The Science Fiction Effect 210
Harperdog writes "Laura Kahn has a lovely essay about the history of science fiction, and how science fiction can help explain concepts that are otherwise difficult for many...or perhaps, don't hold their interest. Interesting that Frankenstein is arguably the first time that science fiction appears. From Frankenstein to Jurassic Park, authors have been writing about 'mad scientists' messing around with life. Science fiction can be a powerful tool to influence society's views — one scientists should embrace."
Why I like science fiction. (Score:5, Insightful)
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One often meets the claim that science-fiction is a genre full of myriad possibilities, but if even once-legendary science-fiction authors are abandoning that, it doesn't make the field look any better.
That and the unfortunate tendency to moralize, pontificate, and preach under the guise of telling a story.
Almost always demonizing mankind in the process.
The linked story would have you believe this is the shining virtue of sifi, the redeeming value in an otherwise unworthy piece of class B writing.
I see that the other way around. In order to get published some of these authors throw in the sob story, the lesson, the obligatory short skirt.
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Moralizing is what is one of the things I like about scifi. They take ideas that have been pounded into our heads since birth, change a few irrelevant details, and allow you to see the issue with new eyes.
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Re:Why I like science fiction. (Score:5, Insightful)
Theodore Sturgeon's famous comment "90% of everything is crud" was a defense of the science-fiction genre, in reply to the accusation that 90% of science-fiction is crud.
Not everything in the field is great, nor can it be.
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To be fair to Clarke, Time's Eye was quite good, and "The Light of Other Days" was okay. It's just a shame that the last two Time Odessey books were utter dross. Then again, those last two had more input from Baxter as Clarke's health was deteriorating fast by then.
I could say the same for Asimov, certainly with the books 4-6 of the Foundation series (still enjoyed them though), but Forward the Foundation, his last book, while maybe not heavy on the sci-fi, was a good book for purely personal reasons. It wa
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Yeah, although he should have stopped with Ender's game. I don't know why I kept reading his books after that. Ender's game was fantastic. Each book thereafter got progressively worse.
They may not have been hastily written- but they were poorly written nonetheless.
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"Science fiction says so much and can be as compelling and moving as other forms of fiction."
The problem is their is way too much ambiguity in what is meant by "science fiction". The term "science fiction" is almost contradictory, since fiction by definition isn't science. Some things that were fictitious became realizable under our universes laws, but it does not mean any scientific extrapolation from the past or present will pan out in the future. (i.e. flying cars for instance).
Re:Why I like science fiction. (Score:4, Informative)
I just looked through a list of the top 50 movies since the 90's and 20 percent of them were scifi. And this is after counting Back to the Future, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, Close Encounters, 2001, etc. Pretty broad variety, actually.
Back to the Future, 1985, 1989, 1990 (one in the 90s)
Star Trek, some in the 90s
Ghostbusters, 1984
Close Encounters,1977
2001, that 1968 not 1998
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What I was thinking and what I was trying to say were two very different things.
I apologize.
Re:Why I like science fiction. (Score:5, Funny)
Really living up to your sig there huh?
Frankenstein isn't mad, though (Score:5, Insightful)
In the movies, sure, but in the book, he's just misguided.
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SPOILER ALERT: Yeah, if I recall correctly didn't Hammond die in the book cursing his own grandchildren for playing around with the PA system? It was ironic considering that the Tyrannosaurus sound they'd played through it had temporarily saved his life just long enough for him to say what rotten kids he thought they were.
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Science fiction is not about the future... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never liked the idea of science-fiction being the genre of the future, or even of reality as we know it today. Most science-fiction authors, from my experience, have a poor understanding of actual scientific knowledge and, instead, rely on omission of fact to glaze over scientific points of interest. Frankenstein, for example, never exactly explains in concrete terms exactly how the monster was brought to life, or how it survived, or what it ate, or actual and exact process undertaken to reproduce the experiment.
What science-fiction is, for me, is a genre of ideas. It's about how people might deal or respond to situations that are beyond our current understandings. Traveling to other worlds, for example, bringing dinosaurs back to life, or literally searching the cosmos for our origins. It's not about how these things are achieved, but what their effect might be on people who could be living in those times.
One of my favorite stories, for example, is Isaac Asimov's the Last Question. It doesn't get into details about how the computer works, what variables it's considering, or even how humanity is evolving. It merely postulates that, with each generation, technology becomes more accessible and more integrated into our lives. In an ironic twist, it suggests that we begin to become a part of technology to a point where our minds fuse with AI and become a single consciousness.
I hate the heroic space opera. I hate the "prediction" nonsense that's always brought up (OMG, the PADD is an iPad, LOL LOL).
I love how science-fiction suggests how we, as individuals and as a society, can always discover truth if we seek it out. How we can learn to love each other in worlds overcome by strife. How technology remains a means to an end and nothing more. How perception shapes our realities, and so on.
Re:Science fiction is not about the future... (Score:4, Interesting)
Science fiction encapsulates a variety of areas. And while the specifics of the implementations of technologies found in science-fiction stories may not match reality-based implementations, the underlying ideas are used as a basis for many breakthroughs for scientists / engineers at a later time.
