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Old 06-03-2018, 01:13 PM   #41
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Default Re: THS 2120!

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
I thought it was the point to make THS the most optimistic setting 100 years in the future possible without getting silly. How closely SJG got with that is of course arguable as with all things opinion, but I assumed all levers set to 100% optimism was a setting goal and feature.
Agreed. I'm just asking what the new visions are. IF we revise the setting, what's the new vision. That's what I'm looking to find out.
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Old 06-03-2018, 04:37 PM   #42
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Default Re: THS 2120!

That's a really hard question.
It's essentially asking, "how would you improve the setting?"
I doubt you could get any three posters here to agree in any way other than vague suggestions.
More robotics/A.I.; less robotics/A.I.
More people in space; fewer people in space.
More advanced terraforming; less advanced terraforming.

Though it seems like interest in space exploration is taking off like no time since pre-Challenger 1986. Technological optimism is likely to become the main trope in science fiction, I think. Now that zombie post apocalyptic seems to be dying down a little. (For once in my life no pun intended.)
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Old 06-03-2018, 05:30 PM   #43
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Default Re: THS 2120!

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
That's a really hard question.
It's essentially asking, "how would you improve the setting?"
I doubt you could get any three posters here to agree in any way other than vague suggestions.
More robotics/A.I.; less robotics/A.I.
More people in space; fewer people in space.
More advanced terraforming; less advanced terraforming.

Though it seems like interest in space exploration is taking off like no time since pre-Challenger 1986. Technological optimism is likely to become the main trope in science fiction, I think. Now that zombie post apocalyptic seems to be dying down a little. (For once in my life no pun intended.)
We've been doing gritty and grim in some form or other since The New Wave was actually new. Optimism could look radical by now. Perhaps a setting with a society with a renewed passion for democracy and intellectual elites that embrace the idea that a useful portion of truth can be known.
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Old 06-03-2018, 06:27 PM   #44
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Default Re: THS 2120!

A pro-science organization that isn't a front for world domination, unethical experimentation, or criminal enterprise?
That alone might be unexpected at this time.
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Old 06-04-2018, 09:18 AM   #45
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Default Re: THS 2120!

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It's not enough to count as proto-memetics to have an objective. There has to be a detailed plan for achieving that objective. If there was such a plan then after the dust settles you could evaluate how well the methods of that plan worked.

This would be science though perhaps with a lower-case "s". Or at least something like science. Historically any sort of detailed plan is rare and ones that survived contact with reality are rarer.
That's a very 'blueprintish' way of looking at things. But things can work in 'recipeish' ways instead. In fact, genetics and organism development generally work more like a recipe than like a blueprint, and people engaged in prehistoric genetic modification had no detailed plan for achieving their objective, just like an organism development isn't written down as a step-by-step plan. And yet nowadays genetic modification uses much more scientific methods, sequencing genomes and engaging in molecular-level splicing/editing/etc. to produce the desired outcomes. Despite DNA being recipes, not plans nor blueprints.
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Old 06-04-2018, 09:26 AM   #46
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Default Re: THS 2120!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
That's a really hard question.
It's essentially asking, "how would you improve the setting?"
I doubt you could get any three posters here to agree in any way other than vague suggestions.
More robotics/A.I.; less robotics/A.I.
More people in space; fewer people in space.
More advanced terraforming; less advanced terraforming.
THS does seem like one of those highly divisive settings, with a semi-broken, semi-unpleasable fanbase, though I think nowhere near as bad as some other setting and/or RPG fanbases (e.g. Exalted, Star Wars).

Still, I thought that terraforming is overwhelmingly seen as a negative because unlike all the rest of the major debatable elements, it breaks some fundamental laws of conservation of energy and the like.

With that out of the way, I think if one is for fewer people in space, one has to ask why pursue a game line that is titled Transhuman Space in the first place.

My stance on robotics/AI is much more indifferent - I think the inclusion of AIs (as opposed to Ghosts) into the topic of Transhumanism is something of an illogical act that is preserved largely for reasons of tradition. Sure, AIs are perfectly at home in radical hard SF and many general branches of futurism, but while many can accept that AIs are persons that doesn't make them humans.
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Old 06-04-2018, 12:33 PM   #47
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Tpeople engaged in prehistoric genetic modification had no detailed plan for achieving their objective,
That's why what they were doing wasn't science and did not directly lead to science.
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Old 06-04-2018, 03:06 PM   #48
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Default Re: THS 2120!

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That's why what they were doing wasn't science and did not directly lead to science.
Architecture is dependent on engineering and science, but it is art. Science Fiction likewise depends on science but it is also art. It seems to me you want a deeply pessimistic hard sci fi setting most people wouldn't look at twice. I could be wrong but it seems that way to me.
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Old 06-04-2018, 07:23 PM   #49
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Architecture is dependent on engineering and science, but it is art. Science Fiction likewise depends on science but it is also art. It seems to me you want a deeply pessimistic hard sci fi setting most people wouldn't look at twice. I could be wrong but it seems that way to me.
Currently all things that are covered by the hypothetical science of memetics are art as well but rt does not necessarily lead to science.

You are radically wrong about my own tastes in science fiction. I have little use for hard science and seldom favor the grimdark or pessimistic. My idea of fun is something in the area of Firefly or even Guardians of the Galaxy.

However, it would seem fairly clear to me that a future where human beings could be manipulated by memetics (specifically the Voodoo Mind Control flavor) would be quite dark.
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Old 06-05-2018, 01:20 AM   #50
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Default Re: THS 2120!

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We've been doing gritty and grim in some form or other since The New Wave was actually new. Optimism could look radical by now.
It looked pretty radical in 2002 when TS came out. That was, I think, one of the points, and a reason why we're still talking about it sixteen years later.
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