One man isn't inventing a whole new field of science. But let's say that one man in 1950 was handed the complete specs for a modern CPU printed out hardcopy, he'd still have to organize an army of engineers to actually build the thing. He's not Tony Starking it in his garage. Thats' pure comic book territory. So the example of you and your furniture is correct -- a super-genius working with the personnel at hand isn't going to be able to do much more than the personnel are capable of. A super-genius thrown back to the 16th century will put together the best army the 16th century can field. A 22nd century super-genius thrown back to the mid-20th century will field the best army the mid-20th can provide. And this is all assuming that they aren't burned at the stake as wizards or assassinated by jealous government officials.

Case 2: Inhuman scary-smart AI aka Skynet

The real deciding factor here is that the AI isn't limited by what humans are capable of. The AI performs experiments, devises new technologies, and builds them with its own servitor units. There's no human intervention in the process. So things operate at maximum theoretical efficiency. So the only limitation in potential development are the physical rules of the universe.

In Orion's Arm, tech is scaled by the level at which matter can be manipulated. The smaller you can engineer, the more advanced your tech is. And if we're talking about AI's controlling everything from design to production, you've eliminated the human factor.

So, what would the limits be for Case 2 super-intelligences? I'm guessing the limit would be the rules of the physical universe. And I would suspect we don't yet know everything there is to know about that sort of thing. Just as nuclear radiation and electromagnetic radiation would be beyond the imagination of the 18th century scientist, there are things likely beyond our own scope of imagination right now that could prove very useful in a few hundred years.

[Stark]

I have a sliding scale of rule of cool. Cowboy Bebop is a pretty good example. The show itself is great but the setting is completely illogical to the point of complete absurdity. But they pull the show off with such panache that I can simply accept what I see. The movie was nowhere near as good and so the oddball schizotech setting grated rather than being part of the fun.

By 'completely illogical to the point of complete absurdity' do you mean 'I don't like it'? Just checking here.

[Simon_Jester]

We've been experiencing that for centuries already. Someone had to invent the screw, the saw, the power drill, etc.

But, my cabinet isn't that much different than a cabinet someone could have built 1000 years ago. Hell, Jesus was a carpenter, so 2000 years ago it could surely be done, just with a hammer and hand saw instead of a drill and power saw.

The big differences are infrastructure. I took a van down paved roads to the lumber store instead of having to walk out to a forest, chop down some trees, and lug them back by hand or animal power. Did increased intelligence play a role in any of those changes? I can say with great confidence: no. Mankind today isn't that much different, physically, than mankind of Jesus' time. It couldn't be changes to our physical brains that made the difference here.

This is true, but there's another factor. Physically we haven't changed much, but there have been revolutionary changes in how we think about certain types of problems. The kind of scientific experimentation we do today, or did in 1800, is qualitatively different from what was done in classical Greco-Roman times. So was the approach to thinking about the implications of a discovery for the overall nature of things: the ancient Greeks and Romans usually didn't think of a physical experiment as a way to discover relevant truths about the overall world around them; at best they were good ways to learn new specific techniques for doing particular things, with minimal synergy between discoveries in unrelated fields.

Changes in the way we think about science- about the organized effort to devise new things- played a key role in the development of modern technology and industry, including the tools that let you get your lumber from a hardware store using a van.

Likewise, advances in the way we govern societies have played a role: many kinds of businesses that operate now would have been impossible in an earlier era, before the legal reforms and institutions we are now familiar with.

Superintelligence could very plausibly affect the way we organize society and the way we approach scientific problems, thus greatly accelerating growth. What's not clear is that this leads to some kind of exponential growth process, because the physical factors you cite remain in play. It might be a fixed multiplier effect, or something that achieves limited returns once a few major reforms are made.

But those physical rules are very important and very difficult to learn. The AI won't magically know what they are, and pure thought simulations only work if you already know the rules.

Say you're a physicist in the past working on gravity. Here's what you know: drop something, and it falls. You could do some experiments to measure the rate at which it falls. Some of these are very simple. Pick up a rock, drop it and time it.

