Star Trek is Already Steampunk

[Christopher]

That doesn't make any sense.

Yes it does. Dramatic license for one generation is to imagine a balloon going to the moon. For another it is people riding an artillery shell to the moon. For another it is scrapped NASA parts allowing people to go to the moon. ...

But particular licenses/conventions expire.

Okay, I misunderstood. You said "that dramatic license has expired," but I missed the "that" and thought you were saying that all dramatic license had ceased to apply.

There are a few bad apples, but there's no one writing viruses for a living in Trek.

Nobody, in all the galaxy? The Federation is a utopia, but there are plenty of bad guys elsewhere in the galaxy, and Starfleet's mission is to go out and explore the galaxy. I mean, come on, man, it's an action-adventure TV show. Obviously every story is going to be about something going horribly wrong or some villain trying to inflict harm, not about people living safe and happy lives in the bosom of a perfected society. The utopian stuff happens off-camera. The stories take place out where the danger and villainy is. That's why the focus is on Starfleet, the organization whose job it is to defend the utopia against threats and to take risks facing the unknown.

As for the rest, I imagine a rich cluster of posthuman diversity. Consciousness distributed on different systems, in different languages, with different levels of connectivity. This cluster would be so diverse that no one silver bullet variable would be likely to take it out.

And that's one possible way of imagining the future, sure. But that doesn't mean it's wrong for SF writers to imagine other possibilities as well. If there's value in transhumanist or posthumanist science fiction, then there can be value in humanist science fiction as well. If all SF advocated a single philosophy or vision, what would be the point?

In science, sometimes not getting the result you expect is a more interesting result in itself, because it forces you to ask new questions and consider new possibilities. Yes, it's probably likely that humans of the future will enhance their minds and bodies to some degree. But that makes it interesting to ask, why might a human society of the future choose not to do so? Maybe there's a story worth exploring behind that.

The "singularity" is a metaphorical reference to black holes.

No, it isn't. It's a mathematical term referring to a point at which a given mathematical object becomes undefined or discontinuous, such as the point where the slope of an asymptotic curve goes to infinity. Black holes are one example of a singularity -- the singularity of a black hole is the point where the force of gravity hypothetically becomes infinite -- which has no physical meaning, so physics becomes undefined or unpredictable at that point. It's a discontinuity in the laws of physics and nothing can meaningfully be said about it. By the same token, the technological singularity is a hypothetical point where the slope of the curve of technological progress becomes so steep that it's impossible to define or predict further progress beyond it. It's a discontinuity in our ability to predict technological progress.

Take the notion singularity too literally, and arguably we went through in 1492, or in 1944, or five minutes ago - because no one really knows what it is or what the world will be like after it, which means it could be anything! This is a rather silly way of looking at it.

Oh, come on. You're twisting the definition. It's not just a point beyond which we don't know what will happen, but a point beyond which our ability to extrapolate from current trends ceases to apply. Nobody with any sense would equate extrapolation with certain knowledge. It's about prediction in the sense of an extrapolative tool for determining probabilities, not prediction in the sense of clairvoyance and crystal balls.

The point is that beyond the technological singularity, even our ability to guess what technological progress is possible no longer applies.

We know that the singularity is a fusion of humanity with technology.

No, that's how some people have chosen to define it. And it's a pretty sloppy definition when you put it that way. I wear glasses and I have metal plates and screws in my jaw. My father had artificial corneas and I think he got a hip replacement. We've been fusing ourselves with technology for a long time. Heck, considering that "technology" means applied knowledge in general, not just electronics, you could argue that we've been fused with technology ever since we began using agriculture and selective breeding to control our food resources.

But that's being overly literal. Let's assume that what you meant to say was a fusion of humanity with computers. We don't actually know that will bring about the singularity. That's a prediction, an extrapolation. It's a possibility, not a certainty. It's incredibly arrogant and foolish to confuse our best guesses about the future with "knowing" what the future will hold.

We know that it holds the prospect of virtual immortality.

Again, we don't "know" anything of the sort. A lot of people want to think that because they're afraid of death. The Singularity is to computer geeks what the Rapture is to Christians, a way to convince themselves that they don't have to die -- which is why proponents of the Singularity and the Apocalypse both insist that the event will happen in their own lifetimes. But medically, we have no reason to believe immortality is feasible; we don't yet know how much it might be possible to extend the human lifespan, because of course we have no experimental data to draw firm conclusions from. Claiming to "know" something without firm data is an assertion of faith, not science.

What we do know, what we can project, indicates that Star Trek is increasingly Steampunk.

And I've already explained why your definition of "steampunk" is completely invalid. It's not a synonym for "retro" or "dated."

You seem to be advocating for the extinction of the human race and its replacement by robot overlords. How is that a good thing?

Good or bad it is coming.

