Science marches on and my inteleejens is insulted

[similar.squirrel]

Don't read spec-fic for the science. Don't read science for the fiction.

 

[rabidmidget]

You're right, I too am outraged that writers had the gall to try to set their works in the future by extrapolating on the technologies of their time.

 

[Saulkar]

You're right, I too am outraged that writers had the gall to try to set their works in the future by extrapolating on the technologies of their time.

The whole playful nature of this thread has gone right over your indignated head. Give yourself a pat on the back.

If I was outraged, I would have used a more formal, not a completely laid back and don't really give a shit but still am intrigued and want to strike up a topic of conversation tone in the original post/topic. Additionally I would not have placed the science moves on TV-Trope at the top of the page which blatantly acknowledges that the author was limited by scientific resources from the good'ol days and thus would no doubt have information that would be in later years expanded upon or discredited if I had anyway been offended by the author's foray.

Furthermore having one's intelligence insulted does not necessarily correlate with one's displeasure over a peace of work (otherwise the Simpsons would never have become the cash cow it is today) thus regardless I can still enjoy whatever I am viewing. Thus in turn I am willing to be insulted all I want without fear of despising the creators or the creation (unless they on purposely created the work with the sole intent to deceive). Suppressing said emotional response does not make you any higher of a being as implied by the sarcastic tone of your comment but rather denotes a simple desensitivity to a trivial emotion.

Now that I am done my amoooozing wall'O'text, has anyone seen my spork?

I want my spork!

 

[Saulkar]

I've never had a problem suspending disbelief when an author introduces magic (or sufficiently advanced technology) and just makes their own rules for it (or even leaves it at a handwave); that's an acceptable break from reality for the sake of a story, and they never pretend that it's supposed to really work that way outside of their own fictional continuity.

I also don't really have an issue with valid assumptions made with outdated information; I have a working knowledge of how current scientific ideas gradually developed, and I can just kinda mentally regress to the same period as the writer.

I can sympathize and genuinely overlook/enjoy that.

Right now we have no real idea what kind of a computer/terminology that has yet to be coined - will be needed in order to properly simulate/be a real sentient intelligence. We just take what we know and twist it into the most likely scenario because it is all that we have. Down the road when we are old and grey and our grandchildren mock the scientific inaccuracies of our media, we can just laugh and point at them like our grandfathers are doing right now to us. :3

 

[rabidmidget]

You're right, I too am outraged that writers had the gall to try to set their works in the future by extrapolating on the technologies of their time.

The whole playful nature of this thread has gone right over your indignated head. Give yourself a pat on the back.

If I was outraged, I would have used a more formal, not a completely laid back and don't really give a shit but still am intrigued and want to strike up a topic of conversation tone in the original post/topic. Additionally I would not have placed the science moves on TV-Trope at the top of the page which blatantly acknowledges that the author was limited by scientific resources from the good'ol days and thus would no doubt have information that would be in later years expanded upon or discredited if I had anyway been offended by the author's foray.

Furthermore having one's intelligence insulted does not necessarily correlate with one's displeasure over a peace of work (otherwise the Simpsons would never have become the cash cow it is today) thus regardless I can still enjoy whatever I am viewing. Thus in turn I am willing to be insulted all I want without fear of despising the creators or the creation (unless they on purposely created the work with the sole intent to deceive). Suppressing said emotional response does not make you any higher of a being as implied by the sarcastic tone of your comment but rather denotes a simple desensitivity to a trivial emotion.

Now that I am done my amoooozing wall'O'text, has anyone seen my spork?

I want my spork!

I apologise for the sarcasm and spite in my comment, it was inappropriate. I was was merely angered by the idea that a work can insult your intelligence in such a way, which seemed disrespectful to the writer.

 

[Saulkar]

You're right, I too am outraged that writers had the gall to try to set their works in the future by extrapolating on the technologies of their time.

The whole playful nature of this thread has gone right over your indignated head. Give yourself a pat on the back.

If I was outraged, I would have used a more formal, not a completely laid back and don't really give a shit but still am intrigued and want to strike up a topic of conversation tone in the original post/topic. Additionally I would not have placed the science moves on TV-Trope at the top of the page which blatantly acknowledges that the author was limited by scientific resources from the good'ol days and thus would no doubt have information that would be in later years expanded upon or discredited if I had anyway been offended by the author's foray.