Then you do the same with a leaf... and it falls at a different rate. You (eventually) get the hypothesis that air is in the way. You run your simulations, based on the rock equations, and have a result. But, is your simulation reflective of reality? To prove it, you need to drop a leaf without air in the way. How do you build a vacuum tube?

Whether your workers are humans or robots, a physical apparatus has to be built. This has several costs: your materials are being used. Your workers are doing this instead of something else. So it can't all be done at once, and you have to gather the materials, find the room, etc.

This takes time. Eventually, you carry out the experiment and your simulation is proven. You end up with a good value for little g.

True. However, it's worth pointing out that this could have been done at any time, even back in the days of the Roman Empire. If people with wealth and determination to find the answers had gone looking for them, it would have taken at most a few decades- even given the need to make apparatus.

What delayed those discoveries for centuries was that there was no institutional dedication to exploring the edges of our hard knowledge about the universe, as distinct from our philosophical theories about the universe.

Want to determine what variety of wood is the strongest? Well, the only way you can do that is to gather some boards and test them. OK, you determined that, but your superbrain was limited by the speed of your lumberjacks (whether human or robot).

Now, how do you grow better trees? Simulations can only use the rules. To learn the rules, you'll have to plant some seeds and wait for them to grow up so you can test the result. Once again, you're waiting on nature. A human biologist or an AI biologist both have to wait for it to grow. Maybe the AI will interprete the results 100x faster, but that stage was < 1% of the total time to learn the rules. The AI's vastly superior brain only sped up the process as a whole by 1%. (Asspulled numbers: human waits 10 years for the trees to grow, spend 1 month testing and determining equations. Total time: 121 months. AI waits 10 years for trees to grow and 1 day for the rest. Total time: 120 months. Very small overall difference!)

Another key point, though, is that a superintelligence can work on more projects in parallel. The total size of the scientific community is limited as much by trained manpower capable of doing the brainwork as it is by economic resources; a superintelligence clever enough to amass considerable resources and smart enough to do the brainwork of many scientists will accelerate the rate of discovery considerably.

Though, again, not necessarily to "infinite rate of discovery." I'm not saying that.

I have a sliding scale of rule of cool. Cowboy Bebop is a pretty good example. The show itself is great but the setting is completely illogical to the point of complete absurdity. But they pull the show off with such panache that I can simply accept what I see. The movie was nowhere near as good and so the oddball schizotech setting grated rather than being part of the fun.

By 'completely illogical to the point of complete absurdity' do you mean 'I don't like it'? Just checking here.

He outright says he likes the show, you know?

Come on, you can do better than this with your content-free one-liners. I've seen you do better than this.

[Stark]

Fuck off, you fucking hypocrite.

I specifically asked what he meant by his problems with the setting (which he obviously doesn't like, you ignorant cretin), since it sounds like he just thinks 'not his single view of scifi' = 'absurd'. If you're going to try to be a big man, try to have a fucking point to go with the chip on your shoulder.

Frankly I expect he'll just say 'omg hypergates = so stupid', which is a bit more informative than WAH WAH WAH SIMON JESTER IS A FUCKING CRYBABY.

[Ugolino]

Easily explained by the EU Droid Revolution. They did it, the droids nearly won, and between that and the clone wars CIS armies, people just don't like seeing them do their jobs.

[Simon_Jester]

Absolutely. I thought about mentioning that, but figured I'd lump it into society's knowledge as a whole rather than attribute it to intelligence. Any intelligence could use any number of philosophies, and presumably, humans and AIs would have the same starting point here, like the rest of our instutitional knowledge or infrastructure.

(Actually, I might argue that we already experienced a technological singularity, in a way - through the widespread adoption of empirical scientific philosophies rather than recursive superintelligences.)

Right. The really interesting prospect is that a recursive superintelligence could kickstart the next revolution in ways-of-thinking, thus advancing technology dramatically. Or act in ways that more fully implement the revolution we've already had, by removing harmful or wasteful things from the system.

