Star Wars despotism VS. Star Trek populism

I never said that there wasn't a potential explanation, only that if you start creating unlikely aliens, then it kind of hurts the suspension of disbelief -- there are ways of dealing with that, such as actually GIVING that explanation, or at least having someone in the story being as incredulous as the reader may be. But that's not a problem isolated to science fiction, and mainstream audiences actually seem to be a lot more accepting of absurd assumptions (how else can you explain shows like "Eureka" and "Warehouse 13", which make Star Trek seem more like a science textbook by comparison).

 

I knew about that -- I know I'm not the only one who was bothered by the fighters banking in space (how/why does a ship bank like an airplane if they are in a vacuum?). Obviously it's because Lucas was trying to serve the action to give the fights within a context that mainstream viewers are familiar with (WWI fighter dogfights) instead of going for any semblance of realism. Which goes to show you that there is a HUGE difference between what feels real and what actually is real.

If the audience were a lot more sophisticated (ie. educated about how things really work in the physical world), Star Wars would have been a flop, imho.

There's a level of comfort that if you exceed, the world on the screen will stop feeling real to you, and that varies based on your personal experience. Not many people have the experience of actually flying any type of vehicle through a vacuum (let alone, a vehicle the size of a jet fighter). But I grew up in a time where the epitome of good on-screen science fiction was "2001: A Space Odyssey", so maybe my standards are a little different. (And hard science fiction, like 2001, was kind of unknown to a large part of the audience of the Star Wars series).

 

There's a concept in (pop) science known as the "Uranium Barrier" - the idea that long before a civilization develops the technology to actually visit other stars, it will first reach the point where it's much easier to split atoms in big nasty explosions. Once you can split the atom, the chances of wiping out your own species just keep going up. Not to mention the perils of genetic engineering gone bad, nanotech grey goo, etc. There's just a lot more ways to destroy your own planet then there are ways to reach other stars.

As I see it, there's only a few ways to survive past the Uranium Barrier and get out into space.
A) Cultural and social evolution to the point where it's like a planet full of buddhas (not just buddhists, but the big guy himself), and not a single case of mental disorder anywhere on the planet.
B) Ant-colony super-hive-mind, where it just never occurs to the dominant species to ever make war on themselves.
C) Repressive fascist regime that makes knowledge of the a-bomb punishable by death.

Now, honestly, I'd be pleasantly surprised if A exists, and I'm not holding my breath. Option C seems doomed to failure, as the more totalitarian your society, the more nutjobs that will crawl out of the woodwork to engage in acts of terror, and eventually despite all your efforts they'll get the bomb (or something worse) anyway. That leaves B.

Odds are the universe is populated by termites and smoking craters.

 

Actually, Timothy Zahn, an author who also just so happened to nearly earn a PhD in Physics (never completed as his adviser died suddenly) had a very sophisticated theory on how craft might come to maneuver in just such a way as is depicted in Star Wars. I'm not in any position to critique it, as my highest scientific achievements are two semesters of college level calculus along with basic college physics and chemistry. But I'm assuming anyone who can earn a Master's in Physics, and qualify for a Doctorate program, should be able to make decent theories.

Also: Any setting that includes sentient A.I. falls into the 'fairy tale' category just as much as any setting that attempts aliens, although not because I don't think a human writer is unable to write a sentient A.I. believably. Many authors have done so.

There's simply no scientific rational for, well... reason. Or free will. We can't put them in a lab and test them, we can't quantify them on standardized charts, we can't even agree if animals of a lower intelligence level possess them. We're fairly certain they work but we don't even have an objective measuring stick to tell us that they're not really fictions created by our instincts and the meat we're attached to. Anyone who says anything about these things is making a philosophical statement, not a scientific one. Note for the record that I say this for the sake of being the devil's advocate, not because I actually espouse the above positions.

 

I have no doubt that there are many people out there with a lot more knowledge of physics than I do, and I have no doubt that the areas of my lack of knowledge are nearly boundless. But that's not EXACTLY what I'm talking about. I'm talking more about what feels real. If you are comfortable with how WWI dogfights appear on a screen, because you've undoubtedly seen old movies like I have, then Star Wars style combat may feel real to you. On the other hand (lacking any sort of context or familiarity with the theoretical physics knowledge of Timothy Zahn), the motions of the Star Wars type space fighters in the films will NOT feel real.

There's a point where familiarity with something becomes ingrained -- you can know something to be true because you've read it, but there's also a greater level of familiarity where it becomes intuitive to the point where you can no longer suspend your disbelief.

