Orionsarm.org

[SirNitram]

I'm sorry, Kojikun. When I enter a SLAM topic, I expect Science and Logic. Of course, you seem to be missing the greater point: Your argument for OA computers being able to extrapolate the SW universe's laws and improve on their tech is a similar no-limits fallacy.

Ignoring your whining that I can't ridicule something that is scientifically ridiculous in the forum specifically for that, I'll point out you have provided no proof that Architects are superior to SW computers; you've evaded the question and used a no-math mentality. You toss out at Yottahertz claim and don't even try to compare it to SW power; you just claim it's 'far outpace' of anything in SW.

Of course, gotta love comparing the nonsentient computer that does hte hypernav calc's, in a box smaller than a man, to a computer the size of a gas giant, that's fully sentient.

[SirNitram]

In OA, the laws of physics are assumed to permit continuing exponential growth of computational power, hence in OA Moore's Law still holds.

I'm not concerned with realism at this moment, but are the OA computer specifications posted anywhere? Computing power and size/weight would be most helpful.

Yottahertz processing minimum; apparently as big as a planet.

[kojikun]

I'm not concerned with realism at this moment, but are the OA computer specifications posted anywhere? Computing power and size/weight would be most helpful.

You'd have to ask Alan. I don't think OA states anything beyond the AI history page with its yottahertz nanoprocessors.

[XaLEv]

... size/weight ...

Shazzam

[SirNitram]

Oh lord, they expanded into nano-wanking since I last wrote there.

[Kuroneko]

... size/weight ...

Shazzam

Thanks.

Hmm, omegons. But what's that I hear?

fap, fap, fap, fap

Nevermind, must be my imagination.

[kojikun]

Thanks.

Hmm, omegons. But what's that I hear?

fap, fap, fap, fap

Nevermind, must be my imagination.

Terribly unrealistic, yes. But it's canon in OA so .. ::

[Mad]

The particle would show up in experiments. This would provide the groundwork required to derive newmore accurate theories.

It would only show up by pure chance, and perhaps only from some strange conditions that are usually neglected because nothing interesting is expected to happen. Your fallacy is that you're claiming something is guaranteed to occur with no proof. Sure, it could happen, but you can't guarantee that it'll occur within a reasonable timeframe.

You're assuming that it would be done in such a way that they'd know. But that's really neither here nor there and something for a proper SWvOA debate.

You're reaching.

No, I said that I didn't know you were talking about the OA universe, and the the OA vs page explicitly states that the OA universe and the SW universe are not considered the same in the particular vs debate under discussion.

So, despite your own claim that OA has discovered previously unknown physics within the OA universe, you will not concede that OA does not have a complete understanding of the physics of its own universe? Now isn't that just being contradictory?

You can't have it both ways... Either you have claims engineering stupidity from supposedly hyperintelligent AIs or you have AIs who don't fully comphrehend their own universe and you expect them to be able to figure out a completely foreign universe.

Humans had to, at some point, do the math themselves. Droids are demonstrably inferior to humans where intelligence is concerned,

By "math," do you mean equation shuffling or number crunching? Today, we rely on computers to do all the number crunching in data analysis because we can't hack it ourselves. The general trend is that the equations are pretty straightforward, but applying them is a total nightmare for anything except a computer. So, we turn to them. And even then we run into problems where the conversation goes something like: "How many computers do we need to solve this problem?" "All of them." (Regarding both computational power and memory.)

And you're ignoring the possibility that lack of data is the difficulty in opening the gates to superphysics. A sufficiently fast computer should be able to solve for anything (equation shuffling), in theory.

and their large computer systems take a good deal of time for something that is relatively trivial.

You're ignoring the analysis of the DS plans. That was not trivial. You're basically saying that since handblasters can't blow up a planet, the Empire doesn't have the firepower to destroy a planet. You're ignoring examples of insane computational power and focusing in on lesser examples and trying to apply them as upper limits on capability. It quite simply doesn't work that way, sorry.

And if data anlysis of new theories of physics is just number crunching, any observations of those new properties of the universe would be analysed significantly faster by OA AIs then by SW humans.

Once again, you ignore the possibility that SW computers have any part in analysis. That's an especially stupid viewpoint when it appears that the Rebel Alliance seems to have access to 100 billion yottahertz machines. And you expect humans to do the bulk of analysis???