Furthermore having one's intelligence insulted does not necessarily correlate with one's displeasure over a peace of work (otherwise the Simpsons would never have become the cash cow it is today) thus regardless I can still enjoy whatever I am viewing. Thus in turn I am willing to be insulted all I want without fear of despising the creators or the creation (unless they on purposely created the work with the sole intent to deceive). Suppressing said emotional response does not make you any higher of a being as implied by the sarcastic tone of your comment but rather denotes a simple desensitivity to a trivial emotion.

Now that I am done my amoooozing wall'O'text, has anyone seen my spork?

I want my spork!

I apologise for the sarcasm and spite in my comment, it was inappropriate. I was was merely angered by the idea that a work can insult your intelligence in such a way, which seemed disrespectful to the writer.

I accept your apology and offer you a spork as an offer of peace.

 

[AnarchistFish]

Keep in mind that a lot of things currently or recently believed as fact in science have been/may be disproved, so you could still believe in the story where somehow they have managed to evade that technicality. God knows what can be possible in the future. If someone had written a story maybe, 400 years ago set today, in exactly how today is like, no-one would have believed it could have been possible.

 

[WolfThomas]

The book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is pretty much entirely based around technology that Huxley saw us having in the future. The main one being cloning, back then the research obviously hadnt been done, so his biology is all completely wrong.. but you kind of have to give it to him for making up an entire science and making it believable, it wasnt just technobabble, either way it still doesnt affect how good the book is.
Also even though his cloning isnt scientifically correct, he does predict alot of other relevant scientific and social advances which is pretty cool.

He also described with relative accuaracy fetal alcohol syndrome, before it was properly discovered.

 

[Jowe]

FYI, just because a planet is small does not mean that it cannot have a large gravitational field, since the gravitational field strength is proportional to F (or g)=G*(m1*m2/r^2) so if the mass is increased enough (the density of the planet, ie it could have a tungsten core instead of nickel/iron (although that would lead to problems with the magnetic fields D then the outer edge of the planet would be closer to the centre of mass and could have a similar g to that of earth, and it is science FICTION after all

 

[Hyper-space]

Man, I read the title as "Science marches on and my Intelli-jeans is insulted".

That sounds like one pair of intelligent jeans.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Something like the way the spaceships in Star Wars fly like they're in an atmosphere shatter some peoples suspension of belief but I do not give a damn and actually enjoy it but at the same time something like the narrator from A Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy saying that a person could survive in space for exactly thirty seconds with a lungful of air completely broke my suspension of belief for about thirty minutes.

This is why I prefer something like Star Wars over something like Star Trek.

I'm not a Star Wars fan at all, but when it comes to "interstellar species" tales I 'd rather it didn't take itself too serious since the concept is ridiculous from the start. So you might aswell just make it Fantasy in space.

If someone wants to make a serious space story, I'll only buy into it if it goes in the 2001: A Space Odyssey or Moon direction. But as soon as humanoid aliens enter the scene it'd better be a bit silly or campy for me to go along for the ride - Nothing's as boring as totally straight humanoid aliens.

 

[Eomega123]

My little brother was watching a cartoon where the villian sucks the intelligence ot of one of the character's brains, making him a genius and the other guy an idiot. I shouted "science doesn't work that way!" and stormed out of the room angrily.

Did your little brother respond with, "No one gives a shit, calm the fuck down." ??

Actually, he said 'Yeah it's stupid, but there's nothing elso on," and if you read my previous post you'd know that my response was more than a little exaggerated.

 

[cookyy2k]

Teleportation was never feasible.

Is and has been done: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3811785.stm

The reason we can't teleport anything more complex is bandwidth restrictions. It would take longer than the Universe's life to teleport all the data for a human at current limitations.

You just defeated your own point, keyword is 'feasible'.

So how is it not feasible? Bandwidth is net going to stay this limited, it will increase and hopefully one day be large enough, that would make it feasible.

 

[Unesh52]

And I never did say that insulted intelligence equaled the inability to still enjoy a film/movie.

This. I think it's fun in itself to consider the real world plausibility of the crazy stuff that happens in fiction. Let's say some movie depicts earth getting hit by some large impactor and rotating off its axis by some large degree. We could actually calculate how big and fast the impactor would have to be to do that to the planet, what would happen to the bodies after impact, and the ecological implications of both the impact and the rotation. And I think that could be fun! It's not being a "kill joy" to derive entertainment from critical thought about the world supposed by a fictional universe. It can be just as engaging as thinking about the "message" of the movie, or what have you. And frankly, there's more math in the former, so I'd probably take it over the latter any day

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Ahh, no. for the body to recognise something in foreign, it needs to express a certan molecule called MHC. red blood cells cant produce this molecule, so the bodies immune system wouldnt recognise foreign blood.

blood is rejected because of molecules in the blood that binds to foreign blood and causes it to clot, causing the rejection.