You don't know that. You're not a prophet. You believe it, you hope it, but news flash, buddy, you're only human and HUMANS ARE OFTEN WRONG. Hell, by your own argument, you're an inadequate, limited piece of meat, so by claiming that your beliefs are infallibly correct, you're being logically inconsistent.

We are the only species which has actively attempted to engineer its replacement! Most species eventually lose the evolutionary contest.

Evolution isn't a contest, it's a process of adaptation to an environment. And many species or genera have thrived for tens or hundreds of millions of years due to their success in their particular niches.

We, however, are laboring to build ours. AI researchers will tell you that the prospects of their research is scary, and yet they keep on doing it.

Make up your mind. Will AI merge with us or replace us? You're not being consistent in your claims.

Evolution isn't about one species replacing another, but about species branching outward from a common origin. Assuming we do create AI, why couldn't we coexist with it rather than being replaced by it?

And why assume that all humans must march in lockstep? Even if it's true that some humans will merge with AI and become higher beings or whatever, isn't it rather naive to assume that all humans would be equally willing to take the leap? What about the Amish? What about people whose religion tells them their souls will be saved upon their death, something they can't do if they're immortal? Just because progress happens, that doesn't mean everyone will embrace it. I think that even if there are advances that radically transform many humans, there will still be other humans who choose to stick with their old ways of life.

(Roddenberry even hinted at this in his novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He posited that a "New Human" movement of collective consciousness was spreading on Earth, but Starfleet represented a more "old-fashioned" mentality that was better able to retain independence when exposed to alien ways of thinking. So he was trying to justify the ST characters being familiar 20th-century types within a future setting. The idea wasn't developed beyond that one book, though.)

You mean humans with bumpy heads? Trek aliens are not all that alien.

Oh, hey, how'd the goalpost get over there? Within the fictional context of ST, of course they're alien. They're as alien as the story needs them to be. You keep forgetting we're talking about fiction here.

 

[YARN]

Okay, I misunderstood. You said "that dramatic license has expired," but I missed the "that" and thought you were saying that all dramatic license had ceased to apply.

No worries.

Nobody, in all the galaxy? The Federation is a utopia, but there are plenty of bad guys elsewhere in the galaxy, and Starfleet's mission is to go out and explore the galaxy.

Perhaps, but I maintain that you are no more vulnerable as a posthuman than as a human. Humans, without modification are uniformly susceptible to many ills.

And that's one possible way of imagining the future, sure. But that doesn't mean it's wrong for SF writers to imagine other possibilities as well.

Post-humanism is just one of my lines of analysis.

And simply imagining old-fashioned humans in space is increasingly old-fashioned.

No, it isn't. It's a mathematical term referring to a point at which a given mathematical object becomes undefined or discontinuous, such as the point where the slope of an asymptotic curve goes to infinity. Black holes are one example of a singularity -- the singularity of a black hole is the point where the force of gravity hypothetically becomes infinite -- which has no physical meaning, so physics becomes undefined or unpredictable at that point. It's a discontinuity in the laws of physics and nothing can meaningfully be said about it. By the same token, the technological singularity is a hypothetical point where the slope of the curve of technological progress becomes so steep that it's impossible to define or predict further progress beyond it. It's a discontinuity in our ability to predict technological progress.

Most often the analogy is made to the Event Horizon of a Black Hole. You want to be precious about the term, that's your biz, but the fact remains -- it's still only a metaphor and not a statement of identity. Futurists espousing the coming singularity are not shy about talking about what the future is not, and offer some positive claims about what the future will be.

The guy who metaphorically appropriated the term for his futuristic claims, certainly has some distinguishable ideas about what this future entails.

Oh, come on. You're twisting the definition.

It's not a definition. It's a metaphor.

It's not just a point beyond which we don't know what will happen, but a point beyond which our ability to extrapolate from current trends ceases to apply.

If we take this in an absolute sense, then it would make little sense that the guy who appropriated the term is taking so many vitamins and looking forward to bringing his dad back to life.

If you insist, however, on taking it in an absolute sense, then my analysis still applies. It just means that ALL science fiction is NOW Steampunk given the approaching singularity.

Nobody with any sense would equate extrapolation with certain knowledge. It's about prediction in the sense of an extrapolative tool for determining probabilities, not prediction in the sense of clairvoyance and crystal balls.

Of course not, but smart science fiction deals with these issues. DUNE, for example, justifies the future existence of bio-humans (albeit super humans) as a consequence of the Butlerian Jihad.

If you want to do science fantasy, then sure, put a large naval warship in space and call it a Battlestar. If you want to do real science fiction, however, you have to offer your guess as to what follows in the exponential growth of technology and the merging of humans with technology.

No, that's how some people have chosen to define it.

