02-24-2023, 12:09 PM | #31 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Tinkering with Ultratech Super Science
Everything is TL ^, that's the point. However the mental translator isn't just machine translation. It reads everyone's mind for the meaning of the words they say and projects the meaning of the words into everyone else's mind. Data sets are irrelevant.
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02-24-2023, 12:22 PM | #32 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Tinkering with Ultratech Super Science
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It maybe made less sense in TOS, but with what's been established since, and given all the different kinds of secret aliens shown to have been visiting/slave raiding/culture preserving Earth without leaving much in the way of evidence, and all the other worlds there's somebody there at the same time as, or historically verified to have been there before the Federation, I'm pretty confident [somebody] has some sort of contact that could collect data on the major languages of everything inhabited often enough to maintain some sort of continuity. You only need one speaker every few centuries, and trading data isn't hard. Even the NX01 seems to be able to load the libraries of entire civilizations in a few minutes. Ships may very well swap, compare and update their entire language databases of a billion tongues by millennia old conventions every time they "open hailing frequencies". For the smokables, well. "Aw, man, that's not what you heard him say? Hey Moonflower pass me the peace pipe, the Security Chief here needs another toke."
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-- MA Lloyd Last edited by malloyd; 02-24-2023 at 12:31 PM. |
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02-24-2023, 01:27 PM | #33 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Tinkering with Ultratech Super Science
Real-time continuous translation, given an appropriate database, is current to near-future, depending how good you want it to be, so not much above TL 9. The magic part is when you run into a previously unknown society and are instantly able to communicate.
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02-24-2023, 01:55 PM | #34 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Tinkering with Ultratech Super Science
There's also the bit where those you're communicating with somehow fail to notice you're actually speaking another language that they can somehow understand, or if you're using some fancy tech to replace the sound of your voice with the translation that your mouth's movements don't match what you're saying (as in a dubbed movie). I've seen at least a few Star Trek episodes that relied on that aspect, with the characters relying on their translators to blend in.
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02-24-2023, 11:13 PM | #35 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Tinkering with Ultratech Super Science
Another variant on the mental translator would be the biotech approach, a subsapient telepathic animal bred to automatically translate speech for the minds of other people close to it. Speaking of which the question of whether mental translators would work for people with active mental shields is worth considering
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02-25-2023, 07:18 AM | #36 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Tinkering with Ultratech Super Science
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It is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that something so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. |
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02-25-2023, 10:14 AM | #37 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Tinkering with Ultratech Super Science
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I think you may have their conclusion backwards, there. Highly-improbable-but-fortuitous happenings are generally more likely to be used as evidence in favor of a creator intelligence than as evidence against the same.
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02-25-2023, 05:44 PM | #38 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Tinkering with Ultratech Super Science
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was a quirky book.
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02-25-2023, 08:20 PM | #39 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Tinkering with Ultratech Super Science
Sure if one of the parties are unknown to everyone and always have been. Otherwise, well, as long as both of you can translate your own languages into some other language you both know, you can establish communication. The fact that shared language is that of a species from the other side of the galaxy neither of you have met because it went extinct millions of years ago and it has been passed to you through different non-overlapping strings of other spacefaring cultures doesn't particularly matter as long as all the translation steps are good.
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-- MA Lloyd |
02-25-2023, 08:47 PM | #40 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Tinkering with Ultratech Super Science
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