For the most part, we experience the world in a very Newtonian way, and I guarantee that any theoretical explanation that Zahn could come up with (because I guarantee he did not try to find an explanation until after he had seen Star Wars) would be non-Newtonian. That does not mean that what he came up with is necessarily wrong, only that it will FEEL wrong to someone with any sort of newtonian-based intuition about how things OUGHT to work.

Which brings me up to something a little bit off-topic: "John Carter". I haven't seen the movie itself (I'm currently reading the first book of ERB's series, and have read other ERB classics). But there's a scene in the trailer that was what truly convinced me not to see the movie.

Now I know that ERB is a product of the era that he hailed from, and he was not as technically well-versed as, for example, Jules Verne. But the scene from the trailer where John Carter starts swinging a huge boulder around that is connected to him via a long metal chain... what the hell were they thinking?

Now I know that Mars as depicted by ERB is nothing like Mars actually is, and I can accept that, because it's a period piece. And I can accept that, as ERB describes in his book, that a person would be able to jump higher and lift more massive objects than he would be able to on earth. But the rules of newtonian physics still hold. So regardless of gravity, it still takes a hell of a lot of force to accelerate a massive object like a boulder, and their will be an equal and opposite force on JC.

In other words, just because you are experiencing a lower gravitational force, doesn't mean that inertia goes out the window.

To me, that scene just felt wrong. It felt uncomfortably wrong. I know that I may be alone in that feeling. But now, a movie that I was kind of interested in seeing at first, I now can't possibly enjoy because of that one stupid scene in a stupid trailer.

 

I'm sorry, I must have misunderstood. Can you give examples of exactly what kind of maneuvering you find to be unrealistic? While I know there are some moments in Star Wars that don't exactly ring true to either inertial based maneuvering or airfoil maneuvering, I had always attributed them to a failure of special effects available to Lucas, as he upgraded them in his remastered versions. Maybe that's part of the cause? Just not clear on exactly what you're referring to.

On the topic of John Carter: I'm not really interested in seeing this movie in the first place, so I've kind of slept through everything I've seen related to it. Wasn't even aware it was based on a book. But yeah, anything by Disney requires a much greater than normal suspension of disbelief. Definitely not for everyone.

 

It's not just specific failings of the special effects crew. It's the whole concept that a space ship in a vacuum can bank and swoop like an airplane, and/or needs to face in the direction they are traveling. Both notions are ludicrous, yet absolutely vital to the Death Star trench scene.

Atomic Rocket's list of common misconceptions about space pretty much sums up it and whole lot of other common sci-fi movie physics goofs. If you've got a few days to burn, click on every page link at Atomic Rocket, and you'll learn more than you ever wanted to know.

A more detailed Star Wars -specific run down can be found at Galactic Interactions.

Arcana Wiki and TV Tropes both have some choice things to say on the topic of sci-fi and science as well.

 

As I said, Zahn and several others have a theory based on the use of the term "s-foil", zero-point energy and a couple of other things I'm forgetting that basically amounts to an answer to the question, "how does a ship with so little reaction mass manage to maneuver so much?" Incidentally, a question I hear asked very rarely if never in spite of the fact that it's pretty major issue, IMHO.

A major part of the theory was that s-foils interact with zero-point energy in pretty much the same way an airfoil interacts with, well, air. As for the whole flying forward part, I'd say that's a side effect of how the human brain processes motion, not physics. Sure, you can fly backwards, but can you do it safely?

Newtonian physics says an object in motion tends to stay in motion, but the human brain is not used to navigating by adding up a bunch of forward vectors to see where you go. Humans process motion based on the idea of running. It makes a great deal of sense to presume that the vessels of highly advanced, human space faring civilizations would maneuver via varying strength rear thrusters and side thrusters, which is how I figured starfghters moved when I was younger. I figured the jets on the sides of the ship were just so small as to be invisible.

Also, given their obvious ability to throw off targeting sensors and increase the confusing and tricky nature of evasive maneuvers, why would I not want my small but essentially unprotected star craft to be able to swoop, twist and juke like atmospheric fighters? Sure a dead stop is tricky. It's also hell on pilot and craft, and if its the only option available it becomes much easier to read. In fact, having to adjust the direction of my ship's nose before adjusting heading sounds like an invitation to getting shot.

It's also worth noting that there is mass in space, it's not a perfect vacuum. While most franchises don't have fighters that move fast enough for it to matter, near-C maneuvering will have many of the same characteristics of maneuvering in atmosphere.