Then send an email to Kurzweil and tell him that he is using his term wrong. LOL

I wear glasses and I have metal plates and screws in my jaw. My father had artificial corneas and I think he got a hip replacement. We've been fusing ourselves with technology for a long time. Heck, considering that "technology" means applied knowledge in general, not just electronics, you could argue that we've been fused with technology ever since we began using agriculture and selective breeding to control our food resources.

And the final frontier is the fusion of mind with technology. Not as an objective resource or prosthetic, but as a transcendent realm of subjective experience.

Or it is the birth of AI - our replacements...

Again, we don't "know" anything of the sort. A lot of people want to think that because they're afraid of death. The Singularity is to computer geeks what the Rapture is to Christians

So true!

a way to convince themselves that they don't have to die -- which is why proponents of the Singularity and the Apocalypse both insist that the event will happen in their own lifetimes.

Yes! It is an End Times Theology! Ha!

But medically, we have no reason to believe immortality is feasible; we don't yet know how much it might be possible to extend the human lifespan, because of course we have no experimental data to draw firm conclusions from. Claiming to "know" something without firm data is an assertion of faith, not science.

I only said it holds the prospect, not the guarantee. Look, if we can run an identical copy of your brain on a computer, there is no reason why your mind (or rather it's copy) could not persist indefinitely.

And I've already explained why your definition of "steampunk" is completely invalid. It's not a synonym for "retro" or "dated."

But it's so alliterative and polemical. It got you to post in this thread and I am enjoying the conversation.

If you prefer another name (some have been suggested upthread), I am open to suggestion.

You don't know that. You're not a prophet.

Every prophet is told he is not a prophet!

The coming conflict does not even require true AI - it just requires machines programmed to act as if they are self interested.

You believe it, you hope it, but news flash, buddy, you're only human and HUMANS ARE OFTEN WRONG. Hell, by your own argument, you're an inadequate, limited piece of meat, so by claiming that your beliefs are infallibly correct, you're being logically inconsistent.

I don't know, with absolute certainty, that my car is still where I left it, but if you asked me if I know where it is, I would say yes. I don't know, with absolute certainty if the Sun will rise tomorrow, but if you asked me if the Sun will rise tomorrow I would say "Of course!"

As for being a piece of meat - even rats know when to flee a sinking ship.

Evolution isn't a contest, it's a process of adaptation to an environment.

Ever here of survival of the fittest? It's the selection mechanism, dude.

Make up your mind. Will AI merge with us or replace us? You're not being consistent in your claims.

It's hard to see beyond the approaching singularity. It may be a happy post-humanism. It may be Terminator. Could be both. The only thing we do know is that it won't be Horatio Hornblower in space.

Evolution isn't about one species replacing another, but about species branching outward from a common origin.

More than 99% of all species that ever lived are now extinct. One species replacing another is the story of evolution.

Assuming we do create AI, why couldn't we coexist with it rather than being replaced by it?

Possible. It is difficult to see (rubs temple), but again, it won't be Hornblower in space.

And why assume that all humans must march in lockstep? Even if it's true that some humans will merge with AI and become higher beings or whatever, isn't it rather naive to assume that all humans would be equally willing to take the leap? What about the Amish? What about people whose religion tells them their souls will be saved upon their death, something they can't do if they're immortal? Just because progress happens, that doesn't mean everyone will embrace it. I think that even if there are advances that radically transform many humans, there will still be other humans who choose to stick with their old ways of life.

(Roddenberry even hinted at this in his novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He posited that a "New Human" movement of collective consciousness was spreading on Earth, but Starfleet represented a more "old-fashioned" mentality that was better able to retain independence when exposed to alien ways of thinking. So he was trying to justify the ST characters being familiar 20th-century types within a future setting. The idea wasn't developed beyond that one book, though.)

It's possible. After all neanderthals coexisted with humans for a time... ...before they went extinct.

 

[Patrickivan]

I keep trying to call the ISS from the middle of Algonquin Provincial Park with my cellular, but it keeps saying I have no signal... I wish I had a Star Trek communicator. Those walkies have an awesome range! And no cellular network provider to deal with. Sure beats my smart phone in that regard any day.

 

[YARN]

I keep trying to call the ISS from the middle of Algonquin Provincial Park with my cellular, but it keeps saying I have no signal... I wish I had a Star Trek communicator. Those walkies have an awesome range! And no cellular network provider to deal with. Sure beats my smart phone in that regard any day.

Heard of satellite phones? You can even get internet access with those things. In TOS the Enterprise was the satellite. The communicator is at today's tech level.

And don't knock your smart phone. You can't play games, stream video, take pictures, etc., with a TOS communicator.

 

[Mytran]

Maybe not, but they're a good deal more user-servicable!
(Spock rebuild one from the spare parts of two in Patterns Of Force)

 

[Christopher]

Perhaps, but I maintain that you are no more vulnerable as a posthuman than as a human. Humans, without modification are uniformly susceptible to many ills.