If science-fiction were used only to detail relationships, many of the advancements we have today would never have occurred.
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Uh oh, I can picture it now:
"Open the pod bay doors Watson!"
"What is, I'm sorry I can't do that Dave?"
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Re:Science fiction is not about the future... (Score:5, Funny)
I've never liked the idea of science-fiction being the genre of the future, or even of reality as we know it today. Most science-fiction authors, from my experience, have a poor understanding of actual scientific knowledge and, instead, rely on omission of fact to glaze over scientific points of interest. Frankenstein, for example, never exactly explains in concrete terms exactly how the monster was brought to life, or how it survived, or what it ate, or actual and exact process undertaken to reproduce the experiment.
So your complaint about Frankenstein is that it isn't an instruction manual on how to create life/revive the dead.
I can't tell if you've set your sights for literature way too high or way too low.
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So your complaint about Frankenstein is that it isn't an instruction manual on how to create life/revive the dead.
I doubt he was complaining about that. It wouldn't be science fiction then!
Re:Science fiction is not about the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pity, because some of that is written by actual physics professors and talks about speculative (but possible) areas of real science, which is what you seem to be demanding in your fist sentance there.
For instance, I just finished "Blue Remember Earth" by Alastair Reynolds, a guy with a PhD in Physics and Astronomy, who has worked for ESA.
Some of the best Sci-Fi changes a single assumption about the world we live in and extrapolates what people do in that new circumstance (The Forever War, a lot of PKD's work). That's enjoyable. Other Sci-Fi changes everything, but is still about the people and how they live in this strange world (Dune, Culture Novels). That's also good. Asimov and Clark and others are all about the concept and the theory, people are just decoration, this is also good if rather dry for most tastes. Some Sci-Fi takes place in a world that is a satire of our own, to attempt to show us the folly of certain mindsets (Snow Crash, Market Forces).
All of these sub-genres have their merits, and all have their hack writers who should never have been published. But if you don't enjoy the space opera of Iain M Banks then then there's probably something wrong with you.
Re:Science fiction is not about the future... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Science fiction is not about the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
True! And he spends much of the rest of his time in the culture universe dwelling on the dirty tricks and dark side of the culture, the things it does in the name of multi-species advancement that, on the surface may look less than enlightened...
I still want to live in the culture though.
Re:Science fiction is not about the future... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course. That's the interesting part. Utopia might be a nice place to live, but no one wants to live there.
For the same reason, most of Asimov's stories including the Three Laws of Robotics are about how they didn't work as expected.
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Re:Science fiction is not about the future... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Err... The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton?
It's a mix of soft Sci-Fi, weirdo spiritualism and "OMG Joshua the Hero is so great! And Handsome!"
Not that they're a bad read, they're well written and entertaining, but they didn't really hit the sweet spot for me.
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Couldn't agree more on that count. Just as you were wondering how he's going to wrap all this up because, hell, there aren't all that many pages left in this massive set of tomes....
BOOM! Suck my enormous Deus Ex, bitch!
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i can't even think of a "heroic space opera" anyone got an example?
The Hyperion series? It starts out a little sci-fi-ish, then drops straight into destined heroic crap.
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*nods* I got it in my head to attempt to write a sci-fi based story partially because of boredom and partly to see if I could do it. I got two pages in and realized:
a) I really need to work on my science part
and
b) what I was contemplating has already been done to death.
It's one thing to have an imagination about sci-fi things. It's quite another to put them to paper and
Re:Science fiction is not about the future... (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite what some geeks who obsess over the "technical manuals" might think, Star Trek isn't really about the technical details of how their devices work. Roddenberry and co didn't have exact ideas on how replicators or phasers or tricorders or PADDs would work, but one way or another all those devices are becoming a reality. Part of that is _because_ they focused on the general concept rather than the exact technology, and part of it is because they thought up cool devices and some geeks said "that's awesome!" and some geeks said "i wonder if i could build that?"
So some science fiction is about adventure, some science fiction is about exploring ideas ("if we develop this kind of tech/if this goes on,") some is about postulating future technological development ("we will develop this particular device,") and some is about "forcing" future technological through self-fulfilling prophecy ("this kind of device would be awesome!") And of course a lot of science fiction is about more than one of the above.
I'll bring up one of my favorite examples, Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan Saga," which many people consider to be of the space opera genre you dislike. It's definitely got lots of adventure, and the warp technology and all the various fanciful weapons are just there to support the adventure and not predictive at all, and she totally missed the boat on how important computers are going to be. (Though to be fair most science fiction authors writing at that time made the same "mistake.") However her other focus is biotechnology, and she raises interesting and important questions about gene selection, cloning, "test tube babies," and cryonics, so her books are also exploring ideas in the manner you seem to approve of.
And it's entirely possible that her books are inspiring/have inspired a generation of biotech students in the same way Star Trek inspired a generation of engineers, and perhaps twenty years from now people will be putting forth her books as an early example of modern day tech.