But yeah, I see what you mean. The premise that there must inevitably be ways to create computers and AI so advanced that they become gods, and that this will inevitably leave humans more or less out of the loop of the real activities of civilization... yeah, that's pretty flawed. Some major unexamined premises there.

Fuck off, you fucking hypocrite.

I specifically asked what he meant by his problems with the setting (which he obviously doesn't like, you ignorant cretin), since it sounds like he just thinks 'not his single view of scifi' = 'absurd'. If you're going to try to be a big man, try to have a fucking point to go with the chip on your shoulder.

Frankly I expect he'll just say 'omg hypergates = so stupid', which is a bit more informative than WAH WAH WAH SIMON JESTER IS A FUCKING CRYBABY.

You didn't listen long enough to know whether he liked the show or not; as far as I can tell the only word in the post you read closely enough to comprehend was 'absurdity.'

I still can't understand why you waste your time gibbering about what people said without knowing or caring what people said. Is it that enjoyable to just sit there and make stuff up about how terrible everyone else on the planet is?

[Bakustra]

Fuck off, you fucking hypocrite.

I specifically asked what he meant by his problems with the setting (which he obviously doesn't like, you ignorant cretin), since it sounds like he just thinks 'not his single view of scifi' = 'absurd'. If you're going to try to be a big man, try to have a fucking point to go with the chip on your shoulder.

Frankly I expect he'll just say 'omg hypergates = so stupid', which is a bit more informative than WAH WAH WAH SIMON JESTER IS A FUCKING CRYBABY.

You didn't listen long enough to know whether he liked the show or not; as far as I can tell the only word in the post you read closely enough to comprehend was 'absurdity.'

I still can't understand why you waste your time gibbering about what people said without knowing or caring what people said. Is it that enjoyable to just sit there and make stuff up about how terrible everyone else on the planet is?

Simon, Stark was asking what he found so absurd about the setting, not whether he liked it or not. Really, is this hostility called for? Can there be no peace between Marylanders and Queenslanders?

[Simon_Jester]

Ahem:

I have a sliding scale of rule of cool. Cowboy Bebop is a pretty good example. The show itself is great but the setting is completely illogical to the point of complete absurdity. But they pull the show off with such panache that I can simply accept what I see. The movie was nowhere near as good and so the oddball schizotech setting grated rather than being part of the fun.

By 'completely illogical to the point of complete absurdity' do you mean 'I don't like it'? Just checking here.

Frankly, Bakustra, I just get tired of seeing him come in and start pelting people with these one-liners, especially when the one-liner asks a question that was answered in the post he claims to be responding to.

Stark could easily have asked the question "what do you find so absurd about the setting" in a sensible form, like "what do you find so absurd about the setting?" the way you did, Bakustra. That would be one thing. However, instead he chose to make a transparent sneer by loading the question, putting it in the form:

"By "completely illogical..." you mean "I don't like it.""

Which, of course, directly contradicts what jollyreaper actually said, as even a brief glance at the post would show, considering the underlined parts. I find this sort of thing annoying- it's a distraction, and a brainless distraction, from the discussion. Therefore, I am hostile to it.

If Stark wants to express his contempt for other people and hurl thinly veiled insults at them when they have done nothing to provoke his hostility, it would be nice to see him justify that contempt. If he's in such a good position to criticize other people's reasoning, he should be able to show it by making substantial arguments.

If he chooses not to make substantial arguments, he should not complain when others call him out on his choice to make an ass of himself.

[jollyreaper]

I have a sliding scale of rule of cool. Cowboy Bebop is a pretty good example. The show itself is great but the setting is completely illogical to the point of complete absurdity. But they pull the show off with such panache that I can simply accept what I see. The movie was nowhere near as good and so the oddball schizotech setting grated rather than being part of the fun.

By 'completely illogical to the point of complete absurdity' do you mean 'I don't like it'? Just checking here.

Sliding scale, as I said. "They pull the show off with such panache that I can simply accept what I see." The worse off a show is, the more I nitpick. I can overlook a lot if it's executed properly.

[jollyreaper]

Fuck off, you fucking hypocrite.