Yes, and that's what's good about them as characters in fiction, because fiction is about crisis and challenges. If your characters are invulnerable, where's the story?

Most often the analogy is made to the Event Horizon of a Black Hole.

I have never heard that analogy, and if there are some people using it, they're badly misinformed, because an event horizon is not a singularity. The event horizon of a black hole is the distance from the singularity at which the escape velocity equals the speed of light, so that no information can be gained about events within that radius. The singularity is the point at the center of the black hole where the escape velocity, the force of gravity, the density of the collapsed star, and all other definable properties become infinite and impossible to define physically.

You want to be precious about the term, that's your biz

I'm doing nothing of the sort. I'm being accurate about it. "Singularity" is a technical mathematical term that's been in use since the 1880s, decades before black holes were theorized. It applies to any point in a given function where a derivative does not exist, such as a point where the function goes to infinity. A black hole is one example of a singularity. The reason the point-mass at the center of a black hole is called a singularity is because that's what it is mathematically: the equations of general relativity cannot define it because they produce infinities at that point.

Now, you're half-right in that Vernor Vinge did coin the term "technological singularity" as an analogy with a black hole singularity, but that's because they both represent points where our model of the world breaks down. Physics breaks down at the singularity of a black hole (not the event horizon, since we can certainly predict the physics between the event horizon and the singularity even if we can't observe events therein), and Vinge proposed that our predictive abilities broke down when confronted with intelligence beyond our own.

If you insist, however, on taking it in an absolute sense, then my analysis still applies. It just means that ALL science fiction is NOW Steampunk given the approaching singularity.

Except that "steampunk" does not even remotely mean what you're claiming it means. Even aside from the clear distinction in literary categories between steampunk (Victorian-influenced retro-SF) and other approaches to science fiction, you're abusing it as a negative value judgment, and that's completely unfair and petty.

If you want to do science fantasy, then sure, put a large naval warship in space and call it a Battlestar. If you want to do real science fiction, however, you have to offer your guess as to what follows in the exponential growth of technology and the merging of humans with technology.

"Real" science fiction is whatever the writer chooses to imagine and explore. SF should be free to explore all conjectural futures, not just the subset favored by some guy on the Internet who doesn't even know or care what the word "steampunk" actually means.

Yes! It is an End Times Theology! Ha!

Well, if you're outright admitting that your position is a religious ideology, then it's impossible for me to engage with you in a reasoned debate about it and I should just walk away.

I only said it holds the prospect, not the guarantee. Look, if we can run an identical copy of your brain on a computer, there is no reason why your mind (or rather it's copy) could not persist indefinitely.

If it's a copy, then it's not me, so that has no meaning to me.

But it's so alliterative and polemical.

How in the world is "steampunk" alliterative? It doesn't have a single repeated letter or phoneme.

Every prophet is told he is not a prophet!

Ergo, you are a prophet? My god, what a twisted and self-serving abuse of logic.

I don't know, with absolute certainty, that my car is still where I left it, but if you asked me if I know where it is, I would say yes. I don't know, with absolute certainty if the Sun will rise tomorrow, but if you asked me if the Sun will rise tomorrow I would say "Of course!"

Oh, don't even pretend those are legitimate analogies for predicting the results of changes so fundamental that the whole philosophy you're endorsing is predicated on the notion that it can't be predicted at all.

Ever here of survival of the fittest? It's the selection mechanism, dude.

People who don't understand evolution constantly abuse the term "survival of the fittest" (which was Herbert Spencer's phrase, not Darwin's) to mean "survival of whoever can outfight the opposition." That's an ignorant, dumbed-down, pop-culture misreading. Survival of the fittest means the survival of those organisms whose adaptations make them best able to propagate their genes. There are many different strategies that various species employ to survive and reproduce. Yes, some do so by competition and aggression, but others do so by cooperation or symbiosis, some by camouflage and avoidance of conflict, some by reproducing in large numbers, etc.

And "fittest" means "best adapted to the environment," nothing more. There's the famous example of the peppered moth. They lived on trees with white bark, so the white moths blended in better and were less likely to get eaten by birds, so being white was more "fit." But then the Industrial Revolution happened and pollution blackened the trees, so suddenly the white moths stood out and got eaten and the dark moths blended in and survived, so being dark was more "fit." And then when the pollution was cleaned up and the bark became white again, the process reversed again.

More than 99% of all species that ever lived are now extinct. One species replacing another is the story of evolution.

No, it isn't. That's the most common misconception about evolution. A lot of categories of life -- sharks, crocodiles, tortoises, spiders, etc. -- have lived on relatively unchanged for hundreds of millions of years while other species have come and gone. Because evolution is not species vs. species -- it's species adapting to their environment. If a species is well-adapted to its environment and that environment remains stable, the species can endure indefinitely. It's when the environment changes that extinction and new speciation occur.

