THS 2120!

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

As I recall from the days when I was nominally subject to it, you could be a "conscientious objector” on an entirely secular basis if you could convince the draft board you were sincere about it. This was in the US when compulsory draft registration was restarted. And I believe it is still in force for males 18-26. Theoretically enforced with fines and prison, but in practice with denial of student loans.

From what I heard about both here and over at your side, conscientious objection is still treated differently, with religious conscientious objection like "my deity says no killing" getting treated most seriously, followed a few pegs down by the quasi-religious like "killing is evil", while something like "conscription is a form of slavery and slavery is evil, therefore I object" being essentially laughed at (IIRC it was something whswhs once pointed out first on this forum).

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Shostak

What about improving the uplifted animal templates to give IQs equal to humans? This is not to say that they would have human intelligence, just that they are much smarter than than their earlier versions.

Or material science improved by exotic compounds made by engineering them with dark matter.

Dark energy spacecraft engines. Sounds pretty woo-woo today, but in 2120--who knows?

EP went with more human-equivalent IQs for uplifts, and I think it makes coming up with characters easier. But in GURPS, the problem with uplifts is that animal body templates seem to be rather expensive much of the time, so they'd end up costing lots and lots of points, discouraging picking them (many of their advantages are of dubious utility in TL10-11).

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Shostak

What about improving the uplifted animal templates to give IQs equal to humans? This is not to say that they would have human intelligence, just that they are much smarter than than their earlier versions.

Or material science improved by exotic compounds made by engineering them with dark matter.

Dark energy spacecraft engines. Sounds pretty woo-woo today, but in 2120--who knows?

20 years is probably only enough time to de-bug the templates from 2100. Many of those has bugs in them that may have been included to facilitate exciting roleplaying or something like that. I suspect he bugs mostly kept players from choosing those templates.

Anyway, de-bugging is physically possible and by the rules in Bio-tech fairly easy. Maximizing IQ though is a TL12 development when 2100 is wobbly on early TL11 in gene-tech.

As for dark matter and dark energy the original books are silent on those even as regards theory. Applications for either would be pretty much out of left field (and probably count as "superscience" that we aren't supposed to see in TS)..

[Shostak]

Dark matter classifies as "exotic" matter, which is listed as being developed at Hawking Station. It could be fun to have some near weightless dark matter alloy steel!

[Flyndaran]

Dark matter has normal mass as that's kind of the mystery. It's that it doesn't appear to interact with normal matter in any other way.
I can't imagine a use for something that has mass but no other physicality.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Dark matter has normal mass as that's kind of the mystery. It's that it doesn't appear to interact with normal matter in any other way.
I can't imagine a use for something that has mass but no other physicality.

If Dark Matter has practical uses, they'll doubtless be surprising.

[Flyndaran]

I don't get the logic. If something of no likely use has a use, it will be surprising? Okay?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Shostak

Dark matter classifies as "exotic" matter, which is listed as being developed at Hawking Station. It could be fun to have some near weightless dark matter alloy steel!

Not usually what David uses the term "exotic matter" for. He usually means something more like some form of high density stuff.

Either would be superscience.

If you just wanted high strength and low mass TS already has carbon fullerene materials that are far stronger than steel with less mass.

[Shostak]

My point is just that dark matter is in a literal reading of the books (and I can only assume that the authors know the difference between baryonic and exotic matter), that we don't know much about it now, and that it could therefor be imaginatively utilized as fodder for cool material science technology in the THS universe. Is that super science? Maybe not any more so than brainpeeling, terraforming, or memetics.

Since we don't know much about dark matter, it pretty much gives gamers free rein to imagine all sorts of nifty possibilities. Maybe incorporating it into baryonic matter makes substances invisible. Maybe it makes stuff super heavy. Maybe it strangely makes stuff have almost no interaction with gravity. Who can say? Nobody, because we just don't know. Its the fiction part of science fiction.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Shostak

Is that super science? Maybe not any more so than brainpeeling, terraforming, or memetics.

Superscience is a term of art, whose meaning is approximately 'breaks fundamental laws of nature as we know them*, as opposed to merely extrapolating known ones and adding compatible developments and applications'. Mars' terraforming is usually criticised as superscience put in a non-TL^ setting because it breaks the law of conservation of energy and/or laws of thermodynamics. The other two you list are compatible with the fundamental laws of nature as we know them, though in the future we may learn things that make their development on an engineering level impossible (the jury is still out on many topics that are important for these technologies).

* == For instance, someone from before the emergence of nuclear physics would (unwittingly) classify fission and fusion as superscience because they break the law of conservation of mass. For these reason there was a huge disagreement about the maximum age of the sun back in the day.