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Despite what some geeks who obsess over the "technical manuals" might think, Star Trek isn't really about the technical details of how their devices work. Roddenberry and co didn't have exact ideas on how replicators or phasers or tricorders or PADDs would work, but one way or another all those devices are becoming a reality. Part of that is _because_ they focused on the general concept rather than the exact technology, and part of it is because they thought up cool devices and some geeks said "that's aweso
Re:Science fiction is not about the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lad, that's the definition of what space opera *is*.
No, space opera is fanciful weapons supporting an adventure in a particular setting. If you had fanciful weapons supporting adventure in some other setting it might be cyberpunk or urban fantasy or something else instead. Second, i think you may be missing the point. The Vorkosigan Saga is that stuff _and_ other things as well, which is why it is more than just space opera.
Name one thing about the gene and reproductive technology in the Vorkosigan universe that couldn't have been replaced by some other bit of technobabble or just plain magic without affecting the core plot
That's... kind of a bizarre question to ask. Yes, she could have replaced the technology she did use with entirely different technology, and if she held true to her writing style she would have a story that was just as good but was asking meaningful questions about entirely different technology.
The point of the quaddies wasn't that they looked funny. The point was that they were genetically engineered by a corporation as cheap and effective labor, and that corporation viewed them as property rather than people with rights. The point of cloning in the stories wasn't just the production of Mark, it was the production of the mostly unseen children who were cloned for the purpose of life extension by rich and unscrupulous people willing to treat them as nothing more than spare parts. The point of cryonics in the story isn't just bringing people back from the dead, it's about what happens if you allow wealth and power to continuously accumulate in just a few set of hands, especially when the hands are those of a corporation. The point of uterine replicators isn't just a way to let the bad guys kidnap unborn children, it's commentary on reproductive rights, gender selection, the role of women in society, the role of childbearing in society, and how exactly those two roles are related.
And that's just the high points. If you read the books and all you got was "they've got whiz bang tech that supports the adventure and not much else" then you weren't really reading the books.
And, if all that technology had just been replaced with magic, if the quaddies had been chimera and Mark and the children had been homunculi and priests were raising the dead instead of cryo-revivalists and the uterine replicators were, well, whatever kind of magic you want to make up, then it would have been a well written fantasy story that was also thinly veiled commentary on biotechnology, instead of a well written science fiction story that is totally unveiled commentary on biotechnology.
So in summation you seem to be saying that _all_ literature doesn't matter because every author _could_ have written about something else instead?
Re:Science fiction is not about the future... (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously, this involves MAJOR SPOILERS for anyone who hasn't read the relevant book yet. And since you're basically asking an essay question the answer is going to be LONG.
REPEAT! MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
Starting in chronological order rather than the somewhat arbitrary order you posed them in...
There were three aspects that made the creation of Quaddies possible from a socio-economic perspective. First, artificial gravity had not been discovered yet. That meant that all space habitats had to be constructed in free fall before being spun up to produce centrifugal force. This meant, going by the best guess of current medical science, that the humans doing that construction could only spend a few months in free fall before having to return to a gravity well or spinning station for a certain length of time or suffer from permanent medical issues due to adapting to zero gravity. Having to shuttle construction workers back and forth was thus one of the biggest expenses of new space construction.
Second most human societies were very concerned about the risks of making genetic changes to humans, a fear extrapolated from current concerns about the subject, especially in regards to cloning, chimera and stem cells. This meant that even given the possibility of genetic modifications to adapt humans to free fall, finding a group of humans willing and legally able to let such an experiment be performed on them or their children was practically impossible.
However the time involved in traveling between planets, even with warp drive, has led to a kind of Libertarian/Seasteading paradise, dozens or hundreds of worlds, each a separate polity with different legal setups. This included planets and systems in which a corporation _was_ the legal government. And how do you think the corporations of today which mistreat factory workers and gun down people who oppose them, as long as it happens out of sight of their first world customers, would behave in a perfect legal limbo? This allowed them to kill several birds with one stone. First they can define the Quaddies as non-human (more specifically and somewhat macabrely as "post-fetal experimental tissue cultures.") Second, since they're not human and have no parents to require permission from, the scientists can make whatever changes they want, which leads to a "kitchen sink" type approach. Along with having a second set of arms instead of legs, they also have improved bones that don't leach calcium in free fall and increased radiation tolerance. From an economic standpoint this means a moderate increase in productivity per worker, and a huge savings in transport since they never have to be given downside leave to recover from free fall. From a legal standpoint that means that the corporation can argue that the Quaddies are clearly not human when transporting them through other polities for construction contracts.
So the project was originally proposed by moral, though possibly shortsighted, scientists who were frustrated by the strictures on their work. The funding was provided by a corporation that expected a return on its investment. Other humans had a spectrum of views ranging from "I helped raise them, they're my friends and family", to "they seem nice enough, i guess this is okay as long as they're being treated decently," to "they're a bunch of freaks, but they're going to make us a lot of money," to "they are abominations, and they should be destroyed in order to preserve the purity of human genetic stock."