It's hard to see beyond the approaching singularity. It may be a happy post-humanism. It may be Terminator. Could be both. The only thing we do know is that it won't be Horatio Hornblower in space.

The one thing I know is that humans aren't monolithic and have an incredible diversity of views and values. Who knows? If the singularity happens and gives us the power to shape ourselves and our world however we wish, who's to say that some subset of humanity won't choose to exist unmodified and use starships to explore the galaxy?

It's possible. After all neanderthals coexisted with humans for a time... ...before they went extinct.

For a long time, it was believed that when modern humans moved into the territories occupied by Neanderthals, we fought or competed them into extinction. But recent genetic evidence has fairly conclusively proven that we actually coexisted peacefully with the Neanderthals for a long period of time and interbred with them, so that to some extent our species merged rather than one destroying the other. We are descended in part from Neanderthals, so in a sense they live on.


Besides, you keep forgetting that what we're talking about here is fiction -- fiction being written for the people living today. The audience for science fiction is human. Do those humans reading the books or watching the shows really want to see fiction about humans like themselves being supplanted and rendered obsolete? Sure, there's SF like that, notably Greg Egan's work. But while I'm impressed by Egan's rich imagination, it leaves me cold that so many of his books focus on characters who aren't actually human at all, just AIs who delude themselves into thinking they're human and who look back on beings like me as quaint, extinct atavisms. That doesn't do much to allow me to identify with the characters.

Science fiction isn't about accurately predicting the future. It's about creating a hypothetical future that will engage an audience in the present. Personally, I'd rather read and write about characters who are genuinely human like me and the people I care about. I'm willing to give them physical and mental enhancements, but I want them to remain human, to exist within bodies of flesh and enjoy their physicality, to think and live their lives in ways I can recognize and relate to. It's not a good idea to tell a story about characters your audience can't identify with or care about.

Heck, even Vernor Vinge, the man who coined the term "technological singularity," tends to avoid writing about posthumans in his science fiction. He finds several strategies for doing so. In Marooned in Realtime, he focuses on a group of modern humans who are projected forward into a post-singularity future and never gain much insight into the beings that emerged after them. In his Zones of Thought series, he postulates that Earth occupies a region of space where the laws of physics don't allow organic or machine intelligence to surpass a certain level, and has "transcendent" intelligences exist mostly offstage, further out toward the edges of the galaxy where the laws are different and FTL travel, superminds, and the like can exist.

So we're really talking about two different things that you're failing to distinguish between. One is what might actually happen in the future, the other is what's engaging as fiction. Even the guy who made up the singularity agrees that you can't tell many stories about post-singularity humanity. "Hornblower in space" may be fanciful, but at least it's entertaining.

 

[Patrickivan]

Maybe not, but they're a good deal more user-servicable!
(Spock rebuild one from the spare parts of two in Patterns Of Force)

Thank You

I keep trying to call the ISS from the middle of Algonquin Provincial Park with my cellular, but it keeps saying I have no signal... I wish I had a Star Trek communicator. Those walkies have an awesome range! And no cellular network provider to deal with. Sure beats my smart phone in that regard any day.

Heard of satellite phones? You can even get internet access with those things. In TOS the Enterprise was the satellite. The communicator is at today's tech level.

And don't knock your smart phone. You can't play games, stream video, take pictures, etc., with a TOS communicator.

Satelite phones? Yes I have. And didn't think I needed to point out that they require a network of what? Satelites specifically designed to relay those signals... Quite dissimilar from what a Trek Communicator does. And a wee more bulky. Sure, we have small personal GPS trasponders now where you can send basic text messages and an emerg signal (SPOT is one), but you still need what? A Network... Yes. And you have to pay a yearly fee. Again, not the same.

And No- the Enterprise was not the satelite, because the communicators worked when the ship was gone too...

And am I knocking my "smart" device? Nope. It does really cool stuff. But I can't upload an entire library in minutes and then send that information directly to the ISS like a tricorders could.

We're talking about completely different technological equipment designed for completely different applications. Communictors are designed to be simple, long range, and most important, autonomous of a support network to make it work.

Smart devices are little computers that in 200 years, I have no doubt will out perform anything Star Trek has. But today, the Communicator still wins for range, independance, durability, and size.

 

[YARN]

Yes, and that's what's good about them as characters in fiction, because fiction is about crisis and challenges. If your characters are invulnerable, where's the story?

That is a sad, sad, sad justification for Trek’s unreflective humanism.
“It’s good that they may be even more vulnerable, it makes for good fiction!”

I suppose this should have been my response to you when you complained (under the reality criterion) that my networked post humans would be more vulnerable. I should have just said, “Mo vulnerable = mo adventure!”

