Sufficiently Advanced Technology

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

For example, a realistic setting could have a TL12 society where the infusion of nanotechnology and the availability of microscopic fusion reactors that use helium-3 throughout every cubic meter of the Earth would give a magical element to existence.

Permit me to doubt the realism of microscopic fusion reactors sufficiently well insulated to avoid melting the Earth's crust. They're trying to confine temperatures measured in millions of degrees.

[garfield]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

<snip> When we look at the past thousand years, a scholar in 1018 AD would have never been able to predict our scientific and technological progress, and our communications technology and our medicine especially would have seemed like magic to him or her. Why should we expect that the scientific and technological progress of the next 1,000 years should be any less remarkable?

First, because what we call science today did not exist 1,000 years ago ...

Second, using the development of our understanding of science, we can now explain, why certain things did not work as some people searched in the middle ages. In a same way I expect people in the future will be able to explain, why some of our ideas did not work out, or why some of the limits we pose now could be circumvented.

But that is the clue: today we can give limits, that have (most of the the time not explicitly stated) conditions on what they are based. If we are aware of the conditions, we can be sure, that the limits hold (when the conditions are fulfilled). So we have more predictive power than the scholar in 1018 AD.

And GURPS reflects this ... as the authors are well educated people ... and are conscious, that games have their "stretch of reality" built in.

[Bengt]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

At TL12, you could probably make fusion power sources the size of mitochondria if you wanted, as long as you used helium-3 as a fusion fuel.

Why is that probable? He-3 fusion takes even higher temperatures than D-T fusion.

[Bengt]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Well, imagine a scenario where you met an individual who communicated with you through telepathy. Would you think that it was technological telepathy, facilitated by the nanomachines transferred from the individual to you when they shook your hand, or would you think that it was being caused through magic/psionics/super powers? From an objective point of view may be more believable, but I could understand why some people might believe the latter.

Personally I assume anything is explainable with enough study and experimentation. But sure there are people who believe in ghosts and psi and stuff, but I think there are a lot fewer people who think smartphones are magical (well at least not literally :) ). It's a gadget, even if they don't know how it works, they do know that it's machine manufactured by humans in a factory.

In truth, most people believe in magic, they just dress it up in pretty names like ancient aliens, information technology, psychic powers, or religious beliefs because anything that they do not understand is magical to them. Cell phones might as well be magic to the majority of people because they understand them about as much as they understand nuclear fusion. Whether or not what they do not understand is natural or supernatural does not matter, it only matters that they fear what they do not understand when they do not control it or take for granted what they do not understand when they do control it.

Now I feel like you are moving the goalposts. If the ultratech in question is deliberately disguised to look supernatural it will fool a few more susceptible people, but scientifically minded people will still assume it's technology.

[vicky_molokh]

'Assume' and 'be able to distinguish' are separate things. For example, I just don't have the ability to distinguish femtotech from sorcery or vice versa, and I don't think you have either - both in terms of knowledge and of tools required to be able to. Sure, you'll assume that it's tech, but you would equally assume that about sorcery, with no way to distinguish between two. I'm not sure a big commission with a cutting-edge 2012-era lab would be able to either.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Permit me to doubt the realism of microscopic fusion reactors sufficiently well insulated to avoid melting the Earth's crust. They're trying to confine temperatures measured in millions of degrees.

Fusion reactors do not use insulation anyway, as nothing material could survive the resulting temperatures. If they are sustained reaction designs, they use electrostatic or magnetic fields to contain the plasma away from the material components of the reactor. If they are pulse reactor designs, they only operate for a millionth of a second at a time, allowing the reactor to cool.

A nanoreactor would be a pulse reactor design. Since it would use helium-3 as a fuel, it would naturally lend itself to pulse fusion, as sustained helium-3 reactions are only efficient in stars. Eighty percent of the resulting energy is convertible to electricity, and five percent of that would be spent on each pulse reaction. While defiantly beyond our capabilities, it is well within the currently known laws of physics.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

'Assume' and 'be able to distinguish' are separate things. For example, I just don't have the ability to distinguish femtotech from sorcery or vice versa,

If you saw an example of it, the keyboard command interface would probably give the game away.

[newton]

From a meta perspective, tech resembles magic with a different set of modifiers and disadvantages.
for instance a robot is essentially a golem with electrical reprogrammabe and limited diet, A phone can produce the same effect as many spells but it needs electricity and a signal, an explosive can produce essentially the same effect fireball but must be thrown.
i’d argue that tech is in a way the magic system of the real world and magic is the tech of a different world

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

If you saw an example of it, the keyboard command interface would probably give the game away.

That rather depends on it having such an interface, and not something totally other. If Abra Kadabra's femtotech utility swarm responds to him making gestures and reciting phrases in 64th century Sindarin, you would need outside information to give that game away (like Superman's comic-book level microscopic vision, or something). If you don't have that, you have no way to distinguish it.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

If you saw an example of it, the keyboard command interface would probably give the game away.

And how would I distinguish it from a technomagical or from a magical keyboard, hmm?