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Old 02-02-2023, 01:33 AM   #1
D10
 
Join Date: May 2009
Location: In Rio de Janeiro, where it was cyberpunk before it was cool.
Default What is our TL?

With the breakthroughts in fusion, the possibility of a primitive form of FTL comms due to quantum entanglement, DNA editing, nascent brain chips, AI starting to get useful, multi-use complex robots for personal use on the near horizon and so many other things, where are we compared to what we were when 4e was released? Sometimes the world feels very cyberpunkish already...
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Old 02-02-2023, 02:09 AM   #2
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: What is our TL?

Quote:
Originally Posted by D10 View Post
With the breakthroughts in fusion, the possibility of a primitive form of FTL comms due to quantum entanglement, DNA editing, nascent brain chips, AI starting to get useful, multi-use complex robots for personal use on the near horizon and so many other things, where are we compared to what we were when 4e was released? Sometimes the world feels very cyberpunkish already...
Pretty sure quantum entanglement doesn't do that. Fusion, brain implants, and all the robots you're thinking of are at a level of realization where they have no actual bearing on TL.

DNA editing technologies are really cool and are in serious use, but are usually not the actual barrier for biotech advances.

Recent developments in AI are interesting, but I'm not sure they touch on anything that's specified to a TL.
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Old 02-02-2023, 03:49 AM   #3
Solomon Draak
 
Join Date: Jan 2023
Default Re: What is our TL?

I would say mature TL 8 verging on TL 9.
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Old 02-02-2023, 04:46 AM   #4
m_weh191
 
Join Date: Oct 2022
Default Re: What is our TL?

Pyramid 4/6: Sci-fi/Tech II includes an article by Kromm entitled "Today's Tomorrow, Tomorrow's Yesterday" in which he breaks down this question in quite a bit of detail.
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Old 02-02-2023, 05:54 AM   #5
WingedKagouti
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Default Re: What is our TL?

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Originally Posted by D10 View Post
With the breakthroughts in fusion,
The overall process is still energy negative. Creating the fusion pellets takes more energy than the process releases and the process itself is barely at the point where it is energy neutral (ie. it releases as much energy as is put into starting the process). Useable fusion power may happen in our lifetimes, but I wouldn't put money down on it happening within the next couple of decades.
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the possibility of a primitive form of FTL comms due to quantum entanglement,
We might see some very early experiments with real world applications in a couple of decades. Might.
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DNA editing,
This is probably the most mature of the technologies you're talking about. But it's still in the very early stages and it isn't even close to early TL9 biotech.
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nascent brain chips,
If you're referring to Musk's wild ramblings, his claims at least 3 decades too early according to the majority of experts I've been able to find. Scientists barely understand the way the brain communicates with itself, even if they understand some of the processes.
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AI starting to get useful,
The algorithms being called AI these days are basically just looking at massive sets of data, trying to compare elements in an effort to figure out a structure. You can think of them as slightly more advanced Google search engines, the AI label is pure marketing.
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multi-use complex robots for personal use on the near horizon
Mobile multi-use robots are still several decades into the future. It will take longer for them to get affordable enough for home use. Immobile robots aren't that great for personal use (unless you start calling your washing machine etc. a robot).

In general, the main reason we've been hearing about these things lately is researchers wanting more funding for their research. And the easiest way to do that is to have some interesting fact or piece of research data that can be spun into an attention grabbing headline.
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Old 02-02-2023, 06:18 AM   #6
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Originally Posted by WingedKagouti View Post
The overall process is still energy negative. Creating the fusion pellets takes more energy than the process releases and the process itself is barely at the point where it is energy neutral (ie. it releases as much energy as is put into starting the process). Useable fusion power may happen in our lifetimes, but I wouldn't put money down on it happening within the next couple of decades.
It's even worse than that - the process only gives a net gain in energy (of about +50% IIRC) if you treat the input energy as "the energy in the laser beams." The lasers themselves are around 1% efficiency (100 MJ input for 1 MJ output), but are older "workhorse" models; newer lasers have markedly better efficiency, but I don't think they get anywhere near the ~75% efficiency that would be needed for breakeven (well, breakeven ignoring the large amount of energy needed to manufacture the fuel canisters, anyway). I don't think the methodology they used for the experiment would really scale up to a level where it could be used as an energy source anyway.

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We might see some very early experiments with real world applications in a couple of decades. Might.
I doubt there are any real-world applications. Quantum entanglement, as I understand it, has to do with the fact that certain unobserved attributes of the pair wind up matching when you observe them... but we have no way to manipulate these attributes, and if we develop a way to do so, I strongly suspect doing so will disentangle the pair. But it would be fascinating to be proven wrong.
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Old 02-02-2023, 08:37 AM   #7
D10
 
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Default Re: What is our TL?

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
I doubt there are any real-world applications. Quantum entanglement, as I understand it, has to do with the fact that certain unobserved attributes of the pair wind up matching when you observe them... but we have no way to manipulate these attributes, and if we develop a way to do so, I strongly suspect doing so will disentangle the pair. But it would be fascinating to be proven wrong.
I thought that was exacly what the physics 2022 nobel prize was about
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Old 02-02-2023, 09:12 AM   #8
Anaraxes
 
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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
Pretty sure quantum entanglement doesn't {enable FTL comms}.
Correct.

The short form is that Alice and Bob can go off and measure their set of entangled particles, but both Alice and Bob are just going to see a string of random numbers. The only way to detect the entanglement is for Alice to send Bob her string of numbers so that they realize they match -- and that communication is STL.

You also have the problem that Alice can't impose a state on her end of each entangled pair -- that is, set the string of entangled bits to some specific message. That is, Alice can do that, but that breaks the correlation of the pair. Bob still gets a random result if he makes a random measurement of the particle on his end, no longer correlated with Alice's.

If our pair know they have a matched, ordered set of particles are entangled -- say, Alice and Bob have divided up the matching pairs when they produce them together, and Bob wanders away somewhere else -- the best they can do is produce a matching random number on both ends. Neither end can impose a state, but they can each read a string of random 1s and 0s. That's useful for key sharing (usually called "quantum cryptography", even though that key-sharing alone isn't actually encrypting anything yet), but that doesn't tell Bob anything that Alice knew that he might want to know. You then have to use that key in some sort of boring old non-quantum STL cryptographic system to transfer any actual information. (And don't forget that "Bob wandered away" -- which wandering is of course STL, as in the first paragraph.) Useful, but not an ansible or subspace radio.

Last edited by Anaraxes; 02-02-2023 at 11:20 AM.
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Old 02-02-2023, 09:32 AM   #9
RyanW
 
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Default Re: What is our TL?

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I thought that was exacly what the physics 2022 nobel prize was about
It's my understanding that quantum entanglement can allow encryption something like a one-time pad, but that the message it translates has to cross the intervening space like normal. Imagining a system that uses a single pair of particles with entangled spin, you measure your particle, and send the message "If up, attack at dawn. If down, stand down."

But two caveats: a) entanglements are much more complex than that, so rather than two possible messages, it's millions, and b) if you think you understand quantum mechanics, they change to ensure you are wrong.
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Old 02-02-2023, 09:47 AM   #10
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Default Re: What is our TL?

The key here is Cutting Edge and even theoretical vs. mature widespread tech.
None of those are widespread and broad enough to bump our TL.
Even gene editing is too narrow to count as a full TL upgrade just for the biology or medical field.
Most of that list are just not practical yet and the few that do are not in wide use or too niche.
SO like others I rate us as upper TL overall and would allow the Cutting Edge perk for some things, especially in a cinematic campaign.
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