Incorrect. Intelligence is directly related to how well physics can be understood. You cannot teach calculus and related physics to a dog because a dogs brain is not capable of understanding it.

How well physics can be understood is directly related to the amount of data you can process and correlate together. Your physics model is going to be based on the amount of data you can gather about the system. Even if Newton was the most intelligent person ever, he couldn't include Relativity in his model because he had no data for it; no reason to hypothesis it.

Similarly, if the math were so difficult that a superintelligent AI weren't able to understand it, then a less intelligent human would be woefully incapable of understanding it.

It doesn't matter how intelligent the AIs are; if they don't have the means to detect superphysics, then they can't account for them even if they can hack the math.

Further, hyperdrive wasn't invented by humans... it could be that being given the data on hyperdrive is what opened the door to SW superphysics access to humans. (Once hyperspace could be accessed thanks to the information provided to them, all kinds of new experiments could be performed and new technologies created.) For all we know, the species that first found hyperspace could be far more intelligent than OA's AIs. You're assuming that things will work out in OA's favor and then acting like everyone should just accept that it's guaranteed... It's far from it.

Thats assuming the universes were infact one in the same. If they were different, then OA archailects should be able to detect the new laws of physics, because their technology can detect things on the smallest of small scales.

In order to detect it, it has to be there... you can't detect a new particle if it doesn't exist within the area being scanned when the experiment is performed.

I have already explain this many times. I'll repeat it one more time: The tasks a SW computer has been shown to take hours to do would take an equivalent MODERN supercomputer effectively similar amounts of time.

I'd like to see an example. Navicomps never took hours, and the analysis of the Death Star plans was beyond anything we could expect to do for hundreds of years (according to OA).

You did not state this before and I fail to see how its relevant. Please explain.

Yes I did. You simply misunderstood... repeatedly. Re-read what I said on the 3rd page (added comments):

"And where has this equipment along with AIs discoverd new laws of physics? [Implication: within their own universe, since I'm asking for examples and they obviously haven't visited other universes.] Why didn't they discover those laws before? Seems to me more like the laws haven't changed so much as the AI has discovered something about physics it didn't know before. [The laws of physics within the OA universe shouldn't have changed, the AIs simply got a clearer understanding.] Meaning there still seems to be bits of physics from the OA universe that the AIs don't even understand. [What was that? "from the OA universe." Plain as day, yet you missed it.] And then they're supposed to figure out completely foreign technologies like hyperdrive or warp in any reasonable period of time?"

Again, OA technology enables sensors to detect things as small as the particles that make up matter. Anything else would have to be derived from accelerator experiments or cosmological data, both of which are easilly accessible to an OA AI.

But there's no guarantee they'll be able to detect hyperspace.

But intelligence is not just a software issue. If a computer cannot perform appropriate numbers of calculations per second, it will NEVER match human intelligence. More calculations per second would mean the AI runs faster, and be capable of more then human standard intelligence.

And if the programmers don't give the capability to match human intelligence, then it doesn't matter how fast the hardware is. You can't prove inferior computing power by discussing software deficiencies. (I've seen a 233 Mhz machine run faster than a 2 Ghz machine thanks to spyware, for instance... only an idiot would claim the 233 had superior hardware when the software was to blame for the end performance.)

Actually, understanding laws of physics is very closely tied with how intelligent we are. Just as dogs are not intelligent to understand calculus, we may not be intelligent enough to understand all the physics of the universe.

We'll still know if the data doesn't coincide with the equations. It all comes down to what we can test for and experiment with. At worst, we'll know something isn't right but simply can't account for it.

On the other hand, if there's something we don't know about, it could be that all we need is the data and then we'll be able to figure it out from there. There's no guarantee either way (even if you'd like to claim there is).

Technology in OA during the 2300s was yottahertz level. 10k years later the technology would be far superior. Even with the very underestimating rate of one order of magnitude per century, thats 100 orders of magnitude, or 10^300. Thats a few times larger then 100 billion.

YOU were saying?

Um, that'd be 10^124, not 10^300.