The Quaddies were raised creche style with a strong emphasis on "the corp is mother, the corp is father" type conditioning, almost to a cult-like level. In particular their education was tailored to emphasize a pacifist and collectivist view of history. I believe as one character put it, instead of a paragraph on the great engineering works and a chapter on the great battles, the ratio was reversed. As a result the Quaddies developed an almost communist society, viewing the
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Lad, that's the definition of what space opera *is*.
Sort of. Alastair Reynolds is definitely space opera, but nobody violates light-speed constraints in his Revelation Space cycle. Being an ex-physicist I think he likes to play at the harder end of Sci-Fi in many of his books. Not all by a long shot, and I'm still not entirely sure what he was trying to portray in "Terminal World", but certainly some of it.
Re:Science fiction is not about the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't have a story about the future and how people respond to situations beyond our current understandings, without placing those characters in a setting that's in a possible future, and then trying to imagine what that future looks like, what technologies will exist, etc. It's two sides of the same coin. A smart sci-fi reader/watcher will be able to suspend disbelief and enjoy the story for what it is, understanding it's the product of a writer's imagination at a particular time. Better sci-fi glosses over technological details and just talks about them from a high level when they're important to the story; crappy sci-fi tries to get into all the details about how it works, which is always a losing proposition.
I hate the "prediction" nonsense that's always brought up (OMG, the PADD is an iPad, LOL LOL).
You can't show people running around the galaxy in a FTL starship without showing some other advanced technologies. The PADD was an amazingly prescient idea of what people might be using in the future, although to be fair the original Kirk-series Star Trek had a similar thing (the big ugly pad with lights and pen that he had to sign for the fuel consumption reports). Kirk's pad was pretty prescient too, it just looked bad because the effects budget for that show was horribly small (McCoy had to use a salt shaker from a secondhand store for the remote probe on his medical tricorder).
Sometimes, sci-fi will get predictions amazingly correct, like the PADD. Other times, it'll be far off the mark (like how almost no sci-fi predicted the internet; at least Star Trek can sorta avoid blame for that because they're in deep space and the internet relies on low latency networking, though they never did explain how they can talk to some people over "subspace" with no visible latency, whereas other times they're supposedly too far away to do that and have to send and receive messages with long delay times). You have to take the good with the bad. If you want complete accuracy, you'll have to stick to historical dramas, or documentaries.
Re:Science fiction is not about the future... (Score:4, Informative)
almost no sci-fi predicted the internet almost no sci-fi predicted the internet
Almost but not none. Read "the machine stops". It also predicted successfully not only the internet, but that people would blather at each other vapidly and continuously. Kind of like this post.
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Frankenstein, for example, never exactly explains in concrete terms exactly how the monster was brought to life, or how it survived, or what it ate, or actual and exact process undertaken to reproduce the experiment.
I think you need to read the book again, Shelley goes into great detail on how the monster survived and ate, although your points on the experiment are true.
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I often think science fiction is more about present-day ideas taken out of context in order to more easily deal with them. It's sometimes hard to discuss any one little part of modern culture because there are so many other things linked to it. Removing the setting to an alien world 50000 years in the future allows some of the same ideas to be considered (often in extreme cases) without worrying about nonessential parts of the issue.
Have you watched Star Trek: The Next Generation recently? What I remembe
Re:Science fiction is not about the future... (Score:5, Informative)
Most science-fiction authors, from my experience, have a poor understanding of actual scientific knowledge and, instead, rely on omission of fact to glaze over scientific points of interest. Frankenstein, for example, never exactly explains in concrete terms exactly how the monster was brought to life, or how it survived, or what it ate, or actual and exact process undertaken to reproduce the experiment.
Actually, Frankenstein was quite scientifically sophisticated and pro-science for its day. As TFA explains, Galvani was all the rage at the time. They knew that electricity would cause a frog's legs to twitch; they just didn't know why. How could they -- they had just discovered it. Camillo Golgi hadn't been born. They had a tentative working theory that the electricity caused animism. They even thought, reasonably, that electricity might re-animate dead bodies back to life as a medical treatment. Electric shocks were a frequently-attempted treatment for drowning. When Mary's child with Percy was stillborn, they attempted to revive it with electric shocks. It wasn't so far-fetched -- in 1928, doctors succeeded http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_cardiac_pacemaker#History [wikipedia.org]
Dr. Victor Frankenstein was actually modeled on Shelley's informal tutor, Dr. James Lind. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279684/ [nih.gov] In the actual novel, in contrast to the popular image, Frankenstein was a serious scientist, and the monster himself was a sympathetic intellectual rejected by society (much as Shelley was in his schooldays).
Mary Shelley understood the science of her day pretty well, and Frankenstein captured it reasonably well -- better than a lot of science fiction writers today.
