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Old 07-17-2018, 12:41 AM   #11
whswhs
 
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

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Originally Posted by dataweaver View Post
But it might make it TL(7+x). Which, from what I understand, is “what of TL7 progressed without some key TL8+ innovations being developed?”
Yes, well, they don't navigate with slide rules, so they're not TL(6+x). And they don't seem to have ubiquitous computing, or neural nets, or much in the way of genetic engineering, or microelectronics as advanced as ours, so I don't think they quite work as TL(8+x).

They definitely have technologies that we have strong reason to regard as "impossible" and that would count as superscience: warp/FTL and the concomitant time travel, transporters, I think force fields, tractor beams, probably artificial gravity (they aren't relying on centrifugal force to give them a sense of up and down, and they seem to be able to compensate fairly well for acceleration). So they're TL(7+x)^.

So what are their capabilities, once you set aside the superscience that might have shown up at any TL? We can set aside the interstellar flight; they're doing that with superscience, not with anything vaguely realistic like Bussard ramjets or antimatter reaction drives. Their phasers might be compact particle-beam weapons of a sort; on the other hand they might be simply disintegrators, which count as superscience. Stylistically they appear a lot like compact lasers, which are TL10. They have antimatter energy storage, which is TL10, and isn't used on anything smaller than a starship. They don't have cellular rejuvenation, regeneration, or full metamorphosis; they don't even have uploading, and while we do see what amounts to a brain transplant, it's presented as McCoy achieveing a virtual miracle with the aid of advanced science and exceeding his normal limits. So they seem to be retarded in the biological sciences in some ways.

The overall impression I get is that they look rather like TL10, with a few capabilities that aren't realistic and that, if they didn't violate natural light, might just as well be discovered tomorrow as with the benefit of a few centuries of scientific advance. So I'd probably call them TL(7+3)^.
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Old 07-17-2018, 12:55 AM   #12
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

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By that logic, every fictional future conceived of now would be TL 8+X. We can't make a TL 9 setting, because it would require things we don't know about the future.
Technically, yes: there will be surprises, and once we get to the point where we can say that we're at TL9, I'm certain that or technology will not look like what GURPS describes as TL9. So technically, what's listed as TL9+ is more accurately thought of as TL(8+x). That is, in fact, my view of TL9+.

The difference between this and TL(7+x) is that we are past TL7, so we have the necessary hindsight to say what counts as TL8 and what counts as a divergent TL(7+1).
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Old 07-17-2018, 01:07 AM   #13
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

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I think that you're thinking of original Trek capabilities in terms of what you imagine behind the scenes as necessary to achieve their capabilities, based on your experience as a TL8 person; not in terms of what is actually said in dialogue or shown on the screen.
I do tend to think of Star Trek as being a "Holo-V" series about Starfleet, much as Top Gun or JAG depict fictional versions of the US Navy.

In my Trek universe there's a show popular in the Klingon Empire called "Battlecruiser Vengeance" that gives the opposite perspective.

Unfortunately with Trek you have several continuity and philosophical problems that can't be resolved based strictly in on-screen evidence.

For example, insisting Starfleet isn't a military organization... then holding a court martial for Kirk, some thing that by definition only military organizations do.

So, yeah... you can't resolve some discrepancies with on-screen evidence.
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Old 07-17-2018, 01:18 AM   #14
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

As far as I can remember, “Starfleet is not a military organization” is an idea that was introduced in the Next Generation, and so is not binding on TOS. Heck, I don't even consider what Star Trek Enterprise said to be binding on TOS, despite it supposedly being set in the same universe a century earlier. Once you bring in revisions from TNG and its various spin-offs, you're no longer talking TOS. Heck, even the original movies are suspect.
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Old 07-17-2018, 06:49 AM   #15
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

They do have cellular regeneration though. In Star Trek IV, Bones gives a little old lady a pill that regrow her kidneys in a few minutes, which suggests the equivalent of TL 12 biotechnology (using a specialized form of highly accelerated proteus virus to transform fatty tissue into organ tissues, in the correct location, and connecting it to the rest of the body). He also uses a regeneration ray to repair Chekhov's brain without surgery, which could be interpreted as just a remote device that was directing previously implanted medical nannites to focus their attention of repairing his brain damage. Just because they do not harp on about thd miracles of nanotech in the series does not mean that it does not exist (most modern stories do not harp on about the miracles of modern sanitation, but we assume that they have running water and flush toilets).
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Old 07-17-2018, 07:17 AM   #16
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

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They do have cellular regeneration though. In Star Trek IV, Bones gives a little old lady a pill that regrow her kidneys in a few minutes, which suggests the equivalent of TL 12 biotechnology (using a specialized form of highly accelerated proteus virus to transform fatty tissue into organ tissues, in the correct location, and connecting it to the rest of the body). He also uses a regeneration ray to repair Chekhov's brain without surgery, which could be interpreted as just a remote device that was directing previously implanted medical nannites to focus their attention of repairing his brain damage. Just because they do not harp on about thd miracles of nanotech in the series does not mean that it does not exist (most modern stories do not harp on about the miracles of modern sanitation, but we assume that they have running water and flush toilets).
That's still not the original series. That's the movies that were made later, and were not necessarily consistent with the original series.

But stipulating otherwise, you can also take that as "TL(7+3)^ advanced in a science (medicine)." What TL something is is a rough average of all of its technologies; it's not simply defined by the most advanced technology it has in anything. And I'd also mention that that level of healing capability seems to be beyond anything that was shown in the actual origianl television shows, so it looks like an inconsistency.

