Which TranshumanSpace technology do you think is total bunk?

[Astromancer]

Skip Mentics and the Black Holes, they were always meant to be WOW factor. Which THS technology do you think is pure Jetsons.

Please give your reasons.

[MatthewVilter]

Normal computers that can run ghosts. The brain is complicated! You should need a bio-nano-neuro-net or a quantum computer for that.

[sir_pudding]

Engineered organisms capable of terraforming Mars accidentally in a few decades.

[David Johnston2]

Or even deliberately.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Or even deliberately.

Yeah, but somehow it's even worse that it was an accident.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Skip Mentics and the Black Holes, they were always meant to be WOW factor. Which THS technology do you think is pure Jetsons.

Please give your reasons.

Actually, I'd give memetics a pass, at least on the core book description. It's actually more than a little unclear exactly how effective it is supposed to be, and well in the believable range for the lower end interpretations.

Hm, I think the most ridiculous tech is the more or less throwaway "Doolittle virus", which apparently is a contagious cross species method of raising animal IQ. Yeah, right, everybody believes there's a single change you can make in multiple species that will boost intelligence.

The fast terraforming of Mars, particularly as a bioengineering project, is pretty ridiculous at the depicted speed, where's the *energy* coming from?
But it wouldn't be too bad for a few millenia rather than a few decades, and it's under one of those coolness constraints to run fast enough to matter in the game timeline.

I think microscale ultraprecision assembly stuff - 3D printers, bioroids - are considerably overplayed in significance - they'd have to be unreasonably cheap and easy to have the impact they seem to.

He-3 fusion isn't bunk in itself, but the portrayal of fusion has been deliberately rigged to make space based He-3 extraction really important.
If He-3 works, DT and even DD are easier and doesn't need those resources. For that matter the tritium decay product is He-3, so you don't actually *need* them for even the He-3 reactors, though they might be cheaper when not embargoed.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Hm, I think the most ridiculous tech is the more or less throwaway "Doolittle virus", which apparently is a contagious cross species method of raising animal IQ. Yeah, right, everybody believes there's a single change you can make in multiple species that will boost intelligence.

I thought it was only Tursiops truncatus that was affected. Am I wrong?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I thought it was only Tursiops truncatus that was affected. Am I wrong?

The original reference is on the Most Wanted Criminals list, and hits the Rocky Mountains. So yeah. It's possible it got fixed later.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by malloyd

The original reference is on the Most Wanted Criminals list, and hits the Rocky Mountains. So yeah. It's possible it got fixed later.

Do you have a page reference? I'm rereading the Doolitle Dolphin template on Under Pressure page 101, and there is no mention of a virus of any kind. Rather it's described as an engineered species.

"The Doolittle dolphin was the first stable germline resulting from Applied Ocean Technology's cetacean uplift program."

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Do you have a page reference? I'm rereading the Doolitle Dolphin template on Under Pressure page 101, and there is no mention of a virus of any kind. Rather it's described as an engineered species.

p 105 of the core book. "6. Richard Law Taylor. Antigovernment crusader responsible for releasing the so-called "Doolittle Virus" that raised the IQs of animals throughout the Rocky Mountains and West Coast, causing unprecedented havoc."

Like I said, it's basically a throwaway idea. It should have been thrown away the rest of the way.