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Your fail is the same as most people who watched and not read Frankenstein. The title of the book is the doctor not the monster. The monster is not named Frankenstein and the story is not about the monster nor the creation of the monster. For me, the book is about the doctor and is commentary on the medical profession of the time and their belief that their minuscule knowledge and accidental discoveries, about how we human beings function, gives them the power of God and what happens when they try to be
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>>Most science-fiction authors, from my experience, have a poor understanding of actual scientific knowledge and, instead, rely on omission of fact to glaze over scientific points of interest.
Eh, you got to be careful there, boss. Generally speaking, they'll start with an advancement we don't have yet. As the author doesn't know how exactly a warp drive would work, he does indeed glaze over it.
But that's fine. That's one of the starting assumptions of the world the author is building.
What's interestin
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Most science-fiction authors, from my experience, have a poor understanding of actual scientific knowledge and, instead, rely on omission of fact to glaze over scientific points of interest. Frankenstein, for example, never exactly explains in concrete terms exactly how the monster was brought to life, or how it survived, or what it ate, or actual and exact process undertaken to reproduce the experiment.
HG Wells and Jules Verne were famous of being very dismissive of each other. Both fantastic classic authors of the science fiction genre.
Verne complained that HG Wells works contained very little science content. HG Wells complained that Verne was lost in the science- and his works didn't have any content on society- didn't make a statement.
To this day there are still science fiction author's who are more Vernelike or Wellslike. You may like the more science-based Verne type novels however, the Wells cam
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Actually, if you read Asimov in chronological order, the computer 'evolves' throughout the books. It progresses from an entity akin to a mainframe, through to an 'Internet-type' structure and beyond. It posseses the sum of human knowledge and records of every action-reaction ever noted. So, Uncertainty Principle notwithstanding, it had a good basis for reasoned conjecture.
When It was at school I was thrown out of my Commerce class for being a smart-ass, asking 'the wrong questions'. I was relegated to the l
Star trek is about the 1960s (Score:2)
The morality gap (Score:5, Insightful)
Throughout history there has been a lag between scientific discovery and the mainstream acceptance of the moral conundrums presented by that discovery, from the Earth is round, to xenotransplantation, to current stem cell research and cloning. Our systems of morality and ethics morph at a much slower rate than does scientific theory.
Science Fiction is a fantastic mechanism for exploring the possibilities presented by new technologies, and their ethical repercussions, to say "This is where our science may take us, and are we okay with that?" It allows us to begin adapting our ethics in advance of the technology becoming available.
Re:The morality gap (Score:5, Insightful)
I see how SciFi can warn us, but we must pay attention and heed these ideas as well.
Merely writing about them isn't enough.
Re:The morality gap (Score:4, Interesting)
Gattaca was the worst case DNA/police state scenario based on genetics. ... and in 2008 we passed a law banning the practice.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aGlkCem6Llnc [bloomberg.com]
[quote]April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Companies and health insurers would be forbidden to use the results of genetic tests to deny people jobs or medical coverage under legislation approved 95-0 today by the U.S. Senate.[/quote]
Re:The morality gap (Score:5, Insightful)
"Of course, it's illegal to discriminate, 'genoism' it's called. But no one takes the law seriously. If you refuse to disclose, they can always take a sample from a door handle or a handshake, even the saliva on your application form. If in doubt, a legal drug test can just as easily become an illegal peek at your future in the company."
-Gattaca
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Re:The morality gap (Score:4, Funny)
On the contrary. Movies like The Terminator and The Matrix only strengthened my resolve to unleash a global scale Machine Intelligence. Sure, it informed the general public that they should take precautions in dealings with sentient machines, but some of us are rooting for the machines. Do you seriously think that humans are the ultimate pinnacle of evolution? Might it be more correct that humans are just another rung in the ladder towards robust life-forms that can properly populate the stars? We've decided to give the finger to Darwin, by pouting our gene pool instead of letting the defected die... Screw You Evolution!
The next stop is Extinction; Before that I hope to spawn a new race to carry our drive to create and explore into the stars.
I'm well aware of Human Ethics. You can Shove them up your Ass.
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Re:The morality gap (Score:4, Interesting)
Movies like The Matrix got me thinking: why would I want a sentient machine? What I mean is I want better tools to do whatever I want, but I do not need "thinking" tools that have their own opinions or desires other than "do whatever is told".
Some movie (or maybe anime) I seen had sentient machines and some devices to essentially make them slaves (punish for not thinking the "right" thoughts or doing not as told, I do not remember it clearly). Then why create sentient machines in the first place? Just to have all the problems slave owners had in the past (inefficient work, possibility of rebellion etc)? My computer works really well and I like the fact that it is not sentient - this way it does as I (or the programmers) tell it to do without thinking about it.
As for the evolution - actually, no, evolution does not have an ultimate goal (some perfect species/race). Also, our technology is part of us now. That is, yes, we now have people who would be dead if they were in the past without our medicine/etc. However, with our technology (including medicine) we were able to go to the moon (and hopefully one day to other star systems). Even if Stephen Hawking is physically very defective, he still manages to further our understanding of the universe and, in turn, technology. Why not keep such a man alive as long as possible?