I have never heard that analogy, and if there are some people using it, they're badly misinformed, because an event horizon is not a singularity.

Of course it isn’t! But once you’ve crossed the event horizon, there is no escaping the singularity and no information can be sent to an outside observer.

I'm doing nothing of the sort. I'm being accurate about it.

No, you’re being ridiculously precious about it.

Consider how you prattle on below…

"Singularity" is a technical mathematical term that's been in use since the 1880s, decades before black holes were theorized. It applies to any point in a given function where a derivative does not exist, such as a point where the function goes to infinity. A black hole is one example of a singularity. The reason the point-mass at the center of a black hole is called a singularity is because that's what it is mathematically: the equations of general relativity cannot define it because they produce infinities at that point.

Imagine you asked me which car of mine I dropped off at the shop. I say, “I dropped off the Chevy.” You say, “You are using the term incorrectly! Yours is not the only Chevy in the world. Your Forest Green 2002 Chevy Malibu is just ONE example of a Chevy! The Chevrolet brand has existed since 1911. DECADES before your EXAMPLE of a Chevrolet existed!”
This is all true, and yet the term “singularity” is often used to describe the physical phenomena we call “black holes” without a care for the purely mathematical sense of the term.

"Now, you're half-right in that Vernor Vinge did coin the term "technological singularity" as an analogy with a black hole singularity, but that's because they both represent points where our model of the world breaks down. Physics breaks down at the singularity of a black hole (not the event horizon, since we can certainly predict the physics between the event horizon and the singularity even if we can't observe events therein), and Vinge proposed that our predictive abilities broke down when confronted with intelligence beyond our own.

Epistemically, what matters is crossing the point where no information is available to an outside observer (this is the relevant part of the metaphor), and that boundary IS the event horizon. If you want to get all prissy with the physics, the event horizon is where the metaphor matters.

"Except that "steampunk" does not even remotely mean what you're claiming it means. Even aside from the clear distinction in literary categories between steampunk (Victorian-influenced retro-SF) and other approaches to science fiction, you're abusing it as a negative value judgment, and that's completely unfair and petty.

Oh, it works fine as a polemical means of stating the contrast between Treknology and ever diverging technology.

"Real" science fiction is whatever the writer chooses to imagine and explore. SF should be free to explore all conjectural futures

This thinking does serious science fiction a real disservice and makes it indistinguishable from fantasy adventure. The Science Fantasy writer should be able to do whatever s/he wishes. His/her books should be on the shelf in the same section that features Jedi Knights, Witches, and Psychics playing out power-boy fantasies. I feel sorry for writers engaged serious science fiction writing. For every 2001, there are thirty Star Wars titles.

Well, if you're outright admitting that your position is a religious ideology, then it's impossible for me to engage with you in a reasoned debate about it and I should just walk away.

Oh, lighten up man!

I give you props for an insightful criticism of my side of the debate and you threaten to walk away?

If it's a copy, then it's not me, so that has no meaning to me.

Ditto for the transporter then. Ditto for YOU in 2011 vs. YOU in 2001 (you’ve replaced uncountable cells, had different experiences, gained memories, lost memories.

Why wouldn’t the person on the other end of the transporter be you? Star Trek has let go of such panicky concerns for years.

Say you walked through the Tesla box in The Prestige. How would you even know which one of you was the copy?

How in the world is "steampunk" alliterative? It doesn't have a single repeated letter or phoneme.

“Star Trek is Steam Punk” – it’s a double “S” thing. You know, like “Peter Piper Picked a Peck...” Also, the words on either side of the “is” are nicely balanced. They almost have the same number of letters (if you separate steampunk into two words - orally the effect is still monosyllabic). The last letter ends in “K.”

It’s just got snap to it.

Ergo, you are a prophet? My god, what a twisted and self-serving abuse of logic.

I imagine that many of us are being abused like this by those who fear the coming singularity.

Oh, don't even pretend those are legitimate analogies for predicting the results of changes so fundamental that the whole philosophy you're endorsing is predicated on the notion that it can't be predicted at all.

No, and AGAIN the notion of the singularity is a “M E T A P H O R.” Every metaphor breaks down somewhere it would be a statement of identity. AGAIN, singularity theorists do have positive things to say about what comes before and after the event.

And stop trying to game the word “know” to its strictest sense of “what we know with a certainty.” If this is the definition, then 99% of the facts you claim to know, are not, in fact, knowledge.

People who don't understand evolution constantly abuse the term "survival of the fittest" (which was Herbert Spencer's phrase, not Darwin's) to mean "survival of whoever can outfight the opposition." That's an ignorant, dumbed-down, pop-culture misreading.

LOL: “Spencer’s phrase” ad hominem, ad hominem, ad hominem,” proves nothing.