The "Encyclopedia Galactica" is supposed to be 5*10^19 bits, or 6.25*10^18 bytes. (Less than the Death Star plans.) Moore's Law applies to storage capacity just as well as processing power. Why, then, is the EG so small relative to what can be carried on a small disk in SW? Perhaps because a roadblock was hit, perhaps? According to your estimates, they should be able to store well over 10^100 bytes of data by that time.

Provide some evidence that Moore's Law hasn't hit some kind of block in OA. A quote and link, preferibly.

Upgrades, probably. But that doesn't really make it any better, because even if it took 1/1000 of the ANH time, the OA computers would still be thousands of times more capable.

So because Han has the equivalent an old 8088 on the Falcon means that the equivalent to P4's don't exist in SW? Your fallacy becomes most obvious when I've already pointed to computational power far beyond that in simply analyzing the plans to the Death Star.

And charting a path isn't exactly trivial when it requires terabytes of data just to store the locations of the stars in the galaxy. Then we have to add velocity, mass, orbits of their planets (and the mass of those planets) and other obsticles that we know they store (like asteroid fields).

I'm going to withdraw from this discussion tho, as its become mere repetition of the same things. If you want we can take this up in AIM so we don't waste board space, and upon conclusion post the chat logs.

If you wish to withdraw or contact me via PMs, that's up to you. I prefer the peer criticism allowed by public posts, however, to correct me if I make any huge blunders.

[kojikun]

Hokay, I got Alan to reply to the debates. He was going to resgister, but because of the paypal thing, he can't. So I'm acting as proxy:

Alan Kazlev:

You forgot the FTL warp bubble sensor. It is funny seeing as how they
bash sci-fi for having FTL drive but themselves use FTL technology.

MAK: Warp bubbles pertained to an earlier softer science version of OA,
and have since been removed from the setting

http://www.orionsarm.com/search.html "warp bubbles"
gives only three hits

o The Amalagamation has been updated to remove the term
"original wild hypotheses of a faster than light telepathy using "warp
bubbles" or "tachyon radio" has been shown to be invalid, and colonies
that cannot link up with the collective eventually undergo a sort of
hyperdenebola collapse"

o Grading Science Fiction for Realism "warp bubbles" are mentioned in
passing in the hard to soft scale - it is said there

http://www.orionsarm.com/intro/grading.html
"These things are highly improbable - FTL Warp drive - (why? - violates
local causality, requires more energy than in the entire universe,
although nano- or sub-nano-sized warp bubbles would be ok as regards
the
latter, but still doesn't resolve the causality problem)"

o The Passenger is an old story and the error will be cortrrected when
the page is next revised

http://www.orionsarm.com/search.html "warp bubbles"
gives only two hits

Active and Passive Sensors
www.orionsarm.com/ships/sensors.html - this is now a relocation page

The Efficiency Maximization Paradigm
this page is part of an old directory that has been removed

As I was writting the previous post I struck a gold mine. This is
http://www.orionsarm.com/intro/vs.html their view the Star Trek vs Star
Wars debate.

Stofsk
I take it these are the sort of people who denounce Star Wars or space
opera as possessing "laughable" or "imaginary" science yet dress up
their own inventions and disguise it as Hard SF? I always considered
that intellectual snobbery ...

Am I wrong in regards to this site? I've only perused it to a limited
degree

MAK: Look at http://www.orionsarm.com/intro/vs.html again. That page
has now been rewritten, and I personally apologise for any
misunderstanding and incorrect information. Especially I draw your
attention to the following words

"Since comparing different universes is like comparing apples and
oranges, none of the following should be taken _at all_ seriously"

They don't realize that the energy requirement problem for lightspeed
travel is independent of the size of an object, and applies equally to
a
single electron as it does to a planet?

MAK: Apart from EM transmission etc, there is nothing in OA that goes
*as fast as* Light. Even the most advanced relativistic ships can only
travel atr "high relativistic velocities"

Also, my apologies to Mike for the accidental Phd

Describing Darkstar's website: ...

MAK: the page now gives equal links to Mike and Darkstar, and that it
is
upto the reader to make up their own minds. Once again my apologies to
Mike for the incorrect claim that he was arguing for SW as something
factual (sorry Mike)

I especially like how they ignore basic suspension of disbelief at the
bottom when stating that rival universes would be transported to theirs
where 'their FTL drives won't work'.