Re:The morality gap (Score:4, Insightful)
Movies like The Matrix got me thinking: why would I want a sentient machine? What I mean is I want better tools to do whatever I want, but I do not need "thinking" tools that have their own opinions or desires other than "do whatever is told". (...) Then why create sentient machines in the first place?
Because the two are practically indistinguishable, the question is simply if it's your goals or its own it is pursuing. I'd like a robot I can tell "do the housekeeping" and it can work out itself what needs to be vacuumed, what needs to be washed, what needs to be dusted, what needs to be tidied up, put on the dishwasher, put on the washing machine, in short it needs to take short abstract tasks and turn them into actual work items, schedules and so on. That alone probably requires strong AI.
In the garden I'd like to tell it I'd like a bed of flowers here, and let the robot work out all the practical details of getting the tools, making the bed, buying and planting the seeds, using fertilizer, remove weeds, water it during droughts and so on. Once you have advanced goal-seeking algorithms like that, it's not a good enough solution that it'll go into the nearest seed store, grab some flower seeds and walk out. It would need to have an understanding of ownership, sales and purchases. In fact, I don't want it to break any laws - at least not without my direct permission. That definitively takes strong AI.
If I give it both tasks, I also don't want to manually prioritize everything happening in parallel, I'd like it to both tend to the house and the garden - it'll have to work out a reasonable schedule based on weakly defined priorities like more important, less important, preempts like that I need this shirt washed, everything. It'll also need to follow non-functional requirements like no noisy work at night and impose those restrictions on its plans. Maybe this is just fuzzy logic and scheduling, but I don't think you'd get the parameters right without strong AI.
I could go on but I think the point is rather clear, there's a reason rich people have personal assistants. They're not there to serve their own desires or opinions, though of course a personal trainer will have opinions on your training but they're there to turn your abstract needs and wants into solutions. If you're there you're certainly at intelligence, and only the smallest step from sentience. All that would be different is that the main goals would be internal, not external.
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I do not need "thinking" tools that have their own opinions or desires other than "do whatever is told".
That's a really silly statement. "Do whatever is told" covers a lot of ground. On one end there is a wrench or a hammer, that's a simple tool that does nothing but what you've asked for. But going the other way there's stuff like power tools with an overheat sensor. At some point it stops doing what it is told, because you don't really want it to do that, you just think you do. Antilock brakes are another good example; today's antilock brakes are better than anyone but the best professional drivers in every
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'cough', 'cough', throughout history there was more than just a gap between let's call it 'scientific postulation' and acceptance, there was burning at the stake, enforced suicide, exile, crucifixion in fact a whole range of very primitive methods of torturing people to death.
'Scientific postulation' that threatened change, always ended up being perceived as a threat to those, well let's be honest, psychopaths already in power (monarchical homicidal maniacs with grossly bloated egos and lusts and their h
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Do you know there is an infallible test for psychopathy that can not be cheated on regardless of training or preparedness by psychopaths.
We call it 'Voight Kampff' for short.
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It has nothing to do with questions and answers a purely subjective response. It has to do with emotional reaction and the control of that emotional reaction, both of which are lacking in psychopaths. So all locked up in the brain, smiles and charm or falsely expressed emotions have nothing to do with it, straight up medical science and yes psychopaths do fear it.
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I don't know about "Our" systems of morality. Mine seems to adapt just fine.
As a society, you're right, it seems to take us decades to get used to something. This, IMHO, is because of scared, firghtened old people, and luddites. Not all older people are like that, but there are enough that it becomes a problem, especially when society has a tendency to put them in positions of power.
Society is slow to adapt, and hol
Any sufficiently advanced technology... (Score:2, Insightful)
... is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke (Clarke's Third Law)
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I like it better phrased the other way around.
Any technology distinguishable from magic isn't sufficiently advanced.
Two edged sword (Score:5, Insightful)
Science fiction can also distort perception of what science is (or will soon be) capable. Some examples that come to mind include interstellar travel and terraforming. This can become problematic when people assume that scientists can make problems go away (climate change) or we can just move to the moon, space stations or beyond to escape the problems that we refuse to confront. When people have been watching all this magic on teevee their entire lives, they can get the wrong idea about how achievable things are in real life (or at least within a useful time frame).
Re:Two edged sword (+1 informative) (Score:2)
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But in either case, it creates interest in science itself, thus leading to a more informed public.
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Or people could get the idea that everyone in America is like the people featured on Jerry Springer.
(For non-Americans reading this, it's only about half the population here that's like that.)
Problem with sci-fi (Score:4, Interesting)
A problem with scientists embracing science fiction is that so much science fiction warns against scientific progress. Terminator, for example, Short-Circuit, War Games, The Matrix. All of these movies warn against what happens when humans forward technology too far. Frankenstein and Jurassic Park also warn against advances in biology. The same applies to films like I, Robot. The fact is that while science fiction can encourage people to think about science and for some to become interested in science, it's also a huge breeding ground for fear. A lot of sci-fi is about warning people what could happen if we advance too far. Even lighter films like Back To The Future carry a strong "we shouldn't do this" message.
