Orion's Arm Tipler Oracle

[Simon_Jester]

No, because at that point we have to ask whether the person who wrote the dictionary knew what they were talking about.

Sometimes this is an easy issue- for normal English words that aren't the subject of philosophical debate. But for literary terms, it's too easy for the highly unofficial "dictionary" to be compiled by someone whose neutrality is in doubt.

Any fool can write their own definitions of words and publish them. It takes a little more than that to be trustworthy.

[lordofchange13]

No, because at that point we have to ask whether the person who wrote the dictionary knew what they were talking about.

Sometimes this is an easy issue- for normal English words that aren't the subject of philosophical debate. But for literary terms, it's too easy for the highly unofficial "dictionary" to be compiled by someone whose neutrality is in doubt.

Any fool can write their own definitions of words and publish them. It takes a little more than that to be trustworthy.

I see you point. But how are we to determine the meaning of a word is we cannot trust it's published definition? It is difficult to communicate if a people do not agree on the correct use of a word, i know this personally. The only every use I’ve heard Hard Scifi be used for: is a speculative fiction story in which contains technologies that can theoretically exist by the understanding of science at the time of writing. I will keep to this definition till a better one is stated. I do not understand why people are contesting its meaning, by calling it a buzz word; Nanotech has become one but that doesn’t change the understood meaning of the word.

[lordofchange13]

Though I full heartily agree that Orion’s Arm is all over the place on the Scifi hardness scale, the stuff up to Ultra-tech seems to fool realistic physics. It’s when they start talking about Metric engineering that stuff starts to become none realistic; but the project is still really entertaining, and has some nice ideas on transhumanist future technology. Though I’m iffy on the whole Singularity level thing.

[Simon_Jester]

I see you point. But how are we to determine the meaning of a word is we cannot trust it's published definition? It is difficult to communicate if a people do not agree on the correct use of a word, i know this personally. The only every use I’ve heard Hard Scifi be used for: is a speculative fiction story in which contains technologies that can theoretically exist by the understanding of science at the time of writing. I will keep to this definition till a better one is stated. I do not understand why people are contesting its meaning, by calling it a buzz word; Nanotech has become one but that doesn’t change the understood meaning of the word.

The problem is that "nanotech" is a symbol with a physical referent- you could easily point to objects that are indisputably nanotech.

"Hard science fiction" is a cultural construct, and different people have always used it differently ever since the term was invented. So the boundaries of what can be described as "hard SF" are uncertain.

It's like "good behavior." What behaviors are good depends on who you ask, so you can't just look up the Christian Science Dictionary entry for "Good Behavior" and figure out what it means to behave well from that. Likewise for "bad behavior." Defining these terms properly requires some real thought.

[lordofchange13]

I see you point. But how are we to determine the meaning of a word is we cannot trust it's published definition? It is difficult to communicate if a people do not agree on the correct use of a word, i know this personally. The only every use I’ve heard Hard Scifi be used for: is a speculative fiction story in which contains technologies that can theoretically exist by the understanding of science at the time of writing. I will keep to this definition till a better one is stated. I do not understand why people are contesting its meaning, by calling it a buzz word; Nanotech has become one but that doesn’t change the understood meaning of the word.

The problem is that "nanotech" is a symbol with a physical referent- you could easily point to objects that are indisputably nanotech.

"Hard science fiction" is a cultural construct, and different people have always used it differently ever since the term was invented. So the boundaries of what can be described as "hard SF" are uncertain.

It's like "good behavior." What behaviors are good depends on who you ask, so you can't just look up the Christian Science Dictionary entry for "Good Behavior" and figure out what it means to behave well from that. Likewise for "bad behavior." Defining these terms properly requires some real thought.

Ha, Now i truly see your point. Do you happen to have a suggestion on either a more descriptive definition or perhaps a few Scifi universes to use as road markers? To keep with your analogy, when someone describes "Good Behavior" they would often give a few examples of what is not good behavior and is not good, or depending on the person , they might boil it down to a sort of edict such as: anything that causes pain is not good behavior. could not the idea of: if the technology is based off of physics that is believed to be true by 80% of modern scientist, then the technology and the universe is hard?

[Alerik the Fortunate]

It shouldn't be a hard and fast category, but a question of degrees, from unquestionably hard to unquestionably soft, with room for debate in the middle. I'd like to find the thread about the cheese hardness scale, but the search function rebuffs me.

[lordofchange13]

It shouldn't be a hard and fast category, but a question of degrees, from unquestionably hard to unquestionably soft, with room for debate in the middle. I'd like to find the thread about the cheese hardness scale, but the search function rebuffs me.

Perhaps this will help you out some.