Your argument about a "healing ray" being a signal that activates and directs implanted medical nanites doesn't sound like anything that's justified by the original script or images. It sounds like you making up an after the fact explanation in terms of what we now imagine may one day be possible. I think we can be confident that the original scriptwriters had no thought of implanted medical nanites; that when they showed McCoy using a "healing ray" they meant, plainly and simply, that he was directing a form of radiation that stimulated cellular regrowth. (If they had thought of "medical nanites" they would likely enough have used that as their medical technobabble.)

What happens in ST has be be viewed phenomenologically: There is a surface appearance of what is happening in the narrative universe, but there is no actual physical reality underlying any of it. If the surface appearance is that McCoy trreated someone with a regeneration ray, then that's what happened. Any statements about the underlying physics are pure speculation—or, in other words, they're you making up a narrative to supplement the original narrative. Kind of like the fanfic writers who identify mithril as titanium, or the people who explain the "chariots of fire" in the scriptures as extraterrestrial spacecraft. And there's nothing wrong will telling that sort of story. But it doesn't tell us anything about the source material.

It's certainly true that the source material is inconsistent. But a lot of what they're doing is limited in a way that the GURPS description of TL12 is not.
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Old 07-17-2018, 09:02 AM   #17
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
Yes, well, they don't navigate with slide rules, so they're not TL(6+x). And they don't seem to have ubiquitous computing, or neural nets, or much in the way of genetic engineering, or microelectronics as advanced as ours, so I don't think they quite work as TL(8+x).

They definitely have technologies that we have strong reason to regard as "impossible" and that would count as superscience: warp/FTL and the concomitant time travel, transporters, I think force fields, tractor beams, probably artificial gravity (they aren't relying on centrifugal force to give them a sense of up and down, and they seem to be able to compensate fairly well for acceleration). So they're TL(7+x)^.

So what are their capabilities, once you set aside the superscience that might have shown up at any TL? We can set aside the interstellar flight; they're doing that with superscience, not with anything vaguely realistic like Bussard ramjets or antimatter reaction drives. Their phasers might be compact particle-beam weapons of a sort; on the other hand they might be simply disintegrators, which count as superscience. Stylistically they appear a lot like compact lasers, which are TL10. They have antimatter energy storage, which is TL10, and isn't used on anything smaller than a starship. They don't have cellular rejuvenation, regeneration, or full metamorphosis; they don't even have uploading, and while we do see what amounts to a brain transplant, it's presented as McCoy achieveing a virtual miracle with the aid of advanced science and exceeding his normal limits. So they seem to be retarded in the biological sciences in some ways.

The overall impression I get is that they look rather like TL10, with a few capabilities that aren't realistic and that, if they didn't violate natural light, might just as well be discovered tomorrow as with the benefit of a few centuries of scientific advance. So I'd probably call them TL(7+3)^.
They don't "even" have uploading? <snort> You say like that uploading is a basic thing and we really know when we'll get that. The truth is of course they have something very close to the technological capability for uploading. They merely regard it as mad scientist ******** that will inevitably bite them in the ass if they do it and can point at the wreckage of dead civilizations who did do things like that scattered all over the galaxy. So they don't usually work on it. It's the same thing with genetically engineering supermen. It's well within their capability, in fact they did it centuries ago. They just didn't like the results.
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Old 07-17-2018, 09:05 AM   #18
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

How much of that is TOS, and how much is TNG/DS9/Voy/Ent?
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Old 07-17-2018, 09:21 AM   #19
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

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They don't "even" have uploading? <snort> You say like that uploading is a basic thing and we really know when we'll get that. The truth is of course they have something very close to the technological capability for uploading. They merely regard it as mad scientist ******** that will inevitably bite them in the ass if they do it and can point at the wreckage of dead civilizations who did do things like that scattered all over the galaxy. S.
They can point to the fiasco of the M-5 computer whose programming was absed on the "engrams" of Dr. Daystrom. Engrams turned up early in TNG when a dying scientist manged to upload his into Data's body. That didn't end well either.

In fact I generally dissent from characterizing Star Trek as a "Safetech" universe. The technologies you don't see in Safetech civilizations aren't shunned because of philosophy, preference or neuroses. Star Trek is a DangerTech universe where many technologies are inherently dangerous and rationally avoided.
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Old 07-17-2018, 09:33 AM   #20
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

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They don't "even" have uploading? <snort> You say like that uploading is a basic thing and we really know when we'll get that. The truth is of course they have something very close to the technological capability for uploading. They merely regard it as mad scientist ******** that will inevitably bite them in the ass if they do it and can point at the wreckage of dead civilizations who did do things like that scattered all over the galaxy. So they don't usually work on it. It's the same thing with genetically engineering supermen. It's well within their capability, in fact they did it centuries ago. They just didn't like the results.
The "even" here reflects that uploading is listed as (a) not being a superscience technology and (b) being TL10, not TL12. That is, I'm classifying it on the basis of how the rules of GURPS define the TLs, not on the basis of what you think is plausible.

As for genetically engineering supermen, what indication is there to support this? "Space Seed" referred to eugenics, which in the 1960s meant selective breeding for desired traits and/or sterilization of the "unfit"; it did not refer to genomic editing or anything along those lines. And the changes that could be seen in Khan and his allies weren't anything radical like TL11-12 species modifications; they were high-end human traits. So you might call it TL(7+2) or even TL(6+3), or maybe one TL above that: attaining the benefits of (minor) genetic engineering by the older technology of selective breeding, exactly like an analytical engine being a digital computer built with mechanical linkages. It's still not the equivalent of TL12 by other means.
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