NOTE: The theory is bigger than Darwin (who was lucky that Mendel saved his bacon).

Survival of the fittest means the survival of those organisms whose adaptations make them best able to propagate their genes. There are many different strategies that various species employ to survive and reproduce. Yes, some do so by competition and aggression, but others do so by cooperation or symbiosis, some by camouflage and avoidance of conflict, some by reproducing in large numbers, etc.

There is always competition at the gene-level. Whose genes will be passed along? Random mutation and genetic shuffling is the differentiation mechanism. Competition (the empirical test of fitness) is the selection mechanism.

And "fittest" means "best adapted to the environment," nothing more. There's the famous example of the peppered moth. They lived on trees with white bark, so the white moths blended in better and were less likely to get eaten by birds, so being white was more "fit." But then the Industrial Revolution happened and pollution blackened the trees, so suddenly the white moths stood out and got eaten and the dark moths blended in and survived, so being dark was more "fit." And then when the pollution was cleaned up and the bark became white again, the process reversed again.

Right. Fitness is contingent. What is a competitive adaptation at one moment is not a competitive adaptation at another.

No, it isn't. That's the most common misconception about evolution.

That more than 99% of species that have ever existed are extinct is a fact. And it isn’t one which is contested in the scientific community.

A lot of categories of life -- sharks, crocodiles, tortoises, spiders, etc. -- have lived on relatively unchanged for hundreds of millions of years while other species have come and gone. Because evolution is not species vs. species -- it's species adapting to their environment.

It’s species with and against everything. It is a competition to survive. When other species are competing for scarce resources we have inter-species competition. But even the last species on Earth would be competing with the environment and with itself (intra-species genetic variation) to survive.

That there have been successful species does nothing to repudiate the claim that life is a competition. You simply point out species which are winning that competition. How many less suitably adapted creatures died in competition with sharks, crocks, spiders, etc.?

The one thing I know is that humans aren't monolithic and have an incredible diversity of views and values. Who knows? If the singularity happens and gives us the power to shape ourselves and our world however we wish, who's to say that some subset of humanity won't choose to exist unmodified and use starships to explore the galaxy?

This is not the prime computation. The slowest, dimmest, most primitive example of the species (the pure bio-human) will be the first to go.

For a long time, it was believed that when modern humans moved into the territories occupied by Neanderthals, we fought or competed them into extinction. But recent genetic evidence has fairly conclusively proven that we actually coexisted peacefully with the Neanderthals for a long period of time and interbred with them, so that to some extent our species merged rather than one destroying the other. We are descended in part from Neanderthals, so in a sense they live on.

Well, all life is descended from life, so in a vacuous sense everything is eternal so long as there is life. But on this view, I would think you would be less panicky about the approaching singularity.

What matters crucially is that the dominant species won the competition. Your days are numbered bioman.

Besides, you keep forgetting that what we're talking about here is fiction -- fiction being written for the people living today. The audience for science fiction is human. Do those humans reading the books or watching the shows really want to see fiction about humans like themselves being supplanted and rendered obsolete? Sure, there's SF like that, notably Greg Egan's work. But while I'm impressed by Egan's rich imagination, it leaves me cold that so many of his books focus on characters who aren't actually human at all, just AIs who delude themselves into thinking they're human and who look back on beings like me as quaint, extinct atavisms. That doesn't do much to allow me to identify with the characters.

Science fiction isn't about accurately predicting the future. It's about creating a hypothetical future that will engage an audience in the present. Personally, I'd rather read and write about characters who are genuinely human like me and the people I care about. I'm willing to give them physical and mental enhancements, but I want them to remain human, to exist within bodies of flesh and enjoy their physicality, to think and live their lives in ways I can recognize and relate to. It's not a good idea to tell a story about characters your audience can't identify with or care about.

Heck, even Vernor Vinge, the man who coined the term "technological singularity," tends to avoid writing about post humans in his science fiction. He finds several strategies for doing so. In Marooned in Realtime, he focuses on a group of modern humans who are projected forward into a post-singularity future and never gain much insight into the beings that emerged after them. In his Zones of Thought series, he postulates that Earth occupies a region of space where the laws of physics don't allow organic or machine intelligence to surpass a certain level, and has "transcendent" intelligences exist mostly offstage, further out toward the edges of the galaxy where the laws are different and FTL travel, superminds, and the like can exist.

So we're really talking about two different things that you're failing to distinguish between. One is what might actually happen in the future, the other is what's engaging as fiction. Even the guy who made up the singularity agrees that you can't tell many stories about post-singularity humanity. "Hornblower in space" may be fanciful, but at least it's entertaining.