I specifically asked what he meant by his problems with the setting (which he obviously doesn't like, you ignorant cretin), since it sounds like he just thinks 'not his single view of scifi' = 'absurd'. If you're going to try to be a big man, try to have a fucking point to go with the chip on your shoulder.

Frankly I expect he'll just say 'omg hypergates = so stupid', which is a bit more informative than WAH WAH WAH SIMON JESTER IS A FUCKING CRYBABY.

Wow. I think someone needs a nice, tall glass of chill-the-fuck-out.

Hypergates aren't the problem in the Bebop world. The problem is that we evidently have here the technology to fly to the furthest rocks in the solar system, outright terraform the rocky planets, have space-worthy fishing trawlers like the Bebop and somehow we feel compelled to do nothing more once we get there than recreate 20th century city plans. And let's not forget using recognizable 20th century handgun to fight a guy with a 17th century katana. Whatever. The show was good enough that I didn't dwell on this but you can't say the setting makes a lick of sense.

Given enough technology, we could make spaceships and space habs look like whatever we wanted. We could build ships that look "realistic" that are gray, boring, and practical-looking or we could build a giant fucking nude greek statue of the galactic emperor himself that goes a hundred miles along the long axis and have that thing flying around shooting lasers from the eyeballs. If you have antigrav godtech the sucker could even land on a planet and balance on two feet. So, by the same token, people with that kind of god-tech could decide to put an entire city inside the giant emperor statue ship and make it look like something out of Golden Age Greece complete with market stalls with live animals, horse-racing, and no sanitation. But you'd really have to ask "Why?"

[jollyreaper]

The genius has to gather information on what is available, how to motivate his army, what the enemy is like, and if his pure thought solutions actually work in the real world. All of this requires interaction with the outside world, and is thus limited by the outside. He'll probably have to lose some battles in the process of learning what does and does not work in the real world battlefield.

Right. I'm not arguing that perspective. I actually think that the idea of the 20th century genius going back in time and starting the industrial revolution centuries early gives too much credit to the power of individual human achievement. And certainly he cannot do better than the information and material he has to work with. You can't sit the greatest military genius of all time down in Saddam's shoes before the first Gulf War and expect him to pull out a victory. It's just not in the cards.

The real deciding factor here is that the AI isn't limited by what humans are capable of. The AI performs experiments, devises new technologies, and builds them with its own servitor units. There's no human intervention in the process. So things operate at maximum theoretical efficiency. So the only limitation in potential development are the physical rules of the universe.

But those physical rules are very important and very difficult to learn. The AI won't magically know what they are, and pure thought simulations only work if you already know the rules.
[/quote]

Of course. But the AI will have no human politics to deal with and will be able to perform the work at the limits of physical possibility. This doesn't discount the possibility of competition from another AI or the AI's own distributed network schisming into different competing personalities or any other sort of setback.

Whether your workers are humans or robots, a physical apparatus has to be built. This has several costs: your materials are being used. Your workers are doing this instead of something else. So it can't all be done at once, and you have to gather the materials, find the room, etc.

This takes time. Eventually, you carry out the experiment and your simulation is proven. You end up with a good value for little g.

Ok, I think you're assuming that it'll be like this story:

The story is "Answer," from Angels and Spaceships, by Fredric Brown (Dutton, 1954). Here is the original text:

Dwar Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore through the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.
He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe--ninety-six billion planets--into the supercircuit that would connect them all into the one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.

Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then, after a moment's silence, he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."

Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.

Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn."

"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question that no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."

He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?"

The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of single relay.

"Yes, now there is a God."

Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.

A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.*

Nice story but no, I'm not saying that. The story implies that sudden godlike intelligence suddenly grands godlike powers. A singularity-trending AI has to work within the real world but the rate of advancement could outstrip human ability to keep up with. Yes, physical experiments would have to be performed, theories built to explain the results, and so forth. But it would advance at the theoretical most optimum rate allowed for by the physical laws of the world.

Replace gravity and trees with super-quantum and meta-nano-materials for the future. You still have to get data to test your rules.