MAK: You could again read the words "Since comparing different
universes
is like comparing apples and oranges, none of the following should be
taken _at all_ seriously"

also the words

"(since this [the VS page] is all pure non-hard SF imagination we can
indulge "

If any of the good folks on the SD board want, i can even highlight
these words and emphasise them more often, to show that the whole thing
is and only was a joke, _not_ a literal part of the OA Universe

Aren't they currently worshipping wormholes as the ideal and perfect
hard-scifi means of getting around?

MAK: actually we are fully aware that wormholes are speculative

http://www.orionsarm.com/intro/grading.html
These things _may or may not be possible_ but can still be considered
Hard (but <em>not</em> Ultra Hard) SF, at least until proved wrong by
future discoveries - Navigable Wormholes - (why? - controversial but
so
far it seems at least as much evidence in favour of as against -
http://www.orionsarm.com/whitepapers/li ... #wormholes

http://www.orionsarm.com/faqs.html#FTL

Q: I can't see why you can't use other kinds of propulsion systems,
such
as true FTL. It's highly unlikely that we would be able to create
wormholes with 'exotic' materials, even more unlikely then 'warp'
technology.

A: We have to disagree with you about it being unlikely. The concept of
a wormhole inflated from the quantum foam and held open with 'negative
energy' from 'exotic matter' is one of the few bits of tech which is
even remotely possible as a FTL solution.

note the word "remotely"

http://www.orionsarm.com/intro/answering_criticism.html

especially
http://www.orionsarm.com/intro/answerin ... ml#fiction
http://www.orionsarm.com/intro/answerin ... sibleornot

-------------
signed
MAK aka Cosmic Alan
http://www.orionsarm.com/

[Kuroneko]

These things may or may not be possible but can still be considered Hard (but not Ultra Hard) SF, at least until proved wrong by future discoveries (Firm and Hard SF):

• Navigable Wormholes - (why? - controversial but so far it seems at least as much evidence in favour of as against - refs)

These things are highly improbable and cannot by today's understanding of physics, astronomy, etc, be considered realistic (hence are excluded from Hard SF). But who knows, they may be proved correct in the future should the laws of physics be completely and drastically turned around (Soft, Medium or (if only one) Firm SF). Many of these themes characterise Hard SF as commonly defined (including its softer polarity):

• FTL Warp drive - (why? - violates local causality, requires more energy than in the entire universe, although nano- or sub-nano-sized warp bubbles would be ok as regards the latter, but still doesn't resolve the causality problem)

To separate them into different categories is ludicruous. Their only requirement is exotic matter--which is required for wormholes anyway. Warp drives do not have to violate causality shape or form, although just like wormholes they can be theoretically be modified to do so. If anything, warp drives are more realistic, because they require less extreme modifications to spacetime geometry than wormholes.

[kojikun]

kuro, what method of FTL is consistant with relativity?

[NecronLord]

kuro, what method of FTL is consistant with relativity?

Alcubberrie warp drive is...

And to be fair, if you can use 'exotic matter' to build a small wormhole, you can make a warp drive with relative ease.

[SirNitram]

kuro, what method of FTL is consistant with relativity?

Ones that cheat.

[kojikun]

Alcubberrie warp drive is...

And to be fair, if you can use 'exotic matter' to build a small wormhole, you can make a warp drive with relative ease.

Alcubierre warp drives don't create problems with causality?

[SirNitram]

Alcubberrie warp drive is...

And to be fair, if you can use 'exotic matter' to build a small wormhole, you can make a warp drive with relative ease.

Alcubierre warp drives don't create problems with causality?

How could they? They never go faster than light. They reduce the distance between two points.

[Kuroneko]

kuro, what method of FTL is consistant with relativity?

Any kind in which the object moves within its own light cone. Two observers located at the same point cannot have FTL relative velocities, but the relative speed of two distant observers can be arbitrarily large provided there is positive vacuum pressure. Exotic matter (and negative energy density in general) provides that. If you think I'm leading you on, recall that this is precisely what occurs immediately after the Big Bang in the the widely cited cosmic inflation theory of Alan Guth.

[Kuroneko]

And to be fair, if you can use 'exotic matter' to build a small wormhole, you can make a warp drive with relative ease.