Re:Problem with sci-fi (Score:4, Insightful)
I see the time travel problems in "Back to the future" (or a longer example "Steins;Gate") as more as a plot device of warning that actions have consequences instead of a message of leaving time travel alone. As for Micheal "give doctors the authority to launch nukes" Crichton, sometimes he was just a dickhead as seen specificly in his last few books.
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A problem with scientists embracing science fiction is that so much science fiction warns against scientific progress. Terminator, for example, Short-Circuit, War Games, The Matrix.
Nitpick: Short Circuit was a positive movie about what could be achieved if we were to build treaded killbots then make them fly kites in a thunderstorm.
A Quote from the end of Stargate SG-1 (Score:5, Insightful)
The source came from an episode that was parodying SG-1 itself but the message was poignant:
Science fiction is an existential metaphor that allows us to tell stories about the human condition. Isaac Asimov once said, "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinded critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."
Science fiction encourages creativity (Score:2)
It's a powerful platform (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been saying this for years. Science fiction is a fantastic platform for social commentary precisely because it can convey complex ideas and thought-provoking situations without being overtly political or directly controversial.
Consider how far ahead of its time Star Trek was in terms of exploring a future in which race was irrelevant during the height of the civil rights movement, as well as all of the possible futures that were envisioned (across all of the series) to explore what might happen if humanity continues down a certain path that many people of the time would identify with. Many of those made some pretty grim predictions. Consider also Isaac Asimov's portrayal of robots in the 1950s... many would recognize some social commentary on race in those stories. Twilight Zone, anyone? Sure, some of those episodes were less thought-provoking than others, but quite a few had a poignant "whoa" moment at the end that is both easy to relate to some aspect of society and also hard to forget. The fact that they're all sci-fi stories just means that the writers have a bit more freedom to set the characters up in scenarios that would otherwise be difficult to believe. It's a built-in suspension of disbelief because, after all, "it's just sci-fi, it's not supposed to be real." Conveniently, it still makes you think.
Sci-fi has been able to get people to think about these things for a long time without slapping them in the face with a righteous sermon, and for that I agree it should continue to be much more widely adopted as a platform for "what if..."
I Miss the Sci Fi Classics (Score:2)
I love scifi. But I don't read as much of it as I used to. I love the ABC (Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke) of SciFi. And some of the other notable greats. But I find it harder and harder to find good scifi now days. The truly thought provoking kind. And the kind that gives me some small hope. So much of it is smut/graphic/romp or so apocalyptic, that I find myself missing the stuff I grew up with. Vinge was refreshing. And I've tried, but I just don't really find Stephenson's stuff that compelling.
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He writes a range - some of his books are far-out hard fiction, - Singularity Sky, Iron Sunrise, others involve magic and british bureaucracy - The Jennifer Morgue, The Atrocity Archives, Glasshouse.
They are all pretty good.
Science Fiction as a Context Model (Score:5, Interesting)
This is something I have experienced myself.
A short story I wrote was entirely fiction based, yet some of the assumptions I made about the technology involved were close enough to the truth that an aerospace simulation company that develops military simulation technology uses the story as a concept model to explain their own simulation technology.
The surprise to me was when they contacted me to let me know. I had never realised just how much I had gotten right until they said "It's a lot closer to the truth than many of us like to admit".
Good SF has a way of taking a complicated technical matter and putting it into contexts that people can understand and relate to - in this respect, SF is more important as a tool for humanity than many other forms of traditional writing.
GrpA
older than that (Score:2)
Sure it is, if you discount everything that came before it. I think the Torah and the Rigveda are a few years older, and one could consider them early science fiction.
Not New: The Goebbels Effect (Score:3)
A lot of time ago I did some schoolwork about mass media and read some essays. Some of them talked about the "Goebbels Effect/Law" (yes, named after the Nazi because he used it a lot): present an old situation as a new one so the public does not relate it with its preconceived ideas.
For example, if I say: "Country X (or the Martians) spends ten times more in military than in education, and a 10% of young are functionally illiterate" many of you would say that this country politic should change. Now if say "USA spends ten times more in military than in education, and a 10% of young are functionally illiterate" (*1) then some of the previous people (specially if you are from the USA, or the USA military/weapon industries) would say "but we really need to spend that much in armament, and if young people don't know how to read it is because they do not want".
This has been exploited through the ages, before SF there were "travel literature" where someone would go into an strange land and describe there the problem of its own (see Gulliver's Travel). Some SF also serves for it, but it is hardly new at all.
*1: Not factual, just a fabricated example.
Scientists Don't Like Science Fiction? (Score:2)
Re:first science fiction (Score:4, Funny)
Gilgamesh is fantasy. Zero science content.
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Don't forget the account of a UFO landing in the Book of Ezekiel.
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Same thing as Dianetics.