The bodies immune system works off white blood cells, so of course the red cells wouldn't attack it. If the immune system doesn't think the donor blood matches whats currently flowing in your body, it will attack it.

The grammar of the next bit makes it a bit difficult to understand precisely what it is your trying to say; I think you are saying that if there is foreign matter in the blood, it will cause it to clot and subsequently reject?

 

[Brandon237]

For Jupiter, don't count on getting to close to it. It's moons take a constant beating. Jupiter is a brown dwarf after all (reclassification pending). While it didn't have the oomph to go stellar, it still pumps out enough rads to ruin your weekend, if you only had one weekend left to live and decided to spend it on one of Jupiter's moons. Why would you, the view is crap. Except for that big ass storm.

What?
Jupiter is NOT a brown dwarf. Not even close.

Currently, the International Astronomical Union considers an object with a mass above the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion of deuterium (currently calculated to be 13 Jupiter masses for objects of solar metallicity) to be a brown dwarf, whereas an object under that mass (and orbiting a star or stellar remnant) is considered a planet.[3]
The 13 Jupiter-mass cutoff is a rule of thumb rather than something of precise physical significance. Larger objects will burn most of their deuterium and smaller ones will burn only a little, and the 13 Jupiter mass value is somewhere in between. The amount of deuterium burnt also depends not only on mass but on the composition of the planet, on the amount of helium and deuterium present.[4] The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia includes objects up to 25 Jupiter masses, and the Exoplanet Data Explorer up to 24 Jupiter masses. Objects below 13 Jupiter-mass are sometimes studied under the label "sub-brown dwarf".

13 Jupiter masses... that is... a lot more than the mass of Jupiter wouldn't you say?
It has the same RADIUS as most brown dwarfs, but it didn't form as most do, and is not NEARLY heavy enough to be one, even at twice its current mass, it wouldn't be considered a brown dwarf.

The reclassification is not "pending", it is an idea in the minds of a few (very few) astronomers who are more obsessed with that planet than I am. It is big, damn big, and heavy, and energetic, but not a failed star or anything close.

 

[khiliani]

Ahh, no. for the body to recognise something in foreign, it needs to express a certan molecule called MHC. red blood cells cant produce this molecule, so the bodies immune system wouldnt recognise foreign blood.

blood is rejected because of molecules in the blood that binds to foreign blood and causes it to clot, causing the rejection.

The bodies immune system works off white blood cells, so of course the red cells wouldn't attack it. If the immune system doesn't think the donor blood matches whats currently flowing in your body, it will attack it.

The grammar of the next bit makes it a bit difficult to understand precisely what it is your trying to say; I think you are saying that if there is foreign matter in the blood, it will cause it to clot and subsequently reject?

I'm saying the white blood cells in the person receiving the blood transfusion can not recognise the red blood cells from the blood transfusion. I have a major in immunology, I'm not an idiot.

blood transfusion failure because of blood type mismatching is not caused by an immune response. there are antigens on the red blood cells that bind with an antibody that is always present, and not produced as part of an immune response, and causes the blood to clot, leading to the blood rejection.

 

[Voulan]

I remember that coming off as satirical (it's what the character believes, not necessarily what the author believes). I could be wrong though; I did read it a few years ago.

Perhaps it was. It was Jack's son, Heinrich, who said this - and throughout the novel he is the voice of science and reason.

Thanks for pointing that out. The book is in my final exam for University, so that could be a good thing to write on.

OT: Anything that calls Pluto a planet, while everyone is discussing Jupiter.

I still maintain Pluto is a planet anyway.

 

[Shock and Awe]

I usually have no problem with something being scientifically inaccurate. If its something thats not stupidly inaccurate I have little problem going with it. What you are describing is what I would consider stupidly inaccurate. There are just so many basic things that are wrong with it I can't ignore it and get into the story. This is part of the reason Foundation kind of bothered me seeing as everything was from an Atomic Generator and thats so out of date it isn't funny. Despite that it wasn't stupid, just a bit silly.