Exactly. Thinking traversible wormholes are somehow less realistic than warp drives is nonsense. In fact, they are less so, because if you have exotic matter, you can create a warp drive. On the other hand, you need to create a wormhole first, and then try to stabilize it with exotic matter.

[Kuroneko]

In fact, they are less so, ...

Just to be clear on this: wormholes are less realistic than warp drives, because wormholes require even more unobserved mechanisms to be created. (Eh, no edit button.)

[kojikun]

How could they? They never go faster than light. They reduce the distance between two points.

Thats something I've never got. If they reduce the distance between two points (ie, stretch/squash space) wouldn't things on the part thats being stretched be stretched as well?

Like.. look:



I would think that if the distortion brings two distance objects closer together (the ship and the star, or two stars) by warping space, the same warp would shrink the size of the stars themselves. Right? Or does the star move, but because of the electromagnetic force, its particles repel one another enough to resist the warp?

What I'm asking, I guess, is, are particles fixed in size relative to the skein, or do the have some disjunction from it?

[SirNitram]

I believe the general consensus is anything actually occupying the space being warped is: Very bad shit will happen to it. Merely appearing odd would be the least of the troubles. However, I can safely say that merely warping space into a shortened 'highway' would be far less destructive than generating two singularities.

[kojikun]

But then alcubierre drives are a very big problem, because application of them would create huge amounts of warped space. And you cant cross the shortened length without passing through the warped space, and in doing so either a) get squashed so that the distances crossed are equally shorted, or b) the thing gets crushed to fuck and destroyed. So theyre useless. Maybe if you could actually REMOVE pieces of space and shift others about so that when you reconnect the part your ship is on its closer to the destination, it would work, but not just by squashing..

[Kuroneko]

How could they? They never go faster than light. They reduce the distance between two points.

The distance warping is a local effect neglibly small compared to the distance to be traversed. In effect, the warp drive does not change the proper distance at all, but still manages to go faster than light.

Thats something I've never got. If they reduce the distance between two points (ie, stretch/squash space) wouldn't things on the part thats being stretched be stretched as well?

Yes, but in the case of the Alcubierre warp drive, things aren't quite that straightforward.

I would think that if the distortion brings two distance objects closer together (the ship and the star, or two stars) by warping space, the same warp would shrink the size of the stars themselves. Right?

But then alcubierre drives are a very big problem, because application of them would create huge amounts of warped space.

No. It is a local effect.

Here are two stars, A and B, some distance D apart in flat spacetime, with a ship traveling between them:

Code: Select all

A~---------~x~-------------------~B
           Ship

Also assume they are in the same inertial frame (or small enough relative velocity for it not to matter), so that their measurements will be essentially the same. Measurements from this frame will be considered the `proper time/distance'. The - represents flat spacetime, and ~ a mild disturbance.

If you `zoom in' on the area around the ship, you'd see something like this:

Code: Select all

    _
   / \
--~   ~x~   ~--
         \_/

The ship is accelerated with some constant acceleration a, and the travel time between the start and end of the warp is sqrt(D/a). Although technically, the ship doesn't actually move; it is the very space around it that does. This gives rise to a problem--the ship that the warp bubble must be collapsed from the outside; the ship cannot stop by itself because it literally cannot reach the warp bubble around it. (This might not be a large problem if the warp bubble is fragile enough to be destroyed with encountering the gravitational field of the B-star or even a small body.)

[Sarevok]

But intelligence is not just a software issue. If a computer cannot perform appropriate numbers of calculations per second, it will NEVER match human intelligence. More calculations per second would mean the AI runs faster, and be capable of more then human standard intelligence.

Only if the software has to run in realtime. It is possible to perform virtualy any computing task imaginable on a 486 if you have enough patience. This is the nature of computing technology.

[kojikun]

Only if the software has to run in realtime. It is possible to perform virtualy any computing task imaginable on a 486 if you have enough patience. This is the nature of computing technology.

True, but then its not as intelligent as a human, because a human could perform more tasks in the same amount of time. So its valueless.

[SirNitram]

Koji, are you going to provide anything to actually support your claims about OA computers being superior to SW ones, in light of the rebuttals demanding such evidence?