I guess what I'm wondering is, why is this such a major issue as to cause a loss of appreciation for a film? Normally, I'd chalk this up to a person taking their entertainment a little more seriously than I do, but let's face it: We're on the web-forums of a game where the main character can carry enough in his backpack to start his own SCA branch without feeling the least bit encumbered. He kills enemies like Footies and Pectinous Tesseracts and he does it with skills like Necronomiceconomics and Killer Veganism. Why is setting aside a little physics in pursuit of a good time such a crime by comparison? Or are movies different from video games? If so, why? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

I "like" this thread quite a bit now - not "kinda like" or even "Facebook like", but more of a "full-on Wi§p like".

Has to be one of the top 5 geekiest threads on the forums at this point.

 

Professional Dweeb FTW!

 

A fourth possibility would be a culture of paranoia, with most of its resources devoted to things like missile defense technologies, deeper and deeper underground bunkers, and, of course, to developing a way to flee the planet.


And also, you wouldn't have to get to the stars, just to another planet. I imagine that there would be an abundance of time to shoot down a missile aimed at Mars from Earth or at Earth from Mars, especially if you were anxiously watching the other planet at all times.

 

Ultimately not as ludicrous as the trench itself. Personally I never understood the point of flying down the actual trench as opposed to above it where there is more room to maneuver, especially as the trench was apparently at a right angle to the target that they aiming for. Why not fly directly to it?

I disagree. I would even go as far as to say that any setting that says that you CAN'T build a sentient A.I. falls into the fairytale category. Hypothetically there's no reason why, even if nothing else, a brute-force, atom-for-atom simulation of a human brain shouldn't produce a sentient A.I. (unless we wish to resurrect the discredited theory of vitalism)

True, as you state, there is no 100% accurate way to test if it is truly sentient, and, if so, if it is truly sapient, but if passes a Turing Test I believe it would be safe to assume that it is both, barring any specific evidence to the contrary. Ultimately there's no way to be 100% sure that anything is anything; In fact, I recently had the disturbing thought that I can't even be sure that I exist (I have some issues with Descartes' proof of "I think, therefore I am" concerning the natures of time and death and whether I still will have existed after I die and stop thinking)

(Also, what definition are you using for the word "reason", all the common definitions that come to my mind are possessed even by normal, unsentient computers)

Also, I agree with you about there being issues with "free will", but most of these rely on the fact that the term is very very poorly defined, and the fact that the idea relies on whatever the opposite of a false dichotomy is (any ideas as to what the correct term would be), it encourages the assumption that if there is will it must be free.

I feel compelled to correct you there. Grand Moff Tarkin destroys Alderann, not Darth Vader. In the entire original trilogy, the sum total of evil acts performed by Darth Vader consist of interrogating a spy, arresting a drug smuggler, and executing one of his men for misfeasance of duty (which, admittedly, is a bit over the top). (This is, of course, not counting the prequels, in which he goes on no less than three separate killing sprees).


PS. Sorry for the double post

 

You seem to be assuming that nukes can only be delivered by missiles. It's ugly, but they could be assembled by terrorists domestic to the culture or nation in question. Which means that what your proposing would really just be a minor variation on my group C, or else it would eventually be wiped out by war, terrorism, disaster at a science lab, etc.

Establishing a colony on another planet in your own system would still require a huge collaborative effort, lots of time, and enormous resources. Given how much easier it is for random terrorists, let alone government big wigs, to cause mass extinctions in a very short time frame via a genetically engineered virus or other WMDs, simply hiding out in a corner of your own system is unlikely to really get you past the "Uranium Barrier" and it's biological and nanotech equivalents. Unless, of course, your hidden culture that survives the fate of the main planet is itself also employing strategy A, B, or C. The point of the Uranium Barrier concept is that making a Generation Ship / Space Ark or even doing major Terraforming in your own system is a much bigger and slower project than destroying all life on your own planet (which eventually, any fool will be capable of doing in the comfort of their own garage via home bio-engineering kits).

It may not be clear from my post, but I was mainly responding to the context of the previous page where people said that they had a hard time swallowing the "lots and lots of aliens" approach of both Star Wars and Star Trek, or just aliens in sci-fi for that matter. One of the major objections to the way aliens are depicted is that they are usually generalized and pigeonholed, so that each species seems to only have one culture. "This is the species that's just like the Italian mafia."

I guess my point was (or should have been) that perhaps the one-culture-per-alien-species notion isn't all that laughable after all, since a planet that still thinks of it's various cultures, ethnicities and nations in "us-vs-them" terms is unlikely get out of their own system without wiping themselves out first. Even if most of your people get past that sort of thinking, you could still be snuffed out by one lone nut with a chemistry set, a la 12 Monkeys.

