Tech Level Question

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Anthony

No, but it's a pretty solid indicator. We notice the cases of 'science says X is impossible and was wrong' and ignore the far more common 'science says X is impossible and seems to be correct'.

Development of new science mostly occurs in the gaps in our understanding -- it's not that previous observations were wrong, it's just that they were less universal than we thought they were -- and while there still are gaps in our understanding in a variety of areas, they're generally in regimes that are inordinately difficult to reach, and in any case whatever fills that gap is vanishingly unlikely to match our random imaginings.

Right. I would really suggest watching The Day the Universe Changed as it gives a thumbnail view of how and why our view of the universe changed.

For the most part it is because the current model becomes a complicated mess, makes a prediction that is not observed, or something is observed that doesn't fit the current model. Some times it is due to another way of looking at the world (the transition of theological size to prospective size for example)

As Burke points out one reason Phrenology failed was it predicted that bigger heads meant the person was more intelligent. There were enough big headed idiots and small headed geniuses that even contemporaries regarded it as psudoscience.

Sometimes it is simply because information doesn't exist. Alfred Wegener's idea that the continents moved case in point as evidence to support his view of the world would not appear until the 1950s and 60s.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by maximara

.

Then you have the replicators which are superscience matter transmitters similar to the transporter. .

This is false for TOS. See "The Trouble with Tribbles" where the Tribb;les got into the "food replicators". There was obviously physical food storage with physical access. If Kirk's chickensalsandwich was materialized by a transporter variant there wouldn't have been tribbles in it.

Mass matter trsmutation was used in the TNG era but not TOS that we can tell.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

This is false for TOS. See "The Trouble with Tribbles" where the Tribb;les got into the "food replicators". There was obviously physical food storage with physical access. If Kirk's chickensalsandwich was materialized by a transporter variant there wouldn't have been tribbles in it.

Mass matter trsmutation was used in the TNG era but not TOS that we can tell.

They were called "food processors" and note I said matter transmitters (Ultra-tech 49; Housing Tools, and Survival Gear section) not matter transformers. (Replicator; Ultra-Tech 93; Communications, Sensors and Media section) though I did mistakenly use the name of the TNG version ie right concept wrong name.

Per GURPS Ultra-tech "The simplest way to explain matter transmission is that it creates a junction between two separate points. This might be a wormhole, a macroscopic analogue to a quantum jump, a hyperspace bridge, a space warp, or some other superscience. This type of matter transmission is often closely related to faster-than-light drive or communications technology." (235)

Storage is point A and the food processor point B. Tribble gets into storage A and the food processor "mindlessly" grabs the material from the storage and matter transmits it to point B. This very basic transmitter is under MT Booths. (pg 235)

The matter transformer you are talking about is not only on a different page but a different section but yes it does use the term "Replicator". Not that it really matters as they both are superscience.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Just because it is superscience now does not mean that it will be superscience in 200 years. If you went back 200 years and tried to explain our technology to our ancestors and they would probably think that it was superscience (or magic, take your pick) because it would violate their understanding of science at the time.

Science fiction as we know it was insanely young in 1819 as Frankenstein, often regarded as the first modern Sci-Fi novel, was only a year old at that point. Sure elements of would we would call Sci-Fi appeared long before then and even before Somnium (1608; 1634) but the general concept simply wasn't there.

Then you have the idea of what is regarded as too fantastic to be believed ala Paris in the Twentieth Century (written 1863). In terms of technology it is frighteningly close to what the 1960s would be like

[AlexanderHowl]

Jules Verne had amazing foresight, but his prediction was for less than 100 years from his point of time, not 200 years, so my point still stands. It is impossible to find a prediction from 1819 that accurately reflects the scientific progress of 2019, because technological progress has been too extreme from the two points of time. Likewise, someone with amazing foresight might be able to predict the technology of 2119, but it would likely be impossible to predict the technology of 2219.

For example, when we compare commercial travel from 1819 to 2019, we go from an average 10 mph for commercial land/sea travel to an average 600 mph for commercial air travel. A similar increase would be require for commercial orbital space travel (an average of 10 mps), as much as 200 years worth of travel technology improvements. Another similar increase for commercial fast interplanetary travel (an average of 600 mps), so another 200 years of travel technology improvements. Going from commercial fast interplanetary to commercial fast STL (an average of 0.2c) would likewise represent another 200 years of travel technology improvements and going from from commercial fast STL to commercial slow FTL (an average of 12c) would be another 200 years.

So going from our current commercial speeds to commercial slow FTL would represent 800 years of technological advancement in the area of travel. Of course, we may have technological breakthroughs that would cut down the timeframe, commercial fusion would allow going from commercial air travel to commercial orbital travel, but breakthroughs are unpredictable.

[Flyndaran]

That still makes the mistake of assuming linear progressions. History and technology almost never do that.
Look at battery development or internal combustion efficiency for counter examples.

[AlexanderHowl]

Not quite linear when it is 60x every 200 years (a linear function would be 600 mph per 200 years or 3 mph per year), but I agree that it is not that predictable. It is just as likely that our civilization will collapse due to global climate change in the next century as it is that we will that we will develop commercial orbit travel in the next century. It is possible that we will be reduced to a TL4 civilization with only 400 million people by 2219, with our descendants telling folk tales about our age of magic.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Jules Verne had amazing foresight, but his prediction was for less than 100 years from his point of time, not 200 years, so my point still stands. It is impossible to find a prediction from 1819 that accurately reflects the scientific progress of 2019, .

It seems to be kind of impossible to find a prediction from 1819, period.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

It is impossible to find a prediction from 1819 that accurately reflects the scientific progress of 2019

That's not really all that relevant to the issue of TL^, though, because TL^ is about predicting what's not possible, not what is possible.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Anthony

That's not really all that relevant to the issue of TL^, though, because TL^ is about predicting what's not possible, not what is possible.

The main thing that made the transition from putative superscience to reality is atomic fission.