If I didn’t like “Hornblower in Space,” I wouldn’t be here. Much of Trek’s future has already come true! I can’t think of a more flattering way for science fiction to age, but age it does, and it increasingly will tend toward myth. Trek is increasingly quaint and antiquated (steampunkish), but I still enjoy it very much. My central claim in this thread is that we should reconsider the reality criterion in our discussions of Treknology as the criterion increasingly drifts, as the chasm between past-future and present-day widens.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Unreflective humanism?

Looking to one's own self for understanding as opposed to waiting for machine gods to bring about the magical tech rapture is more reflective? I think it's ignorant to try and ignore the human condition and try not to understand it. Because no matter wherever we go, the things that make us human are going to follow us, and just ignoring them because they're pitiful mortal biohuman things is just arrogant.

More to the point, humanity is going to be stuck in these flesh and blood bodies for quite some time. The human brain isn't like a hard drive. Everything is physical. Chemical. Any scenario where the human body is supplanted by tech, I think is unlikely to happen in your lifetime or mine, bucko.

 

[YARN]

But today, the Communicator still wins for range, independance, durability, and size.

Very well.

But consider this. A smartphone has all the functionality it's present user could want (for there is no Enterprise in orbit and people in the floating International Trailer Park are not that interesting). If there were an Enterprise in orbit, it could certainly link to your smartphone.

Not only does the present smartphone have all the functionality you could really want for (in areas where the communicator exceeds it), it has gobs of functionality that the communicator never dreamed of. The communicator is a walkie-talkie. The smartphone is a UTM in your vest pocket.

______________________________________

Looking to one's own self for understanding as opposed to waiting for machine gods to bring about the magical tech rapture is more reflective?

Denying the coming singularity John Henry-style with the plucky optimism that biohumans are irreplaceable (i.e., The Ultimate Machine) is unreflective. The machines aren't just beating us at chess, they're beating us at Jeopardy. Some of them are passing the Turing test at a rate greater than 50%.

I think it's ignorant to try and ignore the human condition and try not to understand it. Because no matter wherever we go, the things that make us human are going to follow us, and just ignoring them because they're pitiful mortal biohuman things is just arrogant.

On the contrary, the only way to escape the human condition is to fundamentally change the human condition. It is YOU the biomeatpuppet who is doomed to forever repeat history out of hardwired ignorance, bias, and self-interest.

More to the point, humanity is going to be stuck in these flesh and blood bodies for quite some time.

I agree.

The human brain isn't like a hard drive. Everything is physical. Chemical. Any scenario where the human body is supplanted by tech, I think is unlikely to happen in your lifetime or mine, bucko.

That everything is physical is why, in principle, there is no reason that you couldn't run a brain (with arbitrarily selected or downloaded memories) on a computer.

For the human body to be supplanted by tech we only need a dominant AI to emerge - we don't need fusion.

 

[Christopher]

I knew it was a mistake to revisit this thread. YARN, I tried to respond to your posts with clarification and detail, and you respond with petty namecalling. That says it all right there, so I don't need to waste any more time here.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Spinning quite the YARN isn't he?

Oh ho ho, I slay me.

 

[YARN]

and you respond with petty namecalling.

Wuh?

What name did I call you?

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Pathetic/backwards fleshy/bio/organic-meatbag/sack/puppet?

 

[YARN]

Pathetic/backwards fleshy/bio/organic-meatbag/sack/puppet?

But that's all of us. I am a meat-puppet.

Before this post I was accused (by Chris) of being a religious zealout, and so on, so I don't really see the party foul here.

 

[Patrickivan]

I like my meat-puppets to be female and coated in oil... mmm mmm...

 

[Ghrakh]

Indeed, research has shown that there is increasingly little reason to have pilots aboard commercial aircraft. The planes fly themselves. The biggest reason why we still have them and will continue to have them for awhile is that people aren't yet comfortable with the idea of a pilot-less plane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsp3jQxRSRM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFOuyeYwHms


Yep, leave it to a computer program.

 

[Christopher]

Computers are great at flying planes -- when they're working right and everything is going smoothly. But computers, like the humans who build them, are not infallible, so it's a good idea to have human beings in the cockpit in case the computers malfunction or an unexpected crisis arises.

 

[Pavonis]

Pathetic/backwards fleshy/bio/organic-meatbag/sack/puppet?

But that's all of us. I am a meat-puppet.

You're a meat puppet? As in, you're under the control or influence of another party? Or do you mean meat-bag?

Either way, don't deprecate the flesh. It'll be a long time before technology, nano-scale or otherwise, can surpass the capability, functionality, and ruggedness of biology.

 

[Christopher]

Either way, don't deprecate the flesh. It'll be a long time before technology, nano-scale or otherwise, can surpass the capability, functionality, and ruggedness of biology.

Indeed, some of the most promising cutting-edge research in computer technology involves using neural matter or DNA. I think that instead of technology replacing biology, the future will involve the two becoming increasingly interdependent and maybe eventually all but indistinguishable.