Right. But if you consider human rates of development, say tech in peacetime vs. wartime, you can see that human efforts can be accelerated given the right incentives. The limit wasn't human intellect or the physical world, it was mainly political and the allocation of resources. So how fast could an AI push that sort of advance? That's the big X factor.

Just as nuclear radiation and electromagnetic radiation would be beyond the imagination of the 18th century scientist, there are things likely beyond our own scope of imagination right now that could prove very useful in a few hundred years.

The 18th century scientist wasn't stupid. He just didn't have all the information we have now. For nuclear radiation, first someone had to see it in nature, then gather data from nature. It wasn't just dreamed up.

But it wasn't observed in nature at that point or at least recognized as such. So for example, there's the question of whether dark matter exists to explain the behavior of galaxies in light of our theory of gravity or maybe gravity works differently at a cosmic scale. Seems a curiosity now but maybe it underpins the biggest revolution of physics in the 22nd century.

This is all a really long winded way of saying science and development isn't about sitting somewhere thinking. It's about looking at the real world, which isn't limited by pure intelligence and has opportunity costs. The exponential growth a singularity is based on assumes technological growth is determined directly by amount of intelligence available. (Thus once more intelligence leads to more intelligence, that directly leads to tech growth at a similar rate.)

That simply isn't the case at any level.

I can agree with that. Going back to theoretical wank, we could consider the optimal play strategy of an amateur versus a grand master for games like Civilization and Starcraft. There's ways to muddle through and then there's ways to maximize the possible economic output of your base/empire. Working within the rules of the game, the skilled player can completely outclass the amateur without even resorting to instant godtech. And as far as Civ goes, the more resources you can throw into research, the quicker the tech comes.

Interestingly enough, you can max the tech tree in Civ. In real life, is there a plateau at which we'll not advance any further?

There's the old apocryphal quote:

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Charles H. Duell, U.S. Commissioner of Patents, in 1899.

They say it was never actually said but there are other sources quoting 19th century physicists despairing that all the hard work of physics had been completed and all that was left was dotting the i's and crossing the t's. How wrong they were.

[jollyreaper]

In any case, almost all sci-fi seems to assume there is such a thing, just at different, arbitrary, points. Storywise, this lets you have just about anything by convention. Is leveling off at blasters and hyperdrives for 1000 years really that much different than leveling off at guns and rockets?

That's a very good point. Star Wars is guilty of this in that they have roughly 25k years of roughly static technological development. You basically have droids and starships in the early days of the Republic and droids and starships at the Empire era. The only way to get around that is something like the Dune model, a culturally imposed staticism. And towards the later novels, the Golden Path of the Emperor was explicitly to break this logjam. But if there are certain hard limits, the real question is where they lie at. That's really for the writer to justify.

In real life history, the majority of people have lived their lives in worlds pretty much similar to the ones they grew up in and even their grandfathers would not feel too much out of place. Even in highly technical areas like sailing, the changes were slower paced for a very long time. Things really seemed to start moving by the mid-19th and picked up steam ever since. To prevent that kind of change, you really need a prolonged cultural decline or a rigidly enforced deal like Imperial China or Shogunate Japan. And that only works so long as you don't have foreign devils without your tech hangups waiting to teach you the error of your ways.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, there may also be a 'low hanging fruit' aspect to the problem. Imagine that in Star Wars, the task of inventing significantly better technology (as in something radically beyond what they have now) would require them to invest 20% of the galactic GDP in research for a thousand years, because they need to build a particle accelerator the size of the Oort cloud or something. That might be technically possible, but politically it's hopelessly outside their grasp and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Or perhaps it would require some kind of legendary genius who's both highly skilled in Force powers and a brilliant engineer and profoundly versed in biology and... you get the idea.

Even if they haven't discovered the sum total of everything that can exist, it might take extraordinary effort or luck to learn anything really significant beyond what they now know. Even without rigidly enforced stagnation or decline.

Though decline may play a part in Star Wars: they have major wars every thousand years or so, and if this leads to galactic Dark Ages in which many of the centers of high technological development are destroyed or stripped of wealth, it could slow down progress dramatically.