 

What you say is true. The problem is, there's no reason hypothetically why such a simulation should produce a sentient A.I. Science is what has been done in a laboratory and can be reproduced in a laboratory, not what is hypothetically possible. Faeries are hypothetically possible, a whole subgenre of fantasy called urban fantasy is built around the hypothesis.

But what is being debated here is science not hypothesis. Traditional science holds that nothing can be disproven, so any hypothetical scenario is possible. Until we can experimentally act on it its outside the realm of traditional science.

A.I. assumes some things that we don't know for sure. It assumes that there is no soul or similar component to human beings that is necessary for sentience. It assumes that everything about how the boichemical actions of the human brain produce sentience and reason can be mapped. And it assumes that we can create a process that duplicates all of those biochemical actions in a way we can control and dictate. Can we experimentally test these things? Not yet. So is it science? Not yet.

There are a lot of things which are hypothetically possible but not scientifically valid that turn up all the time in sci-fi. Faster than light travel, artificial intelligence, directed energy weapons, aliens, time travel, gravity and inertia manipulation, mathematically predicting the actions of large groups of people and a host of other premises. Just like faeries still living among us, hidden by their glamours, these things are all hypothetically possible and, by the nature of disproving something, impossible for us to disprove.

Stories about the things are closer to old fairy tales than they are real stories about real science.

I read a sci-fi book called "Raiders from the Rings" that did its future technology very well. There was an anti-gravity and anti-inertia device but otherwise things worked in a recognizable fashion. Ships flew from point A to point B using rockets and fought each other with homing missiles and and interceptor missiles. There was no FTL drive. And computers read data off of magnetic tape and printed readouts on small index cards. The book was published in 1962.

Any attempt to predict the progress of science is going to look very silly to people even fifty years later, never mind a hundred years or more. (H.G. Wells anyone? Actually, I think Steampunk is wicked cool, but hey, that's another thread.) So what's wrong with just sitting back and accepting that there's probably a decent theory for all the madness and enjoying the show?

 

I apologize. That shows how many years its been since I've last seen it. I undoubtedly misremembered that scene. It's funny how mutable memory is.

 

That has little to do with any appreciation or lack of appreciation I have for the film, and in any case, I'm not talking about reality, but the fact that it just felt wrong to me, having studied physics, in High School and college (I have a degree in Engineering, not Physics, and I make no claim to being even an amateur physicist -- if you say that there is a potential explanation, I have no basis to argue against that. The Universe is a stranger place than most people can imagine, imho. I remember seeing mundane phenomena like hydraulic jumps in open channel flow and hexagonal-shaped convection cells for the first time as an engineering student and being completely taken by surprise. What I was talking about was not something that is IMPOSSIBLE, just something that doesn't feel right, as a movie viewer.

I don't actually dislike Star Wars -- I'm just not a fan, as I'd seen that kind of SF before. That STYLE of SF had not been done any better prior to Star Wars, and I fully admire the movie for that fact. I just was never an enthusiastic fan of the really early Space Operas that Star Wars was a throw-back to. So I can admire the movie while at the same time, not actually feel the need to revisit it. I'm more into hard science fiction (which really is not well-represented in the movies, except by "2001"), and more idea-centric SF like "Blade Runner". It just felt old-fashioned to me, not necessarily in a bad way, just that it felt too familiar.

 

You didn't like Gattaca? Or wait, I think you mentioned it earlier...

OK, I'm not seeing it in a quick scan over the thread, so to summarize, Gattaca is a movie about eugenics and how it might affect our lives in the future, when genetic testing is more and more accurate. It's pretty much the only movie I've seen that has any foundation in existing technology and actually attempts to show us what that technology could do to us if we use it badly. If you haven't seen it I'd check it out. If you have and said so earlier you can just laugh at my poor memory.

I do agree with you on Star Wars being something of a throwback to the Flash Gordon days. And I certainly wouldn't want all my SF to be like that. In fact, there's only so much of it you can take. At the same time, I'm not sure how much Gattaca or 2001 I could take, either. But to each his own. I'm almost a compulsive balance seeker. I actually took a personality test that told me I was most likely to resolve conflict through collaboration, so it's not surprising that I'd try and get the best of both styles. =/

 

I loved Gattaca -- definitely ranks among the best science fiction movies I've seen. Actually I originally intended to mention that film, but then I decided to edit down my post (I have a really bad tendency for wordiness and going off on tangents, that I'm trying to avoid, not always successfully, when I post. I'm a little like that when I talk as well.