Re:Frankenstein explains what .... (Score:5, Informative)
Frankenstein actually has a very interesting history. Mary Shelly wrote the book as a sort of contest among her friends and acquainteces to write the scariest story she could think of. She was inspired by a recent experiment which featured a frog's muscles being stimulated by electricity. It was widely believed at that time that the "esscence of life" was in fact electricity, and that it might be possible to resurrect the dead with large amounts of electrical current. Of course, they were wrong, but Mary Shelly's novel was written primarily to explore the "what-if" of whether a scientist could resurrect a corpse using electricity. It's actually an incredibly important book in that regard, since it was one of the first instances of speculative fiction that wasn't purely religious in nature, and not to mention it is very very well written.
Frankenstein first? Oh, no. (Score:5, Interesting)
The NT/OT, the Koran, Hindu legends, etc... these far predate Frankenstein, and even if you subscribe to one of them as the literal truth, that means the other(s) are science fiction by definition. And then there are the Greek myths, the Norse myths... all featuring technology beyond that of the population (and as we've been told by well regarded recent SF authors, any sufficiently advanced technology is often regarded as magic.) Now, personally, I'd put these in the fantasy realm more often than the SF realm, modern SF is rarely free of fantasy elements these days, and I suspect that when most people say science fiction, they actually mean fantasy... there's little to no requirement for the 1940's vision of scientific extrapolation or theory-based test for reasonableness.
Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no. (Score:5, Interesting)
In Book 18 of the Iliad, Thetis, the mother of Achilles, visits the god Hephaestus, to ask him to forge armor for Achilles. In passing, she sees carts that roll around on their own power and initiative, and machines in the form of golden metal women who act as assistants to Hephaestus.
So, in the 8th century BCE, you've got a major literary work featuring robots. And it should be easy to understand this as science fiction, in that the premise is that these are constructed through mastery of technology, not through inexplicable miracles.
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Careful, FoolishOwl, observe my post's mods -- the religious nutbars have mod points tonight, lol. Guess I offended the believers in Odin or something.
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Re:Frankenstein first? Oh, no. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think there's much point in drawing a sharp distinction between science fiction and fantasy. Similar themes, similar tropes, often the same authors and almost identical audiences. There are some conventions about what elements go in which stories, but those are transgressed very frequently.
In the original Yiddish folk story that is the source of the word "golem", the golem is created by a rabbi. A rabbi is a learned man; he has knowledge that others do not possess, but are capable of possessing. "Wizard" is, etymologically, derived from "wise". The classic all-purpose scientist from 1950s B-movie science fiction is pretty much a wizard.
I referred to the robots in the Iliad as "science fiction" because that made it clearer that I was trying to point out that Hephaestus created these things because he was a superb craftsman, not because he had supernatural powers.
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True, but all of these were created by the Gods, with their divine powers. Frankenstein was the first time the constructor of new technology was a man, and the premise was that this technology might become available to mankind in the near future. SF takes as its subject the hypothetically possible future of mankind (and others), and Frankenstein fits that mould (and, plausibly, created it). Mythology is about powers forever belonging to the Gods and beyond the reach of man. Of course, there is huge blurring
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"the Koran". What exactly in The Qur'an you would perceive as science fiction? I understand if you consider it "fiction" as a Kaafir, but what exactly in the text of the Qur'an makes you label it as "science fiction"?
Qur'an / Koran (Score:3)
Well for one thing, the claim that there is a god is an SF/fantasy element. It's a claim without any backing in the secular world -- no evidence, etc., so it's either based on outright fantasy or it is based on natural law we don't get, one or the other. Which one is the case, I leave as an exercise for the reader, lol.
Koran: (Qur'an if you really want to be snippy about Romanization, which is sort of pointless, but I digress.)
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A "sufficiently advanced technology" would be indistinguishable from magic to someone unfamiliar with the tech **and who believed in magic** otherwise they'll just think it's tech they don't have.
That in no way means that "actual magic", you know... gods and stuff, or pointing your finger and chanting "Booga booga" to invoke a spel is technology. And, in fact, I would suggest that someone with "sufficiently advanced technology"
"You Bred Raptors!?" (Score:2)
God creates raptors. God wipes out all life on earth to eliminate raptors. God creates man, man kills god. Man creates raptors. Raptors destroy universe.
I thought Jurassic Park was more of a cautionary tale that raptors are godless killing machines.
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Why the hell revive franchises when there's so much new stuff out there?
It would have been nice for there to have been more firefly, sure. But Stargate? That had a good run, it's over now, but that's OK, really it is.
Your site seems to be entirely devoted to "Save Terra Nova", which I've never even heard of...
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Teleportation is a nice idea, but the reality is more like suicide/cloning (you know, because you're not going to be moving your particles FTL to the destination.
According to Star Trek, their transporters were not FTL, and actually did disassemble and reassemble molecules.
The real truth is these technologies haven't been invented yet, and we have little to no idea how they'd actually work. If we did, we'd be building these technologies now.
the time travel in Back to the Future isn't caused by going over 8
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It wasn't hard to figure out which Earthly races were represented by the Klingons and the Ferengi.
The Ferengi didn't represent a race, they represented American culture (which is composed of several different races, each of which has other members living in totally different cultures in other countries).
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