Space Opera vs Hard Sci-Fi, personal vs realistic

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

It's meaningless to say that THS style ghosting is realistic, since we don't know enough about how the brain works and what it does to make such an assessment. We don't really know what all of the functions and processes of the brain are and do, and we don't know if the processes of the brain are the full story of consciousness. If they are the whole story, we still don't know if all of those processes can even exist/occur in other, non-biological structures or not. We're mostly just guessing.

Realism in sf is not a matter of actually knowing how something works. Obviously we don't have a complete and verified theory of how the brain works, any more than we have a complete and verified theory of how to build a working fusion reactor. If we had the latter, we could build the reactor! But a story where fusion power plants are a power source, and where they are envisioned as working in a way compatible with what we now know of nuclear and plasma physics, and where the engineering details and the economic consequences are made plausible, can fairly be called "realistic." And it doesn't cease being realistic just because later scientific research shows that it was wrong, because "realism" is a quality of literary imagination and not a matter of factual accuracy.

Bill Stoddard

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

You're sowing doubt with reasonable sounding arguments, but "we still don't know if all of those processes can even exist/occur in other, non-biological structures or not" is nonsensical. You can model anything physical with a sophisticated enough computer,

Only if you have sufficient information. And if you can gather sufficient information from a human brain to accurately model it, it doesn't seem beyond the bounds of possibility to put the same kind of information into a human brain...particularly if you can make bioroids the way THS can. (OK, bioroids are silly, but...)

[sir_pudding]

Shouldn't this whole drift about mind emulations go to the sticky thread of doom? I'm not sure it's terribly relevant to the topic (and I haven't commented on it, despite wanting to because of that and the sticky thread has drifted beyond these IMO more interesting questions, so I don't want to post there now either, if we brought this stuff back over there though...)

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Shouldn't this whole drift about mind emulations go to the sticky thread of doom? I'm not sure it's terribly relevant to the topic.

I thought that was for "is a Mind Emulation you/a person/etc" not "can AIs be made"?

But fair enough.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

I thought that was for "is a Mind Emulation you/a person/etc" not "can AIs be made"?

It seems like it's as much about the former as the latter (Bill's throat cutting rampage for instance).

[Lamech]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

You're sowing doubt with reasonable sounding arguments, but "we still don't know if all of those processes can even exist/occur in other, non-biological structures or not" is nonsensical. You can model anything physical with a sophisticated enough computer, even if your model doesn't work in exactly the same way as what it is modeling. A sufficiently advanced model's outputs are indistinguishable from reality's outputs.

We have no reason to believe that there is some non-physical component of intelligence, and implying because we don't know for SURE it isn't "realistic" is simply ignoring the definition realism in science fiction. We have no reason to suspect it wouldn't work, only that it may be difficult. But not in a "beyond the capabilities of engineering to create" kind of difficult, simply "needs (lots) more study and development" kind of way.

It would be more like asking someone from 1600 if flying machines that go past the sound barrier are possible. Sure its not asking about undiscovered laws, but its still a bit early to tell.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

It seems like it's as much about the former as the latter (Bill's throat cutting rampage for instance).

Everybody run! Mr. Stoddard is out for metaphorical blood.
Hee.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Realism in sf is not a matter of actually knowing how something works. Obviously we don't have a complete and verified theory of how the brain works, any more than we have a complete and verified theory of how to build a working fusion reactor. If we had the latter, we could build the reactor! But a story where fusion power plants are a power source, and where they are envisioned as working in a way compatible with what we now know of nuclear and plasma physics, and where the engineering details and the economic consequences are made plausible, can fairly be called "realistic." And it doesn't cease being realistic just because later scientific research shows that it was wrong, because "realism" is a quality of literary imagination and not a matter of factual accuracy.

Bill Stoddard

The trouble is that we know far less about the nature of consciousness, and what it woudl take (assuming it can be done) to replicate it artificially, than we do about how to build a fusion power plant. The gap between theory and practice is far, far greater with the replicated mentality. That's why I used the example of fission vs. phlogiston.

We can say with some meaning that as far as we know, many if not most of the genemod humans of THS are potentially realistic. The gap between theory and practice is small enough to do that. We can't meaningfully do the same with 'ghosting', we don't know enough to make the assessment. Ghosting is more like FTL, the genemod humans are more like fusion power.

[Flyndaran]

Assuming that there is some metaphysical aspect to human consciousness is NOT the scientific conservative opinion.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

You're sowing doubt with reasonable sounding arguments, but "we still don't know if all of those processes can even exist/occur in other, non-biological structures or not" is nonsensical.

No, it's a factual statement of our current level of knowledge.

You can model anything physical with a sophisticated enough computer, even if your model doesn't work in exactly the same way as what it is modeling.

'Sophisticated enough' is a modifier that makes the rest of the statement effectively null. Further, we don't know that all physical systems can be modeled, that has never been demonstrated.

Further, all models are wrong, though many are useful. We don't know how close the model has to be to the reality of consciousness to behave the same way, because, again, we have no data on the matter.

A sufficiently advanced model's outputs are indistinguishable from reality's outputs.

And if have infinite supplies of energy, you can travel at the velocity of light. Not a terribly relevant argument to actual practice in either case.

We have no reason to believe that there is some non-physical component of intelligence,

Not good enough. We have no solid reason to believe that a non-physical component does not exist, either. Null argument. Another way of saying, "We don't know."

Further, I didn't even mention 'non-physical', I said 'the processes of the brain'. Not synonymous with 'non-physical'.